Coming from a former WoW Resto Shaman (Healer for those who don't play WoW), while addons definitely are not needed, many people still like using them. For example, in WoW, healing w/o addons like Grid (basically all it does is puts everybody in the raid group into a 5x5 box) and mouseover macros (I can hover over a person's name in the box and press my heal key instead of having to click the person's name to heal) is possible, but using these macros/addons cuts down time wasted due to hunting for a name and clicking the mouse, making my healing more efficient and enhancing the groups chances of knocking out the boss. Another example would be UI layouts. In WoW there are things such as Bartender and ElvUI that allow a player to customize how their screen looks. While this is not necessarily needed, I do enjoy having my action bars arranged to my liking. Going to click abilities that are placed on every side of my screen takes up time I could be using paying attention to the boss encounter. All of this wasted time does add up, and macros/addons just shortens that time. Addons such as DBM (Basically gives timers for when the boss will use an ability, gives out range checks that tell you if you are within a certain distance of other players [some fights involve mechanics where players spread out], and gives you warnings on basically everything that will potentially kill you) and **** (Gives out loud warnings telling you to basically **** of bad stuff; fire, slime, etc.) are basically there to make normal mode encounters practically fail-proof, unless people can't read, can't hear loud audible tones, or they just aren't paying attention whatsoever. They aren't needed at all, but they help the poor members of your raid that just simply cannot get out of the fire... -_- And finally, Meter addons. In WoW, there are two main tracking meters; Recount which shows things such as Damage Done, DPS, Healing Done, Friendly Fire, Deaths, Damage Taken, and countless others, and Omen, which tracks the threat of all players towards the boss. While Recount can be the bane of all raiding groups because of people staring at their DPS trying to be top on the charts and ignoring the boss mechanics, it can also provide useful information to the Raid Leader so they they can figure out things such as who is dragging down the group because they aren't putting out enough damage, who stood in the black pool of slime causing it to grow across the platform killing all of the group members, and how did the tank die in the last attempt. Omen doesn't have any downsides that I can think of off the top of my head, it allows players to make sure they aren't going to pull aggro off the tank during Tank-Swap phases or Threat resets. TL;DR Addons and Macros are never needed, but they always give the group an extra push to down the boss. OP should have considered these things before going on into his sarcastic rambling.