Raiding is notorious for the number of addons necessary. If you're an addon addict to boot and probably have dozens, if not nearly a hundred, other addons to make life easy.

    But in all honesty, are these addons really necessary for raiding? There are some interesting arguments both ways.

    If Blizzard really wanted you to use things like Omen; they would have built a threat meter into the game itself. That does make sense in a lot of ways. The rebuttal to this argument is that Blizzard provided a huge Addon API for programmers to make things like Omen.

    Another argument is that addons detract from the spirit of the game. This one actually rings true. After all, think about the role playing value of the game a bit. Say you're fighting something we've all done, like High King Maulgar. We all know that he whirlwinds about every 30 seconds. This isn't a big deal after you've learned the fight, because what ever boss mod you're using will pop up a countdown timer to the whirlwind, and then even give you some audio alert when he's about to spin around and kill all the melee.

    If this were real, would you have any warning that Maulgar was about to spin around like a merry-go-round? It is probably not much, if any. You sure wouldn't have a colorful countdown bar remind you. But then again, this is a game.

    Addons are a necessary component of any successful raider or end game player. They take a lot of the guess work out of the game, and let you have a better time playing it.

    The raid encounters are designed to be beatable with the standard UI. The mod API is just there for you to help you. Remember the pre-2.0 healing mods (yes, before TBC)? Passive targeting? Automatic downranking etc. They nerfed it because they thought it was too close to cheating. 

    They'll nerf the API again if they think addons are getting too powerful. They're nice help, but don't get too dependent on them, the functions you can't play without could be gone in next patch.And it wouldn't be the first time they're trying to kill addons by adding the function in the game-proper. They added scrolling combat text (though made a real hash out of it and sct is still much better) and they added new maibox functions.