To me, there are 3 types of WoW players out there: the Purists, the Moderates, and the Borg. The first group swears off any addons that aren't expliticly required by their guilds. You'll see them writhe in pain as they download the latest version of Omen. I'm probably in the Moderates group. If it's a useful addon, I'm happy to install it, but I'm mindful of what a drain on my system some of them can be. The Borg pretty much have every addon they've ever seen mentioned. Trivia game? Got it! Chat mod that moves all my channels into new windows (which you can actually do on your own, kk)? It's right here!

Well, with Patch 2.4, the Purists are getting an upgrade to the default Raid UI. Rislyn says "The Raid UI now can display the range of players relative to you. The option to enable this is in the Party & Raid section of the UI Options." Now, this functionality has been available via RaidRangeAid V2 for a long time now, but personally I never understood why it wasn't built in to begin with. I mean, my spells always know who's close enough, so why not my frames?

Besides the Purists, I think this will mostly benefit the raid's dps and tanks since most don't need a super powerful Raid UI to just check who's dead. I can see this helping the raid leads see at a glance who's at the start point after a wipe before rolling out the ready check. Mages could use the default UI to decurse since it already handles debuff indication. And I'm not talking about just PvE raids. I can see this helping in BG's, too.

From a healing standpoint, I don't see much change. If you're already using the default UI, then you'll have the added bonus of beig more effective. If you're using one of a number of Raid UI addons, you're not going to give up the functionality and style of those for the default. I think a lot more than range would be needed before you start to see healing converts.

What kind of addon player are you? Will this change make you go back to the default Raid UI or were you using it already?

[Thanks to Tam.Zed for the tip!]