Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
Low level dungeons often throw out 2-3 different debuffs. Using and saving your dispel for an actually dangerous debuff. On the flipside, using debuffs early enough so you can dispel more debuffs.
Okay, none of this contends with the issue that you're basically interacting with user-interface prompts, rather than responding to something intuitive.

Also there are bosses that give a player a timed debuff (dispel at x stacks so the explosion is manageable but the debuff doesn't fly around the raid all the time). And at last, dispelling is a major part of playing healers in PvP, so it should be taught if people want to go there.
Yes, I'm not contending that in practice, understanding what debuffs to cleanse, and when, can't be a challenge, it's just a well-designed challenge. It's a problem you only solve with trial and error, or, in the real world case, if you're not the guys from Fatboss or a progression guild, looking up a strat on the internet. ALL of these mechanics are shorthands for, "Consult internet guide to tell you what the game-designers couldn't contrive to supply."

I'm not suggesting that players shouldn't be asked to read their skill tooltips, or learn how their class works, but when it comes to stuff like 'what does this debuff do', and 'why did everyone wipe', the developers are setting the average player up to fail. That's why there's this vast gulf between Heroic (the 'intended' raid difficulty) and LFR in terms of challenge. Because LFR has to assume that nobody showing up is going to bother to put on their pants straight, let alone do research on boss fight mechanics. And I don't think the average player who doesn't want to do 20 minutes of homework on a dungeon encounter is in the wrong here.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the "What killed me?" moment is kind of a design failure. Far too much of WoW's mechanics rely on parsing the really obtuse user-interface, or, more accurately, using a third-party addon to parse the really obtuse use-interface for you, and tell you what to do.

If you can make a system whereby debuffs are intuitive and easy to understand, as opposed to having a WeakAura that gets thrown up saying, "Cleanse Dim-Mak Debuff from Tank!", then I'm all in favor of using them. I just don't think that's possible, in light of the game's engine and design.