Raiding and Teamspeak.

[Cynric]

I don't think VOIP is required or necessary. It can help for some stuff. But it's one of those things that's like, if you play without it, you'll never need it, if you played with it, you don't want to play without it. Using voice chat can help with call outs, bad situations, and general communication.


However, in the same sense, if you need a call out to know a mechanic is coming then you probably should pay better attention, if bad situations are happening then people should improve. Voice chat is a crutch, Call outs are a crutch. Do they make the game easier? Of course they do, but you could also just learn the fight to the extent you don't need someone to tell you what to do.

Situation : swiftcast is down. Now do you really need the healer to communicate to you that swiftcast is down? Or did you just not notice the person who's dead has been dead for longer than 10 seconds?

In many ways Voice chat is useful. In many ways it can dampen your raid awareness to the point that you rely on Voice chat and believe you can not succeed without it.

In experienced groups voice chat just becomes casual small talk during raids, with the occasional "oh crap this thing happened".
Socially, typing and voice chat are about the same, though for some people voice chat is much easier and quicker to use than it is to type something out.

I will say it feels more fun to use voice chat while raiding. It's a stronger sense of synergy when you can talk on the fly about things and get responses quickly. However some people aren't able to respond even on voice chat, especially when they are heavily focusing on mechanics or not dying.