Not sure how you can call it nonsense when it was literally a talking point during the Ion/Asmon interview? And again it was a big conversation with the game designer Morgan Day a few years prior. If game designers are making mention of how challenging it is to design raid fights around addons, I don’t really know how you can state that it’s not significant to this line of topic.
If they aren’t critical, do you play without them? I’m not talking about the cleaning up of the UI addons or the weak auras for individual character that are similar to a heads up display in the middle of the screen. I mean DBM, weakauras that track all cooldowns in PvP, weakauras that negate gameplay mechanics, and things that generally give you a leg up on players without them. Players are definitely better, but you can’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining when it comes to addons not being a part of that.