I do everything I could possibly need to do in the dopesheet… anyone else feel this way?
use it as a tool in your arsenal… dont be afraid of the graph editor.
Humbly, I’d be a bit surprised if you were getting along as well without it as you think you might be. I don’t much enjoy noodling in the spaghetti editor either, but a buttery and polished animation usually requires cleaning up f-curves. Maybe share some of your animation work? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. 
Its possible to not use dopesheet editor and instead doing everything in the graph editor but saying no to graph editor is something new.
Not only it could get ugly but what would you do if you need some basic things such as making a motion going faster/slower with each frame or going backwards partially, more keys? Thats just horrible workflow.
just think of that - most astonishing Animation was done before there were Graph editors 
Look at great 2D Animation Films.
No really - i have worked with traditional animators transitioning to 3D and they never touch the Graphs. Just linear from Pose to Pose.
For easing they just do another pose. I was surprised how well that works.
my 2 cent
I use to work in pose to pose, but then after i realised i was creating rediculous amounts of keyframes to get what i wanted, it made it hard making changes from then on out… now days, i tend to work mainly in auto clamped mode, only adding in keyframes where needed.
why do the work when the computer can do the work for you?
Am I the only one that finds playing in the Graph Editor, really, really fun? It used to intimidate me but it is just really enjoyable.
Yeah i feel the same about using Tech where it helps.
On the other side its the same with every foundational issue. 2D Paint for example - we have very good painting and drawing features in Photoshop. But it distracts you expecially in the beginning process of outlining and Blocking a picture, because you can mess to early with Detail (at least if you are not experienced enough).
I think kind of the same with the Graph editor. If you put it at the end of your work its helpful. Too early and you re doomed to parametricity of the curve. Putting another Pose into a Graph well shaped curve segment and you re tweaking again curves.
This just reflects my experience with tweaking curves where a solid pose would have been a lot easier and direct (visually).
In the end its also a personal taste Just wanted to add that its clearly possible to do great stuff without touching ever the graphs
I am thinking the same way. I think for a t.v style anime animation you could probably get away with not working with the graph editor and do everything with constant interpolation(so that you are fully in charge of controlling the spacing) and get that limited animation look.
As soon as you use Bezier interpolation then I think you will have to go in and tweak the curves because if you leave that to the computer then it just puts in ease-in and ease-out around every single key frame which makes every thing look like mush.
I think for feature film animation style I am deeply skeptical you would get polished animation without using the graph editor
In most app, the graph editor, or its equivalent, is a must have tool, I even use it in the 2D animation tool I use(Anime Studio), but in Blender, not so much in my opinion, because as soon as you change interpolation type, you end up having to do major tweaking, which I find annoying!
This said, it is still the best tool to get 100% control over your animation, so my two cents is, get to know it well, then decide if you need it in the type of animation you want to produce!
I try to work in an NLA-style as much as possible, rarely if ever touching the individual graphs.
I also try to push video-editing as far to the front as possible, getting a tight and effective series of “cuts” between various camera angles and positions, and locking these decisions as early as I can. From there, it becomes more clear what moves are actually required in what will be the finished sequence. (Once you start a move, you can cut-away and the viewer will complete the move in his mind’s eye.)
Don’t be disadvantaged use it to make things less complicated.
Could you point me to an explanation of what you mean by ‘auto clamped mode’? Sounds great. I’d like to see fewer keys, but so far erred on the side of having too many and that means I wade through millions of little dots, later in the process.
In the Graph editor hit V you will see it at the bottom of pop up menu. It helps your curves to have a smooth transition between two keyframes.
Since blender added some new interpolation presets, like Quartic, Bounce and Elastic, I’ve been using the Graph Editor more often. Sometimes I animated a null or cube’s motion, used the graph editor to tweak, and exported to After Effects, because this Graph Editor is way more usable & convenient for me.
erickBLender, thanks! I just checked that Auto Clamp out. That’ll help me many times in the future.
I’ve been working in CG for many many years. I started out as an animator and moved into mostly TD work later in my career. I used to hate the graph editor and never understood why people liked it so much. Then I started working at a small game studio a while back and was forced to use the graph editor in Maya. Basically they kept telling me I need to go into the graph editor and smooth out the curves. I had been working all these years avoiding it as much as possible but after I learned some very key point about graph editor usage, I became a convert. I Especially learned that my dislike of the graph editor had more to do with 3DSMax and LightWave’s terrible implementations. 
The main thing I learned is that if you want to take you animation to the next level, you need to go over it in the graph editor and make sure your curves aren’t doing anything weird. Also, the more you learn how to use the graph editor, the less keys you need to use and that makes it easier to change things down the line or for someone else to work on your animation (which happens a lot in game animation).
Otherwise, the alternative is to put keys on every frame and “Force” the computer to do what you want it to do. I feel like the graph editor is like a peek into the computers mind; It’s showing you that it’s completely blind and you need to lead it to where you want it to go. You can either tell it how to make each step on every frame or you can tell it what direction you need it to go and help it along it’s way. Two different approaches. Neither is right or wrong but I prefer to use less of my energy so that I can focus on doing more in less time. Although, there are times when I will wind up keying just about every frame. So, that has it’s place too.
Understanding and knowing how to use a graph editor is in almost all cases, essential for any quality animation work in any of the major 3D apps.
Getting comfortable with a graph editor is really helpful in 2D animation work too, even just animating text fly-ins and such. I do a good bit of that at work, making what are essentially more animated PowerPoints, using After Effects because, like blender, it’s very shortcut-key friendly and you can do a lot of work in the time line quickly with less clicking and dragging.
it’s OK to not use it, but it can totally help you a lot if you good at it. Useful skill for animators : )