We tend to have fewer battles than normal (usually 1 battle per 3-4 hour session), and the battles are often complicated set-pieces (disrupting a ritual around an altar in the snowy mountains, aerial attacks by rocs and flying wizards over a canyon, fighting ghouls on a storm-tossed ship, etc.). minis and maps are pretty important for us for figuring out combat.
However, I realize that they can remove people's suspension of disbelief: they can make people see the battle from a bird's-eye view, instead of from a first-person view. I try to rectify this when I describe the outcome of actions by catching the player's eye and then describing to them (often pantomiming) what they do and what they see. I'll turn so that I'm facing the same direction as the player and gesture off to my left and say, "Coming from the hallway to the left, you see a misshapen giant lumber forth, gripping a huge axe." or the like.
It's important to get players to see the battlefield from the PC's perspective, but the battlefield makes it much easier to resolve the rules.
Daniel
