A long time ago I wrote a post on the addons I was using in World of Warcraft. Well, it’s coming close to two years since I wrote that post and I’ve made some changes to my addon packs. A friend who has been playing WoW for a long time is finally ready to try to sully his pristine interface with some of these things and wanted some tips on what to try so I thought I’d update my online list as well.
First we’ll start with the things that haven’t changed.
Auctioneer
I still use this. If you want to play the auction house game and make sure you buy low, sell high, you need to know the standard market prices on your server. This lovely tool does all the remembering for you. Scan the AH every day and build up a database of prices for everything, then whenever you mouse over anything it tells you how many times you’ve seen it at auction and what it goes for. It’s really amazing how much prices differ from server to server and this addon ensures you don’t have to keep track of that. This has become even more useful to mean now that I regularly play characters on two very different servers.
Autoprofit
Adds a button to every vendor to autosell all trash items. Yes! Makes life so easy! The main difference is that I’ve switched to using and Ace version of this addon. What’s Ace? Well, it’s a set of libraries that share memory and are optimized and blah blah blah. The main thing I care about is that there’s a handy-dandy updater application you can download and install. Then you just open it up, tell it to look for updates and install them. I don’t have to worry about keeping any of my Ace addons up to date anymore. A word of caution however, it installs the newest of new versions which is sometimes a beta and buggy. But it’s worth the convenience, in my mind.
Scrolling Combat Text
I love seeing details on everything that is damaging me or my enemies. I love seeing who healed me or how much I overhealed someone else. This one is great. Note that there are two addons, SCT and SCTD (d is for damage). Get them both for the most options! Note that I stopped using Cosmos which came with too much crap I didn’t want. I just download this one straight from the source.
CTMod
A collection of simple addons, I use it for the parts that let me see health percentages next to my party’s health bars and let me see all buffs and debuffs on party members. I don’t really raid so RaidAssist doesn’t get much use and I disable most of the bar mods. But for the few pieces I use, it is essential.
Ok, now for the new!
FuBar
This replaces TitanPanel. I basically switched because I wanted to be able to use the AceUpdater, no other reason. It puts a bar at the top and/or bottom of your screen for quick information. Time to level, gold, bag space, clock, current coordinates, anything you want really! It’s actually a framework for addons so you can find all sorts of plugins for FuBar if you search around. I actually just installed this directly from the AceUpdater, as with all the Ace addons. I installed the updater first, then checked off everything that sounded interesting and let it do the heavy lifting.
Bagnon
This replaces AllInOneInventory which broke and went kabloom. One window to see everything in your bags, one window for everything in your bank. I don’t love this addon - the windows don’t interact properly with normal WoW windows, so trade skill and character pages happily come up right on top of these. I just haven’t found something that is simple and works any better. Happy to take suggestions! But I definitely recommend an addon of this type, no more searching to find WHICH bag some item is in.
Fizzwidget’s ReagentCost
Using data from Auctioneer, this adds the market cost of the materials to craft something to all your tradeskill windows. Crafting is mostly a money losing proposition. With this addon you can at least make sure that when you’re leveling up a skill you’re making the most cost efficient items (ie the ones that sell for the closest to their crafting cost). I like the Fizzwidget addons in general and am currently also testing out Adspace which adds a tooltip to recipes that lists all the vendors that sell it. Since I like to make my money by buying patterns and selling them at auction, I hope people don’t install this one. LOL. Just kidding! Kinda. 
These next addons are really not required, but they add info that can be fun or helpful.
LightHeaded
The ultimate lazy person’s tool! If you’re like me and have started up at least 30 alts over various points, you don’t care about reading the quest text on something you’ve done so many times. You just want to find the coordinates and get things done. Well this addon embeds Wowhead comments directly into the game. No more alt-tabbing out to read up on what to do for a quest or what the coordinates are! Just see it right there! And if you have a waypoint addon installed (like Cartographer) you can just click on any coordinates and an arrow will lead you there. Yes, I know I’m lazy. But this stuff helps keep the borings at bay when you’re on you gazillionth character.
Recount
This is an uber-damage meter. Not only can you see who in the group is doing the most damage, you can see what skills everyone is using to do the damage. Charts, graphs, pretty colors, what more could you ask for? I found it because I was looking for an Ace damage meter and this one far exceeded my expectations.
Omen
A threat meter, this is nice for grouping but everyone needs to be running it. Let’s you see how much aggro you are drawing and if you’re in danger of pulling a mob of your tank. Gives you a nice indication when you should back off the DPS (or the heals!).
Cartographer
A map addon, this does a lot. It reveals the whole map in a zone so you can always find things - no more waiting to discover areas to see what everything looks like. It gives you zone maps when you’re inside and instance and shows you where all the bosses are. Even cooler, you can click on those bosses and it will show you what loot they drop! That part is super cool.
Ok, that’s all for now. I love me some addons.
2 Responses to “Current WoW Addons”
One more you should probably try out for your mage is Quartz (which is part of Ace).
http://wowace.com/wiki/Quartz
I’m using it for my shadow priest. It has a bunch of features but the only one I really care about is that it shows you your cast bar as the server sees it (i.e. it takes into account the latency). This is great if you are spamming alot of spells in a row (like, if you are a healer). It allows you to start casting a spell the instant the previous one lands, instead of waiting for your UI to show you the spell is finished.
I sortof do this already by feel (like, you can jump into the air a bit before your flying mount has finished summoning), but Quartz makes it very concrete. I’ve read that some healers get 4-6% more healing out when they use it, even with moderate pings.
Huh, 4-6% more, wow. I definitely do this by feel. I usually cast my next spell shortly before the end of my last one. I rarely do it too early but who knows, I may be doing it too late. I’ll give it a try.