Hey, since we've been talking about WoW lately, and @danryckert seemed curious about WoW addons, here's a screenshot of my current addon setup:

That is, of course, a relatively placid screenshot. And note that this is not a particularly pretty or well-organized screen; it's very utilitarian and focused only on what I absolutely need, without much care for aesthetics. Here's one where I'm actually tanking a raid (albeit an LFR):

As you can probably tell, WoW is not just about gameplay and adapting to what's happening in the world: it's also about data. Shitloads of data. As a tank, there are a few different things I have to keep track of in a fight, in no particular order:

• My health. If this goes away, I die. As a raid tank, I'll usually have a healer or two focusing on me, so this usually isn't an issue, but I have plenty of cooldowns to pop if things get hairy.
• The other tank's health. I set a focus on the other tank in LFRs to ensure that they stay alive. Not all fights require two tanks (some require more than that on harder difficulties), but enough of them do that losing the second tank is usually a bad thing. I can throw them a quick Lay on Hands if I need to if I focus on them. In this case, the second tank's health is above and to the left of the boss' head.
• My party's health. I like to save my Lay on Hands for myself, but I'll burn it on a party member if they get in trouble.
• The boss' phase and debuff stacks. Most raid bosses have a set of phases that they go through during which they'll use different attacks or will force you to hand them off to another tank to survive the onslaught. Most of the time this is the result of a stacking debuff like the Flaming Spear above; the more stacks you get of something, the more damage you take, so the other tank will have to taunt the boss off of you (or you taunt it off of them) and disengage from the fight for a second to let the debuffs wear off.
• Similarly, mods will let you easily see what the boss' cooldowns are for his or her abilities. That's the red meter counting down over the stack of damage/healing numbers in the picture above.
• Cooldown timers. Most of my panic buttons (usually damage reduction for a short period of time) have three-minute timers, shown as a rotating circle of dark and light on the button itself. These aren't necessarily required to live through a fight, but they can make life easier on my healers for a bit.
• Threat. Like most MMOs, fights in WoW use a threat system. Threat is basically how much of a badass a boss thinks you are, and thus how likely they are to keep attacking a character. Tanks usually do far less DPS than dedicated damage classes, but we dish out more threat to a boss due to built-in modifiers and stances. If you're a tank, your threat should almost always be first or second out of your 25-man raid; otherwise, the boss will probably be attacking a DPS or a healer, and most of them will die in one or two hits from a raid boss. My threat meter here is the parchment-style display below the minimap.
• Chat. I don't do fancy raids with teamspeak and the like; LFRs use chat to communicate. Mostly it's dumb stuff like silly DPS being all GOGOGOGOGOGO when I'm talking to the other tank, but there can be good info here.

The main thing that's missing from the second screen above is the full raid status bars. I don't particularly need to know or care what the 20 other raid members outside of my group are up to.

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting, but that's the bulk of it. Here are a few of the core addons that make the above look so stupid:

• Omen Threat Meter: good way to track threat.
• Quickmark: Lets you easily mark mobs with skulls, crosses, moons, etc., from a toolbar on your screen.
• Sexymap: Allows for a variety of minimap shapes. Not critical but nice.
• Tidy Plates/Threat Plates: Not easily seen here, but the green healthbar over the boss would turn red if I lose aggro/threat on him. Amazingly useful in more chaotic fights with multiple enemies.
• DeadlyBossMods: Basically a required mod for raiding at this point. Lets you know when boss cooldowns are up and, thus, when to expect their next super-attack or phase shift.
• Bartender4: There are plenty of bar-customization mods out there, but I like Bartender.
• X-Perl Unitframes: Allows user customization of the appearance of user and target and party health/mana bars. Big, important tool that takes a lot of time to figure out, but pretty great once you get the hang of it.
• Recount: Lots of damage and healing data. Always fun to see how much more damage you took than everyone else.

Of course, I'm playing without any of these at the moment since I'm in the addon-less Warlords of Draenor beta, but hey: that's my story, etc.

As someone who is think about getting into WoW this is really helpful, even if most of it is raid specific.

Linking the mods in question would help though.

As melee dps, I'm mostly just looking for the heads up that Deadly Boss Mods supplies, especially as a raid tourist who doesn't have the fights memorized. So I go with that, Recount, and I installed Titan UI for some of its Timeless Isle features (like calling out rares w/ coords upon sight).

Edit: Oh, I also have a mod that makes my cursor sparkly, just because it tends to get lost when there's a lot of effects onscreen.

Easiest thing i remember being able to do was just goto wow.curse.com and just start downloading the most popular addons and see which you need and which you don't. Haven't played since the start of MoP but it worked then. Jeff was right though, it was easier when it was just "download Cosmos" and figure it out. My strong addiction to the auction house means I spent alot of my addon work just messing with craftables and mats and scanning the AH, but man that sounds like fun...must resist the urge...

I would also recommend a bag mod (such as OneBag) to get rid of the terrible default bag system. I want all my inventory in one window and you should too.

As a hunter, I just use Recount so I can bask in my vanity for being top DPS most of the time. Otherwise i just memorize the fights and pay attention.

Forgot to mention Recount. Great mod.

Get the Curse addon program that'll auto-check for addon updates. You can search for them pretty easily in there, and they'll be easy to update.

I was ready to come make fun of your mod setup but yours is totally legit Rory. I mean, I'm going to keep recommending Elvui to everyone, because it's great, but yours works too.

Man, if you really want to get into craftables, you should look into Tradeskillmaster. It is an incredibly complicated mod, but if you master it it will make the AH so much easier.

I went from 4k to 50k in a month with it.

If you're leveling, I think Titan is a pretty good addition. It's a bar along the top of the screen giving you stats and info at a glance. You can customize it with a lot of options out of the box, and then there are a ton of plugins.

i'll admit, this looks kinda frightening to me. it's almost approaching EVE Online levels of scary. it also makes me feel like an inadequate idiot.

where the hell can anyone find the time for this??

thanks for sharing rorie, and at least partially illuminating how it works. even if i actually got into WOW i don't think i could ever hang with the hardcore like this, though.

It's not really all that complicated. A lot of the mods he has are more for personal information then necessary for the bossfights (Recount is just a fun thing to look at and maybe take notes on, but it's totally superfluous) Also, as a tank he's got Omen to keep track of threat better, but as a DPS these days you can get by without that stuff since tanks are much better at holding agro.

There's a lot of mods most players use but they often just start using them after having played for months and learned what they need changed for their UI. You can level from 1-90 with no mods easily.

I think the most mods I ever used was back in WotLK when i played a resto druid, I don't really miss that, mods are ugly to me, even then I was only using maybe 4 mods. I do admit though, they can be useful, especially in a boring fight and you're feeling lazy and just want to tunnel vision.

It's the part where we've been playing the game for 10 years, so we've had time to learn it. Honestly, you'll learn most of it before you hit the level cap if you run dungeons, and as you search more or ask around for more info once you're checking out endgame dungeons/raids, people will direct you to the mods they prefer. Blizzard has gone a long way in adding a lot of popular mod features to the base UI, but if you want the minute details that you need to be a good raider, then you'll have to grab at least a few specific addons eventually.

This was my setup for most of Wrath back when I was playing "seriously". This was our first kill of Putricide and those who know the encounter can see how close we got to failing (If me or the other guy alive had died the boss would have healed up). I changed it a bit after that getting a different Unit Frame Mod but that's that I used for the majority of the time I played.

That moment is my best gaming moment I've ever had too, WoW is an awesome game for shit like that.

Wow, I forgot what a modded MMO looks like. Really brings me back to when I raided during Cataclysm. Good times.

People in every MMO are always so adverse towards mods, and it really makes me sad that games like Guild Wars 2 don't support them.

I recently switched from recount to Skada. It's pretty much the same mod except for a couple of things that caught my eye. I don't have to type slash commands to hide and show the meter like I do with recount because there's a little skada button on my mini map. The other big one is that I can reset the meter mid fight, which is nice.

A couple of months ago I got back into modding after being pretty much default for a long time. It was interesting to play around with different setups until I found what I'm using now (just a simple bartender setup).

The beams of arcing light around me is the mod called "Icehud". Pretty damn customizable. It shows your hp, the enemy hp, your resource bar (even combo points/chi ect) and cast times. You can hide it out of combat and change the look. Pretty cool little mod, only problem is I just couldn't get used to using it in the midst of arena. I resorted back to looking up in the corner for health bars, cast times, ect. The idea was that I wouldn't have to dart my eyes so far to see critical information, but I ended up ditching it. Also, it kind of bugs me that the default chat window doesn't lie flush with the bottom of the screen (it won't go down any farther). I need a good chat mod.

I kept messing around with different setups and got around to something like this

Mainly just a rearrangement of bars to have my main abilities and CDs in the center for easy eye access. I also found a mod called KG panels that allows me to put little translucent boxes over my bars as a backdrop so that they aren't just bare icons with open space in between. I might also give Xpearl another go, but I find it so difficult to get used to it. I'm so trained on default UI for years that it takes me a long time to get used to even the slightest change. It's why my setup is still pretty bare bones.

One other thing I've noticed is how much more screen real estate people with higher resolution/bigger monitors have. I play on 1440x900, so it's not terrible, but I would have so much more room to work with if I had a better monitor.

As far as addons I'm looking into getting soon, something that tracks diminishing returns for crowd control in pvp. There's so much (too much) CC in the game so knowing when it's safe to trap the healer without it being a "half trap" would be awesome. As it stands I pretty much just go on instinct.

Anyone looking to arena should absolutely have something like "Gladius" it's a frame for the enemy team that shows their hp, but more importantly their pvp trinket cooldown. You can also right click a target on the frame and it auto sets that target to your focus, which is useful for focus macros.

I would mention the mod "Oqueue" mod as a critical one to have, but it seems to be getting replaced by blizzard's in game cross realm group finder in WoD. It's reminiscent of when blizzard added an in game quest helper that made the quest helper mods pretty much obsolete. Oqueue was pretty huge this expansion, though. Especially with more and more ability to play with people cross realm. There's also probably an interesting story there about Modders making money off their addons in WoW, and how blizzard responds to it. Oqueue had a donate button in the interface, and I believe blizzard made them take it out. Have you used the in game group finding tool in beta yet?

I guess I must be one of those crazy people who play with minimal addons. I use the default action bars along with ButtonForge as a supplement. DBM and Recount for raiding. That's it.

Here's the most recent screenshot I could dig up. I probably have 80+ addons but most of those are one-offs that don't really need any setup. The major ones, like unit frames, action bars, and boss alerts, still take some initial setup to get right, but that's mostly a one time thing and patches don't break everything catastrophically like they used to. Also Blizzard has done a pretty good job of updating their UI and combat information that you can get by without many of the once thought "mandatory" addons but I still find the stuff I run useful.

And yes that's me getting Thunderfury on a mage.

Edit: Found a video that shows off combat a little better, if you're into videos.

@rorie: It takes up so much memory though. Skada is a much better option, especially for people with lower end rigs.

Skada is better, in case we're giving recommendations. Recount is just the one everyone knows so everyone uses.

I use to use an auction house mod to control the copper ore market on my server. Pretty much all copper ore sold passed through my devious money grubbing fingers at some point. Man did I get some hate mail.

Sometimes I miss WoW =(

@zomgfruitbunnies said:

I did too when I played, even for some relatively intense PvP play and moderately hardcore raiding. Never really liked mods for or felt the need to edit my actionbars, unitframes, or cooldown timers. I just used TitanPanel for some extra info, OneBag for a (MUCH) better inventory, Recount and Omen for raid stuffs, and DBM for countdowns and raid warnings.

I always use Bartender to clean up my bars. The default always looks so ugly as soon as you use more than one bar full of buttons, since they just hover on top off-center with no real art behind them. I also like scaling each one separately instead of the entire UI.

I used to use some raid mods, but now its just the boss mods. I used to use Recount but I would pay too much attention to my DPS and not enough to the fight, so I got rid of it.

Bagnon (or any other all-in-one bag addon), Postal, and Auctioneer are my three essential addons. They correct three aspects of the game that I think are pretty terrible in the default client without adding a lot of unnecessary features. When Dan started his WoW journey I was really hoping somebody would set him up with some basic addons. They would have probably made his life a lot easier without really detracting from the fun of seeing him learn the game on his own.

http://i.imgur.com/YyAjd77.jpg Here what mine has been for the past like, 8 years? Who needs buttons when everything is keybound (I use WeakAuras for cd's but I broke that a few minutes ago somehow!)

I don't even bother with addons anymore. All I need to know is my threat level on the mobs I'm tanking and if they are casting to do my job.

I never knew WoW was so complicated. This was a fun read, thanks Rorie!

@rorie said:

Curse is awesome, just make sure you're current on all your firewall/security software. I've had hacked account troubles a couple times and each time Blizzard asked on the phone if I use the Curse client. Sounds like there are some well-known holes in it. Don't know if it's spoof versions of it popping up, or problems with the real client, but either way better to be safe. It's an awesome program, just be careful :)

Man, I haven't played since Burning Crusade - I've forgotten just how busy the UI can be as someone who was also a Paladin raid tank myself.

I run with a healer oriented interface with the core of it being Vuhduu. I also use IceHUD for my HP/Mana bars and ShadowUF for specific units frames that don't fall into those.

And curse is "pretty good"! Although the database is fine it is the sync function that helps out a lot. I wish that plugins would be stored in their cloud since plugin settings are.

You can safely ignore the DPS meters. If you're tanking, you worry about threat, mitigation, interuption, and positioning. That's it. If you're DPS, you should worry more about putting out consistent, safe DPS and interupts, rather than standing in fire in an attempt to top the meters. Besides, some hunter named Xxsephiyasaxx is going to be posting recount after every trash pull, anyways. And if you're a healer? Well, that can get scary.

I think Blizzard's default UI does a fine enough job giving you the information you need. You now have built in threat warnings. You now have boss warnings. Back in the early days, you didn't have that stuff and that's where mods really came in. I think people have just gotten used to having their screens littered in menus with big flashy buttons to let them know when they have X stacks of Y. The stock UI will do it, it's just not so in your face about it.

I did the warlock green fire quest at iLvl 490 with the stock UI and no macros and did fine.

These are just configurations of the "heads up display" where often they look daunting because they are throwing a lot of info at you but depending on your role you know what to focus on and ignore the other noise.

True macros in WoW are limited due to specific interface restrictions so it isn't like you can just have a mod that is "Heal someone". Conversely, although the game has gotten better at interaction and reaction feedbacks, it is still impossible to determine some "combat states" without a mod inspecting the data. There is a constant debate about what should be included by "default" and what should be left to modders who know better what the actual needs are.

I started playing WoW again two weeks ago. Before when I had played it I had put about 200 hours into the game and only got to level 32. This was around BC and WotLK days. I spent a lot of time in the BGs too so I didn't level up super fast. Now I started again and my friend let me use his Zygor guides mod. It isn't free but holy shit it makes you really efficient. I am now level 60.

I mainly Melee DPS or Caster, sometimes Tank. Off the top of my head I use:

ElvUI - Replaces pretty much all of the UI. I like the fonts, and how the bars look and scale. I hate how the chat boxes look and how I have to fix them every few days but overall this works super well as a clean, customizable UI. Replaces bags, chat, minimaps, bars, portraits, everything. Sorts my bags.

Drop the Cheapest Thing - Just what it sounds like, auto vendors a list of items, or tells you what to drop if your bags are full. Useful for soloing old content and farming.

Trade Skill Master - For real, your dumb piddly Auction addons have nothing on this beast. Take a LONG time to figure out and work out how to make it work for you, but once you do, yikes. I don't hustle the AH as much as I could but if you have any interest in professions or making gold, this will help tons. It tracks and scans the AH, figures whats most profitable and tells you. You can then make groups of auctions, and task out a queue of things to create. Say "20 of each Sha Crystal enchants" then post those continually for a profit margin you set. This is a huge suite of addons, people charge money for similar addons with way less features. Load up some youtube tutorials and give it a spin.

Auctioneer - For when I don't care enough to sit at the TSM interface for too long and just want to dump some Netherweave cloth at the lowest price.

Skada - Recount lags and hogs a lot of resources, this one has less of a footprint.

Deadly Boss Mods - Pretty much a requirement for any one thinking about raiding. Bigwigs is pretty great too!

Rarity - This tracks my kills on certain bosses/mobs to tell me how far away I am from having more of a statistical chance at a Mount/Pet drop. Pretty much "Hey you've killed Ony like 800 times...uh, that's like 30% chance on your next kill for it to drop, maybe?" I suck at math and used to just have an insane Excel sheet to track kills, but this works so much better.

NPCScan - Scans your surroundings and lets you know if a mob is up. Pretty much only around for Time Lost Proto-Drake.

Factionizer - Pretty much a requirement if you enjoy grinding factions and reps. Replaces the "Reputations" tab on the character panel with info about what gives rep with them, and how far away you are from the next tier.

GTFO - Used to use it when I was learning the SoO fights, good for beginners in LFR. Sets off a buzzer when you stand in bad. Don't stand in bad. Stop that. Move already.

Gatherer - Good and useful for gathering professions, has a database that loads and tells you all the spots ores/herbs spawn to make planning routes easier.

Postal - Because sometimes the TSM addon that tracks my mail isn't on and I just want to grab all my mail and get on with my life.

TellMeWhen - I like this more than WeakAuras, tracks cool-downs and buffs/debuffs.

CLCRet - Tells you what button to push as a Ret Paladin, I use it to keep track of where I'm at in a rotation, there's lots of these around for other classes. But since Ret is pretty simple to play you don't NEED this, but it helps when you're starting out. I think there's Spell Flash or Ovale too, that does something similar for caster DPS.

Overachiever - Overhauls the Achievement UI.

Archy - Archaeology sucks, this makes it still suck but easier to do.

AskMrRobot - Because on alts I suck on, this is the easiest way to figure out gems/enchants and reforges.

Altoholic - Tracks all your alt characters, lockouts, valor points, seals, whatever. Used to just track it on an excel sheet for the week to know. Don't care enough now, hardly use it but its there and sometimes useful if I'm gearing up an alt.

oQueue - Forgot this one. It sucks on ice. But you kind of have to use it until there's a better option for finding groups for content. Lets you list a group or find one for raids, bosses, arenas, whatever. Just sucks the dummy who makes this updates it 3 times a day and it isn't listed on Curse.

Crossdresser - Saves my gear sets, and switches them on when I switch specs. Tank set for Prot, DPS set for Ret. Dumb and one use, but I don't have to think about it.

Rare Spawn Overlay - With NPCScan and Timeless Isle, helps see on the map where rare spawns pop up.

And lastly since I use a ton of them, I forget the name, but it just lets me tick and untick my addons and hit a button and reload my UI. Useful for switching over to tank spec for a fight, or going from farming to raiding and not having to relog, just hit a profile, and load.

As someone who just started playing again shortly before Dan started doing his whole 30 days thing, this is a really cool thread!

I have a Paladin and a Shaman that are both spec'd for healing with off spec being for DPS.

My question to the kind people here is what is the current raid healing mod? How about a PvP healing mod?

Thanks duders!

@epicvandal: I don't heal, but the people I know who do use VuhDo for their raid healing mod. Changes the frames around and lets you list tons of info on them. Not sure about PvP healing, might be good for that too.

The two main frames favored by healers are Vuhduu (or however it is spelled :) ) and Healbot (which isn't a heal bot at all but the player is the healing machine :) ). The trick with the healing role is that it does take a bit of modding and configuration to get the info you need and to do it effectively. And none of them are going to tell you which heal to use when. These mods are effectively highly specialized unit frames that show extra status and extra support for binding all immediate spells you need to function.

The fascinating thing about the way Healing works in WoW is that it is pretty dramatically different across the 5 classes but they are all viable. It is really difficult to make a "one size fits all" mod for this role and requires a lot of hands on tweaking.

Well this is a 'C' change I have to think about doing this for the AH...Acronyms Ahoy!

ElvUI pretty much makes things look like this. I use one of those big dumb G600 mice with all the buttons on it. Also, don't mind me showing off my Green Fire kill, or finally getting my AotC mount.

bag management was something i always hated in wow stuff like bagnon makes it easier to manage but when i found adibags it was the last time i ever fucked with my inventory. It was a glorious day. that with a popular auction addon and maybe a threat addon is all you really need. wows interface is pretty much fine for everything else now.