"Must Have" Add-ons?Follow

I'm relatively new to the game, and on advice from a thread about fishing, I picked up my first add-on. Needless to say I'm impressed.

So I decided to look for what else is out there. Needless to say, I'm overwhelmed.

There appears to be more add-ons than I'll ever need or understand. So what I was hoping for was some suggestions for "must haves". The add-ons that everyone in the game uses regardless of class or playing style. Is there a short list that you would recommend everyone uses to improve their gaming experience?

I guess while I'm on the subject, are there risks I need to be aware of? Stick to only the "tried and true"? Don't overdo it?

I imagine this topic has been hashed over a million times, so if there is a thread I missed, please point me in the direction.

Must Haves:
General info - www.curse-gaming.com, www.wowinterface.com, ui.worldofwar.net

Titan Panel or Fubar (Fubar only available at ui.worldofwar.net) - information panels that display coords, xp rate, and all that fun stuff

Gatherer - remembers herb, mine, treasure, and other nodes on your minimap (not really needed if you don't have herbalism and/or mining).

Auctioneer - if you're doing any day trading, this is essential (memory hog though)

Scrolling Combat Text - better than the Blizzard version.

Other good ones
CT_Mod (www.ctmod.net) - A very good starter ui and addon package. Not the most powerful or prettiest (pretty much keeps the ui looking like the default), but works well when just starting to get into the Addon world.

CT_RaidAssist - Raiding package with various bits of utility

Decursive - will be changing/breaking next patch though, allows for one-click curing for all healing classes

Itemrack - Allows for quick switching of gear

SW_Stats - if you like DamageMeters, you'll love SWS. More accurate, more data, less performance hit

Yule - Combat log replacement. Much easier to read your combat log with this rather than the default one.

As far as risks, if you only download from trusted sites you should be fine. Also keep in mind that these will take up more resources than the default UI, so keep that in mind if RAM is at a premium on your system.

Atlas of Meta-Map. If you are out on a quest and ask where to find mob (or anything else) in general chat there is a good chance you will be given co-ordinates which come from a map add-on.

Be sure to get the one that tells the casting of spells on you. Big boost in PVP.

Fully agree here. Just worth mentioning because it can do more personal stuff than DM.

SWS has summaries of what each of your skills do, who you're healing, how many cures so and so has done, how many times have people died, etc. The Damage Done report can get competitive and lead to people pushing it to get big numbers though. Other aspects of it are very informative. (It also works for class leaders in larger raids for seeing who is under-performing and addressing that as needed).

KLH Threat Meter is great with one caveat, the main tank for the group/raid needs to have it for it to be worth a damn. KTM only shows those who have the mod installed, so if the tank doesn't have it, who knows if your threat number is close to or far away from his :(.

Once you do get into raiding though, I'm sure KTM will be a required thing so that everyone has it (I know it is with MR).

RE: Decursive. Again, agree to some extent here. It's VERY easy to get used to and it's going to be tough for me to break out of the habit of just hitting Alt-A to cure people on Dithers. I'm hoping that they are able to make it work somehow, even just popping up the list and forcing me to target/cure would be useful (it's tough in a raid to see who needs a cure on the fly especially while focusing on healing, and we can setup the lists so that it only shows who you're responsible for).

There are 2 options here. Addon or Default extra bars.

For the extra default bars, simply head into "Interface Options" in game, and click the advanced tab, and check out that first box at the top. You'll be able to pull up a few extra action bars.

For Addons...there are many.
CT_Mod has an action bar piece in it. CT_Mod is one of the better starter packages out there (very simple and low tech addons, doesn't get too fancy but gets the job done).

Discord Action Bars - supposedly let you do anything you want with the bars. I've heard there is some considerable setup with them though. I've never used them.

My personal favorite - Bongos - Another Action Bar mod that allows for considerable freedom, with the added bonus of being very simple to use. Has a very hand "snap" feature that will snap bars together. Also can modify (scale & location for most, just location for a couple) the EXP bar, MiniMap, bag bar, casting bar, "roll" bar (it's the area where the roll windows pop up), menu bar, and a couple others.

As far as the auctioneer comment, I don't really know. I used it for a little while doing some day trading, but I've since removed it as it took up too much memory for my liking.

Well, I have CT_Mod but I guess I haven't found the AB part of it.

What reason would I use it over the standard options available in the interface?

Aren't add-ons like cheating? Aren't we supposed to play the game the way it's dealt to us?

Add-on's aren't cheating. Blizzard has an entire forum on their site labeled "Mod's and add-ons" ... or something really close to that. Also, included with your WoW program is a Blizzard-customized scripting language called LUA. It's what all of the nice mods/add-ons are written in. It's vaguely C-like.

Blizzard encourages these activities. They'll even steal the ideas that appear to catch on (drag out raid frames and the gimped SCT are just two examples that I've experienced. The multiple action bars is another I've heard about but was before my time).



As for this, there's one called MapNotes that allows you to do this. I use it in conjunction with Gatherer to keep an eye out on anything worthwhile (like a mining node when I'm on my herbalist, etc).

Add-ons are not platform dependent. They use WoW;s internal language (LUA) to perform thir tasks. Because of this, add-ons run on Windows, Macs, and Linux equally.