How do you navigate the add-on ocean?Follow

Up util now, I've only used two add-ons, Carbonite and Auctioneer (the latter currently disabled because I'd rather do it myself.

Lately I've been wanting two more, one to display multiple action bars (like you see in how-to screen shots) because the one I need is never visible, and the other a damage counter since it seems to be useful in dungeons.

So, I went out to look for them and there can't possibly be more than 300,000 competing versions of both (OK a slight exaggeration).

How do you go about finding a good one without spending many hours downloading and trying various offerings - i.e. anybody know which ones are the best and want to share the knowledge?

See and I like Skada better. If you want something simple though, one to try would be TinyDPS. Skada and Recount both have a ton of features you can tinker with. If all you want is just a damage meter and nothing else, I'd go for TinyDPS.

Oh and Maz, just so you know, while running Skada and World of Logs, I've noticed that Skada is pretty much on par with WoL, where as Recount isn't. I've heard that Skada is more accurate for raiding, but you can turn on an option to make it more accurate for 5mans. Recount is only accurate for 5 mans.

Skada is more accurate than Recount. Recount, back at least a few months ago, did not track certain guardians as a part of a class' DPS. For example, Fire Elemental totem never showed up on the meters even though it was a huge part of elemental DPS during Firelands. I know after downloading Skada, I noticed my DPS going up at least by 5,000.

Sometimes just looking for the highest rated and most downloaded is a good way to determine what ones to go with. They're popular for a reason.

Really when it comes for me using certain addons, it's to fulfill a need. With an affliction warlock, having a mod to track DoTs is very useful. I'm not a big fan of the ones like Forte or ones that use bars to track it. In comes Tidybars. This mod has the ability to track DoTs on the nameplate of a hostile target. So instead of watching bars on the side, I can watch them on the target directly.

I also just pay attention to what others are using on forums and then just try them out. While not a mod, hearing about Leatrix Latency Fix was one of the best thing I stumbled upon as it reduced my pings down from mid 200s to below 100ms.

Originally I started navigating the ocean by hearing my guildies talk about different addons, so I asked then questions about them. Then started downloading some of the basic ones they talked about or recommended.

Questhelper, Recount, etc.

Then I started getting into raiding. I started reading blogs and forums, and learning about what tools would be useful for me.

Grid, baud gear, DBM, badkitty, WIM, and others followed

Then I started coming across UI threads and such, and decided I'd jump on board. Most of those people would post what mods were in their UI, and were happy to share info if asked.

Then we find me downloading Sexymap, dominoes, gchat, Pitbull, and more.

I added others in there as well, some became obsolete, other ones I got sick of and uninstalled. Some didn't last past 15min, other ones I've used for too long. So ya, long story short I probably navigated the ocean much the way you are now.

keep up wrk!

I just looked in categories at curse and tried the most popular ones until I found ones I liked. Bartender for action bars, Pitbull for Character/target frames, squeenix for minimap, recount & simple threat meter for encounters, bagnon for bags & startip for tooltips. If my computer can run all these and still play then anyones should. I have others like the Libbabble collection altoholic and auctionator, I think it comes too 37 when I do my curse updates but most are parts of a larger whole.

Yeah, it sucks, but Bioware's said no addons at launch.

But who knows, maybe that's a good thing? It's just like Vanilla WoW!

Vanilla WoW was good in the same way we look at the 30's to 50's and say those were some good times.

Rose-tinted glasses.

Rose tinted for sure. I can't speak about the thirties, but the only good thing about the 1950's was that they were followed by the '60s. Likewise, I can't speak to vanilla WOW, since I first played about when 4.0 came out, but I remember all too well what used to pass for game graphics.

I know, I was there. I remember when Damage Meter and CT Mod were like, all the rage.

Although to be fair, CT Mod was pretty cool. It laid the ground work for bartender/dominos, mailbox add ons, and got blizz to incorporate the feature of changing the color of a spell icon when you were out of range.