What Addons Do I Need to Survive?
- April 21st, 2011
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You’re going to run into all walks of life out there. If you haven’t, go ahead and hop into the LFG dungeon finder a few times and you’ll see exactly what I mean. You’ll know when you’ve got a tank that knows what’s going on. He didn’t just “happen” to target the mob that he had the least amount of threat on, by accident. If a tank forgets to mark a group with the traditional “Skull, X, Square” set, and a dps is targeting all the same targets that the tank is, I highly doubt it’s just by chance. The reason that things can run together so much smoother is because of addons.
I recently heard a raid member say these exact words: “I don’t have one single addon. I run a completely stock UI.”
What does that say to me? That tells me that I just found the person that is most likely going to wipe this raid….repeatedly.
I also was tanking a dungeon recently and asked one of the dps if he was running omen threat meter (which I’ll discuss later). He replied “Sorry noob, I don’t use ‘crutches’”. How in the world is Omen a “crutch”?!?! I’ll dive into that later as well.
So what you might be thinking now is “Alright Twizz, what addons do I need to survive? There are SO many out there and there are a lot that are so customizable that it’s almost too much of a pain to try to work with them.” The list is actually pretty short and sweet! All of these can be downloaded from www.curse.com and I HIGHLY recommend downloading the Curse client. It makes seeing available addons and currently installed addons easy to see and work with. NOTE: THESE ARE ALL BASED ON MY PERSONAL OPINION. EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN NICHE!
1) Deadly Boss Mods (or DBM for short) or possibly Bigwigs (an addon that is very similar to DBM). This is pretty much a mandatory addon if you plan on doing any raiding. It gives you timers on boss abilities and notifications when a specific person is targeted for a bosses spell and the raid then needs to work around that situation. To dumb that down a little bit, in a fight a boss may prepare to cast a spell on a random party member. Both of these addons will put a marker of some type (Skull, X, Square etc.) over the player that is about to be targeted. Everyone can stack on that player to dissipate the damage or stay away from that player as he may have some kind of debuff that can hurt other raid members. It’s an easy visual marker so you can see what’s going on. It will also help show the raid if a member doesn’t know what they are doing. If they are targeted by the boss, and marked by DBM, and they don’t do what they are supposed to do, you can easily see why the raid wiped and maybe re-explain the fight to get everyone on the same page.
2) CALLING ALL HEALERS! You guys have a TON of options at your fingertips. All of these addons PRETTY MUCH do the same thing. The only differences are subtle options as well as how it looks on your screen. Depending on how your UI is set up, one addon may fit better than another. I recommend Vuhdo, Healbot, or Grid. I personally use Vuhdo and that’s simply because I like the layout. When you have a HoT (Heal over time) on a target, it will give you a small symbol that represents that you have that current HoT rolling on that target. It will then give you a countdown you can watch so you can refresh that hot or plan your next healing spell according to when that’s going to give its final tick. Healbot is the same way except it will display actual icons of your spells. If you have a Rejuv going on a target or an earthshield, it will show the little icons next to the targets names making it easily identifiable as to what EXACTLY is happening with the target. Very nice. I haven’t used Grid very much so I can’t say whether or not it’s the way to go. I know a lot of people that use it and swear by it! Again, all of these recommendations do virtually the same thing. It all comes down to how you want to see it on your screen!
3) Omen Threat Meter. In my personal opinion, as a tank, this is a MUST. There is nothing more aggravating than having to chase down a target because some stupid DPS has decided to blow every cooldown he or she has at the start of a fight and pump out as much damage as they so they can feel warm and fuzzy over a recount number. Something to keep in mind. Warriors and Druids have this thing called Rage. It costs rage to use threat generating abilities. It will normally take a tank about 2 seconds to generate enough rage and use an ability that will establish the threat bar and keep him or her at the top. Omen shows you this bar….literally. It’s very lightweight with almost no configuring to be done. You (as a DPS) target a mob. It will show you numerically how much threat you, the tank and others have on that mob. If you’re getting ready to pull aggro (or make the number on your bar higher than the tanks), you can either lay off a little bit or use an aggro reducing ability. Let me spell it out for you this way. No one cares about your dps number. Only you do. If you’re dead because you pulled off the tank A) you deserve it and B) You’re almighty DPS recount number is going to plummet severely. So what good does that do anyone? As I stated above, someone referred to Omen as a “Crutch”. In my personal opinion, a crutch (for hardcore players) is something to the effect of a cooldown or DOT timer. Something you can easily look at and know it’s time to refresh. NOTE: DON’T CONFUSE MY CRUTCH DEFINITION WITH ANY OF THE HEALING ADDONS ABOVE! Crutch addons are a luxury only.
4) Tidy Plates/Threat Plates is a GREAT tanking addon. It’s very customizable but you have to tank for a little while before you figure out what exactly you want to change about the appearance or how it works. The basics of it are this: You run into a pack of 4 mobs. All of them have 1 color health bar over their heads. As long as that never changes, you have threat on all of them. You can set it to where if you start losing a mob, the colored nameplate above his head starts getting bigger. This is done so you can click that nameplate easier, and put more threat out to that specific target. It’s very helpful in those instances where a DPS decides to pick whatever target he or she wants and lets loose on it. You can also combine abilites with it so if you lose threat on a mob, a click of their nameplate will automatically taunt them back to you. You’ll then already have that mob targeted and can regain control.
5) The dreaded Recount. Now, this is strictly for additional information. It can be helpful in a lot more ways than what people use it for. This addon will show you your DPS (or Damage Per Second). It’s the number that everyone gets all hot in the pants over. Some features that others may not know about or remember to explore are: Interrupt counts, Specific player rotation, CC’s, and many more. THAT is a useful tool for making sure that someone is doing their job when they are supposed to be and the rotation information is good in case you have that mage who is geared to the teeth but can’t manage to pull over 3K dps. You can see in a pie graph form, the majority of the abilities they are using and how much they are using it. If you see 100% frostbolt coming from that mage, you’ll be able to identify the problem right then and there. Again, this is not a mandatory addon for raiding per say, however it can solve problems quickly and give you a good idea (fairly quickly) of how your dungeon group or raid is going to do.
These 4 Addon recommendations above are basically what you’re going to see in the average raid UI. There are many people that you’ll see using an addon called Bartender. That allows you to move virtually everything on your screen around. This is good for “clickers”. What’s a clicker you ask? It’s someone that does JUST that! They click all the spells on their screen. So being able to move the bars around to make your clicking experience easier is the best thing to hit the market ever! I personally have a Razer Naga mouse that has a BUNCH of buttons on it. I simply push the buttons on my mouse to use my abilities and all my attacks are basically made with my thumb. It’s like a muscle memory thing and it works for me. Other addons people enjoy are as follows:
X-perl Unit Frams – Revamps the UI a little bit and allows your to move your in game character bar around as well as the target and party members bars. You can also see your targets target just to make sure that your tank is being targeted in an encounter. If that changes….LOOK OUT!
Bagnon- why sift through all those bags trying to find where you have your hypnotic dust!?!? Bagnon makes all your bags….one BIG bag! I keep all my things assorted by rows. Top row is all my flasks, etc. Next down is my buff food. Next is enchanting mats. You get the idea.
Postal – Don’t you love having to click (what feels like) 50 times just to get all the gold and expired auctions you have coming to you? Postal takes care of ALL of that. 1 click and it puts everything straight into your bags. Less time at the mailbox means more time outside seeing the game and bettering your toon! Time management FTW!
As far as class specific addons, there are SO many REALLY helpful ones out there. Not sure of your rotation? Here’s a few that I found that put a box on your screen with the picture of the next spell you should use. It’s great because it helps you learn your rotation and make you realize WHY it’s better to use one spell over another. Unfortunately there’s nothing in this line for healers since it’s completely impossible for an addon to detect incoming damage on a tank and calculate the mana cost and cast time for a heal. These are all for DPS and I’ve used them and learned a lot!
1) Feral Druid – Feral by Night
2) Enhancement Shaman – Shock and Awe
3) Balance Druid – Boomkinator
4) Ret Pally – Retribution FCFS Helper
5) Assassination Rogue – Mutilate
I’m certain there are more out there however these are the ones that I’ve messed with the most and had a great learning experience when it came to playing a new spec. If you surf www.curse.com you’ll see thousands of addons. This little blog was simply meant to get you on your way to customizing the game and playing it the way you want to play it.
Twizz out.
Follow me on Twitter @TwizzleTank or you can send me an in game whisper! Givetanks – Emerald Dream US – <Violent Apathy>