The World of Warcraft experience has always been one that you can customize and build to make your own, and the level of support from the community in the form of addons has been excellent since day one. The chances are that if you have something that you want to create, the community has an add-on for you.
However, there are a number of extensions that you should consider essential. They enhance the experience so much that you’ll soon wonder what you did without them. The Shadowlands expansion has already seen plenty of support from creators who have tailored the experience with the new zones in mind from the game’s beta.
Not everything will be relevant to each class as some are role-specific (such as healer based add-ons), but there are plenty that can be universally helpful. These are add-ons you shouldn’t go without.
Here are the most essential add-ons, regardless of your class, all of which can be found on CurseForge.
Deadly Boss Mods
The quintessential dungeon and raid tool, the Deadly Boss Mods add-on is an absolute must for anyone looking to enhance their game. Primarily a tool used during instances but will also help with mobs across the map, the tool highlights what you need to be doing whenever an enemy is using a certain ability.
If it’s something that you should avoid, or that you should be in a certain position, Deadly Boss Mods will tell you. Without it, learning the mechanics of bosses in particular will be exponentially tougher.
ElvUI
The standard interface for World of Warcraft has changed very little since its original inception. It is very basic and offers minimal customization options. Thankfully, there are plenty of add-ons that can offer a fresh look. However, it’s hard to look past ElvUI as the go-to add-on to update your game’s look.
Stylish, yet incredibly flexible to make it look how you want it, ElvUI does so much to enhance the experience that it should be considered essential if you’re still on the vanilla interface.
WeakAuras
While an add-on for the UI can be beneficial, they are typically something that will work universally across your characters well, but won’t necessarily give you all the information you need specific to your class. This is where WeakAuras fits in.
Using lines of script, plenty of which can be found through the weakauras community page, this excellent add-on can place all the information that you need on your characters, such as ability cooldowns and resource management, in one, easy to see place. It’s not restricted to characters either as they can also be used to help with other utilities. If you’re serious about Shadowlands, WeakAuras is a must.
Details Damage Meters
If you want to see where all of your damage is coming from, where you need to improve, what keeps killing you, and more, then Details Damage Meters will provide.
A tool that tracks all the data during fights from each participant, Details can be used to help break down a fight and see what happens over the duration. If your damage is low compared to everyone else, the meters can highlight what’s doing well and what needs improving. In itself, it won’t improve your skills but it’s fantastic for drawing attention to what you need to work on. Especially for raiders, you will want Details to help you maximize your role.
Omen Threat Meter
In World of Warcraft, threat measures what person the enemy is focused on attacking. If someone aside from the tank player has a higher threat level, the monster will attack them instead. The job of the tank is to wrestle the threat back from them and play the “meat shield” role.
Threat meters were less prominent in Battle For Azeroth as keeping threat was fairly easy. This has been tuned in Shadowlands and it should make the classic threat meter become essential again.
While there are a few threat meters out there, Omen Threat Meter is one of the more lightweight add-ons for it, so this should be your threat meter of choice.
Pawn
Despite what the name might suggest, Pawn is all about trying to help you pick the right gear for your class and role rather than selling it. The tool will measure any gear in your inventory against what you are currently equipping, and help you to make decisions on whether to swap them for better output or sell/scrap them for resources.
It’s always best to do your own research on what you think works best based on your chosen talents, but Pawn does an excellent job of breaking down what type of gains you can expect to see from your inventory items very quickly. For that reason, it’s a great add-on that you should be using.
TomTom
This navigation tool helps you to make your way around the map by providing coordinates and a GPS style tracker (hence TomTom).
If you’re struggling to work out where rare mobs or treasure is located, the coordinates provided by this tool will make finding an exact location incredibly easy. It’s fairly basic in its function, but it adds a surprising amount to the overall quality of exploration within the game. Especially at the start of a new expansion, you will be thankful you loaded this into your game.
Auctionator
Over time, the auction house has become ever more vital as Bind on Equip weapons and gear become more powerful, and therefore more valuable, while resources needed for any profession leveling continue to take ever more gold to level efficiently.
Enter Auctionator, which makes using the auction house far more accessible, with shopping lists that include price trackers and a much simpler item listing system that makes something that’s usually tedious quite painless.
GTFO
Standing in things thrown at you by enemies is, in most instances, not good for you. At best, it’s a debuff to you that will leave you weak, and at worst, your team wipes from the current battle.
Thankfully, the incredibly simple but life-saving GTFO will bark at you very loudly if you’re doing something as silly as standing in a pool of liquid death. Combine it with Deadly Boss Mods and you’ll minimize your avoidable deaths tenfold.
Scrap
Bag management is something that can be a nightmare. If you’re using the ElvUI as suggested further up this list, you should see a better system of bag management as part of the add-on. If not, something such as Bagnon can help, but it still won’t always help with junk you don’t need.
With the quality of life add-on Scrap, one-button clicks while speaking to a vendor and your inventory is now junk-free, with gold for anything removed. It’s simple, and works seamlessly, meaning less time bag managing and more time playing.