Shaman Addons Follow Up

Recently one of our readers asked me to go over the UI and addons I use so I am going to break down the adons I use and why. Personally there are only a few necessary addons a raiding shaman must have but depending on how you prefer your UI to look there are some addons to make your UI crisp and sharp.

I posted a pic of the UI I am currently using so lets review the addons I use and why. The first thing you should do before building your UI is visit http://www.wow.curse.com/ and download the Curse Client. This program makes managing your addons a breeze. Not only will it install the addons for you it also lets you know when a newer version is available to update your current addons. You can even search for addons directly inside the client without visiting the website.

Essential Raiding Addons:

Deadly Boss Mods - Messages and alerts letting you know when something important is happening during a boss fight. Also alerts class specific actions needed color coded by class. Must have if you are even thinking about raiding. This is very helpful for shamans on fights like Lord Jaraxxus when you have to purge Nether Power or Abun'arak when he is chasing you a nice little broadcast message on your screen tells you to run like hell.

Omen - This is a threat meter addon that will let you know when you are pulling to much threat. Its pretty simple pull to much threat on the boss, tanks lose aggro and someone dies or its a wipe.

SatrinaBuffFrame - A replacement for the Blizzard buff frames. This mod is completely customizable and the reason I prefer this over elkano buff bars is buffs and debuffs do not take over the entire right side of your screen during boss fights.

Quartz - Customizable cast bars for yourself and your target. The best part of this addon is the fact it takes your latency measures it and shows you on the cast bar when you should be queing up your next spell. Might save a couple cases of carpel tunnel down the road.

Recount - A graphical damage and healing meter. This addon is helpful for so many things such as testing new gear to find out what mix provides the highest dps/heals. Also raid leaders can use it to find out who is pulling their weight and who needs to step it up.

Class Timers - This addon will place a countdown timer on your action bars to let you know when they are coming off cooldown. Very useful for rocking the perfect rotation.

Look and Feel Addons

Sexy Map - This addon Customizes your mini map.

Titan Panel - A control panel bar at the top or bottom of your UI to easily access all of your plugins. There are a ton of additional Titan plugins you can use depending on what you want to see in real time.

Sunn - Viewport Art - This addons lets you change the size of the rendered world area on your screen. This is the addon I use to create the blocked out area at the bottom of my UI that holds my actions bars, chat window, recount, mini map and more. Help to keep a clean look and feel to your UI.

WIM(WoW Instant Messenger) - I love this addon it places all of your whispers into their own separate chat windows. This makes it so much easier to keep track of your conversations.

Action Bars and Unit Frames

Bartender - I prefer these action bars as they are the easiest to set up and are totally customizable. You can see I use a single action bar in my UI to contain Lava Burst. I place this single bar near the center of my screen to make it easy to watch when LvB is coming off cool down.

Xpearl - These are the unit frames I use for player, party, target, focus etc. Easy setup and very customizable.

Grid - This addon take some time to setup but is very helpful for keeping your raid frames from taking up your entire screen. Also when combined with the Clique addon when you need to heal will make things like keeping track off debuffs and aggro much easier. In addition to click healing which is much more efficient.

Shaman Addons

Yata - I love this addon to keep track of my totems. Yata includes totem up time and cooldowns and a customizable totem interface that allows you to keep your action bars and key binding free from all of our totems.

Shaman Friend - Similar to DBM as it alerts you to missing weapon enchants and shows you overload procs. Also announces to raid when you use bloodlust /Heroism.

Other addons I use are MikScrollingBattletext, Xloot, Atlasloot, Auctioneer, Cartographer, Postal, Questhelper. If you have any questions about my UI leave a comment and I will get back to you.