5 best World of Warcraft essential addons, ranked

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Whether you’re leveling in Shadowlands or raiding Ny’alotha, every World of Warcraft player could do with a little extra help from addons. These hotbar, bag organizer, and rotation aids will make you much more efficient, enabling you to improve your effectiveness in the most intense situations.

Some more casual players may not use these modifications and just stick to Default WoW, but a little extra sauce goes a long way to improving your experience. However, with hundreds of popular addons to choose from, it can be tricky to decide which are best. We’re here to help with our list of the five best World of Warcraft addons every player needs.

But before you do anything, you should get a client.

The Addon Client

WowUp is essential to get the best out of your addon experience.

Before you start getting addons, you’ll need a great addon manager. Of course, you’re able to install these yourself through various sites, but a client takes out all of the hard work and allows you get right to business.

Our personal recommendation is WowUp. Previously, Twitch was a great place to utilize to install your addons, but after selling CurseForge to Overwolf, (also a good choice to download your mods from) support was dropped for WoW.

WowUp conveniently enables you to download, install, search for, and update available addons. It supports CurseForge, WowInterface, TukUI, and GitHub, too. Right from the client, it handles everything you could possibly need.

5. Bagnon

Bagnon is a lifesaver for those who like a tidy inventory space.

One of the most essential tools that can often be underlooked in WoW is Bagnon. It provides a streamlined and easy way to organize all of your items within bags.

Bagnon supports many different storage facilities including the inventory, bank, void storage, and guild bank. They’re viewable at any time, from anywhere, and on any character, too. This is handy for those of you who like to have more than one character on the go.

With a handy highlight to indicate items in a particular bag slot, along with cleanup capabilities, and a search engine tool, this addon is something everyone has a use for.

4. Details! Damage Meter

Details is essential in tracking, and upping your damage game.

Touted as a ‘complete combat analysis’, Details! provides battle information, including damage dealt, healing information, and more.

It’s also a fantastic way of pushing yourself to do better in a fight and further finesse your skill and rotation, as you can consistently see how much damage you’re doing. In dungeons and raids, this is even more helpful, as you’re able to see where you sit on that DPS scale against other players in your team.

Details is also great for guild ranking, as you’re able to store the damage and heal from guild runs, plus build lists of top DPS on each boss.

3. Bartender4

Bartender 4 makes it easy to organize and hotkey your bars and abilities.

Bartender4 is a complete overhaul to the hotbar display in WoW. This provides the ability to completely customize every aspect of your action-related toolbar, and it’s a must-have for creating exactly what you need for each character you play.

Featuring support for 10 action bars, the stance bar, pet bar, bag bar, micro menu, and your XP/reputation bars, you’re able to modify everything you want. However, the best thing about this addon is that it gives you the ability to modify the size and transparency of bars, and there’s also an incredibly simple hotkey binding tool that is very useful.

2. Hekili

Hekili is really useful for teaching you your rotation in differing environments.

Our personal favorite, Hekili is a fantastic addon for new or returning players to WoW. Providing real-time indicators of what skill to use next in a fight, it aids with learning your rotation of skills. Writing on the addon’s download page, the creator of it explained that “it works by collecting information about the game’s current state, using a SimulationCraft-like action priority list (APL) to recommend the next ability to use.”

Over time it’ll probably become something you use less and less, but for those who are unfamiliar with, or relearning a class, it’s something that is only going to make you a better player in the end. Right now, it supports all DPS specializations, as well as tanking specs.

1. DBM (Deadly Boss Mods)

DBM takes the need to micromanage battles away from you, allowing you to focus on what you can do at that moment.

DBM takes so much pressure off the micromanaging of everything about battles during raids and dungeons. At times, these conflicts can be hectic experiences, but this addon allows you to focus primarily on your performance and rotation.

With sound effects, special effects, different colors, and on-screen warnings, it indicates when something is going to happen to you. New and old players alike will both benefit greatly from this, and that is why it is number one in this list.

It also hides things from you that you’re unable to do anything about in that moment or situation, such as dispel and interrupt cooldowns. This way, you’re only actively focusing on what can be achieved at that particular moment.

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