What are the best WoW addons? Blizzard’s critically acclaimed MMORPG offers endless adventures, but it also keeps a treasure trove of valuable data hidden away. Discovering the right mods can completely transform your gameplay, especially when facing formidable bosses. But it’s not just for elite raiders! Many of the top World of Warcraft addons focus on enhancing your overall experience, from revitalizing the game’s aged user interface to helping you track valuable resources for your crafting endeavors.
With countless options available, choosing the right World of Warcraft addons can be daunting, especially with new expansions like The War Within changing the landscape. We’ve scoured the community to bring you a definitive list of the best general-purpose addons, designed to enhance your journey in one of PC gaming’s most enduring titles. Whether you’re conquering raids, mastering your trades, or simply aiming for a speedy level-up, these addons are guaranteed to elevate your WoW experience.
Ready to upgrade your game? Here are the must-have World of Warcraft addons:
ELVUI
ElvUI stands as a titan among World of Warcraft addons, a comprehensive collection that brilliantly revamps the entire default user interface. Its popularity is well-deserved, offering a sleek, modern look and integrating many sought-after enhancements for spell bars, inventory management, character portraits, and general utility. What makes it truly exceptional is its ability to automatically tailor your display to your specific role, alongside intuitive options for customizing layouts, repositioning windows, binding keys, and a myriad of other visual and functional adjustments.
Chat, loot, and other scrolling text are neatly organized into separate, manageable windows. Complementing this, small, customizable status displays beneath these windows and your mini-map provide crucial information at a glance, from resource counts and gear durability to available bag slots. These displays even offer quick, one-click access to your bags, guild, and friend list – a feature that will become even more invaluable with the upcoming cross-faction guild system.
ElvUI is renowned for its frequent updates, ensuring compatibility with the latest game versions. It’s important to note that, unlike many other addons, ElvUI isn’t managed by standard addon clients; you’ll need to handle updates separately. While a paid client exists for automatic updates, the core ElvUI package remains freely available for manual installation.
Waypoint UI
While comprehensive addon packs are great, sometimes the most effective tool simply points you in the right direction without any extra fuss. Waypoint UI does exactly that, conjuring a guiding beam of light to your tracked objective. Despite its seemingly minimalist approach, it boasts extensive customization options and toggleable information, including sound effects, unique icons, descriptive contextual details, and even estimated arrival times.
Plumber
Plumber is the quality-of-life addon you’ve always wanted, expanding World of Warcraft’s UI functions far beyond the base game’s capabilities. With this mod, you can track items by adding them to your backpack’s currency counter, transform intrusive talking head frames into clean subtitles, create convenient drawer macros to group spells, enjoy seamless auto-loot, and much more. Be warned: once you experience Plumber, you might find it impossible to play without it.
All The Things
Are you a dedicated collector in World of Warcraft, eager to track down every achievement, rare kill, item, treasure, pet, transmog – essentially, anything you’re missing – and see it organized by zone or area? The All the Things WoW addon is your ultimate solution. It meticulously identifies all missing content and presents it in a straightforward interface, perfectly fueling your inner Warcraft completionist.
This mod not only gives you a helpful heads-up on content you might have overlooked but also provides valuable extra tooltip information about the items you’re collecting. A celebratory fanfare of chimes accompanies the discovery or loss of new appearances, pets, or items. All the Things is an absolute must-have for Warcraft collectors and offers an enjoyable experience for most players.
Thanks to separate databases, All the Things ensures your gameplay remains smooth and unaffected by performance slowdowns.
Deadly Boss Mods
For tackling five-man dungeons, Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) is an excellent quality-of-life upgrade. It provides crucial warnings – like an incoming boss spell or a mob cast that needs interrupting to save a teammate – essentially acting as your personal gameplay guide.
In raids, DBM transforms into an indispensable tool. It helps you navigate complex boss mechanics, provides precise timers for critical fight events, and generally gives you advance notice for everything you need to do to keep your groupmates from getting frustrated.
DBM is our top pick, partly due to the amusing choices in its sound files; for instance, a mechanic that requires you to spread out from your teammates might be comically accompanied by Karazhan’s Big Bad Wolf howling, “Run away, little girl, run away!” If you find such theatrics distracting, BigWigs Bossmods is a solid, less whimsical alternative.
Weak Auras 2
Many World of Warcraft addons offer customizable “if this, then that” notifications. Is your powerful damage spell ready again? Is that crucial crowd control effect about to wear off? Mods like Weak Auras 2 empower you to set up blinking icons, text alerts, distinct sounds, or other noticeable cues to keep you informed.
For newcomers, TellMeWhen is a great starting point, offering a simple yet fully-featured version of these mods. However, for most players, Weak Auras is the undisputed champion. While creating new notifications from scratch is relatively straightforward using its templates, the real power lies in the vast library of pre-built notifications, trackers, and quality-of-life utilities already crafted by the community.
Need something to explicitly display Queen Azshara’s “decrees” in Eternal Palace? A tracker for your party members’ interrupt cooldowns in five-man dungeons? Or perhaps an alert that broadcasts your Mythic Plus dungeon key to your group so everyone can decide the next destination? There are existing Weak Auras for all these scenarios, plus extensive collections tailored for almost every class and specialization. You can find a wealth of these at wago.io after installing the mod.
If you’re unsure which class dominates the MMORPG’s current meta, check out our WoW tier list to truly appreciate the benefits that Weak Auras can provide by optimizing your performance.
Details!
While numerous damage and healing meters exist, Details! stands out as our favorite, thanks to its adaptable displays, intelligent handling of elements like pet damage, and remarkably lightweight installation. This mod allows you to meticulously track your damage or healing output (including absorbs like shields) based on the spells and abilities you use, how effectively they hit opponents, and how your performance stacks up against your group.
We particularly appreciate the ability to hover over individual players for a quick glimpse at what they’re casting, helping you understand why their numbers might be higher than yours. You can easily view statistics for specific segments, such as a single boss encounter, or aggregate totals for an entire dungeon run.
GTFO
This incredibly simple World of Warcraft addon has one crucial function: it loudly alerts you when you’re standing in dangerous areas. A true lifesaver during chaotic boss encounters, GTFO emits a blaring alarm if you’re caught in fire and a warning tone for any single ability hit you could have easily avoided.
It’s simple, lightweight, and an instant way to appear highly competent in groups. While primarily an audio addon (though visual warnings are possible with integration via Weak Auras or Power Auras Classic), seeing the screenshot illustrates the alarm merrily blaring away.
Auctioneer
The World of Warcraft auction house can be a goldmine, but only if you know the ropes. Auctioneer helps streamline this complex process. This essential addon intelligently appraises items, suggesting optimal selling prices and making it effortless to undercut competitors in the auction house.
But it doesn’t stop there. The Auctioneer suite also keeps track of your bids, listings, and mail, making it a breeze to post multiple items simultaneously. It also offers extensive support for enchanting, providing figures for disenchanting items as well as selling enchantments. Used correctly, it’s a powerful moneymaker that saves you the effort of complex market analysis.
Auctioneer boasts an impressive toolset, but it can feel overwhelming for casual Auction House users. If you find many of its options unnecessary, Auctionator is a lighter alternative that perfectly fits the bill.
However, if you’re truly looking to embrace your inner goblin, TradeSkill Master is the ultimate solution for tracking and placing auctions, aggressive undercutting, converting raw materials into profitable crafted goods, and much more. It even includes its own desktop application for maximum gold-making analysis and requires a separate download. Mastering TSM is a skill in itself, so it’s not recommended for beginners.
Bagnon
Managing your inventory can quickly become a complex task, especially once you accumulate several large bags or play with multiple characters. Bagnon is an absolute lifesaver in this regard. Instead of sifting through items bag by bag, it consolidates all your possessions into a single, easy-to-view inventory screen.
Each item is color-coded based on its quality, and a smart search engine is also included. This means you can see at a glance what’s in your bags, simplifying the process of tidying them up.
Taking it a step further, this World of Warcraft addon also displays what all your characters possess, from their gold totals to duplicate items across different alts. If you’re transferring items between your main and an alt, it’s the perfect way to stay organized.
Mythic Dungeon Tools
Mythic dungeons in World of Warcraft are akin to military operations, demanding meticulous planning and foresight. Entering unprepared often leads to swift defeat. If you prefer to streamline your preparation, the Mythic Dungeon Tools mod is the ideal addon. This comprehensive dungeon planner maps out all NPCs on an interactive map, allowing you to craft and share detailed dungeon routes with your party members. It even includes a note system to communicate intricate strategies effectively.
OmniCC
Keeping track of cooldowns can add an unnecessary layer of mental strain during an intense boss fight. Fortunately, OmniCC is here to alleviate that stress by providing customizable countdown timers for all your abilities, making it significantly easier to gauge when they’ll be ready for use again.
If you frequently lose sight of your ability bar amidst the chaos of battle, you can also configure OmniCC to make your skills flash vividly once their cooldowns have expired – a huge advantage, especially when executing complex rotations.
Rarity
Finding a rare item drop is incredibly rewarding, but the pursuit can often be frustrating. The Rarity addon for World of Warcraft acknowledges your desire to understand drop odds, meticulously tracking how many attempts you’ve made to acquire everything from mounts and toys to battle pets.
For each item, it displays its likelihood of dropping, chronicles your efforts, and even calculates your luck so far. No longer will you have to guess whether you’re making progress; you’ll have a clear, statistical understanding of your chances. Essentially, it helps preserve your sanity.
Due to recent changes in how Warcraft handles looting, Rarity struggles with tracking items that drop from grouped mobs or those that yield no loot at all. If gold drops, the count will be accurate; otherwise, the attempt won’t register. Despite this, it remains a valuable tool.
MoveAnything
MoveAnything lives up to its name, providing a fully customizable user interface that you can mold to your exact preferences. Every panel and screen element can be not only repositioned but also resized and hidden – there’s even an option to adjust their transparency. If you love decking out your UI with numerous addons, MoveAnything is essential for maintaining a coherent layout and eliminating clutter.
HandyNotes
World of Warcraft’s default map is generally effective at guiding you, but it’s not flawless. HandyNotes fills a crucial void by allowing you to add personal notes as you explore. A quick alt-right click on the world map lets you jot down anything you need to remember. More importantly, community-published HandyNotes collections enable you to track everything from the precise locations of treasure chests in Battle for Azeroth to the whereabouts (and whether you’ve defeated them!) of rare creatures in Nazjatar or Mechagon.
As a result, HandyNotes is perfect for marking secret entrances, resource nodes, or even picturesque spots for a bit of roleplaying. Prepackaged HandyNotes collections function as their own addons but require HandyNotes to operate. Alongside the War Within HandyNotes, we highly recommend the Battle for Azeroth Treasures collection and the Nazjatar or Mechagon packs by TomCat’s Tours.
Angrier World Quests
World Quests, introduced in WoW Legion, offered special daily and weekly objectives for maximum-level characters. However, World of Warcraft’s default UI did a poor job of highlighting and tracking them effectively. Angrier World Quests steps in to remedy this, diligently tracking quests in both current and previous zones, including those in Battle for Azeroth.
It conveniently lists quests directly on the world map, displaying rewards and offering easy filtering options for quests that fulfill today’s emissary requirements, or those that award gold, Azerite power, loot, or War Resources.
While the original Angry World Quests has largely been inactive since 2018, Angrier World Quests serves as a worthy successor, consistently receiving fixes and regular updates through The War Within. For alternatives, World Quests List or World Quest Tracker both offer similar valuable functionality.
Bartender 4
Bartender 4 is an incredibly useful mod that grants you extensive control over your action bars. It provides full customization for ten distinct action bars, allowing you to adjust their scale, precise position, fade-out behavior, and many other visual and functional aspects.
RareScanner
Never miss a nearby rare enemy again! RareScanner enthusiastically announces rare monsters, treasures, and events in your immediate vicinity. Whenever a “vignette” appears on the minimap – a star indicating a rare, an event, or a treasure – an alert will sound, and a prominent button will appear in the center of your screen, displaying the rare’s name and its potential loot. If you decide to pursue it, clicking the button will place a skull icon over the NPC, making it easy to track down. RareScanner also adds icons for every rare discovery and provides additional information via tooltips.
BugGrabber / BugSack
If you’re a dedicated WoW addon user, chances are you’ve encountered the dreaded LUA error pop-up. These errors typically occur when one of your addons needs an update and often appear at the most inconvenient times. BugGrabber and BugSack work in tandem to intercept these LUA pop-ups before they disrupt your gameplay, instead generating a comprehensive bug report to share with your favorite addon creators. The more addons you have installed, the higher the likelihood of encountering a bug, so these two are invaluable if you want to avoid annoying interruptions during critical raid moments.
LiteMount
LiteMount is the ultimate WoW addon for enthusiastic mount collectors, offering smart customization that far surpasses World of Warcraft’s built-in mount randomizer. Instead, LiteMount allows you to summon rarer mounts more frequently and can even identify the most thematically appropriate mounts to summon based on your current location, faction, and class. It cleverly accounts for Druid travel forms, as well as item and journal mounts, ensuring you experience the full breadth of your stable as you journey through Azeroth.
Plater Nameplates
Plater Nameplates is an incredibly powerful tool in World of Warcraft. While the game’s default UI only shows an enemy’s health bar, installing Plater Nameplates unlocks a wealth of information, including debuff tracking, enemy cast bars, and much more. This is vital for excelling in Mythic+ dungeons or making a name for yourself in your raid group, as it helps you perfect your timings and better understand enemy AI behavior. You can also color-code your nameplates, which is fantastic for quickly marking priority targets during pulls for your personal reference.
Immersion
Immersion is the perfect World of Warcraft addon for players who find it challenging to digest the continuous blocks of text that appear when accepting quests or delving into lore. Instead, Immersion intelligently breaks this text into concise, bite-sized paragraphs that you can click through at your own pace. It also transforms WoW’s cumbersome, old-fashioned quest frame into individual, streamlined frames, complete with talking heads and intuitive dialogue selection buttons. This allows you to absorb your surroundings and the on-screen text without sacrificing your sense of immersion. If you prefer a clean UI that gets straight to the heart of any matter in Azeroth, Immersion is an indispensable mod.
Narcissus
If your goal is to display your transmog as if you’re strutting down a runway at Stormwind fashion week, then Narcissus makes capturing your perfect “blue steel” look incredibly simple. It also comes packed with numerous other quality-of-life improvements for your character UI, including a cleaner way to compare gear, a dedicated viewer for exploring different NPCs, and even the ability to take group selfies with your friends.
Hekili Priority Helper
Hekili is a fantastic World of Warcraft addon that masterfully balances convenience and accessibility. This priority helper offers real-time recommendations for your next ability, regardless of the situation, making it easier to grasp complex class rotations and manage challenging encounters. It’s the ideal WoW addon for anyone who needs assistance with sensory processing, or simply players who want to unwind and relax at the end of a long day. Hekili includes a plethora of settings and customization features to suit your individual needs, from various UI styles to specialized “action packs” for specific class specializations. If you prefer to experience The War Within without the risk of feeling overwhelmed, Hekili is undoubtedly a valuable companion.
Clique
Clique is a must-have for macro enthusiasts, enabling you to bind spells and macros to various mouse and keyboard combinations. You can then ‘click-cast’ or ‘hover-cast’ over unit frames and other in-game elements with precision. The utility you gain from this World of Warcraft addon directly reflects the effort you invest; healers and raid-ready spellcasters will benefit most, but Clique is guaranteed to reduce reaction times across all classes.
Raider.IO
Raider.IO is a complementary addon for the popular raid rankings website of the same name. Naturally, its benefits are primarily realized by dedicated Raider.IO users – but for them, it’s an incredibly worthwhile installation. Instead of constantly switching browser tabs to look up other players’ raid progress and Mythic+ scores, you can view all that vital information directly within their in-game name panel. This means less time browsing the web and more time dominating raids and dungeons.
Scrap
Do you frequently fill your inventory with junk but dread the tedious process of selling it all off? Scrap is a lightweight World of Warcraft addon that automatically sells all your grey-quality junk items every time you interact with a merchant. It also includes optional junk filters to identify and sell other non-grey items you typically dispose of. This efficient addon also conveniently repairs your equipment, leaving you with empty bags and freshly maintained gear at the touch of a button.
Pawn
Are you tired of performing endless calculations to determine if a new piece of gear is an upgrade? No need to give up and equip just any item – Pawn is here to ensure your gear score is always optimized. This lightweight World of Warcraft addon simplifies the process of comparing items and understanding how they benefit your specific class and specialization. It does all the complex calculations and displays a clear value in each item’s tooltip, allowing you to easily compare and contrast gear at a glance.
Pawn even offers extensive options to import custom stat weights and track multiple specializations simultaneously if you frequently switch your build. While recent WoW updates have unfortunately disabled Pawn’s signature green arrows, its creator, TravisSpomer, assures players that they can still be reinstated using their preferred bag addon.
Altoholic
If you’re juggling a multitude of alt characters and constantly losing track of their inventories, currencies, or professions, Altoholic has arrived to save the day. This flawless addon meticulously gathers every conceivable data point across all your characters, presenting them in an easily digestible user interface. Whether you need to quickly check an alt’s gold reserves or see what treasures they have stashed away, Altoholic delivers the goods with unparalleled convenience.
OPie
Cluttered action bars can be an absolute nightmare to navigate, and a disorganized UI can significantly detract from your immersion. OPie offers a sleek and intuitive solution, allowing you to group bindings into dynamic action rings. These rings only appear on your screen when their associated keybind is pressed. It might take a little getting used to, but the fluid drag-and-release mechanic for selecting abilities within each ring becomes incredibly efficient once you develop the muscle memory.
RCLootCouncil
Distributing loot after a raid can often become a point of contention for any guild. While the Loot Council system certainly has its pros and cons, with RCLootCouncil, at the very least, the process of dividing the spoils won’t take an eternity. Based on the familiar need/greed/pass system, RCLootCouncil streamlines everything by sending all raid loot to a designated Master Looter (usually the group leader), who then initiates a session. Once gear candidates have made their selections, council members can efficiently make executive decisions on who receives what. It’s a remarkably simple and effective solution.
Now that you’ve got the best WoW addons up and running, be sure to brush up on essential World of Warcraft console commands. We’ve also got the latest information on WoW housing and all the WoW Plunderstorm rewards from this divisive event’s recent run. Finally, a refresher on the WoW talents system and WoW professions might lead you to reconsider some of your favorite addons.
Original contributions by Heather Newman and Jennifer Allen.