This is a list of the most important add-ons for wow that I have installed and use (more or less) regularly. Most of them are ace based add-ons, since I use the wowace updater and it's so much easier to just install them with two clicks than to have to download and install tons of single add ons each time blizz thinks its a good idea to mess up the lua api.
As also I am constantly trying out new things, some of the detail layouts have changed, especially since I changed my resolution from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 the action bar layout has changed a lot, though the functionality of the single things should be the same.
| Name | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Baggins | Bags sorted by category |
| Bartender3 | Reconfigure your action bars |
| BulkMail2 | Easily send and receive many items |
| Cartographer | All you need for your map |
| Cellular | Manage your whispers |
| CharacterInfo | Look into your alt chars without logging out |
| ClosetGnome | Manage your wardrobe |
| CraftList2 | All Craft/Enchant lists united |
| Decursive | Remove debuffs with a single click |
| EQCompare | Always compare items against yours |
| EveryQuest | Keep track of finished quests |
| FuBar | A Framework for panels |
| Name | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Auctioneer (Advanced) | Auction House "offline" support |
| BeanCounter | Keeps track of your auction house transactions |
| BottomScanner | Notifies you when there is money to make in the auction house |
| FishingBuddy | Easier fishing, and fihing statistics |
| Gatherer | Similar to cartographer |
This is a non-ace add-on from http://auctioneeraddon.com/.
It is best described on their site in detail, also with screenshots. In short, it helps you getting an overview of the market prices in the auction house by scanning the auction house and recording statistics. It will then display all that as tooltips on your items, so even when not in the auction house you can make decision about the worth of an item. They also develop a next generation auctioneer with different interface.
Things that I don't like/miss in Auctioneer Advanced:
Baggins is a small but useful add-on for handling your bags contents. It works the same way for your bank too. It sorts your items by different categories, and does virtual stacking for those items that are not stackable, so you have a better overview. It also has tiny tools like the "bag compress" feature that will complete all stacks but one, which sometimes frees up a place in your bags (This is done by clicking on the two little rings you can see in the screenshot). It will also color the frames of the single item by their rarity value, in my example a few have green frames. With the "Anywhere Bags" addon to baggins, you can let it display also bags of your other chars, though I have never used that, since I use CharInfo for that. It also displays markers for new items, and markers for items that appear somewhere else again in your bags.
Bartender3 lets you completely reconfigure all your action bars, allows for different sizes, hidden ones and auto-hiding ones. It colors the buttons depending on states like "out of range" or "out of mana" properly, just play with it, I am sure you can get the layout you want. You can see my old layout in the "big" screenshot.
BeanCounter is part of the auctioneer suite, so best described there. In short, it keeps track of all your auction house based transactions and can display it there, so you can easily see what you payed the last time(s) for an item.
The bottom scanner notifies you while scanning the auction house, if there is an item that you could make money with, its part of the auctioneer addon suite.
If you send often items, or even regularly special items to special players, such a add-on is a must. It allows for easy queuing of items to be sent to different players, and allows for setting up auto send lists, where items are queued up automatically. Do you have a char that you always send all your leather? Just setup an auto send list, and every time you visit a mailbox you can send those items with a single mouse click. To easily receive multiple items, the corresponding BulkMail2Inbox item is recommended.
Cartographer is really a suite of different add-ons that are based on each other. It displays you quest objects, gatharable items, intresting points, guild members and many more on your map. It helps you keep statistics on what ores you farmed how often in which area. You can add your own notes, or use those of other players using the same add-on via your guild communications channel. It even has complete maps with notes for instances! It helps you planning farming routes, displays little arraws that show you distance and direction, all on the big map and minimap as well. I very much like the way it exchanges data with other guild members, so I almost always have good markers for quest objectives without doing anything.
The Gatherer is a similar add-on made by the same people that
created the auctioneer add-on. I use both, but mainly only to get
gathers of other people, since there is also an add-on to import
gatherer data into the cartographer each time you log in.
I don't like the way the gatherer displays all or nothing on the
minimap, and also the points jumping around on the minimap or even
sometimes having a totally weird moving behaviour annoys me. Plus a
few things it just doesn't have. But make up your own mind, try
both! And maybe even keep both, so that your guild members that
just have one benefit from the data you gather. And don't forget to
enable the sharing of that data!
Cellular is a small add-on that will display your whispers in small single windows, so you can easily manage multiple conversations. It will automatically open windows minimized when you are in combat, so you won't miss someone whispering to you but are not disturbed by it.
With that add-on you will be able to look into the bank, bags, character info and mailbox of your alt chars, as they were saved when you last logged out with them. Very useful for bank chars, or for specialized chars that store/work with special item classes. While it has a very nice display, it doesn't have a nice search ability as e.g. Anywhere Bags from Baggins, which otoh has a totally ugly interface. I use both of them now.
Manage your wardrobe. You can define different sets that this little gnome can put you on, and there are different addons for different things you do. You can let it trigger on changing to a zone, go fishin, eating, riding, and rumours are it even works together with bigwigs and puts you on special drobe on endboss events...
All crafting and enchanting list plugins united. At least thats what it promises to do, I am currently still testing it.
The little green square you see here is whats always visible of decursive (the other thing is PallyPower). You will have one such square for each group/raid member (also for their pets). When one of them suffers from a debuff you can cure, clicking on it will do so. If there are multiple ones, there is a configurable priority list, so you cure the worst debuffs first.
There are only a few opportunities where the blizz tooltips show for an item what you have at the corresponding place. With EQCompare, now wherever possible displaying the tooltip of an item that you could put on, also the one you have already put on is displayed, so you can directly compare the stats.
EveryQuest will keep track also of the quests you have already finished, so you now can answer the question if you ever did such a quest. Unfortunately it must be running when you finish the quest to record that. It has also a few questlinks for Level 70 Instance quests, but for those LightHeaded and MobMap are the far better addons to consult.
The FishinBuddy allows for double-right-click fishing, and displays statistics for the area you are fishing in, and can display those stats for different areas and different fishes. It also has daytime and yeartime based displays of different fishes, unfortunately only of those where we already know that they appear more in the night or at the day, it would be nice if you could do your own stats for free fish.
FuBar is more a framework, than a single add-on. Despite it name, it is not responsible for your actionbars, but for some panel that you can freely move around, that works like a windows taskbar. Many add-ons can display useful little informations, or icons to be accessible via the fubar. You should definetly give it a try if you use more than a few ace based add-ons.
Gatherer is done by the same people who did the auctioneer, so you can find it at
http://gathereraddon.com. It does similar things like cartographer:
It records positions of different things, displays it on the map
and minimap and can exchange that data with your guild or party.
I personally do not use it actively, just for data exchange. One reason is that the display on the minimap is somewhat buggy, it jumps around or doesn't display properly at all. Another reason is that I just like some small things more, like the cartographer routing, the way it adapts to my chars professions and the active quests. You should definitely try out both and make up your own mind.