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[Guide] Addons for the Average
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Edited by Destinction on 22/02/12 16:49 (UTC)
Another day, another guide. As always let me know if I missed anything out or you have any more questions etc.
A lot of people have been asking about Addons lately, so I thought I should share my experience of the game and Addons with you. This guide is rated: Noob - for new players with no previous experience of the content within the guide. Addons for the Avrage. During this guide I shall cover the following:
Why should I use Addons? How do I install an Addon? How do I configure an Addon in game? Recommended Addons. What is an Addon? An Addon is like a mini program inside WoW that changes or adds new things to your game. They are used a lot in high level PvE as well as PvP, they can be very useful and sometimes almost required. A text book answer would be; an Addon is typically a folder that you place inside your Interface Addons folder and (theoretically) improves your interaction with World of Warcraft. (IE: Making it easier to play, giving you more information etc). They are not created by Blizzard Entertainment, but by other individuals who believe there is a need for something more in the game to help you. You may have herd of some of the widely used ones, such as Deadly Boss Mod, HealBot, and PlayerScore (GearScore). These are all types of Addons, that do different things in your game and help you in different areas. Why should I use Addons? There is no reasons that you should always use Addons, but they are found by most people, to be very useful by enhancing game play, changing the UI (user interface) general design or look or just for pure enjoyment. If you wish to play high level PvE you will find that there are some guilds that will "require" a few specific Addons, in order to play. Now this is not because they are stuck up and think you can't play, it's because the Addons really can help to improve your performance. Such as Dead Boss Mod and other boss tactical fight Addons. Another reasons is they can often just generally improve reaction time or general performance such as what you should be doing when, speeding up what you would already be doing or moving UI components around. How do I install an Addon? Installing an Addon can really be done two main ways. Depending on where you get your Addons from and how you choose to do them. 1) The first way is the manual installation method, this is fairly simple but does require common sense. Simply take the Addons basic folders with all of it's components inside (it will normally have the Addons name) and place it inside World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons folder. Very simple but can be confusing of which folder to put in there, if one doesn't work, try the other honestly. 2) The Curse Client. www.curse.com is a website that has almost every World of Warcraft Addon, this is basicly a program that will install the Addons for you, notify you about updates and let you do it all at the click of a button. I do strongly suggest you use this for ease and regular updates. It allows you to search every Addon that Curse.com has and install them with the click of a button. But not all Addons will be on Curse.com and so you will probably end up using the manual method at times. How do I Configure an Addon (Ingame) Most Addons will have an in game /command, for example /dbm (Deadly Boss Mod's). But you can normally find most configure options using the Interface Menu, press Esc (Escape) while in game and click on Interface, then at the top tabs, choose Addons, this should list most if not all of your Addons with their configure menus etc. Not all Addons will allow you to configure them this way, and so you should check out their website or page on Curse.com. But generally either of these will be the case. Recommended Addons These are all personal recommendations based on my experience and it's only generally for PvE Raiding, as that is what I do mostly. - Deadly Boss Mod - Boss Tactics Addon - Big Wigs - Boss Tactics Addon - Skada - Damage, DPS, Healing etc Meter, allows posting in a chat channel as well as viewing in combat and after combat. - Recount - Alternate to Skada, probably more popular than Skada. - HealBot - Method of healing-on-click (google for more info) - VuhDo - Popular alternate to HealBot - Grid - Raid Group Viewer - Omen - Threat Watcher. - Baggon - A bag interface modification that allows easier and more efficient use of bags. - Auctioneer - Auction House addon, allows for easier use of the auction house. Credit to commenter's for some of the recommended Addons Hope this guide was insightful and helpful to people out there. Feel free to ask any questions or point out any faults or things that need correcting. Vote for sticky if you liked the guide. |
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Nice guide :)
I would also add Omen to your list of recommended addons, it is a definite must have for DPS classes. |
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Ah thank-you, knew I forgot one!
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Nice guide, Destinction! I will add this to the Helpful Newcomer Reading compilation at once :)
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Very nice guide!
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Thanks Lethan, MPV comments mean a lot to me :)
Thank-you as well Kutaris, all the encouragement means a lot to me! If you like my guide I shall continue to make more. |
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Edited by Nexiv on 12/04/11 14:04 (UTC)
An add-on that is highly useful for tanking, but also generaly useful for dps when in dungeon groups:
Tidyplates and Threatplates Tidyplates basicaly makes the ingame plates of enemies/friends much easier to see and get information from (nameplates will show for enemies by pressing 'V' and for friends by pressing 'shift+V'). In your interface options for Tidyplates you then set it to use Threatplates as its style profile. What that does is now colour the nameplates of enemies based on your threat towards them. So if you are a tank then all enemies that you have threat on will be small and green, when you start losing threat they turn larger and yellow, and when an enemy stops attacking you (because its going for a healer or dps) its turns big and red. Which makes picking up enemies that are a danger to the group much more visible. As dps the Threatplates work in reverse; anything not attacking you (because the tank should have threat on them) will be small and green. If you pull threat on an enemy and it starts to attack you then it turns red. |
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Edited by Destinction on 12/04/11 14:33 (UTC)
I shall add those two Addons in, please remember I'm not building an entire list of Addons, just a few basic recommended ones for new players. But all additions like the few above are much appreciated.
Edit: Can't add them at the moment, the edit it hating :S |
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I would say not so much, but it really depends I guess.
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Omen is actually more important to DPS than tanks. The tank should be outputting as much threat as possible anyway: they don't need to worry too much about the actual numbers.
Its the DPS who need to be able to compare their threat to the tanks, to ensure that they don't overaggro. Its probably still worth having omen as a tank, but unless you're doing a complex bit of offtanking or tank swapping, you can happily keep its display off. Destinction, you might want to fix the missspelling of "average" in the title. The ones you made in the main body aren't that important, but the title is what people will use to decide whether a guide is going to be worth reading or not. |
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I'm dyslexic so point any out you see people!
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We're all just players like you, remember. The only difference is our font colour :) |
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Oh yeah I know, you suck as much as we do. But you do it with "pretty colours". But I wish blizz would give me like a personal orange one or something XD wouldn't that just be awesome... Anyway back on topic, glad you like the guide.
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Hehe, sounds awesome indeed :)
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Edited by Flashi on 27/04/11 18:52 (UTC)
i played the game for some years and always use addons. But mu question is. What are Blizzards opinion about peopole using addons ????
Tryed to look in battle. net to find a blizzard statmen about addons. Becorse im at the moment is reinstalling the game. Think its becourse off adons =P I did get some interface prob warning. When i whas using Healboot I use curse. |
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Another day, another guide. As always let me know if I missed anything out or you have any more questions etc. |
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Thanks for this - it's really useful. Wondering though - which one lets you calculate dps (if indeed an add-on lets you do that)? I see people talking a lot about how much their dps is and haven't a clue how to calculate mine. I know it's damage per second, but do people really work it out manually?
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Ok I'm back, been away from wow for a while for irrelivent reasons but I'm going to clear up a few questions asked here just for future references:
1) i played the game for some years and always use addons. But mu question is. What are Blizzards opinion about peopole using addons ???? Blizzard have a code of distribution of addons and mods for their games, these are only really required by the creators and distributors of the Mods / Addons. They basically say that they can be used to display information and help the player, but they can't "hack" the game in any way. I won't go into huge details because I haven't totally read it myself but the basics are it can't affect the game servers in any way other than to display information to the user. 2)
There are a number of addons that allow you to display DPS and similar information (total damage, total healing, heals per second etc). You would need to be a computer yourself to calculate it manually. I use either one of two big "meter" addons which are 'Recount' and 'Skada', both do the same things but they calculate them in slightly different ways, have a different interface and look different. I've always trusted Skada more but many people prefer Recount. I'm currently working on updating all of my guides on this forum so I'll post any updates in them, keep an eye on them! |
