WotLK Classic Guide to Mage's Best Addons

Besides DPSing, Mages need to Remove Curse and Polymorph in Raids and Dungeons. They need to see when they have threat from one or multiple enemies so they can quickly react and avoid death. Mages need to judge if it is a good time to sit down and drink for Mana between pulls, or if they need to drink a Mana Potion to be able to DPS. When their Polymorph breaks, they want to be notified and instantly be able to Polymorph again. Having an overview of the whole raid, time until a boss dies, and cooldown timers helps Mages to properly time their cooldowns and do more damage. In order to manage all of these tasks without being completely overwhelmed, every Mage should invest a bit of time to make a simple, basic, supportive UI (User Interface).

Apart from having great a overview in Raids, Mages also want to have an easier life when it comes to every day things in World of Warcraft, such as:

• Dismounting when talking to a flightmaster;
• Accepting and turning in quests;
• Vendoring gray items;
• Repairing your gear;
• Sorting your inventory;
• Keeping track of your inventory.

To this end, there are several addons that make raiding and every day tasks easier or even automate them so you have more time to play with your friends.

We recommend always using the following addons on your character, as they either bring very useful functionalities which cannot be easily passed on or represent significant quality-of-life increases for your WotLK Classic life:

While LunaUnitFrames may, at first glance, look a little bulky, it is extremely easy and fast to configure and offers important basic functions such as being able to display buffs/debuffs, players who have threat, a Mana ticker, and giving a quick overview about your raid status. The raid frames of this addon can also be configured to act as a buff tracker for your Arcane Brilliance buff. While the style of this addon is not for everyone and other unit frame addons may offer more options, this addon is extremely lightweight and easy to configure.

Leatrix Plus WotLK Classic gives you tons of options to automate tasks, such as repairing, accepting quests, selling gray items, dismounting automatically when talking to a flightmaster, scrolling out further, skipping gossip when talking to NPCs, and many, many more. It is one of the most important addons you do not want to ever disable, once you have had it.

MapCoords simply adds coordinates to your map and, if you want, also to your minimap to make it easier for you to find locations by their coordinates, which are often used in guides.

Questie WotLK Classic guides you through quests and enhances your minimap and full-size map. It is very easy to use and will make your questing experience more enjoyable.

Bartender4 lets you customize your action bars. Once you have learned your keybinds by heart, this addon can be used to make more space on your screen by having smaller action bars and even let them fade out when you do not need them. A common trick with Bartender is to make additional action bars where you can put trinkets or consumables on.

OmniCC is one of the oldest and most popular addons in the entire history of World of Warcraft. It adds a countdown to your abilities on the action bar, so you get a better overview when they are ready for use again.

Quartz replaces the standard cast bar and lets you customize it to your own liking. Customizing your cast bar allows for better space usage on your screen and different positioning of your unit and raid frames.

Spell Activation Overlay makes buttons glow when you have, for example, a Missile Barrage or a Hot Streak proc. This is a very useful and important addon, as you do not need to focus on your own buffs and have more time to focus on fight-related mechanics. This addon is also great for PvP.

WeakAuras 2 allows you to configure all types of warnings for yourself with a simple user interface.

Due to its large user base, there is a huge library of auras already created for you to import at Wago WotLK. Make sure to check it out before starting your adventure!

A few examples of great WeakAuras for Mages are:

• Jazo - Dispel Text makes a sound whenever you Remove Curse someone, so you know your decurse was successful and you can decurse the next player;
• Time to Die adds a timer you can place wherever you want on the screen that shows you how long your current target will be alive at the raid's current level of DPS. It is very useful for figuring out when to use your cooldowns.
• This WeakAura by Hildigunnur shows you a list of targets you have threat on and displays your threat relative to your tank. This will show you when you need to stop to AoE and is extremely helpful!
• Fojji - Mage Haste/GCD Edit shows your cast times depending on your spec, your global cooldown, and your Haste percentage. With this neat WA, you can avoid going below the global cooldown of 1 second. Fojji is a player from the top guild <Numen> and makes plenty of ridiculously good Weakauras, useful for many classes. Make sure to check out his Weakauras page, where you will also find the very good Mage UI Weakaura, which gives you a great overview of procs like Hot Streak, Fingers of Frost, or Missile Barrage.
• Trinket Alert by Riece displays an alert when someone uses a PvP trinket.

The addon Details has several functions. It can track everything that happened during a combat period, which also means it is a damage meter, dispel or healing meter, death log, and can even be used as a threat meter. However, some people consider the damage meter part to be distracting and it is up to personal taste if you want to use this addon or not.

ItemRack allows you to configure and quickly swap between different sets of gear. This is incredibly useful for easy swapping between PvP and PvE gear!

While the previous addons dealt with general UI optimization, for raiding you will want to have a few more addons to make life easier.

Boss mods are addons that warn you about boss abilities and give you live advice on how to handle some mechanics. Deadly Boss Mods is the most popular one.

Especially for Mages, Threat Plates is an extremely important addon. It replaces the standard nameplates with customizable ones, but most importantly, when you AoE in melee range with your spells, the nameplate of an enemy you pulled aggro from turns red. This immediately tells you to stop DPSing and/or use survivability cooldowns such as Ice Block.

A threat meter is the single most important addon for Mages in all of World of Warcraft group PvE content. As a good Mage you need to keep track of this and not overaggro. The TinyThreat plugin for Details Damage Meter helps you to avoid overaggroing. You will always deal more damage if you hold back with threat for a few seconds and stay alive, rather than showing the world how big you can critically strike and dying afterward from an angry enemy hitting you. Autonomic has made a nice configuration guide for this plugin.

Whenever you stand in a fire or any similar AoE effect, GTFO will warn you with a sound. This is especially useful as a Mage, as you can just Blink out of any AoE effect. This small addon is literally a lifesaver whenever things become hectic, as the sound effect saves you.

Whenever you do serious PvP, we recommend you to use a few very important PvP addons. Playing Arena in WotLK Classic becomes a lot easier when you use the following, very-useful addons:

LoseControl creates an icon in the center of your screen whenever you lose control of your character (e.g. by getting Polymorphed). This icon will display the ability that caused you to lose control and the effect's remaining duration.

LoCA is an addon similar to LoseControl. Do not let its name fool you, as it has been updated for Wrath of the Lich King Classic and remains fully functional!

sArena is one of the most useful addons for Arenas. It keeps track of CC effects in separate frames and even tracks diminishing returns. Whenever your enemies use a racial ability or a trinket, this addon will also inform you about it. When you Counterspell, sArena displays how long your target is still locked out of casting in that spell school. Playing Arena without this addon is like trying to drive a car without wheels!

While these addons are not quite as impactful as the ones listed previously, they can still be helpful to certain people:

Bagnon shows you exactly which items you have on which character and can also be used to sort your inventory, or to browse the inventory of your alts. This is especially great if someone in your guild links an item and you want to know how many of these items you have. Simply click the item link and Bagnon will give you the answer.

By installing Atlas Loot WotLK Classic, you become able to browse loot from various sources (PvP, Raids, Dungeons, Crafting, etc.) inside the game without the need to visit third party websites.

If you want an overview of guild activities, crafters, gear of individual players, or attunement status of friends in your guild, Guildbook will give you all that information and is mostly automated. With the built-in guild calendar, you can also plan guild events.

For some actions in World of Warcraft, you do not need an addon; a proper macro will do. Macros are usually easy to write and can often help you clean up your keybindings by turning multiple buttons into a single keypress.

For this reason, we recommend a visit to the Mage Macros page, so you can further improve your own skills and gameplay!