Best PvP Addons Guide (The War Within 11.0.5)

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. OmniAuras
• 3. Leatrix Plus
• 4. Plater
• 5. OmniCD
• 6. OmniBar
• 7. NamePlateCooldowns
• 8. BigDebuffs
• 9. sArena + Diminish / Gladius
• 10. WeakAuras
• 11. Conclusion
• 12. Changelog

Do you find yourself struggling to track cooldowns or interrupts? Do the crowd control abilities you use not last as long as they should? Tracking such abilities and diminishing returns can be difficult to do without help. There are thousands of addons to choose from, but to make things easier, we have picked some of the best addons that every PvP player should be using.

If you are looking for an addon that does the functionality of multiple other addons, OmniAuras is the addon you want. This has several crucial functions that PvPers need:

• Raid Frame Settings. You can track important HoTs and defensive cooldowns that your teammates use. This will be visible on your raid frames along with several ways to customize how these spells look. In addition to cooldowns, you can also easily see debuffs that are on your teammates on the side of the raid frame. This is crucial for knowing when your team members are in crowd control.
• Unit Frames. This will show crowd control, burst cooldowns, and defensive cooldowns on character panels.
• Nameplates. Easily see when an enemy used a defensive or offensive cooldown by enabling the nameplate portion of this addon. This will make it easier to see when you should trade cooldowns or swap targets.

Leatrix Plus is a lightweight addon that is used for changing cosmetic settings with your user interface. Here are some great changes you can make with this addon:

• Automation. As the section says, you can automate certain things in-game that can help in PvP. Some common options that players check are 'accept summon' to automatically accept a summon, 'accept resurrection' to automatically accept any battle resurrections on you, and 'release in PvP' to instantly release when you die. The final option is crucial, especially in Rated Battlegrounds and Battleground Blitz. Finally, it is recommended to enable 'Repair Automatically' so you automatically repair gear when you are at a repair vendor window.
• Text. You can change many of the default text options with this addon. This includes hiding keybind and macro text, hiding error messages, and resizing text for mail and quests.
• Interface. This section is primarily used for enhancing different aspects of your user interface, such as the minimap or tooltips. You can also show the durability status of your armor.
• System. In this section there are several ways to alter how your game looks. Some common changes people make are checking the 'max camera zoom' and setting weather density to off so that weather cannot be seen. You can also check 'easy item destroy' so you do not have to type in delete when getting rid of an addon and muting many in-game sounds that you may find annoying.

Plater gives your more flexibility and customization with your nameplates. For example, you can create groups that will show certain debuffs or buffs on enemy nameplates if you do not want to use other addons for it. You can also change the color and opacity of specific units. If you get overwhelmed with how many pet/minion nameplates are on your screen versus pet specializations, you can change the settings for pets as well. It is also easy to import different profiles. Here is our writer's PvP Plater profile

OmniCD is an add-on for those that want to know extra information about their teammate's cooldowns. For healers, this is an absolutely mandatory addon to have. Having the knowledge to know when one of your partners has their trinket or a defensive cooldown available is crucial.

Aside from being able to track your and your teammate's cooldowns, OmniBar is crucial to being able to do the same for the enemy team's cooldowns. OmniBar allows you to do just that. You can simply go into the interface and decide which interrupts/cooldowns should be tracked for each class. This will help you decide if you should use a defensive if the enemy team uses offensive abilities or if you can cast (if there are no interrupts available).

An alternative addon to OmniBar is NamePlateCooldowns. This addon is customizable and can track any abilities you would like to see. The primary difference is that the cooldowns are displayed above the enemy player's nameplate. This is great for those that do not want to keep looking down at their OmniBar. It can take time to glance down and with this addon, the nameplates are normally eye level, helping you react faster to enemy cooldowns being used.

You can also use both OmniBar and NamePlateCooldowns. Ideally, you will use OmniBar to track interrupts and NamePlateCooldowns to track major cooldowns.

Paying attention to details is crucial to being successful in PvP. The first thing you need to pay attention to is your teammates. BigDebuffs increases the size of all crowd-control abilities on your raid frames and makes the more important debuffs bigger. This is useful because, for example, you do not want to start using burst cooldowns if your teammate is stuck in crowd control. This is also especially useful for healers who want to get faster at dispelling debuffs.

No matter if you use sArena or Gladius, these are by far the most important addons to have in PvP. sArena in combination with Diminish does the exact same thing as Gladius itself. These addons are highly customizable and give you important information on the enemy team. Tracking diminishing returns, what honor talents they are using, and what spells they are casting are some examples of the information these addons give you.

An important part of maximizing your damage is being able to track specific procs and cooldowns, and WeakAuras 2 gives you that ability. Even if you are a beginner, you can import strings from other players and use them! Being able to track certain buffs drastically increases your healing/damage output. You can also track the remaining duration of a defensive buff that is active on you or a party member.

It does not matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned PvP player; these addons will improve your gameplay drastically. The addons mentioned give you the information you need to keep track of all the information you need. Let us know in the comments if there are any addons that you use that are not in this list!

• 24 Nov. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
  • Added several addons that impact PvP gameplay.
  • Updated links to addons.
• 08 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
• 07 Jul. 2023: Updated Links for addons.
• 09 Sep. 2019: No changes needed for Patch 8.2.
• 04 Apr. 2019: Updated guide for Patch 8.1.5.
• 06 Aug. 2017: Guide added.

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