Essential WoW Addons for Player vs. Player (PvP), Arena, Battlegrounds

When you are competing in a Battleground, Arena, or any type of open player vs. player activity, it is important that you be able to see as much of your screen as possible since there is a flurry of action coming at you from all angles. Per a suggestion that I received from a friend on twitter, I downloaded Spartan UI in an attempt to clear up my jumbled interface. I’ve been very impressed with the sleek, open design and was excited to learn that Bartender4 was incorporated into this package. Spartan moves hotbars, party frames, the mini map, and other icons to the bottom of the screen which frees up a large portion of the viewing area. Since I use a variety of other addons, which will be mentioned later in this article, I need all the room I can get.

By now, most veteran World of Warcraft players are already using X-Perl to manage raid frames. This is extremely helpful for me as a healer especially in places like Wintergrasp where I’m surrounded by tons of friendly players in need of healing. X-Perl provides the ability to see players in range of you, organize players by group or class, and a host of other features. X-Perl has become invaluable to me in both raid and player vs. player encounters.

As a Resto Shaman, I am blessed with the ability to cure poison, disease, and curses. That’s a lot to keep up with especially when you are responsible for cleansing a large group of people. I’ve been using Decursive for awhile now and it is an essential component of my addon kit. It is another one of those programs that is helpful in any environment. Decursive brings up a grid with a space that represents each member of your party or raid. When someone is afflicted with a curable ailment, the corresponding grid displays a number with the amount of stacks needed for removal. It comes with a panel that allows you to prioritize the order in which the grid sections are displayed. For example, in a battleground you may want to list Warriors, Death Knights, and other DPS/Tanking types first so that you can keep them alive and pewpew’ing. You can configure the program to map your own class’ cleansing spell to a specific mouse button then you only need to click on the unit frame displaying the debuff stacks. An additional panel appears that lists names of all affected players and their current debuff.

Another useful addon for battling fellow World of Warcraft players is Quartz which can be used as a spell timer to track cooldowns on abilities. For example, I try to use Hex whenever possible but have to wait 45 seconds between each cast. It has been very helpful being able to visibly see when Hex will be available to me again especially during frustrating moments of perma sheep! But no worries, Quartz also comes with the ability to set a focus so you can target that pesky mage and crowd control them as soon as you are released from Polymorph.

One addon in particular has made my experience with Arena a little less frustrating since I no longer have to wait until I’m in range of an enemy to know what classes I’ll be facing. Gladius is a sleek enemy unit frame that shows the class, health, and mana of your Arena opponents. You can easily target your opponent by clicking on their frame. This definitely makes executing your team strategy of attacking the primary target much more efficient. Others prefer a similar addon known as Proximo. This is also an enemy unit frame with some additional features including the ability to focus your target via right click and low health announcements via specified chat window.

The World of Warcraft addon known as MutilateCrit totals the swings of the rogue ability “mutilate”. Drood Focus is a program that benefits Druids in both bear and cat form by showing the amount of lacerate stacks and combo points on an actual target. Warlocks will find DoTimer useful for managing DoTs, HoTs, cooldowns, and personal buffs/debuffs. Personally, I’m a big fan of Shaman Friend since it alerts me every time my shield and weapon enchants fade and also lets me know spells I’ve successfully purged from enemy targets. There is also an option to broadcast interrupted spells or the casting of Bloodlust and Mana Tide Totem to the chat window. I never go unbuffed with this friendly reminder.

For those with mod dependencies like me, World of Warcraft can no longer be played without addons such as these. The technical geniuses who are dedicated to creating and updating these addons do so voluntarily and without compensation. I want to personally thank you all for these contributions. These programs help us all take our game to the next level and save us a lot of time and frustration in the process. If you are really enamored with a particular addon, then I encourage you to donate some money to the programmer if you see the option available or take the time to provide a comment on the addon page sharing your appreciation for their work.