Addons: What you need to know.

[The Mule Of Max]

Welcome to the soon-to-be addon sticky!

Please, any questions you may have about addons should be posted in here. I'll be constantly checking this thread, and will answer any questions/concerns you post here.

Table Of Contents
First Post: Action Bars, Auction, Battlegrounds/PvP, Buffs
Second Post: Chat, Class, Combat, Guild
Third Post: Inventory, Map, Quest
Fourth Post: Raid, Tradeskill, Unit Frames
Fifth Post: Compilations
Sixth Post: Addons to avoid

How I post

---EXAMPLE---
Trinity Bars - The #1 recommended action bars of today! An infinitely customizable series to bars with many options. Can be somewhat odd to set up at first, but once you get used to it, it's fairly easy. Gives 120+ buttons that can be moved, shape changed, etc.! Doesn't work with Theorycraft.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

I give a link and explanation of the addon, and tell you what it does. I then tell you how difficult it is to setup/customize, and how useful it is.

Low - Easy to setup. | Not very useful.
Medium - May take a few minutes to get used to setting it up. | Fairly useful.
High - Can take 10-20 minutes to get used too, and may require some reading of Help explanations. | Very useful, recommended for most people.
Extreme - Can take up to an hour to get completely used to, and you may need to download some templates to understand how the program works. | Recommended for everyone that hasn't already found a similar mod that does the same thing.

How to install addons

To install an addon, you first must download one. Click on any of the links in this thread for an addon you want.
Once you download the addon, you'll need a program like Winzip to open it. Most newer Operating Systems come with a Winzip-like program.
You then need to go onto your hard drive, and find your World Of Warcraft folder.
In your World Of Warcraft folder, open (or create if there isn't one there already) the interface folder. Inside this folder, open up the Addons folder (or create one if there isn't one there already), and then extract all the folders using the Zip program to this folder.
While in-game, when you're about to choose your character, go to the lower-left corner of the screen, open up the addons section, and enable the addon if need be. If the addon is an older version, you may need to check the box that says "Load out-of-date addons".

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Action Bars

Trinity Bars - The #1 recommended action bars of today! An infinitely customizable series to bars with many options. Can be somewhat odd to set up at first, but once you get used to it, it's fairly easy. Gives 120+ buttons that can be moved, shape changed, etc.! Doesn't work with Theorycraft.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

TradeBar - A bar for all your tracking needs! Holds all hunter trackings, warlock trackings, herb/mine tracking.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Medium

Bongos - Extremely similar to TrinityBars, but much easier to setup. Less fluff then Trinity, and not as much customizability, but it's a good alternative.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

OmniCooldownCount - Cooldown Count addon that shows in numbers on your action bars and in your inventory, exactly how many seconds it's going to be until you can use that spell/potion/item/trinket/etc. again.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Auction

Battlegrounds/PvP

Buffs

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Chat

ChatMod - It colors the nicknames of chat participants in their class color, stores this information in a database, provides modificaton of the chatframe like mouse scrolling, button hiding, chat editbox movement, channel name striping, channel name shortening, text highlighting, sound notifications, and many many more.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: High

Class

Necrosis - Necrosis is an addon for warlocks that helps them manage their demons, shards, and summons.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

StunWatch - StunWatch for rogues! Let's you know how much time you have until your gouge/sap/blind/etc. runs out. Please note that it's made more for higher level rogues, as the gouge timer assumes you have the Improved Gouge talent, but otherwise, a great addon for all rogues.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

EnergyWatch - Displays energy ticks and combo points on a progress bar for rogues. Extremely useful for those trying to get that perfect stun lock combo down, or just wanting to conserve energy by backstabbing their enemy mob right before they tick, so they have enough energy to just fire off those attacks.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Cryolysis - Necrosis for mages, Cryolysis will provide you a sphere and 9 buttons. The sphere will display relevant information and the outer buttons will provide quick access to all your magely desires.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

DruidBar - Druid Bar is a movable mana bar that keeps track of your current mana, even in a shapeshifted form like bear or cat. remember that this addon is an estimation of your mana, and it could be slightly higher or lower depending on your level(Lower levels will have more problems since there is much less room for error with their smaller mana pools).
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Combat

Scrolling Combat Text - A fairly simple but very configurable mod that adds damage, heals, and events (dodge, parry, windfury, etc...) as scrolling text above you character model, much like what already happens above your target.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

NaturEnemyCastBar - Displays a replication of your Target AND their spell casting bar on your UI. Also displays timers for Gains (Buffs/HoTs), Cooldowns, Diminishing Returns, DoTs and DeBuffs like Stuns or Polymorphs!
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Damage Meters - DamageMeters monitors damage and healing done by and to yourself and other nearby players. It keeps a running total for each player and displays the information as a bars chart in a frame on the screen. It is perfect for real-time comparison of the various members of your party or raid. At any time the text results can be output as "says", to raid or party chat, or whispered to another player.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Low

MobInfo2+MobHealth - MobInfo collects data whenever you fight a Mob. It starts off with an empty database, which fills up automatically the more you fight and play. The data it collects is used for enhancing the game tooltip and the game target frame. It is also available to other AddOns (mostly the mob/target health values). The amount of data that gets recorded is configurable through the MobInfo options dialog.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: High

RightClickSelfCast - This mod allows you to cast a spell on yourself by simply right-clicking it. At the moment, this is only really working with Blizzard Bars, Bartender, and maybe CTMod bars.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Guild

Guild Event Manager - This AddOn allows you to create/schedule/manage future raid instance directly in-game. Players can register (join) and reserve a room for your instance, or cancel subscription.
You can setup a maximum players for your event, as well as the min/max per class.
When a player wants to join and there is no room left for his class, he is put in a *substitute* queue, waiting for someone to cancel his subscription.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: High

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Inventory

OneBag - Currently the only bag mod working without a hitch since the 2.03 patch. OneBag is a replacement for the default game bags that combines all the bags into one frame.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

EquipCompare - When you shop for items at a vendor or the Auction House and you hover over an item, you get a comparison tooltip showing the "currently equipped" item too. This AddOn adds such a feature everywhere in the game where you can hover over items, such as in your bags, in the loot window or on the reward page of a quest. You also receive comparison tooltips when clicking an item link in the chat box.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: High

Telo's QuickLoot - Moves the most relevant portion of the loot window under your cursor when it opens or you loot something. As you loot items, the window moves relative to your cursor so that the next item is always just a left mouse click away.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

ItemRack - This is a mod to make swapping equipment easier. You add equipment slots to a bar and mouseover on the bar will create a menu of all items in your bags that can go in that slot.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: High

Map

MozzFullWorldMap - Displays unexplored parts of the world on your map, makes questing in general much easier. Hasn't yet been updated for the new TBC areas.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

Atlas - Atlas is a user interface addon for World of Warcraft that provides a number of additional maps as well as an in-game map browser. Extremely useful, shows raid area maps, and is required for some extremely useful addons like AtlasQuest and AtlasLoot.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

AtlasLoot Enhanced - Shows loot that bosses in instances can drop, shows tier sets and sets in instances, shows PvP sets, and more. REQUIRES ATLAS.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: High

Quest

MonkeyQuest - The MonkeyQuest AddOn for World of WarCraft displays quests and their objectives in a nice dragable frame in a very customizeable way.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: High

AtlasQuest - AtlasQuest (or AQ) is a plugin for Atlas. AQ shows you information about quests for the selected instance, and also shows you the lore about this instance. AtlasQuest is now compatible with AlphaMap, and Atlas is not needed to use it.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Medium

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Raid

Simple Tranq Shot - This mod automatically sends a broadcasted message when the player casts or misses a Tranquilizing Shot. If the shot misses, it sends a different message than the normal one and displays a message on the screen warning the player that the shot missed.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Medium

Deadly Boss Mods - The recommended boss mods to use, has: Boss mods for all raid bosses, some boss mods have very advanced features like the Loatheb healer monitor which allows you to setup a heal rotation and see the cooldowns of all healers, synchronization system for accurate timers, no dependencies, no embedded libraries, 100% stand-alone, and more
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

KLHThreatMeter - KLHThreatMeter monitors and records your threat, and will list your threat in a table with other members of your party or raid group who are using the mod. Most class talents, abilities, and items that cause or modify threat are taken into account. There is a table for your personal threat contribution, broken into specific categories such as white damage, healing, mana gain, etc, and specific abilities such as Sunder Armor and Taunt.
Difficulty: Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

Tradeskill

Unit Frames

Perl Classic Unit Frames - Perl Classic Unit Frames is a complete rewrite of the original mods by Perl. As you will notice it looks very similar to the originals. It has been a high priority to maintain the look and feel while expanding functionality. The mod has been recoded for performance and is built around the Blizzard UI usage of events.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Compilations

CTMod - This gives you a taste of everything, unit frames, buff frames, action bars, map mods, etc. The new and improved menu makes everything a breeze to set up and customize, and the RaidAssist that is included in the package was mandatory for most raid encounters in WoW 2.0. Expect to be using it when it gets updated for TBC.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

All Deuce UI - All Deuce UI - A Lightweight and Low Memory Addon Collection of Ace2 mods. http://alldeuceui.osgamers.com has forums and more packs you can download to further change the layout of All Deuce, change the colors, forums to discuss the UI and help you with your problems, etc. It also has an Auto-Installer and a font pack!
Difficulty: Low - Medium
Usefulness: Extreme

ZHunterCompile - A compilation of all hunter mods that are... good. Recommended for hunters, although some mods in here dont always work because of Blizzard's destruction changing of the UI interface.
Difficulty: Low
Usefulness: Extreme

 

[The Mule Of Max]

Addons To Avoid

Decursive - Probably one of the best raiding mods there used to be, but now Blizzard is doing everything they can to break this. I would just not use it, and not get used to it, because if you do get used to it, you'll be kinda ******** when Blizzard breaks it.

Cosmos - This is commonly given out on Thottbot. This is probably the worst compilation I've ever seen. It has so much useless crap that can make your game lag even more if you have a lower quality computer or internet connection, and is just totally not worth the time. Just find your addons that you need in this thread, and dont worry about getting Cosmos.

 

[The Mule Of Max]

You may now post. You can post suggestions, but it's not a 100% chance I'll throw them up there.

Thanks.

 

[fahsky]

Excellant list Max, looks great. biggrin Glad to see Necrosis up, it's one of my must-haves. Some suggestions from my Addons folder! Not sure if you want my opinion on their usefulness or not, so I'll just post a general description.

Critline: Notifies you when you reach a new high on all attacks/spells/heals, regular or critical damage - also records reccords in a simple to access & read in-game page.
eCastingBar: Gives you a prettier/ more useful casting bar. Includes target casting bar. Larger than Blizz's, matches Perl.
WoW Instant Messanger (WIM): Instant messange for your in-game whispers. Puts each new whisper into a customizable window. Mini-map button keeps track of all whispers.
SmartBuff: Allows you to easily buff yourself and allies. Includes SmartDebuff.
My Roleplay: Allows you to create a profile for your character other people with the addon can view, & vice versa, as well as notify others of your role-playing status. Includes the options to write a middle/last name, motto, birthplace, physical description, & history.

I would offer up MetaMap & Outfitter, but they've been mean & buggy since 2.0 & TBC. ;__;  

[Itakio]

Does StunWatch only work for rogue abilities?  

[awexy]

Excellent post Max. I found myself downloading several of these. biggrin  

[Leana Anita]

Nice post. heart

Some of my personal favorites:

Cartographer - Similar to Atlas & Mozz's, but this will actually resize & build right on your world map (default M). This mod also has a lot of plugins for extra utility, like vendor/repair locations, quest givers, and class trainers. Great for gathering professions.

Bigwigs Bossmods - I prefer this to CT_ra or oRA. Each boss' warning set is loaded on demand, so you won't waste time loading over a hundred extra files every time you log on. Warning timers are aesthetically pleasing, and can be customized in texture, color, and size.

Xloot - An alternative to Telo's quickloot. Very pretty & smooth looking, with full masterloot support.

Clearfont - Enables you to change WoW's default fonts, often included in larger UI packages.

 

[The Mule Of Max]

I'll make an update soon. :B

 

[Kahalm]

Very nice guide! Easy to read and easy to follow. However Since im paranoid about my account being hacked so I dont use addons anymore... So I am interested in how "safe" are the mods are. An addon is likely very safe if a whole guild has been using it for a long long time with no trouble.

Better safe than sorry ya know. Thanks...  

[Final_Rest]

I can't get any addons to work on my computer

I DL it
I choose fastest mirror possible
I save file to Addons
I open the folder for the Addon, in this case, Zhuntermod
I extract the files from the smallest folder, where all the files are
I log on WoW
It's not there