CHAPTER 3: ADDONS

ADDONS INTRO

Welcome to our add-ons course for WoW PvP. Well, it's no secret that add-ons are absolutely required for PvP in this day and age.

If your UI doesn't look something like this, well, you are at a massive disadvantage. What you're looking at is the skill-capped UI, which we developed over the course of nearly a decade.

And it's available to you right now using the add-ons tab at the top of your screen. But in case you don't want to use our profiles and are looking to set up your own UI, then be sure to watch this course from start to finish as we're going to be breaking down every piece of the modern UI.

FRAMES & EDIT MODE

Say you don't want to use our addon, let's show you how to get the best PvP UI one step at a time, starting with how you should configure your frames. While the quote unquote modern layout is popular in PvE, it's not at all efficient in PvP.

Notice how our party frames, player, target and focus are spread all across the screen. This is definitely something you want to avoid.

In Arena, most of the action will be taking place directly in front of you, which means everything needs to be squeezed in a bit so you can absorb information with a quick glance. First let's drag our party frames closer to the bottom center of our screen.

Then let's take the player frame and scale it up slightly. And we're going to place it in line with our party frames below, making sure to leave some space.

We will do the same with our target frame, scaling it up and then aligning it with our player frame at the top. Finally we will scale up our focus frame too, making sure this box is checked and then align it with our party frames.

Now for extra credit. We will move our D-Box.

We will move our D-Box slightly inwards, making sure they are slightly scaled up. And then we will press save.

As a reminder, this is what we started with. And here's where we're at now.

Notice how everything is focused here within our frame of view, while still leaving adequate space in the center of the screen.

GLADIUS ADDON

Now we need some add-ons, so let's start with the absolute essentials. Do you know there is a better version of Gladius?

That's right, hold off on installing it just yet from Curse. Skill-capped contributor BicMex created a custom version of Gladius, which includes more spells, a fixed DR tracker, and even an interrupt lockout timer.

This is just one reason we prefer his Gladius over other popular alternatives like S Arena or Gladius EX. Once installed, type slash Gladius in-game to go into the layout tab, and then paste the BicMex layout import string that's linked on the Curse Forge download page of the add-on.

Click accept and then import. Make sure you type slash reload UI after doing this, and everything should work.

Type slash Gladius test 3 to see how it looks. With Gladius installed, the next step is to position it on your screen.

Ideally, you should align it with your party frames on the left side of the screen. Once again, keeping it within your peripheral to check information at a quick glance.

If you play Healer, there is one additional setting you might want to enable, target frame. Go to the target bar tab and make sure the module is enabled.

Then, make sure the target health bar is disabled, but make sure to enable target class icon and then copy all the settings you see here. Finally, to make sure the class icon isn't overlapping with the health bar, disable this box and then adjust the health bar width until it fits into the frame.

When everything is done, you will be able to clearly see who the enemy team is targeting just by checking Gladius.

OMNIBAR ADDON

Next up, let's configure Omnibar, which is also included in our package, but be sure to give it a download if you aren't using it already. Right out of the box, Omnibar is missing a lot of its potential.

The biggest mistake even some experienced players make is tracking way too much, having everything clumped together in a giant mess, making it harder to isolate a single cooldown. The workaround to this involves two steps.

Step one is to actually create three separate bars, each dedicated to three different categories of cooldowns.

One for interrupts, then a second cooldown bar for CC, which you should both place around your cast bar, and finally, a third bar for major defenses, which you can technically put anywhere, but it makes the most sense putting it somewhere near your arena frames.

Hold off on making a bar for offensive cooldowns, because we will get to that later. If you're a skill-capped member, you can even use our pre-configured add-on profile, which has done all the work for you.

By splitting things up, it will be easier to find exactly what you're looking for with a quick glance, instead of needing to sort through a massive clump of icons. This is another reason we prefer to use Gladius instead of other arena frame add-ons.

Even though it might seem like a two-for-one, it makes finding isolated information much more difficult. Anyway, once you've made each unique bar, the second step is to only track the most relevant cooldowns.

If you want to keep your UI as clean as possible, you don't need to be tracking minor cooldowns like Nature's Vigil.

WEAKAURAS ADDON

The reason we set to hold off making a bar for offensive CDs is because you might get more value by doing so with weak auras. In the year 2024, 90% of players have this addon installed, but some of them are making a big mistake.

There is a tendency for players to go completely overboard with this addon, tracking way more than they actually need, or even making fully custom UIs that are built entirely around this addon, but this really isn't necessary for 99.9% of players. Instead, focus on using weak auras for a few basic things.

The best use for any role is to track enemy cooldowns, which you can do with our custom pack available on Wago. But if you don't like what we cooked up, Mez has his own popular weak aura package tailored for PvP.

The advantage of tracking enemy cooldowns with weak auras is because you can assign custom sound alerts too, like air horns, kittens, or even this. Whatever you think will help you achieve peak gameplay.

We know from different studies that audio reaction times are on average significantly faster than the average. So if you're a player who's been playing a lot of games for a long time, you might want to be careful with that.

We've also added a new feature called the Weak Aura Master, with some research indicating over a 50 millisecond difference between the two. So if you aren't playing with sound alerts by now, your gameplay might actually be lagging.

For enemy cooldown tracking, we would suggest placing your weak auras somewhere in the top half of your screen. Most of the time you will be looking at this section of the screen anyway, so it only takes a quick glance to absorb information.

Our package also includes key friendly buffs and debuffs currently affecting your character, which we suggest placing somewhere in the center of your screen. Of course, there are multiple quality of life weak auras you can add, but again, it's up to you.

If you are a DPS who plays solo shuffle only, you could benefit from the healer and CC weak aura that we showcased in a recent video. Then there are plenty of other spec specific weak auras that can be useful, but again, we must stress to not go overboard unless you have a really good reason to do so.

At the end of the day, add-ons are just tools, and they only get value if you actually use them. So if you install a weak aura thinking it's going to help you but never find yourself paying attention to it anyway, then don't be afraid to just throw it in the trash.

You would be surprised at how much value you get from it. So if you install a weak aura thinking it's going to help you but never find yourself paying attention to it anyway, then don't be afraid to just throw it in the trash.

You would be surprised at how much value you get from it. This is really much clutter you can remove by doing a simple audit of all of your weak auras.

BETTERBLIZZPLATES ADDON

Now at this point you might have wondered why we haven't mentioned any nameplate addons. The elephant in the room is that nameplate addons are the number one source of clutter for most UIs.

Just look at this player here, where there are multiple overlapping nameplates crammed with debuffs. Our premium users can import a custom made profile for better blizz plates that cuts down on clutter, first by separating debuffs into two categories, customized in unique profiles for every spec.

The bigger debuffs on the left include any important maintenance debuff, allowing you to easily maximize sustained DPS. Then on the right we have smaller debuff icons, representing any damage amps that you need to pay specific attention to while bursting.

Finally on the top row you can see an icon of any active defensives, allowing you to instantly swap if needed. Together you can use this information to do more damage, which you already know by now is one of the fastest ways to seeing rating gains.

Once again this profile is only available for skill cap members, so you will need the import code from our website to pre-configure this addon. Better blizz plates also has an incredible feature that's specifically tailored to solo shuffle healers, but can be equally valuable for DPS.

By enabling the party pointer feature, you'll see a giant icon above friendly players to make it easier to track their positioning. DPS can even enable a healer icon above their healer to make it even easier to never lose sight of where their healer is.

OMNIAURAS ADDON

Now in the past we've recommended both big debuffs and buff overlay as addons that everyone should be using in 2024. Omni Auras merges both of these game breaking mods.

A powerful and highly customizable addon that gives you tons of sweet perks. Omni Auras can work pretty well directly out of the box, showing your important buffs on the bottom right, active defensives in the center, and then any important debuffs on the left, including enlarged icons for CCs.

Altogether, this is every healer's dream and is all part of one powerful addon.

DPS will want to take advantage of this too, as we've customized it with key improvements to the nameplate module, making it show important CCs and even big immunities as icons directly attach to enemy nameplates, making it the perfect complement to our better blizz plates profile.

And if you're an advanced player, you can even use this addon to show your party's cast bars, which we've attached in a non-intrusive place on your screen.

ADVANCED INTERFACE OPTIONS ADDON

Alright guys, so far we've gone through the most important PvP addons in 2024 for nearly every player. Next up we're going to cover some optional addons which you might still want to consider if you truly want to climb.

First up is advanced interface options, which is surprisingly useful for arena combat. Over the years, many interface settings completely disappeared in game, definitely for good reasons of course.

Anyway, one of these settings was custom lag tolerance, which allows you to queue your spells and bypass any lag between abilities. It works by essentially predicting what global you would press next, and then automatically using it for you within a small window.

This window can be adjusted in advanced interface options, but we suggest setting your lag tolerance to your in-game MS plus 100. You can also use advanced interface options to avoid nameplate clutter from those damn demo warlock imps.

I mean, look how awful this is. To fix this, simply go to the CVAR browser, and then type show enemy, setting a value of 1 to pets, guardians, and totems only.

The other two should be set to 1 to pets, guardians, and totems only. The other two should be set to 1 to pets, guardians, and totems only.

The other two should be set to 1 to pets, guardians, and totems only. And by doing so, your eyeballs will now have an easier time actually seeing the game against demo warlocks.

DIMINISH ADDON

Now we're getting into advanced territory, but if you can manage to use the next two addons effectively, you will become a much smarter player. First up is Diminish, which is a simple addon for tracking, you guessed it, diminishing returns.

Tracking enemy DRs is never an issue, since Gladius will be doing this for us anyway. Instead, the real value of this addon comes from tracking DRs on yourself, which is something many high rated players do.

By knowing when you are vulnerable to CC, you can know the right moment to play more aggressive or predict an incoming setup from the enemy team. Because you really only care about your own DRs, you can disable diminishing returns for everyone else, including your teammates.

OMNICD ADDON

Our final advanced addon is Omni CD, which has become incredibly common in both high rated PvP and Mythic+. In a game driven by solo content, being able to see your teammates cooldowns can give you a big advantage, but once again, we have to be selective on what exactly we're tracking.

Skill-capped members can automatically get this addon pre-configured as a premium perk, but we're gonna teach you how to set it up anyway. Most players will benefit from defensive cooldown, interrupt, and CC tracking only, since this information is the most relevant for staying alive and setting up kills.

Tracking offensive CDs can be overkill unless you have a really good reason to do so. Priest players might benefit from this in order to power infusion at the best moments, but the majority of players can simply skip offensives entirely.

For minimal clutter, you should make it anchor to the left side of frames to keep more space open in the center of your screen, while preventing it from overlapping with your focus frame if you're using our UI layout.

Of course, Omni CD adds a lot of additional information to track, especially with everything else going on in your screen, which is why we're considering Omni CD optional, better than the other ones we've seen so far. They're suited for more advanced players.

LEARNING TOOLS ADDONS

Of course, there are plenty of other add ons we've also included in our package. Some are big quality of life improvements like frame sort.

If you use party macros, others are simply learning tools like details and Truffy GCD, which are completely separate from combat designed to give you feedback after the arena has ended. Truffy GCD is most valuable for VOD reviews and should be placed in a non intrusive part of your screen away from everything else.

Tracking your own globals, which will make it easier to analyze your gameplay.