Midnight Was Pretty Great - While today is the official launch day for World of Warcraft Midnight, I wrapped up the expansion in headstart on Sunday and share my thoughts
Below I’ve listed out the majority of addons I run at any given point when playing ESO. I’ve tried my best to sort them by Quality of Life improvements and Combat specific ones, but there’s bound to be some overlap. I’ve also listed raid specific addons since they functionally fall under combat, but I wanted to list them alone for visibility.
There are also some descriptions of what each addon does (for me). I will also include the following icons for “requires some customization” ⭐ and “needs customization out the ass to make this playable, but I still recommend it” 🌹
As an example of some of my UI in action, I will also include (at the end and below the cut) some videos of my gameplay both at the trifecta level and casual questing play.
I’m also fine with people adding their own recommendations to this list - just please read to the end to see which kinds of addons I specifically chose not to list. And as always - be nice. My recommendations and UI are as they are because I do a significant amount of endgame raiding and dungeoning where this info is necessary and useful, and there is far worse UI out there, trust me lol.
And here we go!
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QOL:
Addon Selector. Allows you to make specific presets of add-ons being enabled or disabled, so you don’t need to run around questing with raid add-ons, or raiding with trading add-ons enabled and worsen performance ⭐
Azurah. Ability to move certain frames in the UI, such as the synergy prompt, dialogue window, and quest tracker⭐
BeamMeUp - Teleporter. Rather than needing to search all your guilds and friends list to see if anyone is in a specific zone you need to get to, walk to a wayshrine, or worse… Pay to port… This addon makes a list of all the zones in game and lights them up if there is someone you can port to for free to reach that zone. And more! ⭐
Craftstore. Helpful crafting addon for tracking craft knowledge, levels, and training across your alts.
Display Leads. Shows a list of all antiquity leads you can currently dig up, their time remaining, what they’re for, their source, and how many more codices you need.
Dolgubon’s Lazy Writ Creator. One of my top recommendations. When you have crafting writs in your journal, it will auto craft them instantly. Simple, time saving, big time money maker. Also includes a lot of “time saver” options to play with.
Harvest Map. Puts markers on your map for certain nodes of choice (clothing plants, jewelry seams, thieves troves, chests, etc). It’s a publicly sourced data set too so other players help each other with providing their locations.
Inventory Insight. Forgot which character has your Null Arca dagger? Never fear, inventory insight remembers. Shows you where that item is, be it a gear set, furnishing, map, or anything.
LUI Extended (or any UI addon). I use LUI personally and generally don’t recommend Bandits, but you can do whatever. Trust me, you want something that changes the UI. You’ll find it a lot easier to view your resource bars, buffs and debuffs, the group frames, and so so much more. Just please for the love of all that is holy, do not just install a UI changing addon and leave all the settings as is. Customize it a lot! Disable a lot of settings like the damage cloud or popups for every enemy attack in the game. Take your time to play with the settings until you find what you like and don’t like. 🌹🌹🌹
Map Pins/Lore Books/Lost Treasure/Skyshards. All useful add-ons for showing locations of certain things on the map. Locations for random event spawns, treasure map surveys and psijic portal spawn locations, mages guild books, skyshards, all useful!
Master Merchant. Collects data from your guild traders on what certain items are selling for. Paired with TTC, offers both sides of the trading data
MiniMap by Fyrakin (or any minimap addon). You want a mini map. Trust me
No, thank you! (or any bug catcher to hide UI error messages). Does a few more things like throwing “your guild mate cleared x trial with y score” notifs to the chat instead of notifications, but generally you really want something that makes the UI error warning less intrusive, especially after patches when everything breaks.
pChat. Better UI for the chat window, offers shared settings between all characters, doesn’t delete all messages after a reload or relog, different colors based on different sources of messages, all kinds of stuff. ⭐
PortToFriendsHouse. Addition to beam me up that lets you really easily port to specific people’s houses much faster. Great for guild hall usage. ⭐
Potion Maker. Better UI for more optimally picking ingredients for potion crafting based on what you want to make, less on the sources
Qcell’s Repair. Lightweight addon for using your repair kits to repair all gear, rather than paying a vendor, doing it one by one, or using an expensive repair all kit. NOT an auto repair by default, you just enter a slash command in chat.
Roomba. Easy stacking of items in guild banks, since ZOS does not let us stack guild bank items.
Screenshot Helper. Actually hides all UI when you toggle UI on and off. Also lets you use arrow keys to make the camera while UI is off.
ScriptTracker. Useful for tracking script knowledge across all characters for scribing. Figure out if someone needs to eat a random script you found or if you can sell it.
Style and Elegance. Allows you to save presets of certain combinations of outfits, cosmetics, pets, mounts, and titles. Great if you have a lot of different looks for your characters where you like to change more than just their outfit. ⭐
Tamriel Trade Center. Addon, application, and website that tracks data on how much people are selling items for on guild traders and where they’re being sold. When paired with MM, allows you to see both ends of trading
Unknown Tracker. Keeps track of if certain characters know certain motifs or blueprints even if you’re not on them at this moment. Got a rare purple blueprint and not sure if your main knows it? This addon can tell you without requiring that you swap characters. ⭐
Unlimited Camera Zoom. More camera zoom. Get all up in your toons business.
Urich’s Skill Point Finder. Shows a list of every skill point source in game and if a certain character has it or not.
Votan’s Achievements Overview. Slight UI altering addon for changing the achievement menu’s UI.
WPamA (What Pledge at my Alts). Does a lot more than the title. Keeps track of a lot of data about your alts, including but not limited to: did they do their writs, when did you last log in, have they unlocked a companion or not, what’s their alliance war rank, have they gotten a trial’s weekly coffer yet or not
WritWorthy. More easily view if you can do a certain master writ or not, what the data is on its value compared to the mat cost, and even queue up more than the quest limit’s worth of master writs to create and be ready to turn in all at once.
Combat
Action Duration Reminder. Provides better timers for tracking the duration of skills. Less necessary now with the in game timers, but I find this offers more precise information. ⭐🌹
Alpha Gear/Wizard’s Wardrobe. Allows you to make presets for gear, skills, and champion points that can be swapped instantly at the push of a button. Now I’d recommend wizards more at the present, I’m an old timer who just brute forces alpha gear to work, so I offer both. Alpha gear may offer less, but it could be less confusing for the player looking for something more simple. If you choose alpha gear, you need to get the community patch version from its esoui comment section link to github ⭐
Combat Metronome. Helps you get used to the timing of the Global Cooldown (GCD) for casting skills faster and light attack weaving, necessary skills for progression. 🌹
Code’s Combat Alerts. Most often provides timer bars for certain mechanics going off as well as other warnings about mechanics happening in dungeons and trials. ⭐
Combat Metrics (commonly known as cmx). Necessary for parsing and submitting evidence of parse numbers.
Crutch Alerts. Yet another addon for heads up about certain mechanics. 🌹🌹🌹
Crux Counter or ExoYs Crux Tracker. Necessary for arcanist dds imo, especially now that runeblades and subclassing is implemented
Currently Equipped. Helpful to see what you’re currently wearing without going into the inventory menu. Most useful when paired with gear swapper add-ons to make sure everything swapped correctly.
DebuffMe. Puts timers on your screen for certain debuffs on the enemy. I find it useful for tanking with its taunt timer, but it’s also good for tracking alkosh or off-balance in an unintrusive way. Keeping it center screen keeps my focus where it matters rather than losing it to the clutter 🌹
Dynamic CP. Improves the CP menu for better legibility. Could fall under QOL but I find it necessary for combat situations as well
ElmsMarkers. Allows you to input a string of numbers that puts markers on the ground for positioning within a raid, so everyone knows where to stand for buffs or certain mechanics. There’s more options now but this is the oldest and most common addon for it. ⭐
ExoYs Proc Set Timers. Easiest addon to access for this purpose, is what it says. Little square on your UI for tracking the cooldown and timers for certain proc sets, like pillar of nirn or whorl of the depths.
Group Buff Panels. Most helpful for healers or other supports, shows a list of chosen buffs and current party members to see who has the buff (for example: major slayer, major courage, minor berserk, major expedition, major resolve, etc). ⭐
Hide Group. Allows you to toggle on and off the ability to see your group members. Useful for being able to see the ground when it gets difficult with everyone cluttered up, and there’s a potentially dangerous damage source nearby or approaching.
Hodor’s Reflexes. Necessary addon for sharing ultimates between supports, optional for sharing damage. 🌹
Hoteps Dinner Bell. Not a common recommendation but extremely useful for getting a warning when your food is going to expire, can customize the timer as well. ⭐
LightAttackHelper. Simple counter that counts up each time you land a light attack in an encounter. Great for knowing if they’re actually landing.
LockWeaponSwap. Only good in Cloudrest. Prevents you for weapon swapping while you have voltaic overload once you reach your safe bar. No more nuking the group because you forgot you had voltaic!
Merlin’s Rez Helper. Another personal, not common, recommendation. Shows an arrow pointing to the direction of the person who needs a rez in group. Great for knowing where to start searching if they died far away
OdySupportIcons. Extremely useful for being able to locate your supports and group lead more easily. Puts something similar to the tab markers over the heads of certain players. Recommend tracking tanks, healers, “crown”, and optionally fellow dps if they’re your partners for mechanics. Works with hide group so you can still see their Icon even if the group is hidden. I also recommend disabling custom icons that players have from Hodors Reflexes 🌹
Pithka’s Achievement Tracker. Addon that allows you to easily show others your achievements in group content. Generally always asked for when joining a new raiding server to see your “clears” and get an idea of your accomplishments and current skill level.
Raidificator. Does a few things but mostly I use it for the timer of how long you’ve been in a dungeon, trial, or arena.
Raid Notifier. Somewhat outdated now that we usually have a custom raid specific addon for mechanics, but it was the addon for warnings about mechanics in raids
Samur.ai. Another one of many add-ons for warnings about certain mechanics in group content. I got it for the hackwing dive attack in blackrose prison personally
Synergy Priority. Newer addon, but allows you to edit the code for which synergies take the higher priority in availability to take. The base code often places healing synergies highest and hides damage ones beneath them, and this allows you to change it for yourself to any order you want. ⭐
Synergy Toggle. Allows you to customize when you see certain synergies based on certain criteria. For example, block synergies while using alkosh if the debuff is currently active on main target so you don’t spam them all and run out, block orb if using martial knowledge and above 30% stamina so you don’t go too high and lose the proc, or entirely block the hel ra citadel synergy of “kill your entire team”. ⭐
Synergy Cooldown. Just shows how much time is remaining until you can take another synergy again, since all synergies have a 20 second cooldown
Untaunted. Necessary for tanks and useful for others, shows a timer for taunt and a list of all targets by name of if you have them taunted. Also shows overtaunt and other features I don’t use ⭐
Raid specific addons:
BSC’s How to Kynes Aegis
HowToCloudrest
HowToSunspire
Lucent Citadel Helper by wondernuts and kabs12
Ossein Cage Helper by wondernuts
Qcell’s Dreadsail Reef Helper
Qcell’s Rockgrove Helper
Sanity’s Edge Helper by wondernuts and kabs12
(author’s note, do not use any raid specific addons by slipperysoap - known to have horrible memory leaks they have never been fixed)
Other warnings or recommendations:
Don’t use auto repair addons. They’re extremely known to crash your game if you die and the addon attempts to spam-repair while dead. It will fail (because you’re dead), spam the server with requests to repair, and get you kicked for “spamming the server with messages”. It happens most often with raiding (especially progression and learning) due to how many deaths and wipes will happen. Bahsei is a known crash fest and a major reason is auto repairs. Just have something on your screen that shows the percentage of quality remaining on your gear, and repair before it breaks entirely.
Either manually enable/disable certain addons to not be on if you don’t need them, or use something like “addon selector”. You’ll notice performance increases the less addons you run, so try to keep what is actively enabled to what is needed.
I didn’t list every addon I run, since some are private and unlisted (like updated Cooldowns) or they’re item specific (like Huntsman’s Warmask or Turning Tide). If you find yourself wishing there existed an addon to help with a certain task, look to see if it exists!
Do not contribute to the bad rep that mmo players get for having cluttered, ugly UIs please. Customize your addon settings to disable a lot of what is on by default. Check the settings within your addons to see what they have to offer that isn’t enabled by default. Don’t just leave a million overlapping, center screen hogging addons as is that provide no useful information.
Video examples of semi recent gameplay.
Black Gem Foundry Trifecta - Tank POV
The Final Dark - Solstice Main Quest (streamed for friends) (im messing around a lot in combat to see mechanics and hear dialogue, so it’s not my most optimal gameplay)
WoW has its own internal chat logging setup, and it’s super easy to use. It requires zero manual copy and pasting, there are no character or time limits, and everything is saved to a single .txt file that you can open and look at at any time. Type the command
/chatlog
in the chat box and hit enter, logging begins and continues until you do it again or log off. The result is a text file that opens in notepad and is as much text as your computer is capable of loading. The only caveat is that eventually even a .txt file can get big enough that your computer can take a minute to open it. (Every so often I’ll take what’s in that file, save it to a new file, and drop it in a folder with the current date on it to clean it up)
There is an ancient addon called Wowscribe that automatically enables this when you log in, and gives you some tweaks like excluding npc chatter on top of it. It’s been likely abandoned for quite some time now, and I believe the version on Curseforge is from before they updated the API. A friend of a friend was able to find/replace the relevant bits in it to get it working for me again though; I can either share my version or, if you’re not comfy getting random files from an internet stranger (which is understandable and wise), I’m led to understand that it’s not too much of a beast to correct yourself if you understand what you’re looking at.
WoW’s ingame chat is just IRC with extra steps, and chatlog export is an easy and simple thing that should always be used because having your own records at all times is a good idea.
Friendly PSA from an RPer who has the memory span of a particularly mindless goldfish and lives and dies by their chat logger.
