5 best World of Warcraft essential addons, ranked

Whether you’re leveling in WoW Dragonflight or an earlier expansion, every World of Warcraft player could do with a little extra help from some of the best addons out there. These hotbar, bag organizer, and rotation aids will make you much more efficient, enabling you to improve your effectiveness in the most intense situations.

Some more casual players may not use these modifications and just stick to Default WoW, but a little extra sauce goes a long way to improve your experience. However, with hundreds of popular addons to choose from, it can be tricky to decide which are best. We’re here to help with our list of the five best World of Warcraft addons every player needs.

Here’s everything you need to know about our picks for the best — and most essential — addons you need to be downloading in World of Warcraft Dragonflight.

The Addon Client

WowUp

WowUp is essential to get the best out of your addon experience.

Before you start downloading WoW’s best addons, you’ll need a great addon manager. Of course, you’re able to install these yourself through various sites, but a client takes out all of the hard work and allows you to get right to business.

Our personal recommendation is to use either CurseForge or WowUp, with both allowing you to conveniently download, install, search for, and update available addons right from the respective apps,

5. Bagnon

Activision-Blizzard

Bagnon is a lifesaver for those who like a tidy inventory space.

[Download]

One of the most essential tools that can often be underlooked in WoW is Bagnon. It provides a streamlined and easy way to organize all of your items within bags.

Bagnon supports many different storage facilities including the inventory, bank, void storage, and guild bank. They’re viewable at any time, from anywhere, and on any character, too. This is handy for those of you who like to have more than one character on the go.

With a handy highlight to indicate items in a particular bag slot, along with cleanup capabilities, and a search engine tool, this addon is something everyone has a use for.

4. Details! Damage Meter

Activision-Blizzard

Details is essential in tracking, and upping your damage game.

[Download]

Details! provide WoW players with everything from battle information, including damage dealt, healing information, and more.

It’s also a fantastic way of pushing yourself to do better in a fight and further finesse your skill and rotation, as you can consistently see how much damage you’re doing. In dungeons and raids, this is even more helpful, as you’re able to see where you sit on that DPS scale against other players in your team.

Details! is also great for guild ranking, as you’re able to “store the damage and heal from guild runs”, and you’re also able to “build lists of top DPS on each boss”.

3. Bartender4

Activision-Blizzard

Bartender 4 makes it easy to organize and hotkey your bars and abilities.

[Download]

Bartender4 is a complete overhaul to the hotbar display in WoW. This provides the ability to completely customize every aspect of your action-related toolbar, and it’s a must-have for creating exactly what you need for each character you play.

Featuring support for 13 action bars in Dragonflight, the stance bar, pet bar, bag bar, micro menu, and your XP/reputation bars, you’re able to modify everything you want. However, the best thing about this addon is that it gives you the ability to modify the size and transparency of bars, and there’s also an incredibly simple hotkey binding tool that is very useful.

2. Hekili

Activision-Blizzard

Hekili is really useful for teaching you your rotation in differing environments.

[Download]

Our personal favorite, Hekili is a fantastic addon for new or returning players to WoW. Providing real-time indicators of what skill to use next in a fight, it aids with learning your rotation of skills. Writing on the addon’s download page, the creator of it explained that “it works by collecting information about the game’s current state, using a SimulationCraft-like action priority list (APL) to recommend the next ability to use.”

Over time it’ll probably become something you use less and less, but for those who are unfamiliar with, or relearning a class, it’s something that is only going to make you a better player in the end.

1. DBM (Deadly Boss Mods)

Activision-Blizzard

DBM takes the need to micromanage battles away from you, allowing you to focus on what you can do at that moment.

[Download]

DBM takes so much pressure off the micromanaging of everything about battles during raids and dungeons. At times, these conflicts can be hectic experiences, but this addon allows you to focus primarily on your performance and rotation.

With sound effects, special effects, different colors, and on-screen warnings, it indicates when something is going to happen to you. New and old players alike will both benefit greatly from this, and that is why it is number one on this list.

It also hides things from you that you’re unable to do anything about in that moment or situation, such as dispel and interrupt cooldowns. This way, you’re only actively focusing on what can be achieved at that particular moment.

So, there you have it — that’s everything you need to know about the 5 best addons to download in WoW Dragonflight in 2022.

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