No, no; not this.
I’ve seen this post a lot lately from several different bloggers. As a matter of fact, this is probably getting close to WoW Meme status in Azeroth’s blogsphere. It seems logical to my two cents in, as well, so here is a list of mods that I use and why I use them.
***Long-winded disclaimer: After reading the reaction to Christian’s mod post in Arcane Brilliance, I want to make it clear that I am of the opinion that however you get your job done in the raid (within reason) is what matters. I have personal likes & dislikes about mods (i.e., I really enjoy playing and would never use a mod that “thinks” for me too much), but this whole issue is really up to the raider and his 24 buddies. These are just my choices, and believe me, each of our raiders has their own set-up that works for them. That being said, I hope if you see something here that appeals to you that you’ll give it a shot!
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My Must-Haves:
Deadly Boss Mods. This is not only an irreplaceable tool, it’s expected of any raider we have. This tracks and times the bosses abilities and cooldowns and makes sure you’re aware of anything important. Lunatic Gaze, on Yogg-Saron, for example. Or Death Rune in Iron Council. You get the idea. While you can certainly customize it to an extent (I had to move the default DBM timer bar placement because it was covering up my debuffs), it’s fully functional without having to touch a thing. For me, this is a no brainer. I wouldn’t raid without it.
Grid. I love Grid. My obsession with Grid began in BC. I was a healer and mostly anti-mod for a while, but then another resto druid moved into town, and he was making me look bad. He was using Xperl, but when I tried it, I got overwhelmed. For me, too many options is just as bad as not enough. Then I found Grid and the blessing of mouseover macros. Now, even as dps, I hate going without it. All the information I need in one handy little package. Grid is a replacement for the Blizzard raid UI (you know, where you go into your raid tab and pull the groups out). Straight from the download it will track health of raid members, as well as cleansable debuffs, aggro, and incoming heals. Once you get comfortable with it, there are a lot of customization options. If you’re still using the default Blizz UI that ends up taking up half your screen I highly, highly recommend giving this a try.
Squawk and Awe. At this point, I could probably switch to any kind of DoT or buff timer thanks to the Eclipse change in 3.2, but I’m not going to, at least not yet. Squawk and Awe is still a great tool. It’s compact and gives me all the information I really need to know. It tells me which Eclipse is up when and when Moonfire and Insect Swarm fall off. I tried to raid without this on the PTR, and couldn’t do it. I had to go install it so I didn’t lose my mind.
Mods I Love
TitanPanel. It’s still a great option for coords and information tracking, and my favorite feature for the past year has been the ability to track gold across all my toons.
Recount. Best damage meter out there, and by the way, it has a ton of information when you start poking around in it.
I know, I know; I'm sorry!
QuestHelper. I am so ashamed to admit this, but I swore I would, so there it is. I did NOT use it to level at all until my druid was already at 80. I didn’t want to be directed, I wanted to explore the content, and for this reason, I don’t recommend this for new players. Trust me, the knowledge you’ll pick up along the way when you level the first time is absolutely invaluable. Don’t spoil it with a mindless leveling mod. That being said, now that I have two toons to 80 and I’m trying to level 3 more, it’s very useful not to have to jump out to Wowhead to remind myself of where X,Y, and Z are.
Miscellaneous
Omen. Okay, I know there are about 50 people right now looking at their screen and thinking WHAT?! Omen is NOT MISCELLANEOUS! Well, for me it is. I’m not a big fan of Omen. It’s a threat meter, and definitely useful for some (my magnet aggro husband relies heavily on it, for instance) I rarely pull aggro and I like Blizzard’s new threat-monitoring feature. The only thing that Omen does that I find really useful is the sound warning: when you start moving close to the top on threat, it warns you with a very ominous and unmistakable thunk in your headset. If Blizzard were to incorporate this in their current threat system, I would never use Omen again.
oRA2. I only recently started using this mod. It’s a compact information mod that shows tank targets and cooldowns, and I really only use it to track Guardian health on Yogg. Other than that, it just sits there looking cool.
Decursive. My relationship with Decursive is an on-again, off-again affair. I prefer to use my mouseover decurse/abolish poison in combination with Grid for most things, and it works just fine. As a matter of fact, I only have ever used Decursive on two fights: 1) Kalecgos in Sunwell and 2) Yogg-Saron. Curse of Doom is nasty nasty, and being able to see who has it, how long they’ve had it, and whether or not they’re in range combined with a click-to-decurse set up is extremely helpful for that fight.
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See? My list is pretty short. I know I’m one of the few who still like the standard UI, but I’m so used to raiding with it as is, I don’t see myself changing any time soon. Besides, most of the mods that really makeover your UI are complicated, and I’m just not that into complicated.
I do encourage you to play around with addons. Find out which ones suit you most and then find out how you can customize them to make them even more useful.
And, because it wouldn’t be fair to talk about all this stuff without showing you my UI, here it is (you can click on it to see it in its full size with the active mods identified):
Tastes Like Battle Chicken 