Interface
Everyone’s UI is a personal journey, sounds pretty corny but it’s true. What might work for you will not necessarily work for someone else. The important thing is finding whatever works best for you, it doesn’t matter how ugly it might be.
For me, my UI preferences come from a functionality POV. If it works for me then it works for me. I settled on a style I wanted to improve upon, and over time I added to it changing how certain information was shown, in the end I think my UI is my own lab experiment, a genuine amalgam of 3-4 different creator UI’s
People usually comment on my Runic Power and Runes being on the left side rather than fully central, as others have it. I prefer this because it’s where my unitframe is, I can see all of my most important information at just a glance- My runes, RP and HP. Other than that, I haven’t had many complaints.
There are 4 main addons I recommend for any player wanting to improve or optimize their ability to succeed.
WeakAuras
WeakAuras offer you an easy method to track buffs, debuffs and your abilities. For my UI as an example I like to have everything central so my eyes are tracing down to glimpse action bars at the bottom of my screen, which can cause you to miss certain things happening in encounters.
DBM or BigWigs
What’s the difference? The best way I can put it to you, BigWigs tells you what is happening, DBM tells you what to do. Take your pick there both are boss addons, that function in Raid and M+ and they make life much easier for you as a player.
Plater
Plater is a nameplate addon with a high level of customization available, but you can import profiles or even run from the default install and you will still be better off than the mess Blizzard gives you to play with. Much like WeakAuras, a good nameplate addon like Plater can help you track debuffs, but the most vital part of a good nameplate addon is the ability to actually see multiple nameplates and be able to select them, with plater you can put borders around nameplates, as you can see in the above picture my current target has a white border around it and arrows on each side. You can also modify the spacing between nameplates so in large pulls it is easier to monitor multiple casts and abilities.
OmniCD
OmniCD is a party-cooldown tracker, something which I think every tank should utilise, it can help you adapt mid-dungeon based on what your team has available, perhaps your team doesn’t have defensives for a massive pull, or the offensive CD’s the justify it, OmniCD will show you exactly that.
Macros
Note - you should place a @cursor Modifier into your macro whenever you want an ability to be placed at your cursor location as soon as you press the keybind, makes the gameplay feel smoother. Additionally, you can also do this for @mouseover an example being the macro below.
Raise Ally Mouseover Macro
Allows you to mouseover resurrect someone without clicking on them.
#showtooltip Raise Ally
/cast [@mouseover,help][@target]Raise Ally
Gorefiend’s Grasp Mouseover/Player Macro
Just makes the ability easier to use.
#showtooltip Gorefiend's Grasp
/cast [@mouseover,exists,nodead][@player] Gorefiend's Grasp
Death and Decay Cursor/Player Macro
If you press Ctrl (Can be changed to whatever you want) it will place the ability at your cursor otherwise it will default to your character.
#showtooltip Death and Decay
/cast [mod:ctrl, @cursor] Death and Decay; [@player] Death and Decay
Mouseover Taunt/Grip Macro
An important macro to have is a mouseover Taunt and Death Grip macro so you can quickly grab stray mobs without having to target them. This macro will only grip or taunt on enemies that are alive that you mouseover.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, nodead, harm, nomod] Death Grip; [@mouseover, nodead, harm, mod:lctrl] Dark Command
Weakauras
Again like a UI I think that WeakAuras are a very personal thing and something you can take bits and pieces from other packages to get something that really works for you.
Some full WA packages that I would recommend would be
- Iamhijack: https://wago.io/ikkIbq0_k
- Luxthos: https://wago.io/H1jZ1-dNQ
If you’re not chasing a full package WA then I would recommend getting a good Bone Shield tracking WA and one that lets you know when you’re standing in your Death and Decay and the buff for Cleaving Strikes. Again though you can find these in the packages above and just delete what you don’t require.
You also want to keep track of certain buffs and cooldown uptimes things like Coagulopathy, Crimson Scourge procs and Rune Carved Plates if you’re playing Deathbringer. Or your vampiric Blood uptime etc all of these are found in the above WA packages to make your lives easier.