World of Warcraft’s default UI is better than it used to be, but the right add-ons still give a huge boost to clarity, performance, and quality of life. This article focuses on a small list of “must-have” add-ons that are perfect for the War Within era of 2026 without making your screen look cluttered.
Core combat add-ons
These add-ons directly improve how you see and react to combat.
Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) or BigWigs: Timers, warnings, and sounds for boss mechanics in raids, dungeons, and events, so you know exactly when big abilities are coming.
Details! Damage Meter: Tracks damage, healing, interrupts, and deaths, making it easy to analyze your performance and see what went wrong after a wipe.
Plater Nameplates: Overhauls enemy nameplates so you can highlight important mobs, track debuffs, and see cast bars clearly in hectic pulls.
Example: in a Mythic+ run, DBM warns you of dangerous casts, Details! tells you whether you’re doing your job, and Plater ensures you never miss a lethal cast bar.
UI and readability
These add-ons reshape the interface, so the important information is always front and center.
ElvUI: A complete UI replacement that rearranges action bars, unit frames, bags, and more into a clean, modern layout.
Bartender4 (if you skip ElvUI): Lets you move, resize, and customize action bars without replacing the entire interface.
MoveAnything: Gives you drag-and-drop control over almost every Blizzard frame, perfect for nudging quest logs, raid frames, and tooltips into better spots.
If you want a simple setup, install ElvUI and tweak a few options; if you prefer the Blizzard base, use Bartender4, Plater, and MoveAnything for a lightweight, modular layout.
Bags, gold, and quality of life
These addons streamline the chores: inventory management, farming, and world content.
Bagnon or BetterBags: Combines your bags into one window and adds powerful search and sorting tools so you can actually find things.
HandyNotes plus plugins (like for rares and treasures): Adds icons to the world map for treasures, rares, and objectives, making exploration and farming much easier.
RareScanner: Alerts you when a rare or treasure is nearby and marks its location, great for mount and toy hunters.
World Quest Tracker: Improves how world quests are displayed and grouped, letting you quickly prioritize gold, reputation, or gear rewards.
Auctionator or Auctioneer: Modernizes the Auction House with better search, pricing, and posting tools for casual and serious goblins alike.
With this group, you spend less time sorting bags and scanning maps, and more time actually playing content
Addons for collectors and immersion
If you love cosmetics, mounts, and story, these are worth adding.
LiteMount: Smartly chooses mounts depending on where you are, what you’re doing, and what you own, so you get variety without juggling macros.
All The Things: Tracks almost everything collectible—mounts, toys, transmog, achievements—so completionists always know what’s left to farm.
Immersion: Replaces the old quest text window with a modern, dialogue-style frame that’s easier to read and feels more like an RPG.
Narcissus: Enhances character and transmog previews, adds better comparison views, and makes it easy to create stylish screenshots.
These don’t increase DPS, but they make living in Azeroth a lot more satisfying, especially if you care about looks and lore.
You can also manage your addons with app like Curseforge and WowUP.io.
Please don’t hesitate to try other addons as well!