Introduction to Weakauras and UI Changes for new World of Warcraft players
If you’re a new player to World of Warcraft, you’ll be hearing A LOT about weakauras, then UI changing addons such as Elvui, Plater among others. Some players are more than happy using the base UI and with the new Dragonflight changes adding edit more for a lot more base customizability.
At the end of the article will be download links for Elvui, Curseforge(WoW addons) and my personal Weakauras selections for all tanks.
UI
Starting with UI, your UI is your own, change things as you wish, but there’s a couple of things to remember
1. Keep your field of vision clear, you need to be able to see what mobs and bosses and casting and be aware of your positioning as a tank. In the picture below I’ve squared off an area you want to keep clear to have the best amount of open vision possible to see what you need.
2. Keep it simple and to the most relevant information you need. A crazy amount of customizability comes the power to well, go crazy. Keep it simple and don’t overload your senses with too much information.
Weakauras
WA’s are now an integral part of the game, there’s no way around it. If you want to play WoW at any higher endgame level, you need access to information that is more difficult to see. All your buffs and debuffs are shown in the top right of your screen, and since you are constantly receiving and removing many of them, tracking them naturally is difficult.
Choosing what relevant information you want can be tricky as well, for tanks I tracking your resources and active mitigation is a great place to start.
- Protection warriors: Rage, Shield Block & Ignore Pain
- Protection Paladin: Holy Power and Shield of the Righteous
- Blood Death Knight: Runes, Runic Power, Bone Shield stacks
- Guardian Druid: Rage & Ironfur
- Brewmaster Monk: Stagger, Purified Chi
- Vengeance Demon Hunter: Soul Fragments, Fury, Demon Spikes
Since you need these abilities up to live, these are important to track.
Other good things to track are some important cd’s that may be out of your direct line of sight, boss abilities. Below is a picture of a WeakAura called Raid ability timeline that works in conjunction with DBM and Big/Little wigs(one of either of these addons are required to raid/mythic + in any serious capacity). This track when bosses are going to be doing their abilities allowing you to plan your defensives accordingly.
All in all, WoW can be a very complicated game of what information do I need to be better.
Weakauras is an amazing tool that helps you track everything you need. There’s a wide selection of all sorts on https://wago.io/ where tons of creators have created a wide variety for basically anything in the game. For a guide on how to make your own basic weakauras: LINK
My collection of Weakauras and UI setups for all tanks: LINK
Elvui Download link, you need to download this and manually add it into your wow addons folder: LINK
Curseforge (the main WoW addon downloader/upkeep): LINK
