Addons are a huge part of the WoW Classic experience. Whether you’re leveling, raiding, farming, or simply organizing your bags, the right addons can dramatically improve your gameplay. In this guide, we highlight the Top 10 most essential and widely used addons for Vanilla, Season of Discovery, TBC Classic, Wrath Classic, and Cata Classic.
This list covers UI upgrades, combat tools, quality-of-life improvements, and postbox utilities — everything you need for a polished Classic experience.
1. Bartender – Complete Action Bar Replacement
Bartender is the go-to action bar addon for WoW Classic, offering complete control over your bars: size, position, padding, visibility, paging, stance switching, and more. If you want a clean and modern UI, this is non-negotiable.
Why It’s Essential
Bartender frees you from the rigid default action bars and allows you to build a custom layout that matches your playstyle perfectly.
2. Quartz – Cast Bar Enhancer
Quartz replaces the default cast bar with a clean, customizable, latency-aware cast bar that’s far easier to read. It also includes swing timers, target casting, and channeling modules.
If you play a caster or melee DPS, Quartz is one of the most impactful addons you can install.
3. Bagnon (or BankStack / Combuctor) – Bag Unification & Search
Bagnon remains one of the most popular bag addons, merging all bags into a single clean window and adding sorting, search, and item-level coloring. If you prefer a more modern alternative, Combuctor is an excellent replacement with category filtering.
Suggested Setup
Bagnon + BankStack if you want sorting, or Combuctor for a cleaner, retail-inspired inventory.
4. BigWigs or Deadly Boss Mods – Boss Warnings
Every raider uses either BigWigs or DBM (Deadly Boss Mods). These addons provide timers, alerts, sounds, and warnings for boss mechanics in raids and dungeons.
- BigWigs → lighter, modular, highly customizable
- DBM → more “out of the box,” easier for casual players
Whichever you choose, they massively improve boss awareness.
5. Postal – Mailbox Quality of Life
Postal makes mailing items effortless. It adds features like mass mail opening, remembering names, auto-filling items, and single-click operations — perfect for auction house users and alts.
This is one of those addons you don’t think about until you try it, and then you can’t live without it.
6. Details! – Damage Meter
Details! is the gold standard for damage meters. It’s lightweight, flexible, and shows real-time DPS, HPS, interrupts, threat, dispels, deaths, and more. It also integrates beautifully with modern UI layouts.
Perfect for raiders, dungeon runners, and anyone who wants to track performance.
7. Plater or KuiNameplates – Nameplate Enhancements
A good nameplate addon is essential for visibility and combat awareness. The two kings are:
- Plater – extremely customizable, fantastic for tanks and Mythic-like visibility
- KuiNameplates – clean, lightweight, great default look
Both are miles better than the default nameplates and help with tracking casts, debuffs, and threat.
8. Prat – Chat Enhancer
Prat greatly improves the chat window with timestamps, colors, class icons, URL copying, channel formatting, and more. It cleans up the chatbox without overwhelming it with unnecessary fluff.
If you type in chat often, or you want your UI to look polished, Prat is a must-have.
9. WeakAuras – Advanced Tracking
WeakAuras is easily the most powerful addon in the game. You can track cooldowns, buffs, debuffs, consumables, boss timers, procs, combo points, resources — absolutely everything.
It’s optional for casual players, but for raiders, it’s become a standard part of the UI.
10. Leatrix Plus – Quality of Life Suite
Leatrix Plus bundles tons of convenience features into one addon: auto-selling greys, auto-repairing, faster loot, skipping dialogue, improving the map, camera tweaks, and more.
If you only install one QoL addon, make it this one.
Bonus: Optional Addons Worth Considering
- AtlasLootClassic – Loot tables for raids, dungeons, PvP
- OmniCC – Cooldown numbers on abilities
- TullaCC – Lightweight OmniCC alternative
- GatherMate2 – Herbs, ore, fishing nodes on the map
- ElvUI (UI overhaul) – for players who want a “total UI transformation”
Final Thoughts
These 10 addons represent the best combination of performance, popularity, and utility across all versions of WoW Classic. Whether you’re a new player or a veteran preparing for raids, this selection will dramatically improve your gameplay experience.
Want to know exactly where to put these addons and how to install them step by step? Check out our guide: How to Manually Install Addons in WoW Classic.