Warcraft: Classic Hardcore Recommended Addons
One of World of Warcraft’s strongest assets is the community building addons which dramatically improve the experience of the game. Not only do addons improve the visual design of the UI, but they also supplement gaps in the user experience. At the end of the day, WoW is a better game because of the addons its community creates. The goal with this guide is to provide you the list of addons I personally use to improve my Warcraft experience in Classic Hardcore to improve my chances of survival as much as possible. I recommend using the WowUp addon management tool to install and keep addons up to date.
Must-have addons:
AdiBags – inventory management. Categorizes your inventory, instead of sorting by bags. You can also add custom filters to tweak sorting to your liking.
AtlastLootClassic – loot tables. View loot tables for all instances and professions.
Attune – attunement quest tracking. Easily view attunement quest lines and track your current progress.
ClassicBestiary – mob abilities in tooltip. Adds mob abilities to their tooltips to ensure you are prepared for if mobs have CC, executes, etc. Very important for Hardcore!
Deadly Boss Mods – dungeon & raid encounter mechanics timers. Timers and callouts for raid encounters. There are addons for each expansion and other content, so just install those you’ll use.
Deathlog – alerts for player deaths. Provides alerts for when other players die. Highly recommend adding <last_words> to your death alert and adjust minimum level to 20 for the full Hardcore experience!
Details! Damage Meter – performance output charts. Traditional damage meter showing output for the group. Advanced users can leverage some of the heavier charting and logs to really dig into the encounter to min/max.
ElvUI – modern UI overhaul. A full UI suite to modernize the design and experience of the Classic WoW UI. Highly recommend using this.
Faster Loot – reduces time to loot. Speed up leveling by quickening looting time!
GTFO – hazard notification. Simple addon that yells at you when you are standing in fire.
HandyNotes – useful map notes. Support for adding notes to the world map. There are many different addons, so just browse through and choose the ones you find most useful.
Leatrix Maps (Classic Era) – various QoL map improvements. Enhances world map with dungeon locations, flight paths, etc.
MaxCam – automatically increase max camera distance. Awareness is vital in Hardcore. This addon increases maximum camera distance so you’re always aware of surroundings.
Nova World Buffs – view current layer and world buff timers. Easily see which layer you are currently on and alerts for when world buffs are dropping.
OmniCC – improved cooldown text. Simple quality of life addon which standardizes cooldown text across the board.
Questie – shows quests on map and progress in tooltips. Large enhancement to QoL while questing by adding objectives and quests on map as well as progress in tooltips. This may not be necessary if you are running RestedXP.
RareScanner – scans for rare spawns. Constantly scans the surrounding area and calls out any rare spawns in the vicinity.
WeakAuras – flexible buff tracking. Well known buff tracker. Leverage wago.io for a large selection of community snippets! Be sure to download the desktop client to ensure you always have the latest version of your WeakAuras!
What’s Training? – shows upcoming skill levels to train. Adds a tab to your skill book to show upcoming trainable skills and their level. Very important for planning training and spending gold while leveling!
Wowhead Quick Link – easily search wow-head. Provides in-game shortcut to go directly to the Wowhead page for any items, characters, achievements, etc. This is particularly useful for those who frequent Wowhead.
Nice-to-have addons:
CursorTrail – adds visual trail to cursor. It’s easy to lose track of your cursor in combat, so this adds a customizable trail to your cursor, so you never lose focus.
GatherMate2 Classic – show gathering nodes on map. Adds all gathering nodes to map for quick navigating while farming gathering nodes. Also download the corresponding data to ensure nodes are populated.
Leatrix Plus (Classic Era) – various QoL improvements. This addon provides an assortment of quality-of-life improvements to the Classic WoW experience. I recommend just looking through the options it provides and enabling what you find useful.
LFG Group Bulletin Board – consolidate LFG channel. This takes all messages in the LFG channel and consolidates them into groups based on keywords, automatically updating. Find groups much easier with this!
Method Raid Tools – various dungeon/raiding tools. Adds tooling for raid encounters and tracking the raid. Cooldown timers are particularly useful for raid leaders, tanks, and healers, but any raider would benefit from having ERT installed.
MikScrollingBattleText – floating combat text styling. Groups floating combat text and allows you to style it how you like. This is great for reducing noise/clutter on screen and only showing what’s important to you.
MinimapButtonButton – consolidate minimap buttons. Clean-up minimap by hiding all minimap buttons behind this one clean UI.
Quartz – abstracted cast bars. While ElvUI will show you cast bars for all units, I find it particularly useful to have an enlarged cast bar in the middle of my screen for my target. That’s all I use this addon for.
TradeSkillMaster – economy & trade valuation. A robust interface for those looking to participate in the WoW economy. Less experienced players can use this to quickly create listings at a recommended price or check values, while experienced players can dig into the more advanced aspects of the economy.
VoiceOver (Classic) – adds voiceovers to quest text. A small, but amazing enhancement to the Classic experience, adding voiceovers to all quest text. Also download the sound pack to ensure it works!
WeakAuras recommendations:
Class WeakAura – spec ability timers & resource tracking. Choose the WA for your spec of choice and build your UI around it. Search for your class and there are plenty to choose from.
Ultimate Mouse Cursor – enhance cursor with cast timer, health, etc. On top of improving visibility with CursorTrail, making your cursor functional is just as helpful!
UI Preview Example
Do you have any addons you especially like that you’d like to see added to this recommendation list? If you have any questions or need help with your UI, don’t hesitate to reach out – I’m glad to help! Enjoy your time in Classic Hardcore and stay safe, friends!
Updated for Hardcore Classic Era on 9/12/2023!
