Steps to making you better at playing your class

1.) Play your character against some test dummies/mobs. Use this time to try and learn every ability your class has, and what it does. At this time, put them all on your bar and figure everything out.

2.) Look up a (recent) guide online for your class.

3.) I suggest downloading dominos (an addon) at this point and setting up your abilities that you will be using. I highly suggest binding the majority of your abilities to keys or mouse buttons. (dont be a clicker! its too slow!)

I personally use a mouse with a standard wheel, buttons, and two extra side buttons. The way I bind my abilities to these are extra skills on the two side buttons, scroll up, scroll down, and clicking the scroll in. With those five buttons, I also bind shift + all five of them as other abilities. etc.

4.) Now that you have your bars set up and everything bound (which you can tweak as you go), follow the guide to dps, healing, or tanking priority and try to get it down well. This will only help you in the long run.

5.) Once you begin doing dungeons and raids, don't stop this process. Continually repeat it until you are utilizing all the little caveats of your class. Don't be afraid to look back at a guide and say... are there any abilities that I am under-utilizing?

6.) Grab some addons to make your life easier and your skill in that role much easier. Power auras makes me not have to watch my spirit trinket, so instead I get a giant icon telling me that my spirit trinket is ready to go. This makes me able to utilize my items and abilities to their maximum value, which can go a long way.

Addon: Deadly Boss Mods

This addon is essentially required for any raiding and dungeon content. It can be active at all times and makes any player better. It will give warnings of boss abilities about to come off cooldown and even yell at you for standing in the fire! (yes, even the best of us stand in the fire for 50% of our health sometimes)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/deadly-boss-mods.aspx

Addon: Power Auras

This addon allows the user to create any type of graphical appearance due to a set of criteria. Want to know when that spirit trinket is ready? Want to know when you get a specific buff? Want to know when your dots are about to run off your target? Want to know when water shield runs out? Want to know how many charges are on lightning shield and when the best time to release them is? Want to know when you can purge/dispel/soothe? These are just a few examples, there are nearly endless applications for this mod. Nearly required.


http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/powerauras-classic.aspx

Water Shield and Earth Shield are missing!

Don't Forget the Beacon of Light and Seal of Insight!



Two Holy Power



Three Holy Power



Infusion of Light proc, which was never
added with standard Blizzard packages

A smoking trinket means that it is ready to be used!

Addon: Tidy Plates and Threat Plates

These two addons work in conjunction with each other. Tidy plates gives you customizeable health bars above the heads of enemies. They can also be configured to include casts and even show cast bars that indicate whether the spell can be interrupted or not. Threat Plates are great for all roles, but are amazing for tanking. The colors can be customized, but by default the bars are red if you have aggro, yellow if you are losing aggro, and green if you do not have aggro. These are in sync with wow's aggro system, so they seem to be spot on. Another feature is turning specific mobs plates a certain color. Having trouble finding omnitron's oozes? Make their specific plates neon orange and size 36 font - you wont ever let one slip past.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tidy-plates.aspx

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tidy-plates-threat-plates.aspx

Addon: Recount or Skada

 These addons will document damage/healing/interrupts done (and much more). The main reason I use these is not to judge others, but for personal use. They break down everyone's spells cast and can be used to evaluate your own performance. (Why did I run out of mana on that boss fight? Oh - its because I used 18 flash of lights) (Why is my dps so low? Oh, my dot uptime is only 65%)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recount.aspx

Breakdown to analyze

Overall DPS

Addons: Dominos or Bartender

I personally have only used dominos, but it has ten fairly simple and easy to manipulate bars. The buttons can also be given individual hot keys, however I do note that if you switch specs and the bars are not in the same place between specs, your hotkeys can be jumbled around.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/dominos.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/bartender4.aspx

Just a personal setup

Addon: VuhDo, Healbot, or X-Perl

Of these three, I personally prefer VuhDo. These addons allow you to customize your raid frames to allow a more streamlined healing experience. There are options in VuhDo to also change the bar colors of units missing your buff or inflicted by a debuff. It can be customized 100% and requires a bit of tweaking to personal taste, but is definately worth the time spent. Healers, this one is mandatory : )

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/vuhdo.aspx

A character frame showing druid hots. Regrowth, Wild Growth,
Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom. All timers and stacks!

A character frame showing who beacon of light is on
and the tank cooldowns that have been used currently

Addons: Pitbull 4

This can be used for raid frames as well, but I utilized it to develop my player and target frames. (I am still not 100% happy with how my buffs/debuffs look) I recently picked this up this week and a warning: this took me watching a 15 minute youtube guide to learn to effectively use. Quick tips: in the upper lerfhand corner config menu, you can change the setting to see a dummy version of a player/target/focus frame with lots of buffs and debuffs. You will also want to disable some of the frames in the 'units menu' (you really don't need your pets targets target, haha) This is also where you will apply the layouts you make in the future. Next, if you go up to the layouts menu, this is where you will perform 95% of your editing. The layouts made here will be applied to whichever frames you would like. For instance I have the buffs on my player frame twice as big as those on my target frame.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pitbull4.aspx

This is my character frame with Pitbull. Personal buffs
are shown and mana is shown as a percentage value.

Addon: MiK Scrolling Battle text

This replaces the blizzard scrolling battle text. Mostly aesthetic value, this mod can also let you know when cooldowns are up and ready to be popped again.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mik-scrolling-battle-text.aspx

Addons: Decursive

I've used this addon for a couple weeks now and it has allowed me to take cleanse completely off my bars. Units show up as green squares by default and will turn colors when inflicted by a debuff. This functionality can be performed by VuhDo, but I personally find it easier to play whack-a-mole with little red squares. (Now if I could just find a way to import that graphic...)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/decursive.aspx

See that little red square?
Click it and the poison goes away

Addons: Bagnon

This one is for those of us with lots of junk on lots of alts. This addon will combine your bags into one large bag. The caveat that got me was the ability to type any item into a search window and find it. It also tracks quantities on each of your characters, even if you are logged into a different room. (once you log in one time with all your rooms) Ever wonder if any of your alts has any volatiles or enchanting mats on them? This makes that search much easier.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/bagnon.aspx

Bagnon's capability to store information
on your other toon's bags

Bag Search. The good kind.

Addons: Chatter

Personally, I use chatter. This chat mod has some extra functionality, however I use it for its aesthetic value. This mod helps remove the unnecessary buttons from the default chat window and allows the user to select any format of font they wish.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/chatter.aspx

A lightweight chat mod

Addons: Sexymap

This makes your minimap, well.... sexy. A few of my favorites include the burning sun, the leaves, the totems, and the red skulls. The minimap also can be moved and faded when in combat or when not highlighted by the mouse. Mostly aesthetic, this addon is still one of my favorites.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/sexymap.aspx

Addons: Shared Media

This addon is great! It gives you a package of fonts/textures/etc that can be used by mostly all other addons. (Download all three)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/sharedmedia.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/libsharedmedia-3-0.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/shared-media-additional-fonts.aspx