You must have seen it coming, people. I'm the PvP columnist, and now the addon columnist, too. So, naturally, I had to eventually write a column about the addons I use for PvP. For clarity, I should state that the majority of PvP I do is in the arena. I am also on a couple of rated battleground teams, and do random battlegrounds to gear up my characters, but not once they're geared beyond honor gear, thanks to the changes to the conquest point cap. Now that that's out of the way, let's get started. I've got a lot of addons to talk to you about today.
SaySapped
When there's a rogue in your midst, particularly in random battlegrounds, and you're going about your merry way with a couple of cohorts nearby, they may not notice when you're suddenly sapped. SaySapped is a great little addon that does exactly what it says on the tin -- it makes your character say "Sapped". Simple as that! It's also very handy in rated battlegrounds, saves the use of the chat channel to announce such things, and allows your team to make a decision on whether to leave you as rogue-bait, or to stay and fight. Especially if there's two of you defending the flag or base, it's a boon.
SaySapped
When there's a rogue in your midst, particularly in random battlegrounds, and you're going about your merry way with a couple of cohorts nearby, they may not notice when you're suddenly sapped. SaySapped is a great little addon that does exactly what it says on the tin -- it makes your character say "Sapped". Simple as that! It's also very handy in rated battlegrounds, saves the use of the chat channel to announce such things, and allows your team to make a decision on whether to leave you as rogue-bait, or to stay and fight. Especially if there's two of you defending the flag or base, it's a boon.
Battleground Targets
Moving on to a slightly less simple addon, let's talk about BattlegroundTargets. It's the addon you can see in the header, and it's fantastically useful for random battlegrounds, and almost obligatory for rated battlegrounds. It's a bit of a pain to set up, not having the most intuitive configuration menu, but it's worth the hassle.
Your first step post-installation is to set up what sizes of battleground you want it active in. Due to the addon's not inconsiderable size, and the fact that it's not much use in the big battlegrounds like Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest, I have it set to only run in 10- and 15-man battlegrounds. This, of course, is entirely up to you -- it can run in battlegrounds of any size. The best way to set it up is to get the 10vs10 settings how you want them, then copy those to the 15vs15 settings, then, if you really want to, copy those settings across to 40vs40. I'd recommend making some changes to the sizing of the panes in 40vs40, though, or they'd be huge!
You can see a few of the settings above, the best way to set this up is to install the addon, then get things set as you want to. I mainly heal in battlegrounds, so the above is how I have it. Do note the tabs across the top, which are how the different group sizes are set up. You'll see that, as I've mentioned, I haven't got it running for 40vs40. It displays pretty much everything you'd want it to display about the opposing team -- classes, roles, whether they're holding a flag or an orb, whether they're your target or your focus, whether they're in a guild group, what their realm is, and so on. It's like Gladius for battlegrounds!
BG Defender
BG Defender, as the name suggests, is an addon which is used when you're defending a battleground. It's clever enough not to activate when you're in a battleground like warsong gulch or twin peaks, where you don't need to defend bases. But, when you find yourself in a battleground such as Eye of the Storm, or Arathi Basin, it will bring up a simple little window which looks roughly like this.
What you're looking at here is a series of macros tied to buttons which, when pressed, report information into battleground chat. Say you see three enemies running towards the base where you're standing, and that base is Lumber Mill. Click the "3" button, and BG Defender will post into battleground chat, saying "Lumber Mill 3 incoming". It knows where you are already, no need to set that up. If it's four enemies, click the "4", and it will say "Lumber Mill 4 incoming" and so on. "Help" just makes it let you know that the base you're in needs help, whereas "Safe" will report that the base is safe. It will also work in world pvp zones, should you find yourself in one.
And yes, you can of course remove the need for this addon by simply typing things yourself in chat, or relaying these messages by voice in rated battlegrounds. But if your base is under attack, and you're anything like me, you won't be able to type clear, concise, accurate messages while killing angry orcs.
Healers Have To Die
I've actually uninstalled this addon lately, mostly because its functionality has been incorporated by default into ElvUI, my current UI replacement. And, with Battleground Targets, it's less useful. But if you have neither ElvUI nor Battleground Targets, Healers Have To Die is pretty much essential. It highlights both enemy and friendly healers, with big obvious crosses over their nameplates, which, in some cases, you need to have switched on for it to work. These big obvious crosses allow you to see who is the reason why the mage you're critting for hundreds of thousands of damage isn't dead, and kill them instead, or better yet, cc them.
It also allows you to set it to announce when friendly healers are under attack, so you can find the people keeping you alive and return the favor. For everyone who's ever bemoaned the lack of healers in battlegrounds, this is a really useful feature. One of the big reasons why even PvP fans like me aren't hugely keen on battleground healing is that it's rare for people to make an effort to defend us. Look after your healers, and they'll look after you! You can see in the screenshot above that Hubbabubble is an enemy healer, while Mailyss is a friendly healer.
GladiatorlosSA
Previous addons have been very battleground-focused, so we're stepping somewhat further into the arena. GladiatorlosSA has been an addon that people always bemoan my disdain for. In the past, I'd always recommended SpellAlerter, which gave visual alerts when spells were used, as opposed to GladiatorlosSA's approach, which involves a voice telling you in your ear what's going on. Alas, Spellalerter is no longer updated, so I've given GladiatorlosSA another go.
Basically, it tells you whenever an ability is used. It takes a bit of setting up, as its default arrangement is with almost every ability active, which means it's just a string of speech pretty much all the time, and you quickly tune it out. Go in and switch a good amount of it off, leaving key abilities, and give it a go. I still don't like it, I'm afraid, I miss SpellAlerter. I don't enjoy having someone mumbling in my ear, potentially distracting me from what my team-mates are saying.
Juked
Juked is my chosen replacement for my previous favorite, InterruptBar, which has also sadly fallen my the wayside with the appearance of MoP. Its creator, Kollektiv, was presumably far too busy winning the battle.net world championships to have time to update it!
Juked shows an icon on the screen when an enemy has used their interrupt, allowing a player to see if they have successfully juked an interrupt. Juking an interrupt is when a player successfully tricks an opponent into using an interrupt a moment after they had stopped casting, so they interrupt their cast by jumping, moving, or with a /stopcasting macro. It's terribly hard, particularly when you're learning, to see whether an enemy has used their interrupt or not, and that's where Juked comes in. As you can see in the screenshot, when an interrupt is used, it appears there with its cooldown displayed, so you can see how long you have to free-cast until the interrupt is back off cooldown.
Unlike its predecessor, Juked will also display pretty much every other cooldown in the game, including stuns, CC, etc, with cooldowns. Interrupts aren't the only thing that can interrupt casts, of course, so this is very useful, but perhaps rather too much information!
I'm still playing with Juked, so I may change my mind on it before too long, but I'd love to see a better configuration menu with more options to select whether or not things show in the cooldown table. Currently it's a series of simple toggles, which work, but don't provide enough configuration to make this into the really powerful addon it could be!
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