Dungeon Etiquette in World of Warcraft [ We need to remind players once in a while]

World of Warcraft is ultimately a social game. It aside from questing and grinding leans heavily on group play. In group play three player roles come up in a holy trinity of sorts: the tank, the healer, and the DPS. Tanks soak the brunt of a monster's anger and takes heavy hits that would flatten a non sturdy player. Healers well heal; they keep the tank topped off to take more punches to the face and keep the nuking dps alive to whittle down the boss. And the dps are what ultimately kills a creature off, all while it's distracted by the tank.

It's a great system, when people work in unison. Seeing World of Warcraft raid videos of top world guilds show this clearly with well executed strategies and world first kills. But this can show poorly in 5 man to 25+ play: dps pulling off the tank, tanks failing to keep agro, healers being unprotected. These rules listed here during a run can mean the difference between one shots and a night of wiping on a simple entrance level boss.

Do your set role.

Do not demand to play someone's character for them, or badger them with tips they do not want nor need (unless they ask). It's one thing to offer tips to a struggling tank who may not know where to go, but to badger them because they are not pulling fast enough will not endear them to you.

Everyone should know what role they plan on being inside. Do not change your mind mid run, nor gimp the system with high item level gear only to have a crappy set for your chosen role. This WILL anger people especially when you fail at said role.

If you're a hybrid class note your main role (and not if you can back up as a secondary).

Defer to the tank.

The tank is your meat shield, the bunch of pixels that will decide if that beast will drop loot, or will eat your party for lunch. Pulls and the general speed and direction of a run is set by the tank. Do not try to speed the tank faster than they can handle. It's better to go slow and complete a dungeon, then wipe due to sloppy or too fast for the party pulls.

Let the tank get agro. I usually go by the rule of 5 hits for a pug, 3 for a MT in a raid guild geared tank. Usually within the first hit the tank has already used agro causing abilities and has the mob's hate on them. Aside from letting them position a mob in a set area this is when you attack no sooner. Mind you if you see the mod targeting someone else or you (there is a setting in the options that allow you to see the target of a target very helpful to see if a mob is either on the tank or on someone else namely you) cool off.

Do this or risk pulling off the tank. The tank can try to get agro back on themselves but this causes more work the tank doesn't need. And if you keep dpsing despite the agro clearly on you, don't complain when you go splat seconds later.

Protect the healer.

Healers have arguably the hardest job of the three types of dungeon goers. They definitely have the most stressful. While the tank can simply keep agro and watch mobs hit them, and the dps can spam spells to nuke it down, the healer must watch upwards of 25+ people at once. They are what keeps the tank from dying to large spikes of damage, they keep dps from dying to incidental damage.

Make life easier for them by avoiding taking unnecessary damage - don't pull agro, don't stand in bad things, don't play hero if you are a clothie (or can't vanish, invisibility, ect.). But most importantly if you see a healer is being attacked do not stand there! Go save them. It is better to pull a mob off a healer and die they let the healer die. The healer could rez you, or be that little bit to prevent a wipe with whose left.

DPS

This guide seems mostly catered to DPS. It mostly is - the DPS contingent is the biggest in World of Warcarft. All those big numbers, the damage...the destruction. Glorious isn't it? Not if you pull the big bad onto your face it doesn't.

Keep a decent distance between your threat and the tank. Use periodically agro dropping abilities to keep the gap. Switch targets if one mob's threat is too high. Do everything in your power to keep the big bad off of you while taking pot shots at it.

If a mob wanders to the group especially to a healer try and crowd control it (unless told otherwise). If you do this make sure it is not dotted or in the area of an aoe, or do said things near it.

Also many classes posses a fear type of spell. Unless it is part of the encounter: fearing classes...don't. Just don't. Fear outside or in PvP can be a hilarious and humiliating thing. Mobs tend to be spaced apart and generally manageable.

In instances...they tend to be in packs, clustered in tight corners/rooms, or are in patrols. Almost always a seemingly well timed fear of a mob usually leads that mob to more mobs, which leads to them all coming back to say hello to the group. Rarely does a fear turn out well. So restrain from it. The group will thank you.

Say hello!

Be social! Some groups are just stone quiet, but some once a conversation has started can make what could be a boring run into a fun filled entertaining ride. Sometimes group chemistry can save what would have been a terrible wipe fest.

Say a party member is feared by a mob into a deep pit making them non resurrectable. A funny outlook can make the difference between a rage quit of all party members to the group cracking jokes at the event and pushing on. And yes this did happen to me. During a server lag spike...in the middle of a Black Wing Lair run. Fun times that friends from back when still joke about to this day.

Now keep in mind your group. Unless you are amongst close friends/guildies that accept such humor, keep the jokes PG unless the group is open to that. Nothing like joining a pug and hearing a slew of racial/sexist/orientation ect. type jokes, only to find one or more members were offended.

Having members angry, uncomfortable, or just plain not wanting to be their due to someone putting their foot in their mouth can and will affect group performance. In fact if you join a group and this is the standard banter, call them out on it. If a group persists, leave. The beauty of the queue system is groups are a dime a dozen to find.

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Farming Time-Lost Proto-Drake & Aeonaxx

Decided to write a guide on this, i see too much false information being spread about these two rarespawns.
        I'm going to divide this guide into 2 chapters



Chapter 1
- Spawning locations TLPD
- How to farm the TLPD

Chapter 2
- Spawning locations Aeonaxx
- How to farm Aeonaxx


Requirements:
PATIENCE PATIENCE AND MORE PATIENCE, there has been people that has camper for over 60 days and not even seen a corpse, I camped TLPD for over 300 hours, but I only camped Aeonaxx for about 40 until I saw him.

NPCScan <- This addon is a MUST, it basicly plays a sound whenever a rarespawn comes into your targetting range

Bots or Anti AFK tools <- IF YOU WANT to farm overnight/while afk, I made my own AntiAFK tool which i will attach to this thread / post a link.



Time-Lost Proto-Drake

I'm gonna go straight on point, no blabberyblibberish.

Spawnlocations

On this map you can see all his 4 spawn locations.


How to farm it:
I'm not gonna throw a big wall of text here, so let's get right on it.

You ALWAYS farm a camping spot when there's alot of people looking for it, there are no buts, you find a spawn point, then you stick to it!
The only exception is IF YOU KNOW there's little people camping it, that's when you can kick in the multi-path camping (camping their patrol routes).

I personally like the Bor's Breath (Frozen Lake) Spawn location because it covers 3/4 of TLPD's patrol route.

Some facts:
TLPD Shares a spawn timer with Vyragosa, that means:
They cannot spawn at the same time
When Vyra/TLPD has spawned, there is a 2 hour minimum time limit before they can spawn again (BEFORE IT WAS 6 HOURS)
Vyra has a 15/16 chance of spawning, TLPD has a 1/16 chance of spawning.

You can look at them as "one" rarespawn, and basicly if you're lucky, TLPD will spawn instead of Vyragosa.


Aeonaxx

Spawnlocs:

Aeonaxx is still a fresh rare, so there's not much info about him, BUT these are the known spawn locations.


It's the same story here, you find a spawn spot, then you stick to it.
HOWEVER there are some places where you can camp, that covers up to _4_ spawn points.

That's where I was when he spawned for me, probably the best location if you're camping that bastard alone.


Some facts about him:
Just like TLPD, he has a mob which he shares a spawn timer with, a level 15 Bat.
After patch 4.0.6 it seems like the spawn rate has increased, but this is still unknown.
There is a 6 hour minimum spawn timer on this mob, so that means If it died at 0600, you won't see him spawning till atleast 12:00.

Basicly, if you see him spawn, take a 6 hour break.

I'm probably gonna add more to this guide whenever I feel like it, I just threw in my personal tips (and the best ways) on how to camp those rarespawns.

Now you dun go and get lured by fake info out there.

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Launcher Protip

I like forgetting i was listening to music earlier in the day and notifying my neighbours and their neighbours and THEIR neighbours of my intention to play WoW.

Better protip: Edit your WoW desktop shortcut to link to wow.exe instead of launcher.exe. Never have to worry with that crap.

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Ragnaros is sad about his new legs.

Too soon?

Too soon! You have awakened me too soon, Executus! What is the meaning of this intrusion!? FOOL! You allowed these insects to run rampant though the hallowed core!? And now you lead them to my very lair? You have failed me, Executus! Justice shall be served!

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A few lazy and effective gold-making techniques

I wouldn't call these "secrets"- certainly there are others doing the same things, but to my knowledge these haven't all been hugely publicized and popularized. I never shared these before becuase, obviously competition would have driven down their profitability a lot. So in a way, this is to help me keep my resolve to coming back to WoW, knowing that my favorite techniques probably wouldn't work quite so well if I did. But you can probably still exploit them for a while, especially if your realm doesn't have a ton of wowwit people.

I'm incredibly lazy, so I'm focusing on techniques that are really fast and / or easy, or using time I'd be spending anyway. For example, selling glyphs can be quite profitable, but only if you make a ton, and are constantly camping the AH and underbidding people, while making sure not to underbid "ridiculous" prices like 3g for a glyph that will probably be selling for 100g next week. You can make gold that way but it's a ton of work, so instead this is all about ways you can make a lot of gold by being super lazy.

The crafting professions my characters had maxed out were Blacksmithing, Alchemy, and Inscription, so the crafting tips I have apply only to those.

All of this is, of course, based on prices on my realm at the time. Check your auctioneer/auctionator data and/or the Undermine Journal before sinking a bunch of money into the mats for things I suggest here.

Blacksmithing

• Ebonsteel Belt Buckle = Constant free money. Your server may vary, but on mine, this always had a 50-100g profit margin per item (based on buying mats at the time in the AH- if you stock up when mats are cheap, it's even more) But what made this so great was not even the profit margin, but the volume. Good lord, the volume! Simply put, any time any level 85 player of any class gets any belt they expect to keep for any amount of time, they're going to want to buy one of these. So, just craft 20 or 30 at a time and throw them up on the AH. Don't even worry about getting underbid, after a heavy raiding night the people on your realm will clean out the AH's stock.
• Looting a Chaos Orb = Looting 1000g+. Well, the going price for them on my realm in trade chat was around 350g, but why sell them for that when you can consistently make 1000g from them or more? In my case, I just turned them all into Elementium Stormshields. Stormshields are great because they're epic, craftable, yet only take one orb. The funny thing was, more often than not, there was no one else selling Elementium Stormshields, but 4 or 5 people trying to sell the Elementium Earthguard, which has pretty much the same mats. I found that, if I completed one or two heroics a day, I would wind up selling the Stormshields faster than I could have new orbs to make them, so eventually looting an orb meant making a Stormshield which meant 1000-1500g profit after mats within the next day or two. Just make sure you look at your realm's Undermine Journal data to figure out which is the right piece of gear to make.

Inscription

Make Ink. There's a saying that the people who most consistently made it rich during the gold rush were the people who sold picks and shovels. There are some blogs that suggest paying someone else to mill your herbs to make ink for you. Well, sure, I think that is a good idea if you can find a sucker who will do it for you cheap. But you can make a ton by just milling cata herbs, and turning them into Ink. You can sell the inferno ink, and with blackfallow you can just check which gives you the best prices out of selling it, making fortune cards, or trading it to Jessica Sellers for inferno ink. Here's the trick to it: 1) Get a milling addon. I used miller. 2) Get an auto-looting addon. I used looter. Now, all you have to do is right click on a stack of herbs and it'll mill and loot automatically, so all you have to do to mill 30 stacks of herbs, is right click in their general direction 120 times. (And then craft the pigments into ink while you're afk making a sammich.)

This works best if you're watching TV or listening to a podcast or the like. I mean, you can seriously not be paying attention to it at all, or even looking at the screen. As long as 50% of your right-clicks hit a stack of herbs, you're still doing fine.

How fine? On my realm, whiptail was going for about 100 g a stack, Inferno Ink for about 90g, and Blackfallow Ink for about 10g. One stack of whiptail generates on average 1 inferno ink and 6 blackfallow inks. So, my profit per stack was 90g + (6x10g) - 100g, or 50g/ stack. With my space-out-and-right click method, I could mill about six stacks per minute, which works out to 300g of profit per minute, or 18,000g per hour. So my usual approach was every so often I'd buy a bunch of stacks of whiptail, and blindly click-mill while watching an episode of archer for about 15 minutes and net a nice several thousand in profit. Every time I logged in I'd buy whatever whiptail was under my target price, and sell any inferno ink I had when it was above my target price, but it's profitable enought hat you don't have to if that kind of thing doesn't interest you.

Alchemy

Disregard crafting, acquire Truegold. For a while, with alchemy, I tried to get fancy with how I made money from it. I took flask master, kept on top of the prices and mats for the most popular flasks, and tried to grind them out.

Well, screw that. With Alchemy, the way to go is just transmutation. Make sure you've got a ton of pyrium and volatiles, and just transmute truegold or volatile air once a day, enjoy your random procs and free money, and be done with it. I usually made truegold just because I was crafting Elementium Stormshields all the time.

This approach won't get you the highest total amount of gold compared to some others, but it's about the highest gold to time and effort ratio you can get in this game, so why complicate it?

Leveling your Crafting Skills

Follow the spirit of the guide, not the letter of the guide. When leveling my Blacksmithing, I followed a guide on the internet. I basically did so because, as I said, I'm lazy, and I just wanted to gather up all the mats so I could make everything all at once without constantly commuting between the trainer and the AH/ mailbox. So when it told me to make 5 Ornate Pyrium Belts from 515-520, I did. I took a hefty net loss when I sold them all, but that's just the price of leveling a profession, right? WRONG! The Ornate Pyrium Belt is part of a set; the mats requirements for each item aren't terribly different, but the Belt is almost always going for the cheapest price on the AH. Why? Because everyone else is lazy too, and followed the guide to the letter, just like I did. Lesson learned: if you're crafter and you're following a popular leveling guide, check for opportunities to make different items that will level you parallel with what suggested in the guide. This is especially true for BS, LW and tailors when they get to the point where they can make the blue PVP set.

Overall advice

When in doubt, be lazy. If you want to make a crap-ton of gold in WoW without really trying, your best bet is to find no more than five things that are your big moneymakers. You can still do other things to make money because it can be fun, but if you diversify a lot you'll find that 20% of your time is spent making 80% of your gold, so if you're lazy, why not just slim down to that 20%?

Above all, understand your competition and spend some time checking out the Undermine Journal. Know who your competitors are, or rather just understand where they are, and where they're not. The examples I gave here may or may not work on your realm. On mine, they worked consistently. In your case, I suspect they'll either work consistently, or "not work" consistently. Because most of your competitors who are very successful are probably following a similar approach: They're doing the same thing over and over, so once you find something that works, you can keep doing the same thing over and over too.

I hope this is helpful to you guys, and to all of you who are already doing these things and are likely to take a significant hit to your profits- my sincere apologies.

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World of Warcraft Patch 4.1 to Breathe New Life into Old Dungeons

Blizzard are hard at work on patch 4.1 for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The team are currently in the process of preparing some of that new content to be put through the paces in the Public Test Realms. So just what will patch 4.1 include? An update by Zarhym on Battle.net has revealed not only a number of balance changes, but has outlined that a couple dungeons will be undergoing a significant overhaul in the upcoming patch.

Both Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman will be undergoing significant changes with the new patch.

The Gurubashi Tribe Persists

Originally a 20-player dungeon released in patch 1.7, Zul'Gurub will once again open its gates, featuring updated lore, all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot! Zul'Gurub is now a level-85 five-player Heroic difficulty dungeon. To provide a new tier above the current Cataclysm dungeons, players can expect to find epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is 346.

The Return of Zul'Aman

Ever a player favorite, the level-70 ten-player dungeon of Zul'Aman is being reintroduced as a level-85 Heroic five-player dungeon. Zul'Aman will join Zul'Gurub in a new Dungeon Finder tier of Heroic dungeons, providing epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is also 346. While Zul'Aman will be more of a throwback to the original dungeon featuring many of the same encounters, players can expect to find some updated gameplay mechanics, as well as new environment textures and lighting.

It has been confirmed that the unique mounts once contained within the Zuls will no longer be available and have instead been replaced with new version of the raptor, tiger and bear mounts. The old versions of the mounts will be exclusive to those who already obtain them.

Other changes coming with patch 4.1, include a wide selection of balancing fixes. Below is just a small taste of the changes we can expect:

To start, we want to do a better job of balancing the AoE power of the different damage-dealing specs. You can expect to see some changes to this end made throughout the testing process.

Inner Rage is now available at level 56. It was intended to solve an excess rage problem that largely isn’t affecting warriors anymore. We’ve added a replacement ability for warriors at level 83: Rallying Cry.

Colossus Smash now ignores 70% of an opponent's armor, down from 100%. We are compensating Fury and Arms warriors by increasing the damage of other attacks.

Word of Glory: We want Retribution and Protection paladins to have reasonable healing on themselves or others, but we know paladins sometimes feel like they can’t use their Holy Power on anything but their heals in some situations. We’d rather these two specs spend most of their Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities, with occasional healing.

For more info on what changes we can expect, read the full 4.1 patch notes here. 

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Herbalism Farming Routes + Alchemy Money Guide.

Mount Hyjal - Cinderbloom (occasional Stormvine)

And here is a picture of a Rhino

Uldum - Whiptail

And here is a picture of a magical Chalice

Twilight Higlands - Twilight Jasmine

And here is a picture of a cowboy who is really happy because he just farmed a bigload of herbs

Alchemy Guide

Now, you might be potions master or transmute master.
Big mistake. Elixir master procs elixirs who will proc with a bigger value than the both of em.

For example:
Truegold will only proc 5% of the time, giving you 800g (estimated)
Potions are rarely worth 20g and if it procs *Cough*no gold*cough*

Now elixir master makes a whole lot of gold
You do need more expensive mats, but with all the farming routes at the previous pages you will have the materials.
All most expensive flasks cost at least 8 volatile life.
Now, before you make the flasks its important to check the AH prices, some servers (like mine) are the mats more expensive than the flasks, in that case sell the herbs and not the flasks.


These recipes make the most money.

Flask of the Draconic Mind
Flask of the Winds
Flask of Titanic Strength
Flask of Steelskin

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WoW AddOn Spotlight: OPie

I think I'm pretty much an addon addict, and I can tell you all that OPie is like coke to those of you looking to clean up your interface. I don't use it for anything in combat, but pretty much everything else is in a ring on OPie. If you're looking to clean up your interface, moving all non-combat spells, professions, mounts, buffs, etc. can be bound to an OPie ring and save you lots of valuable screen realestate.

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challenge accepted

How I learned to use the 10-Key.

I do this all the time myself. The worst part is finding out you don't have numlock on and then having to go back and re-enter your password.... AND THEN STILL TRY TO ENTER THE SAME CODE!!! OMFG HURRY!!!

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Good XP grinding level 33-37

In Andorhol in WPL there are many undead mobs. The Opengut Behemoth is the same level and health as all the other enemy mobs, but gives double the xp per kill. Getting 900-1000 xp per kill at 36, and theres tonnes around. Best part is, all the other enemy mobs are fighting each other so its easy to run through most of them straight to the big guys:

Look for Opengut Behemoths:

Kill & Loot the behemoth:

Rinse and Repeat

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WotLK Quests vs. Cata Quests: A Visual Comparison.

Thank you Blizzard for removing most of the grind from the Cata quests, Whoever came up with the idea for the pop-up bubble to update quests in the field deserves a bonus.


Click to enlarge

BIGGER PICTURE

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Bastion of Twilight, Gauntlet Made Easier

On the stair gauntlet prior to Valonia and Theralion, There is a fire mob that runs up the stairs and runs into whoever it agro's and knocks you back, if a paladin runs into this mob with hand of freedom, the mob will explode, and they wont get knocked back, it also works with the shadow mobs and you wont get the debuff, not an amazing exploit but makes it a little bit easier. Will post screen shots if I can find some of the stairs :P, already past it.

They are called Shadow Lord's and Fire Lord's

Picture of the stairs, looking for the mob's now

They Look like this

Will get better pics when i get to do it again but hopefully you understand

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"Don't tell me how to play, I've been here since beta!"

The bigger problem is the fact that anyone thinks playing "since beta" qualifies them as a better player or reputable source.

I've played since beta, and trust me, almost everything has changed.

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Priest & Mage Dirty PvP trick

Basically while playing 2v2 as priest rogue, we came against priest mage and they used a tactic which worked amazingly but i found extremely cheap :P

They basically mind controlled me, put one of their own bubbles on me as i was friendly to them during the mind control, sheeped me straight after and then spammed mana burns while keeping my rogue away.

Due to their power word shield being on me i couldn't click it off, and it absorbed the damage from the burns to make sure i couldnt get out of sheep!

Very dirty tactic but works very well!

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[Resto Shaman] Resurrection Trick for Arena's

1. Use Spiritwalker's Grace.
2. Start casting Ancestral Spirit while in LOS of your corpse
3. Run out of LOS from your enemy's and the corpse, just kite them arround so they can't hit you.
4. Run in LOS of your corpse again just before the cast ends.

This has helped me to pull off quite some resses in arena.

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53-57ish good money and experience

Essence of Air - Item - World of Warcraft

This item is in very high demand with very low supply on most servers. This item is used for many things, but the two most important uses for it are the 2 handed agility enchant and the 1 handed agility enchant. A lot of people are starting to get excess justice points at this point and are beginning to buy lots of BoA gear, and with people buying the mace, daggers, and swords, they are looking to buy more and more of essence of air. With none of the auction house, I was able to sell every one of my essence of airs for over 50g a piece, and, to be honest, I probably could have gotten more as they sold within two hours of listing. Basically, what you are looking to do is be at least level 53 and kill the mob in the northwest corner of silithus Dust Stormer - NPC - World of Warcraft . The drop chance isn't the greatest, only around 4-8%, but they are rather easy to kill and there are more than enough to keep you occupied for a long time. While any level can farm these mobs, I simply suggest 53-60ish for the experience. 

On a side note, as many people may already know, there can be a rare event called an elemental invasion at which point Whirling Invader - NPC - World of Warcraft spawn, and these guys have a considerably better chance to drop essence of air. Though they are a bit of a higher level, you can easily farm a few stacks in an hour or two if you find an invasion, just make sure you leave The Windreaver - NPC - World of Warcraft alive or else the invasion will stop.

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Modifying the UI guide

he following read should hopefully assist you in making a UI that suits you.
Read: This is a guide, not a "how-to" step by step. Many people like different UIs; some like graphical UIs, some like minimal UIs and some like the basic WoW UI. I will simply help you create the UI you want.

Is it necessary for me to alter the UI?

I believe that most people can perform better in WoW with a different UI, but for some it is unnecessary.
If there's anything you believe you can improve, and even more so want to improve, addons will in most situations be able to assist you.

Simply think for one minute: is there anything that could improve your performance? Things such as enemy castbar, boss timers, arena timers, debuffs on yourself, raid frames, cooldown watchers and rotation addons are common weak spots in the basic WoW UI. 

I'll try visualize the weak spots of the basic UI:

This is an example of the basic UI. The blue and red circles illustrates how spread out the stuff you need to keep an eye on is.
The blue is necessary to do proper DPS (manage Runes, CDs, Debuffs on target) and the red is necessary to keep yourself alive.

You simply can't keep everything up perfectly when it is spread in each corner.

That is however very much possible if you change your UI. In this specific example you could move up your bars and add some sort of debuff tracker on your enemy so everything would be "boxed" close to your character in order to keep track of everything.

Here's an example of a UI called "Kripp UI" by Kripparrian; a hunter from the US top guild Exodus.
As you may see his UI is much more boxed. Everything is neatly put together in order to help him as much as possible.

Inspiration

There are many ways to craft the perfect UI - and many have thought of it already.
Below are some of the popular sites with already crafted UIs. Many are downloadable and easily installed, but I strongly recommend you at least alter them to suit you the best possible way.

www.wowinterface.com
By far my favorite site to download addons. You can also gather inspiration through their forum topics. All is very neatly arranged and easily accessible.

www.wowuigallery.com
Great site. Many different UIs to inspire you. This site does however not always include download links for the UI, and crafting some of these beauties is close to impossible; especially for beginners.

www.curse.com
The most popular site to download addons. Personally I don't like this site very much due to the huge advertising and not-so-userfriendly interface. There are however more addons here than on any other site.

www.wowace.com
WoWAce is mainly for addon-developers. Most alpha/beta projects will be released here -- this also includes already existing addons; new updates will be released here first in most cases with a slight risk of including bugs.

Let your role reflect your UI

I can't say this enough. 
Each role have its unique missions - hence why they're separated into roles.

There are two main "paths" in WoW; PvE and PvP. 
If you do PvP, focusing on enemy debuffs, your debuffs, managing cooldowns and filtering enemy buffs might be what you should focus on. 
If you're into PvE, getting bosstimers, own debuff and enemy debuff timers might be what you need.

It all depend on which role you are; DPS, tank or healer.
In general, they all just need something to suit their role. DPSers should improve their DPS without overagroing, tanks should improve their threat and awareness and healers should know what to heal (prioritizing healing).

Focus your UI on what you SHOULD be focusing on. There's no point having raid frames filling half the screen if you're a DPSer.

Common addons

Some addons are more popular than other. The more popular addons are, the higher is the chance that they'll be maintained properly - thus making it a safe choice. All addons should be available on wowinterface or curse.


Bars: Bartender/Dominos are both used heavily.
Cooldown watchers: OmniCC will manage cooldowns on the bar. There are a lot more alternatives if you wish to go deeper into this. I suggest taking a look at WoWinterface -> Castinbars, Cooldowns.
Threatmeters: Omen and other minimal alternatives. Generally I recommend Omen as it is fairly lightweight on its own and is a great tool. The default setting is enough for most people.
Minimaps: SexyMap/Chinchilla and various "lightweight" maps. The map itself is easily coded and therefore does not require much to maintain. Many lightweight (aka. minimal) minimaps alternatives are available and will run just fine.
Castbars: AzCastbar/Quartz are both highly used. I find AzCastbar more configurable, but essentially they both do their job very well.
Bossmods: Deadlybossmods (DBM) / Deux Vox Encounters (DXE) are great bossmods. DBM is the most popular and will also include timers for heroic dungeons and battlegrounds. DXE is maintained by a US top guild so it will often include more accurate timers at the start of expansions. DXE will not include timers to dungeons and battlegrounds; it is only active doing a boss.
Debuff/Buff tracking: NeedToKnow / ForteXorcist are both excellent addons which will keep track of your debuffs on targets. Both are highly customizable. NTK is able to track ICD on trinkets as opposed to Forte. Forte does however include a "cooldown line" which is an excellent way to manage cooldowns.
Unitframes: Pitbull / Shadowede Unitframes (SUF) / STUF / X Perl are all great addons. All are incredibly configurable with nearly no limitations. All of the mentioned will also include raid modules so you won't have to worry about raid frames. As a healer you don't want to use that though.
Raidframes: Grid / Vuhdo are both great. I prefer Grid, but from what I've heard Vuhdo should be on par if not better than Grid. These addons are mainly for healers as they can filter buffs to help them prioritize heals. DPSers and Tank should not need these.
Arena frames: Gladius is by far the best in arena. For serious (but not too serious) arena players it is essential to use Gladius to see if they're CC immune, have their trinket on CD etc..

Installing your addons

All addons should be put in /World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns
Please note that many addons will be in various multiple folders (such as Dominos & Dominos config). This is often to reduce the computers performance. For example, you don't need to have Dominos config active once it is set -- it will just drain your computer's performance.

If you downloaded addon packs other info should be included. If not, this is how it works:

All fonts should be put in World of Warcraft/Fonts 
They need a special name to work ingame, usually they're already named as they should be. If the folder is not there simply create one.

All WTF should be put in World of Warcraft/WTF 
Please note you may need to rename the folders in there to your data (server, account name etc..)

If you wish to keep macros, the files you will need is in WTF/Account/Accountname and WTF/Account/Accountname/Server/CharacterName for specific character macros.

If you wish to keep your ingame settings (resolution, video settings, UI scale) they're located in World of Warcraft/WTF called "Config" and "Launcher".
Please note than in some UIs you may need to use their config as a specific UI scale may be used.

General tips & tricks

I've redone my UI many times over the years, thus gained some experience in the field.
Please note this is not an answer, but rather just my advice.

Keep it simple rather than flashy
When you're messing with the UI, remember to keep it simple and be absolutely sure it does it job before you start the graphical process.
The spacey fonts, flashy button-panels and other stuff with no purpose is to me just trash. Some like it, and I'm not saying you should not use it, but I'm saying that I find it messy and useless.

Center the UI
Most action will be just above and just under your character. A general "focus spot" for a UI is below where fire would be on your character. This is because it is close to fire (easily spotted) and the boss. So yeah, put your important stuff below the fire.

Update your addons
Keeping your addons up to date is alpha-omega. There's a reason why they've been updated. Most of the time it is to fix rare bugs, but I see no reason not to update them.

Center debuffs on you
Knowing that you have 4 different dots on you is never a bad thing. In PvE it is essential that you know when you get a debuff, and with correct filtering you will be able to watch any debuff you may get on any boss.

Generally you should be OK by just filtering auras (such as the one gained at Chimaeron) and exhaustion from Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp.

Post the UI on UI forums
Posting your UI in a "Post your UI!" topic is never a bad thing. Ask for critical feedback and people will give you their opinion. You may agree or disagree to what they say, but all in all it may help you to further improve your UI.

Taking it to the next level (LUA UIs)

I put this last in the guide as it is something most people won't need.
.LUA coding is, as you may have guessed, UIs that require coding knowledge.

Every addon in WoW is made with .lua coding, but most common addons include ingame configurations to remove the advance coding aspect for a more userfriendly design.

The reason people use these are because they're significantly better in terms of performance.

The most popular and highly supported minimal UI is called Tukui. It is 99% .lua based with just one or two ingame config. 

LUI is also an option just like TukUI except it is, of course, different. They both rely on complete recoding. Lui can also be featured on WoWInterface like many other minimalistic addons. The main difference between Lui and TukUI is that TukUI is a bit more lightweight and simplistic in its design, where lui is a lot more flashy.

LUI example
TukUI example

Other minimal UIs exist and can be featured on WoWinterface's minimal section. Remember not to pick the ones with nearly no support as it will probably take weeks after a patch to be ready.

Final Words

I hope this will help you creating a UI fitting your needs. 
As I mentioned this is more of a guide that will leave you to your thoughts and creativity. If you're not much into that but still wish another UI, I recommend looking more into the various UIs at WoWinterface.

If you find anything being inaccurate or just plain wrong, please let me know.
If you have questions or want me to elaborate something, please let me know.

Yeah, let me know as long the subject is in my guide. No I won't help you configuring your UI from scratch. I recommend you look at various FAQs for addons if you have problems with them.

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