Im a MT and i am needing to know what addons are a must besides Omen threat meter? Ty for your input

I use many AddOns, but if I had to strip them all away except for the Raiding essentials, the list would probably end up as so...

Omen, Diamond Threat Meter, or some other Threat monitor

Deadly Boss Mods or Big Wigs

Decursive, since my Tank is a Pally

Some sort of Unit Frame AddOn, such as Xperl, or PitBull - or, what I did was get HideBlizzard along with Grid, and that works well too. Basically, you need to be able to see the life and mana of all your raiders. The Blizzard UI does this, but I like the mods better.

Recount - Used properly, Recount is a great mod. It can help Tanks to figure out which healers they want to heal them, and which to Raid heal, etc. For example on Thaddius I used it to separate the groups for Stallag and Feugen... very rarely did one side out DPS the other, and we always had plenty of heals. Basically, Recount is a great tool to know how to split your group up when it comes to MT Healing assignments (Patchwerk, Gothik, Four Horsemen), etc. Those silly Hunters who just want to see their numbers have no idea about the real uses for Recount.

ReadyCheckAnnouncer - This is a great little mod that adds the /rc funactionality to your game. You type /rc and it does a ready check and shows you a little timer bar. When the bar is finished counting down, it outputs who is not ready or who is AFK into Raid chat. It's also a very nice tool for taking votes by using the ReadyCheck function.

SimpleRaidTargetIcons - I know some people are stuck on MobMarks and such, but I love this AddOn. All you have to do is hold Ctrl and click on a mob, and it brings up a little sphere with the lucky charms on it. You click on one and it assigns the charm to that mob. Since you are probably mousing over the mob anyway, this is indeed a time saver once you get the hang of it.

Ouch - DO NOT get it from Curse. The version you want to get is from WowInterface.com Go there and get Ouch. It parses the Combat Log for you and up to three other pre-defined people. I always put my Tanks into Ouch before a Raid. It is the absolute quickest way to accurately discern "how did that Tank die". You see incoming damage and heals, and with timestamps to the hundredth of a second. Completely underrated and invaluable mod.

If you're a Pally, get PallyPower. Don't ignore me. Go get it. It's so wonderful when all of the Pallys have it, and such a pain in the arse when even one of them doesn't. It's so easy to say in Raid Chat "Pally Power is set", and be done with it than to have that 10 minute discussion about who is doing which buff, and later on that one lazy Pally that always forgets to rebuff... just get the mod.

RatingBuster - It helps with gear choices... personal must-have.

If you plan on using any Unit Frames besides Blizzard's, and even if you do, give SimpleBuffBars a chance. It's is very lightweight, and very simple to set up and use. It's also another mod that you will most likely have to get from WowInterface. Curse does have this AddOn now... just checked.

There you have it. It may seem like a long list, but the above 11 mods will make your Tanking life much easier. I use many other mods to get the full functionality that I personally want/need from the game, but if I opened up my AddOn folder and picked just the ones that I would have to have enabled for Tanking if I had to shut the others off (which I just did), then these are the 11 that I would choose. If you wanted to knock it down to a Top Ten, just forego the RatingBuster mod and return to doing your own calculations.

Hope this helps. Happy Tanking!

I find it helpful to have unit frames which can show you who currently has aggro. I'm currently using Grid (as I already use it for my healer), which puts a red border around party member who have aggro. I can then single-click to assist them.

i DK tank it up, and i only use omen, dbm, and recount... im a minimalist i guess- i like my default ui... i pull the blizz raid frames out for groups 1-5 and put em on the left side of my screen so i can see debuffs and such... also- the default raid ui you can drag out has little colored dots when people get above certain percents of tank aggro (yellow/red dots where their debuffs would be)

ouch does sound like a very nice addon though, does it create a combatlog file from the combined data of several people? if so, that sounds like the solution im looking for... (i dc a few times a raid and sometimes forget to /combatlog upon reconnecting-- or end up with incomplete data)