Some WeakAuras can significantly reduce FPS in World of Warcraft.
After the release of The War Within, some players began to report significant performance drops in World of Warcraft, resulting in a decrease in frames per second (FPS). While there could be many reasons for this, the most common culprits are usually addons and how they interact with the game. After some investigation, well-known mod developers discovered several issues that could cause FPS to drop drastically in specific situations.
One of the developers behind the ElvUI interface, Luckyone, shared a detailed post on X/Twitter about the problems he encountered. A frequent cause of FPS drops is custom WeakAuras that use the display of additional models and textures. Just one extra model on the screen (and there can be multiple in auras, with several auras being displayed simultaneously) can reduce FPS by several dozen points. Other addons that display 3D models in the interface also contribute to performance issues.
If you’re facing similar problems, try disabling model displays in the addon settings by, for example, switching from 3D to 2D versions. As for WeakAuras, you should inspect each installed aura and disable the model display if one is present, though this might slightly affect functionality. You can do this by navigating to: Display > Model > Uncheck “Show Model” or even delete the model entirely. To automatically find auras with displayed models, you can use the following script, which will list their names if they exist:
This script helps identify auras that display models, allowing you to adjust or remove them accordingly.
Performance Issues in Raids
As it seems everyone on social media is an expert on FPS and frame time, let’s take a moment to discuss, explain, and provide some recommendations.
1.) Known Bugs in the Game
Model and Scene Models: These can cause significant performance drops due to a bug in the game engine. This mainly applies to any type of WeakAura that uses such model effects (fancy glowing energy streaks, animated models dancing on the screen, etc.). You should go through all your WeakAuras, open the “Display” tab, and ensure you’ve disabled or deleted any active models or scene model overlays. Without naming names, two of the most popular class WeakAura packs on Wago are known to use these models for the aforementioned effects. This isn’t something addon developers can fix; it’s up to Blizzard to address it. This issue has been studied and confirmed by multiple Discord servers, and Blizzard has been informed.
Portraits on UnitFrames and NamePlates: These significantly reduce performance for the same reasons as models. You definitely shouldn’t use them, and if you insist, switch to non-animated 2D versions.
Impact: Just one single model rendered on the screen can cause a 10 FPS drop. This is not an exaggeration.
1.1.) Event Spam in the Background
Event Spam: Events are triggered by the game and used by addons to execute certain code. For example, the event GROUP_ROSTER_UPDATE should only trigger when someone joins or leaves your party/raid. However, this event is being spammed randomly to your client, forcing addons to repeatedly execute group roster update code. The larger your raid group, the worse it gets.
2.) Aura Filtering (Buffs/Debuffs)
Filtering Auras using allowlists/whitelists and blocklists/blacklists is the most resource-intensive task for an addon. Unfortunately, most players are used to this, and it will be difficult to convince them to adopt alternative solutions, such as single indicators that track spell IDs in combat logs, because this would require disabling automatic aura tracking in frames/panels and manually adding relevant spell IDs.
3.) Font Issues
After some testing and troubleshooting, we found that large font files, such as those supporting multiple character sets like Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, can significantly affect FPS. You can partially check this in-game by identifying which font(s) you’re using the most. Then, find out which addon provides the font(s) and open its folder in Interface/AddOns. Check the font file size—if the font file is larger than 100 KB and you’re using it in many places (especially for cooldown text on action bars or WeakAuras), this could be one of your issues.
4.) Panel, Icon, and Text Update Frequency
Most addons have very high update rates for animations, panels, icons, and text by default. Some update in real-time. This greatly impacts performance, so you should adjust the update frequency in the settings. There’s no reason your damage per second (DPS) meter needs to refresh at 0.05-second intervals (which equals 20 updates per second)! The same applies to nameplates and text on other UI elements.
Ensure your WeakAuras and addons only load for the content you’re engaging with.
For WeakAuras, you can manage this per aura under the “Load” tab.
For addons, I recommend using something like Simple Addon Manager (SAM), where you can set up profile sets for your addons based on custom categories for different content (dungeons, raids, PvP, open world).
There’s literally no reason to keep your dungeon and PvP addons (like HandyNotes or TomTom) enabled when you’re raiding for several hours. One click on a profile, a quick reload, and all unused addons are disabled.
6.) Graphics Profile for Raids and Battlegrounds
It’s strongly recommended to enable the “Raid Graphics Quality” checkbox under ESC > Settings > Graphics > Raids and Battlegrounds. This lets the game load a specific set of graphics settings whenever you enter a raid or battleground loading screen. If you want optimal FPS while still seeing critical effects like dangerous zones, healing spells like Spirit Link Totem and Healing Rain, follow the recommendations in my screenshot.
For more detailed information on optimizing graphics settings in general, refer to my guide on GitHub.
7.) Specific Fixes for ElvUI
Most people complaining about low FPS while using ElvUI aren’t using the default settings (for obvious reasons) and prefer custom layouts or those of their favorite streamers. Fair enough! However, the main causes of poor FPS are typically the following settings, which aren’t enabled by default:
Negative effects for Party, Raid1, Raid2, and Raid3 should be disabled due to filtering reasons mentioned earlier. This will be the primary reason for unplayable FPS in 20-30 person raids.
A good alternative is the “Negative Raid Effects Indicator,” which allows you to display only debuffs that your current specialization can actively dispel.
Player/Target portraits should be disabled.
Panel smoothing should be disabled.
Gradient coloring (added by some plugins) should be disabled.
The author of Deadly Boss Mods, MysticalOS, has prepared several videos that demonstrate how WeakAuras, as well as other addons and settings, affect game performance.
~6 MIN