Power Aura’s in (too much) Depth

July 24, 2009 at 11:24 am (User Interface)

This may well be the most boring post you ever read, but I’ve been asked to post up my Power Aura configuration strings so people can easily try them out. If the amount of them scares you, I’d say by far the most useful are Serendipity, Renew, Surge of Light, Borrowed Time, Penance, and Circle of Healing. If you aren’t interested in Power Aura’s at all, don’t read this post.

What it does:

Last post I talked about Power Aura’s which is a mod for tracking all kinds of things and displaying them by popping up teenie tiny, (or huge) icons or small pictures on your screen.

For example, you can use it to track when spells are available for use. When targets have debuffs, when they are missing certain buffs, when you have certain buffs. You can use it to track your mana, health, runic power etc. You can use it to show when you are silenced or stunned. You can use it to show when a specific ability has procced. Basically, for all sorts of things.

It’s not the best mod for all of these things. For example, if you’re a shadow priest you could use Power Aura’s to track your DoTs and spell cooldowns but I wouldn’t suggest it. You can get the same sort of effect, with more precision, and more detailed information, using an addon like Face Melter or Event Horizon.

How to use it

For the most part the mod is very straight forward.

You open the main screen with the /powa command.

This will give you a screen that looks something like the macro creation screen WoW uses.

You select “New” to create a new aura, you can import, export, edit, preview, etc etc.

When you press “New” another screen appears in which you create the aura itself. There are essentially two things you need to make sure you have. The first is a icon or a picture which is displayed, and a position for it to be displayed in. The second is a condition which says when the picture is displayed (for example, when you have a certain buff, or when a spell is available.

The mod itself comes with various icons to use, it also allows you to use some of the blizzard images. Another option, and my person preference, is a little check box towards the bottom of the screen which says “Use own texture”. Ticking this checkbox will display the texture for that spell or ability instead of a custom picture. So for example, creating a Renew aura and then ticking this checkbox will use the renew icon from your action bar as the picture which is displayed.

You can then drag sliders to move the icon up and down the X and Y axis to find the perfect position on your screen, you can also increase or decrease the size, and add glow effects, animations and so forth. You can even add sound effects which announce the aura being shown, so everytime Pain Suppression is available you could have a sound play. I don’t, but you could.

My Aura’s are quite completist, I show a large number of spells and abilities. The alternative, (which is what I do with my Death Knight for example,) is to just show one or two abilities. The upside is simplicity and much more impact on your consciousness – you’re more likely to quickly notice the aura’s presence. The downside is less information. So juggling Impact Vs Information is something you need to deal with.

There is one known bug with the mod which is more annoying than actually a problem. When you first create an aura it will not show on your screen until you have triggered it at least once. For example, if you create an Aura to show when Pain Suppression is available the aura won’t actually display initially. You will have to cast Pain Suppression, then as the spell becomes available the mod will recognise it and show the aura.

My Strings:

Before I post my Power Aura config strings (and everybody’s eyes glaze over) just a couple of things to say:

Firstly, you’ll want to adjust them. Mine work for me in my current UI but for you they will almost certainly be in the wrong place, the wrong size, the wrong order etc.

Secondly, I’m including both the Discipline ones I use as standard and the Holy ones I use. You can easily import both sets because I’ve set them up so that the Discipline only abilities like Pain Suppression overlap with similar Holy only abilities like Guardian Spirit. So you only see the ones you can actually use, and there is no wasted spaces.

Thirdly, Power Aura’s works out when a spell is usable by tracking your action bars. As such, you have to have a spell on your actionbar in order for Power Aura’s to know it’s ready or not. It must be in a naked form, that’s to say, it can’t be in a complicated macro. So for Pain Suppression (for which until recently I had a macro to announce it) I’ve had to put an extra copy of it on my actionbars. It’s a little annoying, but you can put it on a spare actionbar and hide it, or move it well out of the way and forget about it.

Fourthly, most of my Power Aura icons are set to only display when I’m in combat, so to get them to display you’ll need to get yourself in combat. Or if you want, go through each one after you’ve imported them and un-check the “Only show in combat” box.

Finally, to import these strings:

Install Power Aura’s as usual: Download the mod, unzip it, put the folder in your World of Warcraft\Interface\Addon folder. Open WoW, check your addons to make sure Power Aura’s is loaded for your priest.

In game type “/powa” to load the addon. Click the “Import” button and paste in one of the following strings. Click okay, and Power Aura’s is ready to display that spell.

I’m sure most people won’t be able to use these without making changes. So hopefully either you can work out how to fit them into your UI, or else maybe give you some ideas about what the addon can do and allow you to configure it yourself.

Click Here to get my Auras