Power Auras - General Guide and Support

[Deleted]

Howdy, I see there's already a thread on using power auras for bosses and I felt a general guide and FAQ taking up a new thread wouldn't be out of the question. If that isn't the case then feel free to shoot this thread down. If it is and you're wondering about how to utilize power auras to improve your awareness, reactions and overall performance in raids/pvps/dungeons then you've come to the right place!


Since I plan to make this a very comprehensive guide, I've taken the liberty to make an index of the contents. Press CTRL+F in your browser and the corresponding number to zip straight to what you wish to find!

1.0 - Power Auras? What is it and why should I get it?
1.1 - What the Hell Am I Looking At?
1.2 - Configuration

1.2.1 - Activation
1.2.2 - Animation
1.2.3 - Sound
1.2.4 - Timers & Stacks

2.0 - What's to come?

[1.0]

For those of you who aren't enlightened, power auras is basically an addon to toggle auras similar to blizzard's own using user defined logic. In layman's terms, you tell it when to show you things. For example, a popular use is tracking the warlock ability, "Improved Soul Fire" for which blizzard hasn't implemented their own "aura". The possibilites certainly do not stop there however and you can track pretty much anything you want to.


The benefits of power auras mainly come from the player, I can't cover every scenario it will help solve because that's down to the individual. It is both where it's brilliance lies and where it's biggest flaw is. To the player who does not understand how to improve his own gameplay power auras will be useless, if however you actively criticize your own gameplay realizing that you aren't catching every proc of x or using y within a certain time frame yadda yadda then this addon will improve your gameplay IMMENSELY.


As mentioned beforehand this addon is only as good as the player who uses/configures it. I do not advise using power auras to track boss abilities which are already tracked in boss mod addons such as DBM or DXE, mainly because one click of a button can update those addon packages whereas configuring auras for each and every individual ability would be a daunting task.
(Fortunately if you're hellbent on not taking advantage of that, lawomous has a brilliant thread right here in this subforum! Be sure to thank him!)

[1.1]

Hopefully my description sounded good and you're ready now to get the addon configured, I apologise for not being able to link it as I am a new member to the site but you'll find it on curse/wowinterface. Let's begin shall we?

To show up Power Aura's GUI enable the addon, login to the game on your character of choice and type "/powa" this will bring up a menu similar or identical to the one below:

As you can see your character has five pages, each with 24 auras per page. These auras will only be available on this character so for anything you want to track across globally across your characters the next bit will be superb. Global effects will be loaded across all of your toons, this would be ideal for any boss notifications if you raid on multiple characters like myself. For specific class mechanics such as holy power using the global pages is highly unadvisable.

Now you know which page is relevant for the aura you have in mind (if you don't get one quick cause we're swinging straight on to creating one!) click on that page and select "New" you'll see this page crop up:

I know, I know. It looks like a lot of information to process at first, similar to many addons but here's a quick image describing each of the options we should be concerned with at this point in time, I'll get to animations and sounds etc. later and possibly custom textures:

As you can see everything is pretty straightforward, this will be the bread and butter layout usually. Not much changes when you decide to track something else other than a buff, here's a list of what you can track for quick reference:

Pretty comprehensive, seriously. OOM warning? No problem. Paladin constantly keeping crusader aura on? Piece of cake. CD alert for when salvation is off CD so your braindead DPS don't overaggro on a pull? You betcha! Go nuts, really I'm struggling to think of something that can't be tracked.

[1.2]

Configuration is extremely straightforward if you take a second to read the mouseovers for everything, if that's done and you're still struggling please ask a question and I'm sure either me or another member will answer you.

[1.2.1]

For this let's just keep most of the effects default, I'm sure you have the intelligence to shift them around yourself to get something you find visually appealing. I'll be using an example buff, a very popular one amongst many paladins. Not only because it's a god damn plague but also because it's a good example of how versatile the addon is.
Let's get the logic straight first, how many stacks do we want to show it at? Well crusader aura is an aura so it's weird, we put stacks "=0" (We could also use the stance option as opposed to the buff one in the drop down list but for the sake of simplicity I'm keeping it on buff). Name? Well uh I'll let you figure that one out for yourself! (Crusader Aura). Do we need any other logic such as other Aura checks? Not really. Onto the checkboxes now, obviously if we're mounted we want crusader aura so click it until it says "Only When Not Mounted". We're gonna leave cast by me unchecked because I want to shout at other paladins if they keep it on.
That should do us for now really, It's a sure thing some of you will have went along that guide and did your own thing for your own buffs or debuffs, hopefully you did because that shows that you're at least a little intuitive. Now what you want to do is test your logic, for my example I dismounted and kept crusader aura on et voila, big massive horse on my character.

Hopefully that's your first aura working, logic extends to all of the categories and can be used for an array of things. You can make a holy power bar, probably even a rage/energy bar if you were mad enough and a vast array of other exciting things. Read on if you want to learn how to improve your aura.

[1.2.2]

On the animation tab you'll find 8 total options to change. For the majority of my auras and the sake of simplicity I use fade in and fade out, it looks great and doesn't distract me during a fight. For aesthetics you can choose two animations to play while the aura is in place, change the speed and duration until you're comfortable. That's pretty much it.

[1.2.3]

Many people don't use sounds with their auras, I can understand why - the default sounds given are pretty much terrible. Many people don't know you can use WoW's own sounds as audible cues to your aura and that is what I'm going to show you how to do.

Firstly, go to this URL:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...Cataclysm.html
You'll find a text file inside containing a list of basically EVERY SOUND IN THE GAME. I cannot tell you how useful this is and I would appreciate it if you thank the author. Inside this text file you will find every spell sound you can imagine and more.
Browse about a bit and copy and paste them to your in game chat till you find something you like. For example a good sound effect would be this:

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Doodad\\ArcaneCrystalOpen.ogg")

To have this play as a sound for your aura place this in the "OR Soundfile" field

Sound\Doodad\ArcaneCrystalOpen.ogg

As a confirmation you will hear your selected sound play to you and there you have it. The benefits of using audio cues are tremendous especially as a healer if you're constantly scanning Grid, I use it for tracking power torrent so I can get a little extra mana from arcane torrent and plea.
Same for my warlock so I know to pop cooldowns such as meta etc.

The best sounds will be ones not found in encounters or used by other classes.

[1.2.4]

Both of these fields are pretty much self explanitory, stacks will track how many stacks of the buff/debuff you have. This comes in handy on fights such as baleroc or sindragosa. Timer is great for tracking durations or ICDs.

The only two non self explanitory things would be the "texture" which is basically choose which font and relative to which basically unhinges the numbers from your main aura.

[2.0]

This is the first draft of the thread, no improvements have been made and it looks a bit messier than I intended.

I'm researching creating custom textures and it should be in the guide by the end of the week, I'll also take a look at perhaps making custom animations for those of us who love customization. As well as other useful combinations of addons to use in turn with Power Auras.

That's basically it for now however, any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated and hopefully you've learned something. If you can add anything to the guide, please post which section you feel is relevant and I'll be sure to give you credit.

Peace - Dumbfoundead, Outland EU.

[SpacedOut]

wow, that's actually really really nice. I thought I knew pretty much all about power auras, but I learned some stuff I never bothered with before

[Mordret]

I'm sure that you can't track how many riptides you have currently rolling on raid targets

[Deleted]

Nice Guide!

Since you can't post Links, here are two:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...s-classic.aspx (download page)
http://powerauras.wikispaces.com/ (many many example auras, ready to import. though some are outdated)

If you want to extend your guide I'd suggest the following topics: debuffs, chaining auras, import/export. I can help you write those, but not right now

[Bonemachine]

Nice guild indeed!
However I was wondering since I've been experiencing these wierd issues when having Power Auras on. Whenever I would try to inspect someone it would bug out and I wouldn't be able to see item stats and so on. Is this common issue or its just me?

[Mordret]

Nice guild indeed!
However I was wondering since I've been experiencing these wierd issues when having Power Auras on. Whenever I would try to inspect someone it would bug out and I wouldn't be able to see item stats and so on. Is this common issue or its just me?

Yes, it is because some parts of POWA inspects people to check theirs specs to have "tank", "healer" condition working. You can easily fix it using InspectFix @ Curse. Must have for any POWA user. Don't blame POWA author for that flaw, it is how blizzard is handling it.

[Judge40]

Nice guild indeed!
However I was wondering since I've been experiencing these wierd issues when having Power Auras on. Whenever I would try to inspect someone it would bug out and I wouldn't be able to see item stats and so on. Is this common issue or its just me?

I use to get the same occasionally, I believe the author of PowerAuras has previously looked in to this and stated that it is NOT PA - despite the UI errors pointing to PA. It is instead caused by problems outside the authors control.

Try http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...nspectfix.aspx if you continue to have problems.

---------- Post added 2011-08-10 at 11:14 AM ----------

As far as the guide goes, its a good start.

I would recommend going in to more complex PAs before going in to custom textures. Using multiple triggers is lost on many people and no PA guide should be without at least a basic explanation.

[Bonemachine]

Thanks a lot for reply Will try InspectFix right away!

[Barael]

I use to get the same occasionally, I believe the author of PowerAuras has previously looked in to this and stated that it is NOT PA - despite the UI errors pointing to PA. It is instead caused by problems outside the authors control.

It's not so much the UI errors pointing to PA rather than the fact that disabling PA gets rid of the problem altogether that made me look for alternatives to PA (same thing with raid UI functions like ground markers; can't be used with PA enabled).

[Deleted]

can't be used with PA enabled

Correction: can't be used with any addon that uses dropdown menus enabled. Faulty blizzard code.