PowerAuras vs WeakAuras

[Taryble]

TheDuke, yeah, Meorawr is one of the authors of Power Auras Classic - and he keeps asking, because he wants to know what people USE in WeakAuras that PowerAuras doesn't do yet, so he can see about adding similar features to PAC.

It's less useful to play with the addon when you're looking for things like that - sure, you can see everything the addon CAN do... but why have a feature if only 1% of people might ever use it (programming term for this is called "creeping featurism")? He wants to know what features made WA so much better than PA that people felt they had to stop using PA and start using WA. :>

[Szemere]

Wow, first thing I get when I google it: WeakAuras: WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework...

However, I can't ever get over Power Auras, if you want to know why: roll a Demo-lock, make a PowerAura for Decimation, and choose the soundfile Cookie.
EPIIIIIIIC, gotta love it, think I'll add that sound to my Drain Soul as well, keep forgetting to use it:/

[Revelations]

I got recommended Weak auras as well, but when I didn't find how to make a simple timer I just swapped back to PowA... tbh, PowA got everything you need and it's not "bad" in any way.

[Endus]

Hmm, no promises there. Though our new decorator code does make it really easy to put in custom displays, so maybe...Oh I really shouldn't...But the pretty effects...

I'm a sucker for pretty stuff. I'll work on it really quickly, if I don't get it done within an hour I'll put it on the todo list for later.

It's part of WA's "use in-game models" thing, I just used various Lightning spell effects with adjusted scaling, a relatively small and "quiet" effect for 4-6 stacks, a bigger and more frantic one for 7 and 8 stacks of LS (where you'd want to discharge the stacks), and a big whirly lightning ball-o-death for 9 stacks for "burn this ASAP".

It's not ideal, and it's honestly a relatively quick fix, since my initial plan was to use the progress bar concept, but in both WA and PA, that involves setting up a separate box aura for each number of stacks and positioning them so they LOOK like an increasing bar. The idea was to get a combo-point-like bar display that would go from empty (at 3 stacks) to full (at 9).

That said, one thing I WILL mention about WA that I like is that they allow for Groups. If I get around to making that kind of tracker, I can stick all the nearly-identical auras into a "Fulmination Tracker" group, and then I can change shared settings like relatively location or opacity or size for the group as a whole, rather than having to repeat it for each individual aura. A lot of my auras in PA actually involved 2-4 separate aura entries, and if I changed anything I'd have to manage them all individually, and forgetting to tweak the settings on one out of a set was always frustrating (though not hard to fix).

The dynamic groups are an interesting idea I haven't monkeyed with yet, but progress bars and basic grouping would definitely get me thinking about switching back. The progress bars were a big deal; it's much easier for me to get a feel for how long my lava burst or shock cooldowns are using a bar rather than a number (which was all PA allows for in the current version).

[Izzirez]

Grouping in PA would be nice, as I normally use mine for certain uses over a wide array of abilities, such as spell cds and then I group them onto my UI. Since they all function the same, being able to adjust them all at once would be really nice.

Another thing I'm wondering, is sometimes PA lags a bit for my mind blast cd, from when it actually comes off cd and when it displays the Aura, which is counterproductive for what I made the aura for (So I know exactly when it comes off without looking at my bars). Any idea why that happens/how to fix it?

[eternityshard]

I've been a long long time fan of Power Auras. I did try out Weak Auras when I first heard about it, but it was a little too... much. Weak Auras does seem to offer a lot more configurations than Power Auras, but I found most of them to be distracting when used. This is just personal preference, but I wholeheartedly believe less is more. It was too many bells and whistles in Weak Auras.

I continue to use Power Auras exclusively.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

A picture of video of WAs in action would be greatly appreciated.

I've been using it for a while now so pretty much every kill video since 9/13 has been using weak auras. Mostly I'm drawn to the additional power you get by writing your own Lua, but more on that later.

You can get an idea of how it behaves in say this kill of sinestra (disclaimer: it's mine).


I've tried to link to relevent parts of the video so you don't have to watch the whole thing.

Weak auras is providing the following:

• layout groups. Notice on the lower right an icon for shadow fiend. After I've achieved 5 stacks of dark evangelism it moves to the right to make room for the archangel icon. When I use shadow fiend, it's icon dispears, when I have a 3-orb orbs and mindblast is off cooldown archangel moves over to make room. After casting mind blast the archangel icon moves back. My priority list for this was:
  
  • 3 orb mindblast - Notice the text displaing the number of orbs available so I don't have to check the buff list in the top right.
  • Shadow word death if target < 25% HP OR if I have < 20% mana.
  • Archangel
  • Shadow fiend
  Depending on what abilities are available the list will shift around to display as appropriate.
• Animated 3D models. I use the 'crazy shaking skull' graphic (actually the model for the deathknight ability deathcoil) to show that I have wrack on me. The text is a second aura counting how long it's been active on me. Combined with weak-auras actions and some lua I had it set to automatically message our disc. priest if for pain supression if the following conditions were true:
  
  • I was the only person in the raid with wrack
  • she had never cast pain suppression, or last cast it > 3 minutes ago (off cooldown)
  • I had dispersion available
  • Wrack had been on me for 15s
  That simplified the task of holding the first wrack for 25s so that I didn't require constant attention: it told her exactly when to save me (I recycled this functionality for Baleroc heroic where I soak an entire shard).
• progress bars Above the icons for shadow word: death and mind blast you'll see progress bar for fade when I pulled agro on one of the whelps during AOE. The list of buffs shown there is prioritized for 'survival' cooldowns where some similar abilities show the same icon. On baleroc for example Hand of Sacrifice and Pain supression are effectively identical for me so if for some reason I have both on me (i'll still only see one icon -- I use that to time dispersion). Other cooldowns like aura mastery or image of immortality from the baradin hold rep trinket show up as individual bars. I have the list order with the 'most potent' cooldowns on the bottom and least potent ones near the top.

If you'll permit me to link to a second video I'll I'll use heroic rhyolith as an example:

• Health frames You can use weak auras and progress bars to track things like mob health, mana, 'special power' etc. In this video I created a boss health display for rhyolith. It automatically triggers for appropriate encounters (ie: on twilight council it'll show each of the four council bosses and then just one during the final phase). I can imagine use cases like putricide heroic where you want to push a phase change only after a certain kind of ooze had been out and killed and not <N> second before a fresh one spawned. You could wire up an alert that said "stop dps" if the boss was close to phase changing but a brown ooze was about to spawn (having 3 oozes during the P2-3 transition sucked).
  
  When I'm leveling my tanking characters via RDF pugs I have an aura that alerts me when the healer is below 40% mana between pulls. That allows me to chain pull without babysitting the group and lets me know to slow down when they're getting low and probably want to drink.
• subtle auras I have animated green fire display at the bottom of my screen (it's the model for fel-hellfire i believe) when I have agro from a mob and I'm tanking (ie: it won't fire when when shannox briefly looks at me to toss a trap, it will let me know when i'm about to get beat up by elentals on rhyolith). This sort of display could be useful for tracking (for example) your target running out of range if you're a healer (you'd require some custom lua to track distance over time, but not too much). Low mana warnings or a note that you're sitting on a lot of rage for a long time are nice to display this way. I've also used this style of aura for heroic twilight council to warn me when i had the wrong buff during phase 2.
• another aura example I use the 'holy lines of fire' model to alert me that i'm not in shadow form while in a raid group and in combat. I play fairly zoomed out and with firelands being almost black it's sometimes hard to see if I've remembered to recast shadow form after life-grip or hymn of hope. This graphic gives me a heads-up so i can fix it without being too distracting in the event that i mean to be out of shadow form ("oh crap, all the healers are dead"). It's specific to level 85 raid zones, so I wont' see it if i'm just casually healing as a shadow priest while in a heroic or something when I'm grinding out valor points, or stomping through molten core farming up some tier 1 for transmogrification.

There are a number of other uses you can do (ie: I setup auras that only showed bars for blast waves I "supposed" to kick on nefarian: if my platform's normal kicker accidently put theirs on cooldown or was effected by cinders it'd show up and I'd know to kick, otherwise it'd never display: it removes a lot of the guess work from things like that).

I've got a set of aura that track the amount of haste/crit/spellpower and how much damage boost empowered shadows is giving for each of my dots on my priest. The idea is that I can have them show "Hey, if you recast VT now you'll gain 20k damage vs letting it tick out and refreshing it when it's about to expire". On my deathknight I track my damage taken so i can display how much deathstrike will heal for.

I've been considering looking into parsing DBM events so that I could have even more clever auras (ie: have it not show to deathstrike if a flame breath is due in < 5s and I won't have runes up to cover the damage). That sort of thing seems really complicated to write, but it would be damn cool.

I've used weak auras to track raid cooldowns for heroic domo showing icons for "use the balance druid tranquility now" for scorion slashes - and had it automatically updating to use "powerful" cooldowns after "weak" ones and ignoring things that weren't up because they get blown at the wrong time. This one required a lot of hard coding about the raid composition and intended strategy so it was too much work to really maintain. Still it was cool to have icons for "use x", "now y", "spread out now", "stack up now", etc. that responded to the fight in real time. We've since switched to the "no slashes ever" strategy so it's useless, but it was eye-opening to see how much knowledge you can code into an aura-set if you wanted to. IMO you could replace DBM or Bigwigs entirely with a set of auras if you were so-inclined.


It's this power that allows weak aurs to replace a number of smaller dedicated-purpose addons and I bet that's why a number of it's fans are so adament about why it's "amazing". Unfortunately, to unlock that power you need to be fairly comfortable with lua, the combat log, and wow events. There is one saving grace: the weak auras forums on wowace.com have exceptionally helpful people. "I'd like an aura for X" tends to get a response fairly quickly by somebody willing to help out with the configuration, even if it requires some programming. The author is also very receptive to feature requests -- you might not get everything you want, but good requests tend to get built in.

For the basic stuff (IMO) it's about equal to power auras classic though maybe a little prettier -- no real reason to switch if you're happy with PAC. When you start using it for more complicated auras I think Weak Auras is in a league of it's own.

EDIT2: While I'm all for Power Auras Classic becoming more powerful in the next major release, I can't build my UI out of pixie dust and promises. When it's ready for use by the typical player I'll definitely check it out if only to make sharing auras with guildmates easier. The export system in weak auras is kinda gross even though it's probably necessitated by the complexity of auras/groups you can create.

[Izzirez]

I might have to pick up WA for the ability cds. I have PAC setup to do that, but I keep getting that slight lag on Mind blast (turned the animation speed up to full, even though I don't have any animation. Seemed to help). It seems really clear and the opacity of WA would fit with my UI better.

[MasterOfNone]

You've probably got the Glow setting on, it was checked by default up until 4.22. It's at the top of the aura editor.

Not the case i think it's just the way the auras are. Hope 5.0 brings better opacity.

[Stanzilla]

Nobody said this yet? The PowerAuras options are just bad.

[Rioo]

I used PA through all of WotLK and switched to WA when our officers made a package with raid warnings etc. for all the T11 raids. Now I use it for everything, pretty much all my UI are custom made in WA by me so I can easily customize it for my needs. I haven't tried PA since I switched but I'm really like WA.

[Deleted]

I prefer WA over PA. Look at what evn has posted on this page.

[Judge Malthred]

I have been using power auras for.... years. damn! and as someone else stated moving things around was a major pain in the ass. I will have to cehck this one out!

[DesolatedMaggot]

I might have to pick up WA for the ability cds. I have PAC setup to do that, but I keep getting that slight lag on Mind blast (turned the animation speed up to full, even though I don't have any animation. Seemed to help). It seems really clear and the opacity of WA would fit with my UI better.

So turn up the opacity and turn off "Glow". :P

[Deleted]

Well this thread is getting big

Back on topic: I've had a little fun with WA and I'm loving it. Disabled PW and NeedToKnow for now and keep builing my UI with WA

[Nicola]

I downloaded WA yesterday to test it.
Today I've deleted PA, think that says enough

Lovely addon. Easy to set up and I can do anything I can imagine with it.

[Swaggah]

Didn't use PA for a very long time, but the even lower time I spent with WA I prefered that. It's so easy, and I love how WA reacts to my warrior gaining enrage effects faster then the blizzard UI :P

[ComputerNerd]

Sounding promising.
Looking forward to how that works out.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

I'll just address certain things in evn's post because they're eating at my sanity slowly

Cheers mate

I'm looking at implementing container classes into PA which would accomplish the same effect.
Bars are in 5.0. I love them. They are pretty.
In the region of creating custom displays, we want to support that somewhat.

This is all great news. Is there a forum or website where I can see "whats coming" in more detail than what's presented in this thread? A development blog or something perhaps? Heck, even a git repository where I can pull the development branch? My understanding is that this sort of thing is being kept closed until it's more complete.

Coverable by the custom aura classes we'll be supporting at some point (5.0 is ideally when it'll be in, but if not then it'll be a release very soon after). We don't want to delay 5.0 by too much, and certainly don't want to flood it with features since that'll greatly increase the chance of there being horrible issues with x feature. Steadily releasing new stuff is a better plan for us.

I'm glad to hear this: software that does a few things well vs a lot of things poorly is way more useful IMO.

I read and respond to almost every single comment on WoWInterface/Curse, but I'll assume you weren't taking any jabs there and were just praising them for doing the same on their forums.

Exactly right.

"You can do amazing things with WeakAruas, but you have to know what you're doing. Fortunately there's some good help to get you over the bigger hurdles."

if I were going to comment on Power Aura it would probably be along the lines of "If you want to do <x,y,z> then Power Auras Classic will get the job done."
No qualifiers needed because the add-on is pretty simple to figure out. If Power Auras has a great tech support forum, I wouldn't know because I've never had need for it. The addon does what it says on the tin without tripping over itself offering complexity at every corner. For many users I think that's a key draw and it's turned up in this thread "WeakAuras is a bit much", "WeakAuras looks pretty but it's complicated", etc.

I'll be the first to admit that if you just want an icon on the screen when ability <X> is ready: weak auras isn't the most friendly addon to use.

[ocping]

Never used PAC, but I'm loving WA. Yeah it's not super easy to configure but it's not hard either; just don't expect it to hold your hand and go bling-bling everything's done.