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  1. #1
    Warchief Redpanda's Avatar
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    Power Auras VS Weak Auras

    Ive been a long time power auras user. It was simple to work with, fast and I liked it. I remember one time I made a aura mid fight and it worked like a charm. Now I see WA(weak auras) and I think *shrug* just another aura maker thing. Ill stick with PA. Ive heard people sing wa praises so I tried it and it felt very clunky to use, many different little menus and things to enter in to get a timer for something to work and I was very turned off by it, it was the one that came out when 5.1 came. I want to give it another try encase power auras is broken. My question is what can I even do with wa aside from auras for my buffs/debuffs, is the new version easy to use? Just general info from people that have used it.

  2. #2
    Pit Lord
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    I started using it yesterday for exactly the same reason you are considering it. So far it is pretty easy to use and set up. There is so much more functionality than POWA that I don't even know how to use yet, but setting up the basic functions doesnt seem that hard.

    There are lots of tutorials on youtube and if you google "class weakauras" you can find import strings for your class.
    Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL54E6FD82911B4F55
    Good luck!
    Last edited by Scathbais; 2013-03-04 at 08:21 PM.
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  3. #3
    Warchief Redpanda's Avatar
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    aside from debuffs and buffs what all can you do with weak auras? Im trying to expand my horizons

    Thank you for the info Scathbais

  4. #4
    Things I use it for:

    Tracking internal cooldowns of weapon enchants and trinkets
    Tracking of certain buffs, for example I have a weakaura that gets in my face if I use the invocation talent and don't have invoker's energy buff present or the buff is going to run out so I can refresh it in time.
    Tracking of cooldowns: tell me when my major cooldowns are ready to use
    Reminders for certain buffs like watershield or shaman weapon enchant
    Tracking of mechanics: shows how many stacks we have on amber shaper and when they are about to run out.

    You could probably also rebuilt things like rotation addons (like CLCret or Elementarist) with weakauras.

  5. #5
    You can realistically replace your entire UI save for things like auctioneer, tiny tip, sexy map, and gatherer.
    Whether you should is another question, as is whether you have the knowledge or somebody to help you.

    If you want weak auras to be a PAC clone then it can be. It can also be buff frames, cast bars, boss mods, damage meters, unit frames, etc. the limits tend to be the end users knowledge and how far they want to push it. There comes a point where it takes longer to write the aura than to use a purpose built addon that you made from scratch. Some time before that weak auras should be abandoned.

    I think for most people it is reasonable to say weak auras could be a DBMS replacement and it could drop in for those "press thus next" mods that tell you how to play you're class. Going beyond that tends to take skills that most are not willing to develop.

  6. #6
    weak auras can do everything power auras can and so much more. i left power auras behind at the end of cata and never looked back. you should really dig through all the features and play with it because you won't look back either.

  7. #7
    Warchief Redpanda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by esevenf View Post
    Things I use it for:

    Tracking internal cooldowns of weapon enchants and trinkets
    Tracking of certain buffs, for example I have a weakaura that gets in my face if I use the invocation talent and don't have invoker's energy buff present or the buff is going to run out so I can refresh it in time.
    Tracking of cooldowns: tell me when my major cooldowns are ready to use
    Reminders for certain buffs like watershield or shaman weapon enchant
    Tracking of mechanics: shows how many stacks we have on amber shaper and when they are about to run out.

    You could probably also rebuilt things like rotation addons (like CLCret or Elementarist) with weakauras.
    wow knowing this I can easily cut down 3-4 addons im using. Urg now I have to wait till I get home. Say I do get everythign set up, will 5.2 break stuff? or it shouldnt be too much of a big deal

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Redrun View Post
    wow knowing this I can easily cut down 3-4 addons im using. Urg now I have to wait till I get home. Say I do get everythign set up, will 5.2 break stuff? or it shouldnt be too much of a big deal
    you should update all of your addons with each new patch and there shouldnt be any issues.

  9. #9
    I always used PAC, and had downloaded it to help with a few of my alts tracking things. It just seems like it's losing its support, so I started searching and found weakauras. Love weakauras, use it on all of my characters for tracking CDs n such, save my Paladin who I just grew so comfortable with it seems to cause more problems then help.
    D3 - Aggs 60 Barbarian | Paladin | Warlock | Shaman | Death Knight | Warrior |

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by evn View Post
    You can realistically replace your entire UI save for things like auctioneer, tiny tip, sexy map, and gatherer.
    Whether you should is another question, as is whether you have the knowledge or somebody to help you.
    Yeah I think I saw someone build unitframes from Weakauras once. Kind of crazy and I assume it was just a proof of concept but it really shows how powerful Weakauras is.

  11. #11
    ^ that could have been me, my 'tank preview' ui had unit frames done (mostly) in weak auras.
    Just because you can doesn't mean you should though.
    Last edited by a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51; 2013-03-05 at 01:02 AM.

  12. #12
    Could also have been Kait's UI it was heavily mentioned in several blogs and other wow related sites
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  13. #13
    One of my Favorite things Weakauras can do that Powerauras cant is dynamic groups. I have a group of auras that sort based on the remaining length of the cool down. I made a little video of it. Everything in the video is being made with weakauras except the Raid Frame for Ikle with his hp mana etc. The bar directly below that tracks all my in fight cool downs I want to know right when they come off cool down. I also have a special sort in it that makes the two on the far right always on the far right because the mana tea stack doesnt have a cd, and the Renewing Mist, I don't want to lose in the shuffle of the other spells because using it on cd is so much more important then other spells. Growing verticaly i have another dynamic group that tracks the duration of short term spells like, fortifying brew, diffuse magic, zen meditation. I also have my chi displayed at the bottom. Alot of the design is stolen from Affinitii's Monk Ui, Infact almost all of it is

    http://screenr.com/6bq7

  14. #14
    I was a huge fan of powa, and i tried wa. loved it more, but felt like i had to be a coder with all the conditions. really just need more time with it, but since i stopped raiding hardcore I've settled for crappier options.

  15. #15

  16. #16
    WeakAuras has more types of display, and the ability to have custom code driving the auras.
    PowerAuras was the "standard" for a long time, and generally better supported in pre-made strings to import from around the internet.

    Quote Originally Posted by Resike View Post
    That is just a Fan Update with the bare minimum needed to get it functional under MoP.
    WeakAuras is still being developed actively, something I cannot say for certain is happening for PowerAuras.

  17. #17
    Elemental Lord Sierra85's Avatar
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    The customization & amount of control weak aura's offers borders on exploitation. it's such a good addon and more players should be using it.
    Hi

  18. #18
    WeakAuras has more types of display, and the ability to have custom code driving the auras.
    The customization & amount of control weak aura's offers borders on exploitation.
    I agree here, and I'm a pretty big fan of weak auras, but these are also probably the things that people find most frightening about jumping over. Weak auras is "big kid software": lots of options, lots of power, but there's no "easy mode". You can't really go much further than weak auras before you're just writing your own addon. It's a really good bridge between "configurable addon for people who are fairly knowledgable" and "go edit lua in vim you super nerd". I'm kind of surprised OpenRDX has developed a similar following among power users: it has a lot of promise.

    For all of power aura faults, the "one panel" interface for configuring new auras as something people came to grips with very quickly. It's not as powerful as WA - even if you never write a line of Lua, but it's powerful enough that 'everybody' could make it do useful things with just a couple paragraphs of explanation.

    If I were going to contribute to WA as a developer I'd scrap the tutorial and make an imitation of the PA4 interface that that could be used instead of the standard config. You'd enable it as a "WA-beginner mode" and have severely limited capabilities but at least it would be familiar and help smooth the transition to the new addon.

    PA5 looked really promising (I pulled out a copy from HG like a year ago, maybe more) and liked what I saw. It had/has many of the things that make WA awesome and a few features that WA doesn't (like customizable border graphics for progress bars). Sadly, I think the time between PA4 and PA5 combined with how resistent some people are to WA makes it unlikely that PA5 would succede. The configuration interface was much more complex than PA4 -- that just comes with the territory when you make a complicated and powerful addon.

  19. #19
    I was able to replace ICE hud with weakauras and weak auras has more capabilities over power auras.

    The biggest reason I made the swap in Cata was because power auras did not recognize the ICD of nature's grace. For a moonkin, NG resets often so no need to track it but at the time restos had it but it was every two minutes and I wanted to know when it was up to know when to spread around a lot of rejuvs.

    Weak auras didn't recognize the ICD either but because of all its options I was able to make a pseudo timer to track it.

  20. #20
    I used Power Auras for a long time, but got tired of waiting for it to get updated to work well with MoP. After I discovered Weak Auras as an alternative I can't see myself going back. Granted I'm definitely a power user when it comes to scripting and stuff. Even still, most things can be done easily enough in the interface without any custom LUA code. If anything, the main issue with WA is the lack of abundant tutorials or a concise wiki. That said, asking the community for info on the forums (theirs, Blizzards, or even MMOchamp) will usually get you answers pretty quickly.

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