Power Auras

I've just discovered a little mod called "Power Auras". I know it's been around for a while, but I'm generally mod-averse and I've never really needed it before. However, with the changes to Sacred Shield and Divine Plea, all of a sudden, I needed a mod that would easily keep track of whether or not I have certain buffs on me, so that I can recast them in battle without having to constantly look through my buffs in the corner to try to find them. A couple of people suggested power auras, so I decided to have a look.

The mod is really very useful and one thing I like about it is unobtrusive. Basically, I can make auras or pictures that pop up around my character when certain triggers happen, including things like gaining aggro, having a certain percentage of health or, as I originally intended it, losing or gaining certain buffs. Since these are all picture and sound cues, you can customize them so that they fit nicely into the graphics of the game as a whole. For example, you can make a runed, translucent, purple circle around your character that fits right into the game graphics as a whole.

At first, I tried to make them too unobtrusive. For instance, I had little yellow triangles come out of my shoulders when Divine Plea was down and had little leaves under my feet for when Art of War was up for my ret spec. The problem was that I couldn't see the auras at all under the absolute mass of spells flying around. I imagine the little auras are nice for hunters, mages and healers, but as melee, whether tanking or dps, I'm always at the centre of half a million different spell details. I simply couldn't see them.

However, what gave me the right idea was the crossed swords I decided to put over my head when my target was at <20% health. This was made so that I could know when to use Hammer of Wrath, rather than rely on the little bit of scrolling combat text I only see once. It was really visible, and I decided to repeat that pattern with my other auras, such as when Sacred Shield and Divine Plea aren't up. That worked like a charm. I'm now immediately aware when my Sacred Shield goes down so that I can refresh it as well as thing like Divine Plea. I also added a couple of big symbols for when Hammer of Wrath is available and when my health drops below 35%.

There are a couple of annoying things about the mod. First, there doesn't seem to be any way to disable an aura without deleting it. This is a bit annoying, since I need different things when I'm in my two specs. For instance, as prot, I want to know when Divine Plea is up, but as ret I only care when it is available. There's no way to simply change or disable a mod and the mod has no way of knowing which spec I'm in. So, when I'm ret, I have the little "Divine Plea isn't up" picture most of the time. The second problem is that there's no volume control. I use a big red lion picture to let me know when my health is low. I also wanted to attach a lion roar so that I get an auditory cue. However, try as I might, there was no way to change the volume and the lion's roar is completely lost in the background noise.

Overall, then, this is a very useful mod. I can see it being useful in other contexts and for other classes as well. For instance, I could use it on my hunter to warn me when Serpent Sting has dropped or I could use it on my warrior to let me know when Battle Shout has fallen off. The ability to know when health has dropped low without always looking up to the corner is useful in its own right, even if the sound effect is largely useless. I look forward to using this fun and flexible mod in the future.