Power Auras DOES work with Holy Power

In my previous post about 4.01 retribution paladins I was bemoaning a lack of support for our new Holy Power resource in the amazing addon Power Auras. Now mind you, I haven't used Power Auras before patch 4.01. After the patch I found the need to use it on my discipline priest and, of course, I would have loved it for my paladin. If only it could tell me when my 3 stacks of Holy Power were up.

Well, it looks like I was mistaken. The first time I looked through Power Auras' configuration option I could have sworn I didn't see anything that would help me set it up for Holy Power. Last night I decided to look at it again and this time it jumped right at me. It was so obvious. So here's a step-by-step guide to help you configure your Power Auras (if you haven't already) to display a notification in the form of an icon above your character's head when you have accumulated 3 stacks of Holy Power. It also shows a counter under the icon for how much HP you have at any given time.

Open Power Auras by typing /powa at the console.

The main window will pop up. Pick New to start a new aura. A bigger window (called Effect Editor) will open, with a lot of options. On the lower half there are a bunch of tabs. You will need to change some options in some of these tabs. Here's what I did for my own configuration.

Activation

1. Pick a "texture" for your icon, in other words pick how you want your icon to look. There's a large variety to choose from.
2. Change the opacity if you wish. I set mine to 80%.
3. Pick a color. I chose a shade of yellow/gold.
4. Size and positioning are important. I set mine just a bit over the character's head, with some space below it for the stack counter. I also made is smaller than the default.
5. The most important part comes next: pick Rage/Energy/Power from the Activation by dropdown.
6. Next, make sure to check the Threshold checkbox and set the slider to 3. You want to be notified when you have 3 stacks of Holy Power.
7. Finally, from the Power Type dropdown pick Holy Power. That's the part which apparently I missed the first time I checked out this addon.

Animation

Next you'll probably want to change the default animation. You have several options there, for the various stages of existence of the icon. I changed the following:

1. I set Main Animation to Pulse. This causes the icon to pulse during the time it is active. Helps to draw my attention to it more.
2. I increased the Animation speed slightly to 120% so it pulses faster.

Sound

Adding sound to your aura is entirely optional. I chose to add a sound to mine so that it hits me over the head when it activates (figuratively speaking).

1. From the Starting Sound dropdown I picked RaidWarning because that's one of the few sounds I am partial to.

Stacks

A final enhancement that you can add to your Holy Power aura (and I think it's a nice enhancement if I say so myself) is a real-time count of your Holy Power stacks. This will show up in the space between your character's head and the main icon. The beauty of it is that it shows up whenever you have at least 1 stack of HP and updates in real time.

1. First make sure to check the Show checkbox. This activates the stack counter.
2. Change position/size/opacity to suit your needs.
3. You can change the font to a more readable one from the Stack texture dropdown.

Aaaaand... that's it folks. You've configured your Power Auras addon to work with Holy Power in patch 4.01!

Here's how it looks in action,

1 stack of Holy Power.

 3 stacks of Holy Power.

One more thing. You don't even have to go through all these steps to set up your aura. Instead, you can import the settings I used directly into your own Power Auras and you can either start using it right away or use these settings as a stepping stone to customize your own crazy aura. From the main window click the button called Import and paste the following:

Version:3.0.0W; b:0.1725; anim1:4; g:0.8; thresholdinvert:true; icon:Spell_fire_meteorstorm; bufftype:10; texture:19; alpha:0.8; speed:1.2; sound:11; threshold:3; PowerType:9; size:0.3; y:87; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:BOTTOM; stacks.h:1.7; stacks.Texture:AccidentalPresidency

The moment I started using Power Auras I realized that this is a very powerful addon, limited only by your imagination. My initial disappointment was instantly replaced by joy when I realized that the developer(s) had actually included support for Holy Power and that the addon is indeed compatible with patch 4.01.

Enjoy!

Decursive - the other weapon in my healing arsenal

Decursive is one of my favorite addons and there simply isn't a lot to say about it except that it works and it is unobtrusive.

I use Decursive as a paladin and priest (both as healer and dps) and, as the name implies, it greatly simplifies the process of removing debuffs from group members and/or yourself.

Configuring Decursive is trivial or as close to nonexistent as it gets. I would say that in most cases all you need to configure is the position on the screen and perhaps the size of the boxes (I'll get to those in a minute). The ease of setup is due to the fact that the addon detects what class you're playing and automatically configures the appropriate spells for your mouse clicks.

The way it works is simple. You get a series of tiny boxes on the screen, one for each group member. When someone gets a debuff, the corresponding square lights up, either red or blue and a chime sounds. For red, you click with your left mouse button inside the square to remove the debuff. For blue, you use your right button. Simple, right?

Certain classes, like the paladin, who only have a single Decursive spell (Cleanse), will only ever use the left button. Priests have two Decursive spells (Dispel Magic and Abolish Disease) so they will have to use both buttons depending on which debuff is applied.

I have to mention that there's also a small info box displayed above the main boxes which describes the exact debuff which was applied so you can tell at a glance if it is worth dispelling or not. For example, my group members are often affected by the slowing component of Frostbolts from mobs and I won't bother dispelling those.

There's a lot more to Decursive than appears on the surface. There are several ways to configure it but I haven't felt the need to do so. In fact my Addon is in the same pristine configuration as when I first installed it.

One word on positioning. You can obviously put this anywhere on the screen but I like to keep mine right next to my Healbot frames for quick access. I also like to keep the boxes small. Here's a screenshot of my setup.

Some players may claim that such addons are making the game too easy, faceroll and all that. Personally I think that a healer has a great responsibility towards the group and he or she can use all the help they can get. Just remember that you still have to click once for each debuff you wish to dispel.

Here are some of the advantages of using Decursive:

• it's very lightweight and unobtrusive. Any character who possesses a decursive/cleansing/dispelling type of spell should use Decursive, regardless of role.
  
  
• consider the alternatives: clicking each portrait individually and then clicking the decursing spell or even macros with mouse-overs... To me these are not appealing. Decursive allows for much less mouse movement which can be critical in an encounter.
  
  
• related to the above, the boxes are very close together meaning that you can quickly Decurse multiple people in rapid succession just like that: click, click, click.
  
  
• very importantly, it brings urgent and immediate attention to debuffs that are received, both visually and audibly. Let's face it, regardless how good a healer you may be, you can still miss debuffs in the heat of the battle if you are only watching the character portraits.
  
  
• it frees up your skill bar of critical space and some classes can really benefit from this. I'm looking at you, priests!
  
  
• it frees up time to take care of more pressing matter such as keeping the tank and the rest of the group alive.
  
  
• it works just as well, and provides similar benefits, in solo mode. If I get a debuff I don't have to worry about which spell I need in order to counter it.
  
  
• last but not least, if you are terrified about addons that need a half hour just for the initial configuration, Decursive is not one of them. It just works, right out of the box.

Decursive may not be to everyone's liking and there may be better such addons out there. For my particular needs, this addon is perfect. I would suggest to anyone even mildly annoyed by the task of decursing to give Decursive a try. You'll never look back.

A little RAWR-xperiment

So I just discovered RAWR, which is to say I just discovered hot water. In case you don't know what RAWR is, it's an amazing program that you can install on your computer and which allows you to import your character from the WoW armory, including their gear and talents and then calculates a million fascinating statistics for you.

You can download RAWR here.

I read about RAWR on some random site and I decided to give it a try because I wanted to see what exactly is my retribution paladin's DPS and how I can optimize it. Actually RAWR also has this really cool feature where you can specify a rotation and find out how efficient that rotation is. You can change spells in a rotation and it updates the DPS in real time.

Sure enough, I soon discovered that my rotation was bad and quickly reordered my priorities such that now (hopefully) it is optimal. Now of course, I realize that in the case of retribution paladins we can't really talk about a "rotation" per se but rather a system of priorities.

My old "rotation" was something like this:

Crusader Strike > Divine Storm > Judge > etc
My new one is this:

Judge > Crusader Strike > Divine Storm > etc

Of course, at any point insert Hammer of Wrath > Exorcism if the first becomes available and if Art of War procs for the second.

Here's a screenshot of the rotation portion of RAWR, along with some DPS stats.


As you can see, my DPS at the time this screenshot was 3380 but with the new rotation. My old rotation, although not terrible, would have given only 3234 DPS.

I also discovered that Seal of Command is much better than Seal of Vengeance (or Corruption) when fighting 2 or more mobs, which is always the case in heroics. Since I was using SoC anyway, I'm relieved that I'm doing at least something right.

I won't go into further detail regarding RAWR but I urge anyone interested in optimizing their character, whatever class and spec it may be, to give it a try. It is a very complex program but I managed to figure out the things that were of interest to me fairly quickly.

As I write this my DPS has gone up to 3657 (according to RAWR) due to some upgrades. My biggest problem is still expertise as I only have 7 (or 35 rating). For this reason I'm enchanting and gemming for expertise on my future gear.

Quoting from wowwiki, "DPS will need a total of 6.5%, or 26 expertise, or 213 expertise rating, to avoid Dodges on yellow attacks against a raid boss." So I still have a ways to go but since I'm not fighting raid bosses I can stay a bit lower and I should be fine.

I've been running heroics like crazy with my retribution spec so I could get emblems to gear my protection spec. Now I've completed my last piece of the puzzle and in theory I should be ready to run heroics on my protection paladin. I'm holding back though. Tanking is not as easy as DPS-ing and I need more experience under my belt.

My strategy these days is to run the daily heroic as retribution and then run a normal (non-heroic) random as protection. So far the worst dungeon I've tanked (on normal) has been Pit of Saron (twice). I actually tanked the second Pit today and I did much better than the first time.

On the other hand retribution is so much fun that I've decided to get my dude some DPS gear from Triumph Emblems as well. I'm referring to the Turalyon set. I've already got the gloves and I'm working on the other pieces. I've also set my eyes on a nice libram.

One more observation about DPS. I've noticed that it varies from dungeon to dungeon. In some instances my DPS is top-notch, around its theoretical maximum. In others it is dismal. One example of crappy DPS is The Culling of Stratholme. And it's not just me. Looking at the DPS meter, it seems that everyone is performing poorly there. I don't understand why. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

Now I'm off to run some more heroics.

GearScore addon

Ever since PUGs have become the flavor of the day, I've been hearing a lot about GearScore. This addon calculates the total "value" of your gear and returns a score that gives a general idea of how "good" your gear is.

I've been running random heroics daily with my Hunter and even though my gear is very good for a solo player (all slots are at least ilvl 200), I had no idea how I compared to other players in these groups, especially since many of them had no problem out-DPS-ing me by large amounts. To be honest, I realize that damage meters are a bit buggy in these cross-realm PUGs so I can't be sure that what I'm seeing is accurate.

Curious to see how good my gear really was, I installed GearScore for my two best-geared toons: my Hunter and my Paladin (Prot). Here's a screenshot for each.

Hunter


What I can gather from this is that I'm pretty well geared for a player who's been playing solo until recently. It's true that some of this gear was acquired with emblems from running heroics but before I started running heroics all my gear was at least ilvl 200. Apparently my gear is good enough to (almost) run the highest 25-man raids currently in the game. It seems that I'm over-over-geared for heroics. On the other hand a lot of the random people in these PUGs have GearScores of 5000+. Now I know why some of them are out-DPS-ing me.

Paladin


I've been saying this for a while: I'm seriously thinking about trying my hand at some tanking with my Paladin. This will probably happen once I'm tired of gearing up my Hunter and after I do some serious research on how to tank in a group. As you can see from the screenshot, my GearScore is decent and apparently it is a bit over what's necessary to run 5-man heroics. Which doesn't mean I'm gonna jump right into heroics with my fresh tank. No sir, I need to learn how to do this in normal dungeons and if everything goes well I can move on to the more serious stuff. Unfortunately my health is a bit low, 24K unbuffed and the only way I know how to boost it is through gear, but hopefully that will come after a few runs.

So there you have it: a very useful addon. I am aware that it is folly to swear by this so-called "score" since it is not something officially supported by Blizzard but merely a weighing of all stats on your gear and such. Still, I am finding it useful to figure out how well I'm geared for an instance, how my gear compares to that of other players and whether a new item would be an upgrade or a downgrade. If you haven't tried it yet, give it a chance.