WeakAuras

WeakAuras is my new favorite addon. It’s like Power Auras meets TellMeWhen only with a sane configuration and some very nice grouping options.

Here’s an example of a paladin tank setup showing some of the ways you can use WeakAuras. You can do the icon-based thing that TellMeWhen does and the texture-centric thing that PowerAuras does for different kinds of data.

The neatest feature, from my point of view, is the dynamic display group. For Leafie, I made a dynamic group shown only in combat, and only for a druid character with an active resto spec. One display shows the Innervate icon & plays a sound when I should & can use Innervate. A second shows a mana potion icon when chugging a mana potion would be good. A third reminds me that Lifeblood is up and I can get a haste buff.

For my paladin, my setup is more complex than Leafie’s but not at the level of the tank linked above. I show reminders if my seal has dropped off, or if I’m in tank spec but don’t have Righteous Fury on. I also have a reminder icon to turn on Crusader aura when mounted and pick something else when not. When in combat, I show reminder icons (TellMeWhen style) when various tanking cooldowns are available to use.

I tested this in last night’s raid (our first attempts on the Omnotron Defense System) and was pleased. I also ran BigWigs for the first time in a long time. It was my mainstay while tanking instances through BC, but I switched to DXE in WotLK when I started raiding seriously, as many other raiders did. (Timer accuracy mattered to me.) I was pleasantly surprised by BigWigs. It doesn’t have the insane configurability DXE has, but it had the warnings I needed.

I took some transcripts of the encounter to try to help out the DXE project, though. I did a cruddy job of it because I kept forgetting to stop & restart the transcript between wipes. My attention was usually on analyzing the attempt to see what we needed to do to improve. E.g., why did my tank die there? Woes!

Also useful last night, if only for wipe forensics: BigBrother, with the interrupts option on.