Totem Talk: Power Auras for restoration
by Joe Perez 
Jun 22nd 2010 at 10:00PM
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast
Last week's discussion of Dual Wield restoration was a good follow up to our discussion of the official shaman talent preview. Everyone had lots of great opinions on the topic and there was some good speculation on other things the community would like to see happen as Cataclysm comes closer to being released.
This week I would like to revisit a topic we covered briefly in part 2 of the restoration addon discussion, Power Auras Classic. If you remember last month Matthew McCurley did a fantastic write up in Addon Spotlight on this mod and earlier this month Rich Maloy did a great write up on basic power auras for enhancement shaman. So this week I would like to expand a little bit more about the usefulness of this addon in the hands of a healing shaman.
Last week's discussion of Dual Wield restoration was a good follow up to our discussion of the official shaman talent preview. Everyone had lots of great opinions on the topic and there was some good speculation on other things the community would like to see happen as Cataclysm comes closer to being released.
This week I would like to revisit a topic we covered briefly in part 2 of the restoration addon discussion, Power Auras Classic. If you remember last month Matthew McCurley did a fantastic write up in Addon Spotlight on this mod and earlier this month Rich Maloy did a great write up on basic power auras for enhancement shaman. So this week I would like to expand a little bit more about the usefulness of this addon in the hands of a healing shaman.
As we've said before, Power Auras Classic is a powerful and versatile addon. You can track various different conditions in the game that can have a large impact on how you heal.
Trinkets and Rings
Trinkets and rings are some of the items we have that can often times be overlooked. That said, paying attention to trinket procs and buff durations can be very useful for a healing shaman. Take a look at Purified Lunar Dust, through normal healing the trinket can proc causing the Revitalized buff which increases your MP/5 by 304 for 15 seconds. Knowing how often the buff is up can help how conservative you are with your heals, or when you may kick it up just a little bit while still maintaining a good regeneration rate. Power Auras can help keep track of when this buff is active or when it falls off, and it can be very helpful in knowing how often it does indeed proc. The same can be said about Ephemeral Snowflake which can grant a healer an additional
464 haste through the Urgency buff. This can be handy when choosing what spells your casting in a given encounter. I personally use this addon to track the proc from Ashen Band of Endless Wisdom. I just like knowing when Chilling Knowledge is active.
Relic Buff
Our relic slot items can grant some pretty stellar bonuses, and knowing when some of them are active or at full power can be very handy. Take a look at Totem of the Surging Sea, it grants the buff Energized. This buff grants an additional 85 spell power each time you cast Riptide and it can stack up to three times. While in a normal healing situation a shaman equipped with this relic should see a constant up time of this buff at its full stacks, there may be situations that get so hairy you may miss a Riptide in favor of other spells or even your own survival. Knowing when this buff falls off can be a good reminder to quickly toss a Riptide out there and reclaim its benefit. This holds true for all of our other relics such as Totem of Calming Tides.
Weapon Buffs
There is a large selection of addons that will track your weapon buffs for you and let you know when they are about to time down or when they fall off completely. Power Auras also allows you to track our weapon buffs and know exactly when yours has fallen off. Earthliving Weapon gives us a pretty substantial boost to our healing capabilities and gives us access to a healing over time effect. Since it can proc off of all of our heals, knowing when the weapon imbue wears off can be very handy. There are few things worse than being in the middle of an encounter and having this imbue wear off and not noticing until after the fight. You just wind up losing out on a decent amount of healing.
Set Bonuses
Restoration shaman set bonuses have been pretty good for a long time now. They have provided a solid buff for quite a while now. Some of these set bonuses activate in a similar manner to our talents and item procs, and keeping track of them can be beneficial. Take a look at the tier 10 2 piece set bonus, Rapid Currents. The buff increases spell haste by 20% on the next spellcast. There are some fights that can find us incapacitated for several seconds and so knowing if you have to refresh this buff can come in quite handy. In the past I've used this mod to track the Cataclysm Raiment 4 piece bonus which was very useful.
Talent Tracking
We have several talents that grant us a temporary bonus when we activate it or something trigger the procs. Tidal Force increases the crit rate of our three staple heals by 60% for 20 seconds, with each spell cast reducing the crit rate by 20%. When you activate it it can be helpful to track if you have any charges left. This also holds true for Tidal Waves which lowers the cast time of our Healing Wave by 30% and increases the critical effect of Lesser Healing Wave by 25% while increasing the healing potency of these spells until you cast two of those spells.
Shields
You can also use Power Auras to track the up time of your shields such as Water Shield and even Earth Shield. These are part of the group of core spells for a restoration shaman. Water Shield is vital for your mana regeneration and Earth Shield is a key spell for single target reactionary healing. Knowing when these spells drop off and getting them back up as soon as possible can be very important. Most players prefer other addons such as ShieldsUp to keep track of their shields, but I know of quite a few that do it through power auras.
There is quite a bit you can track through this addon. The mod itself is quite customizable and you can set various visual queues with different textures, animations and colors that can be placed anywhere on your screen. You can also set it to add audio queues for whatever you have it set to track, and this can be just as useful as the visual queues. Honestly over the last few weeks I have grown to love this addon all over again and it is well worth the time to customize it to your needs. It is pretty straight forward and there is a plethora of useful information on how to set it up.
Along those lines, earlier this month I received an email from a player by the name of WoWEgg about highlighting Power Auras for the restoration shaman. He currently has quite a fair bit of information about this addon up at the Power Auras Wikispace and has been gracious enough to share with us a video detailing some of versatility of this mod. He has also been nice enough to add the code strings ready for pasting for the various aura tracking up on the wiki. So a big tip of the hat and a big thank you to WoWEgg, keep up the good work!
Do you use Power Auras? What do you use it to track? Do you use it to track your shields or do you use a different addon?
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Mike Sacco's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, we have you covered.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rakah Jun 22nd 2010 10:15PM
I was under the impression that the latter part of tidal waves was a permanent effect.
That being you can imagine it as two talents in one. one that increases the SP gains of HW and LHW and another that has the proc effect.
Duulket Jun 22nd 2010 10:44PM
Can anyone tell me what the weapon buff addon is?
Elyneth Jun 23rd 2010 5:26AM
Its opie which you can use to display virtually anything in a ring like that. You can set up lots of different rings and key bind them. You can even have subrings but I haven't got that far with it yet. Great add-on for keeping those lesser used shaman spells nicely stored away!
Duulket Jun 23rd 2010 1:00PM
Thanks
Stevey Jun 22nd 2010 11:34PM
Yeah I was wondering that exact same thing Duulket, its pretty awesome! What addon is it?
jrizutko Jun 23rd 2010 2:05PM
OPIE is the best keybind and space saving add-on ever. All the stuff you want at your fingertips when you need it, but don't want visibile in your UI becomes simple and elegant to access.
ChorusOfEchoes Jun 22nd 2010 11:42PM
The addon your looking for is called Opie. the menus are great for getting seldom used icons off your action bar, but still within easy reach.
caelwynn Jun 23rd 2010 3:59AM
It's also good for tying multiple items to one hotkey, i.e. Healthstones, Health Potions, and Bandages. If one is one cooldown, it will use the next available, essentially giving you a single "self-heal" keybind.
Cyanea Jun 22nd 2010 11:55PM
I track Water/Earth Shield, my weapon buff, Riptide's CD and whether or not I have a flask with PowerAuras (I'm an Alchemist, so I should always have on at least Flask of the North)
Jason Jun 23rd 2010 4:53AM
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the use of power auras on a restoration shaman.
Shaman are so proc-independent there is no need to watch them. The tier 10 proc shouldn't last on you for more than the cast time of a heal, so there's no point in watching it. Why would you watch your weapon enchant? Every good shaman I know refreshes their enchant before a fight, while running, doing trash, etc. -- just do it whenever you have nothing to do or between pulls. I suppose you could use it for watershield, but becoming dependent on an addon to tell you when your watershield falls off is kind if, meh. I've learned what mechanics do and don't tick my shield and have a time in every fight where I just refresh it out of habit (IE during a transition phase, running around, etc). Knowing how an encounter affects you is better than relying on an addon, imo.
As for the ring proc, really? When it happens, cool. It's nothing to watch.
Cyanea Jun 23rd 2010 6:03AM
I use PowerAuras on my resto shaman because I don't find those things that you suggest doing to be "fun". Fun for me is healing, not watching various buttons and doodads on my interface (which on the default interface are spread out and surrounded by dozens of other buttons and doodads). PowerAuras for no weapon enchant, no Water/Earth Shield, and no Flask show up right next to Grid and they allow me to skip the annoying parts of playing the game and get to the fun parts.
Heather Jun 23rd 2010 10:17AM
I use power auras to remind me that my Nature's Swiftness is available. I use it to track my Water Shield, because on some fights with heavy AoE damage, I can get so caught up in healing that I forget to watch my shield (several hard modes have caused this issue for me). I use it to track when my Riptide is up, so I don't have to look away from where my feet are and where the party health bars are. I use it to tell me when Berzerking is available, so I know I have that CD up, and for when my Mana Tide is not on CD (which is vital for long encounters like Lich King where people are seriously hurting for Mana).
I think it's a great addon. If you like gimping yourself, and want to have to watch your buff bars and CD's on your buttons, you can go right ahead. I'll stick with Power Auras, thanks.
jrizutko Jun 23rd 2010 2:39PM
I'm largely with Jason. Its not the Power Auras isn't an awesome add-on, just that it doesn't seem very applicable to a resto shaman.
All of the things Joe mentions as utilities for it are things that my fingers do habitually without thought or attention (refreshing water shield), would not change my healing behavior in the slightest (ring and trinket procs), or are keybound in an easily visible place anyway (NS, tidal force, on-use trinkets). Adding power auras seems like it would be more distracting than helpful.
I can see maybe if your uptime for something wasn't as high as you wanted it, power auras might be a good set of training wheels to get you back up to speed, but for regular use? Its like using a GPS on your daily commute.
Etreya Jun 23rd 2010 7:13AM
currently i have power auras set up to watch my weapon buffs, alert me when my shield drops, show riptide cd and it's totemproc stacks, tidal waves proc, tidal force 'stacks', 2pc t10 proc, Mana tide totem availability, Nature's Swiftness CD and, best of all, an Earthshield watch with a stack remaining counter.
Paloma Jun 23rd 2010 7:58AM
I use a PowerAuras package made by suicidalkatt on Wowinterface. It is pretty amazing! I track my earth shield (how many charges and a notifier at low charges) tidal waves, a warning when my water shield and my weapon enchant is off. It also shows riptide CD, mana tide availability and nature's swiftness availability. It is all done through some "dots" so it is quite compact for how much information it contains.
The package includes power auras for all specs - I use the ele ones too actually but haven't messed with the enhancement.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14761.html
Heather Jun 23rd 2010 10:11AM
I have been using Power Auras for quite some time, but I'm having a big problem with them right now.
I had been using Power Auras to track the proc off of my 245 totem - the Totem of the Calming Tides. I recently switched to the 264 totem - the Totem of the Surging Sea.
My problem is that the Totem of the Surging Sea grants a buff called "Energized." This buff is named exactly the same as the buff I receive from my Solace of the Fallen. Which means that when I enter the buff into Power Auras, it tracks the trinket proc, NOT the Totem proc.
I tried to replace the name with the spell number, which I found on WoWHead. According to WoWHead, the spell number is 71220. But when I use the number in place of the name, Power Auras says the spell does not exist - even after I've cast Riptide to proc it several times.
So I'm sort of at a loss. I really need to be able to track this spell to keep the buff up (things are just too frenetic in hard modes for me to keep looking at my buff bars to find the damn thing), but I can't seem to get it to work. Anyone know a way around this?
KPB Jun 23rd 2010 12:14PM
I'd try setting up the trigger to check for stacks = 3 or something like that as the totem energized will stack up to 3 and stay there but the trinket will quickly pass that.
Heather Jun 23rd 2010 12:17PM
Well, it says the spell doesn't -exist- with the spell number.
And when I try it with the name, it still just shows the trinket (and then disappears after the stacks have gotten higher).
Randal Jun 23rd 2010 10:31AM
I use power auras to watch my water shield, earth shield, when my totem of the calming tide procs & how many stacks of Tidal Waves I have available. There's no real need to use it for anything else. Honestly the only reason I use it for Calming Tides is so I can see if I have a spellpower buff to put a new higher powered earth shield on.
Things like the riptide bonus from t10 is obvious. It's your next spell, no need to have an indicator there. When riptide is active is showing on grid, so I don't need it there. I had it set to show me when riptide was available at one point, but I eventually wasn't even looking at it cause you get that feel for when the CD is up, so it was unnecessary.
I'm only saying this because there is only so much screen real estate, so cluttering it up with too many icons can hurt more than it can help sometimes.
rukamich Jun 23rd 2010 2:11PM
I use Power Auras on all of my healers (multiple druids and pallies, with at least one new priest and shammy come Cata) and a few DPS toons.
I absolutely love the add-on. First discovered it via BigRedKitty, but found it was a lot more useful in keeping my buffs, cooldowns, et al in order and helped me be a little more aware of when things were ready (versus watching my bars or looking for timers). It's easily one of my favorite mods.