Power Auras: Keeva gets with the program
Back in June, Kae over at Dreambound shared her Power Auras settings. I had seen Power Auras before but I think this post got the cogs turning, as I realised it could be very handy for a number of my cooldowns.
I don’t have buttons visible on my UI, so I rely on cooldown timers or monitors to count down for me, but my bar-style cooldown timers have really been playing up lately; occasionally they would refuse to show me Innervate or Rebirth; and it’s kinda important that I be able to see those! It’s really annoying (and embarrassing) to have to spellbook an ability to find out how much time is left on it.
So I finally, FINALLY got Power Auras.
Here are some shots of my current UI. No raid shots at the moment sorry; need to tweak it a bit. I’ll try to post some, sometime. Click for large versions.
Solo, no target:
With labels:
As you can see, I don’t have any abilities or buttons visible; all commonly-used abilities are keybound using BindPad or Macaroon. Some infrequently-used ones are on hidden mouseover bars; things like food, tradeskills, mounts, etc.
My Power Auras
Although my bar cooldowns were clear, I found that I wasn’t paying much attention to them. I guess they just never really suited me; they blend into the rest of the UI and I end up basically never using them.
I decided that I needed to see the following things:
- Wild Growth. I either hit it when it’s not up (thus wasting time that I could be casting something else), or I don’t cast it enough. I wanted to be more aware of the cooldown.
- Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness. These probably speak for themselves – I want to know when they’re up, without looking around my screen for timer bars.
- Innervate. I want to Innervate early and often; plus, I need to know immediately if I can innervate the mage that is calling for it, or if I have to refuse them.
- Rebirth. When my timers aren’t working, I think Rebirth is up, but it really isn’t. I call out that I’ll rez, but then discover that I can’t. This is very bad.
- Low mana. For the times when I use my innervate for myself, I want to know when I’m missing a chunk and can innervate.
- Missing buffs. There are still times that I forget to eat, or my flask drops off and I don’t realise.

As you can see, I’ve assigned icons for my short cooldown abilities (Swiftmend, Wild Growth, and NS), so that I can see at a glance when they are available. These icons stay on my screen as long as those abilities are ready to go; they disappear when I use the ability, and then reappear when the cooldown is over.
I was aiming for a colourful icon that basically said, “Hey! I’m here! Use me now!”
When Innervate is up, a purple rune sits around my feet. It tells me that it’s ready to go, whenever I need it. Similarly, a pale green ring tells me that Rebirth is ready when needed. If these rings are missing, I know the abilities are not available for use yet.
I’ve flattened the rings, to make them look as if they are flat on the ground, rather than around my character. I like how it turned out!
Next, when I’m under 80% mana, a purple rune appears over my character for 2 seconds, with a whoosh noise, to prompt me to Innervate (if necessary).This is the only “animated” image – the rest are static. The animation will hopefully get my attention – because scrolling text saying “innervate ready” never does!
Finally, I have two icons that only show during raids – missing food and missing flask. Obviously I don’t care about being well fed or flasked outside of raids, so I’ve set them to show only when I’m in a raid. If a skull pops up, I know to refresh my food and/or flask.
Hooray for Power Auras! Better late than never!
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My name is Emma and I live in Australia. I’ve been gaming on and off since I was about 11. I won’t tell you exactly how long ago that was, let’s just say long enough.
about 2 years ago
Wow, that looks awesome. I’ve never heard of Power Auras before – Is it a healer-specific thing, or can you adapt it to show whatever you want? I think it would be neat for Feral DPS showing some things as well.
Also, I love your UI! I am totally amazed that you play so well with a minimalist UI – no bars!
Sweet.
about 2 years ago
Duh, just read your linked post – clearly can be used for ferals. I’ll have to check it out!
about 2 years ago
I’m looking back at a previous post and it says your unit frames are Pitbull. How do you get it to only show the health bar of ToT and ToTT?
about 2 years ago
I’ve been using power auras for a very long time and it’s gotten better and better. In fact, every time my druid procs clearcasting, I have a recording of my banjo playing an open D – now I can hum a D from memory!
Not since I started messing around on my shaman and looked into UltimateShamanUI did I really see how ineffective mine were. The auras he includes in his are jawdropping.
You can see a test here. It’s made me change a lot of my auras to be a) more simple and b) more effective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwU5McFvYg
Scott´s last blog ..On Goblins of Avaricious Nature and the Social Aspects of WoW
about 2 years ago
Wow, I LOVE your setup! I realize now how all over the board my auras look.
about 2 years ago
omnomnom minimalism!
Shayzani´s last blog ..10man Tanking Gear Loot List
about 2 years ago
I like your Power Auras setup, especially how you flattened them to look like they were on the ground, very nice. One other one I use a lot which you may want is a Clearcasting icon. I also use a very noticeable icon to show if I don’t have Mark/Gift of the Wild, because I’m terrible for buffing everyone else and forgetting to buff myself. ;[
about 2 years ago
What a nice, clean UI!
I think I’d go crazy if I couldn’t see by buttons though. I don’t use them much, most everything is bound with Clique, but I like to see them!
Jasyla´s last blog ..Rotface’s health reduced (10-man)
about 2 years ago
Welcome to the darkside, Keeva.
about 2 years ago
Thanks Erispere
I love having a minimalist UI – I still have a relatively small monitor (19″), so space is at a premium. One day, I just thought to myself, “I wonder if I could play without any buttons at all?” and went cold turkey.
Power Auras can be used for almost anything – buffs, debuffs, cooldowns, low health/mana warnings, dispells, you name it.. you’re pretty much only limited by your imagination. You can create your own graphics and symbols, or use text, too.
I’ll definitely have to do the same for my feral druid – I think it will be even more useful for her.
Sebz: You simply drill down to the ToT bars, and disable all but health. I also disabled all texts except the name; I only want to see *who* my target is targetting, I don’t care to see what percentage health they’re on, etc. If you can’t find it – send me a note and I’ll do a couple of screenies to show you what I mean.
Scott: I read this first thing in the morning, still half asleep, and I laughed out loud when I read your banjo comment! That video is pretty good – I like seeing how people have thought to use their own settings, it helps to inspire me. I basically went through my spellbook to see if there was anything else I needed to add – but seeing other people’s ideas is really great.
I think I’ll probably add Barkskin and Tranquility in, but make them quite small and unobtrusive.
Thanks for sharing!
Cynriah: Thanks! I was pretty happy with it, for my first try. I’m sure I’ll end up tweaking it quite a bit, though.. I’m never satisfied..
Shayzani: My favourite!
Rades: Thanks – that flattening was a bit of a fluke, I was playing with the sliders and noticed that when I skewed the rings, it made them look as though they were flat on the ground, like an aggro-ring or rune at my feet. I loved it!
I didn’t bother with Clearcasting; I see it as a random freebie, rather than something to react to. Some people make deliberate use of it, when it’s up, but I find that I’m usually casting so quickly that I have already cast before I realise. If Vezax hadn’t been nerfed, I probably would have done it, though!
Jasyla: Thank you
As I said above, one day I just decided it might be fun to try having as little as possible on my UI. I liked it so much that I stuck with it – and now I wouldn’t want to go back. A lot of my lowbies start off with the same UI but I furnish them with visible bars – while I get used to the abilities. My druids all share the same minimal layout, though.
Kae: I finally got there!
about 2 years ago
Awesome looking, clean UI you got there.
I was wondering which unit frame addon, and which buffs/debuffs tracker you’re using though?
about 2 years ago
Could you please post the exports of those Auras so others can use them?
about 2 years ago
Really nice the way you’ve set it up. I see you use it for Swiftmend, you used to have to edit the lua to get this to work properly (or target someone who was
“Swiftmendable”), did the author fix this?
about 2 years ago
Hi Amres – I use Pitbull for frames, and Buffalo for buffs.
Willomina – I need to update a couple of things, add Barkskin for certain – once I’ve tweaked, I’ll try to post the exports
Bel -The Swiftmend icon is simply to tell me that Swiftmend is off cooldown; I don’t always target people directly, so a target=swiftmendable trigger wouldn’t be much use to me (ie, I often target the boss, or random people – not specific healing targets).
I have “target doesn’t have Shadow Word: Pain” on my priest, and it’s so handy to remind me to do it.. but since I rarely actually target the person I want to heal, a Swiftmend one wouldn’t get much use.
Keeva´s last blog ..Dual specs + LFD + Need = drama?
about 2 years ago
This was the issue:
http://dreambound-druid.blogspot.com/2009/05/quick-note-on-power-auras.html
Sounds like it has been fixed. 100% agree with you about undesirability of having to actually target someone to figure out whether you should Swiftmend!
about 2 years ago
Please export those settings or give a quick post on how you got them to lie flat.
I just started with power auras but I think it’ll be great.
Thanks
about 2 years ago
I have Power Auras set up for basically only Nature’s Grace but I would like to use it like you have it for when WG and SM are available and I can’t figure out how to work it.
Under the ‘event’ tab thing I select ‘When spell is available’ and enter ‘Wild Growth’ and select the aura I want it to display but it isn’t working.
Any guidance?
about 2 years ago
Oh, Keeva, is your missing-flask aura specific for frostwyrm, or did you make it a generic flask check?
Planning to make a flask-missing aura for myself tonight; my memory for flasks is stuck on the old 2-hr durations, and I forget to renew them!
about 1 year ago
Hey Keeva. I realize I’m a about a month late on this, but any chance you could export your power aura “sets” and share the import strings with us? I’ve been trying all morning to set it up on my own and it boggles me to bits. I adore how your’s is.. I just am having a hell of a time figuring it all. gah.
about 1 year ago
Could you post the export of your power auras? I would like to import it on mine since yours looks great in that pic.
about 1 year ago
Still looking for this Export.. Does anyone know a good resto druid one? I cant find one anywhere online.
about 1 year ago
I’ll be posting mine in the next couple of days. I’ve made some changes to my setup, so I need to tweak before I post.
In the meantime, Revive & Rejuvenate *just* posted a set of exports – and links back to a bunch of others:
http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/2010/02/power-auras-for-healing.html
I’ll get mine up very soon
about 1 year ago
Keeva,
I really appreciate your blog. Like others, I would really find your poweraura’s very helpful in ICC. Would you mind posting them?
Thanks!