WeakAuras addon demands attention

Last week a player that is a little older and a lot wiser in the game of WoW than myself recommended I upgrade from PowerAuras to WeakAuras.

Daunted by the implied weakness of the addon and his admonition it was hard to set up without getting a glop of configuration data from him or someone else, I took note that I should learn about this.

However, I felt I should hold off on downloading and installing it.  Not to mention I was pretty dependent on PowerAuras for my Death Knight game play.

I read some articles on WeakAuras and it sounds like something I should at least try.  It is more powerful than PowerAuras in some major ways, it puts less of a load on the computer running it, and it looks like something which you can tinker with to fit your individual tastes.

When I started playing WoW years ago, I played it in a straightforward fashion:

1. find a few series of spells that worked well together to deal damage, heal myself, or heal others
2. get gear with increasingly higher stats of the type I needed
3. spend talent points to increase the benefits of the spells I most often used or needed to work better in a pinch
4. repeat

Later, I added buying and eventually making my own glyphs as something that helped by characters' effectiveness.

But that really is not enough.  At the higher levels of the game, not only your character has to evolve but your own gameplay as well.

You need to respond to events as they occur — and do it quickly.

These events can occur almost invisibly, nearly out of the corner of your eye as small icons in action buttons on the lower or right edges of the screen as well as buff/debuff icons in the upper left & right areas of the screen come and go.

The nice thing about these addons is that they make it easy to see things that it is easy to miss without them.  And since you need to act instantly not to mention reliably upon those things, it behooves you to try them out.

More info:

• WeakAuras home (WowAce)
• WeakAuras tutorial (WowAce)
• WeakAuras details on curse.com
• WeakAuras article at WowInsider
• WeakAuras tutorial by Jaded Alt
• Letting Go of Power Auras by Kaelynn (wonderful walkthrough of the config panels) and some examples (e.g. shadow priest and restoration shaman)
• WeakAuras how to install (youtube)
• WeakAuras tutorial: Day 1 (youtube) — day 1 of many days!
• WeakAuras tutorial: appendix 1. Mind blast and Starsurge examples (youtube)
• Weak Auras: Warlock | Fel Concentration blog (put into practice on a warlock)

I just want to add one more thing.  As we learned this month, even Blizzard gets hacked.  So be careful about where you get your addons from and what addons you get.