In the 4.0 patch, Blizzard introduced their own (very nice) spell overlays. These happened after specific talents or abilities became usable and put a nice graphic on your screen and make their associated buttons glow.
For example, if a Mage got Fingers of Frost then their Deep Freeze and Ice Lance buttons would get this cute little golden glow around them.
This plugin for Power Auras Classic adds that functionality. You can assign "actions", which are essentially spells, macros or items to specific auras. When the aura in question is shown, the associated actions will glow on your action bars. And when the aura is hidden, the glows would disappear.
The AddOn was designed to assist in replicating what a lot of players have been asking for; customizable spell alerts. While Power Auras already filled most of this niche with the epic graphics, it didn't make buttons look all pretty. Now it does through this plugin.
Actions can be one of three things, and any aura can have as many actions as it so desires.
- Spell - This action type represents a spell on your action bars. You can simply put in the spell name or ID (like Frostbolt) and Frostbolt will look awesome when your aura shows. If you have the spell in a macro, this will also be highlighted.
- Macro - If you have a macro that doesn't necessarily cast anything, you can include this too. Simply enter the name or ID of the macro and it'll glow like normal.
- Item - Say you don't have a spell or macro on your bars. What else could you possibly have. Items! Same deal here, put in the item name or ID and let us take care of the glowy business for you.
If you're wondering how to get the ID of a spell or item without getting another seperate addon for that, find the thing on Wowhead. The ID is the number that comes in "item=50231" or "spell=831" on the URL.
If you have bug reports, suggestions or just want to give me a cookie, leave a comment
What's new in 4.0.3a?
4.0.3a is what 4.0.1e was supposed to be. The problem I found myself running into with the old code was mostly performance based, and it was becoming a mess. I wanted to move the code to a more modular design so it was rewritten and in the process got some significant changes.
The biggest change is that the PowerAurasButtons_Config folder is gone. You should remove the old one if you're updating - it's not needed now. If you used an auto-updater like MMOUI Minion, they should have removed this folder automatically. If not, please report it as a bug and I'll put up a small update which restores the folder but removes the actual code.
Rewriting the auras and button management code allowed me to create two new 'modules' as it were, or 'displays' which are the Timer/Stacks and Border modules.
The Timer/Stacks module will allow you to display the timer or stacks information from an aura in Power Auras directly on the button. Say you have a buff with 6 seconds remaining and 3 stacks - you can display the timer (and its 6 seconds) as well as the stacks on the button.
The Border module is currently in a beta stage and isn't fully bug free, but it allows you to set a colored border instead of a glow on a button when an aura is active. This is useful if you want say, a buff (Blessing of Kings) to gain a coloured border when it is active on yourself, and to glow when it's not.
If you don't see any need for these two features then don't worry - you can disable modules entirely.
In addition to the above, some of the (rather obsolete) configuration options have been removed. For example, Blizzard's standard glows will now always be applied to macros.
AddOn Compatibility
This plugin has been tested with the following AddOns and works fine from what I can tell. I don't make guarantees. Not after last time.
- Power Auras Classic (4.15+)
- Bartender4 (4.4.15)
- Dominos (1.23.9)
- Blizzard's standard action buttons and built in overlays. These all function as they did before.
Note that I don't run Dominos as part of my normal UI. I may be a little slow if some issue crops up during an update. Reporting bugs will of course get the fix thrown out a lot faster than waiting on me to develop something new, test it and realise nothing works in Dominos
How to configure an action
- Open your Power Auras Classic configuration window and select the aura you wish to apply an action to. Click the "Edit" button to open Power Auras effect editor.
- To the right of the effect editor is the action configuration window. Click the "Add new action..." row to add a new action.
- The new action will be added, by default it is of type "Spell" and has the ID 0. For this example, let's assume we want to make Frostbolt glow when this aura is active. First of all, select the newly created row and a new pane at the bottom should expand with several buttons. Simply edit the "Action ID/Name" text box and place in "Frostbolt", or your chosen spell name without quotes.
- Press enter and your spell should be saved. If you enter spells by name, you must have them learned and in your spellbook for this to work. If adding a spell, macro or item by name produces an error then try using the ID number instead.
How to report a bug
The best way to report bugs and errors is to leave a comment here on WoWInterface. I'm pretty damn quick in responding to comments, and fixing critical bugs. Make sure that you include the following in any bug reports, or I may just 'forget' you reported one though.
- Copy/paste the error. This is one of the most important things you need to do. Without it, I have no idea about what has gone wrong.
- The names of any action bar addons you may be running. It'll be easier if I know this is an error with Dominos than if I have to guess as to whether or not you're using any addons at all. (A full list of all your addons would be immensely helpful too!)
- A description of what was going on at the time. Were you jumping into a vehicle? Did you log in and all of a sudden "BLAZAM!"?
- A screenshot of when the error occured would be great too - but optional.
How To...- Display the glow only, but not any textures: In the effect editor of Power Auras simply set the aura texture to "Custom Textures" and leave the field blank. This will ensure no aura images pop up, but glows will still happen.
Future Features
Things I won't add- Add an option to only make actions glow if they are currently usable (off cooldown, etc). Reason: You can chain auras in Power Auras to accomplish the same effect - simply apply the action to the last aura in the chain.
- Allow inverting of actions. So you could set a macro to be highlighted when an aura is NOT active. Reason: Limited usefulness. Normally you only care when an aura is active. Plus you could do this from Power Auras too.
Known Issues- Spells which are in your spellbook but aren't learned may not be converted to ID's. (Likely won't fix unless pestered to)
- The fact that Life is cruel and prevents me from updating and giving the AddOn the love and attention it deserves 100% of the time. This an issue with Life which should be resolved in 2.0 (release date: TBA).