Power Auras And Innervate

About one month ago I read this post on the WoW druid forums.  Since then it's become especially useful on fights like Anub, where mana-management is extremely critical to performance.

Power Auras is an extremely flexible addon available from Curse.  It allows you to create a visual "aura" on your screen based on almost anything: buffs, debuffs, buffs/debuffs on your target, mana/health percentages, abilities off cooldown, abilities ON cooldown, and more.  What's interesting about that WoW forum post is it utilizes multiple auras that reference eachother, which creates a neat "AND" logic.  The first aura tells you when Innervate is off cooldown.  The second aura activates whenever your mana drops below 65% (I find this to be the bext amount where I can hit Innervate and not waste anything gained).

By linking these two together you get an indicator of when Innervate is available and when your mana is low enough to justify hitting it.

First you create the Innervate aura:

• To access Power Auras type /powa.  Then hit "New" to create a new aura.  After selecting it, hit "Edit" to start.
• Set the Activation By to "Action Usable".  This tells Power Auras to display the aura when the named ability is available for use.
• In the bar under Action Usable, type in Innervate.  Make sure this is exact, although you can tell it to ignore capitalization by checking "Ignore Uppercase" below.
• Only if in combat - this is optional.  Checking this will make the aura only activate if you are in combat, which will prevent you from seeing it every time you change specs or otherwise drop in mana.  I don't use it because it rarely matters for something like this.
• Set up the display - you will want to set up the aura to display in whatever manner you want.  I make the innervate aura nearly invisible by making it small and low opacity, because I let the mana aura dominate.  The post where I got this idea said you could turn one of the auras off (so the display wouldn't matter) but I had issues with getting it to work when I did this, so I leave both of them active.
  

Second, create the mana aura:

• Activation By should be "Mana".
• The bar below this will turn into a slide.  Set it to whatever percentage of your mana is around 10,000 down - I usually use 65%.  This ensures that after you hit Innervate you won't waste any mana from other gains, while still letting you use it early.
• Set up the display.  This is the aura that I want to be visible, so I make it go bang - it's in the middle of my screen, it's pretty large, and it's blue (because my brain associates that with mana/innervate).  I use a middle opacity so it doesn't totally interfere with my vision, but it still shows up immediately.

Finally, you need to create the linkage.  Type in /powa and hover over each of the auras you just created.  If this is your first time with Power Auras then those numbers should be 1 for Innervate, and 2 for the Mana.  Personally, the numbers are 3 and 4 for me.  Whatever they are, write them down or remember them.

Now go to your Innervate aura and hit Edit.  Down under where you typed "Innervate", and to the right of the "Exact Name" checkbox, there should be a second little box.  In this enter the number for the Mana aura.  Your final Innervate aura should look something like this:

Do the reverse in your Mana aura - in the same little box, enter the number for your Innervate aura.  So if Innervate is 1 and Mana is 2, then you put "2" in the Innervate box, and "1" in the Mana box.  This tells them to reference each other and only activate if the other one is also true.  Your final Mana aura should look something like this:

The end result of these two auras is that they will only show up when you are both below 65% mana, and have Innervate off of cooldown.  My display shows up like so:

One more thing I do that's related this is create another aura that displays prominently when I'm below 10% mana.  This is the range where I can't afford to Hurricane, so it's significant - it lets me know when I really, really need to Innervate, or when I should consider hitting GotW.  You can simply copy your Mana aura and remove the reference to your Innervate aura (or leave it in, if you feel like), and then change the display to make it show up better - I changed the color to bright green and put it at 100% opacity.  The end result is something like this:

                                                   

I find that this combination really helps me with mana management and lets me utilize Innervate as much as possible.  And while on most fights this isn't key, it's especially useful on stuff like Anub'arak where AOE - and therefore mana management -  is critical to both the fight and maximizing your dps.