Addon Spotlight: PallyPower

Today I thought we'd look at an addon that many guilds require their paladins to use. To be honest, I'd never really understood why until I transitioned to 25-man content. Coordinating blessings with one other paladin (our Karazhan runs rarely had more than two paladins.) was never complicated, but when you've got three or more paladins, it can get messy and can waste valuable raid time.

As my guild continues its efforts in The Eye and Serpent Shrine Cavern, I've found myself somewhat frustrated by paladins who don't use this one. Granted, I was that guy until recently, thinking that because ZOMG Buffs played nice with buff assignments via PallyPower, that I was good to go. Now suddenly I'm taking a more active role in buff assignments and realize that like Omen, Healbot and logging for WWS, the more players using a utility, the better.

First and foremost, PallyPower is a buff assignment addon, one that happens to facilitate easy coordination between paladins buffing the same group. I've yet to prefer it over ZOMG Buffs during solo play, but that's another story for another day.

Once installed, PallyPower is set with no blessings assigned, so let's start getting familiar with how to assign blessings. Perhaps the first thing you'll notice is a red dot on your screen, this is the anchor for your buff grid. Once in a group, this grid will display information regarding buff status in your raid. Click this little button, once it's green, you'll be able to move it around the screen to place it where you want. Right-clicking will open the Buff Assignment interface.

This is where you can begin assigning buffs to each class, plus pets. You can left-click to cycle through your available buffs, use the scroll wheel on your mouse to cycle a bit faster and right-click to clear a buff assignment. You do this in the grid below each class's respective icon. You can also shift-mouse scroll or shift-left click to cycle through buffs for all classes simultaneously. Some other important pieces of information to notice are found on the left side of your Blessing Assignment interface.

You'll notice blessings icons under each paladin's name, these are the blessings that the paladin has available, the number denotes the rank of the blessing. You'll also notice that PallyPower displays how many Symbol of Kings each paladin has. Hopefully you're beginning to see the utility for this type of mod for raid leaders and paladin class leaders alike. Finally, note the checkbox for Free Assignments. This feature allows another person to assign blessings for you. This is a surefire way to make sure your raid is getting the blessings they should, per the raid leadership's direction. This doesn't have to be a paladin, a player flagged as the raid leader or assistant raid leader can do this if they have PallyPower installed.

To assign a single buff to a particular player, you click their name, found under their class icon, select yourself (or another paladin) and assign the blessing. This is important when you've got members of the same class fulfilling different roles. (Resto Druids and Boomkin may want different buffs for example)

Clicking the options buttons on the Buff Assignment interface will bring up a menu with a few more options, some of which are of particular note. This is where you Tankadins can select a Righteous Fury buff. You can also select Smart Buffs here, which will skip over certain buffs for individual classes. (I've yet to have a mage ask for Might or a rogue ask for Wisdom.) You can also change the keybinding for quick buffing here. Normally, a single key will cast regular blessings, while holding shift+your assigned key will cast greater blessings.

Once you're all set up and in a group, you'll notice some frames have appeared around the little red (or green if it's not locked) dot. These frames show the buff for each class and how long until their buffs expire. If you hover over any one class frame, each member of that class will pop up on the left side, showing individual buff durations, their range status (red is out of range) and whether or not they're dead. Left clicking will rebuff with Greater Blessings, while Right-clicking will buff with 10-minute Blessings. This works on both the class frames and the individual player frames, as well as in combat. There is a lot of information available, as well as ways to interact with this addon.

There is a great guide in the Ace Wiki, as well as a fairly comprehensive PallyPower video guide I found on YouTube. Between the resources available, you should be showing up for raid night ready to go, and hopefully avoiding blessing drama. (I swear most non-paladins have NO idea how Greater Blessings work.)

There are, however, a few features I would love to see in a future version. An on-screen warning for expiring buffs would be great, as well as mouse-wheel buffing. Support for Blessing of Sacrifice and Blessing of Freedom, like ZOMG Buffs, and support for Auras as well.

That's it paladins, a great tool for handing out buffs. Try it out, check out the guides and don't be the one paladin in your raid without PallyPower, honestly it annoys the hell out of the rest of us. Dismissed.

Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.