Guide for nova launcher?

Everbody here on default hates touchwiz and promotes nova launcher as a replacement. I downloaded nova launcher and tried the features but the differences are negligible. Sure you can adjust icon appearance, have vertical app drawer and bigger grid, etc but are the differences purely aesthetic? Can you knock to sleep/wake? Swipe a pattern to open a specific app? What does the pro version add? Enlighten this noob because all i'm seeing is you guys just hate touchwiz because all the devs do and you're jumping in on the bandwagon