Macros Part 2 - Targets

Target different enemies -

The macros described in Part 1 are some very basic macros that are also fairly commonly useful and, ignoring the specific spells, relevant to every class. However the functionality/usefullness of macros doesn't finish there, oh noes, there's plenty more where that came from.

Let's say I want a macro that allows me to pewpew my current target but then fire off a Kill Shot at a different target without having to tab or manually click and select the secondary target and then back again. Cause lets face it - that shit right there is cumbersome. Easy, all you have to do is make a mouseover macro! Following from the above examples I, once again...

#showtooltip Kill Shot

(now the next line is where it gets tricky)

/cast [target=mouseover][target=target] Kill Shot (Rank 3) 

(remember...shift left clicking an ability straight from your spellbook will autofill the correct spell and rank details so you don't have to manually type it out)

Now...all I have to do is pay attention and notice when a mob other than my current target is below 20% health, hover my mouse over that mob/bar and BAM...killshot away without deselecting my current target. If I have no mouseovered target the macro will then look at my current target and if below 20% - bam.

Other useful macros in this vain include

#showtooltip Master's Call
/cast [target=mouseover][target=Rumtum] Master's Call

which first checks if I have a mouseovered target to cast Master's Call on (which also works on unitframes by the way) and if not it casts Masters Call on myself.

#showtooltip Tranquilising Shot
/cast [target=mouseover][target=target] Tranquilising Shot

a VERY useful macro particularly in PVE instances whereupon the hunter may get called to tranq. shot enraged mobs (LK and Anub'Arak spring to mind).

Aside from Mouseover targets you also have Focus target which can be added to macros. To select a unit as a focus you can either bind your focus key from Blizzard keybinds, type /focus while selecting them or create a macro to do this for you which would be -

/clearfocus

/focus

Now...anytime you wanted to cast a heal on a tank, or in our case as hunters a misdirect on the tank all you have to do is create the following macro -

#showtooltip Misdirect
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection

You can now cast misdirect in the middle of your shot rotation/priority list without having to actually deselect your current target. Useful during moments where you need to quickly draw a mob to a secondary tank you've already set as your focus for instance.

Macros

Love em or hate em, it cannot be denied that macros can make a hell of a difference to your gameplay. They allow you to cast spells on targets other than your current target. They can chain abilities together sometimes saving you two or three or even more button presses at once. There's actually quite alot that can be done with macros. Now personally I'm not a huge fan of cast sequence macros that basically do your job for you, like the ones that existed pre-wotlk; all in one macros you could bind to your mousewheel and lolwheel your way through raids. However, there are a few macros that I just couldn't do without now.


Before we get started - if you're new to making macros (and are exactly the sort of person this guide is intended for) there are a couple of guidelines you should follow and things you should consider to make life a bit easier for yourself. First off -


What goal do you have in mind?


Who is the target; is it you, your focus, your target, a mouseover target, your pet?


Are you trying to do too much; macros are designed now to cluster together actions which belong together and fit well however will never, with one button press, activate more than one global cooldown. That is to say - as soon as a macro hits an ability that generates a gcd, the macro stops as the gcd has generated a 1.5 second gap and the chain of events comes to a halt so always place the gcd-generating ability at the end of your macro.


(note - the above rule applies to castsequence macros differently, however I won't be going into castsequences)


Chaining together abilities -


So - taking the above as an example lets say I want a macro which basically adds Silencing Shot to each of my shots so that I cast it as soon as possible whenever it's off cooldown. I can do this because unlike my other shots - Silencing Shot is off the gcd.


(note - before writing any macros it's best to open up your spellbook so that you can view your spells side by side with the macro pane as you work)


To start- typing /m opens up the macro pane. From here you would go to 'yourcharactername' specific macros, go to New and select ? icon and type Chimera Shot in the field above. Selecting ok brings you back to the Macro pane where you can then edit the macro details.


In here I would start (and I usually always start my macro with the following line) my macro with


#showtooltip Chimera Shot (<--- this makes sure that when I drag the macro onto my bars it will display the Chim Shot icon)


then


/cast [target=target] Silencing Shot (<--- you can simply shift=left click the ability from your spellbook to autofill it in here complete with any Rank detail)

and finally


/cast [target=target] Chimera Shot Rank 1


so in the end the macro looks like this :


#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast [target=target] Silencing Shot
/cast [target=target] Chimera Shot



So that's it. I would then drag the icon for it from the macro icons and place it wherever in my actionbars I wanted it.

"But wait Rumbum...how do I get rid of all the error messages spamming my screen when I smash this button too many times??!! =("

Have no fear! There are ways to resolve this. I've found the simplest and cleanest fix for the sound error is to literally press Escape, go to Sound options and deselect Error Message effects. For error messages on screen simply add the following /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear() to the end of the macro. So the above macro looks now like this -


#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast [target=target] Silencing Shot
/cast [target=target] Chimera Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()


Now, lets say I also wanted to add Kill Command (also not on the gcd) to the above macro. I simply edit the macro above to read -

#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast Kill Command (note - no target needed here as it is an ability cast only on your pet)
/cast [target=target] Silencing Shot
/cast [target=target] Chimera Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
The macro now checks that Kill Command is available then moves on to Silencing Shot and then on to Chimera Shot and finally prevents any error messages from running if any of these abilities are still on cd.


A slightly more complex than the above but still pretty simple macro is my Rawr macro which looks something like this -


#showtooltip Rapid Fire
/cast Kill Command
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Furious Howl
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire

activates my orc racial for an extra attack power boost, activates my pets call of the wild and furious howl, casts kill command and then Rapid Fire and then stops.

Diary of a new Marksman hunter Part 4

Raid Three 24/08 -

Pretty much nailed it now. Doing some minor PowerAuras and macro tweaking to fit in the Saronite Bombs mentioned in the above post but aside from that it's come together well.

All in all MM is an excellent spec. Played right it's capable of fantastic dps. I look forward to the T10x2 Bonus and weapon upgrades ahead.

Diary of a new Marksman hunter Part 3

Raid Two 18/08 -

Improvement on the AOE front. Dropping an explosive trap in the middle of the mobs and just volleying over myself seems to do the trick. You just have to make sure you follow close behind the tanks. Came near death a couple of times when cleaves were involved but overall was rather happy with my AOE performance last night and felt I kept up with the competition.

Movement is definitely a bitch though and I can see how much it differs from Survival in that you really have to minimise how much jumping around you're doing. Quite a few times I wanted to bounce about avoiding things and had to check myself and pay attention to my swing timer.

It's a vastly different playstyle...but a refreshing change. I look forward to nailing it down a bit better till it's intuitive enough to allow me to focus 100% on the raid environment and swing timer.

Diary of a new Marksman hunter Part 2

ICC 25, Raid One 05/08/10 -

Overall, I wasn't too disappointed. I messed up my initial burst rotation a few times throughout the night, also threw up misdirect too early on a couple of occasions (my own fault and bad timing) which had me hold back at first but when I did get it right I kicked off with about 10K single target dps and generally levelled to around 7.5-8k at the end of the fight. Not bad considering it's my first night trying it properly and I've got some catching up to do gear wise.

AOE damage wasn't as impressive as I thought it was going to be though. I mistakenly believed the 3 points spent in Barrage, increasing volley damage by 12% would be a noticeable change but it was still myeh. Need to remember to try just sitting in the middle of packs dropping Explosive traps every 20 seconds and volleying myself. I might die a lot......but I can always tap Beave for repair money. :P

Diary of a new Marksman hunter Part 1

So ... after spinning with Survival since level 63 or so (about a year or more) I made the switch fully to MM (agility build) last night and will use this thread to post my thoughts.

I'd made the switch to MM for pvp back last year (BG-hero) but many of my talents were based more around survivability than straight up dps (as you do) so am not totally unused to the shots of MM. Initital dummy testing last night seemed to suggest a 400-500 dps increase to around 5200 on the heroic dummy, which is good considering I'm more used to bursting with the spec than trying to keep up sustained dps. However an early morning retest while still somewhat groggy showed a drop in dps, below that of my Survival average by a couple hundred dps...something I'm hoping can be attributed to the fact I was actually half asleep. ;p Will post more later.

EDIT 05/08 - spent half an hour last night going through the rotation till oom at 3 minute intervals (time it takes for Rapid Fire/Readiness to recoup). Initial burst on the heroic dummy was on average 6k, reaching 6.2 on one cycle, but then settling to around 5.2k overall. While it did take some rejuggling of keybinds I think I managed to nail the stationary cycle well enough and this testing proved to me that (in my case at least) it does, on the dummy, produce higher dps results than Survival. However what I experienced was a quickly drained mana pool which is something else to be considered. How this will turn out in raids I'll find out tonight - but as any Survival hunter will tell you: going oom in 10-25 man raids is nearly impossible. Hopefully the mana regen talents of other classes will keep my mana high enough to avoid Viper Aura/Sting.

Some would like to think it's a bit of a baby spec when it comes to difficulty, I know other hunters have scoffed at it's seemingly repetitive nature - Chimera, Aimed, Steady Shot spam rinse and repeat....but there is actually a bit more to it than that, as I'll try to put down here.

Note that this diary is really about the Agility MM build, not the ArPen one. It's widely accepted that until you're rocking 264 gear and reaching 800 passive ArPen without neutering your agility and crit you should probably stick with Agi gems instead of trying to push ArPen boundaries.

(edit for clarity on the Agi-ArPen issue- as my sig suggests there are alot of hunters out there who see top guild hunters gemming ArPen and decide that's the way forward without ever actually checking Elitest Jerks, Wow Forums, or host of other Hunter Blogs out there which explain at what point you should drop Agility gems and go for the Arpen ones. They are doing it wrong! This game isn't about opinions and what feels right...it's about mathematics.)

I'm not going to go into my spec just yet as it's a cookie cutter spec quite common amongst MM hunters (http://armory.wow-europe.com/character- ... Postmortem - thanks Crod for pointing out my noob mistake :P) and I believe there are other intricacies of MM which should be nailed first. Glyphs are rather flexible as there are a good number of them to pick from; steady shot, trueshot, dragonhawk, etc, so again I'll not go into glyph selection as it's a matter of personal flavour, aside from SrS glyph ...which is a MUST.

However, what appears to actually make or break MM hunters is the shot priority, cd usage and movement.

--------------

Shot Priorities.

From top to bottom -
Kill Shot
Silencing shot
Serpent Sting (more details on this below)
Chimera Shot
Aimed Shot
Arcane Shot (dropped from this list once you reach around 400 passive ArPen, except during movement)
Steady Shot

Kill Shot - as expected is top of the list on any hunters shot list.

Silencing Shot is not on GCD (macro'd into all or a couple of your shots - I've macrod silencing shot into my steady and aimed shot as in most raids these days we're not required to silence...if it becomes a necessity...let the rogues do it =P or remove it from your macros)

Serpent Sting - this is a big subject. Serpent sting behaviour is somewhat different between hunters in that it IS effected by the 2 x T10 (Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage: Exploit Weakness, for those Power Aura lovers) so in this case it would be advantageous to reapply the SrS manually rather than refresh it with Chimera. However this isn't the only consideration to be given to SrS...

...crit modifiers will not be overwritten by a Chimera Refresh (only applicable if you're still using 2pc T9.. otherwise ignore crit).. Wild Magic Potion, various trinket procs (greatness and the like), etc. Meaning Chimera will reapply the previous modifier to SrS, however, again as SrS was already in place once the buff was activated - it will not be effected therefore it will need to be manually refreshed while the buff is active.

So juggling these factors in can somewhat complicate matters. The simplification of it all would be to merely pre-pot Wild Magic , apply your SrS and let it roll until your 2xT10 procs and then manually reapply again within the time frame of that buff. Or popping Wild Magic Potion with Exploit Weakness and/or agi proc of Greatness or Deathbringer and then reapplying SrS manually.

Either way, Chimera will then refresh the buffed Crit% mod and Damage+% mod SrS without having to manually refresh it, which is awesome news when it's a pretty static fight where you have one target to focus on. When dealing with phases and multiple targets however, the reliance on refreshing SrS manually to keep it's damage to a maximum is greatly undermined.

Chimera Shot The bad boy of the Marksman tree. Hits like a truck and refreshes whatever sting you currently have on your target, a factor that most think is what simplifies the tree too much and makes it facerolly. It certainly IS one less dot cooldown to worry about in comparison with Survivals Black Arrow and SrS...however what it loses in regards to dot maintenance, it more than makes up for in movement maintenance; more on that later.

Aimed Shot should follow Chimera shot as closely as possible and then Steady Shot. Both are boosted by further talents within the MM tree; namely Improved Steady Shot and Barrage/Imp Barrage.

--------------------

Cooldowns.

So....now we know the shots and what order they should be in as available but how does that work out in practice?

Against the dummy my initial rotation without extra fluff was pretty much this-

Marked the target. Applied Serpent Sting and set Nanook on 'im. Chimera Shot. Aimed Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot and repeat from the beginning without the mark and sting. As a basic 'rotation' it's pretty simple.

However now we add in the cooldowns, namely; pot of Wild Magic, furious howl, call of the wild, Rapid Fire, Racials, Readiness and the like it becomes this -

Mark the target. Pot up with Wild Magic. Misdirect. Apply Serpent Sting and set Nanook on 'im. Blow Cooldowns, Chimera Shot. Aimed Shot. Readiness (to reset CD's, namely Rapid Fire and your shots) Chimera Shot. Aimed Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot. Steady Shot and once the initial Rapid Fire has worn off you cast Rapid Fire again, which should happen just after that last Steady Shot and before your next Chimera.

Edit 25/08 I've ammended the list slightly in last night's raid with the addition of lolbomb . As it's off the gcd I've macro'd it in with Steady Shot, however, as steady is a long cast it doesn't seem to throw the bomb unless you place it between the steadies. As you kinda spam steady at this stage to make sure you fire them off as quickly as possible - it's easy to miss throwing the bomb completely, so will either try a different shot to tie it in with (Aimed for instance) or just try to get used to the timing. Will try the later for a week or so first and see how I get on.

So...you've gone and blown your wad and you're now sticking to the priority list above. Both Readiness and Rapid Fire are on 3 minute CD's and should be used as soon as available. In most boss fights you should hope to get 2 - 4 Rapid Fires (without 30% buffs to your damage of course ;p) however aside from the timely use of the above cooldowns and shots ... what really matters most is your movement.

-------------------------

Movement.

At some point you're going to have to move. If you can just stand there - great, but bosses more often than not require movement to avoid danger or reach safe areas. MM dps has a big reliance on white damage from autoshots and steady shots and as such requires timely movement on your part to avoid clipping your autoshots. To do so requires a swing timer such as Quartz, something that lets you know when your next shot is about to come off so you can move in small steps (when you cannot disengage of course).

As a noob, I gave it a try with Quartz last night and it will require some practice and getting used to the priorities above to do it smoothly however some things that can help are - know the fight: have a good idea of the movement involved in the fight and position yourself at all times in an area that will require the least amount of movement. Preemptive movement: if you know something is about to kick off - start moving now in little steps so you're not panicking when it actually happens and clipping your shots. But only move when you have to - don't move if you're not sure it's about to kick off. Last but not least - Learn how to disengage. Every hunter should have this skill down pat by this stage but disengaging over larger areas is obviously far more advantageous than skipping.


As I said at the beginning; this is really just a test for myself and summary of what I've read/experienced thus far which I'll update as I go along. I'm just getting used to it myself so it's a kind way for me to reflect over what I've learned but I imagine for the next couple of weeks I'll probably suck as I flounder around like a fanny. But it should be an entertaining experience at least =)