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.