Macro helpFollow

Well, for one thing, it depends on the first person in your group targeting a mob, which is a flaw in and of itself. If the first person is you, then it will target whoever you're targeting, which might be yourself and might be someone else and might be no one. Tanks might often target group members as well, for intervene or something similar.

I would suggest, instead, getting a mod that can show who has aggro (I use Grid unit frames, where a red border appears around everyone who has aggro) and simply manually targeting it.

Then don't. Like Isfreak said, you can just use a raid/party frame that shows aggro (most does, these days) and set up a mouseover macro for your shield. Hover your pointer over the group/raidmember in question and just activate the macro either through a bound mousekey or a keyboard key. Automating things like that won't be flexible anyway, and unforeseen things happen all the time in raids. Never trust a macro to do what you can do yourself, unless it's so incredibly simple like a mouseover macro.

That's what I thought at first, but when you think about it it's really situational. I've got a prep macro on my rogue which automatically hits sprint and evasion before using prep (prep resets the cooldown on those two skills, so I might as well use them if I'm going to reset the CD). While I could technically use sprint and evasion myself before clicking prep, this does simplify stuff. You'd have to rephrase the sentence to make it cutting.

I agree with NorthAI the Hand, The only macro I use is for my shackle.. I like to know where my heals are going. I'

I'm new to WoW as well and have a question concerning macros...

My idea for having my macros set up was to have one bar for every person in the party - including myself - and then the 6th bar would be for outside parties (raid, NPC, etc.) Each bar would have macros specifically for the person occupying the position in the party (example: Action Bar 1 is for whoever is occupying the party1 value/slot in the party). Currently each bar has the same spells, but is made so that I can just select the page and then press the key to the corresponding spell I want to use on the player (example: party member 2 is taking damage. Go to Action Bar 2 and press the '1' key to automatically cast Lesser Healing on party member 2.)

I'm not very familiar with the group mechanics of this game and what may or may not be necessary as a priest - or mages in general - to take care of it all.

Basically I'm looking for advice and suggestions on how to build my macros and manage my actions bars. Which add ons should I get? How do you, my fellow players, organize your macros? How should I build my macros?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Macros are the perfect (and only?) way to de-clutter your action bars, especially if you're not a Shadow Priest and don't have the extra tab available that allows you to at least organize things into holy/shadow spells.

Like you can use a single button on your bar and let your UI decide what needs cast.

So instead of having one button each for Renew, Devouring Plage, and SW:Pain, I'm using



What's happening is that if I mouseover a friendly target and hit the macro key, I'm casting Renew on it. If the target is hostile, I'm casting SW:Pain and Devouring Plague. This part resets after 3 seconds, so the macro won't get stuck while waiting for the cooldown of Plague, allowing me to put SW:Pain on more than one target.
If I have a target it does the same thing. Renew on friendly, and the SW:Pain/Plague combo on hostile.
Holding down ALT while hitting the macro key will cast Renew on myself, regardless of what I have targeted. If I don't have a target I will cast Renew on myself also.

This can be done with just about every spell you have, for example



will do Flash Heal/Holy Fire depending on how the target reacts to you. You could do the same with Greater Heal/Smite or Binding Heal/Mind Blast. Just depends on what you prefer to use. I prefer to combine spells that have the same or similar cast time.



Single button to buff yourself up. Since it resets after 3 seconds, it will be available once inner fire expires. Since the next buff to expire would be Shadow Protection, you'd just click through it until there and have it reset yet again. Same thing can be done with the party buffs of course.

There are also modifiers available that allow you to cast depending on whether or not you're in combat. For example, you can't use Resurrection while in combat, so there is no need to clutter your screen with it. Have it share a button with something else.

The only addons I'd recommend are X-perl and Decursive. I think healbot sucks, and about the only thing it's good for is to show the predicted amount healed in the unit frame - but it does that even while sitting disabled in the background.

One thing about the "Mishaps" from using those more or less automated tools:

We used to have a good laugh in Kara each time our Pally would by mistake cast Divine Intervention on somebody thanks to one of his addons not working right...

Don't know what you're talking about. The modifier works fine without having to click anything.

I guess so. I have all my - call them spell macros - bound to the standard action bar buttons in the order I use them. Not using any special keys, and not having more than one bind per key.

Edited, Jan 1st 2009 12:35pm by Kanngarnix