Macro Help(tanking)Follow

You could get the results you want by using a macro to the effects of:

/cast Avenger's Shield
/rw INC: %t

The first line will use the ability, the second will send a Raid Warning (if you don't have the privilege to send raid warnings you can make it anything -- /p for party, /s for outloud -- just don't expect anyone to actually READ the chat log when they're doing things. I know it seems simple, but lots of people can't read all the information on their screen at once). The advantage of a Raid Warning is that it appears in big letters in the middle of the screen with a noise to signal it.

Of course... alerting people to who you pull is a very poor way of doing it. Far more useful is taking advantage of the Raid Markers and putting a marker, say a skull, over the head of your target. You can keybind them all as well so that you can change markers with the press of a key during combat if you want.

Nope.. normal mobs will stick to whoever has the most threat.

If the mob is a physical damage dealer and not a caster, you can stick Hand of Protection on your healer if they pull aggro though. Since it makes them immune to physical damage, the brilliant AI of the mob will register that it can't touch them, and move on to their next target. They keep their threat though, so when they are no longer immune they'll pull aggro back unless you've gotten a threat lead. And of course there's taunt, and all of our nice instant abilities.

Sitting down will however make you eat a critical hit if you're attacked. Your chance to block, dodge, parry, be missed, or take a regular hit is entirely, 100% replaced with crit when you sit. So not a good idea unless you want to take controlled damage.

Along the same lines as this post (so forgive the partial hijack :) ), how do you make the raid symbols appear in chats? Anytime anyone asks, poeple just laugh and call them a noob for not knowing ... So I stopped trying, but it would be nice to know how to do that. Thanks if anyone knows and is nice enough to share :)

{skull} gives you skull, etc.

can be used in all chats except city-wide. also can be macro'd for CC designation.

Two macros that I use:

#showtooltip
/cast [noharm] [noharm,target=targettarget] [] Hand of Protection

for Hand of Protection. Very handy. It means you can target either a player directly, or you can target a mob and it will cast Hand of Protection on the mob's target. Do not use accidentally on Patchwerk. Bad. If you have nothing targeted, it will activate your mouse cursor so that you can click on a player on the game field or on their party/raid frame and it will cast on them.

also:

#showtooltip
/cast [noharm] [noharm,target=targettarget] [] Righteous Defense

Functions the same as the HoProt macro.

The benefit of these macros is that usually the first thing you see is a mob running where they're not supposed to. Being able to just target the mob and hit one key is faster than targeting the mob, hitting your assist key, and then hitting the appropriate key on your action bar.

You can actually bind raid icons to keys through the Options -> Key Bindings interface. It's towards the bottom of the list under the heading "Raid Targeting" and all icons default to unbound.

The difficulty with a macro for something like Avenger's Shield is that I often find myself using it during fights when it comes off cooldown after the pull for a bit of extra threat/damage. It's not exactly mana-efficient, but I've found that I get plenty of mana returns from heals alone in heroics/raids such that as long as I'm taking damage, mana is a non-issue. The last thing you want is to be spamming your party/raid members with a raid warning every time you use Avenger's Shield, and having two buttons for it (one with the /rw and one without) would be a bit redundant, especially when we already have so many buttons to bind in a convenient spot to begin with.

Yes.. Righteous Defense can now be cast directly on the mob, ever since patch 2.4. The spell still does the same thing, it actually hits your friendly target, so they need to be in range, but you can use it directly on something that's attacking them -- as if it has already been macroed.

I still have my macro though -- because I'm too lazy to change it. I use a similar Hand of Protection macro as well, except I have mine set up as a mouse-over macro, so I dont have to change my target at all -- just mouseover and hit the key. I usually just put the mouse over the unit frame of the person I want to taunt off of, but putting it over the mob would work too.

Along the same lines, is there a macro (or add-on) that would help quick target a group member that is either getting close or has stolen threat so I can throw a BoSalv on them plus the HoProt?

Or am I just going to have to do it the old way :( .