I covered the shot priorities list. Now it’s time for macros. Some of you are thinking “Macros? I thought you said not to macro shots, just to weave them manually based on what’s available and highest priority?”. This is correct! However, and I went over this in the last patch, it’s fine to take all your instant non-global cooldown abilities that you want fired as often as possible and macro those into your shots. No /castsequences, though. Those cost you DPS, and every time you post one on the internet, Chuthlu kills a kitten.
Some people believe that they get better DPS by holding off on cooldowns until a heroism. This is based on the fact that heroism magnifies everything you do by 30%, however now that you’re not guaranteed to get one every fight (exhaustion now lasts 10 minutes), I believe it’s best to use cooldowns and trinkets as often as they come up. You might do a little less during enrages, but you’ll be doing more overall considering the fact that sometimes shamans die, and sometimes you’ll have the debuff for the whole fight.
Since 3.1, and into 3.2, all I need to have macroed is:
- Rapid fire
- Kill command
- Trinkets
I put these into every single one of my shots, That’s right, I put it into explosive shot, black arrow, serpent sting, aimed shot, steady shot, and kill shot. I’ve created a macro for each of these that looks like this:
#showtooltip Kill Shot
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Kill Shot
Simply replace “kill shot” with the name of the shot you’re macroing. Also, unless you want a different icon for the macro than you wanted for the shot, use the “?” icon selected by default, and it will automatically show the icon of your shot.
If you don’t have trinkets with “on use” abilities (surprisingly rare in Wrath of the Lich King content), skip those “/use 13″ and “/use 14″ lines.
Nice job on the macros. I do this as well. Not only does this save keystrokes, but it ensures that you use all of your long cooldown abilities.
I used to try and wait for the perfect moment to use things like Rapid Fire. More often than not that moment would never come and I’d forget to use the ability.
Can I do something like that?
#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Kill Command
/cast Explosive Shot
nope, but only because you have multiple things in there that trigger a global cooldown. You can have one GCD per macro. In this case, at least hunter’s mark and your shot.
Thank you very much.
U ROCK man!!!!
Welcome!
no, hunter’s mark has a gcd. other than that it’s great. I have that exact one without mark but I also have track humanoids in case I was just on beast or something.
I find this post very useful but I do have one question. Do you currently happen to have a shot macro that does not hangup on ES and so that SS and BA actually fire off, I’ve been messing around for the past 3 days now on trying to get one to go, but so far it has been a no go >_> I would greatly appreciate this (=
If you’re asking for a castsequence macro, no. They don’t work, and can’t be made to work without breaking the terms of service. The only macros you will need are ones that have a single ability that costs a global cooldown, as well as any instants you want before that.
I am just going to jump in and say Euripdes, you speak wise words. I followed your advice and gave up making a kill shot macro as I you will always do higher dps by just simply adding it to a keybinding. But I am going to disagree with this macro advice.
For general grinding, sure these seem ok. But for raids, a def no no.
Just using an Ulduar fight for example, razorscale. We dps need to deal as much damage as possible when she is grounded on the floor. That means popping our cooldowns and do mental dps! Now with these macros I will have popped all my trinkets, and my 5 min rapidfire cooldown on trash and deal fairly poor dps on razorscale when the time comes.
Now razorscale is just an example but its the case with loads of bosses.
Rapidfire also really works best in certan situations as it heavily reduces your steady shot time. So at the beg of a fight when you fire your shots and dots its best use it after that and spam loads of steady shots during your shot cool downs.
Sorry for disagreeing and being rather vocal about it but sorry, I really consider this bad advice.
Sorry and many thanks.
Gaseraki
Thanks for the comment. I built my systems assuming that higher average DPS is the best for all the content. Razorscale is indeed an exception. I had to create a new action bar for him that had no instant casts before my shots, so I could switch to my old macroed shots when she landed. I’m probably going to go over that when I start writing hunter guides for Ulduar bosses :)
Hi Euripides,
Like Gaseraki I disagree with your macro, mainly because I don’t want to blow my rapid fire and trinkets on something that may be dead within a few seconds.
I prefer throwing kill command, trinket activations, etc. only onto BA and SrS because I only use those dots when I know I’ll be shooting something for a least a little while. I attach nothing to kill shot because (especially in heroics) I’m often ending a fight with kill shot.
Right, kill shot is probably a bad example. I, however, do use BA on trash. But adding your instants to a shot you only use on bosses is certainly a good idea if you have such a shot.
I’m a little old-school about it as well. I like having Rapid Fire separate because of the long cooldown. And I only have on use trinkets for special occasions.
Also FWIW, if a fight has a few phases where Heroism/BL are useful, I’ll usually let Heroism take one and do Rapid Fire on the other. It’s true that you get more dps if you combine them, but often raid-conditions can force you to move and waste dps. I’d rather spread out the risk and be more consistent than risk my dps doing a nose-dive.
As I get better with the content I do, I also sometimes remove the cooldowns from my shots- on Hodir when I was marks, for example, I would try to blow rapid fire when I had all three buffs and had at least 30 seconds until the next flash freeze. In fact, my benchmark Hodir DPS of 12000 was achieved in part because of that. Of course, Hodir is essentially a RNG fight and I happened to luck out, but the rapid fire didn’t hurt.
So am I correct that I replace the “#” with “?”..? Also, I used a macro during BC as a BM hunter and loved it. I guess I am lazy because all i did was spam my macro and DPS was great.
With the macro you have do I just add the shot i want to do and hit it? Basically my rotaion is ES>BA>SerS>MS>SS and then hit ES and MS when they are up and re-apply BA and SerS when needed. I tend to hold off on Kill Command and Rapid Fire untill I have herorism and or when just on the boss.
I am wondering if macroing it all would be better for me?
You do not replace the # with a ?, but when you create the macro, before you can paste in the text, you have to choose an icon. Choose the first one, a question mark. This will make the macro button show the image for the shot you use without having to find it.
You will need to create one of these for each of your shots, but just so you know, your rotation is a little off. You want to keep more of a priority list: see the survival rotation post for more details.
Cool thx..I will look at this today when I am on…Also, I can just remove the trinkets part of the macro correct? The 2 trinkets I use dont have “Use” procs. They are “Equip” ones.
yup, just don’t include them in your macro.
Ok, new to macroing, I have, as an example:
#showtooltip Serpent Sting
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Kill Command
/cast Serpent Sting
And at no time is Serpent Sting being cast. I also have left out the trinket lines as I have no cd trinkets, both rely on procs. Where am I going wrong? Please and thanks in advance.
Just tried it, worked for me. Double check it’s nothing silly like a spelling problem…
Too be sure you don’t get any miss spelling in your macro you can shift click the spell in your spellbook be sure that if you get a new rank of the spell you edit the macro or take out the (rank #) bit
hope that makes sense and helps some1 out there
Banor
I forgot about that- thanks for the tip!
Ok, now with the below…will have have to click the same button twice(once for each one) or will they all automatically go off one after the other?
#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/cast Kill Command
/cast Explosive Shot
edit: Also, if KC is on cool down, will it delay my ES?
Because kill command is off the global cooldown, you only need to press it once, and it will never delay your explosive shot. All instants that are off the global cooldown have this in common- MM hunters do this with silencing shot, for example.
Ok, so while a shot it on GCD, it will essencially “Skip” is and automatically go to the next one? I think I got it… =)
There are two types of instant shots- those that trigger a global cooldown, and those that don’t. A macro can fire as many non-triggering abilities as you have, but can only contain one global cooldown triggering ability.
I just find it hard to think I could simultaniously case KC and ES at the same time with one push of a button if KC is up…
How do i get blood fury into my macro? it either just used my trinket when i use the above macro or if i change/add /cast blood fury it only uses bloodfury and not trinket? thanks
You can only have one global cooldown per macro. Does blood fury cause a GCD? Can you use it while you’re already in one?
Im know im slow on the comment, but thanks for the guide. Great advice. I found that i was getting spammed quiet a lot by “blah is not ready yet” ect so added the follow code the the bottom of each macro :) keeps things clean
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Thanks again for the advice
Welcome, and thanks for the tip. I actually used to use something like that, however opted to get the spam. I didn’t want to risk clearing a message I needed to see.
I am lead to believe that it only clears messages related to the macro. I still have all errors for out of range and not facing target ect still show. Personal preference i spose :)
I’m working with the macros…thanks!…and have a question about cooldown timers…..how do you monitor them? The cooldown time on the icon tics for the longest cooldown listed in the macro, Rapid Fire. But the cooldown on Explosive Shot is already up and ready to go. I ended up leaving the standard icons for the shots on the toolbar to monitor this…is there an easier way?
If you insert #showtooltip as the first line of your macro, it will correctly display the ability and the cooldown, just like the normal button.
Darn spaces! :)
Thanks, you’re the best!
Thanks for all the advice, you always do great guides!
A macro I find great is:
/petattack
/cast kill command
/cast hunter’s mark
Very simple but I use it every time I change targets, keeps me and the pet synchronised makes sure KC and HM are always used :)
Problem with that is that your hunters mark might be overwriting another one. Other than that, it’s solid. I don’t do that any more, but I used to have one just like it.
I’m glad you answered that so fast.
I didn’t realise normal hunter’s mark would overwrite Improved Hunter’s mark.
Guess I will stop being so lazy, or just use it when no-one has imp HM lol.
Thx a lot :)