OutDPS!

[Rip's editor's note: Hi folks, today's post is the first OutDPS hunter PvP post! Since I'm a mouth breathing, key turning, button mashing, terribad PvP hunter, I invited someone with a real arena rating to write about this. Put your hands together for Jurgwena! (And yes, that's his real personal rating on his 5v5 team)]

This will be the first post in a series about Hunters in arenas. Don’t expect an emo cryfest about the state of hunter pvp. We’ve been dealt a hand, and it’s up to us to play that hand to the best of our ability. For the first round of posts I plan to discuss the tools (like macros and mods) that’ll help you win games.

Arenas have been out for a long time, and if you’ve dabbled in them at all, you’ve probably wondered what kinds of macros other hunters use. The answer is that we all use the amount and type of macros that we feel comfortable with, and just because I use a macro to do one job doesn’t mean you can’t do the same job manually. Macros are meant to simplify your life, not complicate it, and no one says you need to adopt any or all of these macros right away. Without further ado, my macro list:

AP trinkets and whatnot

/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Berserking
/use Platinum Disks of Battle
/use Wrathstone

Pretty self-explanatory, this is the button I push when it’s time to kill someone. If you aren’t a troll that can go berserk, remove that line. I rarely use a ferocity pet in arenas, but call of the wild is there just in case. Also, I don’t use Disks and Wrathstone at the same time, but when I swap between them I don’t want to have to change my macro.

When you drop a frost trap in the center of Nagrand arena and a shaman activates it, alarm bells should be going off in your head that tell you to use this macro. Basically, as soon as an opportunity presents itself, use this to do maximum dps on a target who won’t be able to get away quickly, and the sooner you use it the better. Arenas don’t last long, and you never know when an opportunity to kill someone may have passed you by forever.

/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Deterrence

This is a macro that many hunters probably don’t use. We can’t attack when hand of protection or deterrence are active (although you can and should be putting up a hunter’s mark and/or dropping a trap), but if the players attacking us have realized that our active defenses are up and begin to swap to your teammate, you’re going to want to hit this macro to cancel those defenses and unload while their back is turned. The reason most hunters don’t use this macro is because you can also simply bind it to the other shots you’re most likely to cancel deterrence or bop in order to use, like scatter, aimed, or silencing shot like this:

/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast Silencing Shot

It’s all personal preference, and if you can’t spare the keybinds, then just do it the second way, and you won’t have to push an extra button.

Next up, the fabled totemstomping macro:

/petattack [target=Mana Tide Totem, Harm]
/petattack [target=Earthbind Totem, Harm]
/petattack [target=Cleansing Totem, Harm]
/petattack [target=Tremor Totem, Harm]
/petattack [target=Grounding Totem, Harm]

Caveat Emptor: Using a macro like this has its drawbacks, and it won’t work in patch 3.2. That’s all I’ll say.

#showtooltip Flare
/cast !Flare

This lets you spam your flare key without constantly toggling the giant green targeting circle on and off. Hit this button as many times as you want while waiting for an available global cooldown, the green circle won’t go away until you hit escape or cast the flare! Also works for volley and freezing arrow.

#show Intervene
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=player] Intervene

This is a mouseover macro. You can use this for any ability that requires a target. I mainly use it for pet abilities like intervene, master’s call, and roar of sacrifice. You can mouseover someone on your party frames or a focus frame, but if you aren’t hovering over something with your cursor, the ability will go off on yourself by default. Very useful. And here is the variant that lets you put your pet on something without losing your target:

/petattack [target=mouseover,exists,harm][exists]

If you aren’t hovering over something when you hit this macro, by default your pet will attack your current target. This will be great for totemstomping next patch.

/cast Last Stand
/cast Bullheaded
/cast Heart of the Phoenix
/cast Call of the Wild

One button takes care of 3 different pet families! Yay!

/petattack [target=focus]

Didn’t think you could do this? Well you can, and it’s probably the button I hit the most in arenas, besides explosive shot. Gotta land them pet pummels, dawg.

/cast [target=focus] Scatter Shot

Put anything you want in place of scatter shot. This type of macro is a must have in arenas. Back in BC I bound my viper sting – focus macro to my mousewheel ;)

/cast [target=pettarget] Pummel

Make sure your Gorilla actually has a target before hitting this macro or this button will do nothing.

/use Furious Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets
/use Gloves of the Steady Hand
/cast Kill Shot

Since I’m an engineer and I use rocket gloves, I created this macro to free up keybinds, which is crucial. Always look to streamline your keybinds in this way.

/script for i = 1, 170, 1 do DoEmote(getglobal("EMOTE"..i.."_TOKEN")) end

This macro will spam every emote in the game. I don’t recommend it in arenas, but it’s perfect for when officers are taking tells on loot ;) [ed note: by reading these words, you have just relinquished your right to QQ about being gkicked by following our advice. Sucka.]

That does it for the first installment of OutDPS – Arena. In a few days, I’ll post my 2 copper on setting up a usable arena UI. Feel free to comment below or PM me on arenajunkies.com if you have further questions.