/cast [focustarget] Kill Shot; Distracting Shot

I’m gonna play around and see if this could work.

/stopmacro [target=Deathbring Saurfang]

(or put his unit id there)

While I agree that Distracting Shot isn’t needed as part of a rotation (and is often a wasted gcd when you already have agro), don’t listen to anyone who tells you to not use it at all. Pulling a Blood Beast off someone is a very important thing we can do, and Distracting Shot is often essential for when such a person has already generated a lot of threat.

On a side note, on my 25 this past week a warrior pug kept yelling at me and the hunters for using Distracting Shots in their rotations to pull the blood beasts- apparently he had an add-on that detected shots being fired off.

So other hunters be warned should you pug the tanks may yell at you and ban you from using distracting shots.

The no option doesn’t seem to work with other unitIDs, though. A “[no @focus]” will just cause the game to not understand your macro.

Copied from wowwiki UnitID page:

“bossN”
The active bosses of the current encounter if available N (1,2,3). (Added in 3.3.0)

so the macro would be
/cast [no @boss1] Distracting Shot

I haven’t tested it so you would need to make sure you have the right number for Saurfang.

While this doesn’t check you are targeting a blood beast it does make sure your aren’t targeting the boss which I think was the main objective.

However, regardless, I agree that it’s not likely that such a macro exists.

We’ve usually got a melee able to call it out, so if they can just mark it instead, then a hunter can grab it with a macro. I like that.

I do use a Distracting macro for the Beasts (along with Silencing and anything else not on the GCD). But only in our 10M, where there’s only 2 of them, one on each side, and the chances of targeting the wrong one or screwing up some other way are minimal. But alas, I can’t help you with your wished-for BB macro. Good luck.

For instance, say you have to DS a Blood Beast that is on the melee. The Beast you’re kiting is probably closer to you, so the macro you’ve described would only send a Distracting Shot to the one you’re kiting. At the same time, a hasty retarget to the Blood Beast on the melee could cause you to accidentally target the boss instead. That’s why I want a macro that prevents DSing Saurfang but doesn’t merely target the nearest Blood Beast.

Also, the macro you’ve written will cause you to shoot Saurfang with Distracting Shot if the the Blood Beast isn’t in range, which would be bad.

3. I’ve tried out lots of macros like that. While they do preclude shooting Saurfang with DS, they don’t allow you to stay on the Blood Beast you’ve chosen. Rather, they move your target to being the nearest Blood Beast. On 10man, this doesn’t matter so much, but on 25man I often find myself needed to taunt a beast that isn’t the nearest one. It’s that problem that prompts my challenge in the post.

This will target the Blood Beast, Distracting Shot, and then target your previous target.

Done and done.

2. You can shrink your macro:

/cast [mod:alt, target=focustarget] Explosive Shot; Explosive Shot

to

/cast [mod:alt,@focustarget][harm]Explosive Shot

3. Great macro I using for kiting Blood Beasts on Saurfang:

/cleartarget
/targetexact Blood Beast
/stopmacro [noexists]
/script SetRaidTarget(“target”, 1);
/cast Distracting Shot
/y Nuke Star!

Love, all other DPS classes.