Aspect dancing is the practice of switching aspects in between shots to gain access to different benefits, much like druids shift forms and warriors switch stances. (Frostheim has an excellent guide on the merits of aspect dancing here.) Once the announced changes to Aspect of the Hawk take effect, aspect dancing will become all the more crucial to pay attention to because any extended period of time spent in Aspect of the Fox will be a very substantial dps loss. At the same time, skipping Steady or Cobra Shots due to movement remains a huge loss as well. We’ll be left in a position, then, where we will want to spend as little time as possible in AotF but will still want to have it up before any Steady or Cobra cast during which we will have to move. How can we go about making these snap transitions as smooth and fast as possible? One general approach is to use macros, and that will be the focus of this post, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other good ways to change aspects.
Edit: Some commenters, as you can read below, are reporting issues with macros that combine aspect switching with shots. If you’re having such issues yourself, remember that a separate macro for switching aspects does work just fine.
The Goals
Let’s establish some goals for our macro of choice.
- It should allow for or create concurrent actions. Because aspect activations are off the global cooldown, activating one and then finding a shot to fire is a dps loss. We want to be able to switch aspects and fire a shot at the same time.
- The macro should be smart. We want it to switch to the aspect we want rather than, say, cycle through aspects until we find the right one as in a bad
/castsequencemacro. - It should be efficient. Fewer hardware events = less to keep track of (and hopefully less to screw up).
- It should be fast. We don’t want to have to search on an actionbar for the right aspect. We don’t want to have to scroll through a bunch of aspects to find the right one.
The Limitations
There are also some boundaries to what we can do with aspect-swtiching macros.
- Unlike warriors and druids, we don’t have macro conditionals for our ’forms’ (such as
[stance:3]for Berserker Stance). Because of this, we can’t make smart macros that switch aspects based on the aspect we’re in. - Even though aspect activations are off the global, they can’t be performed in the middle of a cast.
Distinct Macros
One option for aspect switching is to create a distinct macro that is activated sepparately but at the same time as a shot. An advantage to this approach is that it does not, say, hardcode our aspects to our shots, and so it consequently leaves us with more freedom when it comes to switching aspects.
Importantly, we want this macro to be keybound or bound to some other piece of hardware (like a scroll wheel) so that it can be hit at the same time a shot is activated. It’s also worth noting that you can queue aspect switches, just like you queue shots, and so you don’t have to wait to use this macro until a cast is full done or a global fully cycled through.
The first macro is a modified version of Frostheim’s macro. It works the same but has the unrecognized conditionals removed.
/cast Aspect of the Hawk
/cast Aspect of the Fox
The way it functions is that it will always put you in Aspect of the Hawk if you have no aspect or a different aspect running. However, if you’re already in AotH, it will toggle off AotH and cast Aspect of the Fox. Unfortunately, this toggling occurs even if you can’t cast AotF. So, for example, if you’re in the middle of a cast with AotH on and you hit it, you’ll actually turn off AotH without turning on AotF. We can’t disable the toggling because then AotF would never get cast.
/castsequence !Aspect of the Hawk, !Aspect of the Fox
This second macro works much the same. It casts AotF if AotH was most recently cast using the macro, and vice-versa. The exclamation points disable toggling, and so you won’t be left aspect-less if you hit it a millisecond too early during a Cobra Shot. However, it has the severe restriction of holding you into a sequence. If you pop into Aspect of the Cheetah for a while, it will pick up where you left off in the sequence and not necessarily where you want to be. It also won’t recognize that you’re already in AotH the first time you use it; it will cast Aspect of the Hawk first and Aspect of the Fox second, regardless of what aspect you’re in.
Macro’d With Shots
It is also possible to macro aspect changes to your shots. For all instants (for which you want to have AotH running), you could have something like:
#showtooltip instantshotname
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast instantshotname
And for the cast shot (Steady or Cobra), the macro would be something like:
/cast [mod] !Aspect of the Fox
/cast castshotname
These shot macros ensure that you’re always in AotH for your instant shots and that, providing you hit a modifier key (shift, alt, ctrl), you can switch to AotF at the start of your cast shot. What you don’t want to do, as Euripides pointed out in a recent Hunting Party Podcast, is leave your cast shot macro without the modifier conditional. Without it, you’re putting yourself in AotF every time you fire the focus regen shot, and that’s a dps loss in the situations where you’re standing still. The main disadvantage of these macros that I find is that hearing the AotH cast noise with every instant shot gets a bit annoying.
Hey bud, nice writeup – here’s a fix I posted on the forums for the Aspect Sounds.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2112512625
/salute
The main advantage of playing without sound while I raid is that I can cause auditory adversity for my raid with no problems on my side. Constantly recasting hawk is not that bad compared to raiding next to the LSD wasp of doom I managed to tame before they became untamable. Luckily, I only bring him out these days when I’ve been lifegripped somewhere annoying.
you can keybind the Spells if they’re on your action bar.
For me, F1 and F2 are Hawk and Fox. Makes for VERY easy switching.
The hunter master in my guild has a G 15 so he has the macro keys on the side of his keyboard. he doesnt use them. Except to switch aspects.
Macro key 1 is hawk
Macro key 2 is fox
Macro key 3 is pack
Yeah, simple keybinds are great and entirely viable too. This post was limited to macros, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways of changing aspects.
The problem with:
#showtooltip instantshotname
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast instantshotname
is that you get a 0.2 sec delay I believe, so every time you shoot an Arcane, Chimera, or any other instant you’re being pushed back by fractions of a second. Over the course of a boss fight, this can be quite significant especially on movement fights if you’re incorporating Arcane Shots as MM. It’s better just to use:
/castsequence !Aspect of the Hawk, !Aspect of the Fox
and anticipate the need to move, and appropriately switch aspects.
You aren’t supposed to get a delay… have you tested this? Can you show in a log that the delay is more than your standard latency? Have you fixed your settings so you can queue up abilities on the server?
How can I make this fix in my settings?
I’ve tested this macro as well:
#showtooltip instantshotname
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast instantshotname
I get lower dps on the dummy under same cirumstances.
Greets
Ara
Dont know if its true as i havent had a chance to test it yet, but some people are claiming that with that macro you have to mash the button twice in order to actually get your shot to fire.
I dont know if this is what is causeing the 0.2 sec delay, but i know i will spam my keybind untill that shot is fired, so i would never notice if i actually have to hit the button twice or not. When i get home i will test this though and find out.
@strutt
That’s interesting as I set my macros up tonight and noticed I was having this problem (having to mash the instant cast shot twice to get it to fire off once) whereas in the past, in the same conditions without macros, I was not having this issue. Think I take out the macros and go back to changing aspects with the macros only. Will report back after more testing. At least it’s not just me!
The instant aimed shot proc caused problems with aspect changing macros. There is a fix over on AJ for this. It’s a neat solution that should also work for similar issues should we get them in future.
Compliments to my DK friend Jareddawg
I made a macro, with my friends help, that allows us Hunters to Aimed shot! while moving. (instead of the macro buggin out)
WITH BARETENDER
1) Type /FRAMESTACK
– You’ll see a box pop up
2) Put a Aimed Shot on a separate button by itself and mouse-over that button, you should see something like BT4 Button XX
3) Make the macro (In my case)
– #showtooltip Aimed Shot
–/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
–/click BT4Button51
DEFAULT UI NOTE
– You will see ” ActionButtonX” instead of ” BT 4 Button XX”
Original:
http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/193811-macro-for-aimed-shot-while-moving-fixed/
Hello all,
I have posted this in Frosthelm’s site for advice as well.
Thank you for the macro guidance. I like using macros when possible. With the information provided here I was able to make a few combined macros. Though I have tried to analyze the workings of my macros I am not able to determine whether they are working as intended and could use some helpful advice and suggestions.
The macro is as follows:
#showtooltip chimera shot (This line is replaced with other instant shots – arcane, aimed, etc)
#show chimera shot (This line is replaced with other instant shots – arcane, aimed, etc)
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast chimera shot (This line is replaced with other instant shots – arcane, aimed, etc)
/cast silencing shot
The equivalent Steady Shot or Cobra Shot is as follows:
#showtooltip Steady Shot (This line is replaced with Cobra Shot)
#show Steady Shot (This line is replaced with Cobra Shot)
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast !Aspect of the Fox
/cast Steady Shot (This line is replaced with Cobra Shot)
Could you like give me your analysis of these macros and tell me if they are working correctly. If they need corrections please suggest.
Somehow during an actuallly fight the macro does not seem to be working the shots properly. Could you please double check this and give me some pointers please?
Your macros seem to be written as if this were still WotLK. A lot has changed with Cataclysm and so you should be careful to not follow old macro guides.
Kill Command is on the global now and so by including it you’re preventing your shot from firing.
Don’t include Rapid Fire and Call of the Wild in shot macros.
A #show line is redundant if you already have #showtooltip.
Silencing Shot no longer does damage and so there is no reason to macro it into your rotation.
Also, please re-read the post above. You don’t want to macro an unadorned /cast !Aspect of the Fox onto your steadies/cobras.
For the Aspect of the Fox macro..the [mod] part..do i actually write in [mod]? or what do i put in between brackets?
Yes, you actually put in [mod].
I spent most of the night trying to figure out my aspect dancing (fox and hawk). I keep going between manually controlling (with mouse wheel up\down) and including in macros with shots. Disabling the annoying sounds is buggy for me. I use sounds a lot during fights to tell me \ warn me of things (e.g. I have a cat meow at me when focus capped).
I created two scripts. One’s mapped to Steady and Cobra. The other is Acrcane. I get a nice night elf chick doing a rasberry at me if:
a) I am moving w\o fox and trying to cast a steady or cobra
b) I am not moving w\o hawk and I’m trying to cast arcane
These are simple audio warnings that help with manually dancing.
Arcane:
/script if GetUnitSpeed(“Player”)==0 and not UnitAura(“player”,”Aspect of the Hawk”) then PlaySoundFile(“Sound\\Character\\BloodElf\\BloodElfFemaleRaspberry01.wav”);end
Stead \ Cobra:
/script if GetUnitSpeed(“Player”)>0 and not UnitAura(“player”,”Aspect of the Fox”) then PlaySoundFile(“Sound\\Character\\BloodElf\\BloodElfFemaleRaspberry01.wav”);end
qq: I wish we could have our aspects unprotected to use CastSpellByName