[PvE] Macro Help - World of Warcraft (2024)

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 11:26 am

I'm trying to setup a macro for my Disc Priest.....I have done them before for my Ret Pally but this one seems to elude me. I have the Glyph of Holy Fire to make it instant cast. So, this is what i was trying to do. Click my target then have a macro button to cast Holy Fire, Shadow Word: Pain and Shadowfiend. Here is the macro I created:

/cast Holy Fire
/cast Shadow Word: Pain
/cast Shadowfiend

My problem is that it only casts the first spell....no matter what order i have it in. Maybe someone here can shed some light as to what i am doing wrong. The macro I made for my ret pally has the same setup and works just fine, which is why i'm confused about why the above macro isn't working.

Thanks!

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 11:26 am ·

warcraft Myrthynn

cymraeg

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 11:32 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 11:32 am ·

McBrain to azinator

Member

2012-Sep-20 11:46 am

#showtooltip Holy Fire
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/castsequence reset=combat/target/10 Holy Fire, Shadow Word: Pain, Shadowfiend
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

That should work, just hit the macro button 3 times in order for it to cycle through the cast sequence. reset=combat/target/10 means that the sequence will reset if you dont cast the macro after 10 seconds, and/or if you leave combat. The /console and /run portions should get rid of error sounds and messages on your ui from spamming the macro when fiend is on CD.

Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll tweak it for you.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 11:46 am ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 11:49 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 11:49 am ·

bTU to azinator

Member

2012-Sep-20 12:45 pm

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 12:45 pm ·

Vinceruos_t
join:2012-05-04

Vinceruos_t

Member

2012-Sep-20 12:48 pm

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 12:48 pm ·

McBrain to bTU

Member

2012-Sep-20 12:48 pm

Here is a pretty good site (for priests specifically) that has some good macros written out. Look around in the macro forum and you will find some good explanations about the macros themselves.

»howtopriest.com/viewforu ··· php?f=18

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 12:48 pm ·

Nick D to McBrain

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 1:00 pm

Going to piggyback off Brain's post to explain why his would work and azinator's original doesn't. Cym alludes to this, but I think its worth making more explicit.

Note: I am not a macro expert, and I often forget/don't know specifics. But they aren't conceptually complicated. People just think they're magic.

Macros are just slash commands you can keybind. You could type "/cast Holy Fire" into your text box and it would cast a spell. This knowledge comes in handy when you want to bind /love so you can love all the squirrels.

You have multiple cast commands in sequence, like azinator's original example.

HOWEVER, this is the big gotcha: multiple commands in sequence can never do something that individual keybinds would not let you do.

That means anything that triggers a GCD (which is 90% of spells in the game) cannot be set up as a bunch of cast commands in a row. The macro will stop as soon as a GCD is hit. If you wanted to have a trinket + spell macro, you need to put trinkets before the spell that incurs the GCD.

McBrain's castsequence version just updates the spell the button will cast after the GCD is met. This is fine, because you have to hit the button each time. So each time the macro executes the whole thing once, the castsequence will update the spell to SW:P or Fiend, and do its SFX/UIErrorsFrame clear (which mostly gets rid of the "ability not ready yet" noises and text).

Another note: probably want to remove the Holy Fire line from #showtooltip, so that the tooltip actually updates to SW:P and Fiend when that sequence is up. As written, it will always show the Holy Fire icon.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:00 pm ·

mettachain to azinator

Member

2012-Sep-20 1:02 pm

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:02 pm ·

McBrain

Member

2012-Sep-20 1:08 pm

Or people with disabilities.

There's a huge argument going on at howtopriest.com about cast sequence macros...I used one on my Shadow Priest forever, it just makes sh*t easy. Could I do things better if I casted each spell myself? Probably...but I get about 97% performance from the macro, while allowing me to pay more attention to the bad sh*t on the floor, or other encounter mechanics. I don't use it all the time, I hard cast in AoE situations and during certain phases of certain encounters. But I wouldn't have loved my priest the way I did without the macro I used.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:08 pm ·

mettachain

Member

2012-Sep-20 1:10 pm

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:10 pm ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer to azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 1:27 pm

Only slightly related, Patch 5.0.4 broke my wife's focus assist macros on her hunter. I didn't see anything in the patch notes, but the shortcut

/cast [@focustarget, nodead, harm][target] Judgement 

stopped working. I had to revert her macros back to the old-school

/cast [target=focustarget, nodead, harm][target] Judgement 

I think I also had to change my smite and holy fire macros to get rid of the "@mouseover" shortcut.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:27 pm ·

warcraft Myrthynn

cymraeg

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 1:30 pm

immer just take the nodead bit out, my mouseover macros were a bit stuck till i did that now for like Penance i just use

/cast [@mouseover,help,harm] Penance

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 1:30 pm ·

Cake09 to azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 4:06 pm

2 more cents on macros

For issues with PW:S if you attempt to cast too early (and binding heal if you mouseover wrong target when casting), I found that adding a /use 1 line works. If you are not familiar with it, it would turn your cursor blue and you would be unable to cast anything until you canceled it.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] spell
/use 1

The PW:S issue came up after the last patch. It was very annoying, I spin the mousewheel to cast it between chain CCs and it caused un needed deaths before I looked up a fix.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 4:06 pm ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer to cymraeg

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 4:10 pm

Interesting... I hadn't tried that.

however, I am not sure I want to eliminate the nodead argument (weird that it would break only the @ shortcut). Because I use order of operations, I want the spell to fire when I hit the button, the macro is just helping prioritize the target... if the tank (or dps) hasn't switched targets yet when I'm firing the spell, I want the next target to fire... i don't want "Not a Valid Target", or "Target is Dead".

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 4:10 pm ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator to McBrain

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 5:17 pm

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 5:17 pm ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 5:20 pm

because the ret pally abilities have cooldowns longer than the GCD. DoTs only suffer from the GCD, so setting them up without the cast sequence will force you to spam the button, but it will just keep applying the first dot.

your approach only works if the first ability is still on cooldown when you hit the button for the last ability.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 5:20 pm ·

Nick D to azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 6:16 pm

There are instant spells that kick off a GCD and instant spells that do not. Using +DPS CDs do not incur a GCD, and actual spells that do damage kicks off the GCD.

So if your pally macro is a bunch of non-GCD stuff (Avenging Wrath, GotAK, ... I can't think of anything else ...) followed by one GCD spell, it works great.

Otherwise, what immer said.

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 6:16 pm ·

warcraft Myrthynn

cymraeg to azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-20 8:00 pm

you original macro would need time resets for the global, in doing that you would basically be waiting the global before it casted the next spell so yes you could make them all cast on their own but, it would still take the time for the global it would be a good macro for moving, but if youre standing still just use Macs macro.

as an example it would look like this

/cast [reset=1.3] holy fire
/cast [reset=1.3] shadow word:pain
/cast shadowfiend
/cast shadowcrawl
/petattack

something to that affect i havent used a time reset in a very long time

· actions · 2012-Sep-20 8:00 pm ·

McBrain

Member

2012-Sep-21 7:57 am

I'm pretty sure shadowcrawl is autocast by the fiend now...I could be wrong though. Not that it really matters because that particular macro isn't close to the 255 character limit.

I rewrote my sPriest macro when 5.0.4 came out because Squinky isn't around to make them for us anymore...I came up with this, and it works really, really well. So well, that I honestly believe the macro reaches 99.9% of my toon's dps potential in a patchwerk style fight. The key with cast sequence macros is that you have to understand when the ideal time to use the macro is and when you should be hard casting in order to achieve the best dps. Macros aren't for everyone, and they definitely aren't for every situation. But I believe that there is a certain demographic that benefits from them being around, i.e. players with handicaps, raid leaders, etc. I think macro users are a lot like people who are clickers...there's a stigma around them and people like to put them down, until they meet a clicker like Ghastlyone that completely dominates them on the meters. Like I said, I've used a cast sequence macro for a long time on my Priest, and I am hard-pressed to find another sPriest with equal gear that can outperform me.

/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=target/4 Shadow Word: Pain,Vampiric Touch,Mind Blast,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Blast,Shadow Word: Pain,Vampiric Touch,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Blast,Devouring Plague,Mind Flay/cast Shadowfiend/use item:7634 

What I learned from this is that you don't need spaces after the commas separating your spells, [nochanneling] causes Mind Flay not to be interrupted by another spell when you're spamming your macro, and /use item: 7634 is shorthand for /use Gloves of Dying Light (Engineer Tinker). The best thing I think I learned while trying to write a good cast sequence macro is that the macros themselves are more flexible than we think. The macro listed above is 253 characters and can be used in the default macro interface. Which is awesome because most cast sequence macros require a macro extender add-on.

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 7:57 am ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 9:40 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 9:40 am ·

McBrain

Member

2012-Sep-21 10:23 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:23 am ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:30 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:30 am ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator to McBrain

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:31 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:31 am ·

McBrain

Member

2012-Sep-21 10:32 am

I'm lazy too, but for me it helps more with raid awareness and dealing with other distractions like wife aggro or 19 month old add phases.

If I can spam my macro for a minute or two, it frees my mind to deal with fight mechanics or real life happenings.

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:32 am ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:37 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:37 am ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer to McBrain

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:38 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:38 am ·

warcraft Azthehealer

azinator

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:39 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:39 am ·

warcraft Immerweise

Immer

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:42 am

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:42 am ·

warcraft

Ginjer

Premium Member

2012-Sep-21 10:53 am

Story of my life there. By the time both kiddos are down, it is past 8 eastern. At that point I try to wake myself up enough to accomplish something.

· actions · 2012-Sep-21 10:53 am ·