Project Lore

First things first, what is a macro and why would you use them?  At the most basic level macros are a simple way to extend the functionality of the game, which is why players use them.  Because we are lazy.  To access the macro area type /m in the chat box.

One of the most basic macros that is often used is the ventrilo macro.

/g Server = my.ventriloserver.com
/g Port = 1337
/g Password = qwerty

By saving the information to a macro you'll never have to type it out again!  Proof that the system is useful already.  Many of the macros I showed yesterday followed this design, simple yet useful commands to save time and enable my brain to focus on other things.  The DPS increase is also nice.

Clicking your spell buttons on your hotbar is actually the same as using a macro.  You can replace every single button with a macro that does the same thing, if you wanted.

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The war over the framerate issue brought on by Onyxia has been won.  But the dragon with cranial lizard properties did manage to score a victory, destroying my macros.  Again, I'm not sure how my macros disappeared into the digital abyss, they are supposed to be saved on server, but they did.  Since then I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to remember all of my macros, and additional time looking for new tricks.

I'll start off the list with my multi-class macros.

Random Pet:
/run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))

It doesn't seem perfectly random, but it does the trick.  Saved my sidebar from being full of vanity pet icons. :p

Random Flying or Ground Mount From List:
/run local g,f={a,b,c},{x,y,z};local z={["Dalaran"]=g,["Wintergrasp"]=g,["Krasus' Landing"]=f};f=z[GetSubZoneText()] or z[GetZoneText()] or (IsFlyableArea() and f) or g;z=(IsMounted() or CallCompanion("MOUNT", f[random(#f)])) and Dismount()

This is straight from WoWWiki.  I wasn't able to create a good one myself, and actually had a heck of a time trying to even find a solid random casting macro.  This is as close as I came.  It's limited by the macro character limit (255).  The mount collectors out there will have to narrow down their list substantially.  Replace a,b,c with a list of your ground mounts, and x,y,z with your flying mounts.  No spaces to save characters.

The mount in the top left of the first page of the mount list is 1, the bottom right of the first page is 12.  And so on.

Fishing:
#showtooltip
/equip [noequipped:Fishing Poles, mod] Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole
/equip [equipped:Fishing Poles, mod] Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat
/cast [nomod] Fishing

A simple fishing macro that gets you ready to do some anglin'.  To use the macro be sure to replace the gear I have listed with any gear you have.  Hold a button down, a modifier in macro lingo, and click it twice to equip your gear.  Click it a third time with no modifier to begin casting.  Don't come to me with stories about the one that got away.

Oh Shit! Button:
/s Fox! Get this guy off me!
/yell Fox! Get this guy off me!
/p Fox! Get this guy off me!
/raid Fox! Get this guy off me!

I think the name, and spam, gets the point across.  The macro is hardly ever used, it would get annoying, but it's fun to pull out here and there.  Although it effectively does nothing, it's the most enjoyable macro I've ever created.

Especially when someone gets it.  Had one DPSer scream "Do a barrel roll!" We wiped because I was laughing too hard to heal.

Here are my rogue macros.  Many of these are just time-saving, but they've helped my DPS by remembering crap for me.

Auto Attack:
#showtooltip Fan of Knives
/startattack
/cast Fan of Knives

I actually use a version of this macro for some of my openers and some basic attacks (Mutilate), but its use with Fan of Knives is often overlooked.  Since you won't start auto attacking when casting FoK, having a command bound to your FoK key is a good idea.  Personally, I know I often overlook right-clicking a mob or fear hitting 'T' to start attacking because I may turn it off.  Here's the no fail solution to guaranteeing that your still getting white damage while AoEing.

Trinket:
/use Name of Trinket
/cast Slice and Dice

I currently don't have any on use trinkets on Solidsamm, so this is currently unused.  During my leveling days I had tons, and that's where the basic macro came from.  Depending on the on use bonus you may want to fire off a trinket before Slice and Dice (additional attack speed) or before a finisher (more Attack Power for bigger numbers).  Easily merged into the Cold Blood Kill Shot macro (see below).

Throw/Deadly Throw Merge:
#show Deadly Throw
/cast deadly throw
/cast throw

Save an action bar button.

PvE Opener:
#showtooltip Pick Pocket
/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Garrote
/cast Cheap Shot
/stopcasting
/startattack

I changed my standard Pick Pocket button to this because I got sick of the mobs seeing me as I danced around or waited for looting to finish.  With auto loot enabled I can now run up to any mob with pockets, rob them blind and perform my opener.  If you're behind them you will squish them with a Garrote, the Cheap Shot covers you if you're in their face.

Spammable Stealth:
#showtooltip Stealth
/dismount
/cast [modifier: shift] Stealth; !Stealth

Don't worry about un-stealthing with this applied to your Stealth button.  Smash that key all day long!

Vanish:
/stopattack
/cleartarget
/cast Vanish

No accidental extra hits after vanishing with this.  Unless you right-click the target.  Dummy.

Cold Blood Kill Shot:
#showtooltip Envenom
/cast Cold Blood
/cast Envenom

This is another macro that I use with multiple abilities, my direct damage closers.  I've noticed my overall DD go up because the macro uses Cold Blood as often as possible, fitting more guaranteed crits in per raid run.  You may lose some DPS on a per-boss-fight basis, but if you don't blow CB on finishers with low combo points you should see an increase in overall destruction.

Tricks of the Trade:
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover] Tricks of the Trade
/script m=UnitName("mouseover"); if m then SendChatMessage("You've been boosted by Solidsamm's gnomish destructive properties for 6s. Make the best of it.", "WHISPER", nil, m); end

I blatantly stole this one from a forum (ElitistJerks I think), just adding a little flavor to the text.  My previous TotT macro was very basic, launching off my focus.  It often became useless when my focused ally died.  It's not a common occurrence but manually resetting the focus mid-fight is a pain.  The new macro simply applies TotT to whoever I mouseover, something I ended up doing anyways.  It also whispers them, but you can remove the second line if you please.

That's all I have right now.  I'll likely think of more in the future.  When I do I will drop them in the comments section.  Now that Solidsagart is level 80 and working her way to raiding I'll follow this informative post with a priest orientated in the future.  Feel free to share your tips and tricks in macro creation, any macro friendly sites you frequent, and any modifications you would recommend to the above content.  Especially on the mount macro.

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Blizzard is 100% serious about making us think before we chose to replace our items. While I still have not replaced much of my S2/T4 gear, I am finally at the level which this should start happening. At the moment I have only easily replaced four items, both of my craptacular trinkets from The Burning Crusade days and the rings to boot. The odd thing is, I have replaced my old pair of trinkets nearly three times over. That is right, I have a total of five trinkets that are an obvious improvement.

Of course, this is where the difficult choices Ghostcrawler discussed come in to play:

• First Mate's Pocketwatch
• Fury of the Crimson Drake
• Talon of Hatred
• Fury of the Encroaching Storm
• Death Knight's Anguish

Unfortunately, the WoWHead item comparison isn't of much help because of the trinkets possessing “Use” or “Chance on hit” buffs. Initially, I went back to min-maxing, a practice that I became to loathe so much from vanilla days. Rather than performing the calculations of average gains over time and all that crap, I just guestimated what was best, taking into account the vendor potential. And no, I didn't even bother checking shared cooldowns for swapping potential. I did check for this post though, the Pocketwatch is the only “Use” trinket not shared with the others' cooldown.

My thought process went something like this. Fury of the Crimson Drake is easily vendored once I look at that Pocketwatch, which beats it in every category. Due to my fast weapons, Death Knight's Anguish pops to its full extent (+150 crit) nearly every fight, adding a solid amount of +crit. To top it off it gives you two separate buffs, making me look more beefcake to the opposing faction and generally badass.

The second trinket seems like it will be a more difficult decision, Fury, Talon or Pocketwatch? Fury and Talon offer the same benefits, static +Haste with AP on use. Naturally the numbers are ever so slightly different, Talon with more haste but less AP. However, Fury is only on a one minute cooldown, meaning I can pop it twice as often. Seems like a good enough reason to beat out the Pocketwatch as well.

Pop in a simple macro and finito:

/use Fury of the Encroaching Storm

/cast Slice and Dice

Now that you are out of my head, you can see that I have finally recovered from obsessing over a small increase in DPS. The case can be made for using the later two “Use” trinkets, Fury and Pocketwatch, since they are on separate timers. The added haste over crit would probably increase DPS due to energy generation off of Focused Attacks, though, and again proving Ghostcrawler's point, I would be losing a chunk of +crit to get the haste. I am just gonna stop now...It'll all get replaced soon.

How do you guys go about these hard decisions? I have a few friends who just go for “whatever is cool,” rather than racking their or someone else's brain over the numbers. This goes for everything, armor, tabards, weapons, trinkets. If the gear is comparable the only stat they analyze is coolness. How I envy them.

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During the (incredibly short) leveling process my Priest was mostly specced Shadow, with a little bit of Discipline thrown in for good measure. Upon hitting level 60, and no longer gaining the benefits of the Refer-a-Friend program, I promptly respecced Holy. It has been three weeks since the change, and I feel that I can finally weigh in on my decision with a semblance of intelligence. In weeks past, Solidsagart has gone from level 60 to level 66, sheerly through instances (along with some dungeon-based quests). I stuck to dungeons so I could prepare myself for group healing. Not to mention the fact that the grind as Holy would totally suck. Initially, my healing ability was appaling; ADHD would kick in and I stopped paying attention, stopped looking at people's health, or decided that I was DPS again, and wasted all my mana trying to contribute to the chart. What can I say, old habits die hard. I decided that the best way to overcome my need for DPS was to stop playing my Rogue for awhile. For more than a solid week, Solidsagart was the only character I played, allowing me to hone my healing skills, and grab some respectable gear from the early Burning Crusade dungeons. Another obstacle I had was to get used to multi-target healing, rather than a single-target mindset. Thankfully, my spec has some built in utility for AoE healing. While on the topic of my spec, I have heeded some of the insights from the previous post's comments. I decided that Guardian Spirit is indeed, nearly useless (thanks Ryan) . Along those lines is Spirit of Redemption. The talent is very situational, and doesn't increase my healing unless used.  It has only made a difference once to date. So, I will be moving that SoR point and Guardian Spirit's into Holy Reach (thanks Claxo). I thought about moving two points from Searling Light to have full Inspiration (as PopeSeanPaul suggested), but decided that I wanted some DPS buff, for when I grind between instances. As a personal experiment I will be dropping Silent Resolve, moving the trio of points into Serendipity to help with mana conservation (numerous people pointed out the overheals issue). I would like to think that I do not burn too much mana off overheals, but I know I burn some. On the flip side, I have yet to pull aggro from the tank. Hopefully, I can maintain that statistic. The slightly modified spec now looks like this. I doubt I will get any raiding time in before Wrath of the Lich King, so that report will have to wait a few months. I would also like to thank the players (not Goggins) who pointed out Grid and Clique, they have been wonderful additions to my suite of addons. Groupmates have loved my "Oh, SHIT!" button. :p

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There certainly is a lot of activity on WoW after the latest patch. Everyone has new talents, abilities, and mechanics. After a bit of a rough start, especially for the Executus server with intermittent problems over a day after the patch, I managed to log on long enough to pick up my newest mount, the Big Blizzard Bear. Other than doing that, I was completely lost. No addons, no talents, missing spells, what was I to do? As enhancement, before 3.0, I pretty much knew what to do. I had all of my addons perfectly setup to make me the most efficient ass kicking machine ever. All of that is now in the past. One of the first things I needed to do after patching to do was set up Dominos, a replacement for my previous favorite action bar addon, Bongos. Then I went through to figure out where to put talents. My spec could probably use a little work after playing for a little bit. Next, I had to figure out what to actually do in order to kick ass post 3.0.2. I have a few new spells and talents that I needed to prioritize. Stormstrike for me is still the best instant available, since it does a bunch of damage and can proc a bunch of other things, including Windfury, Maelstrom Weapon, Flurry, among the other crazy trinkets and procs that I have. Lava Lash seems to make Flametongue a viable offhand imbue, but according to my uncontrolled test environment (I really should spend some more time at the training dummies in Ironforge, near the Military Ward), I still prefer dual WF. Now that hit and spell hit are a single stat, I am extremely close to the spell hit cap, and I can pretty much use Earth Shock without fear of a resist and it gets crit chance from some of my gear. In order of priority, Stormstrike, Earth Shock, and Lava Lash are my bread and butter instant casts. If Maelstrom Weapon is stacked to 5, I'll use it for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or a Healing Wave (I can't wait to setup Clique to optimize off-healing). So, I pretty much set up a macro to optimize my DPS. Improved Stormstrike has an 8 second cooldown. Earth Shock untalented has a 6 second cooldown, Lava Lash also has a 6 second cooldown, and the max global cooldown is 1.5 seconds. So, the macro goes like this: /castsequence reset=8 Stormstrike, Earth Shock, Lava Lash Hammering this macro between other spells will make me miss an Earth Shock cooldown every once in a while, but makes things super simple while I am still trying to figure out Maelstrom Weapon along with my new favorite friends, Feral Spirit. I'll talk about them later, because they are so much fun.

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So you're a hunter. Done. As a hunter you have one job, (unless you are spec'd survival, in which case you still really only have one job) you shoot shit. Since all you do is shoot shit, it becomes of paramount importance that you shoot shit correctly. Okay so how do you do that? Well I don't f***ing know, that's why I look to other people to tell me, specifically http://www.bigredkitty.net/. Bigredkitty has spent lots of time creating and compiling info for the betterment of huntards everywhere. And if you dig into his forums a bit you will find a (not-so-secret anymore) secret. A brave, Tauren hunter by the name of Manito has perfected the Beast Master's 3:2 shot rotation macro. And he has graciously shared it for all the world...of warcraft, to see. You will find all the info you need if you follow this link. Follow the instructions carefully and in no time you will be shooting shit about as good as you can shoot shit. By the way this is the macro I was speaking of in Episode 2.4

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When you absolutely, positively, unequivocally have to kick huge monster ass, then there is no substitute for the "I WIN" macro. Each class can create their own version of this tasty little treat, but I will show you a version that I use specifically as a Beast Master hunter. First create a macro, choose a name (I WIN) or (Kick Ass) or (You Die), then a button graphic. Then in the command line, copy and paste or just type the following:

/use 13
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Intimidation
/cast Rapid Fire
/petattack

The first line relates to your trinkets, "13" is the command for your first trinket slot. So make sure your usable trinket is in this slot (second from the bottom on the right of your character pane), examples of trinkets suited for this are Bladefist's Breadth, Bloodlust Brooch, Berserker's Call, or any other badass USEable trinket you have. The rest is pretty self explanatory. Now put this (I WIN) button anywhere on your action bar and ONLY click it if you are positive you can handle kicking more ass than you have ever kicked. Oh and have feign death ready, you will probably pull some serious aggro "Click" YEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAA!!!!

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