Helping hunters kill bosses one arrow at a time!

Macros, a Tale of Woe!

Back in BC the macro was our primary source of dps. Our old dps”rotation” was spamming the steady shot macro, and hitting the Bestial Wrath button anytime it was off cooldown. There was no shot priority back then, as we didn’t want to waste our mana, even though Aspect of the Viper was very different back then.

Then the Global Cooldown, (commonly referred to as a GCD), was intorduced. You may be wondering what exactly  a Global Cooldown is, it is the time that must pass between actions taken by the player. They put these in the game to protect us from bots, as well as to curb people from spamming one button and ending up at the top of the dps meters, (hunters for example, lol…).

This isn’t to say that all Macro’s are now useless, far from it! There are many useful macros out there, it’s all about what works for you.

So What Can I Macro?

The simple answer to this is anything not on the GCD! As a hunter it means that you can macro these four spells in with other shots:

Deterrence
Kill Command
Readiness
Silencing Shot

Other than that you can macro for mouseovers, modifier macros,  or Aspect toggling. I Personally use very simple macros and in PvE this works just fine.

How to Macro

So you want to start using macros? Here’s a step by step guide!

1) Open your start menu and select the Macros option, this will open the macro window.

2) Pick out an icon and a name for your macro, no one else will see it, so it’s all up to you!

3) If you’ve found a macro on a website that you would like to copy simply select it, right-click and hit copy. (If you’re creating one from scratch skip this step)

4) Window back into WoW,and click your mouse in the Enter Macro Commands window

press the Ctrl button and the V button at the same time, and this should have pasted the macro in to the window.

5) Drag the icon button to your tool bar!

6) Test it out!

Macros I Use

Steady Shot/Kill Command Macro

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro triggers Kill Command when you forget it, useful little dps boost, especially for such an easily forgotten spell.

Aspect Macro

#showtooltip
/castsequence Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper

I personally like this one, it will automatically toggle you between Aspect of the Dragonhawk, or Aspect of the Viper, at the click of one button!

Silencing Shot Macro (MM Only)

#showtooltip Aimed Shot
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast Aimed Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

If you’re MM the extra dps boost from silencing shot is quite nice, this can be macrod into any, (or all) of your shots.

Master’s Call Macro

/cast [target=mouseover]Master’s Call

This macro is amazingly useful, you just roll your mouse over your target you want to free and hit the key you’ve bound it to. It’s great for any situation where you’re rooted to the ground. Think of Hodir’s Freeze ability, whoever is on dispell duty will love you for freeing yourself, or even on Elder Ironbranch, it instantly gets rid of Iron Roots.

How to NOT Macro

An example of a  consequence macro:

/castsequence reset=8 Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

These macros are horrible for your dps, and only the lazy or misguided would ever use them. Please, if you have one of these delete it now, as you are severely jipping yourself out of a large chunk of dps.