Random Macros

There are many ways to heal, tank or DPS and it's up to the individual gamer to decide what kind of style of play they wish to utilize. One tool that helps players out are macros.

For me, I don't use many macros at all and prefer to manually click things or just press keyboard keys/key binds. The few macros I have are based off of basically 2 macro commands. I shall now teach this to you =)

/cast [insert spell name here]

/castsequence [spell 1, spell 2]

So simple, yeah? So for the /cast command, I use that when I want to combine using a spell/ability with a simple /say or /party or /raid or /rw or one or more of the above to announce its usage. If it is a spell that is cast on someone, I use %t in my announcement message so that whoever I am targetting at the time I use the macro will be announced as the target. Then the macro becomes:

/cast [spell]
/say [spell] used on %t


In addition, if you don't want to pick a completely new icon for the macro for your action bar when you first create the macro, just pick the question mark as the icon. This way it automatically makes the macro pick the normal icon of the spell that you use. If you want to mouseover your macro button and see the tool tip, which will help you see the CD too, insert this snippet above the beginning of the macro in the macro input box, like so:


#showtooltip
/cast [spell]
/say [spell] used on %t

Very simple but it can be very useful as well.

Now as for /castsequence, the best way to use this command is for 2 spells. What is important to realize about this command is that if those spells trigger the GCD, you must use the macro again to cast the 2nd spell. I'm not quite sure as to the maximum number of spells you can cast in the /castsequence command but it can become quite hard to figure out which spell you are using if you overload. I recommend 2-3 spells in a chain for 1 /castsequence command. So an example of a simple macro using this command is:

#showtooltip
/cast sequence spell 1, spell 2

I tend to use /castsequence for prot and ret as well as my Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice macro for holy. You can also give the entire macro button a manual CD even if the 2 abilities have different CDs. That is what I do for my DS/bubble macro since I don't want to use DS with my bubble on CD, even if DS if up since it is on a shorter CD of 2 min compared to bubble's 5 min CD. So my macro will be:

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=5 Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice
/raid Divine Sacrifice active! I've bubbled!

Now if you want to use DBM to give you a timer for your ability and thus, warn you when it is up. You can use /dbm timer x [insert timer message here], where x is the number of seconds for the CD to be up. So a macro can be:

#showtooltip
/cast spell
/dbm timer 60 Spell is available!

There are also commands to use trinkets if you want to macro that instead of a spell cast macro. As there are 2 trinket slots, the macro command for each of the trinket slots will also be different. For the upper trinket slot, it is /use 13 and for the lower trinket slot, it is /use 14. An example would be:


#showtooltip
/use 13

This way you can macro trinket use and combine it with another spell to cast when you activate your trinket.

Finally, there is also /castrandom, where you list spells that the macro will pick from random to cast when you use it. Why would you ever use this type of macro command? Well, I use this type of command for my random ground or flying mount macro. Sure, the initial set up can be annoying but it is easy to use if you want a random mount cast macro. Keep in mind that there is a character limit for all macros so you cannot possibly fit all your mounts in there, especially if you have a lot of them.

Now, there are many more sophisticated ways to use macros, so this is basically my very beginner's method of using them. You can find many more ways to use macros I bet just from the WoW forums alone.

I hope this post was helpful, enjoy!