Advanced Macro Guide for World of Warcraft 1.

Introduction ____________________ I see many people ask for macros every day, often either for their class or thei r specific playground. I hope the examples are simplistic enough for a regular p layer to understand the basics and start creating their own macros. The aim of the Guide is to provide the best posseble insight in the working of m acro's. And to give players who have never bothered to make any out of stress a chance to step up and create their own. I know you guys hate long posts, so im borrowing Dalrian's layout to make it ove rseeable and hopefully very clear. If you really are interested in using, unders tanding and making your own macros I do recommend reading it all. Contents: 1. Introduction 2. What is a macro and how do i make one? 3. How does a macro work? 4. Macroing abilities and item's -4.1 Abilities -4.2 Item's 5. Targets 6. Castsequence 7. Modifiers and Stances -7.1 Modifiers -7.2 Stances 8. Weapon Swapping 9. What can you not do with a macro? ____________________ 2. What is a macro and how do i make one? ____________________ Macros allow you to perform multiple actions by only using 1 button. Macros can make things much easier if you use certain abilties in sequence a lot. Or if you want to save space on your actionbars. Basically, macroing is a simple form of coding and it performs the actions in li ne. Usually they are quite simple, but that doesn't always have to be that way. You can make pretty advanced pieces of code to make your macro do crazy things. You can for example, as a Warrior, have 1 button do different things in Defensiv e Stance, Battle Stance and Berserker Stance. You can access the macro-creation window by either pressing escape and then the "macro" menu button. Or you can type /macro in your chatbox and hit enter. Eithe r have the same effect. ____________________ 3. How does a macro work? ____________________ As i explained in 2, a macro is a code that performs one or multiple actions wit

h the use of only 1 button. It will always follow the code from top to bottom and from left to right. Meanin g that an ability placed on the first line, is first to be checked to meet its c riteria. Notice how i add "#show" or "#showtooltip" at the top of every macro. #show shows the ability icon instead of the icon you suggested and its cooldown. #showtooltip replaces the icon you selected with the actual ability tooltip (th e information text about it etc) and also adds the cooldown. ____________________ 4.1 Abilities ____________________ Alright so lets start easy. You all probebly often use certain spells in combina tion. For example a Paladin using his/her Avenging Wrath (Wings) together with D ivine Shield. It would look like this: #showtooltip /cast Avenging Wrath /cast Divine Shield This is useful because it is fast, and goes with only 1 press of a button rather than 2. Careful though, because even though it looks to be pretty much instant, the macr o still performs the one after the other. Beware, this is not posseble with all abilities. Many of your abilities have a Global Cooldown, and those that do only go togethe r in a macro like this with a spell that is not on the Global Cooldown. If you try to macro two spells that are both on the Global Cooldown in this way then the macro will only perform the first ability and fail to perform the secon d. There is a way around this that comes up later. ____________________ 4.2 Item's ____________________ Lets go a step further. You can also bind Item's in your macros! Crazy huh? Lets say, you want to use your Agility/Strength/Intellect PvP trinket along with a big cooldown: #showtooltip /use 13 /cast SPELLNAME This will use the item in your upper trinketslot along with the ability you defi ned. For the lower trinketslot, you use "14".

It isn't limited to trinkets though, you can put anything in there as long as th ere are no restrictions: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Head Neck Shoulder Shirt Chest Belt Legs Feet Wrist Gloves Finger 1 (Top) Finger 2 (Bottom) Trinket 1 (Top) Trinket 2 (Bottom) Back Main Hand Off Hand Ranged/Relic Tabard

Just make sure the item acually has a use effect otherwise nothing will happen ____________________ 5. Targets ____________________ Macro's can help you switch targets very fast, or even allow you to cast spells and abilities at players who aren't even your target at all! For example: #showtooltip /cast [@focus] SPELLNAME This will cast the defined spell on your Focus. It does not have to be in your t arget at all. But i am not even getting started. You can do any of the following: [@target] [@player] (< casts at self regardless of target) [@PLAYER] (< replace with anyones name to cast at them regardless of target) [@targettarget] (< this is basically what it says, the target of your target. So if you target player A, and player A targets player B, this macro will cast at player B.) [@focus] [@arena1] up untill [@arena5] [@party1] up untill [@party5] [@raid1] up untill [@raid40] Just to grab one more example:

#showtooltip /cast [@arena3] SPELLNAME This will cast the spell at the third enemy arena player. And if you have a macro which should remove your target after its use you can ad d the following line at the end: /cleartarget Or if you changed target to run a specific macro and you want your previous targ et back after completion: /targetlasttarget ____________________ 6. Castsequence ____________________ Right, remember about the Global Cooldown i told you about earlier? Well, using this type of macro you can use abilties one after another even if th ey are on the Global Cooldown. We are not going to cheat though (aww :/ ) so you will still have to wait that Global Cooldown out ;) Alright so lets say you are a rogue (excuse me for coming back at the class, but its just the one im most familiar with :P). It's always nice if you can quickly do that (focus) shadowstep kick and not even having to move your fingers around! This is one i am using myself: #show /castsequence /castsequence /castsequence /castsequence

[mod:alt, @focus, stance:0/2] reset=2 Shadowstep, Kick [mod:alt, @focus, stance:1/3] reset=2 Shadowstep, Sap [stance:1/3] reset=2 Shadowstep, Sap [stance:0/2] reset=2 Shadowstep, Kick

Right so let me tell you how it works before i tell you what it does. The "/castsequence" is basically a queueing code which jumps to the next ability once the one before that has been used. The "reset=2" means that the macro will reset to its original state after 2 seco nds of the first use. But you can also put an ability in there.. or a combat definition. Time is alway s in seconds. The ability by name (maybe also by spellid, can anyone confirm?), Ill get back to the [combat] stuff later. So for resetting upon an ability it would look like this:

#showtooltip /castsequence reset=Kick Shadowstep, Kick And for combat it would look like this: #showtooltip /castsequence reset=nocombat Shadowstep, Kick This would reset it upon leaving combat. Ofcourse you can turn it around and mak e it "reset=combat" to make it reset upon entering combat. After that come the abilities themselves, just put in their names in the right o rder you want them to be executed. So if you want Shadowstep first, put Shadowstep first in the queue as i did in m y example. But if you want Kick first, then put Kick first in line and it would cast Shadowstep second. Back to the macro: #show /castsequence /castsequence /castsequence /castsequence

[mod:alt, @focus, stance:0/2] reset=2 Shadowstep, Kick [mod:alt, @focus, stance:1/3] reset=2 Shadowstep, Sap [stance:1/3] reset=2 Shadowstep, Sap [stance:0/2] reset=2 Shadowstep, Kick

What this does, is many things in one: It casts shadowstep at my target in all stances. But if i hold ALT while pressin g it, it will shadowstep my focus instead. That is not everything though. Because if i would press it twice in rapid succes sion in stealth or Shadow Dance, i will also sap the person i shadowstepped. But if I would be in Normal stance (no stealth, dance), or in Vanish state it wi ll Shadowstep my target and quickly Kick it when pressed twice. Again, the ALT focus modifier is fully functional for both of those. So if i wou ld hold alt while doing the above, it will go to my focus instead of my target. ____________________ 7.1 Modifiers ____________________ I already gave you a little sneak-peak at the Castsequence part, but ill explain it here. The following modifiers can be put in a macro: [combat] or [nocombat] Example:

#showtooltip /cast [combat] vanish /cast [nocombat] stealth Easy one. [combat] means "when in combat". And [nocombat] means "when not in com bat". [stance:x] Example: #showtooltip /cast [stance:1/3] Sap /cast [stance:0/2] Gouge This will check if the stance you defined matches the players current stance, al l the classes stances are defined a bit down below. [mod] or [mod:alt/shift/ctrl] Example: #showtooltip /cast [mod:shift] Shiv; Backstab One of my favorites because you can literally use it for anything. Shiv will be cast on shift hold. Regular press is Backstab. [harm] or [noharm] Example: #showtooltip /cast [@focus, harm] Blind; Blind This one goes well with the target modifiers. This macro will cast Blind at your Focus but ONLY if its a hostile target. If the target is friendly it skips and casts Blind on target. [help] I don't think i have to give an example of this one, it is basically the opposit e of [harm]. [dead] or [nodead] Example: #showtooltip /cast [@focus, nodead, help] tricks of the trade; tricks of the trade The last one, this one casts tricks of the trade on your focus. But only if your focus target is alive and friendly. This is useful if you want to cast tricks o f the trade on your focus but have a boss there instead, or a dead player. So yo

u can manually target it without getting an error. ____________________ 7.2 Stances ____________________ For a Rogue its the following: 0 1 2 3 = = = = Normal Stealth Vanish Shadow Dance

For a Warrior: 0 1 2 3 = = = = No stance (does that even apply?) Battle Stance Defensive Stance Berserker Stance

Druid: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 = = = = = = = Normal Bear Aquatic Cat Travel Moonkin/Tree | Swift Flight Form* Swift Flight Form*

*Only if feral. Priest: 0 = Normal 1 = Shadowform Warlock: 0 = Normal 1 = ???? 2 = Metamorphosis Death Knight's do not appear to have Stances, but feel free to add information o n that. And the rest of the classes don't have any stances that would prove beneficial. ____________________ 8. Weapon Swapping ____________________ Having problems with that weapon enchant proc breaking your control? Or do you s imply wish to swap your weapons without having to go to your equipmentmanager or bag? Well then, all you have to do is add this code to the ability you want to swap w

eapon on. Ofcourse you can also just put it on a button without an ability in it. Main Hand: /equipslot 16 WEAPON NAME Off Hand: /equipslot 17 WEAPON NAME Ranged: /equipslot 18 WEAPON NAME

____________________ 9. What can you not do with a macro? ____________________ Although possebilities seem endless.. there are some actions that can not be don e with macros. Theise include: Checking for position Checking the amount of class resources or health you have left Cooldown of abilities (posseble with scripts, but not with an ordinary macro) Recognize procs Checking distance to target (range) ____________________