Friday, April 19, 2013

Enhanced Macro Mania!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter/Facebook may recall my geekery over discovering some new ways in which I could macro a few spells together. You may have also recalled that I had promised a post on it. While I meant to make good on that promise, life/laziness managed to get in the way, yada yada. Anyways, here's that said post! Finally /cheer!


I am by nature not a huge macro person. For the longest time my macro stash only consisted of Ventrilo information macros and weird /say macros. Once I discovered how well my Synapse Springs lined up with Feral Spirits, I made a cheap macro to put those two abilities together. For the longest time, that is to say until a month ago, that is all I had. That is, until last month when I had the noob revelation about exactly how many of enhancement's cooldown abilities are actually off the global cooldown. Ladies and gents, this somewhat opened up the flood gates on my tiny stream of macro knowledge.

For my macros I have omitted the #showtooltip line, since I have the habit of using an icon of my choosing anyways and rarely have tooltips themselves showing. Please feel free to add #showtooltip to the beginning of your macros if you're not an oddball such as myself.


~Feral Spirit Macro~
Engineers

/use 10
/use Blood Fury       
/cast Feral Spirit

Things to be aware of:
1) The '/use 10' portion activates your Synapse Springs on your gloves, 1 min cd.
2) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
3) Two of the three potential abilities in this particular macro are on a 2 min cd, minus Synapse Springs. Not using your Springs as soon as they come off cooldown will slightly desynchronize the tooltip cooldown timer, as it will only show the cd time of your Springs, not your Lifeblood/Blood Fury/Feral Spirits.

OR

Herbalists

/cast Lifeblood
/use Blood Fury
/cast Feral Spirit

Things to be aware of:
1) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
2) All three abilities are on a 2 min cd. Hooray for less tracking!

OR

Engineering Herbalists

/use 10
/cast Lifeblood
/use Blood Fury
/cast Feral Spirit

Things to be aware of:
1) The '/use 10' portion activates your Synapse Springs on your gloves, 1 min cd.
2) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
3) Everything in this particular macro is on a 2 min cd, minus Synapse Springs. Not using your Springs as soon as they come off cooldown will slightly desynchronize the tooltip cooldown timer, as it will only show the cd time of your Springs, not your Lifeblood/Blood Fury/Feral Spirits.

*Please keep in mind that it may be slightly more beneficial to hold off on Lifeblood and to use it when Ascendance is up for even more burst there.


~Ascendance Macro~

/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Berserking
/cast Ascendance
/cast Fire Elemental Totem

Things to be aware of:
1) Elemental Mastery is up every 1.5 minutes. Assuming that you're able to use it on cooldown, it should line up perfectly with everything else in the list (which have 3 minute cds) every other use of this macro.
2) Berserking is a Troll racial, omit if you are not a Troll.
3) Your Fire Elemental Totem will only line up with Berserking/Ascendance the second time you go to use it if it's glyphed. Our Fire Elemental is generally a 5 minute cooldown, though with the Glyph of Fire Elemental we can bring that cd down to 3 minutes. The glyph is only recommended for those specced into Primal Elementalist.

Ascendance Alternative

/cast Ascendance
/cast Berserking
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Fire Elemental Totem

Alternatively, if you'd like to use this macro for openers (as I tend to do) but are not always specced into Elemental Mastery, you can list Elemental Mastery after Ascendance so that the tooltip timer will still show the cd of Ascendance. Just be sure you have some sort of tracking that will alert you as to when Elemental Mastery comes off of cooldown so that you may gain its benefit.

Alternatively alternatively, you may use the original macro, but place this in the first line of the macro: #showtooltip whateverspellyouwanthere


~The 'I Win' Macro~

/cast Bloodlust
/cast Berserking
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Lifeblood
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Ascendance
/cast Fire Elemental Totem

Things to be aware of:
1) If you're Alliance, the first line of this macro should say /cast Heroism
2) If you're a Troll, omit /cast Blood Fury. If you're an Orc, omit /cast Berserking. If you're neither of those races, omit both of those lines!
3) /cast Lifeblood is for Herbalists only. If you're not an herbalizor, remove that line!

The 'I Win' macro is my new BFF when it comes to soloing, especially since many soloing situations for enhancement tend to be a race to kill the thing before it kills you. This macro may also be used as an opener in those raiding situations where you're popping Hero/Lust right off the bat and you'd like to set yourself up for some mad burst (why wouldn't you?!).


For my openers: I tend to prepot (using a potion before entering combat), use my Feral Spirits macro, then either use my Ascendance Macro (depending on raid opener situations) or my 'I Win' macro (depending on what I'm doing). Stormlash Totem is dropped just as I hit the boss.

In the event you have on-use trinkets, place them in the spots in these macros where Synapse Springs would be IF, and only IF, the on-use is stronger than the buff that Synapse Springs provide. Synapse Springs will trigger a short cd on your on-use trinkets and vise versa, hence the need to potential macro things a bit differently. If your Springs still provide the superior buff, use your trinkets as they become available and/or in conjunction with other CDs that line up with them, assuming that your Springs don't also line up with said abilities. Place '/use 13' into your macro for the top on-use trinket, '/use 14' is for the bottom trinket.


Please keep in mind that the macros mentioned here are not perfect for all situations. You will need to use these macros intelligently and be somewhat flexible with them. These are meant to be aids in helping you to maximize your burst damage, however they may not always be applicable depending on the encounter you're facing.

Also be aware that if you have quick, twitchy fingers as I do, you may sometimes find that only half of the spells in these macros actually go off. The easiest solution? Hold the button down momentarily. It doesn't need to be some 5 second long press of the button, but actually click/press/however you activate your macro button long enough for the program to register everything you're asking of it in your macro. Quick taps just don't cut it!

There you have it, all of the nuggets of insight I gained a month ago! I swear, I feel like I should have thought of these things an expansion or two ago. Just goes to show, even an old ghost wolf can learn new tricks sometimes.

3 comments:

  1. I just added Shamanistic Rage to a few of these for my Alliance shaman. Thanks much for sharing!

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    Replies
    1. The danger of tying Shamanistic Rage to these macros though is that you'd be blowing one of your defensive cooldowns at a time when you may not need it, and you'll have Rage on cooldown when you need it most. If you're using a sort of alt modifier though so that it's not triggered when you hit your dps macros, go for it!

      Personally I just bind Rage elsewhere and pop it the moment I know I need it ; )

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  2. Dear Saz,
    It's been a long time since we last crossed roads. You would know me as Grimrhok from Emerald Dream...more importantly from therustyblade.blogspot.com . I've been away for a long time, and have but a short time left before I have to deploy again in the real world. If you still play on Aggramar, you can find me as Mhorgrim. After deplyment, I plan to reinstate my blog again. I thought about doing it now, but so close to another deployment where I wouldnt be able to write as well, I figured wait till I get back. Anyways, I hope you are still active, and hope to see you in game. I like what you are doing for those who still follow blogs on WoW. Keep up the good work. If you are inclined, friend me there on the realm. My best to you while I still have time.

    In arms forever,

    Mhorgrim aka Grimrhok/Greythorn

    ReplyDelete