A Guide to Mages comment thread

[kandrathe]

I have to disagree with you here.  Yes, a polly macro will not flawlessly identify a target, especially when dealing with non-elite mobs which will be named identically and you should use additional information to inform your party what you will be pollying if at all possible.

However.

This information is OFTEN quite helpful.  In fact, IMHO, ALL crowd control abilities should be macro'ed.  If you're going to fear something, let me know what.  I can't see what you're doing behind me and I'm probably not going to look to notice.  If we pick up an add, there are 5 people who could move to intercept that add.  If a mage is going to polly it - I want to hear that over the chat channel.  There are often enough differences that with pulls of 3 or less I can figure out which of the targets the mage is going to polly.  And if I can't the worst case scenario is that I can't figure it out and un-sheep the polly - which would have happened if it WASN'T called out.

Unlike sap, polly goes of in the middle of combat.  Polly picks up adds, polly pulls mobs off the priest, etc.  Sure before the pull there's lots of times to explain who's CC'ing what.  But during combat, that's when these macro's really shine.  When I'm tanking I want to hear that a polly is incoming so I know if I need to run over and taunt the add or not, for example.

That said, please do not macro anything that goes off more than once every thirty seconds.  If your a priest, don't macro your heals.  I'll know if you sent the heal or not when I wake up on the floor.  The only reason I need to know a heal is incoming is to know not to pop a potion and I'd rather macro the potion which will be used once in all of combat than see heal macros spammed every two seconds.

Anyone who macros sinister strike needs to be seriously smacked.  :P
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I messed around yesterday with some macro stuff for my Horde Priest, as in the thick of combat I do not like to drop the mouse, and so I tend not to type; I chatted with lurkers in channel to get an impression of what would be be useful for priest macros. Most echoed some of the sentiments voiced here, that not every spell needs a party spam message. That said, here is what I decided.

Any heal on a long timer, say > 3-4 seconds would be a good use to let party know that the healer is occupied for the next few seconds with a big heal. And, just as with sheep, it was suggested that shackling the undead would be good to announce.

Here is the basic macro I used which prevents misannouncing on ineliegible targets;

/script nm = UnitName("target"); pl = UnitIsPlayer("target") if ((nm ~= nil) and (pl == 1))then SendChatMessage("Healing %t for (1919 to 2147) in 4 sec" , "PARTY", "ORCISH", UnitName("target") ); CastSpellByName("Greater Heal(Rank 3)"); end

For targeting an enemy and preventing mistaken announcements on party members;

/script nm = UnitName("target"); pl = UnitIsPlayer("target") if ((nm ~= nil) and (pl == 0))then SendChatMessage("*** Shackling %t on right side -- Avoid hitting please." , "PARTY", "ORCISH", UnitName("target") ); CastSpellByName("Shackle Undead(Rank 3)"); end

The other macro I wanted to create was a panic button to have a quick way to announce to the party that my priest was getting pummeled by a mob which was not being aggroed away. This gives an audible Help! emote and a party announce, changes the target to the priest, casts a Fade spell, and retargets whatever the priest was on before. This spell requires the priest to target the offender, then press the panic button. I would prefer to be able to store my current target, target what last hit me, do stuff, then retarget my original target, but so far I've not found the LUA commands neccesary to do it.

/party Please help! %t is attacking me.
/helpme
/script nm = UnitName("target"); TargetUnit("player"); CastSpellByName("Fade(Rank 2)"); TargetUnit(nm); end

For alliance you would need to change "ORCISH" to "COMMON" I believe. These are the macros as I remember them since I'm still in the midst of the upgrade, but I will double check to insure that these work and correct them here.

Also in reviewing the LUA commands available I found;
SpellCanTargetUnit("unit") - Returns true if the spell awaiting target selection can be cast on the specified unit.

I will mess around with this to see if I can prevent unneccesary spaming of Shackle or Sheep spells where the target is untargetable.

I would be interested in any other cool macros that people have built.