A Guide to Mages comment thread

[Skandranon]

Instead of having a button on your bar for poly, have a macro that says "Pollying %t" (double check that syntax) and does the poly.
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Don't do this. Please don't do this. Such macros are incredibly popular and mostly worthless. At best, they spit information into party chat that the party should already know. At worst, they cause mass confusion as everyone tries to distinguish which of the identical-looking mobs is a Thuzadin Shadowcaster and which is a Thuzadin Necromancer, resulting in no one doing anything for fear of breaking sheep or a mass of last-second target switching (which causes lack of focus and aggro problems left and right). Which doesn't even go into all the pulls (of which there are many) containing two or more mobs of the same type, where this kind of macro again causes confusion.

I don't mean to jump on you, oldmandennis, but I really want to make a strong statement about the proliferation of these useless macros. They are much less helpful than most mages think.

[Alram]

Don't do this.  Please don't do this.  Such macros are incredibly popular and mostly worthless.  At best, they spit information into party chat that the party should already know.  At worst, they cause mass confusion as everyone tries to distinguish which of the identical-looking mobs is a Thuzadin Shadowcaster and which is a Thuzadin Necromancer, resulting in no one doing anything for fear of breaking sheep or a mass of last-second target switching (which causes lack of focus and aggro problems left and right).  Which doesn't even go into all the pulls (of which there are many) containing two or more mobs of the same type, where this kind of macro again causes confusion.

I don't mean to jump on you, oldmandennis, but I really want to make a strong statement about the proliferation of these useless macros.  They are much less helpful than most mages think.
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I was in a party with a priest once who kept a constant stream of information about his heals going in the party chat. At first I was impressed, but I found that the volume of the info was overwhelming and hard to follow. I stopped paying attention to it. So, I wouldn't want to do something like that with my mage.
I do very much appreciate you responding to my question however. And I don't say that this approach is wrong; it just doesn't work for me.

[savaughn]

I don't mean to jump on you, oldmandennis, but I really want to make a strong statement about the proliferation of these useless macros.  They are much less helpful than most mages think.
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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

[Treesh]

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.[right][snapback]71497[/snapback][/right]

This is why I put in "left %T", "right %t", "back %t", "front %t" and maybe add "male %t" and "female %t". Oh, maybe should do an "incoming %t" to distinguish just what thing I'm sheeping.

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.[right][snapback]71497[/snapback][/right]

This is another thing that GG and I have an advantage with. I try to stand behind everyone in the party. If we get adds, he asks if a mage is sheeping. If I see the arcane glow around their hands (and I know the mage is good on the sheeping), I tell him it's being sheeped and that he doesn't have to worry. Came in handy in the Scarlet Monastery.

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 can't agree with this enough. There aren't going to be that many polymorphs going on that frequently. There are going to be many times when the healer is going to heal and having a message pop up that often is annoying. Save any heal message macros for the heals you don't use often but are frequently used when someone is really low on health.

[Skandranon]

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.
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This should be worked out ahead of time: whether the mage will pick up adds or not. Once that's determined, stick to it and don't execute a macro to pollute party chat in the meantime. As a tank, and I've played a paladin to 52 so I do know what I'm talking about, I found polymorph macros exceedingly worthless.

If you can figure out which target the mage is going after, then why do you need notification in chat? And if you can't, how is the notification going to help you?

Even allowing for the odd situation where it does help, the overwhelming majority of them are going to be superfluous. Much like the even more annoying Flash Heal macro, this one induces people to tune out party chat and pay less attention to the chat window scrolling, which means that they're more likely to ignore key warnings like "inc patrol" and so on. You can't ignore the negative aspects of these macros. Even skilled and attentive players will pay less attention to chat if warnings are going off every fight, and the chances of someone misreading an important alert as just another polymorph notification are much less if the only things chat contains during battle are important.

In any case, polymorph has two distinctive non-visual cues: the arcane casting sound, which only applies to missiles and polymorph, and the "baa" that plays once the spell hits. Even if you miss both of these cues, worst-case you hit the sheep and pop it. Then you turn your attention away, and 1.5 seconds later it's a sheep again. No macro is going to say "I'm polymorphing the add, so don't hit it, and if you do I'll polymorph it again, so go back to what you were doing" and no macro should. Planning ahead, in my view, obviates any need for an in-battle macro, and if you're not planning ahead, a macro isn't going to help you that much.

[playingtokrush]

Don't do this.  Please don't do this.  Such macros are incredibly popular and mostly worthless.  At best, they spit information into party chat that the party should already know.  At worst, they cause mass confusion as everyone tries to distinguish which of the identical-looking mobs is a Thuzadin Shadowcaster and which is a Thuzadin Necromancer, resulting in no one doing anything for fear of breaking sheep or a mass of last-second target switching (which causes lack of focus and aggro problems left and right).  Which doesn't even go into all the pulls (of which there are many) containing two or more mobs of the same type, where this kind of macro again causes confusion.

I don't mean to jump on you, oldmandennis, but I really want to make a strong statement about the proliferation of these useless macros.  They are much less helpful than most mages think.
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I have to agree with Skandranon on this issue, and I'd like to add on to it. There are times where a mage will hit the polymorph key multiple times thanks to annoying line of sight issues (usually slopes). I annoy even myself when I spam "Polymorphing %t" three or four times into party/raid chat.

I only use a polymorph macro if my party asks for me to do so. The people who tend to break polymorph often (even two, three, or more seconds after it's been turned into a sheep) probably aren't going to end up getting a lot of benefit out of a last second chat message anyway.

[Treesh]

I have to agree with Skandranon on this issue, and I'd like to add on to it.  There are times where a mage will hit the polymorph key multiple times thanks to annoying line of sight issues (usually slopes).  I annoy even myself when I spam "Polymorphing %t" three or four times into party/raid chat.
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Gah. I forgot about the Line of Sight issues. That's a very good point to bring up.

[mjdoom]

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.

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Not sure of the best place to reply on this so this seemed like as good a spot as any:

I am in a similar situation with Shackle. The difference that I find is that I use shackle more often in add situations in certain places. I find that people have a tendency to forget about shackles so I currently have a macro set up mostly to remind people that undead can indeed be dealt with if they add on us. In an ideal world this wouldn't be necessary as people would be properly using /assist and would know that a priest can handle undead as well, if not better than, a mage can handle humanoids. I find that the macro is mostly useful because many priests forget that this trick is in their arsenal and thus many people in pickup groups forget that I can shackle.

I also have times where I despise my own macro when LoS or range issues (or I get silenced :( )come into play. In my opinion there is nothing more annoying than 4 straight "Shackling: Stupid Mob" messages spamming raid chat and I usually apologize to the group when this happens. Maybe if people could just understand that shackle is a better version of polymorph I could do away with the stupid macro.

- mjdoom

p.s. For anyone who is curious, the reason I say that shackle is better than polymorph is that it does not reset the target's hitpoints. This makes it phenomenally useful when soloing undead as I can put a mob into permanent shackle and know that it won't heal when I pop it out. It also means that if a party member breaks the shackle and I reset it the damage that has been done is still there (although this is usually minimal).

[playingtokrush]

Gah. I forgot about the Line of Sight issues.  That's a very good point to bring up.
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I swear gnome mages (that's me!) have more problems with line of sight issues thanks to slopes and ledges.

Of course, maybe the taller mages do as well. I don't know, but I swear that shortness is a disadvantage sometimes...

[Treesh]

I swear gnome mages (that's me!) have more problems with line of sight issues thanks to slopes and ledges.

Of course, maybe the taller mages do as well.  I don't know, but I swear that shortness is a disadvantage sometimes...
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It's not just gnome mages. It's all the shorter races have a disadvantage when it comes to line of sight. Gnolack gets more LoS issues than human warriors he's partied with. Taurens rarely seem to have LoS issues. I know for a fact that a human warrior was able to shoot something that a gnome warrior couldn't and they were in the same spot.

[playingtokrush]

It's not just gnome mages.  It's all the shorter races have a disadvantage when it comes to line of sight.  Gnolack gets more LoS issues than human warriors he's partied with.  Taurens rarely seem to have LoS issues.  I know for a fact that a human warrior was able to shoot something that a gnome warrior couldn't and they were in the same spot.
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I wasn't focusing on the "mage" part so much as the gnome part. The only reason I mentioned gnome mages is that this is a thread on mages, after all, and the current discussion was about polymorph. What you say does confirm my suspicion that a gnome mage is going to have more problems with polymorph than a human or horde mage. I'm sure dwarven hunters have more problems shooting at things than night elf hunters, and so on through the race/class combos.

I guess "we" do have sort of an advantage in group PvP situations, though.

[LochnarITB]

more likely to ignore key warnings like "inc patrol" and so on.
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It is much harder to ignore the vocal emote for incoming. When my squeaky little gnome yells "DANGER APPROACHES", it cuts through even the loudest battle. I think everyone should have it macroed.

worst-case you hit the sheep and pop it.  Then you turn your attention away, and 1.5 seconds later it's a sheep again.  No macro is going to say "I'm polymorphing the add, so don't hit it, and if you do I'll polymorph it again, so go back to what you were doing" and no macro should.

But, if the baddie is sheeped then popped and then the popper sees another sheeping message, they do know it is coming (the arcane cast sound can easily be lost depending on battle noise and the orientation of the players) and can focus on the others. If it happened a second time, I assumed they wanted it popped and left it. However...

There are times where a mage will hit the polymorph key multiple times thanks to annoying line of sight issues (usually slopes).  I annoy even myself when I spam "Polymorphing %t" three or four times into party/raid chat.
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This is what finally pushed me into moving my macro to the popbar and placing the spell on a main bar. It seems to only take very small depressions in the land to cause the line of sight problem. I, too, was annoyed seeing the message multiple times when it happened. I don't know if character size is factored into LoS but, if it is, being a gnome just magnifies the problem.

[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.

[Icebird]

Polymorph: Personally I like the sheep macros (although I don't play mage). The message tells me the mage is trying to sheep someone and I should be careful about who I target. If the chat channel is getting spammed because of LoS issues, ask him to have both the macroed and unmacroed versions of Poly available - use the macro once. If it doesn't work, just use the Poly spell which doesn't broadcast.

Creating macros for voice emotes however is one of the most useful things you can do. My most often used macros

/oom
/p I'm out of mana!

/heal
/p I need healing!

/incoming
/p Adds incoming!

/helpme
/p I need help!

Chat messages can be missed. Voice emotes usually aren't. With the new patch I may experiment with the chat bubbles.

Chris

[Skandranon]

Here I humbly request a retest of Arcane Meditation when the patch with Mage Armor is released.  If I have enough time and money for respecs, I may try it with Mitzy myself, but I'd love to see how Arcane Meditation stacks with Mage Armor for high level mages.
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There's currently a report that Mage Armor and Arcane Meditation don't stack. I'll follow up on the Blizzard responses to this issue.

[Quark]

There's currently a report that Mage Armor and Arcane Meditation don't stack.  I'll follow up on the Blizzard responses to this issue.
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To help prevent confusion, I'll note that people are saying it's buggy. That it stacks some of the time, but recasts of Mage Armor break Arcane Medition until relogging. If that's true, I may have to delay my planned build ...

[savaughn]

In any case, polymorph has two distinctive non-visual cues: the arcane casting sound, which only applies to missiles and polymorph, and the "baa" that plays once the spell hits.  Even if you miss both of these cues, worst-case you hit the sheep and pop it.  Then you turn your attention away, and 1.5 seconds later it's a sheep again.  No macro is going to say "I'm polymorphing the add, so don't hit it, and if you do I'll polymorph it again, so go back to what you were doing" and no macro should.  Planning ahead, in my view, obviates any need for an in-battle macro, and if you're not planning ahead, a macro isn't going to help you that much.
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Again, I agree. Rarely do things do anything other than go as planned. If you've agreed that the mage picks up adds, the adds will come in one at a time and will always be humanoid. Similarly, the mage will never have acquired aggro or be in the middle of a long casting spell, and so will always be able to sheep exactly as expected. And even if they did, actually telling your party what the heck your doing should be frowned upon. The best thing to hear in the chat screen is beautiful golden silence. <_<

In the real world, a lot of the time you generall find out that you've just popped the sheep is that somewhere near you there is a puff of smoke and a 'baa' sound. You have no clue if you popped the sheep or someone else did. You're not even entirely sure what mob GOT sheeped. Additionally, in the middle of a fight where two adds join, the mage is going to click on their screen or hit the tab key (which works again! Yea!!!) and the computer will decide which one gets selected. Even if you're trying to get the one on the left, who knows what one you're going to target. Now, you can hang out and retarget a couple times, or you can sheep now.

Things go wrong. Knowing that things have gone wrong and how your party is working to clear this up allows you to recover. When rule #1 kicks in, I want my mage/priest/rogue/warlock to have macros so that we don't have the rogue vanish only to end up with a sapped sheep.

That said, I think having macro/unmacro'ed buttons is definitely a good idea. The LoS observation is a good one. Similarly, bringing 40 people into molten core and having 20 people start chiming off about running out of mana or hps definitely lowers your tolerance for them. But communication is the difference between a successful 5-man group and a dead 5-man group and you can sit down and talk for 20 minutes before an encounter - at some point in time rule #1 is still going to kick in.

<edit: overly snarky comment removed>

[Skandranon]

Again, I agree.&nbsp; Rarely do things do anything other than go as planned.&nbsp; If you've agreed that the mage picks up adds, the adds will come in one at a time and will always be humanoid.&nbsp; Similarly, the mage will never have acquired aggro or be in the middle of a long casting spell, and so will always be able to sheep exactly as expected.&nbsp; And even if they did, actually telling your party what the heck your doing should be frowned upon.&nbsp; The best thing to hear in the chat screen is beautiful golden silence.&nbsp; <_< [right][snapback]71700[/snapback][/right]

Savaughn, I don't know if you're dense or just trying to appear that way. I have other arguments, but your tone doesn't warrant a response. Come back when you're ready to be more civil.

[Icebird]

I suspect for raid encounters, the good guilds develop communication tools specifically for the encounters: "I need dispell magic", "Healer rotation one out of mana, rotation two take over", "Main tank down, back-up tank taking over".

Communication seems to be a big part of being succesful in instances and raid encounters so I'm personally in favour of whatever improves communication. But your mileage may vary.

Chris

[savaughn]

Savaughn, I don't know if you're dense or just trying to appear that way.&nbsp; I have other arguments, but your tone doesn't warrant a response.&nbsp; Come back when you're ready to be more civil.
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LOL - you must of read that the second I posted it! As soon as I posted it I thought I was going overboard and took out the first section. That's pretty funny.