Future Tense

Travel Brochure

I know I’m not alone in enjoying an action bar full of teleport destinations; but sadly since I tend to dock Hearthstones and trade links in the same spot, it can be hard fitting them all in. Here, then, is an easy way to group your teleports:

Button 1: Horde Capitals

#showtooltip [nomod]Teleport: Orgrimmar;[mod:alt]Teleport: Undercity;[mod:shift]Teleport: Thunder Bluff;[mod:ctrl]Teleport: Silvermoon
/use [nomod]Teleport: Orgrimmar;[mod:alt]Teleport: Undercity;[mod:shift]Teleport: Thunder Bluff;[mod:ctrl]Teleport: Silvermoon

Button 2: Expansions

#showtooltip [nomod]Teleport: Dalaran;[mod:alt]Teleport: Shattrath;[mod:shift]Teleport: Stonard
/use [nomod]Teleport: Dalaran;[mod:alt]Teleport: Shattrath;[mod:shift]Teleport: Stonard

~ Aquariar, arcane mage

Summon Demons

You can set four demonic summons to one button: useful for all specs. as a means of bundling the imp, voidwalker, succubus and felhunter or felguard:

#showtooltip
/use [nomod]Summon Imp;[mod:alt]Summon Voidwalker;[mod:shift]Summon Succubus;[mod:ctrl]Summon Felhunter

Equally, now that infernals and doomguards may be summoned into battle alongside your regular demon, you can set a macro for these demonic guardians:

#showtooltip
/use [nomod:alt]Summon Doomguard;[mod:alt]Summon Infernal

~ Gemenar, destruction warlock

Just Keep Swimming

Similar to priestly Levitates and the engineering parachutes, there are times when it’s handy to have a fast, self-cast Unending Breath to hand for some high-speed, watery pursuit – notably, PvP.

#showtooltip
/cast [@party0] Unending Breath

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Summoning Help

I find this macro useful simply in broadcasting instructions, for those who’ve never summoned a player before. It also helps announce just who it is being summoned, via party chat so that the ‘summonee’ will know to prepare too.

#showtooltip
/cast Ritual of Summoning
/p I’m summoning %t – please can you right-click the portal to start, then the bubble around me?

‘%t’ simply posts the name of whoever (or whatever) you have targeted. ‘/p’ works exactly as it does when typing in the chat bar as normal – whatever follows will be spoken as party chat.

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Demonic Circles

Demonic Circle‘s two separate abilities can be annoying accomodations when you’ve a UI full of curses and engineering gadgetry. pressing this as normal will teleport you to the circle; hold down ‘alt’ and you’ll cast a new circle:

#showtooltip
/use [mod:alt]Demonic Circle: Summon;[nomod:alt]Demonic Circle: Teleport

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Curses

All warlocks have quite an array of curses at their disposal, and while Curse of the Elements may be the go-to for destruction warlocks fighting instances, you may have need of a Curse of Weakness for PvP and other situations. Just like other abilities, it’s quite easy to collect all of these option upon one macro button. Affliction warlocks will want to add Curse of Exhaustion.

#showtooltip
/use [nomod:alt,nomod:shift]Curse of the Elements;[mod:shift]Curse of Weakness;[mod:alt]Curse of Tongues

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Demon Abilities

Imps, Felhunters and Felguards possess powerful abilities, which are sadly stowed away on tiny buttons in the pet action bar. You may wish to add them to your main UI if, like me, you enjoy having a constant ‘silence’ button which can be reached in times of panic. Doing so is actually very simple: just use a macro button! You’ll want to look into the following:

• [Imp] Singe Magic
• [Felhunter] Spell Lock, Devour Magic
• [Felguard] Axe Toss
• [Succubus] Seduction

#showtooltip
/cast Singe Magic

It’s also worth noting that if you add these short macros to your general macro tab (i.e. not character-specific), Healbot will be able to recognise and map them to its own healing interface. This can be very useful indeed if you are accustomed to removing curses and magic with a mage, priest or druid. Just be sure to enable Healbot for your warlock, visit the ‘spells’ tab and click the small arrow next to the field you wish to set. This brings up the menu shown right, from which you can select your demonic macro.

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Destruction

Corruption & Banes

I have found that soloing quests requires a different spell line-up to most instance action, and bosses in particular. Curses and Banes don’t feature particularly high upon a destruction warlock’s list when Immolate will do, but I’ve found it useful to line a few shadow DoTs up on one button, which I can alter depending upon the enemy I fight. This button includes:

• Corruption (non-elites)
• Bane of Agony (tough elites)
• Bane of Doom (bosses)

#showtooltip
/use [nomod:alt,nomod:shift]Corruption;[mod:shift]Bane of Doom;[mod:alt]Bane of Agony

Demonology

Metamorphosis

Demonic form carries some unique abilities, but unlike Stealth or Shadowform, you’ll see no special action bar to replace the one you already use; getting to these abilities can be a nuisance, then. Luckily, the two new abilities you’re granted are functionally similar to Shadowfury and Hellfire; if you wanted to, you could replace these or your Rain of Fire spell with a context-sensitive macro!

#showtooltip
/cast [nostance] Rain of Fire; [form:2] Immolation Aura

#showtooltip

/cast [nostance] Arcane Bomb; [form:2] Demon Leap

“form:2″ here refers to Metamorphosis. You’ll see that if it’s turned off, the buttons will function as normal; their context changes as soon as you ‘fel up’.

~ Gemenar, destruction & demonology warlock

Enhancement

Shock Melee

Because the melee damage output is so high, we shaman can basically just run up to stuff and start whacking it without having to cast spells or drop totems – but it helps to get a shock spell in first. I find that attaching an auto-attack to this button comes in quite useful for such occasions, and for PvP too, as it frees your mouse up for running and for selecting enemies.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Earth Shock

You can also add this to Flame Shock or Frost Shock.

~ Cygnar, enhancement shaman

Easy In…

I used to bind my totem call to the UI for convenience, when my shaman still needed the extra push through damage and spell power. Adding an auto-attack to this meant one button could save me a click on the UI and a right-click on my enemy, but then we’re granted new calls come 40 and 50…

#showtooltip
/startattack
/click MultiCastSummonSpellButton

‘MultiCastSummonSpellButton’ is the complex name for that which sits on the smaller, special action bar just below the chat panel. The function will cast whichever spell sits in that leftmost box, meaning it can cast a Call of Spirits, Elements or Ancestors. Note that if you want to port this ability over to warriors, druids or other classes which use this bar, their buttons have quite different names.

~ Cygnar, enhancement shaman

… Easy Out

Sometimes we can forget to refresh those all-important shields between fights, be they Lightning Orbs or a Water Shield. This can be annoying, as the spell knocks another cooldown off the range of spells you want to start killing whatever lays in front of you. In order to make your buttons tidier and more convenient, you can set your Totemic Recall to a convenient spot and have that button re-apply your chosen shield too, meaning it can even be cast while running with the mouse!

#showtooltip
/castsequence Totemic Recall, Lightning Shield

~ Cygnar, enhancement shaman

Emergency Off-Tank

Though this is a role usually handled by a warlock or hunter with an appropriate pet, it is possible for a shaman to help protect the healer or another vulnerable member of the group, should the tank find themselves incapacitated. I wrote this rather simple macro to make sure a shaman can deal her biggest threats within a few seconds:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Rockbiter Weapon, Frost Shock, Unleash Elements

~ Cygnar, enhancement shaman

Levitate in a Bind

I’m always more confident in my engineers for having a parachute button bound to my UI, with a keyboard hotkey to boot. When it came to playing a priest, I simply had to add one for Levitate, though it’s handy to have the accompanying glyph for real peace of mind. This becomes particularly handy in boss fights like the Underbog’s Black Stalker and Azjol-Nerub’s Anub’arak, in which you may find yourself flung into the air and in need of a softer landing.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=party0] Levitate

~ Capricar, holy priest

Holy & Discipline

Binding Tank/Healer Heal

Binding Heal is a powerful panic ability which is most often bound to a certain character. If your tank or their main assist take damage along with yourself, you can heal two in one with a macro-bound target:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=party1] Binding Heal

~ Capricar, holy priest

Panic Resurrections

Guardian Spirit often needs to be cast in a bind, but you may still be targeting the boss in order to monitor their abilities. I swear by having two Guardian Spirit macros on my holy spec. action bar:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=party1] Guardian Spirit

This will cast Guardian Spirit on your tank; you can use ‘party0′ instead if you are the one at risk of being pulped.

~ Capricar, holy priest

Holy

Chakra States

With all credit due to Galatea for her help, this ended up saving a lot of pain in light of the Chakra states introduced to holy priestdom after the Shattering. The problem we have with this ability is that it works as follows:

• Activate Chakra state upon yourself
• Cast a quick heal or a prayer on yourself or another party member
• Cast Holy Word: Chastise under its new guise as Holy Word: Sanctuary (targetted AoE) or Holy Word: Serenity (which must be cast upon a single player)

This is simply impossible to fit into an easy macro. Because Chastise changes into other spells – but those are not considered spells in their own right – you cannot script for something like “/cast [@party1] Holy Word: Serenity”. We can’t combine these either, because Chastise requires a hostile target; Serenity requires a friendly target, and Sanctuary requires you to place an AoE effect.

Instead we arrived at the following solution:

Firstly, ensure that you have space on your UI for Holy Word: Chastise, Chakra and your new macro. I placed my Holy Word on #1, Chakra on #2 and my macro on #3, as most of my healing is actually dished out through Healbot. Make sure that each one is easy to get to, as we will need them all! We’ll work through this as if we were actively healing, so you can see the logic behind it.

Step one is very simple – activate Chakra. We don’t need to do anything to this button.

Step two is to cast our trigger spell upon a friendly target who, for sake of ease, has been set as our focus. This frees you up to keep an eye on the boss as your main target, just in case he’s about to cast a massive spell.

The trigger is usually a Heal or Prayer of Mending. Because I use Healbot, I actually have that Prayer set to a shortcut, and so I haven’t included a button for it. If you do require a UI button for one of these spells though, as I did, you can mould it into a dual-function trigger and Holy Word. For example:

#showtooltip [mod:alt] Heal; [nomod] Holy Word: Chastise

/cast [@focus,mod:alt] Heal;

/target focus

/click ActionButton1

/targetlasttarget

What this does is turn button #3 into a copy of button #1. Note that it does not cast Holy Word: Chastise directly, but whatever that spell is likely to turn into! The exception comes when you hold down ‘alt’, when it shall cast Heal upon your focus, instead of whatever hostile you may be targeting (which would cause an error). The ‘/target focus’ and ‘targetlasttarget’ simply ensure that you cast Holy Word: Serenity upon your focus instead of an enemy unit.

There may not seem much of an advantage to this, but I find that Heal is largely a redunandant ability. As long as you can keep Chakra running, it makes far more sense to have a Holy Word: Serenity close to hand, and by separating that from the standard Chastise spell, you can also forget about having to manually switch targets throughout the fight. An added bonus is that this button will also serve to cast Holy Word: Sanctuary if you choose to trigger that Chakra state!

~ Capricar, holy priest

Shadow

Power Word: Shield

Purely to save time, I have a macro bound to cast and then refresh my shield whenever it’s needed. You can set abilities to cast upon yourself, and they shall when you have a hostile selected, but this macro rules out any upset caused by having a friendly character selected.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=party0] Power Word: Shield

~ Capricar, shadow priest

Sic!

It’s often useful to add a ‘sic‘ function to one of your abilities if you prefer to keep your pet passive. You can add it to abilities like Hunter’s Mark but it’s far safer on a sting ability or its own button. Be aware that this macro will not affect your ability cooldowns, so you can effectively hit Hunter’s Mark and this macro button at the same time.

/petattack

~ Ariessar, marksmanship hunter

Balance

Mana Restoration

One thing is true for all caster druids: a self-Innervate button is nigh on essential, as it means you won’t have to deselect whatever it is you’re fighting.

/cast [@party0] Innervate

The ‘@’ function could just as easily be affixed with a name, such as your regular healer or paladin tank, or another party number. Most groups, including the random dungeon finder parties, will have the tank as ‘party1′ and the healer as ‘party2′.

~ Taurinar, balance druid

Flight to Fight

I rely on this in my balance spec., as I fly about seeking prey. As soon as I spot a foe I can hit this button to switch forms, without any of this “you are in shapeshift form” nonsense greying Moonkin Form out. Of course, it helps to be close to the ground when you do this, or else you’ll suffer fall damage.

#showtooltip
/cancelform
/cast Moonkin Form

~ Taurinar, balance druid

Easy Pull

I find myself having to manually right-click my enemies all too often, just to begin whacking them with my staff as a Moonkin may often do. Thus I affixed an auto-attack to my Starfire spell, since I use that to pull with most often.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Starfire

~ Taurinar, balance druid

Restoration

Mana Restoration

See ‘Balance’.