Shot Rotation Macro

This is the new shot rotation macro we are using. It's simple, effective, and saves us a couple of button slots for other huntering stuff. It also allows us BM hunters to take advantage of the Glyph of Steady Shot in a more efficient manner.

/castsequence reset=3 Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

It simply shoots Serpent Sting, then Arcane Shot, and then Steady Shot enough times for Arcane Shot to come out of cooldown. At the end, it resets, reapplying Serpent Sting and there we go.

Oh and it will reset after 3 seconds of inactivity so you can start it over on the next mob FAST.

Looking for Something... Special?

Rare mobs.

Those pesky little buggers are really hard to find sometimes, heh? That's probably why they're called rare anyway. Mmmm...

As hunters, we like to track down rare mobs. We have tracked down Loque'nahak but we have had our share of hunts in the past. And we will certainly have some more hunts in the future.

We have evolved our Mob-Finder-Macro and we must say the current version is really nice for all those out there trying to find that pesky rare mob.

Here it is:

/cleartarget
/target Mob1
/target Mob2
/target Mob3
/stopmacro [noexists]
/script PlaySound("RaidWarning");
/run RaidNotice_AddMessage(RaidBossEmoteFrame,"FOUND TARGET !!!", ChatTypeInfo["RAID_WARNING"])

Wow looks nifty. But what does it do?

Well, first of all, it clears your current target - so that it doesn't give you a false possitive. Then it tries to target Mob1, Mob2 and Mob3 (you should replace this for real mob names like, for example, "Loque". You can delete one or more of these lines or add more if you need.

Now here comes the cool part: if you have NO target selected, the macro stops there. It doesn't do anything, poof. It's over. But if you do have a target selected, you will hear a sound (the Raid Warning sound) and you will SEE a Raid Warning with the message FOUND TARGET !!!

Bind your new macro to a key and spam around!

There's NO way you'll overlook your rare mob now is it?

Hunter Basics: Pull Shot

Sometimes, we will find groups of mobs. Running towards them with guns blazing may not be the solution. Most of the times it will be your demise and your fast way to the graveyard. You'll see your self in a situation where you must break the group and fight one or two mobs at a time - divide to conquer.

Or maybe you just want to pull the mob out to a place where you can have an advantage over him.

In these cases you need to do a Pull Shot.

A Pull Shot is nothing more than a single shot to aggro the mob, making it run towards you. Now, here's the catch: you want to pull the mob, make it target you but you want it to leave you alone and target your pet instead, when you need to chew it down. So you'll need to do one of two things: either Misdirect your shot aggro to your pet - but you can only do this when you hit 70 - and thus you can use your most powerful shot available (Steady Shot, for example) or pull aggro towards you, using a weaker shot, allowing your pet to easily turn the mob away from you.

Misdirection is easy to do. Just cast it on your pet and the blast the mob away. This is particularly useful for casters and we'll have an article soon about it. Our goal on this post is to talk about the pull shot you'll be using until you hit level 70.

We want to aggro the mob, but in a way that your pet can engage it, hold it and tank it fast and easily. For that you need to produce the least amount of damage possible by using Arcane Shot (Rank 1). Here's the macro:

/cast Arcane Shot(Rank 1)
/cleartarget
/petfollow

This will simply shoot Arcane Shot (Rank 1), tell your pet to follow you (so it doesn't attack your target) and then clear your target (target nothing) so you will stop attacking the mob.

Use the macro to pull the mob, make it follow you to where you want it to be and send your pet to attack it. Your pet should grab aggro fairly easy and you can start shooting away.

This should help you go through your quests and instances up to level 70 where you will, very probably, start using Misdirection.

Go do some proper huntering now!

Hunter Basics: Engaging Mobs

All right. You just hit level 10 with your hunter. You got yourself a pet, learned how to feed him (although feeding your pet is not as important as used to - back in the old days, feeding your pet was one of the major micro-management tasks a hunter had. You'd have to feed or pet or it's loyalty would drop and you could lose your pet and have to tame a new one). You're all set to go!

Up until now, the way you engaged mobs was pretty simple. You'd probably start with a couple of shots and the mob would rapidly engage you in melee distance. From then on you'd fight him with your melee weapon until the end of the combat.

Once you get your pet, though, it's a whole new ball game.

One of the things you must have in mind is that mobs are no longer allowed to get into melee range from you. You do ALL your fights from far away, blasting them away with your gun or bow. Your pet tanks, you shoot him to pieces. He's dead. Gone. Done. Next.

Here's how things should be: first of all, you should cast Hunter's Mark. With that one, all your ranged attacks will have their power increased (the increase depends on the spell level and goes from 20 (for level 1) up to 300 (for level 5).

Once you have your Hunter's Mark on your target, send your pet in. Wait a couple of seconds, so it builds some nice aggro and start shooting away. From then on it's a matter of burning the mob down. Move to the next mob, rinse and repeat.

Easy deal, isn't it?

You can use a macro to help you on your attacks. The one bellow will cast Hunter's Mark on your target and order your pet to attack it. Hit it, start shooting and your all set.

/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack

We also use another macro that can be handy in case a mob jumps on you unexpectedly. If you keep your pet on defensive, it will attack the mob. If you use the macro bellow, you will target your pet's target, start attacking it (using Auto Shot) and cast Hunter's Mark.

/target pettarget;
/cast Auto Shot;
/cast Hunter's Mark();

Now, don't forget this: hunters are a RANGED class. Your job is to stay away from the mobs, shooting them down. If they move to you, keep them at a distance. Use your pet to tank them. It should keep the mobs away from you so you can do your job.

Go do some proper huntering now!

Shot Rotation Macro

Shot rotation for BM hunters are not that hard nowadays. Spam the heck out of Steady Shot and, once your mob's health goes down to 20%, Kill Shot him.

This will change soon due to the changes on the next patch. Arcane Shot will have its importance increased and Steady Shot will have its importance decreased. Blizzard is trying to give us a bit more of complexity which we, in particular, welcome - we believe all classes should be more than just using a couple of spells, shots or whatever.

Until then, we'd like to show you the macro we're using right now, for our "Shot Rotation" (AKA Steady Shot spam):

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot

This macro tries to shoot Kill Shot first. If it can't (due to the mob being over 20% of his health, for example, it simply shoots Steady Shot. Easy, reliable, effective.

We're still doing some trials (and we need to get into the PTR for some testing) with a new macro that will include Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot for 3.0.8. We'll let you guys know once we nail it.

Stay Focused!!!

You remember this post, right? Well I didn't write it too long ago (I wrote it a couple of days ago, actually), so your memory is still fresh.

On that post I talk about my macros for focusing a target (the Lead DPS on my make-believe instance run) and assisting it (targeting the same mob as he, thus concentrating firepower on the poor guy - or undead, or beast or whatever you want to nuke).

Well I started thinking I could make it a bit better. The ones I posted required you to use 2 buttons: one for setting your focus and one for assisting him/her. So I researched a bit and came out with a macro that allows you to use 1 button only, thus saving action bar space:

/focus [modifier: shift] target
/assist [nomodifier] focus

What does this do? Well if you click the action bar button while you press "shift" it will set your current target as your focus. If you hit it without any modifier key (shift/control/alt) it will assist your focus. Nifty heh?

Now I know we can make it a bit better by actually checking if we have a unit/player/character set as our focus and only assist if so. But I really don't feel like doing some research right now. Maybe I'll come back to this on a later post.

DPS classes, unite!

Let's imagine, for a moment, that you are doing an instance with the perfect group. You got a tank, a healer and, as a hunter, you're one of the 3 DPS players.

You get into the instance and you start thrashing mobs around. The tank (or the party leader, whoever he is - I rather have my tank lead though) should first tell the group by which order the mobs should go down. He gets in, holds aggro and now he has 2, 3, 4, whatever amount of guys around him.

In the same perfect world, the tank keeps aggro and all the nice DPS folks control their aggro (you can use a nice addon such as Omen Threat Meter - GO GET IT), the healer does his thing - just another regular business day.

Now, what's the deal with the DPS group? Well you guys should ALL be targeting the same mob to take him down FAST. If each of you targets a different mob, or one of you targets one mob and the other 2 another mob well... That WILL work. But not just as well as if you ALL target the same mob.

Let's say each mob is hitting the tank for 100 dps (nevermind the number - I'm just using a nice, simple round number). So we got 3 guys hitting the tank for 100 dps each. That's 300 dps on top of the poor guy. If you all target a mob and bring him down, you'll reduce the damage by over 30% quickly. Then you move on, take more damage down from the tank and so on.

If you target different mobs, the poor tank will have to sustain more damage, for more time. The healer will have to heal him more often, spending more mana. This is a big no-no. You guys want to bring the mobs down, one at a time, but FAST. Nuke them. Send them to WoW-hell. Whatever. Just bring them down as fast as you can.

Now I know this is not too hard to do. You guys read/listen carefully to your party leader, you know what symbols mean what, what's the kill order and you just nuke a mob, pick another mob and so on. Nevertheless, and as I am a tactical gamer, I try to add a little more of teamwork and tactics to this action.

In the said perfect group, one of the DPS players would be the Lead DPS. This is the guy that has the responsability to quickly switch targets to the next mob. The other 2 guys only follow their lead, by assisting him.

Let's say you are confronting a group of 3 mobs - A, B and C - that are to be killed by that order. You guys target A, the tank goes in and off you go shooting them to pieces. After A is killed the Lead DPS picks mob B and the other 2 DPS players assist him. You can either select the player and hit "F" (the default key) or click the target window on the group frames. But there's another cooler way: macros.

I use a couple of macros to help me on this matter: 1 to set a player as my focus and another one to assist my focus. Don't mix this type of focus with pet focus. They're 2 different things.

When you assign a player as your focus, WoW stores the said player in memory so you can reuse it later.

So you click on the Lead DPS player and enter "/focus target" into the console. Or, better yet, do a macro and make it a button on your action bar.

Later you will be able to assist your focus player simply by using yet another macro, which will be comprised of a single line, once again: "/assist focus".

So let's say you click on your Lead DPS player and hit your "/focus target". Later on, that player will start targeting mobs. You hit your "/assist focus" macro and bang! You're targeting his mob. If you and the other DPS player do that, you will ensure that EVERYONE will be hitting the same mob, bringing him down fast and doing your job!

Your tank will surely appreciate it.