Lichborne: Elementary death knight macros
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Oct 27th 2009 at 5:00PM
As you approach the end game of WoW, one thing you may find out quickly is that the proper use of macros is a great way to take your game to the next level. Sometimes they streamline moves, other times they allow you to perform actions that would be otherwise impossible. Death knights are definitely no exception, and though we'd be here all week if I went through all the ins and out of macro theory, or even death knight macro theory, I figure right now is still a good time to get you started.
Let's look at a few basic essential macros for the various roles and trees of the class.
DPS and PvP
One of the most basic DPS macros for a death knight is the burst macro, in which you get yourself as buffed as possible before unleashing your devastating last attack. Here's one for Unholy:
/use Potion of Speed/cast Summon Gargoyle
This macro starts out by using your gloves (slot 10 being your glove slot). If you're an engineer, this is useful since you'll hopefully have some Hyperspeed Accelerators attached to your gloves. 13 and 14 are the trinket slots, so if you have anything usable on those trinkets, it'll be put to use. One warning here is that the glove enchants and most trinket enchants do apparently have a shared cool down of a few seconds, so you may have to choose one or the other if you're an engineer and your trinkets have on use abilities. I've just put all three in the macro for easier reference.
With that out of the way, the macro moves on to chug a potion of speed, then summon a Gargoyle. Since Summon Gargoyle is the only action in the macro that's on the GCD, it all works out. Also, since Summon Gargoyle acts as a pet and bases its stats off yours at the time of cast, having all those extra buffs on helps it out immensely. Of course, the downside to this macro is that you'll be chugging speed potions like a maniac, so consider that if you want to tweak it for your own personal use.
With that out of the way, the macro moves on to chug a potion of speed, then summon a Gargoyle. Since Summon Gargoyle is the only action in the macro that's on the GCD, it all works out. Also, since Summon Gargoyle acts as a pet and bases its stats off yours at the time of cast, having all those extra buffs on helps it out immensely. Of course, the downside to this macro is that you'll be chugging speed potions like a maniac, so consider that if you want to tweak it for your own personal use.
#showtooltip Dancing Rune Weapon/use 10/use 13
/use 14
/use Potion of Speed/cast [target=player] Hysteria/cast [target=player] Dancing Rune Weapon
Here's a similar macro for a Blood death knight which works under essentially the same principles as the above Unholy macro, with the same cautions and drawbacks, but substituting a few Blood specific talents. The [target=player] assures the mentioned buffs are cast on yourself. And yes, there is a reason we stick it on Dancing Rune Weapon, too. Dancing Rune Weapon, as it turns out, actually shows up in front of the target it's cast on. If you cast it on yourself, it will show up with you, behind the enemy (assuming you're back there like you should be in most group DPS situations).
#showtooltip Howling Blast/cast Deathchill
/cast Howling Blast
Since Frost doesn't have a big old pet to summon, they're a little bit out of the loop here, but if you absolutely can't wait to get a Killing Machine proc lined up, you can always use the above macro for a nice bit of critical AE damage.
#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Mind Freeze
This is a pretty basic macro for when you're on interrupt duty on one monster but need to DPS another. If you have a good caller or a good addon, you can keep an eye out for the cast and use this macro to quickly interrupt it without breaking your focus on your main target. Of course, the disadvantage here is that you still have to be in melee range of the other target.
#showtooltip Hysteria
/cast [target=playername] Hysteria
This is a pretty basic macro. If you're Blood and your raid has dictated Hysteria should go to another DPSer, you can set this up by replacing "playername" with the name of your Hysteria target so you can quickly cast it without using sight of the enemy.
If you're an Unholy death knight, this tooltip will send your Ghoul out of danger. Simply change the player name to a ranged DPS or healer who you know is standing back out of harm's way. This probably won't be as useful in PvE anymore since Night of the Dead has pretty uber AE protection, but it could still save it in a PvP situation for sure.
Tank
This idea is pretty straightforward. Rune Strike is good. Rune Strike is cheap. Rune Strike does lots of damage and threat. But it's also sort of a pain to watch for the extra button to light up so you can press it. Luckily, since Rune Strike isn't on the global cool down, you can easily throw it on a macro. Pick an ability (and plug it into the macro where "Ability" is currently) you'll be weaving into your rotation constantly, and you should be able to grab Rune Strike pretty consistently. Just be aware that it can theoretically leave you short of RP when you really need it for Icebound Fortitude or Anti-Magic Shell.
It's worth noting that the above macro can also be modified by engineer DPSers for easy casting of some rockets. Just replace the Rune Strike cast with a "/use 10" to set off your gloves.
#showtooltip Bone Shield/cast Blood Tap/stopcasting/cast Bone Shield
This macro can be used for Unbreakable Armor in the Frost tree as well. The idea here is to use your defensive talented cool down without breaking your rotation. Casting Blood Tap can help you keep the rotation going while still getting your defense on.
Moving on with macrosNow, it's worth noting that we're just scratching the surface. Once you get a better understanding of macro theory, you can create focus, key modifiers, and other such macros that offer a whole new world of bar space saving. One word of caution, though: Stay away from cast sequence macros. It may be tempting to create a lazy one button rotation macro, but that lazy one button rotation macro can't account for fight movement, adapting to changing combat situations, or using other abilities in emergencies. You will see better DPS in almost any basic fight by sticking with multiple buttons. Save combination macros for spells that really do work well together.
Either way, a good macro makeover is a great way to get ready for Patch 3.3. Arthas won't know what hit him -- mostly because he'll be too busy trying to decipher macro code, but hey. Take them where you can get them.
Welcome to Lichborne, the new class column on the new WoW class, the Death Knight, where we discuss Patch 3.1 cookie cutter builds, basic defense gear and Heroic defense gear for the Death Knight tank, 5-man Crusader's Coliseum gear previews for tanks and DPS, and basic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category.Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Instances, Raiding, Guides, Death Knight, Macro Anatomy, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JoeHelfrich Oct 27th 2009 5:22PM
You might want to change the template footer. Patch 3.1 discussion is a bit dated.
Diego Oct 27th 2009 5:27PM
Shouldn't Blood Death Knights cast all of their buffs / speed pots first, and then use Dancing Rune Weapon? I had thought the weapon absorbs / uses whatever buffs you currently have active on yourself.
Thyrial Oct 27th 2009 5:34PM
Yes which is exactly what the macro does >.>
catharsis80 Oct 27th 2009 5:30PM
Nope, it's there in the article.
curtisrutland Oct 27th 2009 5:31PM
For DPS, the only thing I had macro'd was Hysteria. When I was blood DPS, I used
#showtooltip
/cast [target=player] Hysteria
When I tank (blood) I use the macro you have listed, with our top physical dps's name there, since I don't particularly want to start gouging my own health in a raid situation.
The Mind Freeze one is less useful than it seems, because of the range of Mind Freeze. You have to be inside a mob's hitbox to use it, and currently, I can't think of a lot of fights where I'm going to be interrupting a focus target but DPSing another target that are stacked on top of each other.
catharsis80 Oct 27th 2009 5:34PM
Having recently begun a level 80 Death Knight, I'll throw this one out there. It's been extremely valuable...
/cast [target=mouseover] Death Grip
This lets you Death Grip anyone you hover your mouse over within range of Death Grip. This way, you don't have to change targets just to Death Grip, and you can continue your normal rotations on the current target.
Oh, and kudos for listing the !Rune Strike macro. I've been using that since the start of the DK tank. :D
Diego Oct 27th 2009 6:03PM
Oops! lol yes you're right Thyrial! It does! Been a long day at work :p
catharsis80 Oct 27th 2009 5:38PM
I'm a little confused on the Howling Blast macro. Do you have them out of order? Shouldn't you be using Deathchill before you cast the actual spell of Howling Blast?
Mutak Oct 27th 2009 5:43PM
I'm confused...i don't see /y GET OVER HERE!!! in any of those macros.
Vitos Oct 27th 2009 6:37PM
Or
/y RISE MY SOLDIERS RISE AND FIGHT ONCE MORE
/y RISE MY SOLDIERS RISE AND FIGHT ONCE MORE
/y RISE MY SOLDIERS RISE AND FIGHT ONCE MORE
/y RISE MY SOLDIERS RISE AND FIGHT ONCE MORE
/y RISE MY SOLDIERS RISE AND FIGHT ONCE MORE
/cast Army of the Dead
Also- Noth, please shut up
catharsis80 Oct 28th 2009 3:16PM
I'm guessing because it pisses off other players to have the dumb text balloon pop up in their face and cover something in the field of battle that they need to see other than someone's personally gratifying emote.
I COULD BE WRONG.
homesickalien Oct 27th 2009 6:01PM
Although a caveat was mentioned about castsequence macros, I've been using this one for ages and it's served me well.
/castsequence reset=3 Icy Touch, Plague Strike
It basically puts up your diseases after 2 quick button presses and will reset after 3 seconds. If your rotation is solid you should be consistently putting up your diseases one after the other anyhow. Saved me a space on my hotbar and keyboard.
If you feel so inclined you can add "Pestilence" after plague strike in the macro and hit it 3 times to open up on mobs, however, be warned that diseases will break CC and one loose pestilence might wipe your raid during the Faction Champs ;)
Craig Oct 27th 2009 6:44PM
I'd like to add a +1 to this castsequence macro, it's pretty simple and it _rarely_ causes me any stress. I use the following variation:
/castsequence reset=target/10 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence
The "target" reset causes it to reset when you swap targets, so you can re-disease something new. The timeout of 10 is enough time that if I don't immediately have enough runes to finish off the Pestilence, it doesn't reset on me right away.
Only three situations I've had any issues with it:
- When I haven't been hit capped and I miss with Plague Strike - then your macro resets to the beginning and you have to either do the whole sequence again, or be ok with being down a disease for a few seconds. I'm hit capped now, so it's not an issue anymore.
- "Ranged" DPS (say...on Ony). In this situation you have to untarget Ony, and then re-target to cast Icy Touch again. Minor pain, but no one expects me to do awesome ranged DPS anyway :P
- Accidentally targetting something new. Don't do this.
Good luck!
staffan.johansson Oct 27th 2009 8:01PM
I have a similar macro, except mine is
/cast [mod:shift]Plague Strike;Icy Touch
I use mods in a couple of other places too, in order to save button space. And I include Rune Strike in pretty much all my macros, despite being DPS. I'm too lazy to change out my bars between instances and soloing dailies, and if I'm not being attacked Rune Strike isn't exactly going to be triggered now, is it?
When using my macros, I do most of my DPS with only four buttons.
2: /cast [mod:shift]Plague Strike;Icy Touch
3: /cast [mod:shift]Pestilence;Heart Strike
4: /cast [mod:shift]Obliterate;Death Strike
5: /cast Death Coil
6: /cast [mod:shift]Strangulate;Mind Freeze
All of course include #showtooltip and such.
Sunaseni Oct 27th 2009 7:13PM
The !Rune Strike macro is an absolute must for tanking. Macro it to every single ability and watch the threat roll in. Rune Strike's my top damaging ability with T8 because of this.
baelyn Oct 28th 2009 12:14PM
@johnnytorrance
The "!" is a special modifier used for macros to prevent toggling an ability on and off repeatedly. It will queue a Rune Strike, which is for your next melee or if it has already been queued, do nothing. This is also useful for targeted aoe spells so you don't end up losing the targeting circle if you hit the button more than once.
Chris Anthony Oct 27th 2009 8:22PM
@johnnytorrance, the exclamation mark actually isn't necessary. When you're using a macro to activate an ability that can be toggled (like Stealth), placing the ! before the name of the ability prevents the macro from un-toggling the ability (so "/cast !Stealth" would put you into stealth, but not take you out of it).
Since it appears that Rune Strike can't be toggled off once it's been activated (that may have been possible in the past, but empirical testing says that it's no longer possible), the ! is just a spare character. :)
Byron Oct 28th 2009 12:18AM
No need to use /cast anymore. /use works for everything now, and saves one character. Useful for really long macros that hit up against the 255 character limit and include several /use lines.
tim Oct 28th 2009 5:07AM
While you (appropriately) warned players about tying Rune Strike to other abilities, you did not make a similar (appropriate) warning for Blood Tap. Without management, Blood Tap can (and will) damage your DPS output...
Ilnara Oct 28th 2009 12:05PM
My favorite macros..
/cast leap
/cast gnaw
/cast Deathgrip
/cast gnaw
And no, I don't macro Runestrike into my normal attacks.
Also handy is
/castsequence Mind freeze, Strangulate
Since they have vastly different CD's you can pretty effectively macro these two abilities to a single key. If one is on CD, it'll use the next.