Ready Check: Using macros for raid calls
by Michael Gray 
Mar 4th 2011 at 2:00PM
We talked last week about raid calling. Even if every raid member has read up on the fights, watched videos, and has all of their addons installed, some well-timed raid calls can do a lot to help your raid work together.
A problem presents itself if some raiders can't be in voice chat. While I'm sure there are dozens of folks eager to say "can't chat, shouldn't be in raid," the fact is that voice chat isn't always possible. There are medical reasons, lifestyle reasons, and even practicality issues. It happens. Maybe in a perfect world with blue skies, everyone is always in voice chat; but the reality is that you should have a method on hand to deal with voice chat failures. Some people simply can't hear the audio clearly, no matter how carefully and loyally they turn on the program.
Typing in raids isn't universally feasible. Addons like Deadly Boss Mods handle a lot of the typing and calling work, so it's not all bad. But what you need is a quick and easy way to spam raid chat with your unique instruction. The answer to that need is to use macros during your raid.
What are macros?
The use of macros seems a little less prevalent in Cataclysm than in previous expansions, so it's possible not everyone knows what a macro is. Essentially, a macro is a slash command, or many slash commands, pre-written so that you can automatically "retype" it all with a single button push. Slash commands you're probably accustomed to include /say and /yell.
Creating macros isn't difficult. Type /macro and the interface will pop up. Select New to create your macro, select the button icon and set its name. Then type out the slash command you want to recreate in the free text field.
How does this help raid calling?
The essential pieces of raid calling are commands like "Stand here," and "Get away from there!" It's tough to translate that kind of dynamic raid calling into macros. After all, if you completely knew every instruction before the fight, then you probably wouldn't need to raid call at all.
The new Cataclysm raid interface allows raid leaders to mark a location. We can call these zones. This provides a handy location marker than allows you use these locations in a kind of "toggle" manner -- "Go there!" versus "Get away from there!"
Marking a raid member
The next thing you need to know is that many boss mods will mark raid members with the skull and cross as a visual alert. For example, if Cletus the shaman is hit with an ability that makes him explode, the skull over his head is a good notification that everyone should get away from Cletus.
That's great, generally. However, when you need to mark a player for some reason, having the symbol overwritten by a mod can be a pain in the neck. Get around that problem by having the player summon a non-combat pet. For example, in the picture to the right: Grunty.
When an addon attempts to place a mark over Cletus's head, the mark on his noncombat pet won't be disturbed.
General macro "raid calls"
Most raid movements -- the things you nee to call -- can be distilled into four things:
- Kill that.
- DON'T kill that.
- Get there.
- Get away from there.
To make your life easiest, turn all of these things into macros. Mark areas in a boss fight with the appropriate area markers, and set yourself up to have macros that speak to that.
Example macros include:
- /ra Kill {Skull}!
- /ra Get to the {Square}/Blue marker, nao!
- /ra Get away from the {Triangle} !
- /ra Get away from %n ; he's gonna blow!
The places where the raid marker is surrounded by squiggly paranthesis tells the interface to use the symbol instead of just the word. %n is a variable; whatever you have targetted will be repeated in chat. You can see how these four commands look in the picture to the right.Specific fights
Some specific fights have more complicated calls that you might have to make on the fly. These are simply going to be a challenge. Hopefully, most of your raid can handle voice chat, and you'll only have a few folks who can't hear audio calls. Use Boss Blueprints to help out if you're in this situation.
It can be tough to balance the need to support all your members versus downing the content. However, with some macro work, you should be able to err on the side of the angels.
Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
Filed under: Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jeffbr Mar 4th 2011 2:17PM
/ra Get away from those cans; he hates those cans!
ltgalloway Mar 4th 2011 2:35PM
LOL! Nice.
johnny86 Mar 4th 2011 2:25PM
First off, I pity the guilds that are actually trying to down new bosses this way.
More importantly, it is super risky making people rely on reading raid chat to know to do something. For one, they need to make sure they configure their chat frames in a way that doesn't cause them to stand in a fire while tunneling on their chat.
/say macros are better for "move away from me" because the message will appear above the person and if you are standing on the person you can easily see that.
The macros probably should be raid warnings as well, so they appear in a more visible spot for players.
Marcosius Mar 4th 2011 2:51PM
Back in my day we didn't have fanchy schmancy ventrilo's and teamspeaks'n, we only had one raid warning, one raid warning for the whole raid, and we still could kill C'thun without a hitch!
*mumbles* youngsters these days...
The Dewd Mar 4th 2011 3:03PM
You're assuming that people have speech bubbles turned on. And if your caller is using /rw instead of /ra macros, that helps a lot.
Honestly, when I'm in a fight (5-man, heroic, raid, whatever), the chat panel is one of the LAST things I look at. I use it more in pugs, especially on a class with CC abilities - at least until I know which symbol is my CC target. IMO, DBM (or something similar) plus /rw macros are a better way to do it.
The Dewd Mar 4th 2011 3:00PM
/rw I will not move when Flame Wreath is cast or the raid will blow up!
Bonejuice Mar 4th 2011 9:45PM
http://shadeofaranchant.ytmnd.com/
Elicor Mar 4th 2011 3:07PM
Felmyst breath warnings. Spammed ad nausaeam until people catch on - too late, of course, to get out of the cloud.
chris Mar 4th 2011 3:19PM
We use the AutoMark feature of my UpysRaidTools a lot to ensure a mark is retained on a raid member. Even if a boss mod steals it or places a different one on them, within 1 sec it's back for stacking etc :D
jfofla Mar 4th 2011 3:24PM
I never use Chat bubbles
kingoomieiii Mar 4th 2011 3:26PM
Copy and pasted from wow.incgamers.com:
The following macro will do the trick.
/run SetRaidTarget("target", 5)
Substitute the "5" for whichever raid icon that you want.
0 = no icon or Remove icon
1 = Yellow 4-point Star
2 = Orange Circle
3 = Purple Diamond
4 = Green Triangle
5 = White Crescent Moon
6 = Blue Square
7 = Red "X" Cross
8 = White Skull
I hadn't seen that non-combat pet trick. That's handy.
Saeadame Mar 4th 2011 3:57PM
I remember using it a lot on Rotface. If the kiting tank got the ooze, DBM's marker would overwrite his marker, so we started doing the pet thing. Works quite well, although the mark is a little smaller than it would be on a player.
Camo Mar 5th 2011 4:52AM
With the same numbers you are able to use {r#} and get the same icons but without the dependency on the client version.
Harvoc Mar 4th 2011 7:18PM
Yea, like Michael said, some people choose not to participate in voice chat. For me, I know if I were to raid, I'd choose not to because of a minor stutter I have. It'd be pretty embarrassing for me to stutter during voice chat and even worse for my stuttering making the raid wipe by not saying something that was needed to be said in time.
Berna Mar 4th 2011 8:54PM
I don't like voice chat at all. I'm not a native speaker of English, and while I read and write it well, I often have trouble following people in voice chat. They often speak unclearly, in all kinds of different accents, with badly set-up sound systems, with background noise in their home, in the game, sometimes in my house... I used to be in a raid group where the leader fortunately spoke very clearly and with his sound set up just right, but people like that are very much the exception. I'd love it if more people'd use macros to communicate.
marshall.glenn.usn Mar 5th 2011 4:29PM
I will say this.. as a guild officer and sometimes RL, I always require Vent. One caveat though.. my requirement is you have to be able to listen. Many ppl come to me and say I dont like to talk so I wont log vent. I say log vent, and just listen.. you dont want to talk that is your right and I dont care why, Vent is a 2 way street imho, listening and talking, so if you decide no talkie talkie, but can listen well then welcome to the raid.
Muse Mar 5th 2011 4:08AM
That, and the fact that there are a LOT of situations where even people who can use voice should use macros because your eye-to-hand reaction time is a lot shorter than your ear-to-hand, simply because your eyes can take in the entirety of the message all at once, while your ears are restricted to chronological order. (assuming you don't write essays for the visual cues)
For example, you have your generic bossfight, Tank1 is main, healer1 is on the tank, healer2 is on raid. Suddenly healer1 realises s/he has overstretched and is out of mana. On vent, the order would go something like "I'm out of mana, heal tank1". No matter how fast you say it, that's still some time, then include vent lag, and then healer2 has to hear healer1, realise what healer1 wants, and start healing tank1. Whereas healer1 using a preset "/rw OOM, heal my target" only requires healer2 to read the phrase (which s/he'll have seen before, so recognition-reading more than reading) and pick out the necessary bits, remember which target healer1 was on, and start working.
Granted, visual cues come with the risk of getting drowned out because everything else is also done visually, but speaking of pure speed when everything is working the way it should, visually is faster. It also does require some consistency, we recognise the way the words LOOK more than we actually read them. (which also applies to verbal commands, if we're expecting a specific message from a raider over vent, we don't necessarily hear exactly what s/he says, we hear the voice and react to what we know by training that s/he's gonna say. f.ex a tank who is waiting for the call to taunt isn't going to wait until the other tank has finished saying, "taunt". S/he's going to taunt on the T. Or if the tank has a mic that makes a silly noice when it's activated ;) )
Which isn't to say vent is useless, far from it, it's still an integral part of raiding. But the point is, visual cues aren't bad simply because they're text-based.
And if that fails, I'm pretty sure Mumble and Vent can be set up to play pre-defined text-to-speech on command.
Cambro Mar 5th 2011 10:44AM
In my opinion, anyone making a serious attempt at raiding should be using some form of voice chat, whether it's built in, ventrilo, mumble etc. And when I say "use", I mean at minimum have it set up so you can at least hear what is being said. You don't need to talk, just be able to hear instructions. And honestly, I've found the more people talking during an encounter, the more hectic it is. During an encounter, you shouldn't have more than a couple of people calling things out, and as last week's article pointed out, they only need to be calling out the really big stuff. Using DBM or Bigwigs will take care of most of the warnings, and healers should be using something like Grid/Grid2/Healbot/Vuhdoo/Decursive that will show them debuffs that need to be removed.
But also, macros are great for raiding. As a tank, I've used macros to tell the other tank to taunt off me (/rw Taunt!) or to give the healers a heads up:
/cast Last Stand
/rw Cambro just used Last Stand! Big heals in 6 seconds!
About non-combat pets, we've discovered that some pets are better than others for putting a raid marker on. I think Onyxia Whelpling is one of the troublesome ones; not only does it do an emote that clutters the chat window, it flies and has a slight delay in moving with its owner.
Berna Mar 6th 2011 5:39AM
Of course, I always do listen. But like I said, I often have trouble understanding what people say, and I can't keep asking them to repeat themselves after every sentence, can I?
Tanadord Mar 9th 2011 10:39AM
What si the name of the website used to make that picture? I remember seeing a post about it but cant for the life of me remember what its called. would be really useful as i am writing guides for my guild atm. If anyone knows please let me know