Totem Talk: How to use macros to maximize your enhancement utility
by Josh Myers 
Mar 26th 2011 at 7:00PM
When I first started playing during The Burning Crusade, I had no idea what a macro was. I'd love to pretend that this was because World of Warcraft was simpler back then and that a good player could get away with never using a macro. Unfortunately, that isn't the case; I just wasn't a very good player in my shaman's youth.
The truth is that macros are something that any serious raider or PvPer should never be without. They fulfill a variety of roles, from cast sequence shock macros saving you some bar space to using your Feral Spirits' Bash ability on a focused healer to interrupt their Tranquility cast. In a raiding game where the ability to interrupt a target you're not DPSing is a huge asset, learning to manage your abilities through macros is a huge benefit for you and for your raid group (as well as for your arena team).
Focus macros
The first macros we're going to take a look at are our macros for casting on a focus target. Typing /focus (or better, making a /focus macro and clicking it!) sets up an opponent as your focus target. This focus target then has a unit frame pop out that is separate from your main target main frame, allowing you to effectively monitor two targets at the same time.
The most useful application for focus targeting is seen in arena, where your focus should generally be on the enemy caster you are not damaging at the time. If you're playing a priest/mage team and you're focusing the priest down, you want to have your focus on his mage buddy to try and interrupt/Grounding Totem the Polymorphs she's casting to try and peel you. If you're instead focusing on killing the mage, you'll want to focus the priest so that you can Wind Shear the Flash Heal he's trying to cast or Hex him when the mage is low to land the kill while the priest is silenced.
Focus Purge is huge, too, allowing you to dispel important buffs like Innervate without losing your kill target. While most good restoration druids will roll HoTs on themselves to shield from dispels when preparing to Innervate anyway, focus Purge is a great way for dealing with the bad ones who don't. Finally, focus Bash (your Feral Spirits' ability) is a great way for interrupting important casts while you're CCed. If you're caught in a Cyclone while the resto druid is running behind a pillar to cast Tranquility, hitting him with a bash and interrupting the Tranquility channel just cost him an 8-minute cooldown while making you feel like a total pro.#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus,harm]Wind Shear
Focus casting isn't something that is only applicable to PvP. Interrupting casts is huge in the Cataclysm endgame, with Arcanotron, Maloriak, heroic Atramedes, Nefarian, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Ascendant Council, and Cho'gall all requiring you to be well-acquainted with your Wind Shear button. Of those, at least four of these fights can benefit from having a focus Wind Shear macro set up so that you can interrupt casts without losing your DPS target. Beyond that, Maloriak's Remedy and Arcanotron's Power Conversion are both abilities that can be applied and dispelled while you're damaging another target, making focus Purge awesome.#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus,harm]Purge
/cast [target=focus,harm]Bash
#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus,harm]Hex
Healing macros
Whether you like it or not, healing with Maelstrom Weapon is an important aspect of the enhancement shaman's arsenal. Whether you're clutch healing your arena partner with a Greater Healing Wave or throwing a Healing Rain on the melee clump, you will at some point in your career spend your MW procs on healing.
The first macro we'll look at for healing is a mouseover macro. What this macro does is make your heal castable on the target your mouse is currently hovering over. You can mouseover their character, their nameplate, or their raid frame to allow this to work. For full-time healers, these macros are amazing since they remove the extra few milliseconds of clicking on the raid frames of every person who needs casting on. Over the course of a boss fight, this adds up to more spells cast, more spells cast with the target at lower health, and overall more HPS.
The macro we're going to look at has three functions. First, it heals your mouseover target. Second, if you have no mouseover but have a friendly target, it heals that target. Third, if you have neither a friendly mouseover or friendly target, it heals you.
You can switch in Greater Healing Wave for any single-target cast in your arsenal, which is everything that isn't Healing Rain.#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=target,help][Harm,target=player]Greater Healing Wave
The next macro is a lot simpler, with its primary function being to preserve bar space.
You can also use this macro for general bar space-saving. If you want, switch Healing Rain for Lightning Bolt and Chain Heal for Chain Lightning, or HR for Earth Shock and CH for Flame Shock. Using all three as macros just consolidated six buttons down into three, making finding space on your bar infinitely easier.#showtooltip
/cast [nomodifier] Healing Rain; [modifier:alt] Chain Heal
For next week, I'd really love to do a grab bag of emailed questions à la Joe Perez's latest Restoration Totem Talk or Brian Wood's Scattered Shots. If any of you have a question you're just dying to ask about enhancement, please shoot me an email at josh@wowinsider.com!
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk: Enhancement every week. We've got enhancement-specific advice on rep gear, heroic gear, and raiding gear, plus tips on maximizing your utility skills and tactics for raiding Blackwing Descent.
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nipah Mar 26th 2011 7:13PM
You can trim these macros down (Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN! *ahem*) by using @focus, @target, and [nomod]/[mod:alt] in the right spots.
Nipah Mar 26th 2011 7:18PM
and to add to the list, I present "Nipah's list of 'meh, they work' macros"!
#showtooltip
/use [mod] Hearthstone; Astral Recall
#showtooltip
/cast [mod] Water Shield; Lightning Shield
#showtooltip
/cast [@target,help,nodead,mod][@player,mod] Water Breathing
/cast [@target,help,nodead][@player] Water Walking
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,exists] [@target,help,nodead] [@targettarget,help,nodead] [@player] Greater Healing Wave
#showtooltip
/cast [nomod] Hex; Bind Elemental
/focus
#showtooltip
/cast [mod] Flametongue Weapon; Windfury Weapon
/use [mod] 17; 16
/click StaticPopup1Button1
(I'll admit, this one works, but its probably old code)
Biskit333 Mar 26th 2011 7:29PM
Another way to trim your macros is to replace /cast with /use. /use works on everything now, and that one character can make a difference. For instance, my earth shield macro is at 3 characters shy of the limit (it sets my focus if I have none or hold control, casts ES on my mouseover if I hold shift, or casts ES on my focus, my target, or myself with no mod, depending on the state of each target). This is also important for combining all purpose mount macros to work with ghost wolf.
Grubba Mar 26th 2011 7:46PM
Do you guys have any good resource sites you can recommend for macro guides? Everything I seem to be able to find uses code that I know is outdated (like target=___ rather than @target).
Biskit333 Mar 26th 2011 8:09PM
Wowpedia has a fairly good macro section, but in general you have to just search for whatever kind of macro you are looking for. For instance, there are lots of resources for class specific macros, but not many places where many categories are in one resource.
Grubba Mar 26th 2011 8:29PM
Yeah, wowpedia is one of them that I was talking about. A lot of the stuff there is stuff that was just copied over from wowwiki, and a lot of that stuff was relatively dated. Searching for specific macros is probably a better idea. Thanks!
Amaxe Mar 26th 2011 10:30PM
Don't forget [button:2] allows you to right click on a button.
Nipah Mar 27th 2011 4:59AM
@Amaxe:
[btn:2]!
Sorry, I was on a roll here...
rakkarage Mar 26th 2011 8:11PM
"Typing /focus (or better, making a /focus macro and clicking it!) "
you can bind this in the keybindings menu too
Izzy Mar 26th 2011 9:55PM
Focus is naturally bound to "U" - I've found it's far enough away to not get in my way of other keybinds but not so far that it's unusable.
Jack Mynock Mar 27th 2011 11:31AM
Isn't "U" bound to the reputation sheet by default?
Henry Mar 26th 2011 10:16PM
The 'harm' in those focus macros isn't necessary. They'll behave exactly the same w/o it because those spells aren't usable on friendly targets.
Vitos Mar 26th 2011 11:04PM
When I was redoing my UI, I wrote modifier macros so that I could fit every spell I could potentially ever want into something like 24 buttons.
The great thing about them is that you can (if you have the space) add them to @focus or @target macros, so you save space and have a greater range of abilities, with just one button.
Titusx Mar 27th 2011 12:27AM
Modifier macros for shields and weapon buffs are space savers. I love collapsing abilities into fewer buttons (I have all my spells on the standard button bars).
If you are an engineer you should make a macro for synapse springs to go off on at least two spells. Also, since I like to use Storm Strike to start attacking I use a macro that finds an living enemy and targets it and begins attacking, it back fires some times but its good.
For many useful addons go for wowwiki.
Stilhelm Mar 27th 2011 4:33PM
A rather basic thing is to macro /startattack with some commonly used spells. For example:
/cast Stormstrike
/startattack
or
/cast Flame Shock
/startattack
When switching targets on trash, for example, you might just hit stormstrike because it's a fun button. If SS is on cooldown, you won't start attacking, but the macro will make you start attacking whether you hit them with SS or not. Similarly, Flame Shock is one of the earliest used spells, and being a ranged attack doesn't seem to turn on my autoattack, so the macro fixes that for me.
stephaniepaul7 Mar 27th 2011 10:13PM
Could you please point me in the right direction of who I would need to ask or where I would need to look for Elemental PVP?
I do arenas as Ele and just need a guide to stats etc...
poilbrun Mar 28th 2011 5:05AM
Not shaman related, but macro related, so I guess this is as good a place as any for my question:
The [mod:alt] part of the macro only functions if you click on the button, right?
I can't have such a macro bound to my 1 key and have it work if I press alt-1, can I?
Braxxis Mar 28th 2011 2:11PM
Hey all, Ive been having some problems with modifier macros and my Razer Naga mouse. I've been trying to use the modifier macros that this and a couple of the other columns mentioned but when I try to use them I can only use the unmodified ability without changing the hotkey bar.. An example of the macro would be: /cast [nomod] lightning bolt; [mod:shift] Chain Lightning
I can cast the Lightning bolt this way, but when i use the Shift modifier it changes the hotkey bar from 1 to 2 or whatever number the ability is linked to. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this?
Thanks in advance.
Bhaalspawn Mar 28th 2011 2:58PM
oh I probably should note that when I use that same macro with the actual number keys on the keyboard i works just fine, but when i use the number buttons on the mouse it does not :( .
Joe Mar 29th 2011 12:31PM
Spammable Ghost Wolf:
(I tend to mash the button when I'm trying to put space between me and someone - this will make it so spamming the button doesn't put you in and out of GW form)
/Cast !Ghost Wolf