Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Improving performance with Macro’s pt.1

An often over-looked aspect of the game is macros. Either you may think that you have to be a programmer or someone with a working knowledge of computer programming, or you may just think that it’s really not worth the effort, that it really can’t make that much of a difference.

It does… Now to what extent can rely entirely on you, your creativity and perhaps your gear.

The quickest and easiest way involves trinkets. You know, all those ‘on use’ effects that you never remember to click, let alone every time their up on every fight? Tying in their use into a macro and combining it with spells you regularly use will take 99% of the pain out of remembering to use them and will help to squeeze out a surprising amount more healing or DPS.

If you aren’t doing this, your not only wasting the full effect of an item with an on use, you also may not be using some talented abilities to their fullest as well, cutting down on your overall performance.

I’ll assume you know the basics of creating a macro, if not; you’ll want to go to the Blizz homepage and dig around for a tutorial. Or check out Priestly Endeavours’ Writing a Macro Series for some great details.

Now for this to work well, you’re going to want to tie it in with a spell or ability that you use rather regularly, or if you’re feeling motivated make a macro for every spell and ability you use. Following the other guides and tutorials (or if you already know what you’re doing) make a new macro, give it a short meaningful name and pick an icon.

I’ll give you an example, here’s how mine looks for my Enhancement Shaman.

#showtooltip Stormstrike
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Stormstrike

Pretty simple, right? All this does is use both of my trinkets and cast Stormstrike every time I hit the button. I simply replace my Stormstrike button on my bar and use it as I normally would otherwise. Now, the only annoying thing is that you’ll get those irritating ‘Item is not ready’ messages, but we can solve that by adding in:

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
at the beginning of the macro

And

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
at the end of it.

So the end result would look like:

#showtooltip Stormstrike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Stormstrike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

To personalize this for your own use, simply replace every instance of the word “Stormstrike” with whatever spell you want it to cast. Additionally, if you chose a specific icon for the macro that is not the same as the spell icon, leave out the #showtooltip line, or it’ll use the icon of the spell instead (unless that’s what you wanted). Something to note as well is that the numbers ‘13’ and ‘14’ correspond to the trinket slots on your character inventory screen, 13 being the top and 14 being the bottom trinket. You can also use specific names for your trinkets, but the 13/14 method is an easier catch-all solution and it uses less characters.

Now, this is great for using trinkets, but what about other items you say? It’s just as easy. I personally have The Decapitator that I use for my main hand weapon which has an on use effect that pretty well gives me 540 damage every 3 minutes for free. Is it much, no, but it saves me having to remember to use it. Adding it into my macro is simply adding 1 line:

/use The Decapitator

So my macro now looks like:

#showtooltip Stormstrike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/use 14
/use The Decapitator
/cast Stormstrike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Now, with the touch of a button I can ensure all of my ‘on use’ items are being used on a regular basis. The problem here may lie in those people that like to micro-manage certain on use items and in fact there may be some items that shouldn’t be used every time their available, but they tend to be few and far between. This is a simple and effective way to squeeze a little more out of your toon, with very minimal effort.

Working in the same way, you can ensure that your other cool downs are being used regularly as well. Talents such as Elemental Mastery, Inner Focus and Icy Veins may suffer the same under-usage as trinkets for those that aren’t as dedicated to micro-managing all of their spells and abilities and your performance can easily be boosted by creating the same simple macros for them as well.

For example, when the whim strikes me to spec Elemental I have this handy macro make sure I’m getting the most out of my Elemental Mastery (free crit damage spell every 3 mins). By using almost the same macro as above, I get:

#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Lightning Bolt
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

This will ensure that not only am I using both of my trinkets all the time, but also using Elemental Mastery every time it’s up as well. The best part it: I don’t have to think about it!

Another example is my wife, who is currently playing a Shadow Priest, who makes use of the following macro:

#showtooltip Mind Blast
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Inner Focus
/cast [nochannelling=Mind Flay]Mind Blast
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

This does pretty well exactly the same thing that my Lightning Bolt macro does, only it works with her more Priestly versions. It makes sure that her trinkets and Inner Focus are used and also makes sure that Mind Flay isn’t being channelled before casting Mind Blast (I’ll get into that another day)

The short of it is that macro’s like these can go a long way in improving your performance. The only downside is that such ‘automation’ of use may mean that your trinkets and abilities aren’t available if you need them at a specific time (think Prince Phase 2). I personally don’t worry about it too much, though some trinkets and abilities aren’t very suitable for this kind of automation. For instance I don’t have Bloodlust and Shamanistic Rage in macros, nor do I have Shield Wall automatically cast when I use Shield Block on my tank. It may require some thought, but at the end of the day, it’s a quick and easy way to make sure you’re at the top of your game.

Try it; you’ll thank me in the morning.

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