Monday, May 24, 2010

Ask Coriel: Ret and Prot Macros

John asks:
I’m running up my human female pally after being away from the game for about a year. I had played a warrior tank for a couple of years previous. Can you share some of your macro’s for tanking and retribution if you have any?

I don't really use a lot of macros for Prot and Ret.

For Ret, If you have On-use trinkets, you could bind them to Avenging Wrath.

#showtooltip Avenging Wrath
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Avenging Wrath

The only other macro I use is a castsequence for Divine Storm and
Consecration, to save button space.

/castsequence reset =10 Divine Storm,Consecrate

However, you cannot use this macro if you have 2-pc T10 (Ret).

For Protection, I'm not sure. You could use 2 macros to make the
96969 rotation easy.

#1: /castsequence Judgement of Light,Consecration,Holy Shield
#2: /castsequence Hammer of the Righteous,Shield of Righteousness

Then just alternate between the two buttons for easy-mode threat.
However, you have to be careful of fights where you can't use AoE
threat willy-nilly. For example, Deathbringer Saurfang in ICC. There
it is a bad idea to use Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous when
the Blood Beasts are up.

Any other good Prot/Ret macros out there?

13 comments:

  1. What about the "bubble and them remove bubble" macro, for cleansing debuffs without dropping mobs on the dps and healers? (sorry don't have the macro text handy, I'm at work)

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  2. I used to macro the 6 and 9 prot abilities together in castsequence like that, but honestly I think that it's a bit of laziness that ultimately will limit your ability as a player. There are times when you want to drop consecrate first, for example. Other times, you might not have the mana to drop it at all, eg pulled too early / late and Divine Plea dropped off, or it's a single trash mob and you've got enough of a threat lead that you don't need it. Sometimes you want to lead with HotR, perhaps to gather threat over multiple mobs fast, or to refresh Divine Plea (since Judgements don't count).

    Personally I use a logitech G13, and basically have the 6s abilities bound to buttons on one side of the board, and the 9s on the other, with the divine plea button in the middle. You're still alternating left and right so it has a nice rhythm to it, but you've got some flexibility.

    Another thing that's useful is to add /startattack to Crusader Strike, Judgement and Divine Storm. Especially DS if you have the 2pT10 Ret bonus.

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  3. For Prot, as Carson mentioned:

    /cast Divine Shield
    /cancelaura Divine Shield

    which will drop all your debuffs without making you lose aggro

    also (if you have Divine Sac/Divine Guardian)

    /cast Divine Sacrifice
    /cancelaura Divine Sacrifice

    will give your party/raid the reduced incoming damage without you taking the extra damage. Both are useful for tanking.

    I also have a mouseover macro for Hand of Reckoning/Righteous Defense, which casts Reckoning if I've moused over an enemy, Defense if I'm moused over a friendly, and Reckoning on my target if I don't have a mouseover target, but I can't remember the script for that off the top of my head.

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  4. This is my bubble macro:

    #showtooltip Divine Shield
    /cancelaura [group] Divine Shield
    /cancelaura [group] Blessing of Protection
    /cancelaura Divine Plea
    /cast Divine Shield

    Tap it once to bubble, tap it a second time to remove the bubble. Useful when alone, the bubble stays up. Useful when tanking, tap it twice in a row and bye bye debuffs.

    I cancel Divine Plea because I had problem when bubbling and healing in solo.

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  5. I have a /use Potion of Speed before /cast Avenging Wrath when I'm Ret (which is like 98% of the time, other 2% is holy).
    Mouseover cleansing is a good idea for *all* pallies.
    A mount macro that applies Crusader Aura when mounted and the usual aura of choice when dismounted is another good one.
    Also for Ret, a libram swap macro can be good, using Three Truths for SoV and either Discord or Furious Gladiator for SoCom.
    Those are the 'must have' ones I can think of right now.

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  6. For prot I can heartily recommend this Righteous Defense macro:

    #showtooltip
    /cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget] Righteous Defense

    It's useable on both friendlies and enemies, so you can target the person who got aggro OR any of the mobs that they aggroed, whichever is more convenient.

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  7. For Retribution:

    Macro every attack ability, and adding a /startattack in front of each. You will see trash DPS increase by around 20%, because even when your abilities are on cooldown you'll pick a new target and start white swinging. Especially valuable when you get a lucky run of DS spam thanks to your 2PT10.

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  8. There is no need for special Righteous Defense macro anymore since patch 2.4 as casting it on a enemy will do the trick.

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  9. I use the following (explanations courtesy of Fitzairn's Macro Explain-o-Matic website)

    #showtooltip
    /cast [@mouseover,harm] Hand of Reckoning; Hand of Reckoning

    Which does:
    If the unit your mouse is currently over is an enemy then:
    Cast Hand of Reckoning on the unit your mouse is currently over

    Otherwise:
    Cast Hand of Reckoning on the currently targeted unit


    I also have

    #showtooltip
    /cast [target=targettarget,help]Sacred Shield;Sacred Shield

    If the currently targeted unit's currently targeted unit is a friend then:
    Cast Sacred Shield on the currently targeted unit's currently targeted unit

    Otherwise:
    Cast Sacred Shield on the currently targeted unit

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  10. I mainly use macros for "space saving" on the UI.

    So instead of keybinding 3 Judgements, 4 10-minute Blessings, 4 30-minute Blessings, and 6 Seals, I have 5 keybinds that cover all 17 skills.

    As a Draenei I have Gift of the Naaru keybind with Avenging Wrath. Gift is off the GCD, and if I'm popping wings while healing any little bit will help. Likewise if I'm popping wings while DPS the extra healing is another buffer while Forbearance locks me out of my other defenses.

    I've macro'd a raid / party announcement for when I activate Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice. I'd love to have my Aura Mastery announcement also tell the raid what the benefit is (eg - "Aura Mastery Active - Immune to Silence for 6 seconds" or "Aura Master Active - Increased Armor for 6 seconds")... but I'm not smart enough to do that.

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  11. No matter how people think that playing ret is facerolling pulling max dps out of your pink pet is like playing chess, you have to think 3 steps in advance so that you avoid those dull moments when every spell counts to zero as much as you can. Not to mention ability to save raid in crucial moments and later flamed if not doing so. I don't use any macros, tried but felt like i don't have control when i needed it.

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  12. I use 2 macros of any relative import as prot, and the first is just binding my trinkets to any one of my 969 abilities. I know a lot of tanks like to save them, but like any cooldown, they never do any good if not used. Save your big cooldowns for big incoming damage, use trinkets at will to reduce overall damage.

    Only other thing I use is a mouseover macro with the addon Grid configured to tell me who else in the raid has aggro. If it is someone that should not have aggro, then I can simply mouse over the offenders name (damn you high dps!) and click my macro'd button to cast Righteous Defense and pull back whatever mobs they may have pulled. This saves time and effort seaching through a sea of mobs for the one that may have gotten away or recently spawned (ugh, Dreamwalker).

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  13. Just for laziness in raids ;)
    works also with Judgement of Light

    /castsequence reset=6 Holy Shield,Shield of Righteousness,Judgement of Wisdom,Hammer of the Righteous,Consecration,Shield of Righteousness,Holy Shield,Hammer of the Righteous,Judgement of Wisdom,Shield of Righteousness,Consecration,Hammer of the Righteous

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