could someone please try and explain to me...

[nosoup4crr]

why my macros that include abilities off of the GCD have such trouble? For instance, I currently have a macro for charge (warrior). It's incredibly simple:

/cast battle stance
/cast charge

Given that charge is off of the gcd, I'd expect that pressing the macro once would both change stances and charge. However, the charge doesn't register. Mashing the button, i normally don't get the charge off until the 3rd hit. I used to notice the same thing with my natural selection macros.

In addition, changing equipment slots will muck up a macro. When using the following macro, I always get the "you must have a shield equipped" error:

/cast defensive stance
/equipset shield
/cast shield block (which is off the gcd)



Any ideas? it's a little frustrating seeing videos of warriors insta-intercepting when it takes my warrior a solid 3/4 of a second to switch stances and trigger the intercept.

[nosoup4crr]

It might be foolish of me to blindly believe it, but on wowwiki, it says that charge/intercept neither trigger or are affected by the global cooldown. Is that just wrong, then? Or does "not affected by the global cooldown" mean something other than what I assumed it meant (that being in a 1.5s GCD doesn't disallow the ability's use)?

[nosoup4crr]

hm. seems like that page i read is very misleading. thanks for the help.

One other question, since you seem to be in the know--

equipment swapping...I remember reading that equipping a new weapon triggers a gcd. What about a shield?

[nosoup4crr]

thanks muchly

---------- Post added 2010-10-29 at 11:50 PM ----------

i don't mean to be difficult. I was just testing on a target dummy, and i'm definitely able to charge after a mortal strike without waiting for the 1.5s global.

[Kirfkin]

The stances are only supposed to share a GCD with themselves. In addition, when I swapped my shield or weapon, it did not trigger a GCD on my Charge - IE, a GCD doesn't trigger a GCD for an off the GCD ability. It's supposed to be that way.

I didn't use a macro; but I have it hotkeyed. While in combat, I switched from defense to battle and charged while the GCD was still rolling. Not locked out of it.

I switched my weapons, and then charged before the GCD rolled off. I also switched from Battle to Defense, equipped my shield and used Shield Wall all within the Stance's GCD of eachother; the weapon swap GCD was in progress as well when I used Shield Wall.

It certainly works as intended without the use of a macro.

[lawomous]

Ok see if this makes more sense. Compiled all the posts into one after a lot of testing.

Charge, Shield Block, and Intercept are not affected by the GCD.

If a spell is not affected by the GCD it can be used together with a spell that does, and will work without error.

Warrior Stance swapping only triggers a shared 1 second cooldown with the other stances.

Swapping any weapon or shield in combat triggers the GCD, but they can be swapped out of combat without a GCD incursion.


Your first macro should work, and your second macro will work but the Shield Block is activating at the same time as the weaponswap, so modify it like this to not get an error, but you'll need to spam it due to latency of the weaponswap.

/cast Defensive Stance
/equipset shield
/cast [worn:shields]Shield Block

[Myte342]

why my macros that include abilities off of the GCD have such trouble? For instance, I currently have a macro for charge (warrior). It's incredibly simple:

/cast battle stance
/cast charge

Given that charge is off of the gcd, I'd expect that pressing the macro once would both change stances and charge. However, the charge doesn't register. Mashing the button, i normally don't get the charge off until the 3rd hit. I used to notice the same thing with my natural selection macros.

In addition, changing equipment slots will muck up a macro. When using the following macro, I always get the "you must have a shield equipped" error:

/cast defensive stance
/equipset shield
/cast shield block (which is off the gcd)



Any ideas? it's a little frustrating seeing videos of warriors insta-intercepting when it takes my warrior a solid 3/4 of a second to switch stances and trigger the intercept.

From what I understand from my own dallying in the macro world is that ANY macro with multiple /cast must be pressed multiple times to trigger each /cast.

For your charge macro, you press once and the game says-- If Battle Stance=false then cast Battle stance, if battle stance = true then cast Charge.-- that's an over simplified way of seeing it but it demonstrates my point. So you press it once, the game casts battle stance and assumes it's done till you press again.

As to the GCD with charge, some abilities are OFF the GCD meaning you can press them at any time to immediately trigger that ability (see the new Heroic Strike and shamans Wind Shear) Other abilities can't be used during the 1.5 sec GCD but pressing it will not trigger the GCD so you can mash that button then immediately another after without waiting for the GCD, because there wasn't one. There is not alot I can help you with for your charge macro, it is working as macros are intended to work, so you can't have 1 macro that does everything for you.

Try pressing the button in rapid succession, so that if a GCD is not triggered by changing stance you cast charge directly after. You will never get a 1 button press for these type of macros, but they still come in handy. (Edit: The game might consider the GCD for stances when calculating the macro, so it sees a GCD in progress then quits thinking it can't continue because of GCD, even though it's a different GCD.)


for you shield macro try something to the tune of -

/cast Defensive Stance
/equipslot 17 Shield of Impenetrable Darkness
/cast Shield Block

and make sure to spell it all correctly, most annoying thing about these types of macros.

You still have the two button press limitation with this macro.

Found this on wow-wiki --

/castsequence [harm, nocombat, stance:2/3] Battle Stance; [harm, nocombat, stance:1] Charge, Defensive Stance; [harm, combat, stance:1/2] Berserker Stance; [harm, combat, stance:3] Intercept, Defensive Stance; [help, stance:2] Intervene


Description-
Charge

(Tested in 3.3) When out of combat this macro will switch to Battle stance and cast Charge on an enemy and then switch back to Defensive stance (3 clicks). It will cast Berserker stance, Intercept, Defensive stance when in combat on an enemy (3 clicks) and it will do Intercept on a friendly target.

Also, if you are already in either Berserker stance when you target an enemy, it will skip trying to put you into Berserker stance and just intercept. Same for friendly target with Battle stance and Charge. (it only takes 2 clicks in above situations)

Hope this helps.

[lawomous]

This issue bugged me because I didn't know the answer at first either, but I must've deleted and edited my post about 30 times within an hour of testing.

I guarantee everything to be true.

Myte:

1) The only true/false thing with the stance and macros is if it has a modifier.

/cast Battle Stance
/cast Charge

It might have been that you were just out of charge range in the heat of the battle but the macro works fine in one click under test conditions.
In-game terms it means Battle Stance AND Charge.


Now

/cast [stance:1]Charge

That means if Battle Stance = true, then Charge.

2) While wearing a 2h, only equipping a shield will not work. You have to equip a 1h and a shield together.

[Myte342]

This issue bugged me because I didn't know the answer at first either, but I must've deleted and edited my post about 30 times within an hour of testing.

I guarantee everything to be true.

Myte:

1) The only true/false thing with the stance and macros is if it has a modifier.

It might have been that you were just out of charge range in the heat of the battle but the macro works fine in one click under test conditions.
In-game terms it means Battle Stance AND Charge.


Now
That means if Battle Stance = true, then Charge.

2) While wearing a 2h, only equipping a shield will not work. You have to equip a 1h and a shield together.

Won't argue with you on any of that. Like I tempered my post at the beginning, I only know from what I ahve messed with on my own. I could very well have an inflated sense of my own grandiose wealth of knowledge on this issue.

[nosoup4crr]

It might have been that you were just out of charge range in the heat of the battle but the macro works fine in one click under test conditions.

i've been working on it w/ test dummies. I'm like you. I see no reason why it shouldn't work (talking about the simple "1) /cast battle stance, /cast charge"). However, it does not. It may be because of lag. Maybe there's a hidden limitation. I'm not sure. But i know that the one-touch macro doesn't work for me.

I just noticed that I get the "you must be in battle stance" error. For some reason, when charge is triggered, the macro is not yet reading me to be in battle stance.

[Woogs]

Try:

/cast Battle Stance
/stopcasting
/cast Charge

[nosoup4crr]

tried that also because i'd read that the stopcasting command can fix lag issues. it didn't help.

[Myte342]

tried that also because i'd read that the stopcasting command can fix lag issues. it didn't help.

Erase your macro and start over, it could be that you have a random dot or comma or a space that the system can't reconcile.

I just tested your simple two line macro and it works just fine.... but I am Prot with warbringer talent, so I don't know if that affects things... let me dual spec to fury real quick and see how it works then.

Edit: It does not work as Fury with a single push, but double tapping works without waiting for the GCD. It's not as smooth as with Prot and the Warbringer talent (I charge and change stances in mid charge) but it works faster than trying to do each separately without a macro.

Edit-Edit: I do think it's a change in the macro system, I do believe either the system sees the GCD from Stances and stops the macro then and there, or something else similar. The macro seems to try to cast both /cast functions at once, and because it can't it casts the first then the second. As Prot I can use Charge in any stance so it's able to cast simultaneously and the macro system sees no issue, but as Fury it seems to reconcile not being able to do both at once by doing the first and ending the macro because it thinks the second can't be done yet.... because it couldn't have been done before pressing the macro in the first place.

Double tapping seems to work pretty fast but not as smooth as when Prot spec'd.

Edit-Edit-Edit: sorry for the long posts. Just had a ... rememberance? Anyway, since Charge IS off the GCD the system IS trying to cast both stance and charge at once, since you are not in Battle Stance right as you press the macro it won't make you charge, thus having to press it twice to charge. It sees you not in battle stance when you press the button and thinks it can't do it then casts battle stance. I think this is still a part of the idea that Blizz does not want you to be able to put all your buttons on a single macro. If it can't cast it immediately a the press it does the first it can cast and stops.

[lawomous]

Oh boy you're right. I did all my tests with Warbringer. How deflating.

It's going to look exactly like the Shield Block macro then. Requires a doubletap and no GCD. I'm thinking due to the latency it's not able to cast the two skills at exactly the same time, so it needs a bit of spamming. This gets around the error message.

/cast [stance:1]Charge;Battle Stance

[Taryble]

Honestly, having Battle Stance and Charge in one macro causes problems because when you send the Charge command, your client hasn't recieved the "Okay, moved to Battle Stance" reply from the server - so it still thinks you're in your previous stance, and won't let you Charge.

[DrgnDancer]

I'm not a huge macro person, but if this were a "normal" programming language and I had an issue like that with latency creating problems, I'd insert a sleep() to make the program pause of a length of time sufficient for everything to "catch up". Does the macro language allow you to insert some kind of pause? So in C style pseudo code it'd look like:

cast(battlestance);
sleep(0.5);  //pause the program for half a second to allow the network to catch up
cast(charge);

I'm not familiar enough with WoW's macro language to know if this would work though.

Edit to add: Looks like this is possible, but you have to invoke the lua script interpreter. Probably making things a lot more complicated than you want to for a "normal" macro.

[Deleted]

Macro has no sleep commands.
Lua has no sleep commands.
Lua can't automatically cast spells without user input.