Water Elemental Help

[Snuggli]

Hey guys, after reaching 1.7k 2v2 rating on my Mage.. I've been wondering what to do with my Water Elemental, and considering i've only had this mage for little over a day, I was hoping some of you could shed some light on the matter.

As of current, I have my pet on Passive.. all the time. I will, also, have it on follow, however sometimes I need to send it round a pillar to stop someone from drinking or to help peel off my partner. (We play Frost / Ret)

I was wondering what the best way to handle a Pet is? Is it best to have it on passive or do you guys have any handy macro's for actually using it offensively? Is it worth keybinding 'Move to' and 'Follow' to get clutch long-range freezes?

I also find it quite hard to track where it is.. because I very rarely.. if ever, look at a minimap during Arena. :<

Cheers for any replies.

[Goldrinn]

Wait, what? How did you manage to get to level 85 and start doing arenas in "little over a day"?

Oh, and I usually just leave the little bugger on Defensive. Couldn't care less where he is or what he's doing, really.

[Snuggli]

Wait, what? How did you manage to get to level 85 and start doing arenas in "little over a day"?

Haha, bad wording on my part. I meant he's been 85 for little over a day. I've had this Mage for nearly 2 years .. just never bothered to level it.

[Daerken]

Anyway, on to the question... Keep your pet on passive and key-bind the Freeze and Attack-commands. If it's on defensive it might be attacking CC'd targets and such which is quite unpleasant. I would say that "Move to" is pretty much ALMOST useless at the moment, before 4.0.6 it was awesome to send the WE away when you used Invisibility, but since the WE goes invisible with you now it's of no use there. To get those long freezes of I would rather just send the pet to attack the target I wanna freeze, it decides the quickest path and everything and you don't have to "aim" it.

One macro I started using in PvE and then also started using in PvP is the one which combines one spell and your pet's attack. For example, Frostbolt:

#showtooltip Frostbolt
/cast Frostbolt
/petattack

As simple as that, it makes sure your WE is always attacking the target you want to attack. For more complicated stuff this might not be perfect, like getting on people that are trying to get out of combat etc, but it works rather well and you get to think of other stuff instead of your pet.

[Lilariel]

I keep my elemental on passive all the time aswell. Aside from having summoning it and pet-freeze macroed to the same button, I replaced frostbolt with the following macro:

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice block
/cast frostbolt
/petattack
/cast waterbolt

Quite self explanatory I reckon. Convenient cancel for iceblock, and makes your waterelemental attack whatever it is you're targetting. Waterbolt is the elementals spell, incase you wondered. Suits me very nicely, and Daerken beat me too explaining it just as well! :P

The summon/petfreeze macro I use is this:

#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
#showtooltip Freeze
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/click PetActionButton4