Need Opinions for Macro Management

[edwardcook14]

I'm a long-time player but completely new to the Paladin class. I'm level 20, specializing in Protection and was wondering how you, veterans, manage casting utility spells to yourself, the focus target, or any other friendly target for that matter. I've been toying with the idea of creating a macro so that each of the 3 modifier key targets a different friendly target. I've also thought about using the mouseover function. Anyways just wanted some opinions on how you guys deal with this situation. Thank you.

[trystero]

I just use mouseover macros for most of my utility abilities. Like, '1' is bound to mouseover hand of freedom; with no mouseover, it goes on myself. I'll add a keybind if it's something I need immediate reaction for, like Hand of Sac on my co-tank (that is alt+x; default hand of sac is third mouse button mouseover).

I have a lot of keybinds so I personally don't like using modifiers for changing targets (my shifts are all bound up and many of my alts are too).

[Fhi]

I use mouseover too. For casting spells on myself, there is an option in the Settings that allow you to cast it on yourself if you have no friendlies targeted, so if I'm targeting the boss and need to cast something on myself, it just does.

[edwardcook14]

I'm assuming the general population uses a mixture of both mouseover toggle and hotkey binding for specific targeting for the more important utility spells. This concerns me because even if Paladin were to have the least amount of usable abilities, the fact that a majority of them can interact with either enemies, friendly targets, and myself makes for a large amount of hotkey bindings.

Is it fair to say that you guys have a lot more than the average of the bindings - 20 to 25 unique buttons, let's say? If so, how many are you rocking at this moment?

[Deleted]

48 binds here atm, but I'm still just using the old click on raid frame and cast spell method.

[Fhi]

Is it fair to say that you guys have a lot more than the average of the bindings - 20 to 25 unique buttons, let's say? If so, how many are you rocking at this moment?

Paladins don't have as much bloat as other classes, but I do have 28 that I use in combat. The rest I click; stuffs like long duration buffs and rezzes. I only use mouseover for utility spells, my keybinds are too few to waste them on same-spell-different-target binds.

[Xs]

I'm assuming the general population uses a mixture of both mouseover toggle and hotkey binding for specific targeting for the more important utility spells. This concerns me because even if Paladin were to have the least amount of usable abilities, the fact that a majority of them can interact with either enemies, friendly targets, and myself makes for a large amounts of hotkey bindings.

Is it fair to say that you guys have a lot more than the average of the bindings - 20 to 25 unique buttons, let's say? If so, how many are you rocking at this moment?

Try playing a Druid, Paladins really don't have that much. Could probably get away with 1-6+shift+ctrl.

To give my personal thing though
1-9, ctrl+1-6, QEVZ\, m3-5, ctrl+QEVGF and ctrl+m3-5, 31 in total with F1-8 bound to marks for RLing and shift+f being my only shift binding for my 2ndary mount (taxi, water walking etc.) if you want to include those.

[edwardcook14]

Thank you all for the information thus far. I appreciate all of your help.

[trystero]

Yeah I don't have an exact count, but I'm 30+. Paladins do have a lot of binds due to utility/shared spells across specs. On a philosophical note I do not regard it as a bloated class. All of the abilities have some function and value. I can't really think of one, except Flash of Light as Prot, where I say, "I never use this." (last time I used that regularly was on Heroic Iron Qon when I'd try to offheal the raid after a windstorm). On any given raid night I use each ability at least once, even Salv.

Now it's not all that bad honestly. If you're doing Arena then that's when you need (if you want to compete at high levels, I am told) multiple target bindings. You can easily get away without doing that when raiding as Prot. Like, mouseover macros will make your life so much better than trying to bind each ability to different targets (again, unless you NEED to do it, like on Thok I NEED to BoP a certain healer at a specific moment, so I keybind it). All I have for BoP is a mouseover of '2'. The tradeoff unfortunately is a delayed response time; even though I'm pretty quick, I still have to move the mouse over to the raid frames and hit 2 on the right player, which will very obviously never be as fast as a keybind. But hey, that's the game. You can't have keybindings for each ability for 24 separate raiders. As long as you get it within a global or two it's fine in almost all circumstances.

For focus macros, you don't really need them except for Hand of Sac. When tanking I have my co-tank as my focus by default and he (used to be before outgearing) is often the target of Sac, so he gets a focus macro, but that's it. You can also just tailor macros to each encounter, like in the Thok example I gave before.

Edit: You'll probably need some target macros, while I'm at it. I have two, one for the main boss and another for a target I may need at some point (e.g. the Shredder on Blackfuse, Shamans on Galakras, and Desecrated Weapons on Garrosh).

[Xs]

Easiest to just use focus exists macros for the specific examples you mention though, unless you really want focus for other things on Thok for example, thats how I handle a lot of the quick Hands, not online atm but I think mines something along the lines of [@mouseover,help,exists][@focus,help,exists][] (note: pulling out of ass, don't use this unless I'm right (I'm probably not))

[Serani]

Out of curiosity, you state that you're level 30 odd, how often do you find yourself needing focus macros, and to use utility spells? Don't most things just melt anyway?

Not meaning to be offtopic or anything, purely curious.

[nightfalls]

A mixture of mouseover macros (some hands, lay on hands, etc.), clique binds (other hands, flash of light, L90 in some cases), and self casts (generally I save Eternal Flame/Word of Glory for self as protection, others may choose to use it to hit a co-tank for instance, or have another bind, etc.)

For high end arena most gladiators seem to suggest/require using [@arenaX] and [@partyX] macros, but I personally haven't had much room for them nor time to get used to them, so I just stick to my standard clique binds even there, though it probably will not get me very high in rating for now. Other than that for almost all other purposes those binds should be enough.

[edwardcook14]

Out of curiosity, you state that you're level 30 odd, how often do you find yourself needing focus macros, and to use utility spells?

Fair question. Yes, at this level the content is very trivial - things easily die. But I started this thread in preparation of tanking at higher levels and to start thinking about how to manage my abilities before I actually need to.

[nightfalls]

Fair question. Yes, at this level the content is very trivial - things easily die. But I started this thread in preparation of tanking at higher levels and to start thinking about how to manage my abilities before I actually need to.

Never fail to BoP that which stands in Blades of Light.

[Ibis]

Yeah I don't have an exact count, but I'm 30+. Paladins do have a lot of binds due to utility/shared spells across specs. On a philosophical note I do not regard it as a bloated class. All of the abilities have some function and value. I can't really think of one, except Flash of Light as Prot, where I say, "I never use this." (last time I used that regularly was on Heroic Iron Qon when I'd try to offheal the raid after a windstorm). On any given raid night I use each ability at least once, even Salv.

That's how I feel also.

I'm prot and I don't really use that many macros. For all the hand spells (+ cleanse + LoH + redemption, 9 spells in total) I use click-casting with Clique, and I literally never set anyone in focus. I have main tank frames where I can see the other tank and their debuffs + defensive buffs, and usually HoP in particular is cast at a certain known point (so it's not a big hassle to move the cursor to the correct place before you need to cast it). If those abilities need to be used reactively, then you can't really know who will need it so you need to check the raid frames anyways, rather than having a focus macro.

I keep my actionbars hidden so I can't click anything, which means I do have keybindings for everything combat related. I only have macros for talents, so that my bindings for talents don't disappear when I change the talent. And using the addon KayrMacro I setup lvl 90 talents so that if I have Holy Prism or Execution Sentence, shift+bind will cast it on me otherwise on enemy (and it won't cast Execution Sentence accidentally on me if I don't have a target and I'm not pushing shift), and if I have Light's Hammer it just casts that. I've also got macro for Sacred Shield / WoG / Eternal Flame / Flash of Light management if I'm ret. As prot/ret I'm selfish and only heal myself, so I don't bother with mouseover stuff (except for LoH, for which I use Clique and also an "oh f***" bind for myself).

Now that I checked my macros, I do like to macro alternative abilities together. For example [nomod] Crusader Strike & [mod:shift] Hammer of the Righteous, so I don't have to use 2 action bar slots for those. And of course /cast Divine Shield /cancelaura Divine Shield. And once upon a time I decided that Concecration simply has to be shift-4, so now I have a macro with SotR + Concecration. I've also macroed an on-use defensive trinket to shift with Divine Protection. But I could just place all those shift/nomod macros on action bars and bind them individually, and I'd only need the bubble macro, but it's just how I prefer to do it, because when I could see my actionbars, the macro icon would change to the corresponding ability when pushing shift, so it was sort of a space saving method. But then again I do have shift-binds that aren't macroed together with the non-shift spell, because I've hidden the action bars anyways (even before hiding everything I'd have a hidden bar for certain keybinds).

For marking targets/placing world markers, buffs (inc. seals + RF), and some random stuff I have 4 different OPie rings (so that's 4 bindings for a lot of stuff). I counted 30 keybinds (3 of which are BS/JC/mount) + 4 OPie binds + 9 Clique spells. 6 of 30 spells are behind shift. I use Razer Naga so 10 of those are actually bound to the thumb grid binds. There aren't really that many spells. I actually have free space in my action bar grid for Naga binds and only 2 of the buttons have macros that do something different with shift. Gotta admit though that the last row is a bit difficult for me to accurately click, so that's one reason I don't use them, but I could quite comfortably add 5-7 more shift binds there if there was something to add.

I suppose target macros would be good in some situations, but the problem for me is that they get used so rarely that I'd always forget to use them and just check nameplates for target switching.