Macro Anatomy: Mouse-Over Spells

This week I profiled Decursive 2.0 over at Addon Spotlight, which has a macro feature that allows you to use its cleansing functionality via a keystroke or a mouse over macro. Many of the comments in the article, as well as those in the HealbotContinued feature, center on the concept of mouse-over healing and casting. To be quite honest, I really didn't understand or use this way of doing things, so I thought I'd look into it and try to break away from my "clicker" tendencies for the sake of change.

I'm primarily a paladin healer, which usually means I concern myself with four spells for healing; Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Shock and Cleanse. Although I toss out the occasional Blessing of Protection, this is the bulk of my healing, so I thought I'd work on making two mouse-over macros for my Karazhan run tonight.

The basic use for a mouse-over spell is this command:

• [target=mouseover]

That's pretty much how you target using a mouse-over, there's more to using this feature, so come back after the break to get cozy with mouse-over macros.

Welcome back, let's get down to business with mouse-over spells. Now, I'm specifically looking for a solution to my healing needs. However, rather than jump in with both feet, I thought I'd try this out on my low level priest. I figured this would allow me a bit more leeway to make mistakes without wiping my raid group, I'll let the beer take care of that for me.

For a mouse-over Renew, I went with this simple macro:

• /cast [target=mouseover,exists] Renew

I ran around the Ghostlands everything I could, but I knew there had to be more available to me, then I found this bad boy on the WoWWiki Priest Macro page.

• /cast [target=mouseover,exists,help,nodead] Renew; [target=mouseover,exists,harm,nodead] Shadow Word: Pain; [help,nodead] Renew; [harm,nodead] Shadow Word: Pain; [target=player] Renew
  

Now this is macro goodness, lots of efficient functionality in this one. Here's the description from the wiki:

"This macro casts either Renew (friendly) or Shadow Word: Pain (hostile) on whoever is hovering under your mouse that exists and is not dead. If you're not hovering, it does either Renew (friendly) or Shadow Word: Pain (hostile) on your selected target that is not dead. If all of the above are false, you will Renew yourself."

I've only briefly touched on modifiers and conditionals here at Macro Anatomy, and until finals release me from their horrible embrace, I'll just have to provide fertile examples like this one. However, take a look at what this macro does and its syntax. The scripting language used to write macros is pretty intuitive and hopefully you can see how this macro comes together.

Every week Macro Anatomy takes you on a magic carpet ride through the world of macros. Sometimes you will encounter existing macros that you can use off the shelf. We'll break them down and figure out how they work. Other times we'll just talk about the different parts of a macro and how you can use them to create your own. You can always stop by the shop if you want to catch up or get started with macros.