Scattered Shots: Hunter macros even your mother could love

Welcome to Scattered Shots. I am Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from The Hunting Lodge and I'll be your tour guide each Thursday as we explore what makes our Hunters tick and how we can make them better.

Well, maybe not your mother. But you know us Hunters, we really love our macros. Unlike some other games out there, World of Warcraft gives players a pretty simple method to help customize their playing environment. We all know about the cool add-ons like Recount and RatingBuster. Now add to that the ability to arrange the look and feel of our User Interface and Blizzard really has done something special.

Instead of trying to tackle those, I thought we could talk about the one that gives many of us players some difficulty: macros. And you know what? They really don't have to be that complicated.

Before we get started, I would be remiss if I didn't at least explain little bit about macros. At least I need to define what macros are what they are not. Macros are a way to combine several commands (attacks, emotes, or other actions) and combine them into a single button press or click.

As with most things in life, there are some rules we have to make sure to follow. For example, your character can only have 54 separate macros (36 shared across your characters, and 18 assigned to a specific toon). Also, each macro can only contain 250 characters. (Now, if you use Twitter, you already know that's a little less than 2 tweets.) Don't let this limitation fool you though: macros are extremely versatile and offer a ton of flexibility.

If you are interested in more details about how to script or create macros, I'd say head over to WoW Wiki. Their macro resource goes into a lot more detail on the workings of macros and commands than I could attempt to do here. However, what I can do is give you a list of different macros and show you how they can be used for PvE as well as PvP. Let's take some macros and see what they do and how they can apply to each style of play.

(Note: you might need to alter some of these macros depending on spell availability.)

Save Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Keeping one's pet alive is one of the biggest challenges to a Hunter. And for a Beast Mastery Hunter, losing your pet can mean a loss of up to 40% of your DPS. This macro will yell out asking for a healer in your raid to heal your pet. Then it will cast Mend Pet and start using bandages to offer a bit of help.

/Yell FLUFFY NEEDS HEALS!!
/cast Mend Pet
/use [target=Pet] Dense Frostweave Bandages

Feed Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Pet feeding used to be a chore. But with the automatic pet feeder it's not bad at all.

/cast Feed Pet /use Clefthoof Ribs

Pet management simplified (PvE or PvP)

Now if you want, you can actually combine the two macros above into a single pet management one. What do I like about this? It's how you can replace several different buttons from your action bars with just this one macro. The only gotcha is that this macro uses the control, shift and alt keys as modifiers. So when you click it, remember to hold the appropriate key at the same time.

/cast [modifier:alt] Revive Pet
/cast [modifier:shift] Mend Pet
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Call Pet
/cast Feed Pet
/use Clefthoof Ribs

Time for bed (PvE or PvP)

This is a great macro to use when you have party members being mind controlled during Yogg-Sarron. In PvP, well let's just say it can really frustrate some Warriors and other Hunters.

/cast [target=mouseover] Tranquilizing Shot

Save me Seymour! (PvE or PvP)

When you're in battle and need your pet to pull your hide out of the fire, this one can do it.

/cast Master's Call
/cast Roar of Sacrifice
/cast Intervene

Incoming! (PvE or PvP)

Depending on which method you prefer, you can either use the one that requires you to use focus or if you prefer I have one that allows you to just mouseover the intended target.

/focus /cast [target=focus] Misdirection

or

/cast [target=mouseover] Misdirection

Give me mana (PvE or PvP)

This is an aspect switching macro. Each time you press the button you can switch between DragonHawk and Aspect of the Viper. It's a great single button macro so you can easily switch between aspects.

/castsequence Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper

Go get 'em (PvE or PvP)

This one assumes you are and your pet is attacking the same target. It will send in your pet, apply Hunter's Mark and then fire of a sting. If you are questing or in a raid, you're probably wanting to apply Serpent's Sting. And if you're in Arena you will probably want to try and sap your opponents' mana. Here's a PvE and and a PvP version of the same macro.

PvE Version:

/petattack [target=target]
/cast Serpent Sting

PvP Verson:

/petattack [target=target]
/cast Viper Sting

Shh... Be Quiet (PvE or PvP)

Silencing shot is still one of my favorite spells. There is nothing like seeing mage getting ready to send a giant fireball your way only to be left speechless. The enjoyment is even bigger when it's another player instead of an NPC mob.

/cast [target=mouseover] Silencing Shot

Full Steam Ahead (PvE or PvP)

This is the old standard Beast Mastery I-Win button. By pressing a single button you will set off Bestial Wrath, Kill Command, Rabid Fire, and both of your trinkets.

/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Rapid Fire

Hunter Melee (PvP) (edited: fixed)

I know what you're thinking and you're right, Hunters are not suppose to melee. But I don't know about you, but every time I duel or decide to go into a battleground, sure enough someone will sneak up on me and force me to fight my way out. Then I remember I have Disengage and can click it. So to save room on my action bar I created this Hunter Melee Macro.

/castrandom Wing Clip, Mongoose Bite
/cast Raptor Strike

Nosebleed section (PvE or PvP)

Sometimes I just need to see more of the game than allowed by the default camera zoom. If you didn't realize it, you can actually make the camera zoom out further letting you see more of the terrain. This can be especially helpful in those raids where you need to see what's going on while still watching out for bubbly red stuff. An even better use of this is in PvP when sometimes it could literally mean the difference between a corpse run or extra honor.

/script SetCVar ("cameraDistancemax" ,50)

That's about all I can think of for now. For more macros and how to use them, I suggest you check out WoW Wiki's Hunter macros. If your looking for macros to help your PvP game, check out the Arena Junkies Hunter macro site. There are just too many different ways to use macros to capture here. I've seen special shot macros and trap macros. I've even seen macros that can switch out your gear and ammo.

What about you guys? Do you have any favorite macros? Or have you been searching for a macro and just can't find the right one? Let me know and let's see if we can really get a comprehensive list of Hunter macros together.

(edited: Since ellekay asked so politely, I went ahead and removed the healing request line in the Save Fluffy Macro. I also made some corrections to the ones mentioned in the comments. Thanks for the feedback.)

So you want to be a Hunter, eh? Well then you came to the right place. Scattered Shots is the one column dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a Hunter. Each week Scattered Shots will cover topics to help you Fix Your DPS, Choosing the Right Spec, Gear Selection, Macros and Pet Selection and Management.