The Warcraft Hunter

As soon as you reach level 70, you absolutely need to get the Misdirection spell and make a Misdirection macro. If you don’t, you are wasting a terrific opportunity in both raiding and soloing.

Normally when you are shooting at a mob, you are creating Threat against that mob as well as on any other unfriendly mobs that are nearby in the fight. What Misdirection does is move that threat to someone else in your party of your choosing, which would normally be your tank or your pet. (If you accidentally Misdirect onto your Healer, you won’t get invited back, believe me).

The “natural” way to cast misdirect is to target the party member you want to Misdirect to, cast the Misdirection spell, and then the threat from your next three shots will go to that party member. The trouble with this, and the reason that many otherwise good Hunters don’t use Misdirection, is that it is awkward to use this way. Not only do you have to find and click on your party member of choice, but you then have to find your actual target and get the shots off in a timely manner.

A Misdirection macro takes care of that for you by specifying your target under different circumstances so you won’t have to fumble around looking for the person to Misdirect to. The premise of this macro is that you will have one of two conditions. The first condition is that you are in a party, and one of the party members is a Tank, and that this is the only person on whom you will cast Misdirection. The second condition is that you are soloing and you will want to default your Misdirection to your pet. We will start creating the macro based on the first condition, and then add some options to it.

#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection

The first line is our standard button icon selector. The second casts the Misdirection spell on whoever your “focus” is. A focus is a special target that you set up ahead of time. When you are in a party you will normally see the frames showing the other members of your party. You can right-click on one of these and choose the option “focus”. This will create another frame which is basically a copy of the party member frame but without some of the details. You can move this frame to somewhere less intrusive; and if you cannot move it, then right-click and choose the Unlock option and try again.

As long as you have a focus frame, the above macro will cast Misdirection on whoever is in that focus frame, and it could be a party member or your pet. If you have no focus frame then the macro will fail. Bear in mind that you will lose your focus under certain circumstances, such as death and mounting, so you will need to reset your focus. Yes, you could create a macro for that, but right-clicking is not much harder than clicking a macro button, so I don’t bother.

So how do we deal with the situations where you don’t have a focus, and simply want to cast Misdirection on your pet? Do you need a separate macro for that? Absolutely not. First, we are going to add some “conditions” to the second line of the macro:

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection

By adding “exists” and “nodead” we are saying that we want to cast Misdirection on our current focus, but only if we have a focus, and only if the party member that is in focus is not dead; otherwise don’t attempt to cast it. Now we need to say what we want to happen if one of those things is not true.

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet] Misdirection

The semicolon (;) acts as a sort of “else” statement. In fact, programmers will recognize this as a sort of “if…else” statement, with the conditions and parameters contained together in the square brackets. With this macro, if you have no focus, or your focus is dead, then you will end up casting Misdirection on your pet. This works well for soloing, because you don’t need to keep resetting your focus. However, there is a little more that we can add to prevent error messages from being displayed by adding conditions to the second part as well.

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection

Now the same conditions apply, and if you have no pet out, or your pet is dead, then the Misdirection won’t be cast at all (assuming the first conditions fail as well). So here is the final Misdirection macro:

#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection

Be ready to use this on demand in raid, and use it to save your skin when soloing; it is the best way to ensure you can use maximum fire power and still not pull aggro onto yourself. Even better, it can help a tank keep enough threat so no one else in the group can pull aggro off them either.

Basics, Macros Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

As a Hunter you will need to use Target and Assist Macros frequently. During quests and raids you will be doing massive damage (hopefully), but this will also create threat against whatever you are shooting at, plus its neighbors. For this reason you will want to be attacking the same thing either your tank or your pet is attacking (your pet IS your tank when you are soloing) so you are less likely to exceed their threat and pull aggro. You can do this with an Assist macro.

Other times you will need to attack specific mobs within a large group before attacking anything else, even though the tank is occupied with something else. This is most often going to be a Boss fight, where the tank is dealing with the boss and your job is to burn down the “adds.” Sometimes these adds pose a serious short term threat and have to be killed immediately so you can avoid a wipe. These mobs can be hard to pick out in the middle of a fight with a lot of teammates and mobs, but you can find them quickly with a Target macro.

To make an Assist macro, you just need to know the name of the character you will want to assist. This is normally the tank, but on occasion you may want to follow another DPS character who is familiar with which mobs need to be taken down in which order. You can also use an Assist macro on your pet, which is useful for grinding, farming and solo questing.

Let us assume the name of the player you are assisting is called “Thebigtank”. The following macro will change your target to the same mob that he is targeting:

/Assist Thebigtank

It’s that simple. Just drag the button to your action bar and keybind it. Whenever you hit this button you will switch target to the same one as Thebigtank is targeting. A word of warning though: the person you are assisting could be tabbing through a bunch of mobs to see who he should concentrate on. This might include some mobs that are not currently involved in the fight, so do NOT start shooting or attacking with your pet until you KNOW that this target is actively engaged by the tank. You will see this by looking at the debuffs on the Target icon, most likely at the top of your screen. If you start shooting too early, you will likely pull a bunch of unwanted aggro, causing a wipe. It is moments like this that lead to the popular term “Huntard”. Don’t be one.

One more point about Assist macros: you do not have to use the entire name of the character to assist. You could just as easily have a macro with the line “/Assist Thebig”, and as long as there were no other friendly targets with names that begin with “Thebig” you would be perfectly safe. However, if there was a party member with the name “Thebigcow” you might end up assisting the wrong player.

Targeting specific mobs works in a similar manner. Suppose you wanted to be able to target Chaotic Rifts in Nexus in a particular boss fight. You simply need a macro like this:

/Target Chaotic Rift

When you get visual indication that one of these mobs is being created, you simply run the macro (again, it should be on a keybound button on one of your action bars) and you will target a mob with that name, providing it is in range and in a targetable direction (not behind or too much to one side; I am not sure of the specifics, so if anyone knows, please comment). If it is safe to do so, you can send in the pet and/or let loose with the fire power.

The same short cut applies here, as well. You could have a macro with “/Target Chaotic”, and as long as there is nothing else with a name beginning with “Chaotic” you will be fine.

With these macros, it is a good idea to have one or two of each of these, in case you need to have multiple options. Be ready to make quick edits between bosses, too (or between quests) as your desired targets might change for these.

Basics, Macros Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

In my previous post I showed you how to create a macro that would mark your unfriendly target with a Hunter’s Mark, attempt to use all your special spells and trinkets that were not on a cooldown, and send your pet in for attack.

What was not included in that macro was any shots, and this was deliberate. As I explained, you may not want to shoot right away after marking and sending the pet in. Instead, you might want to wait until your pet generates enough threat that you won’t pull aggro; or you might want to lay down some traps or cast Misdirect, or simply wait to see what happens before deciding what to do.

But at some point you are going to want to start shooting, and it would be nice to have a macro that will do the exact shots you want to in their proper order. This macro will help with that.

Read more…

Basics, Macros, Uncategorized Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

If you read my last post, you will know that I gave you a description of how to create a macro to make your character sit down.

Big deal.

After all, what you really want to do is send your pet in to make a kill, and follow it up with some massive fire power. Well, this next macro is going to help you automate that as much as possible. Some of what I will show you may be above your character level. That’s OK, because you can always remove the lines that don’t apply to you. Or, you can leave them in, but turn off your error warnings in your interface (more on that in another post).

Once you reach Level 6, you can use the Hunter’s Mark, but for the purposes of this macro I am going to assume that you are at least Level 10 and have a pet. If not, then there is not much sense in automating your attack with a macro. So, open up your macro interface by typing “/macro”, and create a new Macro, naming it “Send In The Pet”, or anything else that makes sense to you. Make sure to use the button that has a question mark on it.

The first line to enter into the macro is:

#showtooltip Hunter’s Mark

It is very important to get all the spelling, punctuation, capitals and spaces correct. What this line does is change whatever button you assign this macro to into a Hunter’s Mark button, only with the first few letters of the name of your macro on it. Even better is to make sure the button is keybound, which means that the button will be activated by a specified key on the keyboard.

The next line to add is:

/cast Hunter’s Mark

You could add some “qualifiers” here to only cast Hunter’s Mark if your current target is an enemy and is not dead, but since nothing else in this macro ought to work if those things are not true then it hardly matters. Again, turning off the error messages will prevent distractions when you happen to accidentally run the macro when you have a friendly target or no target at all. Of course, the purpose of this line is to actually cast the Hunter’s Mark on your target, and that is exactly what this macro would do if you left it as is.

But simply creating a macro to do what the spell would do anyway if you just moved it to your action bar is hardly worthwhile. So we add another line:

/cast Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire is available when you reach Level 26, and it increases the speed at which you can fire. The faster you can fire the more damage you can do, so you should be using this as much as possible. By adding this to your macro you are at least attempting to cast it every time you run this macro. If the cooldown is not up, then there will be an error which may or may not be displayed depending on whether you have error displays turned on in your interface.

Now you want to add the spells that are specific to your Talent Tree and race. For instance, Beast Master Hunters can get Bestial Wrath once they have 31 talent points in the BM tree. Add the Beast Within talent, and this becomes a potent attack combination. Here is how it looks:

/cast Bestial Wrath

So this macro stuff isn’t looking that hard after all, is it? Again, since this spell has a cool down, it will only take effect if it is available. But it should be used at every opportunity if you have it, and stuffing it into this macro is the simplest way of making sure you do.

You can add any race-specific spells or other Talent Tree spells you might have as well; just make sure to get the spelling exactly correct!

Next we look at Trinkets. If you don’t have them yet, don’t worry about it, but you will eventually get some. They fit into two slots on your character, and normally have both an Equip and Use buff. The Equip buff is effective whenever you are “wearing” the Trinket, but to “Use” it you must actively do so. You can right click on it in your Character screen (hardly effective during combat); or you can drag the Trinket to a button and activate it from the button whenever you remember (which will be at the end of some battle, trust me); or you can activate it from within the macro, like this:

/use 13
/use 14

If you have never seen this before, then it may look a bit odd. If you have made a macro that uses Trinkets before then you will know that you can use a line like “/use Fancy Trinket”, where Fancy Trinket is the name of the Trinket. But Blizzard in their infinite wisdom have allowed us to simply refer to the slot number where the Trinkets go, which are 13 and 14. This means you don’t need to twiddle with your macro whenever you make an upgrade; plus it prevents spelling mistakes.

So far we have changed the way the button looks, cast a Hunter’s Mark on our target, cast any Talent or race specific spells plus Rapid Fire, and activated our trinkets. But nothing has been attacked! The next line will change all that:

/petattack

Now your pet will lunge, prowl, slither, fly, charge or dash to the target and start attacking in whatever manner it deems appropriate. At this point it is your job to follow up with a barrage of bullets or arrows to take down the target as fast as possible, taking advantage of all the buffs that may have been put on you from the previous lines in the macro.

But this does not mean you should add any shooting commands to this macro. In fact, I believe you should not. This macro does plenty of things which ought to be done at the beginning of your attack anyway. But shooting may not necessarily be your next step. Sometimes you may want to wait until your pet gets enough threat that you can fire away without worry of pulling aggro. Or you may want to cast Misdirection (available at Level 70), lay a trap or do something else.

Anyway, there will be macros to handle each of those things, but you will need a moment to decide what to do next, and then you can do it.

So here is the macro as I wrote it in complete, and it is very close to what I actually use:

#showtooltip Hunter’s Mark /cast Hunter’s Mark
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Bestial Wrath
/use 13
/use 14
/petattack

Again, you can add lines that are specific to your Talent Trees and race, and remove those that you don’t have, or don’t have yet. But the important thing to remember is that you have some spells and items that can be used from time to time, and it is important to use them whenever possible. They will help you when grinding, questing, raiding or running Battlegrounds. Using a macro like this one will help you make sure you don’t miss any opportunities.

Be sure to put this macro on one of your action bars, and keybind it. When you activate it, make sure to “spam” it by hitting it several times. That way you can be certain that everything that can be done will be done, as cooldowns can sometimes interfere with certain spells and trinkets. Also, you want to use this method of attacking almost all the time; the only time you should attack differently is if there is a reason for your pet not to attack, or if you don’t want to waste your cooldowns just before an upcoming Boss.

In the next post we will talk about shooting macros, which will help you with your shot rotation.

Basics, Macros Add new tag, Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

If you are not sure how to make macros in WoW, then this series of articles will teach you how, and give you a few sample macros that you can use.

First of all, a macro is simple a list of commands, all of which could also be typed in chat. For instance, if you wanted your character to sit, you could type “/sit” in chat, and instead of your character saying “/sit”, it will actually sit. There are many other such commands that behave this way, such as emotes, “/logout”, etc.

Macros give you an opportunity to store a few commands and run them all at once at the push of a button, or press of a key. But they are more than just a stored list of commands; macros can also use “conditions” to decide which commands to actually run, as well as sequences, random selection, and even termination of the macro under various conditions.

Also, macros will not automate the game for you. You still need to know when to run the macro, and it will not cause itself to run automatically under specified conditions. You will always need to run a macro by assigning it to a button and either clicking that button or pressing the key on your keyboard that is bound to that button.

Lastly, you cannot “chain” your macros; in other words you cannot use one macro to call another. However, Blizzard has relaxed some restrictions on the number of different commands you can use, so your macros can be relatively complex.

So, to create a macro you simply type “/macro” and hit Enter, and the macro screen will be displayed. If you have not made any macros yet you will see the default macro that Blizzard includes. Also, there are two tabs at the top, one for your currently selected character, and another for all characters (I believe this is for all characters on your current realm, and not your account, but I may be wrong).

On each of these tabs you will see (if they are there) buttons for each macro that is part of that tab’s collection of macros. If you click on one of the buttons you will see the text of that macro in the bottom of the macro screen. It is here where you will enter the text of your first macro.

Rather than edit one of the pre-made macros, you can create new ones. You can start this by pressing the button that says “New” (you probably guessed that). A new screen will pop up that prompts you to enter a name for the macro and to select a button that you will use to display on your action bar. Once you have done these, click the button to accept your choices and the New Macro screen will close, leaving you with the main macro window displaying your new, empty macro with its button.

To enter the text of your macro, just type in the bottom section. Each command you enter should be separated by a “/”, but I also find it easier to work with one command per line. The game will not care either way if the commands are on separate lines, but it makes it easier to tweak them later on.

So, now you can enter a command that you would normally type in chat. For instance, you could enter “/sit”. You do not need to save what you are typing, as the game does this for you on the fly. When you are done entering your text, simply click and drag the button for the macro (displayed at the top left) to a spot on your action bar, and then  exit the macro screen.

Now to test your macro. Make sure your character is standing, then press the button where you dragged your macro button to. You character should now sit.

If that worked for you, then you have created your first macro! A useless one, of course, but it works for demonstration purposes.

If your macro did not work, then check the following:

• Does the button you assigned to your macro show the name or part of the name of the macro? Is it the same button picture? If not, then you did not actually manage to assign the macro to the button. Open the macro screen, and find your macro and click and drag it to the button on your action bar, and make sure it “sticks”. You may have another button already there, in which case you will need to “release” that one by clicking on somewhere inactive on the screen.
• Check the text of your macro. Does it have a slash in front of the “sit”? If not, then it will not be interpreted as a command. Make sure it says “/sit”.
• Did you enter the command under the new macro, or did it get entered in one of the pre-existing macros? Or did you drag the wrong macro to your action bar?

That’s all there is to creating macros. My next few posts will deal with some of the commonly used macros for Hunters.

Basics, Macros Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

If you don’t know how to install add ons in Warcraft, this post will explain how, at least for Windows users who know a little bit about the file system. Later posts will talk about specific add ons that are good for Hunters or good for WoW players in general.

To install an add on, you first need to download it. Presumably you have read about the add on, or some other player has told you about it. You then go looking for it with Google or maybe you were given a URL for it. Either way, there should be a option that will let you download the files to install the add on. But before you download, check the following:

1. Is the version of the add on that you want to install compatible with the current version of WoW? You can usually be safely a patch or two behind, but not major patches. For instance, an add on that is made for version 2.x will not work with 3.0.8, but one that was made for 3.0.2 might.
2. Do you trust this source? Have you heard about lots of other players using it, or is this some secret new add on that your friend told you about and no one else knows about? Does your friend have a sick sense of humor? Perhaps you should wait before installing this one, because there is no guarantee that what you are downloading is what it says it is. Only download reputable add ons.
3. Does it use a lot of memory, and can your computer handle it? Most add on sites will tell you whether it is “light” or not. Too many “heavy” add ons will slow down the game unless you have lots of RAM and a good video card (lousy video cards rely partly on RAM to make up for their lousiness).
4. Is there documentation for this add on? If not, then either it cannot be configured (reasonable for simple add ons), or the programmer couldn’t be bothered. The documentation does not have to be elaborate; it can even be just a list of simple instructions on the Web site you downloaded from. Either way, make sure you read it; and if there isn’t any, think twice before downloading.

When you download the file you will likely be given an opportunity to pick the location you want to store the download in. I recommend the desktop because it is easy to find the file afterwards, but if you have a favorite location that you can find easily then that will work just fine.

The file that you download will be a compressed (zipped) file, so you will need a program to extract it. Windows computers with Operating Systems  of XP or later have built-in options to compress or extract files, but you may also have some other programs available such as WinZip or WinRAR. Normally you just need to right-click on the zipped file (it might be called a “compressed folder”) to see what your extracting options are.

I will assume that you will be able to figure out how to extract the file; if you cannot then look for some tips either in the help file or on line as there are too many different variations for me to cover here, but it really should be obvious. What you really need to know is where to extract to.

To know this, you must know the location of your World of Warcraft program. The default location in most computers is “c:\Program Files\World of Warcraft”, but it might be different on your computer. If you are not sure, then you can try the following:

Right-click on the icon you use to start WoW, and choose Properties. You should see a box labeled “Target” that will tell you the folder the program is in, plus the program name itself. Everything after the last “\” is the program name; what is left is the folder location.

Inside this same folder is another folder called “Interface”, and within that one is another called “AddOns”. This is where the AddOns go (hence the name!) Even if you have never installed any add ons you will still see some because Blizzard uses some of their own add ons to run certain parts of their software. This is in part because not all software needs to be loaded all the time, such as the Auction House interface.

You will need to extract the downloaded file to this folder. The zipped file you downloaded should contain only folders itself, and it (or they) should be named the same as the add on or add on components; if you see other files then you should not install it.

Once you have installed the add on folder to the right location, you now need to verify whether it is turned on. After you launch WoW and sign in with your account info, you will see the character screen for whichever server you last played on. At the bottom left there will be a button labeled “Addons”. Click this, and you will see a list of add ons that are installed and what their current status is. The status can be changed for one character, or globally for all characters on this server.

There are four reasons why an add on might not be loaded when you start playing on a character:

1. You have not selected the add on for this character or this server.
2. WoW has determined that this add on is Incompatible, which is usually due to being so out of date that it does not meet the interface requirements.
3. The add on is only slightly out of date, and you have not selected the option to “load out of date add ons”. This sometimes gets de-selected after patches.
4. The add on is “dependent” on another add on, and that add on is not loaded for one of the above reasons. If an add on cannot load, then none of the add ons that are dependent on it can.

As for using the add on in game, you need to check the documentation for the add on you downloaded. You did read the documentation…didn’t you?

Basics Add Ons, Basics, Hunter, Warcraft

The WoW Armory is one of the best tools for learning how to play a Hunter (or any class really) because it gives you a chance to compare your stats to those of someone else. For instance, if you have seen that you are not killing as quickly as another Hunter, or you are not putting out enough DPS in raids, you can use the Armory to look up the stats of both yours and the other player’s characters.

When you do a search on a character’s name, you will be given a list of characters to select from (players can use the same names if they are not on the same server). Just find the one that is on your server and click the name, and you will get a screen with their gear and stats. This will be based on when they logged out last, so if that player is still on you will not see any changes they have made.
Each slot shows what they are wearing, and the equipment info related to that item. Even better, you have an option to “Find an Upgrade” that takes you to a page with a list of items that Blizzard says are better than the one shown in the slot, but you need to be a little careful about their definition of “better”. However, the listing is pretty accurate, and I have found many a good item to go looking for based on this. In addition, each item has info on it saying what its source is: player made, quest reward, mob or chest drop, rep or PvP reward.

I have also used the armory to compare my equipment to another player’s, and to look at how much the item’s stat differences contribute to our overall stat differences. This is important in deciding which items to upgrade first. If you have the 2nd best gun in the game, and the other person has the very best, upgrading probably won’t make that much of a difference. However, if you have a different slot that your stats are way lower on, then this is the one to concentrate on first.

Another thing you can look up on the Armory is the Talent specs they have chosen. I have made improvements to my Talent selection by comparing talent by talent what someone else has and what I have. If the talents each of us have chosen are only slightly difference, I would compare what each one gives and try to determine if the trade-off is worth it. If the spec is completely different, I might ask the player if they really enjoy the spec and if it made a big difference if they recently switched to it. I have noticed that several good Hunters I know have switched to Survival, at least those that are raiding. In talking to those who have switched, you can ask for tips like shot rotation, pet talents, and even if they would do something different if they were to respec again.

The Armory has many other good things you can look up, but these are the features that have helped me the most.

Resources Hunter, Resources, Warcraft