The Warcraft Hunter

Pets in the Cunning Tree are a sort of hybrid between tenacity and ferocity. In addition to this they have a couple of effects that might actually come in handy during some prolonged fights. Most of these pets are of the winged type such as bats and birds of prey, but also include serpents and ravagers.

I have not used any of these types of pets, so my comments must be taken with a grain of salt. I am only going to give you my impression of what these talents would be useful for, but it is possible that I may be way off base. In addition, since so many of the talents on this tree are the same as on Ferocity and Tenacity, I will only list the talents that are unique to this tree.

I welcome any comments from anyone who has used these pets, or has any insight on how well they operate under various conditions.

Tier 2

Mobility, 2 ranks. This talent simply reduces the cooldown on Dash or Dive by 8 seconds and 16 seconds. Not a huge bonus in my opinion, but might make grinding or farming a little faster.

Owl’s Focus, 2 ranks. There is a 15 and 30% chance that there will be no focus cost the next time your pet uses an ability within 8 seconds of the previous one. Maintaining focus for your pet is a lot like maintaining Mana for yourself. This could come in handy.

Tier 3

Carrion Feeder, 1 rank. Your pet can feed on corpses in order to generate health and happiness. This will save on the necessity to carry food for your pet, or at least reduce it. This seems pretty minor to me, especially as there are options in that beast master tree for hunters that pretty much reduce the necessity to feed your pet to zero.

Tier 4

Cornered, 2 ranks. Your pet does 25% and 50% more damage and is 25% and 50% less likely to be critically hit when it is at less than 35% health itself. This sounds like an excellent talent, but I would expect it to be ineffective in PVP or raid. In PVP, other players are less likely to focus on your pet then on you, and he made you want to be careful how much threat you generate. I may be wrong about this though, and I would be glad to hear about anyone’s experience with this.

Feeding Frenzy, 2 ranks. Your pet does 6% and 12% more damage to targets when they are below 35% health. I like this a little more than the previous talent, especially since it helps bring down mobs faster. If I were to get a pet in this tree, I am pretty sure I would grab this talent.

Tier 5

Bullheaded, 1 rank. This talent helps keep control of your pet by removing all movement impairing effects, such as freezing or rooting. I can imagine this being quite useful, but I don’t know how important this is compared to other talents. There are times when I wish that my pet was not stunned, but it is relatively rare and does not last for very long.

Roar of Recovery, 1 rank. When your pet rulers it restores 30% of your Mana over 9 seconds. Since there is a cooldown of six minutes on this I am not sure how useful it turns out to be. Since aspect of the Viper pretty much restores mana over a few seconds anyway, this might be less useful than it appears.

Wolverine Bite, 1 rank. A special attack that does extra damage and cannot be dodged block or parried.

None of these talents is a standout for me. Even as a group they do not impress me that much, but it may be that I am underestimating their combined effectiveness. I might try out one of these pets as a mere curiosity, but as I don’t expect it would be that effective I cannot imagine that I will spend a lot of time leveling it to the point where I can give it a fair comparison. Therefore, I am asking for anyone who has experience with these to please comment.

Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft

The role of a Hunter in any group situation is to do as much damage as possible. It makes sense, therefore, that in this situation you would want to have a pet that can do as much damage as possible as well. Pets in the Ferocity tree are exactly what you need for this situation.

Cats, Wolves, and Raptors are the most common beasts picked for their Ferocity. Core Hounds and Devilsaurs are examples of exotic Ferocity pets.

Not only do Ferocity pets have the ability to do extra damage, but they also have some interesting talents that help them stay alive. This is important; after all, how can your pet do extra DPS when it is dead? However, it is vital that you do not pick too many talents that focus on defensive aspects for your pet. Remember that your job is to do damage, and all the talents that you choose for your Ferocity pet should aim towards that goal.

Tier 1

Cobra Reflexes (2 Ranks). this talent will increase your pet attacks feet by 15% and 30%. However, each attack will do less damage. The important effect here is that your pet attacks more frequently, and thus has more chance to proc certain skills. Ferocious Inspiration is one such proc that can help your group do a lot more damage. A must-have.

Dash or Dive (1 Rank). Increases your pet’s speed by 80% for 16 seconds. the faster your pet can get to an enemy, the faster it can do damage. This is a must have talent.

Great Stamina (3 Ranks). Increases your pet’s total stamina by 4%, 8%, and 12%. This is not what I would focus on for a ferocity pet. However, you may find that you need to put one or two talent points here, eventually.

Natural armor (2 Ranks). Increases your pet’s armor by 5% and 10%. Again, this is not the best talent for a ferocity pet to health, but if your pet is dying frequently, you may need to pick one talent in this or in Great Stamina.

Tier 2

Bloodthirsty (2 Ranks). Your pet’s attacks have a 10% and a 20% chance to increase its happiness by 5% and heal its total health by 5%. Obviously the healing is important, because your pet will stay alive longer; but the happiness is important too, as it will do 25% more damage than normal when it is happy.

Boar’s speed (1 Rank). Your pet’s movement speed is increased by 30%. This is a permanent increase, as opposed to the temporary increase in Dash or Dive. Once again, moving faster means it can get to the enemy faster, and thus do more damage.

Improved Cower (2 Ranks). When your pet cowers, it will also decrease the damage against it by 10% and 20%. If you find that your pet is getting aggro frequently, you may want to take one or two points in this talent. This would be applicable only in a group situation, where the tank is supposed to hold aggro. It is not a good talent to have when you are playing solo, because you want your pet to keep aggro as much as possible.

Spiked collar (3 Ranks). Your pet’s damage is increased by 3%, 6%, and 9%. Anything that increases damage is good, so you should grab as many points as you can here.

Tier 3

Avoidance (3 Ranks). The amount of damage that your pet takes from area of effect spells is decreased by 25%, 50%, and 75%. This is not especially useful for Ferocity pets, unless this is a specialty pet being used just for mobs that specialize in AoE damage.

Charge or Swoop (1 Rank). When your pet charges an enemy or swoops at it, it will increase its attack power by 25% on its next attack, as well as immobilize the enemy. This is a good one to have.

Lionhearted (2 ranks). Stun and fear effects are reduced by 15% and 30%. Again, this talent is a little bit questionable for ferocity pets. Unless you are fighting mobs that fear or stun frequently, this will be of little use to you. (However, if your pet is feared or stunned, it cannot do any damage.) Also, this talent does not lead to any Tier 4 or Tier 5 talents, so I never bother to get this talent.

Tier 4

Great Resistance (3 ranks). Damage to your pet by Arcane, Fire, Frost, Shadow, and Nature are reduced by 3%, 6%, and 9%. Since this does not focus on doing damage, and does not lead to any other talents, this is not worth having.

Heart of the Phoenix (1 rank). Allows you to instantly rez your pet after it dies in battle, with full health and focus. This is an absolute must-have talent for a Ferocity pet. Grab this as soon as you can. It has saved my life more time than I can count.

Spiders Bite (3 ranks). Your pet’s attacks have a 3%, 6%, and 9% extra critical strike chance. Since so many other skills and spells are invoked by critical strikes, it makes sense to get all three ranks of this talent.

Tier 5

Call of the Wild (1 rank). Your pet roars, thereby increasing both ranged attack and melee attack power for all members of your party that are within 40 yards by 10% for 20 seconds. This sounds like a lot of extra damage, but there is a five minute cool down, and it does not affect spell damage. That being said, extra damage is extra damage. You may want this one.

Lick your Wounds (1 rank). Your pet is healed for 100% of its health, channeled over 5 seconds. Again, this sounds useful. But in a group situation, it is the healer’s responsibility under normal circumstances to keep everyone healed. And since you would already have Heart of the Phoenix, you should not need this extra healing as well.

Rabid (1 rank). Your pet increases its attack power by 5%, with a 50% chance of increasing attack power by an additional 5%, stacking up to five times. This lasts for 20 seconds and has a 45 second cooldown. It is difficult to stack this five times and thereby get 25% extra damage, and it requires three points in the avoidance talent. But again, extra damage is extra damage, and this may well be worth having. It usually comes down to either this or Call of the Wild.

Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft

If you are new to the game or have never played a Hunter before, chances are you’ll need a little basic Hunter pet info. Once you reach Level 10 you will be able to tame one of many types of beasts to be your pet. This pet will fight with you and do damage on mobs, as well as take the brunt of most attacks for you. Some of its skills will be invoked automatically, others will need to  be triggered by you.

The single most important thing about choosing a pet is what Talent tree you will choose from: Cunning, Ferocity, or Tenacity. Every beast type is classified as one of these three types. There are also “Exotic” pets, but these are just special kinds of beasts available to Beast Master Hunters, but all of them still fall into one of the three types.

Deciding with type of pet you get will depend on how you want to play. In fact, you can tame more than one pet, and keep all but one in the stables that you find near most Inns. That way you can switch pets depending on what you are doing.

Most Hunters will pick Tenacity pets to begin with, as these types of pets will keep aggro and withstand a lot of damage. This makes them great to use as tanks when soloing, whether you are questing, grinding or farming. Gorillas are a very popular choice, as are bears turtles and boars. Personally I use a gorilla for farming.

Ferocity pets are the opposite: they will deal out  large amounts of damage but not hold aggro or withstand damage as well as Tenacity pets. These are the best choice for raids, since neither the Hunter nor the pet are expected to take a lot of direct damage under most circumstances. Cats are the most common choice for Ferocity, but wolves and raptors are also popular. Core Hounds make an interesting choice for an exotic Ferocity pet, but the consensus seems to be that they do not deal as much damage as regular ferocity pets do.

Cunning is a hybrid type of Talent tree, and these pets are in between for both damage dealt and damage taken. In addition, they have available to them some talents that make them pretty useful under certain circumstances. I don’t know many Hunters who use them, but as I understand it they can be useful in PvP or raids, and workable in solo play. Most Cunning pets are of the winged variety (birds, bats, winged serpents) plus spiders and ravagers.

Once you have a pet, you will need to take care of it. That means feeding it to keep it happy, so knowing what kind of food it eats is critical. Keeping the pet happy is important, as it increases the amount of damage it will do when fighting.

Leveling the pet is simple, as it will gain xp from kills just as you do. Also, if you tame a pet that is well below your level, it will automatically be “leveled” up to 5 levels below yours. Skills and ranks of skills (not the same thing as Talents) are automatically learned as the pet levels, so you don’t need to do a thing about that anymore. In previous versions you would have to tame a pet that “knew” that skill, use it until you “learned” it, then get your main pet back out so it could “learn” it from you. Now new skills and new ranks of skills are based entirely on what level your pet is.

Talents are chosen from the pet’s Talent tree, much as your own Talents are chosen from yours. The pet Talent tree is limited in comparison, so there won’t be many Talents left out, but you do want to be careful and pick the ones that enhance the role of your pet as much as possible. Talent points are given to the pet for every 4 levels starting at Level 20. Also, Beast Master Hunters have an option that gives them an extra Talent point for their pets.

The last thing I will mention on this post is that the specific animal you tame will not affect any of its stats: any type of cat that you tame will end up with the same stats, even if it is one the “elite” mobs. The only thing that will be affected is the look of the pet.

Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft

For me, the best Hunter Aspect macro is a simple one. I don’t need fancy options to determine things based on whether I am in combat or anything like that, I just need to switch back and forth between two aspects: Viper and Dragonhawk.

Aspect of the Viper becomes available at Level 20, and its purpose it to help you regenerate Mana quickly, especially during battle. As useful as this is, it does have a cost, which is to reduce your damage by 50%. While this loss in damage can be minimized it cannot be eliminated, so you really don’t want to stay in Viper for very long. As soon as your Mana is full you want to switch to either Aspect of the Hawk or Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

If you are not familiar with Dragonhawk, it is a newer aspect that combines Aspects of Hawk and Monkey, giving you the ranged power of the one plus the dodge bonus of the other. It is available at Level 75, so if you are not there yet, simply replace the word “Dragonhawk” with “Hawk” in the macro given below, and bear in mind that you will need to switch to Monkey in some other manner (I will give a suggestion below).

The macro I use to switch quickly between the two aspects is this:

#showtooltip Aspect of the Dragonhawk
/castsequence Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper

What this macro does is set up a rotation with no reset, so I am always casting one after the other. The only downside to this macro is that after I log in, if I am already in Dragonhawk, then running this macro just turns it off. That is because the spell is actually a toggle, meaning if the aspect is on before the spell is cast, then the spell will turn it off. I have not played with putting a “!” in front of it as I have seen done with Auto shot, because it is simple enough to just run the macro twice to get the aspect that I want.

If you want to add another line to cast Aspect of the Monkey (assuming you don’t have Dragonhawk yet), you can try this:

/cast [button:2] Aspect of the Monkey

If you add that to the above macro it should let you cast Aspect of the Monkey if you are right clicking on the button. If it fails due to a cooldown, then move the line above the second one and it should work fine. I haven’t tried this myself, as I preferred to deal with melee situations in whatever way seemed appropriate, such as trapping, kiting, feigning. Some situations do not warrant switching aspects, and I like to improvise rather than have preset strategies. Sometimes even Volley is a better option, especially if you are surrounded by lots of weak mobs. In that case you would not want to switch away from Hawk or Dragonhawk as that would reduce your Attack Power.

Basics, Macros Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

A Pet Care macro can save you a bunch of time dealing with various pet care activities, such as healing, feeding, rezzing, summoning, etc. I deal with some of these with single buttons, but there is a nice macro that you can start with and tweak as you see fit that will let you do any of the above with one button. Not only is it convenient to reduce the total number of buttons on your action bars, but it also serves as an example of some other options that you can use in macros.

I am going to do the reverse of what I normally do, and display the entire macro, and then explain each line afterwards.

#showtooltip Mend Pet
/cast [nopet, modifier:ctrl] Tame Beast
/cast [combat] Heart of the Phoenix
/cast [nopet] Call Pet; [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet
/castsequence [pet,nomodifier,button:1] reset=15 Mend Pet, null
/cast [button:2] Dismiss Pet

So there are a few things in this macro that we did not see in any of the others. The first line is the usual one where we choose what the button is going to look like. In this example I have chosen to make it look like the Mend Pet button. Keeping the button looking familiar is important, because you may end up looking for this button in the middle of a fight and it will be easier to find.

Line 2 is one that I remove from my macro simply because I rarely ever tame beasts. I think on my current main, which is now 80, I only used Tame Beast twice. Anyway, this particular line will only work on the conditions specified, which are “nopet”, and “modifier:ctrl”. This means that you don’t have a pet currently controlled (that much is obvious), and that you are hitting the Control key (Ctrl) on your keyboard at the same time as you click on the macro button. I find doing that a little awkward, especially since some of my action bar buttons are keybound with some ctrl+letter combos. However, if normally click on a button rather than using keybinds, this will work for you.

The third line is my favorite, and it has saved me numerous times. Once you have enough Talent points spent in the Ferocity tree you can get Heart of the Phoenix, which is an instant rez on your pet with full health and focus. It has a ten minute cooldown, so you are likely only get to use it once in any battle unless you are on a particularly tough Boss fight. This line will only work if you are in combat, but that makes sense as you would rather use the normal Revive Pet if you are out of combat since time is not a factor then.

The fourth line has two possible actions. You will attempt first to Call Pet if you currently don’t have your pet out (such as when you dismissed him or lost control due to distance); or you will cast Revive Pet if your pet is dead. Oftentimes in the heat of the battle I don’t know whether I died first or my pet did. This will cast the appropriate spell afterwards based on whether the pet is dead or not. Convenient.

Line 5 is rather clever, as it prevents you from wasting Mana when casting Mend Pet. If you click the button with a normal click (Left click, or Button 1) you will cast Mend Pet, but only if you have not done so already in the previous 15 seconds, otherwise it does nothing (null). For myself, I usually remove this line because I use keybinds, and because I want to control when I cast the Mend Pet, even if I “waste” Mana. Sometimes it is more important to me to have the Mend start at the beginning of an AOE attack by a boss, or if a healer goes down and I am trying to keep my pet up at all costs. If that happens I usually switch to Aspect of Viper anyway to keep my threat down and Mana up.

The last line is one that every Hunter should know how to do in a Raid. There are times when you simply cannot have a pet around, either because of aggro or chain attacks, and you need a way to dismiss your pet quickly so the group does not have to wait for you to fumble through your spells. This line will dismiss your pet if you Right-click on the button. Even though I prefer to keybind mymacros I leave this line in, because I know I won’t accidentally dismiss my pet by keyboard strokes.

So pick and choose which lines you want to keep, or play with the modifiers if you prefer different click or key options. If you have different ideas about what the macro should look like, please let me know in comments.

Basics, Macros Basics, Hunter, Macros, Warcraft

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 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