This is what I’m planning after reading Big Red Kitty and Jabaris’ articles on trapping macros and techniques.
The goal is to be able to keep one mob controlled, while laying the smacketh down on others. To that end, you need to be able to have one mob that is always just a touch away from being targeted, no matter where he is or where you’re looking. This leaves you free to select targets and shift your fire at will where it needs to go.
To this end, I’m looking at the following macros and tactics as a 5 man instance arrangement. Your comments and criticisms are welcome, as I ain’t even tested it, this is just me reading around, imagining and applying what I know as a tank.
Whatever you assign as the “Focus” is remembered, despite your current target.
For the purposes of these macros, the designated Blue Square mob for trapping is the “Focus”, and whatever the next mob the tank is concentrating aggro on to kill is the “DPS Target”.
Macros
Set Focus
/set focus=target
Pull Shot – Focus
/cast[target=focus] Arcane Shot (Rank 1)
/stopcasting
Restablish Aggro Shot
/cast[target=focus] Distracting Shot
Send Pet and Mark Target
/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
THE PLAN
- 1) When the Blue Square gets assigned, use the “Set Focus” macro to make it your Focus.
- 2) Select the first designated ‘burn down’ target, usually the tanks’ Skull target, to be ready for DPSing.
- 3) Get in trap location 1 and lay trap prior to pull. Goal is to have 30 second trap cooldown almost over before pull, so if the trap is resisted, you can reapply immediately.
- 4) When the pull happens, (tank pulls aggro) activate the “Pull Shot – Focus” macro to draw the Blue Square to you. In a perfect world, he runs to where you’re standing, hits trap first, and gets frozified. If he resists the trap, drop a new trap again immediately. (It’s off cooldown, right? Right?)
- 5) With the Blue Square trapped, move to trap location 2. If the first trap was successful, then your trap is ready immediately, and you only need to move a teeny distance away to lay trap 2. If the first trap was resisted and you had to lay another one on the fly, then you have a 30 second cooldown, and your mob will be trapped for only 20 seconds. Do the math. If you stand there, then in 20 seconds the mob will be in your face, and there is still 10 seconds to get pounded before you can lay another trap. Instead of playing punching bag, you need to run away from trap 1 for about 10 seconds before laying your trap. That way, you run for 10 seconds, wait for 10 seconds, Mob breaks trap and runs towards you, (maybe you pop your Restablish Aggro macro a few times while you wait, since it does zero damage, 800 threat, and doesn’t break traps), you wait for mob to run 10 seconds, and boom! As he reaches you your cooldown is up and you pop a trap in his face.
- 6) Keep an eye on the tanks’ threat level on his Target. As soon as he has established decent threat, hit “Send Pet/Mark Target” macro and open fire with Arcane Shot. Begin weaving your Aimed Shot and auto-shots, with Kill Commands thrown in.
- 7) As the tanks’ targets die, allow tank to establish aggro on new target, then shift your fire to it and continue using the “Send Pet” macro to apply your pet and mark to the new target.
- 8) As needed, when your trap breaks, fire off the “Restablish Aggro” macro to make sure your Blue Square comes back to you and retrap. As the Focus is getting only the one shot, your auto-shots will continue applying DPS to your tanks’ target.
There ya go. that’s what I’m thinking of here. Only a handful of macros, and plenty of leeway for concentrating on applying ranged DPS instead of obsessing about the trapped mob.
Again, let me know you’re thoughts on all this.
As far as I can see, the biggest trouble point is if the second (or third) trap you drop in the mobs’ face is resisted. At that point, with a 30 second cooldown and a mob on your butt, your only choice to avoid death is Feign Death. However, chances seem high he would then go after the Healer, since he is going to be tracking the highest Global Threat. So it seems to me that I’d need to be ready to Feign Death, target my Blue Square (not using the “Focus” macro, but actually target him), click the ‘Send Pet/Mark” macro, and activate the Pet’s Growl. If the mob seems to be close to reaching the Healer before the pet will reach the mob, then a Distracting Shot as it gets near the Healer should help it to ping pong back towards me.
Thank you to BRK and Jabari for all thier hard work. It’ll be a lot of fun to play with this stuff. I just hope that I can learn enough to keep from getting a rep as a ‘huntard’….
Looks basically good.
Couple of nitpicks:
1) Just use Max-Rank Arcane instead of Rank 1, for a couple of reasons given in the comments in BRK’s post.
2) You’ll need one more macro, for Misdirection. It’s pretty simple: “/cast [target=tankname]Misdirection”, but you’ll need to remember to update it at the start of each run.
I wonder if there is some way to do a “petattack focus” macro – I haven’t looked around for one, but there is a “/petattack” command, so it might be possible. Will check later when I get some time.
Looks good. In step 5, even if the trap is successful, you still want to get as much space between yourself and the mob as possible. Those extra seconds while the mob is running to you are excellent for your cooldowns if you need to trap it more than once. And while you’re running you can pop off a serpent sting and/or arcane shot onto the tank’s mob.
As a BM hunter I’ve found that Intimidation works wonders when your turkey resists a trap or starts beating on you. Just call back your pet and pop Intimidation and Growl, it stuns the mob for a couple seconds and lets your pet build aggro really fast. With a Mend Pet your pet should be able to tank the mob successfully until your trap cooldown is ready again. Once order has been restored, remember that your pet has aggro not you, so when the turkey thaws again that’s where he’s going… though if the pet is standing next to the tank and the turkey is next on the hit list it’s very convenient.
Chorius and Spot – Cenarius
Another thing you can do when you start getting behind is throw a concussive shot or if he gets close a wing clip . This slows him down getting to the next trap and gives your cool down time
Jabari, to answer your question:
/petattack [target=focus]
Now if you want to be fancy (grin), try this bit of fun:
/petattack [modifier:alt,target=target][target=focus]
Obviously, this means normally the pet attacks the focus, but you can select a target and have your pet attack THAT with by keying while using the alt key.
Now fancier yet is the one I’m playing with:
/petattack [modifier:alt,harm,target=focus] [modifier:alt,harm,target=focustarget] [harm,target=targettarget] [harm,target=mouseover] [harm,target=mouseovertarget] [harm,target=target] [harm,target=targettarget]
All of that, by the way, should be on a single line.
Let me break that down. I can set a foe as the focus, or I can set something like, oh, say the main assist as the focus. When I alt-key, if the focus is a mob my pet attacks that, if my focus is my main assist then the pet attacks the mob the main assist has targeted. I also have three options in the event I don’t want to slap the alt key. The target I’m mousing over if it’s a mob, its target if I’m mousing over a friend (note – doesn’t have to be in my party or raid, just its target has to be a foe), and if all those fail the pet attacks my current target if foe, or its target if that’s the foe.
Kirk
Priestlyendeavors.wordpress.com (but yes, I do have a hunter alt)
Okay, everybody is leaving wonderful notes, great suggestions, thank you, thank you…
Except Kirk. Dude, you’re insane. Do you really come up with that shit YOURSELF? I’m talking basic addition, and you’re into da calculus.
Man… I can’t even read it, let alone parse it. WAY too advanced for me… LOL.
On the other hand… I want to see you post hunter stuff, damn it. If it’s like that, I wanna read it.
heh – it is surprisingly easy — as easy as calling shake and bake on moving targets off a TRP once you know the deal. Here, let’s give you the simple deal.
Every bracket is a test, done in order. The first one that’s ALL true gets used, and that ends the macro.
modifier:alt — modifiers are shift, alt, and ctrl. Pretty obvious.
test “harm”. Is the target hostile? Note that this is a flaw in the macro I wrote – too much time doing priest-based. What really needs to happen is replace every “harm” test with a “nohelp” test. Help – is the target friendly. nohelp…
warcraft’s macro language has similarities to German – you can string some words together to be a ‘new word’ that has meaning. There are rules and variations, but we’re going to only mention two. The first, here, is “no” can be appended to darn near every test and limiter. It means, literally, “everything that is not X”. So why am I using “nohelp”? Neutrals. A test for harm only works for hostiles. Friends and neutrals escape. “Nohelp” is everthing that is not friendly (green).
And last item in every bracket is … a weirdness. It is of the category I call qualifiers instead of tests. They are by default true IF the rest of the bracket is true. If the rest of the bracket is true, then the target is…
the focus, what I put my mouse over, or the target. Or – and here’s the second german-like structure – I can chain “target” together after every potential basic target type for several steps. (Yes, I can say “target=pettargettargettarget”. That is, if my pet is attacking a mob, and it’s attacking raid member, well, then I’m attacking THAT RAID MEMBER’s target. Don’t think about it too much, it’ll make your head hurt more. Just stop at one iteration – if you accidentally target a friendly, then target is really that friendly’s target. Auto-assist for the win.)
So you can actually chase that whole mess really simply:
/petattack [modifier:alt,nohelp,target=focus] [modifier:alt,nohelp,target=focustarget] [nohelp,target=targettarget] [nohelp,target=mouseover] [nohelp,target=mouseovertarget] [harm,target=targettarget] [target=target]
command the pet to attack the target, target being the first true statement of:
a) If I’m pressing alt, target the focus if it’s a bad guy;
b) If I’m pressing alt and the focus is a good guy, assist the focus;
(a series of just the button with no alt keys)
c) mouseover if bad guy;
d) If mouse is over good guy, assist;
e) If my target is a good guy, assist;
f) Attack my target.
(If none of those are true, I get an error message. If none of those are true I probably deserve an error message.)
Yah, it takes time to figure out how to WRITE the macros, but reading them turns out to be simple. Oh, I said simple deal. There is more – lots more – that could be done. Qualifiers and modifiers and “and then” and sequence and… bah. Never give everything as one lesson.
I basicly have set my focus to the MT, meaning i’m doing trapping manually. Just keep an eye on your trap CD’s and drop one on time or prepare for some kiting if it aint up yet and you aint survival.
A disctracting shot with /stopcasting might still be usefull if you want to keep aggro on the trapped mob.
Some huntertimers will be very helpfull here.
Besides that i have bound a key (Q) to petattack and one (E) to assist pet + autoshot, this makes it easy to get that pet in fast and use him as an anchor if needed.
Hi there,
normally I come here to read tips and tricks for my Druid alt! But now that I se you have a hunter alt I can return some advice from my hunter main.
First I just wanna check that when you say you weave auto and aimed shot -you actually mean auto/steady. If thats not what you meant then it should be from now on :)
As for targeting and trapping and OT’ing with pet.
I use my focus target for my MT so I will be able to get of an MD real fast in case of need Read squishy in danger or aggro loss by MT). So I dont use it on blue! What I use for skull is my /targetlastarget macro or if I need to trap and send pet to OT I use the /targetlasttarget for blue so I can sen pet straight on the pull to his target and then either assist via focus or just manually target MT’s target.
So for a real tricky pull with me MD’ing, trapping and OT’ing with pet it would go like this:
Drop trap, target pets mob then target skull. hit MD macro that casts MD on focus (MT) and let fly on skull. After ur 3 shots (or if u abort after 1) hit /targetlasttarget macro and push petattack key. Then in this case you would have to target blue manually and get him with distracting, then target focus and slap assist -now u are blasting skull!
Ohh, now I sound like I’m showing off :)) Well you have impressed me a lot with ur tips for my Drood so I guess I’m trying to return the favor :)
Anyway the point I wanted to make was to make sure u are weaving steady and not aimed and to shor the usefulness of a /targetlasttarget macro
Thanks for the tips and GL with ur hunter
I’m pretty much the same as Exanimo. I use my pet as a target anchor, for the dps target and then deal with chain trapping manually.
I’m survival so don’t tend to get a lot of resists, but there are a number of ways to deal with them. If you have scatter shot, on a resisted trap it’s a fine time to use it… that’s a few seconds extra of trap cooldown where your mob isn’t beating on anyone. As survival I have Deterrence, which I find allows me to hold the mob for a few more seconds, allowing it to beat on me (as I dodge and parry a lot). Once I’m fed up of taking a beating, it’s time to feign and let the mob head for the healers.
Head for the healers? Scary! Yup – but as long as you are a distance a way from the healers, the mob will have a way to run. Wait til he is just outside melee range (casters are more of a pain to do this with but the principle still applies) of his target, and whallop him with a distracting shot and an arcane shot, which is almost certainly enough to get his attention again… and watch in amusement as the chump starts out back towards you. A concussive shot will buy you a little more time, and hopefully, your trap wil be off CD and ready to lock him down again.
Obviously, BM hunters can just sick their pet on the mob and not worry too much, but I figured a survivalist’s point of view might be of some use.
@Kirk:
Very nice :)
Does the “/petattack [target=focus]” actually work? I remember looking for something like that, and getting results along the lines of “no modifiers if it’s not a /cast command”, but it’s been a long while ago so something might have changed.
One macro that I’ve always had is my “PetTankIT” macro:
/petattack
/petautocaston Growl
/cast Intimidation
(just remember to turn Growl back off before the next pull!)
If the target=focus works, then a TankTheFocus one would be very nice to have. (or one macro, with a keypress modifier like you showed above)
@Jabari,
Well, it works for me. (grin) It didn’t used to, but one of the patches (and no, I don’t remember which) made petattack a secure command. Secure commands accept options – which include conditionals (the things in brackets). (Options are a subset of parameters. Further I’ll not go here – this way be dragons and worse, and I’ll save that exploration for my own blog.)
Oh, a ‘by the way’ – /petattack works for all pets, be they hunter ‘permanents’ or caster ‘temporaries’ (demons, elementals, fiends…)
Kirk
priestlyendeavors.wordpress.com
Steady Shot not Aimed Shot.
BRK will scold you and take away your licence otherwise.