Well, finally, after 5 runs in Steamvaults as the CC hunter, I took the time to rearrange my full button bars, created the Macros that I had planned out, and fired ‘em up.

I then went out into the wilds of Terrokkar Forest, there to practise them, stress test them, and generally make a nuisance of myself to all the Spiders and Wolves and Moths drifting about.

Things did NOT go well.

The following are each of my original proposed Macros, followed by commentary and what I ended up with.

Macros

Original:Set Focus
/set focus=target

In testing, this did not work. It did not work at all. However, testing was interesting because neither did macro #2, the pull shot. So, was I getting a focus but just not shooting, or was I not getting a focus but it would shoot if I did?
I spent quite some time reading Kirks‘ awesome series of ‘How to write Macros’ posts (One, Two Three, Four…), none of which seemed to address my Focus issues… and then went on out into Terrokkar to figure it out on my own. In the end, the problem was quite simple… that is NOT how you assign a target to be the focus. At least not in my configuration. What you do is THIS:

New:Set Focus
/focus

That’s right. “/focus”. That’s all. And what is worse, I KNEW that. I knew that back in the old ‘raiding Molton Core in 40 mans’ as a resto druid, with the main tank as a focus and using numbered hotkeyed macros to heal him while spot healing the rest of my assigned party. Talk about ancient history!

Original:Pull Shot - Focus
/cast[target=focus] Arcane Shot (Rank 1)
/stopcasting

Once I had the Focus macro fixed, and was getting that lovely focus box coming up, I moved on to non-functional #2… Pull would not shoot. Not at all. So, was it my Spell name, or my targeting info? First thing I did was remove the qualifier… Made it just Arcane Shot. Nope, still nothing. Then I removed the special targeting, and made it a cut and dried “/cast Arcane Shot”. That worked fine… but not on my focus, of course. So, since the focus macro was hosed, was the [target=focus] the right syntax?.

Turns out that yes, that is the right syntax… but there MUST be a space between /cast and [target=focus]. The final macro that works looks like this:

New:Pull Shot - Focus
/cast [target=focus] Arcane Shot
/stopcasting

Ain’t that pretty?

Original:Restablish Aggro Shot
/cast[target=focus] Distracting Shot

After seeing what I learned on the Pull Shot macro, it becomes clear to see that this SHOULD look like:

New:Restablish Aggro Shot
/cast [target=focus] Distracting Shot

Original:Send Pet and Mark Target
/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark

This, thankfully, worked great. Yay!

However, I had two more macros that I ended up adding. The first, is one that was recommended to me in the comments by Jabari, for Misdirection. Applying what I had learned, I created:

New:Misdirect
/cast [target=tankname] Misdirection

I tested this one by using my pet’s name, Moonclaw. Total win. And lots of fun, too.

The other macro I created was to counteract an annoyance after I played with the Focus macro a bit….
Simply put, until I set a new Focus, the old one, even dead, hung around up there on my screen. And thus, the “Clear Focus” Macro was born:

New:Clear Focus
/clearfocus

Boy, that one was difficult, amiright? LoL.

There you go my friends… the macros I’ve made, playtested and proclaim quite fun for my hunter to use in 5 man groups… and heck, why not in raids too?. If you are a new 70 hunter like myself, then maybe the use of these macros could help clear some of the chaos from your life as well!

Even if they don’t, I hope that reading about the process has been entertaining, if not instructive.

Have fun everyone!