Kae's 4.0 Druid Macros

In an update from my PTR post, I have found that not only have they fixed the OP kitty death pounce of ravagey doom, but also fixed lifebloom for macro useage. Both good things.


MACROS

The following macros are 4.0 updates to the macros I currently use. Healing didn't change much, in terms of spells, so most of these are feral. It is likely I'll be tweaking these macros as I grow accustomed to the new abilities and grow away from my old bind habits. It is also likely that you may find a different arrangement of abilities to be useful: feel free to hack these macros apart and replace things with your own preference. That's what macros are for :)


- NOTE 1: if you are not a primary-spec resto and secondary-spec feral, you will want to look at all instances of [spec:1] and [spec:2] in these macros to replace them with your appropriate spec.

- NOTE 2: I use an old-model G15 keyboard, which offers me at least 4 "easily reachable" extra keybind keys for pinky reach. You might be a little more pressed for keybind space if you don't have or use one of these, and have to rely more on mouse-click actions.

- NOTE 3: Bindpad has a working version here on WoWInterface.

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Generic Macro Templates

Cut and paste in your abilities where you'd like. If in doubt, click them out of your spellbook to get the correct name.

Mouseover Heal or Cleanse:

/cast [@mouseover,help] [help] [@player] Spellname


Mouseover or Focus Harm:
(attack your mouseover, or otherwise your focus target, such as with CC)

/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] [@focus,harm,nodead] [@focustarget,harm] [] Spellname


Mouseover or Focus Harm Toggle:
(hold shift to attack or assist your focus target, such as with CC, otherwise mouseover)

/cast [mod:shift,@focus,harm,nodead][mod:shift,@focustarget,harm,nodead][@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] [] Spellname


Focus-assist or Target Harm:
(set a main tank as assist, for example)

/cast [@focustarget,harm,nodead] [harm] [] Spellname


Mouseover Help or Target Harm:

/cast [harm] DPSspell; [@mouseover,help] [help] [@player] Healspell


Modifier-toggled casts:

/cast [mod:shift] Spell1; [mod:alt] Spell2; Spell3


Modifier-toggled Helpful Mouseovers:

/cast [mod:shift,@mouseover,help][mod:shift,help][mod:shift,@player] Spell1; [mod:alt][mod:alt,help][mod:alt,@player] Spell2; [@mouseover,help][help][@player] Spell3

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Custom Macros

My Skull Bash Key (G12):
Skull bash is our new feral-form spell interrupt. While the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars (besides the mouseover portion of Wild Growth), I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad.

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form); [form:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form) /stopmacro [spec:2] [form:1/3] /cast [@mouseover,nodead,exists] [@player] Wild Growth

• Cat: Skull Bash
• Bear: Skull Bash
• Caster [spec:1]: Wild Growth (mouseover)

My Stuns Key (G18):
This key used to be my remove curse macro; my cleanse has been consolidated and thus freed up this button. As above, the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars (besides the targeting portion of Cyclone), I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad. You could throw warstomp in there, but I prefer having access to that straight from feral forms.

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Maim; [form:1] Bash; [harm][@focus,harm][] Cyclone

• Cat: Maim
• Bear: Bash
  
• Caster: Cyclone on enemy target, else on enemy focus target, else normal.
  

Mushroom Toggle:
Casting mushrooms (up to 3 at a time) and detonating them requires different casts. While we won't learn this spell until level 85, it is good to plan ahead and map out where you'd like to put this ability in your binds/bars, and consolidating the two into one toggled macro is a great way to save space.

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift] Detonate Mushroom; Wild Mushroom

• Shift: Detonate Mushrooms (boom them)
  
• Normal: Wild Mushroom (place them)
  

STAMPEDE (~):
While we won't learn Stampeding Roar until level 83, I wanted to save a spot for it. While yet again the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars, I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad. /shrug

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Stampeding Roar(Cat Form); [form:1]Stampeding Roar(Bear Form); Hurricane

• Cat: Stampeding Roar
• Bear: Stampeding Roar
  
• Caster: Hurricane. Because. THUNDER AND LIGHTENING, VERY VERY FRIGHTENING!
  

My feral AOE Key (q):
Swipe gets spammed a lot, as a cat. Swipe has a cooldown as a bear, but it used to get spammed a lot. We'll be getting Thrash, another bear AoE, at 81, so we have to plan for that. I like binding tons of stuff to my q and e keys :)

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift,form:1] Thrash; [mod:alt,form:1] Mangle(Bear Form); [@mouseover,harm,nodead,form:1][form:1] Swipe(Bear Form); [stealth] Pounce; [mod:shift] Rake; [@mouseover,harm,nodead][] Swipe(Cat Form) /startattack [nostealth]

• Cat:
  • Swipe
  • +shift: Rake
  • +stealth: Pounce
  • If you'd like to add [mod:alt]Mangle(Cat Form); then you'll need to kill the #showtooltip and some blank spaces to make room.
    
  
  
• Bear:
  • Swipe,
  • +shift: Thrash
  • +alt: Mangle
  
  

My feral "E" Key:
Pulverize is an important new bear tool you need to include in your rotation. It is a "CP-user" of lacerate stacks, so binding it to your lacerate key makes sense to me. As for cat form, I haven't changed any of my old binds, but will probably replace Maim with something else down the road, once I get used to my new stuns macro.

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite; [form:3,mod:alt]Rip; [form:3] Maim /stopmacro [form:3] /cast [nomod:alt] !Maul /cast [mod:shift] Pulverize; Lacerate

• Cat:
  • Maim (because it's where I'm used to it. If you're using a combined stuns key elsewhere, you may consider replacing this with something else).
    
  • +shift: Ferocious Bite
  • +alt: Rip (you might consider making this the default by removing the red text, if you don't want Maim here)
    
  
  
• Bear:
  • Lacerate and Maul,
  • +shift: Pulverize and Maul,
  • +alt: hold alt to not use Maul

My T Key:
An update to my "t" key. It's got a bunch of random but useful stuff in it, including my ToL shift. As a note, if you are feral, you might want to consider a cast-sequence instead for catform which is in the next macro down, as you can now use unstealthed Ravage after using feral charge.

#showtooltip /cast [form:1,btn:2][form:1,mod]Enrage /cast [form:1,btn:1][mod,form:1]Frenzied Regeneration /stopmacro [form:1] /cast [mod,form:3]Savage Roar;[form:3]Feral Charge(Cat Form);[mod,spec:1] !Tree of Life; [@mouseover,help][@player]Nourish

• Bear:
  • Frenzied Regeneration
  • Right click: Enrage
  • +Shift: both Enrage and Frenzied Regen, together
    
• Cat:
  • Feral Charge
  • +shift: Savage Roar
• Caster:
  • Nourish
  • +shift: [spec:1] ToL
  
  

My Catform Charge+Ravage Key (t):
The improved feral charge talent makes your next ravage usable while not stealthed, for a short period of time after charging in cat form. Note that if your ravage misses or is a failed attempt due to positioning, it still consumes the buff.

#showtooltip /cast [mod] Savage Roar /castsequence reset=8 Feral Charge(Cat Form), Ravage

• Feral Charge and then Ravage (two presses);
  
• +shift: Savage Roar

OT: Sintel

Sintel is a short film produced using open source 3D software (Blender). Short, sweet, and sad, it was released at the end of September and made its way to my feedreader, where it impressed me greatly. Some of the animation could use more work (the blood pooling on the rooftop, for example) and I really wanted MORE to what felt like a predictable story in a world I wanted to explore in more depth, but I still loved it.



The dragon design reminds me of the wyrms in WoW, mixed with demons. Gargoyle-wyrm-demons. :)

Highlight: Postcards from Azeroth

Every few days as I'm checking my RSS feed reader, a simple postcard will pop in. A screenshot from a city, or quest, or NPC, or some event in World of Warcraft; a relic of the past, a memory that makes me smile. Sometimes, a place I have never seen. Things I may have walked past and met with a blind eye, things I may have never taken the time to admire, things I may have taken for granted and then forgotten.

Many of them things that may not be there, come Cataclysm.

These are pictures that tell the story of us all: the quests we have run, and in turn, the times we spent there and the people we saw it with. That first victory over Ragnaros, or Illidan. That leveling buddy, or the girl who was working on Loremaster with me. That applicant who whispered me for information while I was questing around the downed balloon in the marsh, who later became a fellow healer and blogger. That time I stealthed all the way into Orgrimmar, and saw their sights for the first time, then died to a few dozen spitting enemies. The time my guild posed around that skull for a victory screenshot. The time I spent playing against the Warlords team in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, getting bored and trading HKs and caps; then waiting around the Arathi Highlands or Ashenvale for the next queue. Getting my first bug mount, and the joke about it matching my elf's blue hair, and that other druid who was color blind or something saying he wanted a blue one to match his (green) hair. That crazy feral druid I met at level 15 and died to Westfall's Defias with, 5 years ago, and you still keep in touch. That dance party I had with my first raiding guild in that empty inn in the Dwarven District. That ship at the docks that I've never really fully explored. That quest chain that tugged at my heart-strings as I watched an NPC die, myself unable to help.

Postcards from Azeroth. Rioriel does an amazing job of capturing the world we play in, and reminding us of all that the game has to offer.

4.0 and Imp Feral Charge (aka Stampede)

A new "bug" I found while playing around on the PTR while I was sick yesterday:

Talented Stampede may not be "working as intended." Sometimes it won't allow ravage to be used; others, you can cast 6-8 unstealthed ravages for free and rack up the CP. The text of the talent states,

Stampede 2/2: Increases your melee haste by 30% after you use Feral Charge (Bear) for 8 sec, and your next Ravage will temporarily not require stealth for 8 sec after you use Feral Charge (Cat), and cost 100% less energy.

"Next" Ravage would usually mean only one free ravage within the next 8 seconds, rather than all ravages within the next 8 seconds, so I'm going to guess it is currently bugged. I think it's also a safe bet that the handful of times that it refused to let me cast ANY unstealthed ravages after a feral charge was also a bug, and I'd estimate that happened about 25% of the time while I was testing it in Orgrimmar.

Regardless, I did come up with a handy castsequence macro that let me ravage away to my heart's content (when the game let me).

#showtooltip /cast [mod] Savage Roar /castsequence reset=8 Feral Charge(Cat Form), Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage

Binding it to my T key, I was able to just spam the key to charge and immediately begin my Ravagey chomping. Holding shift in the middle of the spam would use up the quickly-earned CP in a quick Savage Roar buff, and I could easily return to my ravagery without much in the way of keystroke changes. Amusingly, I also have T bound to one of my mouse's buttons (15 button mouse) giving me freedom of motion at the same time.

Scawy kitty. And to think that, glyphed, feral charge only has a 28 second cooldown, and the ravages cost no energy. This is why I suspect a possible bug... it seems a little OP :)

4.0 and Macros

I took some time this weekend to dive into the PTR, looking specifically at what changes I would have to make to my setup. Beyond a respec and many broken mods, the most notable thing I needed to update was my macros.

Possible Bugs:

• Lifebloom refuses to be cast via macro, insisting it isn't ready yet.
  
• Insect Swarm is not being learned properly from the trainer. Trainer insists I've already learned it, and the spellbook insists I need to speak to the trainer.
  
• ADDITION: talented imp-feral-charge may not be "working as intended." Sometimes it won't allow ravage to be used; others, you can cast 6-8 unstealthed ravages for free and rack up the CP.
  

Ability Changes

• Dire Bear Form becomes Bear Form
• Maul has a cooldown, but does not trigger the GCD still. Will require some error-cleanses to keep from spamming "that ability isn't ready yet," or else creating a new macro for it.
• Abolish Poison and Remove Curse become combined as Remove Corruption; frees up one keybind slot as well.
  
• Remove Gift of the Wild. The original Mark of the Wild becomes a full party/raid-wide buff.
  
• Mangle becomes Mangle(Cat Form) and Mangle(Bear Form). It is still feral-only; non-ferals will still use Claw in cat form.
  
• Feral Charge becomes Feral Charge(Bear Form) and Feral Charge(Cat Form). It is still a feral talent.
  
• Swipe becomes Swipe(Cat Form) and Swipe(Bear From)
• Put Soothe back on your bar; is not "Soothe Animal," just Soothe, and is now used to dispel enrages. It can only be used in caster form, so priority on casts should go to restos (and maybe moonkin, didn't test if it deshifts them) first before cats and certainly least by your bear tanks.
  
• Put Insect Swarm on your bar (though the ptr wouldn't let me learn it from the trainer)
• Put Skull Bash(Cat Form) and Skull Bash(Bear Form) on your bar, most likely as a macro.
  
• Put Pulverize on your bar (feral only)
• Ravage does not always require [stealth], if talented as a feral.

Personal Keybind Changes

The addition of several new and important abilities into the feral rotations has me combing across my keybinds to figure out how best to map them. Skull Bash, Bash, and Maim all share similar use so could probably be macroed together into a CC button, along with Feral Charge if you can reach the modifier keys easily from the keybind. Something along the lines of:

/cast [mod:shift,form:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form); [mod:alt,form:1]Bash; [mod:shift,form:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form); [mod:alt,form:3] Maim; [form:1] Feral Charge(Bear Form); [form:3] Feral Charge(Cat Form); [mod:shift] Entangling Roots; [mod:alt] Hibernate; Cyclone

...but I'm not sure I can comfortably use such a macro, personally, as it'd require me to drastically alter my current keybinds.

I'm rather happy that my main spec has rather limited changes! I am just hoping that the lifebloom-in-a-macro bug is fixed by the time the patch is released ;)

Kae's Cata Resto-Talents Ponderings, Sept 2010

As usual, I am tentative about posting Cataclysm stuff when it's not official beyond beta testing and not as close to release as I'd like, but with the months ticking down and the resto talent tree still looking unpolished, I did want to dig in and voice my concerns with it.

First, to make a point, let's add up the total talent points in all of the trees:

• Balance: 41
• Feral: 44
• Resto: 45

45 talent points. Feral's 44 include talents that are specific to only bear or cat: specializations allow them to easily skip some that are inapplicable to their role, while resto has a very limited number of inapplicable talents (and that only out of pvp vs pve). The resto tree is a bit heavy on useful talents, making the talent specification process very difficult; nevermind attempting to still pick up some useful healing talents in the balance tree.


Talent Commentary

Moonglow, Genesis and NG (balance):
I'd like to see Nature's Grace and Moonglow (or Genesis) swapped in places in the talent tree. I don't think such a swap would impact moonkin badly, and it would save restos some wasted talent points off of a haste talent that is supposed to proc off of a DPS ability. I am mostly bothered by the need to spend so many points in DPS talents to reach the healing talents in the second teir of the balance tree, especially as we are unlikely to then be able to reach both healing talents and are forced to choose between half of moonglow or half of genesis (or to forgo healing talents in the resto tree to get 5 points to split between them).

Furor:
If mana is truly the problem the beta-testers are complaining of, I can see some restos looking to the 15% mana pool increase as a possible way to alleviate mana problems. While I don't think it needs to be moved, I did want to point it out, as it still is a talent of interest in the whole "how do I spec?" question.

The First Row of Resto:
9 talent points all useful to a resto druid. This is a heavy hand of points to have to spend. Naturalist is dependant on how often we are casting our longer heals. Blessing of the Grove could potentially be skipped if you can put those points instead into Genesis (which is a more powerful boost), but that requires you to forego Moonglow.

Genesis vs Blessing of the Grove:
BotG (2/2): 4% healing to rejuv. Genesis (2/3): 4% to all HoTs and swiftmend. Keep this in mind when building your own specs, as there are opportunities to replace BotG with Genesis, assuming you need to put points in Naturalist.

Fury of the Stormrage:
If we're having mana problems and need to actually be spending our GCDs on healing, will we have the time to throw around DPS spells? Wrath has a 2.5 second base cast time. Considering it is opening up a mana talent (Malfurion's Gift) for OoC procs off of LB ticks (rather than just spellcasts) I worry at the points being shoved into a flavor talent.

Swift Rejuvenation:
As a deep-tree talent, you can easily yank a point or two based on your haste. The talent allows you to have a capped GCD for Rejuvenation, without any haste on your gear. While it sounds like they don't want us capping to the 1second GCD from haste alone, this talent is one that is more flexible based on gear. In addition, some players may not even make good use of this talent without being impeccably aware of their changing GCD timer: a fluctuation from 1.3 seconds (for example) to 1.0 seconds depending on what spell you cast in the heat of a busy combat is tiny and easily missed. We all have an internal timer that we develop for our keystrokes around successful spellcasts, anyway, and it can be difficult to alter it for rejuvenation alone. So, when looking at this talent, you need to be honest with yourself about how useful it is at your gear level with 2 points, or if you would be better served with 1 point or 0 (compared to other talent options).


DPS talents: Take your Pick
Overall, it appears that we can't really get away with a pure healing build. We are currently forced to pick up a pure DPS talent somewhere. These are a couple options I created while toying around:

• Moonfire and IS: the insta-cast DoT spells: these are quick to cast, but cost you precious mana. NG and Genesis both build on these DoTs, as does Blessing of the Grove. With NG, each DoT will proc you 15% spell haste which will apply to your healing spells, which not only impacts your GCD (should you notice the proc and slightly faster timer) but also your nourish, HT, and regrowth casts. You could replace Genesis with moonglow to help reduce mana cost, as this particular build appears to be much more of a mana hog than the one below.
  
• Wrath and Starfire: with Fury of the Stormrage, wrath will have a cast time, but no mana. This also opens up Malfurion's Gift, making the build reliant upon lifebloom to be efficient: this is a build for tank healers, certainly (or some very glorious mana returns when you go ToL and blanket the raid in lifebloom). You can replace NG with Starlight Wrath to reduce your wrath to a 2-second base cast time, though the points spent in the resto tree will limit how many you can feasibly put into the balance tree. I left Swift Rejuv off due to the lifeblooming build this spec lends itself towards.
  

Point Adjustments: the Solution?
Ultimately, the resto tree is heavy on talents, and I think it would be best served by reducing the number of points it takes to max out some of the talents from 3 to 2, such as Nature's Bounty, Revitalize, and/or Living Seed and Efflorescence. This would free up more talent points to put into the more questionable talents like Naturalist, or into the balance tree's yummy healing 2nd-tier talents (for example, this build or this one, assuming that revitalize and nature's bounty were reduced to 2/2 rather than 3/3). Even 2 points freed up would be adored; 3 points would be quite useful as it would then reopen options like full Naturalist or Genesis+Moonglow, together with Swift Rejuv. This would also prevent the need to ignore or complain about DPS talents, as Blizzard seems to be pushing us towards picking up some DPS versatility.

Otherwise, swapping NG and it's DPS-triggered haste proc with either moonglow or genesis would probably make many druids happy.

A Mashup of Commentary

A bunch of topics that I don't really feel like making separate posts for.

CATACLYSM

• CATA TALENTS: the talent tree for resto is still confusing me, with its tendency towards dps talents. The feral tree is nicely straight-forward and I can put a build together without issue, but the resto tree is not nearly so cut-and-dry in terms of talents. I think much of this stems from not knowing exactly what to expect with mana management and spell use, as well as time available for DPS (regardless of free wraths).

• CATA GUILD RECRUITENT: I've noticed a lot of people apping specifically to join a guild for the expansion, rather than for current raiding. I have a bit of advice: if you're going to play as a different character for Cataclysm (or are willing to level and play a different character as a main), make sure you SAY that in your application so that the guild can plan around that class and role, rather than your current main. Linking to your current main is only useful in terms of showing off the care you give to your gear, spec, and reputation-grinding.
  

LIFE

• SAWMILL: I went to a sawmill late last week. Live, operational, industrial sawmill. I watched as trees were methodically turned to lumber. The resto druid in me was screaming... but I couldn't hear her over the earplugs necessary to protect my ears from the screech of metal on wood. I did have a philosophic moment as I watched a tree be quickly decimated into boards, scrap, and sawdust that this was much like what Blizzard was doing with current resto druids: cutting it down, slicing it apart, making it something that looks visually nothing like the treeform it once was.
  

• BIRTHDAYS: It was my birthday over the weekend... went to dinner on Saturday with Kitarha to one of those hibachi grill places. The grill table we sat at had not one but two other birthdays, and we heard at least 4 other birthday song-and-cakes go out (not all birthdays buy this special treatment, either). In addition, I shared my own birthday cake on Friday night with 2 other birthdays. It makes me empathize a bit with twins and kids who have their birthdays over the winter holidays. It steals the specialness of your birthday. You're just another one littering the weekend, unremarkable, overdone, "lol what was in the water 9 months ago."
  

• PUPPY: River had her first dog-to-dog socialization over the weekend, and did well. She also met a bunch of "the college kids" whose common exclamation over her was "FLUFFY!" I left the camera at home because I didn't want to risk it getting lost or damaged in the rush of dogs (and wanted my full attention on her rather than taking photos), but I'll try to remember to bring it to her next playdate.

MOVIES

• OLD MOVIES: Last Dragon and Gymkata are more bearable than Zardoz. One word: mankini.

• NEW MOVIES: Legend of the Guardians was cute and decently done. As a "kid's movie," it couldn't really delve too deeply on topics it skirted around... an adult/teen version would actually do well. As an adaptation from the books, it did well in cutting out a lot of the slow parts that I thought unnecessary, but it took some liberties and shortcuts I was upset with given how short the film itself was. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW:
  1. It took two completely different, rival factions and merged them into one conglomeration (St. Aggies and the Pure Ones were mashed together). While it worked, more or less, it was a surprise and forced several of the plot changes.
     
  2. It made Kludd out to be nicer than he was supposed to be. He PUSHED SOREN (and later, Eglantine) out of the tree AS A SACRIFICE to the Pure Ones... he didn't fall with him and it wasn't an accident. Kludd was never kidnapped. He also tried to kill Mrs. Plithiver when she refused to stay silent about him pushing his siblings out of the nest. He also WAS Metalbeak. Kludd was evil from the start.
     
  3. Otulissa was underdeveloped, as was the training at Ga'Hoole which was completely understated; they could easily have added that time to what was a short movie.
     
  4. What happened to the entire Collier chaw? That whole firestorm thing was something Ezylryb trained Soren and Otulissa to do, among others: they collected coals for the Blacksmiths.
     
  5. Ummmmmmm wtf was up with the magnetism? It's just MAGNETISM. It's not visible. It attracts metal and messes with the owls' navigation and makes them woozy/disoriented. It's. Not. Visible. In addition, the vampire bats were just around to drain the St. Aggies owls to make them weak and unwilling to try to fly: they were not warriors with their own metal weapons (they also just ignored the whole plot point about metal and magnetism when it came to the movie-bats' weapons).
     
  6. If I'm remembering right, Soren's parents "vanished" (aka killed). IIRC, it was hinted that they were killed by Kludd himself. They certainly did not magically show up at the Ga'Hoole tree after months of their childrens' disappearance and say "oh we were so worried about you!"
     
  7. I was disappointed that they didn't include Madame Plonk; I was looking forward to hearing their adaptation of the Taps song she sings at the Ga'Hoole tree, with the harp the nestmaid snakes play. It was, possibly, the part I was looking forward to the most. I think it was also what was supposed to help cure Eglantine's moonblinking.
     
  8. WTH did they do to Twilight? In the books, he was harsh, he was strong, he was violent, and he certainly did not have a lute. He was a warrior who happened to sing war songs in combat out of ego and as a tactic to confuse and inflame his enemies. At least, that was always my impression of him: a world-hardened young owl, not a showy (and bad) bard.
     
  9. ....echidna? Hello, puffin-replacing movie plot device that makes me /facepalm. The crow mob got nuetered from the true danger it was supposed to be, and they certainly didn't know any nuerotic echidna-sages.
     

Okay, I think that's everything for now :)

Currently Listening To: Linkin Park - The Catalyst