zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

A lot has changed since I last posted my macros so I thought about doing a revisit. Similar to my previous entry, I still take a 3-step approach when it comes to fights but I’ve also included a couple of other things in the mix as well. My key bindings have a lot to do with the way I play so I’ll be including those as well. Of course, feel free to modify the macros to your liking.

Stealth - Mapped to “1″

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:ctrl]Feint; [modifier:alt]Throw; [combat]Slice and Dice; Stealth

1. Casts Stealth by default.
2. Casts SnD during fights.
3. Casts Throw when pressed with Alt.
4. Casts Feint when pressed with Ctrl.

Not much to see here. This macro is not as situational as the others except for SnD. You’ll see what I mean when we get to the other ones.

Opener - Mapped to “2″

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift]Cold Blood; [stealth]Cheap Shot; [nostealth]Mutilate
/startattack [nostealth]

This is my basic attack macro for assassination. For combat, I use this:

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift]Adrenaline Rush; [modifier:alt]Blade Flurry; [stealth]Cheap Shot; [nostealth]Sinister Strike
/startattack [nostealth]

1. Casts Mutilate or Sinister Strike by default.
2. Casts Cheap Shot when stealthed.
3. Casts Cold Blood or Adrenaline Rush when pressed with Shift.
4. Casts Blade Flurry when pressed with Alt.

Combat has more skills to trigger like Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry compared to assassination so it has more modifiers. I feel more comfortable pressing Alt than Shift, so skills with shorter cooldowns get mapped there. The last line of both macros ensures that you attack your target whenever you’re not stealthed. Without that line, the following problems may occur:

Switching targets may cause your toon to stop attacking (depending on your settings).
Your toon will do nothing out of stealth. That would be defeating the purpose of something that’s supposed to be an attack macro.
Your toon will do nothing if he or she does not have enough energy to do the default attack skill (in this case, that’s either Mutilate or Sinister Strike).

Finisher - Mapped to “3″

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt]Envenom; [modifier:ctrl]Eviscerate; [modifier:shift]Rupture; [stealth]Garrote; Kidney Shot

1. Casts Kidney Shot by default.
2. Casts Garrote when stealthed.
3. Casts Rupture when pressed with Shift.
4. Casts Envenom when pressed with Alt.
5. Casts Eviscerate when pressed with Ctrl.

Replace Kidney Shot with your preferred finisher except for Slice and Dice (see the first macro). I stunlock when I do dailies or farm so that’s why it’s my default skill. Just substitute the modifiers and abilities to your liking.

Multi-purpose - Mapped to “`”

#showtooltip
/castrandom [modifier:alt]Dismantle; [combat]Shiv; [stealth]Pick Pocket; [flyable]Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, Onyx Netherwing Drake; Purple Skeletal Warhorse, Horn of the Frostwolf Howler
/dismount [flying]

1. Casts a random land mount by default.
2. Casts a random flying mount if flying is permitted.
3. Casts Pick Pocket when stealthed.
4. Casts Shiv during fights.
5. Casts Dismantle when pressed with Alt.

This is an all-purpose macro that has actions specific to certain situations. I can pick pockets with it if I’m stealthed, cast Shiv when in combat and cast Dismantle when I want to. Outside of combat and stealth, this becomes a mount macro. The last line will dismount me whenever I’m flying.

That’s it. Again, change the key bindings, skills and modifiers to what you prefer. Hopefully this will help you create your own macros. For you subtlety rogues, sorry if I didn’t include it because I haven’t played that spec in a while. Also, you’ll notice that some important skills like Hunger For Blood and Kick are not included. They’re assigned to individual buttons so that’s why you don’t see them here.

Day 2 showed the availability of our main tank, so I was off the off-tank duty and was able to play my rogue Sin. Not that I was expecting to get anything out of Naxx (my dice rolls are a joke), but it always feels good to be playing the DPSer instead of the tank. We downed Loatheb, rolled for the shoulder token and then moved on to the Construct Quarter. Patchwerk enraged nearly a minute earlier than expected but we killed him nonetheless. The Military Quarter was next.

Both the Military and Construct Quarters are unfamiliar territories for us. Our last attempt with The Four Horsemen wasn’t great so we knew what we were in for. It took us less than ten tries to get it done, but in the end we managed to get past them as well, thereby getting the achievement.

We went back to the Construct Quarter and tried our hand at downing Grobbulus. Latency problems reared their ugly heads again and prevented us from progressing. Our MT had to go somewhere so we took a two-hour break. I set my alarm, took a quick nap and then woke up two hours later with my eyes seeing double. I’ve had this sort of thing happen to me before, but maybe it was a combination of that plus the literal nearly two-day marathon that led to me to being passive about the fight. We weren’t able to go beyond him so we all called it a night.

That covers last weekend’s Naxx raid. Day 1 was about clearing the bosses that we were already familiar with and day 2 marked progression for our guild. Overall, it was pretty good considering that we were all out of practice. We cleared the Military Quarter and managed to do most of the fights in one or two tries. I feel pretty good about how the Heigan dance went off, in particular.

The weekend was spent raiding. Our guild has been trying to get a 10-man Naxx run together for a month now and after three weeks of failed attempts—that’s two weekends of attendance issues and a week of latency problems—we finally succeeded. We raided Naxxramas after nearly a month of inactivity.

We started on Saturday at around 1PM. Our main tank was unavailable due to work reasons so our off-tank became our MT and my death knight filled in for the off-tank post. Considering that my experience is with DPS and not tanking, I knew I was in over my head. But hey, if I didn’t do it, there’d be no raid. My rogue Sin was going to have to sit this one out for now.

It’s a good thing that I’m familiar with how to tank most of the bosses in Naxx. Of course, knowing what to do is different from actually doing it, but the execution went off well. We had a little trouble with Maexxna but that was it. The Heigan dance was done with a single attempt and there were five of us who remained standing in the end. By the end of Saturday, we were able to clear the Arachnid Quarter and most of the Plague Quarter.

Patch 3.1 is live on the PTR and it’s the one that finally allows players to dual spec. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, dual specs will let players switch between two specs nearly on the fly. WoWWiki describes it as “the ability to switch between two talent specs, glyph sets, and action bars on each level 40 character.”

For hybrid classes, it’s easy to see how this can be exciting. As a paladin, you can be a main spec tank and a healer off spec. Of course, that would mean bringing two sets of gear, something that casters won’t need to do (or at least not as much). A priest can go resto to shadow without changing a lot of armor since spellpower benefits both offensive and defensive spells. Minus the inconvenience of gearing and re-gearing (so to speak), dual specs sound great.

Here’s the thing though: dual specs are less useful if you’re a DPS class. Rogues, warlocks, hunters and mages are all there to do one thing: deal damage. We don’t tank and we don’t heal. Sure, rogues can dodge-tank and voidwalkers took on Illidan at some point, but generally speaking, pure DPS classes get the shorter end of the stick with dual specs because of the limited options. A mage that goes from frost to fire simply changes the way how he or she deals damage. Rogues can switch from assassination to combat if they get bored with daggers. Warlocks can go from destruction to demonology if they want to do some PvP. The point is that regardless of the chosen spec of these classes, they will not be able to do anything other than deal damage.