Healing Macros

I have an addiction to mods. I have a mod installed for practically everything (except things I like doing on my own). From UI mods (Bartender4, Pitbull, SexyMap) to mods that help me in raids (Grid, HealOrganizer, oRA2, etc.), I probably run about 65mb in mods (a little on the high side… I know). However, there is one thing that I refuse to do – use a mod to heal.

You can argue that Grid + Pitbull include Heal Library and tells you about incoming heals on your target, as well as estimated amount healed, but I use that for information to decide on which heal to use, rather than a mod that makes my decision for me (i.e. Healbot). I also don’t use Clique – consider me traditional. I use heals on my action bar, bound to my number keys. However, I do use macros, as I find them better suited for both PvE and PvP.

Clique wouldn’t work for Arena due to the mouse key bindings. In Arena, you can’t win if you keyboard turn. I need my mouse to be on the screen and pivoting as necessary. In raids, the half a second to click-to-target could cost you a death. As a result, I make a bunch of mouseover macros (2 sets – 1 for raids, 1 for arena).

Raids

For raids, I combine mouseover-target, click-to-target, and self-target options to my heals, as well as binding trinkets. If you’re anything like me, you never remember to pop your trinkets. Ever. And no, mods that alert me of things off cool down don’t work either… So I’ve crafted macros that I can use for certain spells.

In this example, I’m going to use Greater Heal. For Flash Heal, Renew, Binding Heal, etc. I just swap the spell names.

#showtooltip Greater Heal
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use [combat] 13
/use [combat] 14
/cast [combat] Inner Focus
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=target,exists][target=player] Greater Heal
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Going through it line by line here:

#showtooltip Greater Heal
The macro will now show the icon and tooltip for Greater Heal.

/use [combat] 13
/use [combat] 14
These 2 lines tell the macro to /use whatever is in slots 13 and 14 on the character panel (these are the two trinket slots). This portion of the macro is the dumb part, making no differentiation between what trinkets you have on. If you’re wearing the Medallion of the Alliance and your Battlemaster’s trinket, I would suggest taking these two lines out and keybinding them separately…

The conditional in the macro [combat] specifies that the trinkets should only be used if you are in combat. Why waste the trinkets during a raid when you’re just topping someone off while you’re running somewhere, right?

/cast [combat] Inner Focus
This is the line to cast Inner Focus, only while in combat. Free Greater Heal whenever it’s off cool down with the extra 25% chance to crit? DO EET! I, however, only use this for Greater Heal or Flash Heal, as it puts me at a strategic advantage with Surge of Light proccing right after. It’s not really worth using it with the other heals though because they are extremely mana efficient already and the incremental value-addition is almost negligible, if not negative (i.e. wasting Inner Focus when you don’t need it).

/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=target,exists][target=player] Greater Heal
The conditionals here is what really affects how you set your targets.

• The first conditional: [target=mouseover,exists]
  If you are mousing over a target, then the heal will land on that target. This works great if you use Grid or some other raid unitframes mod. It also only casts if a mouse-over target exists. Otherwise, it moves on to the next conditional.
• The second conditional: [target=target,exists]
  I use this more as a security blanket. This way, I can always target my MT for heals and raid heal via Grid and keep my Focus unitframe free for shackles, etc. Versatility. I haz it. And if you are not mousing over a target or targeting a player, it skips onto the third conditional.
• The third conditional: [target=player]
  I use this as a way to retain the smart cast option where if you’re not targeting anyone or if your target is harmful, anything that you can cast on a helpful target is cast on you by default. That way, I’m not limited to having to mouse over or target myself when I need a heal. Less work = focus on more important things.

/script … ….
You might be wondering what the lines that begin with /script do. Don’t worry about them – they’re just there to make sure errors don’t pop up on your screen when you try to use your trinkets or Inner Focus while they’re on cool down (“Item is not ready yet” or “Spell is not ready yet”). However, this doesn’t stop your character from speaking the errors if you have that feature enabled. But it is helpful in reducing clutter on your screen.

I am currently not using the /script lines so I’m not sure if you can actually fit this entire macro within the 255 letter cap per macro that Blizzard has in place. You can definitely go without hiding errors if you don’t care too much. Not like you’ll be looking up there anyway…

For Flash Heal and Binding Heal, just swap out “Greater Heal” wherever you see it and you’ll be good to go.

For Arena, I had to make a second set of macros where I left out the /use lines. Otherwise, they’re pretty much the same macros.

My Dispel macro also uses the targeting parameters that my heals do so that I don’t have to click to dispel:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=target,exists][target=player] Dispel Magic

However, there is a problem with this macro. I’ve tried to add a modifier to fix it but I haven’t figured out the solution yet. Generally, if you’re dispelling a helpful player, it works like a charm. However, in Arena, if you have some warlock dotting you up and you want to dispel yourself, more often than not, you have the lock targeted and not yourself. This could actually cost you time as you then have to target yourself first, THEN dispel yourself. Not really an ideal situation…

That’s it for our macro lesson. Not so much a lesson as it is a copy & paste information session. I’m thinking about making Monday posts addon-centric so that it becomes more like a “featured addon of the week” kind of thing. We’ll see what happens come Monday. Have a good weekend!