Macro's and gnome sequencer enhanced

Guides UI and Macro
1

I’ve had someone recently message me about using gnome sequencer enhanced for macro’s and I’m curious about the legality of it in terms of blizzard ToS, I made a ticket to a GM but they couldn’t answer and suggested I try the forum.

So I know macro’s are fine, and I’m pretty sure the addon is fine, but I’m wondering about binding it to a mouse button that auto casts on toggle. So basically, if I make a macro that casts spell 1 if possible, if not casts spell 2, if neither then casts spell 3… if I bind that to mouse button 5 and have it toggle, so 1 click starts the macro and it repeats until I click it again, is that illegal? I still have to tab target mobs and such and move my character about, but rather than keep spamming 1 key over and over (due to wrist problems) I instead click a button once to start it cycling.

Would this be classed as botting/automation? I’m not sure how it differs from actually spamming 1 button on my keyboard repeatedly for the same effect as pressing a mouse button one time for those of us who can’t do that. Can someone clarify for me where the line is drawn? Can I do a macro that I spam myself but can’t have the mouse spam it for me?

2

One keypress = 1 action only.

3

There’s your clue.

1 Like
4

Yes, 100% against the rules.

5

From what I’ve seen with it, as long as you keep hitting 1 it’s cool. A self playing macro you start/stop will 100% get yoy banned.

6

OK thanks for the replies. I wasn’t sure if it was a grey area because the GM I ticketed said he wasn’t sure, which I thought was a bit odd. I guessed maybe because I was still in control of my character and moving about it wouldn’t be classed as botting.

7

It’s pretty garbage to in all honesty. I tried it with an assassin rogue years ago. Came back to wow after a 10 year break, and didn’t have a clue what I was doing lol. Tried it on a test dummy and the numbers were poop. Even me playing it really badly did far better numbers.

8

OK I found this and now I’m more confused -

I can’t post links so forgive the lack of one here

https :// imgur . com/a/hB0ctTj

AutoHotKey automates mouse clicks, but then that GM says it is fine to use that program. I’m now thinking again maybe Blizzard doesn’t consider it ban worthy as long as you are not afk, actually still in control and moving your character about. Is there any chance of an official blue forum post about this? It seems this thing has been around for years with no definitive answer, only opinions.

And I know the castsequence thing doesn’t do great dps but for those with difficulty playing, it helps a lot.

9

There have been many blue posts on that topic over the years already but Ãnna basically already summed it up as concise as can be:

That’s basically it.

AutoHotKey itself is fine, infact you’ll need that program (or one like it) in order to multibox.
Which (despite not being really well liked by many here) is perfectly fine with Blizzard.

If you press a button and one thing happens in your wow client, that’s fine. One thing can mean one abilitycast or triggering one wow macro, either is fine.
If it involves timers / delays / delayed actions => not allowed.
If it involves automatically repeat pressing a key => not allowed.
If it involves any kind of automatic decision making* => not allowed.

* = if you consider that term to be too vague: any sort of “decisionmaking” inside wow macros is fine, because that is naturally limited to only very basic conditionals like [help,nodead], we don’t consider that real decisionmaking in this context. but any kind of decision making at all in the third party program is bad. any sort of conditional at all.

If you are multiboxing (eg: running multiple wow clients at the same time), then those same rules basically apply per wow client.
So pressing one key can mean that 1 thing happens on wow-A and one thing on wow-B as well, that’s fine.
These 2 things also don’t have to be identical, so it’s fine to have pressing the X key result in your mage casting a frost bolt and your priest casting a greater heal.
As long as its one button => one action (without delay or outside decision making).

The macro part is fine. Anything you can put in a wow macro (no matter how many lines it contains) is considered “1 action”. Wow macros have build in protections already that basically make it impossible for 1 macro to cast multiple abilities from a single click/press, so you can’t go wrong there.

The auto-repeat part does clearly violate the rules, the fact that you toggle it on and off doesn’t really mitigate that in any way, it’s still automatically performing actions for the duration in between you flipping it on and off.

Yup, that would be fine.

.

I sympathize with your problem, when it’s to work around a handicap or injury, but automating it isn’t really a fair way to compensate for that.

I don’t know the particulars of your situation, but there may be alternate devices that would allow you to have full agency without straining your wrists.

Remember it does not matter for wow if you use a mouseclick or keyboardbuttonpress or controllerbutton or scrollwheel or the like to trigger the spell, it just matters that you do it manually.

Technically you could hook up some racing game foot peddles and cast spells by stamping on those badboys. Though i wouldn’t really recommend that one :slight_smile: your downstairs neighbors would probably have me killed.

2 Likes
10

If you look up gaming foot pedals for pc they are really good… I had one with 3 pedals on it.

11

:slight_smile: I’ve seen good ones for like racing games and such (where you essentially press down and hold the pedal, as you would in a real car), but having to press it like a mouse button (press down, release, press down, release), basically stomping on it with your foot sounds super uncomfortable to me :slight_smile:

I’d have the legs of a amazonian after one evening of playing a rogue like that.

Maybe there are different ones that i’m not aware off though, and i’m totally sure there is some more specialist stuff out there.

There are so many different types of handicaps/injuries out there in the world, and almost everyone who has one still has a wish/need to use a computer (often even more so). Many many really interesting/clever devices have been made to make that possible, so it’s probably mostly a question of finding one that fits the bill.

12

Thank you for the detailed response, much appreciated. :slightly_smiling_face: Someone told me they’d been using AHK for years to do the auto toggle thing but have never been banned, I’m assuming they have just been very lucky to not get caught.

The foot pedals sound like a great way to get in shape but I wouldn’t fancy running a raid on one :sweat_smile:

13

Haha yea me neither. But there truely are hundreds if not thousands of interesting controllers out there that aren’t anything like the usual common mouse/keyboard/console controller. I’m no expert on any of it, but i’ve seen a lot of it around on articles like for example:
https://www.ranker.com/list/video-game-controllers-for-people-with-disabilities/nathan-gibson
Though that one seems to focus mostly on pretty severe handicaps, so the solutions are a bit more out of the box than is probably needed.

At the most basic level you’ve got trackball mice, and at the much more extreme level you’ve got straws to blow in or shouldershrugging controllers like on that page.

I doubt i’ll be a whole lot of help on recommending a good fit, as it’s really not my area of expertise.

It would actually be a really interesting forum thread to see now that i think on it. Having handicapped wow players show the controllers and/or addons or workarounds they use to be able to play the game. For me it’d be purely out of curiosity, but i’m sure there’s a ton of other players who might run into something there that would help them as well.

14

Yea i don’t think it’s something Warden is actively looking for, but i dont know really. Either way, if anyone takes an interest in looking at his logs (like after someone reports him) it’s likely extremely obvious whats going on.

The repeating timer likely triggers on a specific time frame. so if all your casts/attacks are spread exactly 1000ms apart (for example) it would stand out like a sore thumb, and result in being banned for botting.

15

We had someone in my old guild who was quadriplegic, he used some type of breathing tube setup and a I think a scanner on his head to point. It was incredible how well he played with it, you would never believe he played that way if he didn’t tell you - was always top 5 DPS in our raids :smile:

16

:slight_smile: awesome

Steep learning curve i bet, but once you’ve pushed through that…

17

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.