Revamped macro system

Community General Discussion
1

Ok so its been long time coming that we should have a revamped macro system.

With many abilities coming back, and a lot more buttons to press in SL. I think now is the time the macro system got a revamp. A revamp where you can right click spells to make mouseover, button sequences and maybe more if the devs are creative. Not only will this make the gameplay be more smooth, it will allow the player base to be more focussed and have more creative fights.

Two which i think would be cool is, automatically create the macro (e.g. a mouseover macro) and replace it with said spell. Along with allowing the macro to play through a certain amount of spells well you’re focussing on the fight.

Comment below and what you think about this idea and what you’d love to see in a revamped macro system.

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2

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/shadowlands-macro-api-bugs-improvement-wishlist/618955

This guy has some real good suggestions, and has my vote.

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3

Reminds me of MS office. Although I create my by hand.

I’d prefer they work on the UI instead.

4

If anything I’d like more character specific macro slots. Making macros for each spec doesn’t have enough slots…got a bunch of macros spilling into the General section making it a mess.

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5

I’d like class wide ones but i suppose making more general ones is much easier.

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6

The problem with creative macro systems is how they replace the actual gameplay. Funny enough, macros were able to do more than now in vanilla, and functions got removed because of the issues that came with too powerful macro systems

7

You mean /castsequence?

Or do you mean you press the macro and it chains up a list of spells to use?
They’ll never do that because its automation / same as botting.

The creation of simple macros could be made a little easier thou, as they are super helpful in reducing action bar bloat. Just a simple command list you could click through would help the vast majority of people at least get started.

One thing I’d like to see is the stopmacro command to be attachable to the end of other commands and not be a command by itself… such as:

/dismount [mounted] stopmacro
/use mount

Because currently there are many situations where you’d think it would be useful where its actually not, because the action you want to test for (and then have the macro stop) invalidates the conditions to then test to stop the macro.

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8

First of all, there’s not more buttons to press with SL. Second of all, we had 3x the amount of buttons to press in MoP and the macro system worked just fine.

The way macros work is pretty much perfect and there is no need to revamp it ever.

9

It actually doesn’t. All conditions are tested at time of press, not sequentially as the macro progresses.

#showtooltip
/dismount [mounted]
/stopmacro [mounted]
/use Mount

Works as intended. Mount a different mount than the one the macro uses and test it.

Please, share with the class your solution for identifying when pvp talents, and which pvp talents, are active.

10

I wouldn’t mind if they updated the macro screen to involve more character specific macros and maybe a shortcut to create mouseover macros with tooltip with the click of a button. Atm I ctrl+V my macros and just change the spell name with the once I got mouse over macros on.

When it comes to the other things its just a no, we shouldnt have button sequences macros they are just bad for the game.

11

Opening your talent tree

12

Maybe a good idea for an addon!

13

This would be awesome im tired updating macros for my ally char and repeating same for horde.

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14

Hmmm so it does, how did I manage to fail to get them to work for so long :rofl:

What about:

/clearfocus [@focus, exists]
/stopmacro [@focus, exists]
/focus [@focus, noexists]

I always assumed it failed because of stopmacro conditions being invalidated, but I guess its because [@focus, exists] doesn’t actually work as I think it does?

Edit:
Playing around with this

/cast [@focus, exists] Consecration
/cast [@focus, noexists] Wake of Ashes

–

/stopmacro [@focus, exists]
/cast consecration

–

/focus [@focus, noexists]

all work fine…

/clearfocus [@focus, exists]
/stopmacro [@focus, exists]
/cast consecration

clears the focus, and casts consecration… so this doesn’t seem to be checking the conditions for stopmacro, until after the focus has been cleared.

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15

no idea what that even means

16

So the last line of that basically translates to: set my focus as my focus if my focus doesn’t exists.

I’ll need to check that one but it’s odd that it’s behaving differently.

[added]
I wonder if it has something to do with there not needing to be communication between the client and server about the unit being destroyed so it’s actually able to update the test conditions immediately, destroy the unit being tested against, and return false on the next test.

[added-2]
Interesting, appears it’s more complex than “all conditions are tested at time of press.” Seems it may behave more like asynchronous javascript where if a condition update needs to be confirmed by the server before it changes there’s a delay in the state changing (and/or possibly if there’s a client-side animation involved before the state changes) .

Tested using the following macros.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/macro-talk

/clearfocus [@focus,exists]
/optsay [@focus,exists] focus exists; focus doesn't exist
/stopmacro [@focus,exists]
/s end of macro

The state of focus updates immediately and the end of the macro is reached.

/dismount [mounted]
/optsay [mounted] mounted = true; mounted = false
/stopmacro [mounted]
/s end of macro

Dismounting takes time so the test doesn’t update immediately.

Learn something new every day. Thanks! :slight_smile:

17

There’s currently no secure [works in combat] way to test if PVP Talents are active and if a given PVP Talent is selected. Back when they were first introduced and used a row/column system like regular talents there was a [pvptalent:row/col] condition that could be used to check.

Since they switched the system over to a pick 3 from a list there hasn’t been a test. This leads to frustration because macros can’t dynamically change how they function based off of whether or not those features are active.

Now there are certain workarounds you can use like the following but they’re not perfect. In the example below, if you know both SPELL1 and SPELL2 the macro will always show SPELL1.

So there is a need to update the macro system as the features within the game change.

18

good replies.

Just a few points:

  1. Im not a keen avid macro creater so the differences between cast sequence and a chain of spells means nothing to me.
  2. Blizzard does need to revamp this system, similarly to workshop in OW but obviously to accommodate macros.
  3. For some classes there are more buttons to press, e.g. affliction warlock, shaman, etc, so making the macro system will make the gameplay experience better and smoother.
  4. The first forum link you posted seemed like it contained some good ideas.

Also, id like to say, im not one for clutter on action bars due to the way I am (aka on the autistic spectrum, and i will openly admit that) so a revamp would benefit not only me, but many others if it is done right. Hence why I made the point about focussing on fights.

keep commenting ;D

19

You’d think, but

/focus [@focus, noexists]

Works by itself just fine.
i.e. if I have a focus it won’t focus a new target… but if I don’t have a focus, it sets my current target to be my focus. Which I admit is counter intuitive to how all other @s work… but it works…

Edit:

Might be a special case for the focus command, as

/focus [@focus]

just acts like /focus (It will focus your target and ignore that it should be focusing your focus)

Likewise

/focus [@focus, exists]

will also always focus your target, but only if you already have a focus… if you don’t have a focus, it does nothing XD

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20

The what now?