I really like action targeting but I’ve noticed there is an issue with the spells that can target both enemies and allies such as Holy Shock. Basically Action Targeting allows you to cast at an enemy even with allies or yourself targeted which can be a great thing for healers to reduce having to be extremely precise with your locked target. This of course is an issue when you use a spell that targets both enemies and allies as your locked target will be the priority over Action Targeting soft target. I’ve tried looking for a macro that interacts with Holy Shock to only target enemies but so far I haven’t found a proper interaction.
A macro such as
#showtooltip
/cast [harm] Holy Shock
Will in fact never cast on yourself even if you are targeted which is basically the interaction I want however it has no form of interaction with the soft target from Action Targeting.
In the past I have done a cheap trick such as putting /startattack at the beginning of the macro to override my target automatically to an attackable target however this should be unnecessary if there was a way to interact with the soft target except I know of no way myself. For instance a Penance macro that works as I just described with a modifier portion to target allies and myself looks like this.
This would do what I want with Holy Shock as well however I’d actually prefer if I had something that interacted with the soft target instead. Anyone know of anything that can force interaction with the soft target? Maybe even a macro interaction that will promote the soft target to my main target like /startattack?
Thanks for cleaning up my penance macro it was pretty gross looking. Unfortunately the Holy Shock macros don’t quite do what I need.
I think it’s just a problem with the new action targeting system that is impossible to overcome currently.
To clarify my goal was to create a macro for Holy Shock to only hit enemies so it would interact with the new action targeting system to always do a cast on an enemy. Every offensive only ability like Smite or Crusader Strike will just hit the “soft target” the action targeting system gives you even if you have yourself or an ally targeted. Thing is Holy Shock/Penance and soon Living Flame can’t do that because they have the healing portion and from everything I’ve tried you can’t force the game to consider it an offensive spell even with macros so it would cast at the soft target.
The reason I don’t just use that exact Penance macro on action targeting is because action targeting won’t change your target with /startattack it will just make you start attacking the soft target since there is no need for it to do that. /targetenemy will change to an enemy target but cycles every time you hit the macro which I wouldn’t want sometimes. So unless I select the target myself there’s no way to make a one button to instantly fire those help/harm spells at an enemy unless I turn off action targeting.
Action Targeting is basically the exact solution to why I started throwing /startattack into some of my abilities to cut down getting an initial target or switching immediately from an ally to an enemy. The only problem being it just doesn’t work with these abilities. Unfortunate.
Still have the issue, i’ve made over 20 different elbaorate macros all of which fail because the core of the issue is in the spell programming itself. Just go back and use the programming for holy shock out of Wrath of the lich king!
I have same issue. Dual mode spells can not function correctly with them. Or with the macro system. Also warlock aoe trigger incorrectly dropping in random places with the system on.
I tried this for science and I discovered the best way to utilize these UnitIds is to do a little trick which allows for forced interaction with a soft target to a degree. Basically instead of using anyenemy in the cast line which will not work to force enemy interaction with those hybrid spells still you can simply force wow to take the target of your soft target with /target [@anyenemy].
#showtooltip
/target [@anyenemy]
/cast Holy Shock
I only tested with holy shock but I imagine that should work with Penance and Living Flame. I do not believe it is possible to keep an ally/self targeted and cast on the soft enemy target with these spells but this allows a workaround so it at least functions with action targeting.
Just in case anyone comes upon this it will only work with action targeting enabled you cannot use these UnitIds to interact with anyone without it enabled.
This will target harmful for holy shock, then after cast clear target returning you to action targeting. I use this macro with the Steam Deck and gamepad support.