I’m not sure why this was removed from the combat interface options. It was available in CLASSIC WoW. When I’m done fighting a mob and accidentally hit arcane shot (or any other cast), I automatically target the next nearest enemy and attack it. This is obnoxious because I’ve broken so many crowd controls with it.
This is the macro I’ve been using.
/petassist
/cast Arcane Shot
/stopattack
It stops the attack, but it doesn’t stop me from auto targeting the next nearest enemy.
I just want to make it so my toon doesn’t attack unless I manually click on the enemy I’m attacking. None of this auto target nonsense.
The only times I can think of auto targetting happening is when you have no target and a monster does some kind of attack at you, the game will automatically target that monster. It also works that way if the monster attacks your pet. That is not an option that can be turned off.
If the monster has some kind of AOE effect, like you get within 20 yards and a debuff is put on you, then its possible for you to be “attacked” by it even if it has been crowd controlled. I can only think of 1 set of creatures that currently do that and they are specific elites in Torghast.
There are many key bindings for targetting and sometimes if you hit those key bindings in combination with other things you end up with unusual results. For example, shift-tab is the default for prev enemy, but if you also have a ctrl-shift-tab or alt-shift-tab or ctrl-alt-shift-tab key binding setup as well you could trigger both effects unintentionally (target an enemy + whatever else you key bound). If the only way you want to target something is by mouse click and never by keyboard, go into your key bindings and unbind all of those target keybinds. You may want to write them down for later first just in case you didn’t realize that yes you actually were using some of them and want them back.
For now the best you can do is use the “stopAutoAttackOnTargetChange” console variable which is a 0 value (off = your auto attacks continue automatically when you change targets) by default but can turned on by typing this in the chat box:
/console stopAutoAttackOnTargetChange 1
I believe that its a permanent change and will automatically be saved between gaming sessions so long as you are able to exit the game in an orderly fashion before doing a /reload
You do not need to macro in a /startattack anywhere. That happens automatically after you use any attack ability on a target.
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Nope, go test it on a target dummy in town when the servers come back up. If you have nothing targeted and use an attack (specifically an instant attack), you will automatically target and hit whatever the nearest mob is. Someone helped me figure out how to fix the issue but you need to type this into every instant spell on your toolbar. Obviously arcane shot comes to mind first.
This will stop your auto targeting… you will still cast your auto shots on the current enemy being attacked. Don’t confuse the two.
/stopmacro [noharm]
/petassist
/cast Arcane Shot
You need that stop macro line in each of your instant ranged attacks… I wouldn’t do this with a melee class unless you are good at targeting a single enemy in a group of mobs that are really close to you. But for a ranged class like a hunter it’s almost mandatory unless you are extremely anal and always paying attention to everything on your screen. Obviously not me LOL.
I will do that.
- Stand in front of a target dummy with nothing targetted and no pet
- Open the spell book, click on Arcane shot to cast it (no marcros impacting the cast)
I’m 98% sure that I will see the “no target” message instead
You should also try the same test.
EDIT: servers are up
I just tested and what happened is I stood in front of a dummy and clicked Arcane Shot and “There is nothing to attack” is the message I saw and I didn’t attack anything and nothing was targetted. I then mixed it up, targetted it, attacked, put the pet on it, and when I cleared my target and hit Arcane shot either from the Spell book or my own macros, no target was selected.
Now if I enter this command
/startattack
by itself, or enter this:
/assist
on someone already attacking the same target dummy
THEN the target was automatically selected and my auto attack started.
My feeling is that you are using 1 of those in a macro and that’s what is causing your issue. It’s also possible that you have set a console variable (CVar) to turn that start attack behavior on, but I can’t find any that controls that behavior myself.
As a side note, you don’t need /startattack at all. By default if you have a target selected and cast an ability on it (like arcane shot) your auto attacks will start automatically after that cast.
It must have something to do with my pet attack macros then. I’ve been using /petassist in a lot of macros.
Either way, the “stopmacro” option worked perfectly to keep me from auto targetting after a fight. I’m not breaking my traps anymore or accidentally hitting a boss in a dungeon when I’m tired 
And I don’t want to use the (CVar) because it would affect everything which I don’t want. I might give survival a try and use some melee skills if Blizzard ever fixes the spec
Not sure if this is what actually happened in this case but on some fights, where you take passive damage over time from certain creatures(either the boss or the adds) it will “select” an enemy for you if they deal damage to you, when you don’t have a target already selected that is.
Again, is this what happened with the case above? Maybe not.
But if you take passive damage every few seconds, that might be the reason as to why you acquire a new target even though you did not do so manually, and it might seem as if it was because you pressed an ability, even though it isn’t.
Note: In recent days, I also haven’t managed to auto-select a new target by simply pressing an ability. That has only happened when a target has dealt damage to me while I’ve had no other target currently selected.
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Nope, it was literally selecting a new target as soon as you hit any instant ability like arcane shot. This had nothing to do with enemies targeting you. That’s why I tested it on a target dummy in town.
Anyway, the stopmacro line solved the problem. I only use it on ranged instant attacks so I don’t accidentally pull in a dungeon or break a CC in pvp.
The only best advice I have is to angle your camera just a bit away from the mob-in-question’s view, whether it is angling down or just facing the camera away, you’re only able to automatically target what’s within your character’s peripheral view that allows it to attack as well. I had similar instances where I do end up attacking unintended targets because they just happened to be right in my view but clearly from my pov, they were just idling while I happened to be dealing with another.
So, hopefully you can try and mitigate by doing this. I’m sure there’s other ways but this was my method to avoid hitting unintended targets.
you have no idea how much you helped me with this post, specially the turn off auto attack on target change string. I am leveling a hunter and have been looking for this fix, for the past few days. i will spread your word. thank you very much.
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Never put stop casting in a macro unless you want ur auto shot to stop going off forever. As a hunter you don’t need a stop casting macro.
As far as startattack in macro if only need that to restart auto attacks…this line in a macro would make you continue new targets after ur current is dead or you misclick a new one by accident.
I took those out after trial and error. You just put pet claw,bite, pound into macros depending on which pet.
I also put pet passive into things like masters call to make the pet more reactive to coming back.
Test it with explosive shot, it’s the only shot that creates this issue. Which is especially a pain in dungeons and raids. Testing in front of target dummy in War Within.
EDIT: Same with Tranquilizing shot, the same macro fixes that as well
This macro fixes it.
/cast [@target,harm,exists] explosive shot