Predatory Strikes & Leader of the Pack lost on powershifting

WoW Classic WoW Classic Bug Report
1

I’ve narrowed this down to the point where I can replicate the issue without a macro. It requires clicking very fast, and I’m not necessarily fast enough to do it every time, but if I click the spell Cat Form or the spell Dire Bear Form twice as fast as I can while already in Cat Form or Dire Bear Form I will shift into the relevant form and “lose” both the Leader of the Pack aura and the hidden Predatory Strikes aura.

When testing this way, if I see the animation for my character in caster form at-all there is no bug. If I do not see my character in caster form for that split second and it looks like a form-to-form shift, I will see my attack power is lower (because I’m missing predatory strikes) and the leader of the pack aura is gone from my active buffs.

You can consistently replicate the bug with one button macros.

#showtooltip Cat Form
/cancelform;
/cast Cat Form;

This is the most streamlined no questions no extra complexities way to test. If you are in caster form and you press this button you will be put in cat form and gain both the aura and the hidden aura fine. If you are in cat form and you press this button (while you have those auras) you will shift into cat form again, but you will lose the auras. If you are in cat form without the auras now and you press the button again you will shift into cat form and gain the auras.

There is a way to work around this by adding some extra steps to any macro, but it comes with some consequences.

#showtooltip Cat Form
/cancelaura Leader of the Pack;
/cancelaura Predatory Strikes(Rank 3);
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form;

What this will do is cancel both the aura and the hidden aura, then cancel a form if you are in it, then cast cat form. Pressing this just once (when not on a global cooldown) will consistently get you to cat form with the relevant auras on, thanks to canceling them before this.

There are some problems this introduces that are not necessarily part of this “bug”, in that if you spam the button you’ll cancel your form. That part can be dealt with this way.

#showtooltip Cat Form
/cancelaura Leader of the Pack;
/cancelaura Predatory Strikes(Rank 3);
/cast [form:1] Dire Bear Form;[form:2]Aquatic Form;[form:3] Cat Form;[form:4]Travel Form;
/cast [noform:3]Cat Form;

These extra bits make it so that you will “cast” the relevant form to cancel it instead of using /cancelform. That will prevent you from shifting out to caster form unless you are off the gcd.

This, however, introduces the added overhead that now if you hit the button while on gcd or spam it you can end up canceling your auras yourself, but at least this way you won’t get caught in caster form.

13 Likes
2

I can attest that these bugs are prevalent as I have encountered them as well. While I don’t mind using macros in a general sense, even for something like this as a workaround, I’d feel a lot more comfortable if the issues presented were to be fixed in some capacity. Macros used as workarounds for something like this is useful, but I don’t feel like it’s a good enough solution for the long term “health” of the class.

5 Likes
3

Hey I use a different style of cat and bear form macro. I like to be able to spam my keybind and go to that form and stay in it. I was utilizing the /cancelform [noform:x] before but I noticed the leader of the pack disappearing when I flickered between bear and cat. I’ve modified my macro now thanks to you.

Before my macro looked like this. The exclamation mark would allow me to spam Dire Bear Form and once in Dire Bear Form it would stop. The /cancelform [noform:1] cancels any other form besides Dire Bear Form so I can flicker from cat or travel form directly into Bear with only a puff of smoke. If I am already in Bear nothing happens. This was my old macro:

/dismount
/cancelform [noform:1]
/cast !Dire Bear Form

I had the same issue as you. Leader of the Pack would disappear when flickering from Cat to Bear so I modified my macro to look like this.

#showtooltip Dire Bear Form
/dismount
/cancelaura [noform:1]Leader of the Pack;
/cancelaura [noform:1]Predatory Strikes(Rank 3);
/cast [form:2]Aquatic Form;[form:3] Cat Form;[form:4]Travel Form;
/cast !Dire Bear Form

Initially I didn’t have the [noform:1] and I realized spamming the macro cancelled my auras. Now the macro switches and stays in bear form and I never lose my auras.

For reference this is my Cat Form Macro:

#showtooltip Cat Form
/dismount
/cancelaura [noform:3]Leader of the Pack;
/cancelaura [noform:3]Predatory Strikes(Rank 3);
/cast [form:1] Dire Bear Form;[form:2]Aquatic Form;[form:4]Travel Form;
/cast !Cat Form

With my macros I have no means of getting back to caster form without rightclicking the Cat Form symbol in the Buff Frame. I therefore utilize a Caster form Macro which simply cancels all forms:

/dismount
/cancelform

My final macro is travel form which I do like to flicker so its different in comparison to Cat and Bear Form:

#showtooltip Travel Form
/dismount
/cancelform
/cast Travel Form

Thanks for creating this post. I hope they fix the issue but for now macros will have to do.

Most of my macro knowledge came from this post:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/totally-pawesome-druid-macros-tested-in-beta-and-ready-for-classic/255251

4 Likes
4

Thank you so much for bringing this up, I had no idea I was missing out on so much damage due to this bug. I feel like every Feral Druid should know about this.
Anyways, I had this same problem but I wanted my macro to do something different. Here’s what it looked like before:

#showtooltip Cat Form(Shapeshift)
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form(Shapeshift)

And this is the fixed version:

#showtooltip Cat Form(Shapeshift)
/cancelaura Leader of the Pack
/cancelaura Predatory Strikes(Rank 3)
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form(Shapeshift)
2 Likes