I am a lifelong DPS/tank main who has played druid/other specs for quite a long time without ever really wrapping my head around advanced macros. After a couple hours of throwing myself into dungeons, I am extremely frustrated but also determined at the challenge. I am beginning to see how useful harm/help/mod macros will be for me in order to keep me sane. I’ve done some testing via guides I’ve found online but am having trouble getting the macros to work. If anyone would be willing to link me a NOOB FRIENDLY macro guide, or trade discords with me to help me out, I’d be so appreciative.
you’ve come to the right place fellow healer, as the archdruids here can be very helpful.
let us jump right into this lesson!
what addons are you currently running? specifically, what do you use for party/raid frames? do you have any experience using weak auras?
good news is that this spec isn’t very macro crazy imo, so it’s best to keep it simple if you’re new.
i think one of the first things you want to focus on being comfortable with is your UI setup and the information you will need access to on the screen.
For reference, I have in the past used entire UI overhauls like ElvUI, but since Dragonflight’s base UI overhaul has happened, I want to try and keep my UI as Vanilla as possible. Note that I haven’t played with ElvUI since the start of Shadowlands and started Dragonflight with the updated Blizzard UI.
I’m currently using Plater, and ran a couple of dungeons using the base WoW raid frames. I’ve used WeakAuras before, but only with plug-and-play stuff.
My current issues are:
- I’m unable to effectively track debuffs (to cleanse) and HoT’s (because the base raid frames only displays three at a time.
- I want to make my keybinds more intuitive so I have less buttons to push.
Right now, they keys are use are QERTFT (plus shift mods), 123456 (for less urgent stuff), Mouse thumb button 1 and 2 and middle mouse button (plus shift mods). My thumb mouse buttons are used for shifting in and out of bear/cat form.
If you want to track all/most hots without a complete UI overhaul, enhanced raid frames or big debuffs are good base UI attachments. Big debuffs is simple but caps out at 6 trackable and getting the debuffs to show can be a bit hectic, enhanced can go up too 9 on a single raidframe and you can just set all debuffs to show the default UI way, but youll need to download a profile or insert every spell into its slot by hand.
Some decent anti button bloat macros ive found are combining previous covenant abilites to one shift macro
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:Shift]Convoke the Spirits(Shadowlands);[target=mouseover, exists][target=target, exists][target=player] Adaptive Swarm;
will put swarm on your mouseover or normal target, then if you hold shift and hit the same key itll cast convoke.
I also combined our cleanse and soothe into one button with
will be a normal cleanse for mouse over and targeted friendlies or soothe any hostile targets under your mouse. Also works with the other specs non-magic cleanse.
Turning efflorsecene into a @cursor macro can also save some time with placement if you dont want to press twice it to place it.
personally, that’s why i use Vuhdu…the dispel and buff tracking are just still good and easy to customize. (for example, i have my raid frame turn a specific color when there’s a debuff i can cleanse).
i like clique because it has a setting where you can “hover” your mouse over a frame to use an ability, instead of having to click the player first…i find that to make my gameplay much more fluid and less “clicky button bushy” if that makes sense.
the default UI is still pretty good imo, but i haven’t completely figured it out with some of the little tricks, so that’s partially why i still use vuhdu/clique
I long ago abandoned lots of UI addons and UI overhauls like ElvUI.
Stock UI, mouseover macros, one of the complete WAs from like Luxthos or the like. Omni CD to track people’s CDs and Interupts. Enhanced raid frames for tracking more HOTs.
I do use Tell Me When as a tank for more visual tracking of defensives so I don’t overlap them as much.
