I met a few local WoW players during the recent National Novel Wiriting Month (National Novel Writing Month) event in November and thus I now have a brand new pair of alts over on Dragonmaw. It’s my first time on a PVP server, but I have yet to see any opposing faction members, so it’s been pretty low stress so far.

The goal is to level up to 15 by this weekend so we can do guild-only dungeon runs, which should be a blast! But this does make things a little more complicated than just running about by myself, thus I’ve got a few macro tweaks to share.

And yes, they did ask me to play hunters. So the fact that I now have three pairs of them is totally not my fault. *solemn nod*

Party Time!

My job in the party will be DPS and using the pets for off-tanking (in case of tank faceplant). This is signifigantly different than my job solo, which is mainly concerned about Staying Alive.

So, important things:

DPS: Need one button I can spam, to save on the brainpower
OH$HIT: Need a macro to have the pets pick up tanking duties, if needed
Focus: Need macro to set focus to tank and for follower to hardcode assist leader
Loot: Needs to be set to Free For All, so I don’t have to try and loot on my follower.

This does limit my ability to play each one independently, but I’ve found as long as I leave some of the abilities keybound, I can use those individually as needed. For right now I’m just worrying about the basic rotation, the other points can wait until I hit 15 and am a little more settled. *rolls up sleeves*

Building A Rotation

Thanks to the wonders of /castsequence it’s a lot easier to make a one-button hunter than you’d think. Which makes me wonder how all the non-dualboxers get away with being FAILhunters. *mutters*

Anywho, here’s the logic behind my two rotations.

Most of the abilities that I have at this level are instants, so the constraints are based around cooldown times (Kill Command), durations (Concussive Shot), and focus generation (auto and Steady Shot).

Since Concussive Shot has a six second duration and Kill Command has a six second cooldown, that’s what I built my routine around. Instant spells do not trigger the global cooldown (GCD), so that doesn’t come into play here.

Focus regens at 4 focus per second, so the following should leave me with just enough focus to start the rotation over again (with 50 for Maresy, 25 for Doesy). I also have the option of auto-attacking until the targeted mob dies of natural causes. Where nature = Doom Chickens.

Ability Sum-up
Concussive Shot – instant, 6 second 50% slow, 5 sec cooldown, no cost, does not stack– so should be up at all times
Arcane Shot – instant, 25 focus
Kill Command – instant, 6 sec cooldown, 40 focus, pet attack (pet must be in range so I need to put this far enough back that the pet has time to get there)
Steady Shot – 2 sec cast , focus regen 9 so with a 2 sec cast I end up with 17 total (9+4+4)
Serpent Sting – instant, 15 sec dot, 25 focus, no point in this except boss fights—not sure what else would last fifteen seconds.

Maresydoates

/petattack
/castsequence reset=combat/6 Concussive Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Kill Command, Steady Shot
/startattack

Doesydoates

/assist Maresydoates
/petattack
/castsequence reset=combat/6 Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Kill Command, Steady Shot
/startattack

Rolling Along

Now it’s time to test things out and see how they work. I’ll probably have to tweak things a bit, as I pick up the rest of the skillset on my way to level 15, but hopefully there will be more macro’ing goodness to share come this weekend!