Arcane Macros for PVE

[Loosefur]

Can you guys post your arcane macros if you have time please? I dinged 85 less than a month ago and have been working diligently to get up to raiding proficiency, with macros being my weakspot. Also, if you have time to critique my toon, it would be most appreciated: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... p/advanced

[Guromin]

Loosefur,

Here's the macro's I personally use for arcane.

First of all, all of my spells have an alt modifier to attack my focus. Basically when I press the button while holding alt it will target my focus instead of my main target. Like I said, I put this on all my target based damaging spells.


#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/cast [modifier:alt, target=focus] Arcane Blast/cast [nomodifier:shift] Arcane Blast

#showtooltip Arcane Missiles
/cast [modifier:alt, target=focus] Arcane Missiles/cast [nomodifier:shift] Arcane Missiles

Hopefully you get the pattern with this one. Same thing for the rest of them. I use it in all of my specs too. On to the next macro.
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#shottooltip Mana Shield
/castsequence reset=12 Mana Shield, Mage Ward

This macro will activate Mana Shield if Mana Shield is not on CD and Mage Ward if it is. Great way to put your shields into one button.
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#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

This macro will stop what your casting and cast Ice Block. Important to be able to Ice Block instantly. Also when you click it again it will cancel Ice Block. A lot of times you only need to be invulnerable for a few seconds. No need to waste dps time frozen.
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#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Counterspell; Counterspell

This is a macro to stop casting and Counterspell my mouseover IF my mouse is over a target and if not my current target. Great for interrupting without switching targets.
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#showtooltip Spellsteal
/stopcasting
/cast Spellsteal

Getting a little redundent. Stops casting and cast's spellsteal on my current target.
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#showtooltip Slow
/cast [target=mouseover] Slow

This will slow my mouseover target. This is rarely useful. I made it for slowing people on Heroic Nefarian.
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/cast Arcane Power
/cast Berserking
/cast Mirror Image
/use Icy Veins

I Macro'd all my instant cast CD's into one macro. Right now I don't have any activation trinkets, but if you do have them it's easy to add. Just add "/use (trinkets name)" and your good to go.
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This last one isn't specific to just mages. It's good for any class.

/focus

There have been several encounters in this tier where switching your focus mid-fight is almost required to do your best dps. Theralion and Valiona being the most notable of them.
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Gear

You requested that I look over your gear to critique your toon so I shall. For the most part it seems like you at least understand how to gear, but there's a few things you could do to improve. Before I go into this I want to talk about stat weights. If it isn't abundantly clear already some stats are better than others. Stat weights are numbers we calculate to determine how good one stat is compared to the others. The values I give for each of these are Relative!!! The values are also generaic. They are the widely accepted values that are generally close to what yours would be specifically. These values on'y apply to arcane mages. Fire mages will be different.

Intellect (5.16)
Hit (3.21)
Spellpower (2.8)
Mastery (1.4)
Critical Strike (1.34)
Haste (1.28)

From this data we can conclude that Intellect is the best stat by far. Intellect is 3.6 times better than mastery, crit and haste. Although hit is a very strong stat, intellect is still far better. Now we can take a look at where this applies to your gear.

Your EmberFlame Bracers have +50 hit rating on them. Even if your hit rating is low, intellect is still a better choice. I will show you a few ways to get more hit shortly.

Your boots have +50 mastery which is wrong. There should really be no discussion on this one. No exceptions. You MUST put run speed on your boots. Staying alive and moving out of things is so incredibly important. I can't stress enough how important this is. I very often hear people saying that mages don't need it because of blink and ice block and other abilities. That is wrong. If you refuse to admit that it could potentially save you from taking additional damage, look at it as a dps gain. Moving 8% faster means less time getting somewhere and move time spamming Arcane Blast.

Your shoulders have the lesser enchant on them, which I assume your are simply working on the reputation. Keep working ;)

As a general note; staffs are typically not as good as a main hand and offhand combination. Having an offhand allows you to benefit from an additional +40 int stat. Of course this rule will often have exceptions *cough cough* legendary staff *cough cough*.

I noticed one of your rings had intellect on it but not the other one so you recently dropped enchanting for Alchemy/Herbalism. Honestly this makes me sad because Enchanting is a great profession for mages and both Alchemy and Herbalism are really really really really bad in comparision. Many hardcore guilds will turn down dps applications for having a gathering profession. It just litterally doesn't benefit your damage very much. Also Alchemy has no enchant and just luxury benefits allong with trinket. The issue is that the trinket will be quickly replaced.
While on the note of trinkets your other trinket is bad too. There's a 346 blue trinket thats better. My recommendation is to get Theraltions Mirror. Normal is fine, heroic is better. Either way, they are both really good for arcane.


Your reforging is good, but I can tell you did it in your head instead of using an online calculator. I use AskMrRobot for my reforging and gem calculations with my own stat weights. It's a great, simple to use tool that will help you reforge optimally. From my experience it has been spot on accurate for Arcane. The website for it is http://www.AskMrRobot.com.


If you have any other questions feel free to ask

[Guromin]

I read over what I wrote after I posted it and realized something I had miss-stated. The modifier on all of my actions is for shift NOT alt. I'm not sure how I ended up typing that wrong, so I'm going to blame it on my dyslexia. Just thought I would clarify so I didn't confuse anyone.

[Loosefur]

Thanks for the macros. As far as the toon itself, I have 525-level enchanting, tailoring and jewelcrafting on other toons. This one is one I've had sitting around for years and decided to level. My professions are bad, as I thought I would use this one to make some money, and then found after playing I like the playstyle. I will likely power level tailoring and jewelcrafting on this one to get the benefits now that I'll be raiding with it. The ring with the enchant on it is a BoA archeology ring that I passed on from my lock and it kept the enchant (it's like having two bad professions and half a good one...hehe).

I decided to wait on getting a better shoulder enchant because I'll likely be upgrading soon. I will change out the boot and wrist enchants per your suggestions. Thanks

[Zurkhan]

My mage is pretty bad too, I have Alchemy/Herbalism!

Keep in mind Alchemy provides the same intellect gain as enchanting; and most other professions.

The Flask of Enhancement gives +80 intellect while not using a real flask (2 rings with +40int = +80).

Mixology also comes into play when drinking a normal flask which gives you +80 intellect (or whatever your primary stat is for the class with alchemy) on top of the normal flask gain. Blizzard has balanced most professions around the +80 primary stat mark; while leaving gathering professions much weaker. Herbalism = Haste, Mining = Stamina and Skinning = Crit.


For Mage Professions I'd choose the following:

Tailoring > JC > (all other non-gathering) > Gathering

Tailoring is proc based so it's more difficult for blizzard to keep that at a static +80 intellect. JC has 3 custom gems which will give you +81 intellect.

Keep in mind when selecting professions, Engineering tinkers share the same cooldown as on-use trinkets (moonwell chalice, etc). I try to avoid having trinkets or on-use effects interfere with each other as much as possible so I think I'm going to shy away from Engineering and go Tailoring on my mage. I currently have Herbalism but I have been too cheap to drop it and level a new profession in 1-2 day period so it doesn't hurt my raiding. While the herbalism buff isn't one of the best ones, the haste is better than nothing while I'm gathering the materials to level tailoring.


Here's a few of the Macro's I use:

1) Slow Fall (security blanket for ragnaros)

#showtooltip Slow Fall
/cast [@mouseover,exists] Slow Fall ; Slow Fall

When we were first working on ragnaros we had a few people get knocked into the traps from Wrath of Ragnaros and they went flying into the air; I would quickly run near where they were standing and hold my mouse over their raid frame and spam slow fall. Usually the slow fall will apply about 1-2 seconds before they hit the ground making for a very dramatic life-saver.


2) Invisibilty Macro

#showtooltip Invisibility
/stopcasting
/cast Invisibility
/cancelaura invisibility

It's useful to go invisible on demand for some mechanics (shadow conductor, back in ICC you could skip being stunned, etc). I don't really remember why I had the cancelaura macro in there with it; as casting a new spell will cancel the invisibility automatically anyway. However the /stopcasting can be handy when you need to invis "NOW".



Basically take all your mage spells and think about how you will be using then against bosses, trash and other such things. There will be times when you'll want the option to have someone on focus, have a target and still want to mouse-over interrupt or focus interrupt or main-target interrupt. That's where macro's get complicated with their modifiers. The shift-modifiers in the first response are a great starting point for learning these; you can assign another key as a modifier (shift, control, alt) to change the ability slightly (I use them as "target modifiers"). I'll paste in my counterspell macro when I can log in and copy it.