Cataclysm Hunter Macros Guide

View other WHU WoW Cataclysm hunter guides.

Macros are a way to combine several actions into one, and automate simple, common tasks to make life a bit easier for your WoW hunter. Different hunters use different macros, and differing amounts of macros. Some hunters will just have one or two macros and live happily on it, while other hunters will almost never use a single ability out of the spellbook, preferring to use macro’d versions of them.

Here are a handful of useful WoW hunter macros, distilled from the collected wisdom of the WHU. I don’t use a whole lot of macros for my actual gameplay, personally. I have my Misdirection macro, aspect dancing, pet management, and various utility macros for setting raid icons, assisting, etc. I have, however, included several popular hunter macros here in addition to the ones I use.

If you don’t see the macro you’re looking for, drop a note in the comments. The WHU is filled with more wise and knowledgeable hunters than anywhere else in WoW, and if it’s possible to do, I’m sure one of us can supply you with the macro you need!

Hunter Macro Shortcuts:

• Misdirection Macro
• Aspect Dancing Macros (2)
• Trap Launcher Macro
• Pet Management Macro
• Blow Cooldowns Macro
• Cancel Deterrence Macro
• Show Tooltip Macro Command
• Order Pet to Attack Macro Command
• Stop Casting Macro Command
• Mouseover Macros
• Communication Macro Commands
• Set Raid Icon Macro Command
• Clear Errors Notices from Macros

Misdirection Macro

As a hunter, one of your jobs is to misdirect to the tank. We also sometimes use Misdirection at other times when our threat is getting a little scary. My preferred way to manage Misdirection is to set the tank as my focus target (just target the tank and type /focus) and then use this macro to handle my Misdirection so that I never have to switch targets. This macro will cast Misdirection on your focus target, but if you don’t have a focus target it’ll misdirect to your pet instead for seamless group/raid/solo misdirecting.

/cast [@focus,help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

Aspect Dancing Macro 1: Switch Aspects as Needed

This macro will let you easily swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox with the push of a button. If you’re in AotH, it will put you into AotF. If your in fox, it will swap you over to hawk. If you’re in any other aspect, or no aspect at all, it will put you into Aspect of the Hawk.  Simple and effective:

/cast Aspect of the Hawk
/cast Aspect of the Fox

Aspect Dancing Macro 2: Switch to Aspect of the Hawk for Instant Shots

This macro combined with the previous one is probably the best aspect dancing solution I’ve seen. This macro will automatically force you into Aspect of the Hawk any time you’re casting an instant shot. If you’re already in Aspect of the Hawk, it will not change or remove your aspect. Ideally you want to create this macro for every one of your instant shots, that way you’ll automatically, instantly, switch into hawk for those shots that you can cast on the move.

/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/cast Explosive Shot  (or whatever instant shot the macro is for)

Note that you do not want to do this to automatically swap into fox during steady/cobra casts (though you can, of course). With the recently buffed Aspect of the Hawk attack power, you want to be in hawk any time you possibly can — so you’ll have to manually swap to fox when moving.

Trap Launcher Macro – 2 Button Press to Launch a Trap

It is currently not possible to macro your trap launcher to just one button press — sadly. We can, however, macro it into a two-press macro, so you just have to tap this macro twice and you’ll get the green targeting circle.

/castsequence [nomod]reset=3 Trap Launcher, Freezing Trap

Pet Management Macro

We hunters love our pets, but that doesn’t mean we have to have half an action bar cluttered with pet commands. This macro will do the following: if you don’t have a pet out, it will summon your pet. If your pet is out, it will cast Mend Pet. If your pet is dead, it will cast Revive Pet. If you right click on it, it will dismiss your pet. Note however that this macro will only call one of your pets, the one specified by which Call Pet you use (Call Pet 1, Call Pet 2, etc). So you have to have the right call pet command, alas.

/cast [nomod,nopet]Call Pet 1
/cast [nomod,target=pet,dead]Revive Pet
/cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:1]Mend Pet
/cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:2]Dismiss Pet

ZOMG Kill Now! Macro to Blow all Hunter Cooldowns

As a hunter, you have a lot of cooldowns and pet cooldowns available to you. This macro will blow them all at once, useful for big burn phases in boss fights. If you have specific racial abilities you can add them on here as well — as long as it doesn’t trigger the global cooldown, you can keep piling them on until you hit the character limit.

/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rabid
/cast Bestial Wrath
/use 13  (activate trinket)
/use 14  (activate the other trinket)
/use 10 (activate gloves if you’re an engineer)

Deterrence Macro to Cast and Cancel Deterrence

Deterrence is a fantastic hunter tool, but often you don’t want it up the entire duration — once it’s done its job, you’ve got shots to fire. This simple Deterrence macro replaces your Deterrence button — hitting it will cast Deterrence for you, but if Deterrence is already up, it will take it down. Just be careful not to spam it!

/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast Deterrence

Macro Modifiers

Just a couple of macro notes that you’ll likely want to use in your hunter macros. These are just a couple of commonly used lines that you can toss into your macros:

Show Tooltip

#showtooltip AbilityName

Make this the first line of you macro (obviously “AbilityName” is the name of the ability — Explosive Shot, Mend Pet, whatever) and the icon for your macro will automatically be the icon for that ability. So if you use #showtooltip Explosive Shot, then regardless of what you put in your macro, the macro will have the Explosive Shot icon.

Note that while you get the icon, you will not see the default UI timer on the icon, nor will it light up for special abilities, like Killing Streak or Lock & Load.

Pet Attack

/petattack

This line will tell your pet to attack your current target. Some hunters like to have this macro’d in with their shots to ensure that their pet is always attacking the same target they are. Personally, I prefer not to, because there are times I deliberately do not want my pet to attack my target, so I prefer to control my pet manually.

Stopcasting

Some hunters like to macro a stopcast command into their big hard-hitting shots, like Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, etc. The idea here is that if you started casting Steady Shot or Cobra Shot when you shouldn’t have, it doesn’t matter. When you hit your big shot it will automatically stop the steady/cobra cast and fire the big one off. Just add this line before your shot:

/stopcasting

Personally I don’t like to do this. I’m a button spammer, and I’m hitting my next shot a fraction of a second before it’s necessary and I don’t want to cancel my casts with only 0.1 seconds to go. If I do screw up and cast steady/cobra at the wrong time, I just twitch my character to cancel it. But mostly I just don’t cast cobra/steady when I shouldn’t.

Mouseover

/cast [target=mouseover] AbilityName

When you press this macro, it will cast the ability at whatever target you are currently moused over, even if you don’t have them targeted. In this way you can turn any macro into a mouseover macro.

Talk

/s whatever (say)
/p whatever (party)
/y whatever (yell)
/rw whatever (raid warning)

You can always modify your macros to announce what you’re doing — this is particularly common for CC abilities like Freezing Trap or Wyvern Sting. You macro in an announcement that you’re CCing so people (in theory) know not to attack it. You can also modify this by announcing the name of your target with the %t command like so:

/s I’m trapping %t so don’t attack it. Or else.

Set Raid Icon

You can also have your macro automatically assign a raid icon, or lucky charm, to your target (assuming you have permissions to do so).

/script SetRaidTargetIcon(“target”,8)

The number 8 on the end is the Skull icon. Each icon has a different number.

Clear Macro Errors

Sometimes you’ll have something in your macro, like using a trinket, that puts up an annoying error message every time you use it when that ability is not ready. This command will make it so that error doesn’t display.

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();