Well, maybe not your mother. But you know us Hunters, we really love our macros. Unlike some other games out there, World of Warcraft gives players a pretty simple method to help customize their playing environment. We all know about the cool add-ons like Recount and RatingBuster. Now add to that the ability to arrange the look and feel of our User Interface and Blizzard really has done something special.

Instead of trying to tackle those, I thought we could talk about the one that gives many of us players some difficulty: macros. And you know what? They really don't have to be that complicated.

Before we get started, I would be remiss if I didn't at least explain little bit about macros. At least I need to define what macros are what they are not. Macros are a way to combine several commands (attacks, emotes, or other actions) and combine them into a single button press or click.

As with most things in life, there are some rules we have to make sure to follow. For example, your character can only have 54 separate macros (36 shared across your characters, and 18 assigned to a specific toon). Also, each macro can only contain 250 characters. (Now, if you use Twitter, you already know that's a little less than 2 tweets.) Don't let this limitation fool you though: macros are extremely versatile and offer a ton of flexibility.

If you are interested in more details about how to script or create macros, I'd say head over to WoW Wiki. Their macro resource goes into a lot more detail on the workings of macros and commands than I could attempt to do here. However, what I can do is give you a list of different macros and show you how they can be used for PvE as well as PvP. Let's take some macros and see what they do and how they can apply to each style of play.

(Note: you might need to alter some of these macros depending on spell availability.)

Save Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Keeping one's pet alive is one of the biggest challenges to a Hunter. And for a Beast Mastery Hunter, losing your pet can mean a loss of up to 40% of your DPS. This macro will yell out asking for a healer in your raid to heal your pet. Then it will cast Mend Pet and start using bandages to offer a bit of help.

/Yell FLUFFY NEEDS HEALS!!
/cast Mend Pet
/use [target=Pet] Dense Frostweave Bandages

Feed Fluffy (PvE or PvP)

Pet feeding used to be a chore. But with the automatic pet feeder it's not bad at all.

/cast Feed Pet /use Clefthoof Ribs

Pet management simplified (PvE or PvP)

Now if you want, you can actually combine the two macros above into a single pet management one. What do I like about this? It's how you can replace several different buttons from your action bars with just this one macro. The only gotcha is that this macro uses the control, shift and alt keys as modifiers. So when you click it, remember to hold the appropriate key at the same time.

/cast [modifier:alt] Revive Pet
/cast [modifier:shift] Mend Pet
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Call Pet
/cast Feed Pet
/use Clefthoof Ribs

Time for bed (PvE or PvP)

This is a great macro to use when you have party members being mind controlled during Yogg-Sarron. In PvP, well let's just say it can really frustrate some Warriors and other Hunters.

/cast [target=mouseover] Tranquilizing Shot

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I promise we'll get back to our Ulduar guide for tanks and DPS warriors next week. For this week, however, since we're midway through the sixth month of 2009 and we've seen patches up to 3.1 released (and we're waiting on 3.2) I thought it would be a good idea to go back and cover some of the things a leveling warrior might want discussed. We get emails from all kinds of warriors, and so it's only fair to cover the concerns of warriors who aren't raiding Ulduar but rather just setting foot off of the dock in Howling Fjord.

Before we get started, though, the upcoming Patch 3.2 changes for Warriors in their current entirety: Armored to the Teeth: This talent now provides 1/2/3 attack power per 108 armor, up from per 180 armor. Try not to get too excited, people.

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Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you've been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It's something I'd wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.

Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there's more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That's right -- twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn't about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.

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Blizzard's Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton answered quite a lot of questions about the upcoming PvP changes in Patch 3.2. There are a lot, particularly the experience gains in Battlegrounds which also has deep implications in PvE as players can simply toggle experience gains off (any Level 60s up for Molten Core?). It's a pretty lengthy interview and Stockton goes into detail with the new Isle of Conquest Battleground. Some highlights from the chat:

• Experience gain in Battlegrounds is slightly slower than questing or grinding
• Players can toggle experience gain on and off with a mere 10 Gold
• There are plans to include greens and "the occasional blue item" at the end of each Battleground match (!) but won't make it to Patch 3.2
• The Isle of Conquest is in the Frozen Sea, North of Icecrown
• Objectives in Isle of Conquest are captured exactly like flags in Arathi Basin -- I totally called this wrong when I said it would probably be a numbers and proximity thing
• Battlemaster Achievement isn't likely to change (whew!) but Blizzard is considering what to do with the Achievements for the Isle of Conquest
  
• Rated Battlegrounds are coming. Not quite soon®, but an announcement will be made during BlizzCon
• Blizzard plans "to deliver more Battlegrounds to the players as often as we can"


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It's that time of year again, folks. Frankly, I'm glad to be back in the realm of more reasonable and just plain fun holiday achievements, because I hated School of Hard Knocks, and wound up giving up and quitting the achievement after hours of fruitless battleground deaths. Fortunately, the Fire Festival has a lot less potential to drive you to the nuthouse, and a lot more potential to grant experience, gold, and cool items. From what I've seen, Blizzard hasn't changed the holiday since its 2008 incarnation, which is actually a good thing in a number of ways because last year's revamped and expanded Fire Festival was great.

A note on eligibility: your character will need to be at least 50 to hand in the items needed for King of the Fire Festival, and at least 65 to get the higher-level quests necessary for killing Lord Ahune in Slave Pens. With that said, we still recommend that lower-level characters participate, because you'll wind up with a ton of experience and gold even if you can't complete the meta-achievement.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy deathmatches. This season's bosses hail from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

It's the day that time stood still: Chrono-Lord Epoch (The Culling of Stratholme) versus Volkhan (the Halls of Lightning). Who'll stop who (/snicker) in this week's five-man Wrath boss deathmatch?

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We had a bit of a minor freakout when we heard that the Rusted and Ironbound protodrakes might be getting removed as rewards for the Ulduar meta achievements in Patch 3.2, and then even more of one when the slow trickle of information about 3.2 turned into a firehose. Bornakk mentioned the change initially with the caveat that it was their intention to remove the drakes eventually, but that he'd seek definite confirmation either way as to whether it was happening in 3.2 or not. There's been no update about it in the past few weeks.

Well, after a thorough reading of the 3.2 patch notes, I don't see a single trace of anything saying the drakes are getting removed. At the risk of counting my protochickens before they hatch, I think we might be safe, given how fast 3.2 looks like it's coming out.

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I discussed last week about how Hunter trapping and crowd control had gone the way of the dodo. And now as reported earlier today, we have much to celebrate with the release of the official Patch 3.2 PTR Notes. Ghostcrawler and the development team are really showing us Hunters some much needed luvin.

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

I was really wondering what we were going to do now that mounts were available at 20. It seems we are in good hands. We only have 16 painful levels of slow run until we can get Aspect of the Cheetah and start zipping around.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

New graphics are always cool.

• The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I guess if your target hasn't tripped your trap in 30 seconds, they probably never will.

• Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

Is this the best thing since peanut butter on pancakes or what! Separate cooldowns? Finally, the ability to fire off Black Arrow, drop both a Freeze and Snake traps basically at the same time. I can't wait to take this one on a test drive.

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Thankfully, Blizzard has heard our pleas. In the patch notes for Patch 3.2, a small note under the Ulduar section informed us that the clouds will be "more vocal" to players who stand in them.

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We've picked up some more details about professions in Patch 3.2. Some of the changes were covered a few days ago by Eliah. The notes made today elaborate more on engineering, alchemy, fishing and cooking changes.

Alchemy

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Well wouldja look at that -- hidden in the just-released Patch 3.2 notes are a whole slew of UI changes to check out.

• Auto-completion for character names in mail, chat, and pop-up interfaces can now be enabled (and disabled) from the interface options. I believe auto-complete was already in there for mail, but now it'll be everywhere, and/or you'll be able to turn it off if you've sent things to the wrong place in the past.
• Names are getting a color option according to class, so if "Lolpaladins" is really a Death Knight, you'll know right away.
• Casting bars near a portrait's target will show whether the spell is interruptible or not. Some boss casts are not interruptible, so now you'll know with a glance.
• Druids will be able to see mana bars even while shape-shifted, which probably won't change gameplay much, but will be nice for bears and kitties.
• Item comparisons (like the ability to check other gear for slots while hovering over that gear) are now available everywhere -- hover over an item with Alt pressed to see what's currently equipped in that slot on your character.
• Macros and scripts can no longer target totems by name -- bye bye totem stompers.
• The quest log is getting a small revamp: it'll be "double-paned for more easily viewing quest information." We're not quite sure what that means (you'll be able to look at two quests at once? It'll break out the list of accepted quests into its own full-size window?), but we'll give you a look as soon as we see it on the PTR.
• Vendor prices will now be listed on items even if you're not at a vendor. This was a pretty common feature already, thanks to Auctioneer, but now it'll be built into the standard interface.


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Blizzard just released some screenshots from Patch 3.2's brand new super massive Battleground, the Isle of Conquest. For those unfamiliar with the Isle, it's a large-scale 40v40 Battleground that features siege combat, good old-fashioned melee, capturable resource points, NPC bosses like Alterac Valley, steady Honor ticks from capping certain areas, and more. It's essentially the Battleground with something for everyone. We just recently posted a Q&A with World Designer Cory Stockton, with a lot of questions about the Isle answered.

And now we've got screenshots to give us a feel for the place. They show bits and pieces of the Isle, including the Alliance Keep, part of the Refinery, what appears to be the Airship Hangar, and the Lighthouse. It's all very Northrend and very exciting. After all, in the grim, dark future past World of Warcraft, there is only war. As long as you're in a Battleground, anyway. But only if you're fighting instead of fishing or killing harpies. Regardless, there's definitely war going on somewhere.

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Death Knights are among the most-changed classes in the first PTR version of patch 3.2, which is not terribly surprising for such a young class. Because of such significant changes, all DKs will receive a free respec.

Blood Strike will scale more from disease (up to 50% per disease), while Frost Strike is receiving significant nerfs: it can now be dodged/blocked/parried, and only gets a 55% bonus from weapon damage, instead of 60%.

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We mentioned this issue a while back -- since it was introduced to the game, Strand of the Ancients has started Alliance on attack first, and that's caused problems. Due to the way the map is set up (a back-and-forth attack and defend map), the team that starts attacking has an advantage in terms of farming honor -- they only have to play until the other team loses rather than having to keep up a defense the whole time. That means shorter battlegrounds for the Alliance, which means more honor overall for them.

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There are a lot of things in the patch 3.2 test realm notes that jumped out at me, but the changes to the Emblem system seem like an especially big deal. The developers made it quite clear that they wanted a tiered token system in Wrath of the Lich King, they didn't want players just farming Heroics all day and night to get the best possible gear. In patch 3.2, it looks like they're backing off on that pretty heavily, likely an attempt to reignite interest in running Heroics. If you haven't seen the patch notes, here are the points I'm referring to:

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
• Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
• The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
• The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.

So taking all of this into consideration, a player could theoretically get 4 pieces of Tier 8 gear without ever setting foot into Ulduar, simply by grinding out Heroics and getting a couple of lucky drops from Emalon. To get the Tier 8 hat and gloves, you would need a combined total of 116 badges. At roughly four badges per Heroic, that's just shy of 30 Heroics. That sounds like a lot, but when you take into consideration how people got their gear in The Burning Crusade, it really sort of... isn't a lot at all. This is a big step away from what the developers stated they want to do, but as I said, I imagine it's a change made in the interest of encouraging people to continue running Heroics.

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A big part of the reason why mana regen has been so extreme in Wrath is Replenishment; as of right now, any of five DPS specs (Shadow Priest, Survival Hunter, Retribution Paladin, Frost Mage, and Destruction Warlock) will provide the ten lowest people in your raid 0.25% of their maximum mana per second. Among other things, this makes Intellect a prime regen stat.

Well, Replenishment is getting a bit of a nerf in patch 3.2: instead of 0.25% max mana per second, it'll be 1% maximum mana over five seconds. That's a 20% nerf. This applies to all sources of Replenishment. At the same time, all items with MP5 on them are having the MP5 buffed by about 25%. These two changes will probably even out for the MP5-based healers (Paladin and Shaman), while making them value MP5 gear a bit more. Druids and Priests will feel a regeneration nerf, but I think they can afford it.

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But that's not all. Besides those two, Blizzard says that there are six other new unannounced non-combat pets available, not including Argent Tournament rewards.

But even that's not all! Northrend Children's Week will start with the new patch, which means that we're likely to see the Gorloc and Wolvar orphans we've known about since Wrath launched.

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Well, as we already discussed, block is currently a lackluster stat for tanking. But patch 3.2 has some changes in store, and one of those changes is to how much block value you'll see on just about everything, clearly aimed at boosting block's worth.

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
  
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus.

What this basically means is twofold. First, of course, you're going to be blocking for more damage. Since the amount of block value you get from your shield and from strength will not be affected, it won't be exactly double what you're blocking for now, but it will be close to that much: expect to see at least 75% more block value all told.

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There was a big announcement today on upcoming Battleground changes. However there are two critical pieces of PvP information that people everywhere, especially twinks, are going to go crazy over.

• You will be able to level through PvP Battlegrounds
• You will be able to turn off experience gains
  

This means that you'll be able to level your character simply by competing in PvP in battlegrounds and completing objectives, such as capturing the flag in WSG or securing resources in AB. Not from killing other players. This opens up a whole new way of playing the game at the earlier levels, one that will add a significant dynamic to it.

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Patch 3.2 PTR Patch Notes
Quote from: Blizzard[html]

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.2.0

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

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I totally called it: the Patch 3.2 PTR notes are now available on the official forums, which means that we should expect the PTR itself to go up today. This is the patch that will bring the expansion of the Argent Tournament, with new 5/10/25-man content, and much more - see our patch 3.2 guide for an overview.

General

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The WoW Livejournal communities are really some of the best citizens in the WoW community at large -- they always have interesting discussions and insights going on over there, and if you ever need a question answered or just want an opinion on something in-game, they're always ready with some insight. That's why I think this WoW Friending meme that spirdirslayer has going on is such a good idea -- basically, if you're over on Livejournal and are looking to meet a few players on your realm, you can head over to the page, find your server, and then enter your information along with a few survey questions and check out who else is playing with you in-game.

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Blizzard has just released a set of major upcoming changes to the Paladin class, due to come about with Patch 3.2. There are some major changes that are going to not sit too well with folks, while making others quite happy. But with that said, it should be noted that all these changes might not make it through.

A few of the key intended changes include:

• Removal of Seal of the Martyr / Seal of Blood
• Crusader Strike cooldown lowered from 6 seconds to 4 seconds
• Beacon of Light buffed significantly
• Illumination nerfed significantly
  
• Ardent Defender is getting an automatic Last Stand

For additional information on the upcoming patch, check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2. The complete announcement after the break.

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Also, Blizzard added 2 screenshots of the Coliseum raid instance to the official site.


Update - Upcoming Paladin changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)We know it's hard to evaluate the Retribution changes without understanding how the Seals now work. Here is how they work.

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Your appreciation for Castlevania: Wisps of Dracula by Noblejazan will vary depending on your knowledge and experience with poorly written fan-fiction. The author took an "original story" written by a fan of the game Castlevania, and put it into machinima. Mind you, Noblejazan used an actual fanfiction. The resulting video is somewhere between a hyperspeed parody and a weeping nod to the phenomenon of fanfic.

This video has all the very best tropes. It has senseless tragedy, dashing heroics, an invulnerable, rogue hero, and a hint that the real Mary Sue has yet to be born. (I'm sure Rhonin is just around the corner for the next installment.) The author is careful to pronounce the actual language from his chosen fanfiction, and the movie moves so fast it feels like you're on a sugar-fueled rollercoaster ride. I especially like the word-art flying across the screen, to help make sure you don't miss any details.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

Well folks, we've had some tight battles lately -- and this wasn't one of them. In a rather predictable display of superiority, the Hall of Lightning's General Bjarngrim outclassed Sjonnir the Ironshaper from the Halls of Stone in this week's Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves.

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I think he's right, too. The success of EQ allowed for countless imitators and innovators to follow in its footsteps, and WoW is certainly both of those things. What made WoW successful in the first place, beyond brand recognition, was the fact that the developers -- whose team consisted of a number of former EQ devs and prominent community members! -- refined and added on so many features cribbed from EQ. They made the formerly hardcore-only genre accessible to a wide variety of players and age groups, and in doing so broke subscriber and sales records -- thus continuing to make new MMOs financially plausible. And with WoW's improvements to the diku formula, the genre is now filled with WoW imitators as well. History repeats itself.

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Did you really believe that the Ember Clutch was created by a bunch of fire-breathing proto-dragons? Pshaw. That's just what they want you to think. In reality, Akrasia of Steamwheedle Cartel-EU got a little too careless with her Arcane Missiles, and what was once a thriving forest is now a bunch of very large matchsticks. Remember, kids, as the Rabid Brown Bear says, only you can prevent forest fires. At least that's what I think he says. It's hard to understand him through all the foaming at the mouth and chewing on my leg.

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Burnout is a natural part of doing anything for a long period of time whether it's a game or your job. Right now I've got WoW burnout, I can't be asked to log on and the thought of raiding Ulduar (Ignis specifically) just makes my eyes and head hurt. It's not too bad and I've certainly had worse pre-Wrath but it's exacerbated in part I think by the lull. Patch 3.1 is out, Patch 3.2 is coming and the next unannounced expansion is a long time off yet. On top of that there aren't enough hours in the day to work, sleep, raid and play with my cats.

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