Single Click Tanking!?
 

Is there a way to have a macro to prioritize attacks and do whichever one is highest on the priority list and ready to be used (ie. not on cooldown)?

I would like a macro that will cast one of the following, basically whichever is highest on the list and available/not on cooldown:

Defensive Stance (If not in def stance)
Revenge
Shield Block
Sunder Armor
Heroic Strike

/cast [nostance:2] Defensive Stance
/stopcasting
/castrandom Shield Block, Revenge
/stopcasting
/cast Heroic Strike
/stopcasting
/cast Sunder Armor

This might possible work.

It can't be done and that's quite intentional.

Guess i'll have to go to back to my previous method of putting all 4 commands bound to successive keys, and just mashing all 4 at the same time continuosly :)

Mods and macros cannot select spells for you. UI, not AI.

sounds like you want to make a bot. so no i guess not possible.

Ug, there are 2 classes in the game that really need intelligent good players to be at the keyboard. Tanks and healers. Seriously, reroll, that's your best option.

There are a couple of macros out there that try to to what you are looking for. I tried one awhile back but it was pretty bad. I think that timing is too important to use a macro for tanking (i.e. you wouldnt want to do a heroic strike when your shield block was almost up - wait the additional 1/2 second).

Also you might want to try using shield slam - as far as instant hate its pretty much the best.

I agree, I've raised one priest to 60 and another to 51(so far) and without a doubt the 2 most important classes in any group are the healer and the tank... good healing alone doesn't help anyone, you need a good tank to keep everything in check. and viceversa, if the tank is doing his job and keeping all the mobs on him, he'll die without a good healer.

er... rant over, get good at tanking or re-roll and do everyone a favour

in all my days tanking has never been to much of a hassle

i hit 1 to sunder, a timer tells me when they expire so i can re apply before i lose all 5

(saves me from blowing a mercy point in devastate)

hit q to shield slam (when the cooldown timer tells me its up)

and hit revenge (2) when the warning tells me to

other than that im right clicking to use heroic strike until q or 2 is back up,

bloodrage is e for whens its up, and taunt is r

stances are f g and h respectively, tanked all of kara with my left hand :)

except for taunting i suppose

one more thing, intervene is better than you think, a nice macro is intervene immediately following /assist %t

you'll find that in most mt interfaces

in all my days tanking has never been to much of a problem of intelligence,

its all in the wrist...er keybingings i mean :)

i hit 1 to sunder, a timer tells me when they expire so i can re apply before i lose all 5

(saves me from blowing a mercy point in devastate)

hit q to shield slam (when the cooldown timer tells me its up)

and hit revenge (2) when the warning tells me to

other than that im right clicking to use heroic strike until q or 2 is back up,

bloodrage is e for whens its up, and taunt is r

stances are f g and h respectively, tanked all of kara with my left hand :)

except for taunting i suppose

one more thing, intervene is better than you think, a nice macro is intervene immediately following /assist %t

you'll find that in most mt interfaces

Devastate is far more useful then just refreshing all sunders. It creates a HUGE amount of threat which is very necessary for a good tank taking a lot of damage and thus being healed.

The sequence you've described for the most part works for what a tank needs to do for abilities but hitting the target alone isn't enough. They need to be smart enough to know when they need to use an ability.. shield slam, shield wall, shield bash, etc etc. Also, standing there like a noob will get you and your raid killed. If the tank doesn't have the skill to properly manage aggro and know what abilities they use to do it and how to do it (ie a tank with more skill than a single clicker) then s/he definitely doesn't have the skill to know how to do a given fight. Gone are the days of a tank standing there and getting beat on and healed through everything that happens. Tanks need to move, kite, get out of range in certain circumstances, etc. yous also mentioned intervene, useful trait but requires a tank to be aware of wtf is going on around him.

Single clicking tanks are as useless as.... well ****, I can't think of something as useless as that.

for intervene....you can do it without changing targets...

/cast [target=targettarget] intervene

this isnt copy/pasted so it might be a bit off, but what youll really want is

/cast [target=help] Intervene; [target=targettarget,exists] Intervene

works on friendlies, works on enemies, and has some protection against getting the click-target cursor if you dont have a target or your target doesnt have a target.


unfortunately there is no macro that will make you even a mediocre tank. i would suggest researching if its possible to do something like this:
/logout
/deletecharacter [target=player]
/castrandom rollhunter; rollrogue; rollmage; rollwarlock

that way mashing one button will still make you suck at wow, but at least you wont be such a huge liability to your group.


(no offense to the pure dps classes, its just easier to cover for a crappy dpser than it is to cover for a crappy healer or tank :))

tanking isnt hard to the point where someone would want a single click macro

i didnt really mean it in the way than im bad or i dont move or anything, after all by saying ive mtd all of kara ive done shade of aran, netherspite, all that jazz with execution and such

sure it requires you to pay attention, but if you are in it with 9 other people they deserve the attention you'll give them

as for devastate, i dont have trouble building /holding threat so i dont put the point in it simple as that

Tanking should not be thought of like a DPS class, in that you need a specific rotation that maximizes GCD's and CD's to output the most DPS. In every tanking class in game (provided spec'd correctly & yeah i dont want to get into a class debate over which tank is harder to tank on) blizzard has gone out of there way to make threat gen relatively simple over all.

This is because while Blizzard want tanks to always be pushing buttons (hence the need for threat), they know good tanking is to a greater extent thinking about popping and cycling CD's/reaction abilities efficiently, raid/situational awareness, and ability to position/reposition boss on call.