The Freeze Macro Or How To Float In Mid-Air Nerf, WorkAround, What's Been Fixed, What Works, What You Can Do With It (Patreon)

For some time exploiters, including myself in info published here, have been using a "freeze" macro, this was a specific macro which paused gameplay for n seconds causing your character to remain in position, frozen, even in mid-air.

The primary public usage of this was for exploration purposes. Say, for example, you wanted to cross a long chasm on a demon hunter, you'd use fel rush, fel rush then activate the freeze macro, suspending your character in mid-air while the fel rush cooldown expired. That way you'd lose no height, enabling access to inaccessible areas.

But the freeze macro also had potentially gamebreaking uses in other areas. 

A method I came up with allowed a flag carrier to run down the clock in pvp. In, say, twin peaks, if your team was ahead on flags you could simply jump off the edge of the cliff and activate your freeze macro. 

Similarly you could use it in pvp with the technique Rain From Above allowing the player to gain infinite height. It could also be used to extend the range of venegful retreat and fel rush (as mentioned above) bypassing obstacles such as the gates in Strand Of The Ancients. You could also use the technique to remain in the sewer pipe in Dalaran arena, giving you 

In PVE the freeze macro could be used to skip bosses that could not normally - indeed this is probably why the freeze macro was finally fixed despite surviving for the duration of an entire expansion. 

The freeze macro has now been comprehensively fixed. However, there is an alternative which does much of what the freeze macro used to do.

The alternative which I mentioned even before the freeze macro was fixed, is simply /reload. 

/reload is not exactly the same as the freeze macros. The freeze macro would simply pause all activity on your screen in accordance with the user defined variable n. /reload naturally reloads your screen. So, it's duration is fixed at whatever time interval it takes your comp to reload the data on screen. 

The big advantage of reload is that the freeze macro crashed your client very easily, while reload can be spammed indefinitely without problems. It is FAR easier to make incremental changes to character position with /reload than the freeze macro. 

The big disadvantage is that even when spammed at maximum speed /reload does not completely halt character movement, it just slows it to a snail's pace. 

Of the things you can do with the freeze macro, here are the changes with /reload,

1) Extending movement abilities such as gust of wind, disengage, fel rush etc....essentially the same as before with slightly less effect.

2) PVP-you can still use it to kill tied carry-the-flag battlegrounds but you will eventually fall down to your death so this is only viables towards the end. 

3) Dalaran arena. See above. You can hide in the pipes for a few minutes which helps dps with dampening but not indefinitely. 

4) Rain From Above. This has been comprehensively fixed. /Reload does not work after vehicle bar activation-when used beforehand it simply returns the character to the ground.

Note /reload can be used in combat where the freeze macro couldn't. 

Overall for everyone other than hardcore exploiting pvp demon hunter there is not really that much difference, though the changes are quite interesting and may hurt or help in specific cases.