Our Dragonflight Macros Guide (Patreon)

The Useful Macros

Cursor and player macros! Having to click again for a ground-targeted ability sucks, so use a macro like this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Death and Decay</code>

This is a game-changer for spells like Blizzard, Efflorescence, Heroic Leap and the like. Sometimes, though, your mouse isn’t where you think it is… so there’s also this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Death and Decay</code>

This drops it at your feet instead - which can be useful for things like Death and Decay, but not very good for Heroic Leap or Grappling Hook.

By the way, #showtooltip automatically grabs the correct tooltip for the spell that the button will cast, in case you were wondering. It’s brilliant.

And if you’re thinking, wait, does that mean you can just pick a target in a macro, you’d be right! There’s a whole ton of ways you can specify targets, but unfortunately only @player works with ground-targeted abilities, because that’d be a bit unfair otherwise. For everything else though, yeah - there’s player, mouseover, target, focus, pet, partyN, raidN, arenaN, bossN where N is their position in the frames, and even specific player names.  Note, we largely leave mouseover out of this video because Blizzard supports it as a default option now, but you can still use it for anything custom you’re making. As well as just these, you can even select the target of any of these by adding target - so say you have the boss on focus, and you want to drop a quick heal on whoever the boss is hitting, you could have this macro:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@focustarget] Healing Surge</code>

Or if you raid with the same people as a Priest or a Druid and always drop PI or Innervate on the same person, you can write a macro instead of having to manually target them!

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@Parselord] Power Infusion</code><code>#showtooltip
/cast [@Manaissues] Innervate</code>

If you’re a particularly lazy raidlogging healer, you can even macro your DPS abilities to always target the boss in a fight. Waste of a keybind, but possible - and you can combine it with some other stuff to great effect.

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@boss1] Shadow Word: Pain</code>

Now, modifiers. The part in brackets is called a conditional, and macros can accept multiple to make smart decisions based on which conditional returns true. Here’s an example of a target and modifier working together:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift,@focus][] Power Word: Shield</code>

This translates to: if the shift key is held, target the focus with Power Word: Shield. If the shift key is not held, use the next bracket - which is empty, so that means the normal logic, as if you just pressed the Silence button itself. Valid modifiers for these are ctrl, shift and alt. You can even use them with different abilities, like this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Black Powder; Eviscerate</code>

If this macro was bound to say, R, then a Sub Rogue could swap between finishers but only using up one actionbar slot. Hold Shift for AOE, hold nothing for single-target.

Using these in combat is entirely personal preference based on how you want your actionbars to look - it can be awkward making macros when there are more than enough actionbars to just keybind the combos instead, but they can definitely help for target selection.

The most universally useful version of this, though, is probably for mounts. Check this out:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Windborne Velocidrake; [mod:ctrl] Grand Expedition Yak; [mod:alt] Mighty Caravan Brutosaurus; Invincible</code>

You can put this on one button and have all of the mounts you could possibly need! Shift is a Dragonriding mount, Ctrl is the Transmog Yak, Alt is the auction dino, no modifier is Invincible. It’s pretty handy, but we can go even further. Dragonflight removed the old [talent] conditional but replaced it with a new one called [known] that checks if you know a spell. So now, we can do crazy stuff like this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [noknown:33389/33391/34090/90265] Summon Chauffeur; [mod:shift, known:376777] Windborne Velocidrake; [mod:ctrl] Grand Expedition Yak; [mod:alt] Mighty Caravan Brutosaurus; [known:Travel Form] Travel Form; Invincible</code>

So in addition to the above, it also checks three things: One, if your character doesn’t actually know how to use a mount, it summons the chauffeur instead no matter what you hold down. Next, if you hold Shift but haven’t learned Dragonriding yet, it’ll default to using your normal mount. But, before it uses your usual mount, it checks if you have Travel Form and uses that instead - so one button, every mount you need. You can also add [flyable] if you want to use a flying mount when you can fly and a ground mount otherwise.

Before we move onto the DPS ones, the [known] conditional can be used for a few more things. Say you have a choice talent node, Incapacitating Roar or Mighty Bash. As a Druid, you can do this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [known:Incapacitating Roar] Incapacitating Roar; [known:Mighty Bash] Mighty Bash.</code>

This lets you use one button to stun or disrupt an enemy target based on which spell you know - the only caveat is that it shows as a question mark when you have neither - it used to render fine, just like when you drag an unlearned talent to the bar, but that broke.

Over on Fury Warrior, there’s a nifty use-case:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [known: Annihilator]Slam;Raging Blow</code>

If a Fury Warrior knows Annihilator, the button will be Slam. If they don’t, it’ll be Raging Blow. Technically the talent Storm of Swords adds Slam to the rotation, but you’ll always take Annihilator with it anyway. This means you can change a talent without having to mess around with your hotbars. Obviously a talent loadout change will shift your hotbars with it, but for when you’re manually tinkering or have a weird setup, this works perfectly.

Squeeze Out Extra Damage & Save Your Fingers

Now, the DPS-increasing ones. You can macro a bunch of stuff together, but only if only one of the abilities is on the GCD. It may seem a bit restrictive… but why press two or three buttons when you can press one?

<code>#showtooltip Shadow Dance
/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Symbols of Death</code>

This one uses Shadow Dance and Symbols of Death at the same time as Rogue - generally speaking, if you have both Shadow Dance and Symbols up, you’ll want to press both at the same time. This itself doesn’t even trigger the GCD since neither are on it, so we can actually take it one step further.

<code>#showtooltip Shadow Dance
/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Symbols of Death
/cast Shadowstrike</code>

There’s a tiny bit of lag between pressing Shadow Dance and your actionbar letting you press the Shadowstrike button, but macroing it in means it goes off immediately, potentially letting you fit an extra attack into the Shadow Dance window. You’ll still want to press Shadowstrike with a different button at other times, but this can be a great way to get big wins - and if you don’t want to use Shadowstrike, you can press this button while your GCD is rolling and everything will cast except for it. If you want to be nuts, you can go even further by using your trinkets. You can use items by slot directly with /use, so we can make sure we try our trinket every time Shadow Dance is pressed.

<code>#showtooltip Shadow Dance
/use 13
/cast Shadow Blades
/cast Shadow Dance
/cast Symbols of Death
/cast Shadowstrike</code>

You can macro trinkets with most of your cooldowns this way, working best when the cooldown actually syncs. It might not be optimal every time, but if you forget your trinket regularly this is definitely worth it.

<code>#showtooltip Avenging Wrath
/use 13
/cast Avenging Wrath</code>

To move on, the big pet macros are next.

<code>#showtooltip Barbed Shot
/petattack
/cast Barbed Shot
/cast Bite
/cast Smack
/cast Claw</code>

For Hunters, this will tell your pet to start attacking your Barbed Shot target immediately, and force the pet to use its basic attack if it has it ready to go - this can circumvent the occasional bit of lag time it takes a pet to decide to attack, and it also forces them to instantly swap targets when you do. Back in 2011 this was apparently a few % of DPS gain, but it’s probably less now.

Realistically, This should more or less be on most of your regular abilities as a BM or SV Hunter if you want to min-max - and at least on the ones you open with and press most.

This also works for Unholy DKs and Warlocks, so here are example macros. The Warlock one is long, but that’s because it needs to try every pet ability.

<code>#showtooltip Scourge Strike
/petattack
/cast Scourge Strike
/cast Claw</code><code>#showtooltip [spec:1/2]Shadow Bolt;[spec:3]Incinerate
/petattack
/cast [spec:1/2]Shadow Bolt;[spec:3]Incinerate
/cast Firebolt
/cast Felbolt
/cast Consuming Shadows
/cast Shadow Bite
/cast Tongue Lash
/cast Lash of Pain
/cast Bladedance
/cast Legion Strike
/cast Mortal Cleave</code>

If you struggle with keybinds, this next one is for you:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [harm]Smite;Flash Heal</code>

This macro uses Smite if you’re targeting an enemy, but uses Flash Heal otherwise. Basically, [harm] and [help] are valid conditionals - if you’re targeting an enemy, harm is true, if you’re targeting an ally, help is true. These also work with mouseover, though you need to give it a few clauses like this to make sure it catches everything - mouseover help, mouseover harm, target harm, then the heal spell. Awkward, but it works!

You can run this to use important keybinds as hybrid DPS and healing spells, saving some pretty damn vital keybinds on specs that really struggle.

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead]Flash Heal;[@mouseover,harm,nodead][harm]Smite;Flash Heal</code>

The opposite is useful for DPS who want to be able to off-heal, or heal themselves - the key is to swap the order.

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead]Stormstrike;[@mouseover,help,nodead][help]Healing Surge;Stormstrike</code>

For Hunters, Mages and Paladins, this next part is vital.

<code>#showtooltip
/cancelaura Aspect of the Turtle
/cast Aspect of the Turtle</code><code>#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block</code><code>#showtooltip
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield</code><code>#showtooltip
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/cast Blessing of Protection</code>

You can’t attack during Aspect of the Turtle or Ice Block, and sometimes Divine Shield and BoP can make mobs you’re tanking or fighting behave weirdly. That means you might want to remove them easily - and these macros do that. The reason the cancelaura is first is that, the first time you press the button, it’ll try to cancel, fail, then cast the spell. The next time you press it, it will successfully cancel the aura.  For Mages, you can optionally add a /cast Blink to the end if you want to make sure you instantly escape whatever danger you Ice Blocked yourself in.

Some Less Useful But Fun Stuff

Now, to round us out, a few little fun bits - [spec]! This time Druid-specific, relies on the [spec] conditional, and it takes you into your appropriate form on just one button - unless you’re Resto, then it cancels your form, which is he same thing. It can also be changed to use Treant Form, if you prefer. You can also use this to change actionbar contents based on form if the first actionbar paging isn’t enough for you.

<code>#showtooltip [spec:1] Moonkin Form;[spec:2] Cat Form;[spec:3] Bear Form; [spec:4] Treant Form
/cast [spec:1] Moonkin Form;[spec:2] Cat Form;[spec:3] Bear Form;
/cancelform [spec:4]
#Uses Treant form tooltip so it isn't a ? on Resto.</code><code>#showtooltip
/cast [spec:1] Moonkin Form;[spec:2] Cat Form;[spec:3] Bear Form; [spec:4] Treant Form</code>

There’s also [stealth], then [stance], which includes Warrior stances, Paladin auras, Shadow Dance, and then [form], which handles nearly everything else!

Warriors get to stance dance with one button, like this:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [stance:2]Defensive Stance;[spec:1/3,stance:0/1]Battle Stance;[spec:2,stance:0/1]Berserker Stance;</code>

Rogues get to use one button for their Stealth attacks here. Make sure to bind Ambush seperately on Outlaw since with the talent you can get Ambush procs without being Stealthed. For Sub it’s perfect.

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [spec:3,stance][spec:3,stealth]Shadowstrike;[spec:3]Backstab;[spec:1/2,stealth]Ambush;[spec:2]Sinister Strike;[spec:1]Mutilate</code>

And Shadow Priests can make sure they’re in Shadowform before using an ability:

<code>#showtooltip
/cast [noform:1]Shadowform;Vampiric Touch</code>

That’s it for macros! At least, without going into any of the crazy niche possibilities that the add-on M6 allows, the benefits of Macro Toolkit, or looking at the one-button macros that Gnome Sequencer enables. We’ll leave that for another day - this should be everything you need to have a better time in Dragonflight without any more addons. We’ve certainly recommended enough! Have we sparked any ideas for macro use here? All of these and more are available in a doc linked in the description - enjoy!