/stopcasting – A Caster’s Friend for Life

Today, as I sit in my office at work bored out of my mind, I have decided to write about one of my favorite techniques for getting the most dps out of your mage (or other spell casting class). One thing I’m sure any World of Warcraft player has noticed at some point in time is that the game lags at times. You know it all too well…here you are, casting away at *insert boss name here* and things are going great. Fireball after fireball, you’re melting said boss’s face when all of a sudden your spell cast lags and you have to wait a bit longer than 3 seconds for your spell to cast. This is where /stopcasting comes in to save the day.

Now in order to utilize /stopcasting macros to their fullest potential, you will need to download an addon called Quartz. Quartz is a cast bar mod that is highly configurable and can be downloaded from the WoWAce website. The thing that Quartz does that makes it so unique is that it has a latency meter built into it that shows how much your fireball (or other spell…forgive me, I’m a fire mage!! lol) cast time is lagging.

As you can see in the image above, the red section shows how much you’re lagging. The more you lag, the bigger the red section is; the less you lag, the smaller it is. Simple enough, right?

“But I have a l337 internet connection! I never lag!” Get over it! Everyone’s spells lag a little, even if you notice it or not.

First of all, begin by creating macros for which ever spell(s) you use the most. Your macro should look something like this:

/stopcasting
/cast Fireball

Basically all you have to do is press your newly created macro to cast and re-cast it every time your bar gets into the red area. It will then bypass the lag and cast the spell and start a new one without having to wait for the bar to go all the way through to the end. The only thing about this macro is that you won’t be able to spam your spells. You will have to learn to press once, wait, press again, etc.

Now for those of you who are concerned about Blizzard’s policy concerning this, it is totally ‘legal’ and Blizzard knows about it. In fact, Blizzard intends on correcting this spell casting lag issue in the 2.3 (I believe) patch, so /stopcasting macros after 2.3 will no longer be necessary. But until then, enjoy this little tip on maximizing your dps!!

~Jacob

Mage-ish Macros

Macros…love ‘em or hate ‘em, the truth is they make playing the game a whole lot easier at times. One of the main things I use as a mage is the /focus macro. It is probably one of the most useful (and probably least used) functions in the game. Basically it allows you to keep track of a certain mob/player/npc without having to keep a constant eye on that target. Now as a mage, that is ESPECIALLY useful for sheeping (or pigging, or turtling, or whichever polymorph you prefer). But other than the Focus Polymorph macro, which I’ll get into in a minute, there are other useful macros that I like to use.

So without further ado, here’s the list:

1. Interrupt Counterspell

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Basically this macro allows you to interrupt whatever spell you’re currently casting and cast counterspell on your current target. This is useful for bosses such as the Shade of Aran, where interrupting spell casts are important to the fight.

2. Focus Polymorph

#showtooltip Polymorph
/stopcasting
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph

This is my favorite macro of all the ones I use. Basically what it does is sets your current target as your focus and sheeps it. But the best part is while you’re dps’ing another mob, you can re-sheep your focus target without actually having to look for it and click on it, etc etc.

Now there is one down side to this macro and it annoys me at times. This macro will not let you change your sheep target unless your current one is dead. So lets say you’re fighting 3 mobs. One of which is the main target, second is a sapped target, and third is your sheep. Your group kills the main target first, but then your sheep breaks and the main tank decides to kill your sheep before the sap and then tells you to sheep the sapped target while they kill your sheep. The only way you can do this is to manually clear your focus with a /clearfocus command. So it’s a good idea to also make a macro to clear your focus if a situation such as this ever occurs.

3. Focus Counterspell

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus] Counterspell

The only boss encounter I use this macro on is the Romulo & Julianne fight. The reason this macro is useful for that fight is because usually mages are dps’ing Romulo and also need to interrupt Julianne’s heals. As long as you target Julianne and use the /focus command, you should be able to dps Romulo down and CS Julianne without ever changing targets! HAX!!

4. Mana Gem Use/Conjure

#showtooltip Mana Emerald
/use Mana Emerald
/cast [button:2] Conjure Mana Emerald

This is another macro I LOVE! It also saves action bar real estate by putting two actions into one. What this macro does is simply conjure a mana emerald when you right click and use it when you left click.

That is pretty much all the macros I use as a mage. I’m sure there are many other macros that other mages like to use (PoM/AP/Pyro comes to mind), but these are mine. Hope you enjoyed this delve down macro lane, and if you have any others that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear your comments.

~Jacob

Ricco’s Suave Blog of Magedom

Well today marks the beginning of a new era…

Ok maybe it doesn’t, but after hearing a friend ask for a blogging program it made me want to start my own. At first I didn’t know what I should make a blog about (since my life is rather boring and monotonous), but then I had the idea of making a blog where I would talk about one of my favorite things, World of Warcraft! Specifically things that pertain to the Mage class, since after all, mages are the class I know most about and play most often.

Just to let you, the reader, know a little bit about me, my name is Jacob and I play a Gnome mage named Ricco on the Azjol-Nerub server. I am currently in Knights of the Runes, an end-game guild who have progressed through Gruul’s Lair and will soon begin SSC/The Eye.

So this is it, from now on I shall post my plethora of mage knowledge on this site and hopefully it will help some lowly noob who is re-rolling a mage for the first time.

~Jacob

Disclaimer: If no topics get posted or this site doesn’t get updated often, I’ll take back my ‘plethora’