Loading ...Stop using your Bad Macro Now rather than Later
We are all finding out pretty quickly that there aren’t a huge number of choices when it comes to Glyph customization. Guess what… you’ve got even less choice than you think. A lot of the Glyphs that you’ve looked up already and dreamed about… aren’t going to be available till the expansion because they require a higher level Scribe to do it.
1 Major Glyph we’re Waiting for…
You’re not alone if you were very disappointed that this gem isn’t accessible till Wrath of the Lich King. The Glyph of Blocking stands out as the strongest of all tanking Glyphs in a single target tanking situation when it comes to increasing your damage output. (That’s what we care about now folks) Initially the short time period of the buff (10 seconds) is a little discouraging, but if you stop to think, you’ll realize that this buff is actually going to be active constantly as long as you are consistently using Shield Slam. (Between a 6 second cooldown and Sword and Board, this should be very easy)
However, it’s not going to affect your first Shield Slam which brings me to the macro that I’ve hinted at in the title.
/use all my trinkets
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam
Good? It used to be, but it’s not anymore. Macros like that one prematurely blow all your cooldowns and make it so that you don’t get the maximum value out of your shiny, new Glyph. What you’ll want to use instead is a macro that just ties to together your block value trinkets with Shield Block and keeps Shield Slam independent of it completely. I repeat, do not make a macro that has both Shield Block and Shield Slam on it. This will ensure that when Shield Slam #2 rolls around baked with 10% more Block Value that you’ll be able to get the maximum punch out of your Shield Block Buff.
The Moral of the Story
Even though right now, you don’t have access to this Glyph. You should play like you do and get used to having to utilize Shield Block and Shield Slam independently. Most importantly, make sure that your trinkets are tied to Shield Block not Shield Slam.
p.s. There’s another Glyph Post Tomorrow too 
October 16th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I guess, since I’ve never used a macro for tanking except stance dancing and popping BR for nightbane, that it should be easier to for me to pick up on doing things manually.
Currently, i just have heroic strike and sunder armor glyphs. However, I have not seen a minor glyph in the AH around or being made at all.
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October 16th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Minor glyphs are learned on a 20 hour cooldown, so they will become more prevalent within a week. Give it a bit ‘o time
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admin reply on October 16, 2008 4:08 pm:
Ya, I’m conflicted between waiting for guild members to learn them or paying the outrageous prices for them on AH and getting them immediately. Unfortunately, when it comes to this kind of thing, I’m an impatient man and will likely be droppin’ 30g per Glyph to make sure I show up to the raid tonight with 3 Minor Glyphs.
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Orenus reply on October 17, 2008 9:05 am:
The methods of learning major and minor glyphs just seems completely backwards. Minor glyphs are 3-5 times the price of major glyphs on my server’s AH.
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October 16th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I saw my friend Yakra using a Shield Block & Shield Slam macro, but I didn’t like it. I use them independently, just as before, though I have moved it away from Revenge now. I’m actually having a hard time finding a logical place to put it on my hotbar.
We’ve gained slots for Berserker Rage, Charge, Shockwave, Cleave (more important now), Mocking Blow, & Intervene (for some). Guess I’ll elaborate on this slightly off-topic ramble in a future entry.
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admin reply on October 16, 2008 4:03 pm:
An interesting aside: Yakra is on Darkspear with me (He’s just a dirty Alliance) and he’s also started up a tanking blog at:
http://mirrorshield.blogspot.com/
It’s definitely worth a look
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Arideni reply on October 17, 2008 7:28 am:
Yeah, thanks for the heads-up. Darkspear has some fantastic players, me? I’m on Illidan myself. Thanks again, Veneretio!
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Furiat/Vege reply on October 17, 2008 12:07 am:
Still, warrior is one of the classes with almost no problems when it comes to hotbars - it was easy enough for me to put all my skills on bars when compared to my main - huntah.
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Tatian reply on October 17, 2008 5:42 am:
Are you serious? I have 2 bars with key bindings 1-9 and shift 1-9. And in any given raid i will use 80% of those if everything goes right and 95% of those if things get crazy.
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Draco reply on October 17, 2008 9:15 am:
Yeah my bars are always full, gotta be ready for anything and be versatile.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I have to disagree about stopping using it at all. I currently use this macro and **most definitely** will not be changing it come wrath.
The way it can be done is, like me, have a regular shield slam on your bars (you use this once or to set off the glyph) and then have a “spam all cooldowns” button (this macro - that you can use for the rest of the fight or when the glyph is up) anyway.
The reason this macro is actually good is that it allows you to get 4 shield-slams off (assuming that you are exceptionally unlucky with sword and board) with all of your +SBV mods up. Normally, you would only get three because of human reaction. Using this macro (after activation of the glyph) over manual activation of trinkets/SB - even in a single macro - will still yeild more with sword and board too.
I dont know. I will not stop using this macro, even in wrath. It may take a bit more micro-management but what the hell, bigger shield slams for longer :p
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Sanelora reply on October 17, 2008 12:12 am:
BTW, SBV is also good for AoE tanking thanks to damage shield
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Hydrix reply on October 17, 2008 3:40 am:
Sanelora, the advance to having it separate from shield slam is that you can also use shieldblock combined with your trinkets as an oh s**t button as well, independent of shield slam. When I pop both my BV trinkest and shield block I sit at almost 2700 block value. That’s enough to typically keep me alive, like a mini shield wall, until the next heal comes.
You would do yourself a service to break apart from this macro.
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Djiss reply on October 17, 2008 6:32 am:
Do you mind to link your toon armory? I’m curious about the gear you use to get that high, at best I reach 1k sbv w/o SB, but I lose way too much def.
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Hydrix reply on October 17, 2008 7:21 am:
I’m at 492 defense I believe when I put on all my BV gear…
If you wanna look me up I’m Hydrix on Area 52.
Sanelora reply on October 17, 2008 7:44 am:
You can hit the macro, provided that you have SS at the end and it will pop all the trinkets and shield block regardless of if SS is on CD. If you do what i do then you will have a regular SS on the side anyway.
Personally, i sit at roughly 2700-2800 SBV with everything popped.
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October 17th, 2008 at 1:25 am
How about:
/use [nomod:ctrl] all my trinkets
/cast [nomod:ctrl] Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam
Now first time you shield slam hold ctrl down… Easy!
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Yakra reply on October 17, 2008 5:03 am:
This is more or less what I use. I’m a large fan of shift or ctrl mod’s on my keys, do do things like add or remove heroic strike, shield block, ect. I think no-trinkets/SB is the default, and Shift adds them to mine.
Also, thanks for the plug Vene =D - I suppose I can overlook your horde-ness for now (but come 80, LOKI is going to be in your capitol citiez, killing your leaderz - again ;p ).
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 7:09 am:
That’s a good comprise, Ricky and makes for a very strong macro. I think I’d still be hard pressed to not have Shield Block on my bar somewhere by itself though.
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Yakra reply on October 17, 2008 9:28 am:
I wrote a semi-counter post, that promotes a macro like we’re talking about here. I’ll get a supplementary screenshot up ASAP of my layout.
Vene - I do have SB alone on my bar, right above this macro, as a way of tracking its cooldown. I just typically activate it through this button.
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 9:37 am:
I think we’re going to find that Shield Block is going to be used Defensively in the early stages of WotLK the majority of the time. So, it’s definitely good to have access to it by itself.
Also, since Yakra fails at shameless promtion, the following is his excellent counter article:
http://mirrorshield.blogspot.com/2008/10/start-using-good-macros-now.html
Ridlyblade reply on October 17, 2008 10:54 am:
Hmm…modifers in macros hint at clicking. I’m not afraid to say that clicking is bad.
Sure, yeah, 3.0 is here and threat generation is a joke now, but you can still see a difference in TPS of a hotkeyer vs someone that clicks their buttons And odds are they’re a keyboard turner. >
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October 17th, 2008 at 6:30 am
So far I am using 2 major and 2 minor. Majors are
Glyph of Sunder Armor
Glyph of Revenge
Minors are
Glyph of Thunderclap
Glyph of Charge
Sundering 2 targets at once = win
Free heroic strikes after revenge = lots of win
Extended range on insanely high threat generating skill = pull more, pull more!
Glyph of Charge + Warbringer - I can pull next set of trash without having to leave combat now! They almost dead? Good! Charge! 30 yard range is fantastic!
Tanking is so overly simple now I really want to see how they gonna make it challenging again. Cause now I can quite literally chain pull an entire heroic from start to finish only stopping when the healer begs me for a break.
Al’ar went down with no problems at all, no wipe or nothing on our second try at him. Our first try being 2 months ago and the decision was made to progress in ssc instead.
I love how we getting our moment in the sun but I am so looking forward to seeing how they gonna make the new places challenging for us!
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admin reply on October 17, 2008 6:37 am:
They’ll make places harder by making stuff hit you insanely hard.
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Kavtor reply on October 17, 2008 7:54 am:
Or they’ll make you move a lot, click things, etc.
At this stage when 2.0 hit, we were saying the same things. Then we found the original versions of Mag, Gruul, Hydross, Vashj, Kael…
They can ‘dumb the game down’ a whole heck of a lot, and still make the game pretty challenging.
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October 17th, 2008 at 6:44 am
On the Glyph of Sunder Armor, wouldn’t that break a nearby sheep?
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 7:07 am:
Nope.
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Sleepingbag reply on October 17, 2008 8:08 am:
Does it do damage or cause threat on the second mob? I was wondering if it is similar to the Glyph of cleave as an increase in threat gen on a second target.
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 8:28 am:
Threat, I don’t know. It does not cause damage though. It just applies the debuff. I’ll try to test it sometime this weekend. (…or hopefully someone will just post their findings ;))
Ridlyblade reply on October 17, 2008 10:31 am:
Satrina at Tankspot.com has done testing and the threat is applied to the secondary target. (although i’m not sure i agree with their normalized threat modifier of 207.3 but I’m working the math out myself so that might change)
Here’s the thread with the #’s
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/39775-wow-3-0-threat-values.html
Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 10:50 am:
I think you’ll find that Satrina is very, very meticulous about being 100% accurate. Nice find, Ridlyblade!
Ridlyblade reply on October 17, 2008 10:56 am:
I don’t doubt that work hasn’t gone into it to find the #s. I just like seeing if I can derive the same #s myself and reproduce the testing as much as possible so when I give advice to people i semi-feel like I’ve done my share of research into it instead of just regurgitating what I read.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:06 am
So the Glyph of Sunder Armor does NOT work with devistate I assume? If so maybe I better add sunder back to my action bar…….Still working on my post patch rotation.
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 8:29 am:
Glyph of Sunder Armor DOES work with Devastate.
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Yggdrasil reply on October 17, 2008 10:16 am:
I feel very stupid for having assumed otherwise. That is huge.
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Matt reply on October 17, 2008 8:50 am:
Glad to hear that glyph of sunder works with devastate. I’m responding to this post because it mentions rotations in the brave new world of 3.0.2. In short, I have no idea what kind of a rotation I should be using (part of this, I’m sure, has to do with the fact that I’m pretty new to tanking, though not new to the warrior class). It seems right now that I just have more skills (and rage) than I have global cooldowns, and I’m not sure how best to use them. I’d love to see a column with some suggestions for rotations in various situations.
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Veneretio reply on October 17, 2008 8:59 am:
I’ll probably put something official together eventually, but ultimately Dezzy of Will Tank for Healz basically nailed it already in the following post:
http://www.willtankforhealz.com/2008/10/tanking-rotations-in-wrath.html
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October 17th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I only kept the macro at first when I still had my 2pc t5 bonus. now that that’s gone, I agree… the macro has no real use.
I’ve noticed my BR PLUMMETED when 3.0 Hit… but I’ve managed to make do. I had NO problems in BT last night.
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October 21st, 2008 at 8:58 am
glyp of mocking blow is also a decent minor. it gives it 20% increased dmg
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admin reply on October 21, 2008 9:00 am:
25% and I suppose it would be okay, if it’s something you used consistently. Personally, I never find myself using it anymore.
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Kodora reply on November 27, 2008 7:40 am:
I used mocking blow for the first time since the expansion the other day (@76), and it was only because my taunt missed because i was trying to tank hall of lightning (level 80 elites).
Other than that i’ve never had a taunt miss and therefore never used my mocking blow
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November 27th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I understand why this macro is bad for the very first instance of shield slam, but for every other one this will be good won’t it?
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