Loading ...The Art of Warbringer
Warbringer has proved to be one of the strongest utility tools in our arsenal. With 3.1, it was magically buffed even more to feature the Intercept ability as well which resulted in Warriors everywhere scratching their heads as to where they were going to fit another ability usable in Defensive Stance. Thankfully, the solution doesn’t need to take up any space at all.
Step 1: Laying Plans
Ideally, we want to be able to use both Charge and Intercept in one button. We can accomplish this by the following:
/castsequence Charge, Intercept;
Step 2: Waging War
It’s not enough though to simply be able to use both in one button we also want to make sure to always use Charge instead of Intercept if Charge is active. We can accomplish this as such:
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept;
Step 3: Attack of Stratagem
What could make this macro truly powerful though is not simply solving a space issue nor prioritizing that solution, but instead by unifying all aspects of Warbringer. This leaves us with our grand finale:
/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, Intercept; [help] Intervene
Step 4: Tactical Dispositions
The above macro elegantly combines Charge, Intercept and Intervene. It’ll use Charge always before Intercept and it’ll only attempt to use these abilities if the target is an enemy. However, should the target be friendly, it will Intervene them.
Step 5: Energy
Despite the simplicity of this macro, it’s power is in how easy it allows you to be creative. I’ll straight up say that if you click this ability, you aren’t going to find it very effective. If you move with your mouse though and as a result, select targets with your mouse frequently, this macro will change the way you play dramatically. The raw speed advantage you’ll gain by being able to click randomly on anything in an area and know that be that target friend or foe that you’ll be there ready to tank is a massive advantage.
Step 6: Weak Points & Strong
You may have noticed something this macro lacks and that’s the full functionality of Intervene. It’s true this macro isn’t a replacement for Intervene if you’re an avid Intervene user. It’s about movement and frankly, a macro that did realize the full potential of Intervene would, in fact, be inferior. The reason is an unexpected change of target due to aggro or even just random spell casting could have you racing towards your ally instead of towards the position on the field you wanted to be in.
Step 7: Maneuvering
This macro is, of course, not all fun and games. As is the case with most macros, you’re always risking something by using them. In the case of this macro, when you really want to be stunning a mob, you may accidentally Intervene an ally. Even the act of Intervening an ally rather than entering combat with a foe can be disorienting. Personally, I haven’t found the former to happen more than a few rare occasions and I’ve found the latter is more about getting used to the macro than anything else.
Step 8: Variation in Tactics
The biggest advantage to this macro is that the majority of the time it requires very little thought to be used extremely effectively. You’ll find yourself racing into stun a mob on the outside of a fight then Intervening back to an ally to get in position for another back of incoming mobs and you’ll do this effortlessly and often.
Step 9: The Army on the March
When racing to an ally’s aid, this macro begs the question, “Do I save my friend or stun my enemy?” While most of the time, you’re going to want to use this macro instinctively and not worry so much about accuracy, once you’re ready to turn this jack-of-all-trades into a precision strike, you’ll find that this macro suddenly commands a lot more of your awareness than when you originally started utilizing it. You must know if the mob is stunnable. If it is, you should pursue the enemy. You must know how much aggro you’re going to need to generate on the target in order to gain aggro. If you need not gain much then you want to purse your enemy again in hopes of gaining his aggression as quickly as possible. If you need to generate a lot of threat then you should save your friend. The Intervene is guaranteed to soak up one hit from your enemy as you switch to it in order to start the uphill battle of getting threat away from your friend.
Step 10: Terrain
The macro ultimately can’t do much for you other than aid in fostering your innate instinct quickly. Should you see fire in-front of you then it’s up to you to determine whether it’s safer to Intervene your friend on the left then Charge to the right thereby avoiding the flames. Or, if you’re better off soaking up some damage by racing through the flames. The beauty of this macro is that should you choose the former then it’s a whole lot easier to pull off.
Step 11: The Nine Situations
The number of situations where this macro is effective far surpasses nine and as a result, it is most certainly here where my attempt at paralleling the genius works of Sun Tzu fails. (Not that I don’t realize one could have made a case for it breaking down a whole lot sooner than this) That said the 9+ situations you’ll use this will all for the most part be movement based and I assure you they’ll dramatically increase the speed at which you move around an encounter.
Step 12: The Attack by Fire
Ignis in particular really shows off where this macro is amazing. Handling the adds on the Ignis encounter can be very complex, but consider the following situation. You move an add into the fire and Concussion Blow it, moving out. You Charge in stunning it again, Intervene out minimizing time spent in the fire as well as setting up another stun in the form of Intercept. Using this macro, you can be dancing in and out of fire constantly and barely having to think about it. (which I imagine would be especially nice to those of you that rarely or never use Intervene in the first place)
Step 13: The Use of Spies
Don’t believe me though. Try it out yourselves and let me know how you like the feel of this macro.
The Addendum of the Art
Already the comment section has spawned a number of excellent points worth sharing here in regards to this macro’s pros and cons as well as how one could derive differing macros from it.
The most important point mentioned by both knagh and diaz was that of spamming the button and the tendency for it to cause both Charge and Intercept to be used simultaneously. It’s something you won’t necessarily notice at first if you’re Glyphed into the improved range on Charge which many of us are, but it’s there and it’s a very real reality of using the macro. If you’re finding that you’re more spam happy than most then consider the following:
/cast [harm] Charge; [help] Intervene
Yes, it doesn’t solve the problem of where to put your Intercept button, but it still makes moving around the battlefield far, far easier and intuitive and makes it so you’re actually utilizing Intervene. Taking a step back to the original macro for those that really are interested in an all inclusive solution there’s 2 approaches you can take:
- Add /cast [mod:shift] Intervene to the end
- Add fully functional Intervene
This will result in the following with thanks going to Yakra of Mirror Shield:
/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, Intercept; [help] Intervene
/cast [mod:shift] Intervene
This will result in the following with thanks to bandar:
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
I can’t emphasize enough that not every macro is going to work for everyone. As mentioned in this post, virtually every macro seems to always have some small downside for the convenience it offers. What you need to determine as a player is if that convenience outweighs the downsides of using the macro no matter how small they may be.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 am
hey great post! I’m going to use that macro on Ignis tonight
Mobility is definitely one of the few things that sets the Warrior tank apart from the rest, and having an all-in-one macro like this helps cut down on the number of buttons to mess with!
I like.
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 7:46 am:
Razorscale is another fight where you’re really going to enjoy having this macro. It’s one of those fights where Warbringer truly sets Warriors apart from the other tanking classes.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 7:32 am
I use something similar, but instead of the [help] feature, I use
/cast [mod:shift] intervene
on another line. Then I can use it on a mob if need be.
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 7:43 am:
Ya, I’ve got Intervene by itself bound elsewhere atm because I just never find myself using it for it’s target of target purpose anymore. The change in the range of Taunt really was the big kicker on that one as I used to use Intervene in order to get in position to Taunt mobs, constantly.
That said, maybe an interesting macro these days would be:
/cast Taunt;
/cast [mod:shift] Intervene
Basically, you’d use it if you needed to be in position to pick up a mob off someone and you didn’t want to have to wait for the mob to get to you not to mention it could put you in better position if your Taunt was resisted.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 7:39 am
Wow, I had never thought about macro-ing all the charges together like this. I think I’ll still keep Intervene on its own button as well for situations where I know I just want to use Intervene, or at least until I feel more comfortable with the macro.
Also, in your Step 12, I think you meant “Intercept” when you said “…setting up another stun in the form of Intervene.”
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 7:50 am:
You’re right, I did mean Intercept. Nice catch
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April 23rd, 2009 at 7:56 am
This macro has changed my tanking life.
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Rhoche reply on April 23, 2009 10:45 am:
LOL best response so far!
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April 23rd, 2009 at 8:01 am
Are you seeing any issues with mashing the macro button? Prior to 3.1 i had the /castsequence part of the macro for beserker stance only, and found that mashing the button while i had > 10 rage would result in a double charge-intercept. i think this happens b/c charge does not activate the global cooldown, but i haven’t looked into it very thoroughly.
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diaz reply on April 23, 2009 8:21 am:
Yes, if you spam the button it will use both charge and intercept together. This almost denies the rage benefit of charge and, well, puts both on cooldown. If it weren’t for this problem it would be perfect.
I still use it, but having to be careful about pressing your charge more than once can be really annoying.
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 8:35 am:
That’s a good point and may prove that I’ll need to go back to my original macro of Charge + Intervene instead in time. So far, I haven’t noticed it being an issue, but then perhaps I haven’t been in enough stressful situations yet either since 3.1’s release.
I’ll be sure to closely monitor whether or not this presents itself as an issue.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
This is the Intervene macro I came up with
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
/startattack
I like it cause it allows me to target friendlies and Intervene them or if I need to it’ll Intervene my target’s target. This was really helpful in the XT-002 encounter and Razorscale and handling Kologarn’s rumblers.
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 8:39 am:
Yes, it certainly can be done, but like I say in Step 6, I find putting the full functionality of Intervene in the macro to be inferior. That said, I probably should update the post with your macro for those curious to try the true “everything Warbringer” macro.
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Stanoslav reply on April 23, 2009 11:06 am:
I’m not a macro guru … but why can’t we combine the intervene conditions on Bandar’s macro (effectively making an “or” condition)?
/cast [help][target=targettarget, help] Intervene
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April 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 am
I have the following macro with Zerker rage so that I get a good burst of rage at the start of a fight and its not on the GCD.
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept;
/cast Berserker Rage;
Then start attacking with a SS marco.
/cast Shield Slam
/cast Shield Block
I really like your addition of Intervene, I will try that when I get home.
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Stanoslav reply on April 23, 2009 11:18 am:
Grido … I think you meant to put Shield Block first and then Slam.
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Grido reply on April 23, 2009 2:30 pm:
Correct. Thank you.
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam
I also like this macro because it usually procs Revenge for a good burst of threat. Having these secondary buffs on my main rotation means I never forget to use them as they get triggered as soon as they come off cool down.
Another trick I like with the Berserker Rage version of the marco the ability to use the same key to trigger Berserker Rage while in combat (The Charge will fail but the Berserker Rage will work)
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April 23rd, 2009 at 9:59 am
Nice post Ven. I admit that I’ve overlooked that Warbringer allows us to use Intercept as well as Charge. I will definitely give this macro a try.
I’m a bit confused about this macro:
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
I don’t know enough about macros to understand how a /cast will work when preceeded by a /castsequence. Under what condition(s) will I Intervene rather than Charge/Intercept? Secondly why is it necessary to have the [target=targettarget, help]? I thought that Intervene was modified several patches ago to make this unnecessary.
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Veneretio reply on April 23, 2009 10:16 am:
The way it works is if the target of the target you are targeting (O.o) is a friendly target, it will Intervene. If that target is an enemy then it will Charge or Intercept. If the actual target you have selected is friendly, it will always Intervene.
As I said in Step 6 though, I don’t recommend this as mobs with random casts or if a ranged pulls aggro, you could find yourself running in the absolute wrong direction purely by accident. That said, no harm in testing it, it may suit you better than me.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I’ll have to try the charge / intervene combo in PVP, now that we’re not stuck in zerk stance. Or, at least not stuck as much. Damn pummel.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
i been using this macro since the relase of 3.1
took about 2 hours of testing in a party on to small boars outside orgrimmar to make it work corect …
i sometimes find miself in a situation where i charge then it instantly intervene the player highest on aggro
ex : Iron council fight
i tank the vrykul add;
dk tank gets the big big dude and he does the initial pull so all threat goes to him at the beggining;
i charge the vrykul -> then it automaticly intervenes the dk tank -> click macro one more time and back to my vrykul with intercept.
Personal opinion about WARBRINGER : it is the best thing that happened to warr tank since TBC.
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April 24th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Where’s the Vene that shot down his readers for using macro’s?
It is handy, though… but I can’t help but feel that the more ‘tools’ we use for the job, the less experienced/qualified/professional we become.
/ww out
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Yakra reply on April 24, 2009 8:40 am:
Vene doesn’t shoot down people for using macros. He shoots down using bad macros.
Like most technology, macros can be used for good, evil, or stupid.
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April 24th, 2009 at 7:04 am
One of your best posts ever - this macro vastly improves my mobility and gets me to raid trouble spots in a heartbeat. Thanks man!
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April 24th, 2009 at 10:26 am
That is very cool! I’m a bit nervous of having Intervene on the same macro as the others, but the charge/intercept one was awesome on Razorscale this week.
I know it’s good because the other tanks are jealous
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April 24th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Regarding the problem with intercepting right after the charge.
Another ability in the sequence could solve the problem (and create a other problem …):
/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, shield slam, Intercept; [help] Intervene
So with the extra shield slam in the sequence, we cant intercept and charge at the same time. However the problem is, that we can only intercept, when we use the shield slam. I guess in many cases shield slam is the ability we would use right after the charge.
Its no perfect solution… But maybe a other ability instead of shield slam?
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April 25th, 2009 at 8:55 am
The problem I have with intervene is I have to click or F2-5 off my target, hit intervene, then, after disorienting myself, possibly rotate myself back to facing the mob before he smashes my face, which can be very difficult to do, or relatively easy to do, depending on how disorienting the charge event was
Now, for fights like Skadi, I do make a “intervene the healer” macro, mainly because the healer is probably the one person not being a tool somewhere, but that’s just for the whirlwind phase
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Chet reply on April 25, 2009 9:59 am:
following a little bit of a rabbit trail here, but can’t you just move away from your dps, then taunt him during the WW phase? I know your taunt doesn’t last the whole time, but basically he’ll run toward DPS/heals while you’re positioning, then you taunt before he gets to them, then he comes back, maybe hits you a couple of times, then heads back toward the group, but doesn’t get there before WW is over. That’s what I generally try to do anyway, and it seems to work. I’ll admit though, I haven’t been into UP since I got my sword.
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Vivilros reply on April 26, 2009 8:32 pm:
Well, I have my sword too, but what ended up happening all too often is I’d move away and he’d be following me and then me and the healer would get split up and the healer wouldn’t heal and I’d go splat…
So intervene the healer and entire group runs in the same direction, just like in Occulus, I tell all my groups to run south together, then turn around together, course half the people try this swervy shit and end up either blowing up, or being 50 yards away from me and dying afterwards cause martyr didn’t work
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April 25th, 2009 at 10:12 am
You should add a /charge to it, if only to amuse yourself.
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Chet reply on April 25, 2009 11:05 am:
nice touch. I’ll definitely be adding this to my macro
It’s also another good reason not to spam it. No one wants to see your /charge 8 times in a row lol
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April 26th, 2009 at 7:54 am
T(h)anks!
I love this!
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April 26th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Very nice post.
Our mobility, thanks to Warbringer, is our great advantage over the other tanking classes so we should never forget about using it, and this macro makes it “painless”, even for beginners.
I’ll definitely combine Charge with Intercept in one macro, but I just can’t imagine not having Intervene on separate button..
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April 28th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Nice one. These macros have already made me a better tank.
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April 28th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
First off I want to say that this is an awesome macro. But I was wondering how I could make it so that it uses my mouse over target as opposed to the one I currently have selected. Sorry I’m terrible at this whole macro business.
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May 5th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Reaching this post late but I’m also a fan of
#showtooltip intervene
/cast [nostance:2] Defensive Stance
/cast [target=focus] Intervene
My reason being is because it’s so incredibly helpful in Ulduar.
Ignus: Intervene out of the cone attack, even during flame jets (this is tricky though since it costs you some threat)
Iron counsil: Intervene out of Nova while tanking the caster (on 10 man this also gives you kiting time since you have to tank the second melee as well) free interupt on charging back in
Holdir: Break ice root with intervene. Reach the snow drift if somehow knocked away (rare but has worked for me when specced dps)
Freya: Darting between mushrooms
VoA: Dodging Nova
I still use the standard [help]etc macro in times when I need to intervene a different target and this Focus method requires your focus to be half competent (usually choose a healer). Others might hate this method but in terms of getting as much as possible out of that amazing talent point, I’ve been looking for any means to Intervene.
Anyway, GL out there and nice post Vene.
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June 5th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I have been using a full-functionality intervene macro for intervene since I got it back in BC. As such, I kept that as it’s own macro and added the “step 2″ macro right beside it on the bar. I love the fact that the icon of the macro will dynamically change to display which charge is about to fire off, though (assuming you used the “?” icon for the macro). I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to put it through it’s paces on Ignis, or even just running flags in BGs.
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June 7th, 2009 at 2:52 am
I’ve only just started reading your block and for some reason I missed the whole warbringer changing to affect Intervene and Intercept as well. This macro is godlike, I thought I was having fun playing a warrior, but 2(3) charges every 15 seconds is godlike.
Thanks you so much
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June 8th, 2009 at 2:39 am
*Spoiler alert* I liked The Art Of War by Sun Tzu, it changed my life but *Spoiler ends*The Art Of Warbringer by Veneretiochanged my wow life. I can now tank adds 100% more efficiently all thanks to this (I had different bindings on Charge, Intervene and Intercept so now i can get more bindings and increase both mobility and adaptability) Ty Vene
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June 11th, 2009 at 12:20 am
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
I don’t understand the point of “[target=targettarget, help] Intervene”, this condition will never happen since you will charge or intercept to the enemy first.
I don’t understand what’s the point of having this condition. Can someone explain?
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July 13th, 2009 at 6:05 am
This is the best warrior tanking macro ever.
@Hanzy
You can double click it and it does an intervene after a charge or intercept
Its good to zoom around 
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October 30th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Hi folks,
first of all I have to admit, that I’m not tanking end game content as my time to play WoW is way to sparse.
I just wanted to point to an addon, that a little bit combines the power of a one key macro with the flexibility of seperate keys for seperate spells.
That addon is called OPie.
What it does is to show a Ring menu on pressing a key.
Thats good for stuff like tradeskills etc. (though I use Autobar there) but it can realy shine in combat too.
I for example have one button of my mouse bound to a ring containing the Charge and Intercept macro and Intervene. So when I press the button only once, the macro is triggered, but if I press the button and move my mouse slightly forward, I intervene.
It takes only a short time to get used to the neccessary mousemovements.
I also have the shouts and the stances stored in these rings.
The only drawback is you can not see the CD of the abilities in the rings if the ring is not shown (that means if you don’t press the button), so you have to find a way around that (clickthrough action bar without keybinding with BT4, maybe a power aura etc.).
(hope someone reads this though it has been a while since the last comment ;))
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December 4th, 2009 at 4:43 am
#showtooltip
/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, Intercept, Charge
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
I had a problem earlier with the macro where eventually the Charge ability would fall into the Intercept cool down which made Charge wait UNTIL the Intercept ability was refreshed. In other words, Charge was ready to be casted, but couldn’t because Intercept was still on Cooldown.
I fixed the problem by adding “Charge” after “Intercept” (…Intercept, Charge)
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