Refreshing Dots

[Ektomorf]

Awhile ago I saw a macro on here for refreshing dots while still casting range attacks eg for a boomkin casts Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Faerie Fire then casts Wrath soon as the DoTs have expired they are automatically refreshed.

But I've looked and can't seem to find any mention of such macro. Any help would be appreciated :D

EDIT:It appears I was misunderstood on another forum and they thought I was asking for something that required 1 button push.

I meant, You'd still have to push 2 or whatever key the macros on. It just would only cast the DoT if it was not up and if it was up instead it would cast the ranged attack.

[Starbuck_Jones]

All of that was removed from the game a while back. The UI no longer allows logical conditionals and checks in macros.

There used to be some really bad azz ui mods back in the day that would buff, heal, fight and basicaly do it all on a single button smash, to the point it would swap spells and ranks etc so you didnt over kill anything.

[ElectronDF]

2 ways about it that I see. Make a macro that ends when DOTs end. Or make a macro that includes when the DOTs end already in it.

That ends: (assume DOTs end in 15sec)
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=14 Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath

That includes DOTs:
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=combat/target Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath
This assumes that the 4 wraths take about 12-14 secs to cast, so by that time, it is time to do the DOTs again. You might have to adjust based on casting time and how long the DOTs last.
Hope that helps.

[Fuzzyboy]

2 ways about it that I see. Make a macro that ends when DOTs end. Or make a macro that includes when the DOTs end already in it.

That ends: (assume DOTs end in 15sec)
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=14 Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath

That includes DOTs:
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=combat/target Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath
This assumes that the 4 wraths take about 12-14 secs to cast, so by that time, it is time to do the DOTs again. You might have to adjust based on casting time and how long the DOTs last.
Hope that helps.These aren't very efficient for several reason. First of all they don't factor in castspeed increases. This applies to spell haste in general, trinket procs, heroism etc. Also, depending on latency, /castsequence macros will lower your dps by quite a bit, because unlike /cast and /castrandom your spellcast isn't qued.

The best solution I have found is either making a macro to apply initial dot's and manually reapply or simply leave them out of the rotation. On my moonkin I use:

/castsequence reset=target/combat moonfire, null
/castrandom wrath, starfire

Which will cast moonfire once and then spam wrath/starfire unless target is changed in which case moonfire will be reapplied.

[Maxion]

2 ways about it that I see. Make a macro that ends when DOTs end. Or make a macro that includes when the DOTs end already in it.

That ends: (assume DOTs end in 15sec)
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=14 Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath

That includes DOTs:
/castsequence [targeting and option stuff] reset=combat/target Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath
This assumes that the 4 wraths take about 12-14 secs to cast, so by that time, it is time to do the DOTs again. You might have to adjust based on casting time and how long the DOTs last.
Hope that helps.These aren't very efficient for several reason. First of all they don't factor in castspeed increases. This applies to spell haste in general, trinket procs, heroism etc. Also, depending on latency, /castsequence macros will lower your dps by quite a bit, because unlike /cast and /castrandom your spellcast isn't qued.

The best solution I have found is either making a macro to apply initial dot's and manually reapply or simply leave them out of the rotation. On my moonkin I use:

/castsequence reset=target/combat moonfire, null
/castrandom wrath, starfire

Which will cast moonfire once and then spam wrath/starfire unless target is changed in which case moonfire will be reapplied.

ending a castsequence with null actually makes it not reset until reset conditions are met?
please confirm


Also note that having a timed reset in a castsequence only applies to time since last button push, so it wont start over 14 secs after you started pushing it, but 14 secs after you stop.
This is a common misconception.

The best ways to include dot refreshing in your button spam is to either have a separate button for the dots, in a castsequence if they have similar durations,
or making your one-button castsequence insert the dots at appropriate timing based on how long it takes you to cast the rest of the spells,
but this timing will change as your haste changes, and will be way off with bloodlust etc. Bit much work to re-time it every time such things change.

[Owltoid]

Also note that having a timed reset in a castsequence only applies to time since last button push, so it wont start over 14 secs after you started pushing it, but 14 secs after you stop.
This is a common misconception.

The best ways to include dot refreshing in your button spam is to either have a separate button for the dots, in a castsequence if they have similar durations,
or making your one-button castsequence insert the dots at appropriate timing based on how long it takes you to cast the rest of the spells,
but this timing will change as your haste changes, and will be way off with bloodlust etc. Bit much work to re-time it every time such things change.

I'm not sure there's very much correct information in this post...

[olipcs]

Why? For me every statement is correct... (especialy the first, which a lot of players misunderstand)

[Owltoid]

Why? For me every statement is correct... (especialy the first, which a lot of players misunderstand)

It's likely that I am wrong and I should have kept my mouth shut :)

However, I guess I'm surprised to hear that the /castsequence is from the last button push. IIRC, I can make a castsequence chain with a reset of 10, put in a spell that is currently on cooldown and will not become available in the next 3 minutes, spam the hell out of the macro, and eventually the castsequence will reset. If the above is true, then it should never reset as long as I am spamming the button or until that spell on cooldown becomes available so the sequence can complete.

The other part I disagreed with, from reading other posts, was that it's good to include your DoTs in a spam macro. To do this it would require the spam macro to be reading a castsequence the whole time unlike Fuzzyboy who only has castsequence for a very small portion. There are many posts stating that a significant reduction in DPS occurs with castsequence chains.

[Khatovar]

From everything I've read, castsequence time is the time in which a sequence will reset if not active. So reset=14 means that this macro will not reset until it reaches the end or has been idle for 14 seconds.

I actually use this to my advantage with my hunters/paladin. My hunters have improved tracking, so they do better damage against mobs they track. My paladin needs a certain seal active to benefit from glyphs. I have both mapped to ";" however, I was running into issues with needing to spam that key to get all my hunters to register the proper tracking command. That means my paladin had to waste precious mana and GCDs recasting seal of Wisdom over and over. So I made this :

/castsequence reset=30 Seal of Wisdom, Hammer of Wrath

Hammer of wrath only goes off on a mob under 20% health, so I am intentionally blocking my paladin from progressing that sequence.

[Owltoid]

I have very limited access to research things at work (most is blocked) but I came across this interesting bit of information:


Since 2.3 the way that the cassequence reset has changed. Before 2.3 it was how long without a key press before the macro reset to the beginning. Now the macro will reset after that time regardless of its activity.

Perhaps others can verify, but I'm pretty sure my castsequence macros reset even though I'm spamming the hell out of the button and a spell in the chain can't be cast (due to cooldowns or something... causing it to constantly try that spell and not allowing it to continue down the chain).

[Owltoid]

It's a bit hard to follow, but I think this thread describes the castsequence only reseting on idle time being a pre-2.3 issue.

Castsequence reset times ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=2174&pageNo=1')

[olipcs]

Since 2.3 the way that the cassequence reset has changed. Before 2.3 it was how long without a key press before the macro reset to the beginning. Now the macro will reset after that time regardless of its activity can't test this, because I'm also at work (pst, don't tell), but I realy doubt it, because a change that would be that big (it would mean the 'holy grail' for every DoT Class, becasue if true I could make the follwoing makro for a druid:

/castsequence reset=18 Moonfire,Null
/castsequence reset=12 Insectswarm,Null
/cast Wrath

which would apply all my Moonfire after 18-seconds, Insectswarm after 12 and otherwise cast wrath.. ..this would be tooo good to be true ;)

[Starbuck_Jones]

It is too good to be true.

[Khatovar]

I can confirm that it is x time idle. Using the macro I posted above, hit once, casts SoW, any further presses send it to HoW with errors "You have no Target" or "Invalid target". 30 seconds after the last keypress, it resets to SoW.

Spamming it casts SoW on the first press and spams me with errors for HoW. 2.5 minutes of spamming {30 seconds longer than the duration of SoW} and no reset. 30 seconds after I stopped spamming, SoW finally lit up again.

[Bigfish]

If you are talking about a "smart" spam macro that refreshes DoTs and cast direct spells between recast times, it can be done, but it involves multiple macros and utilizing /click funtionality. I think I'll go post how to do it in another thread.

[Owltoid]

I can confirm that it is x time idle. Using the macro I posted above, hit once, casts SoW, any further presses send it to HoW with errors "You have no Target" or "Invalid target". 30 seconds after the last keypress, it resets to SoW.

Spamming it casts SoW on the first press and spams me with errors for HoW. 2.5 minutes of spamming {30 seconds longer than the duration of SoW} and no reset. 30 seconds after I stopped spamming, SoW finally lit up again.

Looks like I was very wrong, thank you for testing this!