Mecurio's Cataclysm Multiboxing Macros

A mapped key has a few ingredients.

Most have a hotkey to activate them.
Although they don't need this, if they'll only be activated by another mapped key.

They usually do one thing.
IE, have one step.

If you wanted a mapped key on the " ; " key...
You would probably make a new mapped key.
Use the ; as the hotkey.
And have it output (in actions) the ; key to all windows.

In the case of Mercurio's macros.
There is a spam key, which can be '2' or whatever you want to spam.
This is the hotkey for the mapped key.
It has two steps, because it does one thing on the first press, and something different on the next press (at which point it resets to the first press).
He has chosen "2" as the output of the first press, and ";" as the output of the second press.
But "2" is the only key which is pressed, and it will likely be spammed.
If you always want the "proc" on this is a decent way to do it.

If you want to be able to disable it.
You'll want something like the approach you linked in green.
I'd have a mapped key, using whatever key I wanted to spam.
And have it "Do Mapped Key" twice, once for each output.
Then have a toggle macro (two steps) one that enables the second output and one that disables it.
So you can spam the "spam key", and have it alternate outputs or just output the one key.

I did additional testing tonight using my 5x shaman setup. I wanted to do a more formal test of the /castsequence versus /cast for the Lava Burst proc.


In my setup, all shamans were not grouped with no buffs or totems deployed. Each shaman DPSed a training dummy for 5 minutes to get a nice solid average.

For the first test, I used Mercurio's elemental shaman dps 2 step macros, but I removed the totem drops and left only the Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock, Earth Shock, and Lava Burst.

In the second test, I used my single macro with the /cast Lava Burst instead of a cast sequence.

Overall, the DPS was about the same across all 5 shamans between the two macros. This is odd, since I was seeing delayed Lava Burst procs with the castsequence the other night. Perhaps the difference is due to latency? Tonight my latency is 187 ms, which is pretty good.


In short, I believe the /cast Lava Burst and /castsequence Lava Burst are equivalent.

I'll try more testing with Mercurio's macros that drops totems in between Lava Burst if that affects anything.

Thank you very much for this very interesting post, both the OP as well as all others contributing and feeding the discussion.

I have one question though, what is the difference (technically, in terms of performance, logic, etc...) between:

a) Having both keys in different steps;
b) Having both keys in the same step as additional actions?

Aren't they still being "spammed" the same way by the hotkey we chose?

Thanking you in advance and have a good day,
A.

Ok, I think I found out the source of the discrepancy.

I'm using Aragent's setup in Isboxer to test out these macro differences. I went to the original setup and found the culprit.

In Aragent's setup, he has a /cast Lightning Bolt at the end. Since there is no cool down for Lightning Bolt and since there is a /castsequence Lava Burst, Lava Burst, ... Lava Burst there is a race condition as to which one goes off first. From my testing, when Lava Burst is available it won't always go off immediately when a /cast Lightning Bolt is present.

Now, when I take this out and have either /cast Lava Burst or /castsequence Lava Burst, the procs go off as soon as they can.

If you spam, but the spam is two different steps, in theory it will alternate between them.
You should get a precise: 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2... etc.
One of the macros might be stuck on something and unable to advance, but the other macro should fire off fine, and the stuck macro should run as soon as it can.

If you spam both keys together, in the long run they should fire approximately as often.
But you will reach streaks where the same key is pressed first consistently, meaning the other does not have an opportunity to fire.
In short, it is a less even distribution with a greater potential for streaks of one macro over the other; you could inadvertently be on a "stuck" stage with not much happening for several presses.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

If you spam, but the spam is two different steps, in theory it will alternate between them.
You should get a precise: 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2... etc.
One of the macros might be stuck on something and unable to advance, but the other macro should fire off fine, and the stuck macro should run as soon as it can.

If you spam both keys together, in the long run they should fire approximately as often.
But you will reach streaks where the same key is pressed first consistently, meaning the other does not have an opportunity to fire.
In short, it is a less even distribution with a greater potential for streaks of one macro over the other; you could inadvertently be on a "stuck" stage with not much happening for several presses.

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Ualaa... it's not even the fact you're always there to help... it's just that when you explain something it's so damn clear!

Can't thank you enough.

Cheers,
A.

I did some additional testing of my 5x Shaman DPS macro.

With these, I was about to get and maintain 7K DPS on my main shaman, which is PvP specced with Full Wrathful gear and reforged crit to mastery.

Here is a link to my main



Step 1

Code:

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/castsequence reset=8 Flame Shock,Chain Lightning,Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt,Chain Lightning,Lightning Bolt,Earth Shock,Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt,Lightning Bolt

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Step 2 for Shaman #1

Code:

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/castsequence reset=combat/8 Wind Shear, searing totem,lava burst,lava burst,lava burst,lava burst,Wind Shear,lava burst,lava burst,lava burst,lava burst
/cast elemental mastery
/use 13
/use 14

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The main difference is I incorporated Chain Lightning into the standard rotation. It is spaced between 3 Lightning bolts apart because of the 3 second cool down. So even with max haste, it should still have enough time to come off cool down before the next one occurs. Also, the number of chain lightnings and lightning bolts are optimized to make full use of fulmination. On average, if should trigger earth shock with 7-9 orbs.

In step 2, this is mostly the same as Mercurio's macro. Searing Totem is cast at the start and is refreshed once every 60 seconds. Lava Burst has a 8 second cool down, thus 60/8 = 7.5, so we'll need 8 Lava Burst casts as filler.


I've also incorporated a staggered Wind Shear.
I have 5x Shamans and wind shear cool down is 6 seconds. So if each Shaman does Wind Shear in sequence, that is ~30 seconds between casts. 30 / 8 = 3.75. So Wind Shear is place once every 4 Lava Bursts. Each shaman has a slightly different proc macro where wind shear is staggered down the line. For example, here is my macro for Shaman #2

Step 2 for Shaman #2

Code:

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/castsequence reset=combat/8 searing totem,lava burst,Wind Shear, lava burst,lava burst,lava burst,lava burst, Wind Shear, lava burst,lava burst,lava burst
/cast elemental mastery
/use 13
/use 14

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Is that 7k single target DPS, or 7k including hops to other target dummies?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

Is that 7k single target DPS, or 7k including hops to other target dummies?

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That is single target.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tweedle

I understand how this is supposed to work but am new to boxing and newer to ISBoxer, were in any of this does it show how to set the ";" key in isboxer? I'm having a real bad time at trial and error tryig to figure it out myself.

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I'm not sure what you mean by "set the ';' key in isboxer, so I'll give you two answers.

1) The second screenshot provided by Va1entines shows that the ';' is sent to all windows in the first step. This is actually not correct, it should send ';' to all windows in the 2nd step only - as I explained right after the screenshot. So that's how the ';' gets sent to all windows through ISBoxer.

2) Once the ';' is sent to all windows, you may be asking how it is associated with your Proc Macros. To do this in WoW (arguably the easiest way), you have to associate the ';' key to a certain action bar slot. I use Bartender4 (the add-on) which allows you to associate any key press to any action bar slot. I used it to associate ';' with the 4th box on the 9th action bar, then made sure all my toons put their Proc Macros in that slot.

Hope this makes it clear for you!