Priest Macro Guide

These days playing a priest is rough…in PvE you have to compete with shaman’s spamming chain heal on the raid, paladin’s spamming holy light on the tank, and in PvP you’re constantly running and getting beat down but double melee gib teams.

Needless to say, it’s a rough life for priests. However, a few well placed macros can change all of that and give you an immediate edge on your opponents.

Raid Healing Priest Macros
/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal

/stopcasting
/cast Renew

/stopcasting
/cast Flash Heal

/stopcasting
/cast Circle of Healing

I think of all the macros, this is probably the most simplistic and effective. It drives me crazy watching healer’s jump or move in order to cancel a heal. This is incredibly inefficient as you lose large amounts of overall healing time throughout the fight. Getting used to a system of stopcasting macros will allow you to turret up and let the heals fly, maximizing your available time to cast heals.

Power Word Shield Macro
/cast [target=player] Power Word: Shield

Pretty simple, just cast a PWS on your self without ever having to drop target. Nice in the heat of an arena match or a raid encounter.

Dispel Macros
/target (name of your teammate)
/cast Dispel Magic

Generic quick target defensive dispel on your teammate.

/assist (name of your teammate)
/cast Dispel Magic

Generic quick target offensive dispel, great for assisting your DPS classes to clear shields, buffs, etc.

Note: The above dispel macros were pulled from the more complete guide here, discipline priest arena strategy.

Mouse Over Healing Macros
/cast [target=mouseover] Flash Heal

/cast [target=mouseover] Greater Heal

/cast [target=mouseover] Renew

/cast [target=mouseover] Circle of Healing

Now, this method of healing may or may not work for you. For my shaman I found it ideal to manage raid healing, by using these macros in combination with a raid unit frame mod called grid (to the left is a screenshot of grid). This basically allowed me to mouse over any frame within the grid unit frame and fire on chain heals on my shaman. You could achieve the same result using the clique mod, but I prefer the macros

Rebuffing Macro
/castsequence Inner Fire, Power Word: Fortitude, Shadow Protection

Requires multiple clicks, but will allow you to put all your buffing spells onto one bar. You can simply add any additional buffs you have based on race / talent spec (divine spirit for example) at the end of the macro, each requiring an additional click.

Trinket + Inner Fire + Devouring Plague Macro
#showtooltip Devouring Plague
/use NameofYourDamageTrinket
/cast Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/cast Devouring Plague

Nice macro that further consolidates clicks and action bar use

Trinket + Healing Macro
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Greater Heal

For reference purposes 13 is top trinket, 14 is bottom trinket. These type of macros are a staple for every class and spec. Now, the trinket may determine weather or not you use this macro. Some trinkets shouldn’t be used until a given point (IE…spirit based regen trinkets shouldn’t be used the moment the fight begins). Conversely you could create a +healing trinket and circle of healing for raid spamming, since you’ll want it up as often as it can be used.

Silence / Arcane Torrent Macro
/castsequence reset=45 Silence, Arcane Torrent

A good friend of mine used this a ton when I played with him season 3. Once again, it won’t make or break you, but it’s certainly a nice way to free up some action bar space.

The DoT Bomb
/cast Inner Fire
/stopcasting
/cast Devouring Plague / Star Shards (if you have it either)
/stopcasting
/cast Shadow Word Pain

Smart Shadowfiend
#showtooltip Shadowfiend
/cast [harm,nodead][target=targettarget,harm,nodead] Shadowfiend

This macro will send your shadowfiend to attack your target if it’s hostile. If you do not have a hostile target currently targeted then it will send it after your target’s target if it is hostile.

If you’re looking for shadow priest specific macros, check out this guide, shadow priest macros.

Grid - Raid Unit Frames

For this week’s addon of the week, the very first addon of the week and newest feature to ZugGaming, I wanted to take a step away from the arena scene. Now, I’ll be first to admit I’m not the hardcore PvE raider I once was pre-BC, though I still enjoy the occasional 10 and 25 man.

If you’ve raided at all, then you know what a pain finding a good unit frame addon can be, and believe me I’ve looked! Though I think grid just might be the saving grace for all of us.

Unlike other unit frame addons, grid is extremely compact, so compact it takes up only about 1/4th as much screen space as my previous raid frames did. Better than that, it provides me with even more information!

To the right is how grid looks out of the box. This type of raid frame design was so revolutionary when I first saw it I was kind of turned off. Beyond that, it looked confusing at first.

Though with a little customization I was able to get the ideal working design for my shaman to effectively heal during 25 man raids.

Basically the addon creates a small box for each player in your raid, various details within and around each box are associated with the criteria you’ve set. For example, you can see a red line around some of the boxes in my screen shot. These are targets which are out of my healing range.

Each box has 7 subdivisions, left upper corner, right upper corner, left lower corner, left lower corner, center icon, center text, and border. Various colors and icons are assigned to each area to represent data: health, aggro, incoming heals, debuffs, range, death, and numerous others.

The module comes setup pretty nice by default, though you might want to change some of the color scheme, size, background color, and other settings to better work for your needs.

All in all it’s just a great addon. It’s an effective tool to use whether you are raid healer, a tank, or just a DPS, and I highly recommend it.

Get the newest version of grid for patch 2.4 below!