Not Cowher, Google. Cower!

BRK » 11 October 2007 » In Macros, Pets »

“Dear BRK, long time reader, first time writer. Last night while grinding away in the Hinterlands I noticed that every time my pet Void (a ghost saber) grabbed aggro both growl and cower would auto cast at the same time. I turned off cower and removed it from the pet bar and it still would cast. Do you have any ideas what is going on, and isn’t both of these counterproductive to each other? Sandier and Misha.”

Growling and Cowering at the same time are most certainly counter-productive and should never be both set to Auto-Cast.

Now neither your nor your pet’s spells need be on your action bars in order to use them. For example, one can cast Distracting Shot as part of a Pull Shot macro and Distracting Shot doesn’t have to be seen on your action bars at all.

Removing the Cower spell from your action bar doesn’t affect its effects. Your pet’s spells can be cast without them being on your pet’s Action Bars. And since your pet’s spells can be set to Auto Cast, they can Auto Cast from their quiet hiding place on your pet’s Spell Book without being placed on the pet’s action bar.

Open your spell book, click on your Pet tab, find that Cower spell and we’re pretty certain you’ll see the Auto Cast glowing, circling aura all over it. Right-click that icon to turn Cower’s Auto Cast off, and you’ll be good to go.

Now because you have Cower trained, you can make a Pet-Aggro Dump macro:

/cast Cower

This will make your pet cast Cower one time! Isn’t that great! /cheer

What might be more useful is to make a macro that turns on Cower’s Auto Cast:

/petautocaston Cower

Now we don’t have Cower trained as our tanks hold aggro pretty well. Can’t bloody well take down Gruul without them, know what we’re saying? But what we do have are two macros for Growl:

/petautocaston Growl

and

/petautocastoff Growl

We have these on our action bars and have mapped keystrokes to these slots. We use Shift-W to turn Growl on and Shift-E to turn Growl off. Very handy stuff for when your going into Karazhan and realize a little too late that you left Growl on from your leather-scavenging expedition. Just smack Shift-E and keep on trucking.

Why two macros? Because we have not seen a successful Growl-Switch single-button macro. A “toggle macro” for Growl would be awesome, but it hasn’t been done yet, (that we know.)

Macros, Pets | October 11, 2007

Comments

13 Responses to “Not Cowher, Google. Cower!”

  1. Spac3Rat on October 11th, 2007 4:42 pm

    Actually Cower and Growl are probably not being cast at the same time. What happens is that they share the cooldown. So when Growl goes up, you see Cower “cooling down” too.

  2. Endymione on October 11th, 2007 4:45 pm

    spac3rat beat me to it, Sandier said he turned Cower off so there’s no reason for it to cast.

  3. Kirk on October 11th, 2007 7:23 pm

    Another reason to eagerly anticipate 2.3. From the forums

    “* NEW - /petautocasttoggle [slot or spell name] “

  4. Krawl on October 11th, 2007 7:33 pm

    On July 31, 2007, Lakeisha posted a comment on Botanica and Pet Spell Macros:
    /petautocastoff [nomodifier] Growl
    /petautocaston [nomodifier] Cower
    /petautocaston [modifier:Shift] Growl
    /petautocastoff [modifier:shift] Cower

    I have not had the chance to test this, but it does look like a viable single macro solution. I can see where one would quickly turn your fingers into a bowl of noodles trying to hit too many modifiers.

  5. Samownall on October 11th, 2007 8:59 pm

    Mbe 2.3 will help this?

    Wow pvp tips

  6. Sedna on October 11th, 2007 8:59 pm

    I think the devs must read BRK’s WoWInsider columns (and have an evil sense of humor)- as part of 2.3, they just announced a bunch of changes to weapon skill, hit rating, and racial bonuses for Dwarves and Trolls (both will increase crit chance with guns or bows by 1%). Dammit- that was a great article that answered most of my questions about hit…

  7. pelides on October 11th, 2007 10:11 pm

    @Sedna

    Heh! Yeah, I read the patch notes today and found it very ironic that they came out after such a lengthy description of +hit and racial bonuses.

    Guess you’re going to see more dwarves with bows and trolls with guns soon!

  8. Someone on October 11th, 2007 11:04 pm

    @Spac3Rat: that would be my guess as well but you beated me to it! :)

  9. Nythro on October 11th, 2007 11:09 pm

    Very sneaky! I will have to use that one!

  10. Clicker on October 11th, 2007 11:37 pm

    Off-topic, regarding the new poll. Does BRK use a Nostromo? I’ve been contemplating getting one of these because I believe my play-style is hampering my performance. I have never been able to get used to using W-A-S-D and instead use arrows to navigate, but this makes it more difficult to reach function keys and modifiers effectively.

  11. Radelas on October 12th, 2007 3:30 pm

    I’m too lazy to make a login and such….call me Radelas from Dragonblight. You want a macro to switch btw cower and growl…here you go, tested and works.

    /click [pet] PetActionButton4 RightButton
    /click [pet] PetActionButton5 RightButton

    Set Cower for button 4 on your pet bar, growl for button 5. Make sure that you begin with one of them on and one of them off and that’s it. hitting this button should turn the one that’s on..off, and turn the one that was off..on. Enjoy, i searched for this solution and found it on some random forum that I can’t remember. Nor can I remember who posted it, but props to them.

  12. Fiordhraoi on October 12th, 2007 5:11 pm

    Coming in the next patch:

    /petautocasttoggle [slot or spell name]

  13. Ironshield on October 12th, 2007 5:25 pm

    BRK,

    “toggle macro” for Growl:

    /click [button:1] petautocaston Growl; [button:2] petautocastoff Growl

    Drop the macro button onto your action bar and bind a key to it (say ‘G’ for e.g.).

    Left click and press ‘G’ for Growl on, and Right click and press ‘G’ for Growl off.

    Ironshield.

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