It is possible to add a conditional into a macro that checks your talent selection and assign spells based on your talent choice.

It doesn't just give you the talent chosen it even allows you to put in a replacement spell for talent choices that are passive and when combined with the spec variable can allow 1 macro to cover a potential 9 spells for most classes and 12 for druids!

As an example of the basic format as a Disc priest my tier 7 talents are:

• Clarity of Will (a castable bubble);
• Words of Mending (a passive ability that auto casts a mana free Prayer of Mending);
• Saving Grace (a castable heal);

Now what I can do is have a macro that casts Clarity of Will or Saving Grace if I chose either of those 2 spells but if I chose the passive ability I can also make the keybind do something else (I will make my choice here to be Prayer of Mending but it could equally be Hearthstone)

#showtooltip
/cast [talent:7/1] Clarity of Will; [talent:7/2] Prayer of Mending; [talent:7/3] Saving Grace;

However, it could have equaly been three spells with no relation to the talents and that is what makes it better than dragging the talent to your bar:

#showtooltip
/cast [talent:7/1] Smite; [talent:7/2] Mind Sear; [talent:7/3] Leap of Faith;

Now something else that I've know for a few years is that there is a spec;1/2 condional you can use in a macro. So if I want to cast Smite as Disc and Heal as Holy I can use this:

/cast [spec:1]Heal;[spec:2]Smite

So therefore it should be possible to combine the 2 conditionals to produce a macro that checks your spec and talents!

A good example is the tier 7 talents as Holy Priests don't get Clarity of Will they get Clarity of Purpose which changes the way Prayer of healing works and renames the spell Clarity of Purpose so now what you can do is add in a spec conditional to the macro so it casts Clarity of Purpose for holy priests (this assumes you have Disc as the main spec and holy as the second spec.

#showtooltip
/cast [spec:1,talent:7/1] Clarity of Will; [spec:2,talent:7/1] Clarity of Purpose; [talent:7/2] Prayer of Mending; [talent:7/3] Saving Grace;

If you use Clique you can import this macro straight into Clique to replace the spell (remember to drop the #showtooltip) and Vuhdo users can ofc use this macro by calling the macro Name rather than the spell name.

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With the Warlords of Draenor beta being addon free, I've been looking around for a way to bind a macro to a keybind.

Hunting around I discovered a script that allows just that (which sadly doesn't fix the issue as scripts are also currently banned on beta). However, as I'm hoping to free myself of as many addons as possible when warlords hits the streets sometime in 2015 (?) it will be some use later on.

The command you need to run is:

    /run SetBindingMacro("SHIFT-A", "MacroName")
    /run SaveBindings(1)

I use a macro on a hotbar for this and recommend you do too as I'm not too sure how it behaves if you simply type it in on two lines. Of course, when you do this, you need to change the exact wording to fit your needs:

• Replace SHIFT-A with whatever key you want to bind the macro to (e.g. A, ALT-A, CTRL-SHIFT-A);
• Replace MacroName with the name of your macro;
• Replace the 1 in the SaveBindings call to a 2 if you use character specific key bindings which I don't as all of my character use the same bindings;

You can also replace MacroName with the name of a spell or other ability, which can be useful especially for pet abilities. more »

The wow macro system is great for combining several slash commands that execute together when you click a single action button or keybind. It allows for a total of 54 macros (36 account wide and 18 character specific ones). Some people love them (including me!) and others are afraid to use them for fear of being accused of cheating or simply being unaware of how to program them.

The in-game support for macros is almost non-existent and the only change I have ever seen was when they added the save button to the UI a few months ago. Then from nowhere came the message below:

Taepsilum

Devs are looking into revamping the whole macro system at some point, meanwhile, simply increasing the number of slots would probably be good enough. They were having some discussions about doing just that but we still don't have any concrete plans on the way, if anything changes we'll let you know.

source

Upon reading this news I was overjoyed as I have all my macro slots full on all my priests and my paladin and then I sat down and thought exactly what I wanted from the changes and to be honest I couldn't think of much I wanted changed beyond more slots and more character spaces to allow more complex macros.

It is not that I want to have an I win macro or a lazy man's macro that simply has a complete rotation in one massive /castsequence macro, that was so vanilla and if I wanted to spam 1 button I could just go play an arcane mage or a windwalker monk. However, there are some features that while not being a game changer would make the macro system better.

Things that spring to mind are:

• a tutorial on how to make a macro;
• a search facility for the icons;
• a syntax check;
• a flexible macro;

The last item on that list needs a bit of explaining as what I'm after is a macro that changes completely depending on your location. If you're doing the Golden Lotus dailies it could be the bomb for bombing teh cannons, in Nizao Temple it could be for throwing the bomb at the mantid vehicle, in the Heart of Fear it could be the Impaling Spear in Mel'jarak's room. This is possible as there is an addon, I Has Macro Lol that does exactly that, sadly it is now woefully out of date and being botched to make it work so I simply refuse to use it.

Beyond those six things I can't think of much to add to the system. What would you like to see changed in teh macro system?

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From time to time I have the need to link an item or achievement in a macro, sadly the built in macro builder doesn't allow you to simply type in the macro and "shift/click" the item into the macro like you can when typing a message (why Blizz stop this only they know).

There are longwinded ways I have seen on other blogs but recently I discovered an easy way to do it.

First you get the link from WoWhead. In this example I'll use the link to the Herald of the Titans achievement, http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=3316,
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Macros, I love em! They are great to enable many "slash commands" into a single button click. I won't go into the basics of what they are are or how to make them (click here for a beginner's guide) but they do come in many levels of complexity.

There are two limits Blizzard have on macros. The first is that macros cannot be more than 255 character long, which while annoying is an anti-botting mechanism of which I approve. The second is you are limited to 18 macros per character and while you can extend this with the use of the account wide General Macros, it  is still annoying for a raving altaholic like myself.

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