Just a general observation, the

/cast !Auto SHot

included in all the kill/steady shot macros is unnecessary. The Kill shot call will trigger auto shot even when the Kill shot itself cannot be used due to the target being > 20% health.

Won't that just apply Serpent once, but no more?

Have to read what is written in entirety.

I assume that the !Auto Shot is included as the partial workaround for the "steady shot clip" bug and has nothing to do with Kill Shot. This is the bug that is introduced when you turn off the (don't remember exact name) "shift your auto-attack onto another mob automatically when this one dies" checkbox in the UI.

I'm having some troubles with getting special shots to fire/activate over my normal rotation.

Like many of you I spam steady shot to never miss out a mili second, this naturaly stops me from using rapid fire, hunters mark, stings etc. So I've binded them all and made a macro with ./stopcasting and then the desired ability.
Yet it still tends to finish of my steady shot cast or it doesn't even works at all. Sometimes I just have to wait for my current Steady Shot cast to be over and not cast a new one again and use my specials, doesn't the ./stopcasting force me(wow) to stop casting what ever I do and fire that ability.


ps: I'm not sure if it was /stop casting or /stopcasting but I'm using the correct line :P.

A example.

I must be doing something wrong

My first post, really appreciate the atmosphere and the information here.

I have been using a simple pull-shot macro for some time, to wit:

/cast Arcane Shot
/stopcasting

Haven't used it much since the introduction of the freezing arrow, but I had the sense that it was no longer working correctly. Farming this morning confirms that suspicion; where it used to simply fire one arcane shot and then stop attacking completely, I now continue to auto-attack.

I am definitely not a macro-writing guy, so I tried adding lines such as:

/stop Auto Attack

But the problem remains.

Anyone have any advice please? And perhaps some insight into why the macro simply stopped working, presumably with the expansion introduction?

Thank you.

According to this thread on the official forums, you need to add a third line to your original macro: /stopattack

I would've thought that replacing /stopcasting with /stopattack would be the answer, but according to that thread it doesn't work - you need both.

I tested as well, and I can't get any of the combinations to work, either. Sorry to have led you astray - I was rather convinced by the apparent careful testing done by the author of that thread. In fact, since there's no reason to doubt what he says he observed, I'm confused as well.

It seems silly that a hunter can't easily fire a single shot and nothing more.

Two workarounds:
1) You could move while firing Arcane Shot. Autoshot cannot fire while moving, so you'd have a little time to untarget/self-target/turn around to prevent further shots from firing. I used to employ this method to prevent autoshots from escaping between my three preferred special shots when misdirecting pulls (MD -> aimed -> distracting -> strafe and fire arcane).

2) /cast [target=mouseover] Distracting Shot
Use that to pull without targeting a mob at all. With no target, auto shot will not commence. For some reason, it does not work with Arcane Shot, and Distracting seems to cause significantly more threat than Arcane (for me at least), so I don't know if this will suit your needs. EDIT: as pointed out below, Distracting Shot is a Taunt-like ability now. What I was seeing as "significantly more threat than Arcane" was actually the taunt mechanic in action.

[Off topic, but in testing that second work-around, I discovered that critters (e.g. Zul'Drak Rats) will attack you if you distracting shot them. Didn't they use to run away from any aggressive act that didn't immediately kill them? It's rather amusing to have a pack of five rats nipping at your feet.]

Hmmm. Let me describe the issue and see if it rings a bell...

When 3.0 came out, a bunch of hunters (myself included) found that their Auto Shot was automatically acquiring new targets if their current target died while in the middle of casting Steady Shot. Someone found that you could "fix" that behavior by unchecking (or checking, can't remember the exact option) the UI option to auto shot/auto attack. Unfortunately, unchecking that option meant that you ended up clipping a shot (I thought it was steady, but maybe it was auto) in some weird way, significantly lowering dps. A partial solution was to go back to a steady shot macro, with a !Auto Shot. Putting the auto before the steady provided better performance (for the reason you suggested).

So, questions:

a. Will the (sans !Auto Shot) macro will trigger Auto Shot before Steady, even if the Kill Shot is unsuccessful? (as it will be most of the time)

b. Will the (sans !Auto Shot) macro still supply a workaround to the clipping problem that comes with turning off the auto attack option in the UI?

c. Does the auto attack bug still actually exist? (maybe it was fixed in 3.0.3?)

a. yes, I have tried it

b. don't know beacuse I've gotten so used to having that turned off that I haven't bothered to try it the other way - and because testing it in a reliable mana required a room fr on yellow mobs and I'm too lazy to go back and beat up the scarabs in ZF

c. See b.

guys anyone knows if and how we can make the Stead shot spam(this one in beginning) macro to work like this.

when my mana goes lower of 500(or 5%) to change my aspect of the dragonhawk to viper and when go again to 8000(or 95%) from viper to dragonhawk ?i forgot to change aspect often and i loose dmg . ty and sorry for my English.