Top Ten Hunter PvP Macros

This post contains some outdated info relevant to the Wrath of the Lich King era. Click here for a current listing of best Hunter PvP Macros for Cataclysm.

The following list contains ten macros that I use extensively while Huntering in the battlegrounds, as well as arena. Anyone who plays a Hunter is well aware that we have a bazillion abilities at our disposal, yet it can be hard to execute them with immediacy and efficiency while faced with a 1v3 situation in Warsong Gulch, or while that Retadin is chasing you around the Dalaran Sewers waving his Betrayer about.

Macros can make life a lot easier for Hunters, especially within the realm of PvP combat. Here are a few that I highly recommend…

* Please note, all macros listed here are for baseline abilities only. For additional Hunter macros, please visit my macros page.

1. Target Nearest Enemy / Anti-Rogue macro

Every Hunter should have this macro. With one button press it will target your nearest enemy, place a Hunter’s Mark on them, send your pet to attack and begin your auto attack. I use this macro every single time I step into an arena or battleground. On one hand, it can be used as a “lazy” Hunter macro for targeting, but what it’s really intended for is to prevent stealthed targets from getting the jump on you.

Whether I’m defending a node in Arathi Basin or standing on a flare in arena, I always have my fingertip at the ready to hit this key the moment I hear that dreaded sound of a Rogue or Feral Druid coming up on me. This macro can save you precious hit points by putting them in combat before they can pop an opener on you.

/targetenemy
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack
/startattack

2. Uber Wing Clip

This macro basically combines Wing Clip with Raptor Strike, creating a Wing Clip with a whammy. It’s very simple, yet extremely effective. While Hunters are fairly inadequate when it comes to close quarters combat, we do have a handful of damage dealing skills at our disposal. If you’re going to slow them before you escape to range, you may as well give them a little something extra before you go. This will give you a Wing Clip that hits for 1K-2K. ๐Ÿ˜‰

#showtooltip Wing Clip
/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Wing Clip

3. Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite Melee Macro

This macro is similar to the previously mentioned Wing Clip one, only it focuses on strictly DPS melee abilities. If you’re hopelessly caught in melee range, then this macro can bring a little bit of pain before you’re able to run away again. If you get lucky and manage criticals with both attacks, you can achieve about a 3.5K-4K melee burst with this one button press. The other beauty of this macro is that you can combine two seldom used, yet important melee abilities into one action bar slot.

/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Mongoose Bite

4. Wing Clip and Escape Disengage Macro

This very useful macro drops a quick Wing Clip on your target before you fly away. Using this not only creates 30 yards between you and your opponent, but also keeps them snared for 10 seconds while you dance around at max range delivering headshots. Drop a Frost trap at their feet a split second before hand for maximum enjoyment.

#showtooltip Disengage
/cast Wing Clip
/cast Disengage

5. Simple PvP Tracking Macro

This macro enables you to switch between Track Humanoids and Track Hidden with ease. In arena I primarily use Track Hidden as a Beast Mastery Hunter, but if you’re Survival or Marksman you’ll need to switch to Humanoid Tracking in an instant for the Improved Tracking damage bonus.

In battlegrounds I have Track Humanoids enabled the majority of the time, but if I suddenly see a red dot on my mini-map disappear on its way up to the Lumber Mill while I’m guarding, then I give this macro a tap.

/castsequence Track Humanoids, Track Hidden

6. Freezing Trap

Another very simple macro with a very beneficial effect. All it does is cancel your auto attack so that you don’t accidentally break your own Freeze Trap. Now that your partner has that Druid on the ropes, last thing you want is to free up his Warrior partner that you just put on ice.

/cast Freezing Trap
/stopattack

7. Failsafe Bandage Macro

A clutch bandage can be key for an arena win. Sometimes amongst the bedlam that is PvP, you may accidentally have your pet or other friendly target selected. This macro just makes sure that the bandage is always applied to you no matter what. You may not think you need it, but why take a chance..?

/use [target=player] Heavy Frostweave Bandage

8. Come Here Boy (or Girl)… Quick!

This is a good macro to use if your pet is getting focus-fired hard. Tap this macro if your pet has just LoS’d you and is about to get raped by that Death Knight/Ret combo. Follow it up with a quick Mend Pet and your pet will be able to head back into the fray within a few seconds.

/petpassive
/petfollow
/cast Dash

Alternatively, you can swap Dive in place of Dash if you are using a flying pet such as a Chimaera, Bird of Prey, Nether Ray, Bat, etc… (Although I recommend against using anything but anything flappy for PvP. Chimaeras are good for Beast Mastery Hunters, but for MM or SV, you can do much better with land animals.

9. Master’s Call

This macro attempts to unsnare a teammate if your mouse is placed over them while the macro key is pressed, or free yourself if no friendly target is selected.

/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=player] Master's Call

Tip… copy this macro and swap Intervene in place of Master’s Call if you have a Tenacity pet, and you have yourself an Intervene macro as well.

10. Target Circle Macros

In PvP, and especially in arena, it can be quite easy to accidentally turn off your target circle when furiously trying to get off a spell. These include: Flare, Volley and Freezing Arrow.

Although these macros are very simple in nature and don’t combine any special skills or commands the way most macros do, they are still important nonetheless. All three of these abilities are used often in arena, and a fumble on any one of them can definitely cause you and your teammate(s) problems.

Technically, I have three macros listed here, which makes this list 12 macros deep. However, these are all so simple and basically do the same thing, so I am just counting them as one. Got it..? Good.

Flare Macro

Don’t let a Rogue vanish on you at 5%, then immediately stunlock you due to a miscue on your Flare. No matter how jumpy you are and however many times you spam your Flare key, this macro will ensure you don’t lose your targeting circle.

/cast !Flare

Volley Macro

Volley is another extremely useful tool for popping out stealthed targets. Volley can be used at leisure while standing on a Flare, but if your Flare’s on cooldown and you need to pop a target quickly, Volley is key. Don’t blow a well timed Volley by losing your target circle at the wrong moment.

/cast !Volley

Freezing Arrow Macro

This macro works in the same way as the other two. Timing is very important with this ability since the trap has an arming time. Fumbling around with your targeting circle because you’re too jittery can mean the difference between CC’ing the healer and nuking his partner, or missing the CC and getting raped yourself.

/cast !Freezing Arrow

Alrighty… so there ya go. Those are some macros that I use all the time when engaging in Player versus Player Combat.

This list is fairly short and isn’t intended to be an end-all-be-all guide to Hunter PvP macros, but it’s a good place to start. For more Hunter macros, please visit my macros page.

While I’m no Megatf, Levidia or some of the other Hunter greats out there, I am pretty capable. I may not be a 2K+ player, but I have managed to grind out 1800+ ratings the past four seasons with very unorthodox combos, plus I am enough of a loser to have spent enough time on my Hunter to achieve nearly 60K honor kills. I’m battle tested and war hardened I tell ya. ๐Ÿ˜‰ In a casual sort of way I suppose…

Take what you want from this post, and most of all… have fun people!

Now go kick some ass!!!

27 thoughts on “Top Ten Hunter PvP Macros”

  1. Hi, i come here time to time to get help on my macros.
    I’ve been working on a macro to raptstrike/freeze trap/disengage. the problem is auto attack hits when i land so the freeze trap dissipates. I’ve tried all sorts of way that I know of to /stopattack yet nothing works. my code is:

    #showtooltip Freezing Trap(Rank 1)
    /castsequence reset=5 Raptor Strike(Rank 1), Disengage
    /castsequence reset=5 Freezing Trap(Rank 1)

    Can someone help me out here and tell me how to prevent the autoattack. When I use /stopattack the macro shuts down the raptstrike and place the freezing trap.

    Reply
  2. For a Hunters quick safe exit out of a P.v.P “Stun” combining your “Aspect of the Cheetah” “Master Call,” “Deterrrence” and “Disengage” I found that this macro was very useful for getting in close with traps or for a hasty recovery, (And remeber to CHANGE your ASPECT after Master-Call and Deterrence wears off or when you engage the enemy again or it will fail!!!!!)

    You’ll need to change the (Target Name) for “master call” to your self where it says “[target=Enter name]” for your pet to get you out of thoughes nasty movement impairing effects.

    /cast [target=Enter name] Master’s Call
    /use Deterrence
    /cast Aspect of the Cheetah
    /use Disengage

    Reply
  3. Ignore my previous comment, instead of copy and pasting I wrote the same macro manually and it is working now, which is odd but a problem resolved nonetheless.

    Reply
  4. With the anti-rogue macro I get a target, me and the pet attack it but even if I spam it there is no hunter’s mark being set.

    Please email me if you have a suggestion ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  5. I find that binding the F key to follow target works well for me, since I remember it easily, F = Follow. Also, my G and H keys are bound to my healing and mana potions so I can grab them on the fly if I run out of mana or the healer is taking her own sweet time getting around to me. (Unfortunately, this often happens in raid settings since the priority is the tank and melee dps.) Now that 4.0.1 is out, I’ll have to figure out another potion to bind to the H key.Woot! I have an extra key to bind! *Goes through her macros, trinkets and pots to see what else she can bind*

    Reply
  6. how to make macro with 1 button 1st to shot scripling shot second aimed shot chimera shot and last arcane shot pleae anser me at skype smoking_1991

    Reply
    • tedo,

      There’s no practical way of macro’ing all of your shots together. The only shot that can be macro’d along with other shots is Silencing Shot.

      The only way to do this is with a /castsequence, which is a horrible idea – especially for PvP.

      Basically, all of your shots need to be micro-managed, with the exception of Silencing Shot (in PvE settings only). Silencing Shot can be tied to other shot macros, as it does not use the global cooldown.

      Hope this makes sense.

      Reply
      • I’ve found a way to get past the Global Cooldown, it’s really simple. Just type it multiple times. Ex:
        /Cast Freezing Trap
        /Cast Disengage
        /Cast Disengage
        /Cast Disengage
        /Cast Disengage

        Reply
  7. i may have sumthing wrong but dont think so. checked multi times. the anti rogue macro i get the target and the hunters mark, but then it says i need petted lol. does my pet status make a difference? ie, does it need to be on aggressive automatically? cause if not, ie. if it is defensive or passive my pet just sits there. sorry i am new to macros, this is my first so i know this prob. a goober question. thnx.

    Reply
  8. I Bound F as my mount and g as my flying mount for my 2 guys find that wors real well seeing as f is flashlight in other games and g is just nothing always lol or grab

    Reply
  9. Hey,

    Thanks for the great macros.

    I’m having problems when dueling with rogues or feral druids. If my opponent knows how to play their class I don’t stand a chance, because they stun me and nuke me down so fast that when I actually get out of there they’ve already got me to something like 20-50%. I have 842 resilience and 24k unbuffed health, so it shouldn’t be because of my gear. I’ve tried to spam your anti-rogue macro in the beginning, but it doesn’t usually help. Spamming Disengage in the beginning won’t usually work either. Flare and Track Hidden isn’t also enough, when they are quick. I don’t know what’s wrong with my playstyle against these stealthed targets, but I just can’t win them if they know how to play. Against many other classes I fight a lot better.

    I modified your anti-stealth macro a bit for use with a spider pet:

    ” #showtooltip Web
    /targetenemy
    /click PetActionButton6
    /cast Dash
    /cast Hunterโ€™s Mark
    /petattack
    /startattack ”

    Click PetActionButton is my spider’s Web skill. It is working well otherwise, but it doesn’t cast the Hunter’s Mark for some strange reason, even if I spam the button. Any ideas how to get Hunter’s Mark working in that kind of a long macro?

    Thank you in advance for any tips.

    Reply
    • hey, what I find helps is your standard rogue trap, just flare, pop an explosive, a snake and a frost right behind you, and just wait. if the rogue shadowsteps it breaks stealth and ruins his initial ambush, he also cant out range you if you have both a flare and the aoe trap up. serves me well

      Reply
    • I know this is a late reply but atleast it is one and i hope you see it, you have to shift click the hunters mark in u cant just type it in cos u need its rank in it aswell ๐Ÿ˜› Hope this helps!

      Reply
    • its a good macro the anti rouge one but when i went to test it out it wouldnt hunters mark anything just my pet and me would instant attack.

      Reply
  10. Thanks for the helpful info. A basic Question: When I am guarding a flag, I click pet to aggressive & usually a freeze trap as well. My pet gets the rogue most times. Your rouge macro is better & more sophisticated but would my move be a decent basic strategy?

    Reply
    • Yea… best parts would be if the rouge steps “on” ur freeze trap and therefor gets visible tand targetable to ur aggresive pet which will attack him out of it….

      rouge sprint –> back where you started…

      Reply
  11. @ Trackerbr

    That’s nice usage of your mouse. I see you’re using a mount macro. You may want to have a look at GoGo Mount. It’s a pretty slick addon.

    @ Roarbeard

    Good call on adding Raptor Strike to the macro. I tried it on a dummy and it worked brilliantly.

    @ Dracky

    Yeah, that works too of course. I just really like clean one button macros for PvP.

    Reply
  12. Good stuff. I think i’m gonna try adding raptor strike to the disengage/wingclip one. That macro is so much fun as it is though. Me and a friend (pally) dueled and I pulled that one on him. He was like, What the crap man?! that’s cheating. lol. Oh, and for BM, Gar has a big bad beasty macro that I love. Takes like 3 different things off ur bar. Its beautiful. ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  13. I have improved my macro use with mouse scroll up/down + Shift/ctrl/shift+ctrl…. I’m at work now but later I can post some of my macros and key bindings.

    On mouse scroll I normally use:

    Shift+scroll down – Kill Shot
    Shift+scroll up – Steady Shot
    Ctrl+scroll down – Some Stings
    Ctrl+scroll up – Tranquilizing Shot
    Alt+scroll up – my 255 character all propose Mount Macro
    Alt+scroll Down – !Volley
    Shift+ctrl+scroll down – !Flare
    Shift+ctrl+scroll up – Saronite Bomb

    Reply

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