single button tanking?

[Meloree]

No, the macro only cycles when the ability successfully casts. So, you're free to slam the hell out of the button in the neverending quest to leave less casts on the table.

[Wrathy]

You would probably break your keyboard pretty quickly with that one. I remember on my pvp grind back in vanilla, when i was raiding full time and pulling about 500-800k honor a week, I broke a few keys off my keyboard hitting them so much. I think one was my Heroic strike button.

Interesting idea, but I still like the flexibility, and I would be afraid that if i went to something like that, I would lose some of the muscle memory of being able to do a 969 with out watching the cool downs.

[Oryanadin]

You would probably break your keyboard pretty quickly with that one. I remember on my pvp grind back in vanilla, when i was raiding full time and pulling about 500-800k honor a week, I broke a few keys off my keyboard hitting them so much. I think one was my Heroic strike button.

Interesting idea, but I still like the flexibility, and I would be afraid that if i went to something like that, I would lose some of the muscle memory of being able to do a 969 with out watching the cool downs.

I was a hunter in BC. I went through 3 Keyboards from SSC-Sunwell. The "E" Key on all of them stopped working... "E" was my steady shot macro.

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking and I personally feel like being able to react to a situation that was not supposed to happen extremely quickly separates the decent prot paladins from the good and great ones. For instance, 3 mobs spawn and you hit your macro and get a shield of the righteous. Whereas I see three mobs coming and "Shift-mouse wheel down" and get hammer of the righteous. 3 mobs spawned and were all picked up in one GCD with no taunt. In your all in one button you might get a single target attack and need to mash taunt.

[Chicken]

You would probably break your keyboard pretty quickly with that one. I remember on my pvp grind back in vanilla, when i was raiding full time and pulling about 500-800k honor a week, I broke a few keys off my keyboard hitting them so much. I think one was my Heroic strike button.

Interesting idea, but I still like the flexibility, and I would be afraid that if i went to something like that, I would lose some of the muscle memory of being able to do a 969 with out watching the cool downs.

I was a hunter in BC. I went through 3 Keyboards from SSC-Sunwell. The "E" Key on all of them stopped working... "E" was my steady shot macro.

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking and I personally feel like being able to react to a situation that was not supposed to happen extremely quickly separates the decent prot paladins from the good and great ones. For instance, 3 mobs spawn and you hit your macro and get a shield of the righteous. Whereas I see three mobs coming and "Shift-mouse wheel down" and get hammer of the righteous. 3 mobs spawned and were all picked up in one GCD with no taunt. In your all in one button you might get a single target attack and need to mash taunt.

Well that can also be solved just by making some small changes to the macro, not to mention it's only a situation that really happens at the start of a fight... Since in the middle of a fight if it's Shield of Righteousness coming up next, there should still be 3 seconds of cooldown left on Hammer of the Righteous.

Just change the macro to something like this:

/castsequence reset=5 [mod:shift] Hammer of the Righteous; [] Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous

And voila, if you hold shift when pressing your button you'll force a Hammer of the Righteous, after that you can just use the macro normally.

[Meloree]

You would probably break your keyboard pretty quickly with that one. I remember on my pvp grind back in vanilla, when i was raiding full time and pulling about 500-800k honor a week, I broke a few keys off my keyboard hitting them so much. I think one was my Heroic strike button.

Yeah, I go through keyboards pretty quickly. Not appreciably faster with 2 button macros than 5 individual abilities, though. I slam the hell out of 5 buttons instead of 2, that way. More buttons to be the weakest link. Also, beer makes you smarter, it kills off the weakest brain cells.

Interesting idea, but I still like the flexibility...

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking

No. Just no. We covered that. The repetition of that position is beginning to annoy me. Misinformation does not help anyone, and it's been clearly pointed out that 2-button macro doesn't have any loss of flexibility, unless you go ahead and take all the other abilities off your bars (which is dumb). Frankly, it was pointed out in the LAST thread we had about macros... and the one before that...

[Oryanadin]

You would probably break your keyboard pretty quickly with that one. I remember on my pvp grind back in vanilla, when i was raiding full time and pulling about 500-800k honor a week, I broke a few keys off my keyboard hitting them so much. I think one was my Heroic strike button.

Yeah, I go through keyboards pretty quickly. Not appreciably faster with 2 button macros than 5 individual abilities, though. I slam the hell out of 5 buttons instead of 2, that way. More buttons to be the weakest link. Also, beer makes you smarter, it kills off the weakest brain cells.

Interesting idea, but I still like the flexibility...

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking

No. Just no. We covered that. The repetition of that position is beginning to annoy me. Misinformation does not help anyone, and it's been clearly pointed out that 2-button macro doesn't have any loss of flexibility, unless you go ahead and take all the other abilities off your bars (which is dumb). Frankly, it was pointed out in the LAST thread we had about macros... and the one before that...

Further down my post I say All in one macro.

[Meloree]

Further down my post I say All in one macro.

Still no. In any given situation where adds are spawning, some of your abilities are on cooldown, and some aren't. If you're doing 969 properly, only one ability from that queue is available at any time anyway. Individually keybound abilities versus macros are no different with a fight already in progress, unless you're not executing 969 properly. If you know that stuff is coming, and want to save abilities, there's still no reason that you can't save abilities by breaking out of the macro, hitting what you want to hit, and leaving the other stuff available.

The macros ADD functionality - the ability to mindlessly run your rotation in one or two buttons - without removing anything, because there's no reason to not have the individual abilities keybound anyway. I'm still not a fan of the all-in-one macro, but that's a personal choice.

[theckhd]

No, the macro only cycles when the ability successfully casts. So, you're free to slam the hell out of the button in the neverending quest to leave less casts on the table.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I could have sworn it used to work the other way, but that might have been back in classic when it was introduced.

I would be afraid that if i went to something like that, I would lose some of the muscle memory of being able to do a 969 with out watching the cool downs.

This is probably the best argument in the whole thread, actually. Lord knows what would happen if I let myself be even more lazy than I already am.

[fuzzygeek]

Yeah, I go through keyboards pretty quickly.

I heart my 17 year old IBM M5-1s.

I'm personally a proponent of intelligent use of a one-button macro in addition to normal keybindings -- not in lieu of -- as it leaves a lot of mental bandwidth available for raid leading. I wouldn't miss it if I didn't have it, but it's handy to have for certain situations, just the same, so I can focus on other things.

All-in-ones are a shortcut, and one you shouldn't take unless you've got the fundamentals down as it'll teach you bad habits and inflexibility.

As far as muscle memory goes -- from launch to TBC I played a holy priest. I've barely touched her on a regular basis until recently, when farming frost badges. I still have muscle memory for all my healing keybinds. It's surprising how long that stuff stays with you.

I used WordPerfect extensively back in the early 90s. I'm very curious how many of those hotkeys I'd still remember if I sat down in front of it today.

[Snake-Aes]

If you macro ShoR, HotR, and keybind HotR separately... you can start with HotR, and then happily push the 6s macro. I can still do a 5-button rotation. I can still do it with basically the same ability usage/efficiency as I get out of macros. But I end up glancing at the action bars more often to make sure I know where I am in the rotation. And that's attention that's best spent on some other part of a progression boss fight, for me.

Two buttons for two skills.
Using modifier macros on seventeen different spells to save space, and using one extra action bar worth of keybindings, I still have abilities I want to bind and can't fit them in.

Yes, i'm SOOOO going to make a macro for two abilities and bind one of them anyway out of it.
Hell, it's easier to not bind it at all in the first place. It's even easier to learn. "this button, then that one. Start with this for single, start with that for aoe". Proprioception is a beautiful thing.

[Oryanadin]

Meloree- It's probably my experience as a hunter during B/C that makes me so against One button for everything macro's. But like you said, it is all personal preference.

[halabar]

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking and I personally feel like being able to react to a situation that was not supposed to happen extremely quickly separates the decent prot paladins from the good and great ones. For instance, 3 mobs spawn and you hit your macro and get a shield of the righteous. Whereas I see three mobs coming and "Shift-mouse wheel down" and get hammer of the righteous. 3 mobs spawned and were all picked up in one GCD with no taunt. In your all in one button you might get a single target attack and need to mash taunt.

This. Also consider Sauerfang where you have to tank with no AOE otherwise you'll grab the beasts. With Gunship and a few other fights, I think I'm going to add HoR to one of my keybinds near the rotation.

But I do use a two-macro system, with all the other capabilities keybound around them. But I'm going to make a second set of macros where the AOE is dropped out for Sauerfang, and probably another one for when I just want to drop Consencration out of the rotation.

The other problem with spamming a rotation macro is that you might get 2 or 3 clicks registered, and be unable to respond as quickly as you would like. I still use macros, but I'm aware of this limitation, and am careful about it.

[Snake-Aes]

But on the 969 macro issue I feel like the macros take the flexibility out of tanking and I personally feel like being able to react to a situation that was not supposed to happen extremely quickly separates the decent prot paladins from the good and great ones. For instance, 3 mobs spawn and you hit your macro and get a shield of the righteous. Whereas I see three mobs coming and "Shift-mouse wheel down" and get hammer of the righteous. 3 mobs spawned and were all picked up in one GCD with no taunt. In your all in one button you might get a single target attack and need to mash taunt.

This. Also consider Sauerfang where you have to tank with no AOE otherwise you'll grab the beasts. With Gunship and a few other fights, I think I'm going to add HoR to one of my keybinds near the rotation.

But I do use a two-macro system, with all the other capabilities keybound around them. But I'm going to make a second set of macros where the AOE is dropped out for Sauerfang, and probably another one for when I just want to drop Consencration out of the rotation.

The other problem with spamming a rotation macro is that you might get 2 or 3 clicks registered, and be unable to respond as quickly as you would like. I still use macros, but I'm aware of this limitation, and am careful about it.

This is an example of why it's not a good idea to macro sequences of abilities. Fights that require any change will make you either not use the macros, or use a whole new set of macros. It's a waste to relearn everything every time you have to change the flow. In a reduction from 5 to 2 or 3 or even STILL 5 like some examples were hinted to be, there's no point to using a macro at all.

[theckhd]

This. Also consider Sauerfang where you have to tank with no AOE otherwise you'll grab the beasts.

This isn't true, you just have to drop HotR from your rotation for about 10 seconds around their spawn time. Their aoe reduction reduces Consecration ticks so much that healing aggro easily outpaces them.

[bentglasstube]

Interesting, I didn't know that. I could have sworn it used to work the other way, but that might have been back in classic when it was introduced.

You might be getting /castsequence mixed up with /castrandom which used to pick a new random spell if there were cooldown issues. Either way, they both continue to attempt to cast the same spell until successful now.

Then again, I was too much of a noob to know about macros in vanilla.