A guildie’s alt hit 80 yesterday and immediately started to complain about vanish not working in PVP. While “* breaks vanish” is a long-running joke, there are some simple things you can do that help out a lot.
Your Connection
One of the problems is that after pressing ‘vanish’, it takes a short time for your client to update the server so that the rest of the World (of Warcraft) knows you have vanished. Unfortunately things can go wrong during this delay, such as your auto-attacks continuing to proc.
This can be ‘fixed’ by making a very basic macro for vanish rather than casting the spell directly.
#showtooltip vanish
/stopattack
/cast vanish
That’s quickly fixed one of the problems associated with vanish failing, now for the next.
Your Opponents’ Connection/Attacks
Your auto-attacks will now hopefully be stopped before you vanish, but unfortunately there may still be spells/bullets/swings travelling through the air towards you. If your request to vanish reaches the server before these do, these attacks will hit you after your vanish, breaking it. This is a lot harder to fix than your own attacks, so it comes down to either taking a risk, or stopping your opponent from being able to attack. Gouging works, but eats lots of energy and that might stop you from Cheap-Shotting your target. A less reliable (and much more situational way) is to LoS your opponent, perhaps by running through them to break their spell casts. Using
Your Special Attacks
/stopattack will stop your auto-attacks from landing, but another problem is your special attacks. When you vanish it is possible to quickly hit your next attack before your stealthed actionbar has replaced your normal actionbar. With my keyboard layout this means that instead of cheap-shotting my target I kick them (‘kick’ is my normal actionbutton#1, ‘cheap shot’ is my stealthed actionbutton#1). You can get around this by using macros for these attacks.
For the above example where actionbutton#1 is kick, you would need to replace the spell ‘kick’ with a macro containing the following;
#showtooltip kick
/cast [nostealth] kick
If you press 1 too fast after vanishing you will not blow your vanish/waste your kick. I use this to protect vanish being broken by spells other than my cheap-shots and garrottes.
The Switch-Around
Even with only a rogue hitting you, it’s not uncommon to go from 100% to 0% HP in the duration of a cheap-shot/kidney-shot. You can use the following macro to try and switch around the situation by trinketing/vanishing then reopening with a cheap-shot before they can react.
#showtooltip TRINKETNAME or if you’re human use #showtooltip Every Man for Himself(Racial)
/stopattack
/use [combat] 134 or if you’re human, use /cast Every Man for Himself(Racial)
/cast [nostealth] vanish
/cast [stealth] cheap shot
“/use [combat] 13″ activates your trinket-slot 13 (which is the top one – the bottom one is 14). You will need to spam this macro as pressing it once will only trinket/vanish.
Combine all of this with some common sense (don’t try to vanish while standing in consecration!), and hopefully you’ll find your vanishes are a bit more reliable.
great thanks!!!
All great tips, thank you! The macros are particularly useful.
You sir (mam?) are a god! Your special attack macro is awesome. On my bar it’s even worse. I have dismantle on my normal bar where my cheapshot is on my stealth bar, so if my vanish fails I’ll end up dismantling my target. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve inadvertently dismantled a priest or other caster! Thank you so much for this macro.
Just a minor correction for any /use (trinket) macro: Trinket slots are 13 and 14 (top, bottom respectively).
Thanks Downcast, appreciated!