Role Tokens

Macros can target @focus or @party3. They can't target "the tank", and they definitely can't target "Bob, unless he brought his warrior". RoleTokens lets you write exactly that.

/cast [@tank,exists,nodead] Misdirection
/cast [@pi,exists,nodead] [@pi2,exists,nodead] [@dps,exists,nodead] [] Power Infusion

@tank is whoever is tanking. @pi is the first person on your Power Infusion list who showed up tonight. You write the macro once and it keeps pointing at the right people as your group changes.

How it works

The game doesn't let addons cast spells for you, but it does let them edit macro text when you're out of combat. So RoleTokens watches your group, and every time someone joins, leaves, or changes role, it rewrites your macro so @tank becomes @party3 or @raid17 or whoever it is right now. The macro on your bar is always a plain, ordinary macro. Your focus is never touched.

If someone changes during a fight, the macro updates the moment combat ends.

Quick and easy: the role tokens

Nothing to set up. Write @tank, @healer or @dps in a macro, save it, and it works.

Hunter: mouseover, then the tank, then your pet.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,exists,help,nodead] [@tank,exists,nodead] [@pet,exists,nodead] [] Misdirection

Rogue: mouseover, then the tank.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,exists,help,nodead] [@tank,exists,nodead] [] Tricks of the Trade

Druid: mouseover, then a healer, then yourself.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,exists,help,nodead] [@healer,exists,nodead] [@player] Innervate

Healers with a tank external work the same way with @tank and @tank2.

The moment you save, RoleTokens says now managing macro <name> and swaps the token for the real unit. From then on the macro follows your group.

@tank is the raid's assigned main tank if there is one, otherwise the first tank. @tank2, @healer2, @dps3 and so on count through the rest in group order.

You are never picked yourself. A tank who writes @tank gets the other tank, and a druid who writes @healer gets another healer. For something you can also cast on yourself, put [@player] at the end, as the Innervate macro above does.

One rule to keep: always pair a token with exists. When there is no tank, the token is left as written, @tank isn't a real unit, and the clause fails so the macro moves on to the next one. That's the entire fallback system, and it's why a bare [@tank] would try to cast at nobody instead of moving on.

If you want to choose who gets it: your own tokens

Say you're a priest with two friends who should always get Power Infusion before anyone else. Make a token called pi and put them on it:

/rtk token pi add friend Alice
/rtk token pi add friend Bob
/rtk token pi add Carol-Illidan

Now @pi is Alice if she's in the group, otherwise Bob, otherwise Carol. @pi2 is the next one down, @pi3 the one after that. People who aren't here are simply skipped.

Then write the macro so it walks the list and skips the dead:

#showtooltip
/cast [@pi,exists,nodead] [@pi2,exists,nodead] [@pi3,exists,nodead] [@dps,exists,nodead] [] Power Infusion

Read it as: my first choice, or my second if the first is dead, or my third, or any dps if none of my people made it, or whatever I'm targeting. The game checks nodead at the instant you press the key, so this stays correct mid-fight even though RoleTokens itself only edits macros out of combat.

You can also do all of this from the RoleTokens page (Options, AddOns, RoleTokens, or the minimap button), or by right-clicking a player, a friends list row or a guild roster row and choosing Add … to @pi.

The details

Naming. The first add creates the token. Names are letters only, up to twelve, and can't be something the game already treats as a unit like focus or party.

Only while they're playing the right role. If Bob sometimes heals, tell the token to skip anyone who isn't dps right now:

/rtk token pi role dps

Or set it per person, which overrides the list setting for them. "Alice only as dps, Bob only as tank" is:

/rtk token pi role Alice dps
/rtk token pi role Bob tank

On the page, that's the small role button on each row.

Seeing what's going on. /rtk token pi lists everyone on the token with a reason next to each name: who they're on, not in group, healing · skipped, and which slot they fill. /rtk on its own shows every token at once.

Editing. remove 2 or remove Bob, move 3 1, clear, delete. The page has arrows and an x on each row.

Friends and their alts

When you add someone as a friend, they count on whatever character they log in with. Two things make that practical:

Keep one alt out. Bob is great on his mage and useless on his warrior. While he's on the warrior, target him and:

/rtk token pi except Bob target

or right-click him and choose Never Bobwarrior for @pi, or click never this alt on his row on the page while he's on it. The page shows it as an except line under his name with an x to undo it; allow does the same from chat.

Rank one alt higher than the rest. Add the character and the friend separately. Bobmage at position 1 and friend Bob at position 4 means: Bob on his mage is my first choice, Bob on anything else is my fourth. A person is only ever used once per token, so there's no double counting.

Friends are shown by the name part of their BattleTag, never the number. If two friends share a name, the page tells them apart by the character each one is on, or was last seen on.

The page

Options, AddOns, RoleTokens. Or /rtk ui, or the minimap button.

Left side: the built-in tokens, then yours, and a + New token button that checks the name as you type. Right side: the selected token's list, one person per row with their name on top and what's going on underneath. A green dot means they're in your group and count right now, and the slot they fill is shown at the end of the row. A grey dot with a reason (not in group, healing · skipped, excluded) means they don't. The line at the bottom shows what each slot resolves to at this moment, which is the quickest way to answer "why did my macro pick Carol".

The + Add button opens a picker over your group, your online friends and your online guild members, with a search box. Typing a name that matches nothing and pressing Enter adds it as written.

The minimap button can be turned off with the checkbox at the top of the page or with /rtk minimap.

Commands

/rtk                     what every token resolves to, and which macros are managed
/rtk ui                  open the page
/rtk refresh             rewrite macros now
/rtk forget <MacroName>  stop managing a macro; its current text stays
/rtk token <name> add | remove | move | role | except | allow | clear | delete
/rtk minimap             show or hide the minimap button
/rtk quiet, /rtk verbose chat notices off or on

Good to know

• Tokens are shared across all your characters. Your Power Infusion list is only useful on a priest, but it does no harm anywhere else.
• Macros can't be edited in combat, so a change mid-fight lands when combat ends.
• Macros cap at 255 characters after expansion, and raid17 is longer than pi. If a macro would overflow, RoleTokens says so and leaves it alone.
• Nothing runs in the background. RoleTokens only does work when your group, roles or macros change, and one pass is a handful of comparisons.
• If you used pins in an older version, they became tokens named mytank, myhealer and mydps with a role filter. Where a macro relied on a pin, change @tank to [@mytank,exists,nodead] [@tank,exists,nodead].