If you are like me and type slow, you can bind your canni macro to any of the F1 - F12 keys. That way you can continue doing your canni dance while typing in chat so you don't feel that you need to type between server ticks and you can take your time.

Or you could just be that hardcore boss shaman type that is awesome and mysterious that others look up to because he is silent.

Gotta agree with fishingme. Stoicism is an important part of being a shaman.

Just do your cannis in bursts, even if it is not optimal. It's a game after all, not your job.

40+ year olds playing this game, should allow macro keyboards or you're going to lose your core audience.

That's pretty much accurate.

You will replace medding with canni by the time you're 60 (or you'll be severely limiting yourself)

Example : Ayillish (30ksomething HP), doubles for 250s, AOEs for up to 250.

This fight takes nearly 30minutes solo, and you'll likely be casting 200+ canni for that fight alone. Attempting to do this fight without serious canni dancing would almost certainly OOM you before you even get the mob to half health.

Canni is the price of playing a shaman. You don't get to med.

That being said, You can certainly get away with canni dancing -less-. Just apply mana smartly and you can relax a little bit.

TL;DR Shaman life is canni dancing. Be glad you're only needed to dance when you spend mana. Poor bards have to twist for their supper year round!

As far as a canni macro, Get yourself some instant cast clicky item. (lets say This or This)

We need a clickable item to resresh your top spell gem earlier than it would normally be available. This lets you overlap your 'spell cooldown" time with your "casting a spell" time. The timesaving benefit will be obvious when you do it.

Now, lets roll up a macro
===============
/pause 2
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1
===============

Next, we're going create a clickable "button" for the clicky item.

Equip the item, or place it in one of your 8 bag slots.
(yes, you must sacrifice a bag if you're not wearing the clicky)
Next, click-and-hold the item, and drag your mouse so you get a duplicate icon of the item. Place this button on a macro slot (lets say #1 keypress slot)

Next, Take that macro you made and put it on another hotbutton (lets say #2)

Now, #1 should use your clicky, and #2 should try to canni. We're getting close.

Finally, open up your options (alt+O) and go to "Keys" tab, then from the drop-down menu, select "hotbar 1" Change your keypress #2 (the clickable item) "alternate" key to "1".

Now, when you press 1, the following things will happen, in order

Item is clicked, refreshing spellgem #1
/pause 2
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1, /pause 1
/cast 1

Using this macro, you can spam canni very fast with just 1 keypress, (you can occasionally cast -too- fast, and the server tells you "NO!")

This also allows you to use "2" as a spell gem refresher. You can only "chain cast" the same spell off the #1 spell gem, but you can "chain cast" different spells (2-3-4, 4-3-5, etc) using this method as well to give you more free time in general.

An example : Mob is pulled to camp, cast malo, press 2, cast slow, press 2, cast root, press 2, cast a heal, press 2. This allows you to move from spell to spell with minimum waiting time between.

This will let you, as others have mentioned, "burst canni" to get your HP chipped down so you can get back to sitting sooner. This is a much saner alternative to watching for med tics.

You could modify that macro to automatically /sit off and /sit on with some longer duration pauses, however, I find that annoying, as I reflexively sit after casting anyway, and I'm not a fan of long-running macros.

Also, I hope you specialize in alteration, this is the school for canni (roughly 3/4 of shaman spells are alteration) and will save you loads of mana (HP) on fizzles

Thank you so much for posting this Darkatar! This is so much more relaxing than waiting for ticks. I didn't realize that the #1 casting gem behaves differently with clicky items than the other 7.

My understanding is that /pause commands need to go at the beginning of the line, though the pause actually occurs after the subsequent command. I believe the "/pause 1" commands in this macro won't even be parsed.

pause works in 10ths of a second and the countdown starts from the beginning of the command they proceed.

for semi auto dance I use
/pause 60, /cast 7
/pause 60, /cast 7
/pause 60, /cast 7
/pause 60, /cast 7
/cast 7

I manually toggle sit/stand between casts to land med ticks.

My AFK canni is

/pause 60, /cast 7
x4 times
then /sit


Note you could use a shorter pause than 60 for the afk canni if you wanted.

If you are not Canni-dancing (timing canni between med ticks), or not L60 with Torpor and Cann 4 then Canni is barely more efficient than sitting and medding. The only time it is ever useful to canni-spam without Torp/Cann 4 is if you need mana without consideration of HP (i.e. in emergencies or if being healed externally).

Otherwise, canni-spamming without Torp and Cann 4 is basically pointless.