Setting up macros for Forever launch day

The November 4, 2026 checklist: what to back up, what to audit, and the binding ceremony that takes five minutes and saves a week.

The five-minute plan

Forever launch day is a returning-player wave: you are coming back to a renamed world, and your macro bar is the part of your character you should not have to relearn. The five-minute plan gets you to level-1 with your binds intact:

  1. Back up WTF (now). Copy your World of Warcraft WTF folder somewhere safe. Macros, keybinds, addon settings, all of it, one folder.
  2. Note your bind map. Ten minutes with a notepad: which key is your interrupt, your cleanse, your cooldown chord, your mount. Future you will thank past you when the addon asks.
  3. Prebuild the core set. The five binds on this page are class-agnostic and take one paste each. Have them ready before the revamp renames anything.
  4. Diff at launch. When the patch lands, open the spellbook next to your macros and fix the renames. One-word edits, not rewrites.
  5. Re-check in a week. The return to the hub a week after launch: the class-revamp notes and any new-conditionals news.

The core bind set (prebuild these now)

Five binds cover most of a launch-day bar, and every one works with the pre-launch client and the post-launch one (renames permitting):

#showtooltip/stopcasting/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] <your interrupt>; [harm] <your interrupt>
#showtooltip/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead] <your heal or cleanse>; <your heal or cleanse>
#showtooltip/cast [button:2] Dismount; [swimming] <water mount>; <flying mount>; <ground mount>
#showtooltip/cast [mod:shift] <minor cooldown>; <main cooldown>
#showtooltip/cast [mod:shift,@focus,harm,nodead] <kick or cc>; [harm] <kick or cc>

Angle brackets are your fill-in names. Prebundle them now, swap the names the moment the revamps tell you what changed, and launch week is a leveling wave, not a rebinding session.

What the revamps will actually touch

Every class and spec is getting a revamp, which in macro terms means some ability names change. The pattern on this site survives renames by construction: the gates and fallbacks do not care what the spell is called, only the name argument does. That is why the advice here is a diff session, not a rebuild. TheForever hub tracks what is confirmed as of each update date, so check back, and the Skyborne page covers the new race's binds.

Questions people ask

Where are macros stored on disk?+
Macros live in your World of Warcraft folder under WTF, in per-account files. Backing up the WTF folder backs up your macros, key bindings, and addon settings in one move. Copy it before launch and again after your first Forever session.
Should I really audit every macro before launch?+
Audit the ones that matter: interrupt, cleanse, cooldown chords, and mouseover heals. Those are the binds that decide fights, and they are the ones that break silently when an ability renames. The rest of the bar catches itself in the first dungeon.
What should I do the moment the revamps go live?+
Open your spellbook, open your macros, and diff the two. Renamed abilities make a one-word edit. Blizzard does not send you a list, so the diff is the whole job.