Very early in patch 2.4's progressive development on the PTR, the ability to send raid icons over chat was implemented. The syntax is pretty simple, you place the name of the icon in those funny looking brackets, like so: {circle}, {star}, etc.

Personally, I'm not too terribly excited, it's not something you'll be typing on the fly, probably. I can't really see a Mage or Warlock(or anybody) taking the extra time to type that out properly when something goes wrong(ie death), as simple as it seems to do so. However, this could be a good tool for raid leaders, not so much the raiders. A raid leader could include these in a tanking/crowd control assignment macro. "/ra Matthew, tank {skull}. Christian, sheep {square}." That sort of thing.

Regardless of how often this will actually be used, it's a nice little feature, and I'm sure post-2.4 mods and addons will make good use of them, even if the players themselves don't.

Marking targets is an art form, one that requires tactical know-how of whatever instance or raid you happen to find yourself. This duty can fall to your raid leader, your tank or some other designated distributor of raid markers. Of course, the exception is often the Protection Paladin who often requires no crowd control and lets DPS go to town on whichever target they want. But, eventually, even a great multi-target tank needs to establish a kill order. Regardless of who does the job, LuckyCharms2 can provide an easy-to-use raid marking interface.

During my days as a Protection Paladin, I started out using the somewhat clunky, default raid-marking interface. A druid friend eventually clued me into the concept of binding the aptly named lucky charm markers to keys, which made my marking endeavors much easier. However, being an addon junky, and a confessed clicker, I knew there had to be something better for me. Enter, LuckyCharms2, a nice little addon which allows you to assign raid icons by using a small frame displaying the different lucky charms.

I like Nikol's writeup of her experiences marking targets in instances. There really is an art to laying down those icons in a group, and it requires quite a bit of knowledge to do right. You need to keep group makeup in mind, know the abilities of all the classes involved, pay attention to what individual members want to do and even how they're specced, and have a basic knowledge of the instance and how it works. There's so much that goes into it that it's basically an art in itself -- do you sheep the caster and take out the minions, or focus on the big bad first and then move on to trash? Do you have the group to interrupt and pull a caster to a trap, or do you need to get the mobs out of the way before the patrol comes through?

It's complicated and fascinating stuff, and this kind of group coordination is why some players choose to play PvE rather than PvP -- because while yes, the mobs are predictable (and players aren't; as much, anyway), the fun is in the planning. And when you get a good group to go with a good planner, then things really get interesting. There is an art to laying down marks, but once you study what a good marker does, and get the hang of it, you're that much more helpful to any groups you're in.