What is the point having precast gear?

[Gwydion]

You could hypothetically use all that precast gear by making three macros to set all those slots with /equip, then cast the spell, and then use /equipset for your midcast gear, but... yeah, it's cumbersome. I guess the intended approach is to just always wear your precast gear rather than only wear it just before you cast a spell?

This is one of those cases where things would work a lot better if we could have /equipset without the 1 second lockout, but apparently that's not possible. 20 line macros would be good enough, but that would conflict with one of those PS2 limitations aspects of design so... not likely to get that either.

All things considered, what is the way that players are expected to use both sets? I mean, what does a vanilla macro look like with the appropriate equip sets in precast and midcast/potency of a spell?

[Zenion]

All things considered, what is the way that players are expected to use both sets? I mean, what does a vanilla macro look like with the appropriate equip sets in precast and midcast/potency of a spell?

In the Abyssea days, before /equipset was a thing and when summoner was starting to get actual useful gear (finally), my blood pacts would look something like ctrl+5 ctrl+6 ctrl+7: blood pact delay. ctrl+8: blood pact. alt+1 alt+2 alt+3: blood pact potency. alt+6 alt+7 alt+8: idle set. I imagine that's basically how your vanilla macro would look like, only now midcast could be an equipset on the actual spell macro, and idle set could be a single macro of its own since you can afford a second's delay in swapping back to it.

So basically: Three macros to put on your midcast, one for the appropriate spell, one for getting dressed again afterward.