FFXIV Ultimate Healer Targeting Macro; or Gamepad Done Right!

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Originally Posted by raela

I have fairy summon macros that change which embrace is set to a xbar - you can place skills with macros.. or maybe I misunderstood?

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You can place skills with a macro, but you can't place macros with a macro. So, for example, an Embrace + Physick macro can't be placed with the chotbar set command.

no complaints personally about using the d-pad to change members. I like your system, it's inventive, but it seems like you're literally doing the same thing I'm doing, and prone to the same errors, but you have two less spots on your hotbar. I personally just use the main hotbar and hotbar 8 with the LT+RT and RT+LT combo. I've gotten quite accurate at it and don't make many errors.

I used to heal in everquest online adventures...you had to scroll through members with R1, if you missed one you had to go all the way through. Granted they were only 4 player parties, but it led to a lot of errors. I think there was a combo button to go back a member, but I don't remember and probably never bothered to learn it.

Kudos?

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Originally Posted by raela

I personally love how healing is.. on another MMO, I did kb/mouse, then swapped to a controller using a third party program to map the keys (as the game was not designed for controller use). Soft targetting is awesome.

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Soft targeting is neat for sure but FFXI had a party cast targeting that I was more used to and expected when I started playing ARR. The way it worked was that you press heal first and then the 'soft' targeting activates and then lets you select your heal target and then you hit confirm to cast the spell.

It's pretty much classic FF single player rpg style and basically just the logic order of what spell and then casted on who instead of cast on who and then what spell do you want to cast on him/her. There's the downside of having an extra step but I would have liked to have that option to try in ARR. Especially how much of a pain it is to set down a shadowflare/sacredsoil (to me anyway) since you have to let go of the trigger hold that activates the skill to confirm the placement. I mean, I already wanted to place an aoe on the floor, why can't I just tap the same skill button again to confirm it or at least press confirm without letting go of the trigger hold?

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Originally Posted by Sadana

You can place skills with a macro, but you can't place macros with a macro. So, for example, an Embrace + Physick macro can't be placed with the chotbar set command.

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You can get around that by copying whole sets onto your intended cross bar. It requires sacrificing an entire crossbar for each pet but it works since macros from another crossbar gets copied.

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Originally Posted by Gardes

You know, have you tried /macrolock? I haven't gotten around to using this. Apparently it prevent other macros from cancelling currently running macros until it finishes. I've seen switched back to non /chotbar change for stance dancing but I imagine this could possibly prevent CS not deactivating..

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Yeah, I tried using this once.. it actually made things worse. It prevents the casting of any skill while the macro is going and still can get the bars swapped around wrong. Without it, messing up the swap can result in heals under CS.. with it, heals won't go through and you can't instantly swap again (if you hit it by accident/want to swap back for whatever reason).

Watching that YT video made me feel sharp pains in my thumb.

Do people seriously press the X button constantly to cast spells?
He's hitting Stone II over and over and over and over when it's on cooldown.

I've seen SCH's do it with Embrace + Physic 'cus it fails to cast sometimes, but that seems painful and mad.

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Originally Posted by raela

Yeah, I tried using this once.. it actually made things worse. It prevents the casting of any skill while the macro is going and still can get the bars swapped around wrong. Without it, messing up the swap can result in heals under CS.. with it, heals won't go through and you can't instantly swap again (if you hit it by accident/want to swap back for whatever reason).

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Well that's what would naturally happen if your heals are made of macros. The /mlock locs out other macros from running after all. I tried the setup with no macros on healing and attack spells but the issue of targeting came up and I fixed it with adding target switching on the 2 stance macros themselves. Turning on cleric would make my target jump from main tank to his target (likely the boss) and turning off cleric would make my target jump from the enemy boss to its target (hopefully the main tank) or number 2 on my party list as a fail safe. That part seems to be working well for me so far after a couple dungeon and trial roulette runs (including titan hm).

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Originally Posted by Jakeson

no complaints personally about using the d-pad to change members. I like your system, it's inventive, but it seems like you're literally doing the same thing I'm doing, and prone to the same errors, but you have two less spots on your hotbar.

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Error reduction comes from not having to press and release the shoulder buttons to (de)activate the chotbar. Less finger strain because of this as well. I am prone to the same errors of targeting the wrong person, HOWEVER, I will never jump, switch chotbars, cancel or open my chraracter drop-dn menu because my chotbar wasn't active. It's always active.

Not being able to target while moving is an error as well.

And as you can see in the vid, I manage my chotbars pretty well (I'm not any more reliant on spell macros than the next elf).

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Originally Posted by radioactive_lego

I will never jump, switch chotbars, cancel or open my chraracter drop-dn menu because my chotbar wasn't active.

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Um.... I never have this problem.. ever... and I don't use your method.

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Originally Posted by Cutie_McSnuggles

Um.... I never have this problem.. ever... and I don't use your method.

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Way to go! That was not sarcastic. And in no way do I want you to think it should make you feel wrong, convoluted or difficult. Seriously. I even upvoted you.

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Originally Posted by radioactive_lego

Error reduction comes from not having to press and release the shoulder buttons to (de)activate the chotbar. It's always active.

Not being able to target while moving is an error as well.

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Well, there's only so much you can do when there's movement, camera, skill access, friendly targeting, hostile targetting and there's only left and right analog and face buttons and dpad counted as one set and triggers counted as one set and each of them having separate pools of options for gamepad calibration.

This could probably be user fixed had SE allowed the gamepad to hold empty functions and we can instead use xpadder to tie the empty buttons and triggers to an unused hotbar set that activates in game macros. For example, if set select can be turned off like auto run does, you can map your targeting macros like you wanted. But then...you would now be unable to use the standard controller tabbing when you're tanking/dpsing because it now only selects friendlies for you.

Same thing if you make the right analog do nothing from in game and tell the xpadder to go up and down the party list as you flick the right analog up and down and tab target enemies as you flick it left and right and... move camera control to the triggers (imagine just constantly holding a skill trigger while moving with your left thumb, selecting targets with your right thumb and using your index/middle finger to rotate camera. You'd still end up sacrificing your camera control (vertical motion and zoom control).

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Originally Posted by Gardes

snip.

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Adding a macro to change the function of l1/r1 to Player/Party/Everything/Enemy targeting (the way you can with d-pad filters) would fix everything.

-No more targeting macros
-Movement while targeting
-Chotbars remain active ALL THE TIME, the way they are for tanks/dps.

It boggles me that this is not a thing.

What boggles my mind more is that so many are fine cycling through the party list one member at a time. As soon as I started doing the 8-man content, I thought "Nope, this has got to change". I gave up 15 hotbar spots, and that's not counting some of the repeat spells, (across 3 hotbars) just to get around that problem, so it makes me chuckle to see some knock the idea for taking up just 2. It really is one of those personal preference things, though.

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Originally Posted by Gardes

I'm curious about the system other players use to place their skills on their crossbar because most of the time when I see people posting pics with their crossbars in view, it usually doesn't make sense to me.

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I know, right? I remember watching a video of our a friend's first t10 clear, and I spent the whole time staring at the crossbar, thinking about how different it was from mine.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

I know, right? I remember watching a video of our a friend's first t10 clear, and I spent the whole time staring at the crossbar, thinking about how different it was from mine.

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The 6 healing spells/skills on my right hotbar (and the two targeting macro) could account for 90% of the skills I use for any raid/trial/dungeon, if I chose never to go offensive.

If I used all 8, it would have to be:
Cure I
Cure II
Medica
Esuna
Regen
Stoneskin
Swiftcast + Raise (Macro)
Benediction

With these 8 I'm confident I could do 95% of all the games content, and never have to switch a chotbar or toggle to the other half of the chotbar. I would set it up like:

- Regen, Swift + Raise, Benediction, Medica on the right (buttons). Because Regen, Swift + Raise, and Bene are all insta-cast (doable on the move). And Medica can steal swift from Raise to make it insta-cast.

- Cure I, Cure II, SS, and Esuna, on the d-pad. Because you cast these stationary (not swiftcasted) 99% of the time; there's no conflict of interest on your left thumb between the d-pad and thumbstick.

if only i don't have to press (x) when switching to different party to heal; id rather just press up/down when the member i highlighted then use the skill. I'd rather not press (x) on the member then use a spell.

With that, I'd love to see the maros you used! I'd to give this a just to see if it's viable for me

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Originally Posted by radioactive_lego

- Cure I, Cure II, SS, and Esuna, on the d-pad. Because you cast these stationary (not swiftcasted) 99% of the time; there's no conflict of interest on your left thumb between the d-pad and thumbstick.

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I actually did try this, but it felt terribly awkward. By this point, the face buttons being the common "action" buttons and the d-pad being relegated to tasks that feel like they would be right at home if they were used from a menu, has been ingrained in my mind. Being able to target on the move was nice, but I'm no stranger to "the claw", done that for years now. I didn't run into the claw situation enough in this game to make coping with "reverse" contols worth it for me. It was pretty funny to fumble around with, though.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

...ingrained in my mind...

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YES! For the longest I only played PLD and WAR, and I got SOOO used to being able to switch targets with L1/R1 that I couldnt play without it. I couldn't stand healing because I was forced to turn off my chotbar (!!! why would I want to do that in combat!?!?) and use the d-pad for party targeting. It made the game feel completely different and non-sensical that I never progressed CNJ past lvl 15. I STILL feel this way. The whole reason for making the macros is this persistant feeling, as they are a reasonable substitute for L1/R1.

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Originally Posted by myahele

With that, I'd love to see the maros you used! I'd to give this a just to see if it's viable for me

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Will update the OP this weekend. It'll include a short vid so you can see the macros in-game and how to setup the crosshotbars.

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Originally Posted by Gardes

Well that's what would naturally happen if your heals are made of macros. The /mlock locs out other macros from running after all. I tried the setup with no macros on healing and attack spells but the issue of targeting came up and I fixed it with adding target switching on the 2 stance macros themselves. Turning on cleric would make my target jump from main tank to his target (likely the boss) and turning off cleric would make my target jump from the enemy boss to its target (hopefully the main tank) or number 2 on my party list as a fail safe. That part seems to be working well for me so far after a couple dungeon and trial roulette runs (including titan hm).

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None of my heals are macros.. I thought a bit on this more and I think I remember the issue. Macrolock isn't aware of a skill's cooldown, so if you use it without a wait, you can still screw up CS. If you add in the wait, now you can't quickly drop out of it if you switch and need to go back to healing right away. If you add the wait only for going into CS but not out, you can still manage to get out of sync. In the end, it was an extra layer that didn't help me at all.

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Originally Posted by raela

None of my heals are macros.. I thought a bit on this more and I think I remember the issue. Macrolock isn't aware of a skill's cooldown, so if you use it without a wait, you can still screw up CS. If you add in the wait, now you can't quickly drop out of it if you switch and need to go back to healing right away. If you add the wait only for going into CS but not out, you can still manage to get out of sync. In the end, it was an extra layer that didn't help me at all.

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Ah but turning CS on triggers its cool down for 5 seconds. Putting a /wait 4 or 5 in the CS on macro (which is the point of the macro; no point in locking if you dont lock it for how many seconds) shouldn't even matter because once you go into CS you can't get out of it for 5 seconds. Putting a /wait 4 or 5 in the CS off macro would disallow you from going back to CS for that many seconds which seem to be a non issue to me because when you turn off CS, you want to be healing someone right away, no? At least from my perspective, it's better to be locked out of CS than to be locked in CS in any scenario where you want to be in the opposite stance.

My only issue right now is that I have set select button to only ever go to 1, essentially making a set reset button instead of set scrolling. Useful for how I do things in tanking and dps modes but if I accidentally press this button while healing, it goes out of sync with my stance (being in cs and hotbar 2 for dps and then accidentally resetting to hotbar 1 for healing without turning off CS) but that is not a macro issue but my own controller settings and habits issue.

OP updated w/ macro build under second hide button.

You can see a vid of the macro build here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wg3W9KysU
Pause the vid as required to see the individual macro (recommend 720 qual). Detailed instructions on how to make it work coming this weekend. I'm sure many of you are smart enough to figure it out from the vid though.

FYI, using this process you could make it so that any class(es) that was beholden to a strict script could 1-button a nearly unlimited chain of spells/skills, and repeat it without error.

OP updated w/ instructions under the second hidden button. GL, HF and happy targeting!