Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

Care to share your macros?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I am curious.

I get that an optimal player will be better without macros

---

With respect, this isn't true, and that's part of what I'm trying to communicate with this post. Because people have different strengths and weaknesses, and they may be optimal at some things will less optimal at others. So a player who is optimal at pressing their macros in the proper window but less optimal at finding space for and pressing 32 different buttons will do better with macros. But a player who is less optimal at pressing buttons in the proper window but more optimal at finding space for and pressing 32 different buttons will do better with normal actions. Neither of these setups is innately better than the other, both can be used to do all the content in the game. Also, it's worth saying this isn't black-and-white. A truly optimal player will recognize the places where macros can up their game and use macros for that, and they will recognize the places where normal actions can up their game and use macros for that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

but is there a point where a bad player can play “good enough” with macros?

---

It will depend on where we place the goalposts for the definitions of "bad player" and "good enough", but generally speaking, the answer is that it can. Will it? That depends on why the player is "bad". To offer just one example, I'm a controller player, and for the way my brain and body works, I would be bad at the game if I had to find a place on my controller for 32 different buttons and remembering where they are all tucked away (since the crosshotbar can only visually display 16 buttons at a time). I've tried a variety of different options in the game to try to make that work and it just doesn't for me; I know what move I want to use at the proper time, but the controller simply doesn't provide easy, intuitive access to that many different moves. Macros absolutely help me play at a higher level by allowing me to better customize my control layout so that the buttons I already want to press are readily available when I want to press them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

And are certain jobs more receptive/forgiving of macro-use?

---

I think this ends up coming down to personal preference, especially since there are so many different kinds of macros to make. Every class I play tends to have at least 5 macros, though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

Like Ninja jitsu presses are much faster by hand, I would think.

---

Because the cooldown on Jin, Ten, and Chi are so rapid, in my opinion these actions are actually great for macros; because you want to press these sequences of buttons with a quick rhythm, the shorter activation window of macros will generally be less of a downside. So you can, for example, make a macro that casts Chi when used with GCD available, but instead casts Mug when the GCD is unavailable. Thus, you have 1 button that can do 2 different things depending on the context in which you press it, reducing the number of necessary buttons on your hotbars by 1:

/macroicon "Chi"
/macroerror off
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Chi"
/ac "Mug"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

But putting oGCDs (like assassinate) on GCDs so they fire when the GCD isn’t ready yet is better than the bad player just not using the oGCDs at all… right?

---

100%! ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Because the cooldown on Jin, Ten, and Chi are so rapid, in my opinion these actions are actually great for macros; because you want to press these sequences of buttons with a quick rhythm, the shorter activation window of macros will generally be less of a downside. So you can, for example, make a macro that does Chi with GCD but Mug with oGCD.

---

Sorry, I had to check, you have Ninja at 90, how do you not know that you cannot put anything between the Mudras otherwise it straight up gives you bunny. In fact, with all GCDs with a recast time of 1 second or less, you won't be putting oGCD attacks after them, not only because it clips the GCD, but it is pointless to do. The other ones are Monk's Meditation, which you only use when disengaged, so the best you will do thunderclap and lose some GCD time there (which will be worth it depending on how far away you are), Dancers Steps, because you cannot physically use anything other than the steps and En Avant, of which En Avant does clip and Sage's Eukrasia, which, 99% of the time, is going to be followed by a Eukrasian GCD, which gives you a 1.5 second, no cast time spell to weave something into.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

So you can, for example, make a macro that does Chi with GCD but Mug with oGCD.

---

lol. lmao even.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natalyah

Care to share your macros?

---

I have nearly 200 macros at present, and they're on a PS5 console (in a different room) so it's not as simple as copying and pasting them. However, I'd be happy to share some. Is there anything specific you're looking for? Here's a sampler platter of macros I've compiled from the various pages of this thread:

All 10 Dragoon Combo Skills in Only 4 Crosshotbar buttons
Here's a video that shows the set of macros I'm probably most proud of, which puts all 10 of Dragoon's combo skills on only 4 controller buttons. The video shows both how it plays as well as all the macros and crosshotbars that make it happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsZo2iWJDrs

What's actually happening here is that when you press a combo macro, it copies the buttons from a different crosshotbar onto you current crosshotbar. In this way, you can make macros so that when you press combo 1 it populates your crosshotbar with combo 2, then when you press combo 2 it populates your crosshotbar with combo 3, and so on.

It's worth pointing out that there is a cost to this specific method: the buttons that are being copied have to be stored in a different crosshotbar. Luckily, these can be literally any other crosshotbar; if you prefer, you can store your Dragoon crosshotbar configurations in your extra Dragoon crosshotbars, but you could also store them on any other class, including any of the 8 crosshotbars on non-combat classes like Botanist or pre-job classes like Gladiator. In this way you're unlikely to run out of space, but the initial setup and any modifications you make down the road will be that much more involved.


Automatic Sharpcast after Ice Paradox:
/macroicon "Blizzard"
/macroerror off
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/wait 1
/ac "Sharpcast"

This is a macro I use when playing Black Mage. When Blizzard is available, it just casts Blizzard, because Blizzard has a cast-time longer than 1 second, and thus Sharpcast doesn't get cast. But when Blizzard becomes Paradox, it becomes an instant-cast, and then a single-weave of Sharpcast follows Paradox. If you prefer using Sharpcast at other times, this probably isn't the macro for you, but I've been enjoying it.

Some players may wonder why there's so much repetition in this macro. Basically, if you put the same action multiple times in a macro, that in effect creates a queue window for the macro you've made. Each attempt at casting the spell takes a very short amount of time (according to Sindele's data, each line takes 1 frame to execute), and the more you have in a row, the larger the window within which your spell tries to cast will be. I recommend this technique for any GCD macro, and it can help oGCD's as well depending on when you like to press your buttons; depending on your circumstances, you may prefer more repeats or fewer repeats to get the timing just right for you.


GCD and oGCD's on the same button:
Pressing this macro makes it so Ruin II is cast if GCD is available, but if not then it'll do Energy Drain if you have Aetherflow charges, otherwise it will cast Aetherflow. The repeated Ruin II lines not only act as a "queue" for Ruin II, but also for the other oGCD's as well. Technically there's a downside where Energy Drain and Aetherflow will always be "queued" for all of the Ruin II frames, and thus they will always have a short cast delay, but I've found that this doesn't matter at all for single-weaves, and depending on when you press buttons and your framerate you might be able to get it working for double-weaves. I'd recommend giving it a shot, probably adding more Ruin II or removing them to see if you can get it to line up with your preferences.

/macroicon "Ruin II"
/macroerror off
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Energy Drain"
/ac "Aetherflow"


If there's anything more specific you're looking for, let me know and I'd be happy to help!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Sorry, I had to check, you have Ninja at 90, how do you not know that you cannot put anything between the Mudras otherwise it straight up gives you bunny.

---

With respect, you've misunderstood the purpose of this macro, so let me explain. The intent of this macro is not that you cast Chi and then follow it up with Mug. Rather, you have 1 button that can do 2 things.

So when you're doing your standard combo with other buttons and you decide you want to use Mug, you press this macro.

And in a totally separate circumstance when you want to cast Chi, you press this same exact macro.

This reduces the number of buttons on your crosshotbar by 1. That's the benefit.

Hope that clears this up!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

With respect, you've misunderstood the purpose of this macro, so let me explain. The intent of this macro is not that you cast Chi and then follow it up with Mug. Rather, you have 1 button that can do 2 things.

So when you're doing your standard combo with other buttons and you decide you want to use Mug, you press this macro.

And in a totally separate circumstance when you want to cast Chi, you press this same exact macro.

This reduces the number of buttons on your crosshotbar by 1. That's the benefit.

Hope that clears this up!

---

To which I say, why would you run the risk of messing up a mudra due to macro shenanigans and not just put it on a different button? An idea there would be to put it on Meisui, something that has a very specific activation and can only be used in that instance and is used in the same 120 second window that Mug is used in, just at a different time. Or, if you really want it on a GCD, stick it on a Raiju. just, do not, stick ANY mudras on a macro, that is probably one of the few things I will say no, there are much much better things you attach an action to that don't pose a risk of messing up a core element of the job.

Now:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

/macroicon "Ruin II"
/macroerror off
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Ruin II"
/ac "Energy Drain"
/ac "Aetherflow"

---

As an FYI, there is a chance this will fail as if it is one of the later Ruin 2s that is activated, the macro will continue on and try and activate Energy Drain and Aetherflow, but you are still in the animation lock for Ruin 2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kaynide

Like Ninja jitsu presses are much faster by hand, I would think. But putting oGCDs (like assassinate) on GCDs so they fire when the GCD isn’t ready yet is better than the bad player just not using the oGCDs at all… right?

---

One of the more important things that makes a "bad" player "decent" is to always be casting something and keep your OGCD CD's rolling.

A "good" player optimizes that to try to hit buff windows when they can

a "great" player never misses a gcd and never misses a buff window. Everything is perfectly aligned.

Certain macros can absolutely make "bad" players "decent". Not good, but a step above a bad player.

For example:

Astrologians will never NOT use Minor Arcana and Play Crown in any other order. Ever. So it can literally be a QoL issue to macro:

Minor Arcana / Crown Play Macro
/micon "Minor Arcana"
/ac "Crown Play"
/ac "Minor Arcana"

One press preps the Lord / Lady the next press fires it off.

There are multiple buttons in the game that do this (DRG with Jump > Mirage Dive is another). One action requires a certain previous action and they could easily be combined into a single button that just simply changes but the job design team leaves us with button bloat instead of dynamic skills.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

As an FYI, there is a chance this will fail as if it is one of the later Ruin 2s that is activated, the macro will continue on and try and activate Energy Drain and Aetherflow, but you are still in the animation lock for Ruin 2.

---

That's not a failure because that's not what the macro is meant to do. The point of that macro is not to press it once and have it cast two skills, it's to have it activate a different single ability depending on the timing of its use. It's supposed to not cast an oGCD if it successfully casts Ruin 2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

If there's anything more specific you're looking for, let me know and I'd be happy to help!

---

I use this for my Bard to split it into fewer buttons, tell me what you think (songs are on their own keybinds ofc)

Single target

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac barrage
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "bloodletter"
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow"

aoe

/macroicon "Quick Nock"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "Shadowbite"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow"

Dots

/macroicon "venomous bite"
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "venomous bite" <wait.3>
/ac "Windbite"

For me that's a lot less buttons. Wish I could make something for Paladin,but I imagine that's too complex.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Ally/enemy-sensitive cure/damage macro
If you're targeting an ally, this casts Regen. If you're targeting an enemy, this casts Dia. It's going to cost you a single frame roughly have the time; whether the convenience and reduced button bloat is worth that cost is up to the individual.

/macroicon "Regen"
/macroerror off
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"
/ac "Dia"
/ac "Regen"

---

Except that if you cast regen while targetting an enemy instead of not working, it casts targetted at yourself. This one might need some work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by vetch

That's not a failure because that's not what the macro is meant to do. The point of that macro is not to press it once and have it cast two skills, it's to have it activate a different single ability depending on the timing of its use. It's supposed to not cast an oGCD if it successfully casts Ruin 2.

---

Until it does. You can flip the scenario and you hit an early Ruin 2 which then activates the oGCD as it is late enough it could potentially come up later than the action lock, especially if you don't plan to use the resource in that time (in this case, any action that uses Aetherflow that isn't Energy Drain).

Again, reducing flexibility to make something that isn't necessarily reliable just to save some space, if space is even needed at all. Again, I don't care (mostly) whether someone uses macros or not, however, understanding the limitations imposed on yourself by using said macro is just as important.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natalyah

I use this for my Bard to split it into fewer buttons, tell me what you think (songs are on their own keybinds ofc)

---

I know I'm not the OP, however I would hope that they would agree with me on this one. No, all bad and shows you have failed to understand what the OP is talking about in regards to macro creation and getting around their limitations. This should hopefully highlight why it is important to have all information laid out clearly.

However, for the sake of this poster, I am going to start from the beginning. The reasons macros are generally considered bad is because they do NOT interact with the action queue system. This system is designed in a way that, with the normal actions pulled from the actions menu, you can press it early and it will still go off. This timing is generally considered at about 0.5 seconds. You can test this out yourself by going to any striking dummy (Summerford Farms has some level 1 ones right by the Aethernet Crystal), use a GCD action and, before the GCD comes off of cooldown, press another GCD action once. You will find it will still go off.

Now, Macros, as stated, do not interact with this. Even if your macro was only one line of, /ac "Heavy Shot" <t>, it still would not have the same action queuing as I described in my previous post. Instead, it will only have a chance at activating once the GCD has come off of cooldown completely. Since noone can spam a button to ensure it goes off as soon as it can, it leads to a delay between the cooldown and the action going off, which is not present otherwise. What the OP describes is putting multiple lines of the same command in the macro so that it is effectively being pressed between your presses and therefore has a higher chance of going off exactly when the GCD ends.

What your macros are aiming to do do not fit and is what is generally considered when people talk about macros, however, they are, objectively, bad. With only 1 or 2 instances of the main GCD being used, it is likely to not go off (keeping the GCD rolling is by far the best thing to do). However, this is also a good time to talk about macros again. You CANNOT have 2 macros going off at the same time and each line is executed in order, they do not go off at the same time. If you were to rapidly press it, it is likely you wouldn't even make it to the end of the macro before you press it again and restart it, defeating the whole point. I could go on, but it would be better to advise you to rethink what you want out of your macros and what you want to achieve. The extreme button culling you are going after is just not feasible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Automatic Sharpcast after Ice Paradox:
/macroicon "Blizzard"
/macroerror off
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/wait 1
/ac "Sharpcast"

---

Because I'm such a helpful person, as another tip, you can put <wait.1> at the end of a line to execute the wait command, which means you can replace the /wait 1 with /ac Blizzard <wait.1> and it should work out exactly the same, just with a tiny bit of extra time. You're welcome.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Frizze

Except that if you cast regen while targetting an enemy instead of not working, it casts targetted at yourself. This one might need some work.

---

Good catch! I had forgotten about that aspect of healing spells, thank you for the correction. I've gone back to add clarifications that that specific macro does not actually work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

To which I say, why would you run the risk of messing up a mudra due to macro shenanigans and not just put it on a different button?

---

You could put it on a different button if you prefer; it's really up to the preferences of the user. I personally haven't had any difficulties with this macro.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

As an FYI, there is a chance this will fail as if it is one of the later Ruin 2s that is activated, the macro will continue on and try and activate Energy Drain and Aetherflow, but you are still in the animation lock for Ruin 2.

---

That's actually the intended design of this macro: that if Ruin 2 gets cast, it should never cast any of the oGCD's.

In all my time using macros on PS4 and PS5, I've never experienced a situation where a single press of a macro without /wait resulted in 2 actions being cast. This is because (at least in my experience) every animation lock is longer than the duration of a macro. I just did a few quick tests with a variety of swift-casting actions like Chi and oGCD's on my PS5, designed to coax out a second non-wait cast if possible, but they didn't.

However, since the rate at which macros process is affected by framerate, this may not be a universal truth that applies to everyone? It's possible that folks with lower framerates might be able to cast 2 actions in the same macro without /wait. That would be interesting! I presume it would be double-edged, as you might be able to perform some additional functionality that people with higher framerates can't, while also needing to remove some of the padding from your macros to ensure that they don't extend past animation lock in the contexts when you don't want that.

Also, there is technically an exception to this rule: if your macro leads with a move like Hide or Iron Will that can be "deactivated" on the second cast, such deactivations do not have animation lock. So a macro is capable of deactivating and then immediately following up with another action. My best guess is that most people wouldn't want to make a macro that did this, but maybe some enterprising soul will prove me wrong. :)

If you test the macro and put the skills seperate on the bar you will see they go off without any issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natalyah

I use this for my Bard to split it into fewer buttons, tell me what you think (songs are on their own keybinds ofc)

Single target

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroicon "Heavy Shot" <-- redundant
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac barrage
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "bloodletter" <-- redundant
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow" <-- redundant

aoe

/macroicon "Quick Nock"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "Shadowbite"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow" <-- will never be cast, better to remove

Dots

/macroicon "venomous bite"
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "venomous bite" <wait.3>
/ac "Windbite"

For me that's a lot less buttons. Wish I could make something for Paladin,but I imagine that's too complex.

---

It really depends on how much you care about achieving optimal, high-level play. If I were going to critique these macros for someone looking to do Ultimate fights, I'd point out a few things:

All 3 macros
None of these actions are designed to benefit from the pseudo-"action queuing" I describe on my first page, so that will likely result in some clipped GCD's.

Single target macro and AoE macro
Removes some control of when to cast certain oGCD's, especially "Raging Strikes".
Macro seems like it might lead to mashing because the timings of the different actions are so varied.

DoT macro
Clips roughly +0.5 seconds of GCD time
Can't weave without cancelling the Windbite cast.
If something happens where you need to cast Windbite but not Venemous Bite, you can't.
Depending on your settings, if the target of Venemous Bite dies before Windbite is cast, Windbite may be cast on a different enemy, which is only a problem if you don't want that.
All that said, the problems with this macro are only problems relative to the amount of times you cast this macro. So if you only cast this once during a whole boss fight, and then just cast Iron Jaws to keep these abilities up the whole time, it's not that much of a loss. At least in theory.

But it's not always about optimal play.
I wouldn't recommend these macros for someone looking to achieve optimal, high-level play...but that's not what everyone is aiming for. If your goal is to be able to play at a casual, "good enough" level (like getting through the MSQ and some chill side content) while pressing one button for single-targets, one button for AoE's, one button for DoT's, and one button each for songs, I think this is fine. Generally speaking GCD's will clip a handful of frames on each cast but it won't be the end of the world. The most important thing is that it works for you and gets you where you want to be. So if you are aiming towards optimal play, let me know and we can discuss different options. But if you just want functional macros that consolidate your buttons and you're fine with losing out on some DPS to get this result, I don't see any problem with that. I do have a couple notes, and depending on what your preferences are, you can choose to incorporate what works for you and discard the rest.

Also, warning that I don't play Bard much, so if I try to suggest something that is intended to be optimal for Bard but I actually chose the wrong move or combo, please feel free to correct me ^^;

1. just to make sure, I encourage you not to button mash these macros. Each of your macros do so many things, and mashing will cause the macro to start over before it gets to the end, meaning it might end up adding additional delay to your casts if you mash.

2. Assuming that you press your AoE macro when the GCD is available, your Refulgent Arrow line will never cast, because Quick Nock will cast fist. So I would remove the Refulgent Arrow line, as it isn't doing anything.

3. Your macros have some redundant lines; I've pointed them out in bold above. Some of the moves in your macro are the same move; for example, Straight Shot becomes Refulgent Arrow, which means if you have Straight Shot in your macro, it will already cast Refulgent Arrow when you have that upgrade.

4. If you want, there is an option in the settings to make it so that if you do an attack without a target, the game will select a target for you. I would guess this may use the same criteria as the /targetenemy command. So if you want that functionality for all your attacks, regardless of whether they are macros or not, that could be something to look into, and it will also free up macro lines.

5. Especially since you're packing so much functionality into every single macro, I would probably recommend splitting GCD actions and oGCD actions into their own macros. My main reason is because I worry about you getting a repetitive motion injury from your fingers repeatedly pressing the same button for so long; adding even a little variation or reducing the frequency of presses can help mitigate this. However, the other benefit of this is that you'll be able to get into a better rhythm of pressing buttons, which will result in more optimal play if you're interested in that. The idea would be that you have two buttons like the below:

/macroicon "Straight Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"


/macroicon "raging strikes"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac sidewinder
/ac barrage

So you can press the top GCD macro when GCD is available, and then use the bottom oGCD macro for weaves between GCD's. You could alternate the two to get single weaves, and depending on your timing and your system you might even be able to do GCD -> oGCD -> oGCD to get some double-weaves when you wanted to.

A couple notes about a few other changes I made:

• I changed the macroicon of the GCD macro to let you know if you have the stronger shot available, in case that affects how you want to play. And either way, it shows you when your GCD is available.
• I rearranged the order of some of your oGCD abilities. My goal was to make the abilities with the lowest cooldowns the highest in the list, so that we can cast them ASAP and thus get more damage out of them. The lone exception to this rule is Raging Strikes, which you would want to cast before your other abilities so you can increase their damage. With Raging Strikes as the macroicon, you can tell when your damage buff is available so you can unload, if you prefer to coordinate like that.
• In the GCD macro, I added repeated lines for "Straight Shot which will allow you to "queue up" straight shot shortly before the GCD is available; this might make it more comfortable to play with this macro without waiting for the GCD to be available to press it. Give it a try, and remove the extra lines if it's not your thing. Note that this will result in potential frames delay for any Heavy Shot casts, so while I'm guessing you're not concerned about that, let me know if you are and we can discuss alternatives.

The main downside with this oGCD macro in my subjective opinion is that Raging Strikes is coupled with all of the oGCD damage attacks. Which means that if you had a Bloodletter proc and you wanted to cast it without activating Raging Strikes, you wouldn't realistically be able to with this macro. But that's also probably not worth fretting about unless you want to, as "good enough" play generally doesn't require you to optimize for such things.


Edit: Alternatively, instead of splitting the oGCD's into their own button, you could simply automate them:

/macroicon "Straight Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot" <wait.1>
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac sidewinder
/ac barrage

Each press of the button will give you a GCD and then an oGCD if one is available. The upside of this is that you've still got a single button for all your single-target stuff and you only have to press it once every 2.5 or so seconds, which will still reduce the possibility of a repetitive motion injury. The downside is that if you don't want to use an oGCD, you would have to accept the fact that one would be used, or manually press another macro to cancel the follow-up action before it gets cast. So maybe this would work better for you, maybe it wouldn't.


Also, if you're not already doing something like this, I'd recommend having some visible space for the actions with cooldowns so that even if you aren't pressing those buttons, you can see when the cooldowns are available. I like to have visible hotbars just under my actual crosshotbar that I explicitly use as a sort of "tray" for this purpose, as shown in the image below:
https://i.imgur.com/5GmJ1SB.png

Anyway, I hope that makes things a bit easier on your fingers and mind while giving you the same easy access to "good enough" play! And if you're looking for something more optimal (no pressure if you're not!) let me know and we can work on other macros.

Edit: I may just come back and try to add some more optimal macros regardless, just to show what the difference would be. But it might take a few days, we'll see...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Because I'm such a helpful person, as another tip, you can put <wait.1> at the end of a line to execute the wait command, which means you can replace the /wait 1 with /ac Blizzard <wait.1> and it should work out exactly the same, just with a tiny bit of extra time. You're welcome.

---

Haha, I think you're right! I used to think that the embedded <wait.1> command only worked if that was the specific row of the macro that had its action executed, but if I recall I did a test recently to prove that wasn't the case. I should do the test again to burn this fact into my brain, since clearly old habits die hard. Thanks for helping me to be the best I can be! :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natalyah

I use this for my Bard to split it into fewer buttons, tell me what you think (songs are on their own keybinds ofc)

Single target

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac barrage
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "bloodletter"
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow"

aoe

/macroicon "Quick Nock"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac "Shadowbite"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac sidewinder
/ac "refulgent arrow"

Dots

/macroicon "venomous bite"
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "venomous bite" <wait.3>
/ac "Windbite"

For me that's a lot less buttons. Wish I could make something for Paladin,but I imagine that's too complex.

---

My old Bard macro was similar. Basically every OGCD that would come off CD would be used immediately. And I was never in the bottom of the DPS doing this. Often toward the top.

/macroicon Heavy Shot
/ac Straight Shot<t>
/ac Sidewinder <t>
/ac Empyreal Arrow<t>
/ac Heavy Shot<t>
/ac Bloodletter<t>
/macroerror off

Aoe:

/macroicon Quick Nock
/ac Shadowbite <t>
/ac Rain of Death <t>
/ac Sidewinder <t>
/ac Quick Nock

DRG can literally be macrod to:

/macroicon Vorpal Thrust
/ac True Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Vorpal Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Full Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Fang and Claw <t> <wait.3>
/ac Wheeling Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/echo Macro #1 finished <se.3>
/ac True Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Disembowel <t> <wait.3>
/ac Chaos Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Wheeling Thrust <t> <wait.3>
/ac Fang and Claw <t> <wait.2>
/echo Macro #1 finished <se.2>

You'll lose roughly 2 gcd based on your spell speed due to the wait timer but again, you'll still be doing better than "certain" other players.

I can't wait to see the practical test in an endgame setting on this.

Thanks so much for all your helpful info :)

As for dots I use Iron Jaws to refresh them

I will give yours a try also. I'm not interested in high end content or anything. My raiding days are well behind me being an older player and parent.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natalyah

Thanks so much for all your helpful info :)

---

Happy to help! Also, I thought of a potential alternative way to adjust your buttons. I added it to the previous post, but I'll also put it here for your convenience:

Alternatively, instead of splitting the oGCD's into their own button, you could simply automate them:

/macroicon "Straight Shot"
/targetenemy
/macroerror off
/actionerror off
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot" <wait.1>
/ac "raging strikes"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "empyreal arrow"
/ac sidewinder
/ac barrage

Each press of the button will give you a GCD and then an oGCD if one is available. The upside of this is that you've still got a single button for all your single-target stuff and you only have to press it once every 2.5 or so seconds, which will still reduce the possibility of a repetitive motion injury. The downside is that if you don't want to use an oGCD, you would have to accept the fact that one would be used, or manually press another macro to cancel the follow-up action before it gets cast. So maybe this would work better for you, maybe it wouldn't.

Alright, I had some free time last night that I used to look over Bard's various skills, so I've returned to provide one possible example of how someone could use macros to reduce Bard button bloat while still playing optimally.

At a high level, here's what we'll end up with:
- Our crosshotbar will keep track of whether we're doing single-target or multiple-target attacks and present us with relevant actions.
- Our crosshotbar will keep track of which of the two DoT's we used last and present us with the other one.
- We'll have a buffs button, an oGCD attack button, and a song button.
- (optional) Our GCD buttons will cast oGCD attacks when pressed outside of GCD.
- Pressing each button will result in a single action being used; there is no automated queuing in these macros.

Crosshotbars
We'll be playing on crosshotbar 1, which will be populated with actions when we copy them from other crosshotbars. We'll have 4 crosshotbars to copy from, with each representing one of the 4 permutations of "Venomous Bite or Windbite" and "single target or AoE".

Crosshotbar 2 is "single-target + Venomous Bite":
Heavy Shot V macro
Straight Shot
Iron Jaws
Quick Nock V macro
Venomous Bite S macro
Single-target oGCD macro
Song macro
Buff macro

Crosshotbar 3 is "single-target + Windbite":
Heavy Shot W macro
Straight Shot
Iron Jaws
Quick Nock W macro
Windbite S macro
Single-target oGCD macro
Song macro
Buff macro

Crosshotbar 4 is "AoE + Venomous Bite":
Heavy Shot V macro
Shadowbite
Iron Jaws
Quick Nock V macro
Venomous Bite A macro
AoE oGCD macro
Song macro
Buff macro

Crosshotbar 5 is "AoE + Windbite":
Heavy Shot W macro
Shadowbite
Iron Jaws
Quick Nock W macro
Windbite A macro
AoE oGCD macro
Song macro
Buff macro

Macros
This specific setup uses 12 macros.

Heavy Shot V macro
/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 2 BRD 1
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Empyreal Arrow"
/ac "Sidewinder"
/ac "Barrage"

Heavy Shot W macro
/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 3 BRD 1
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Empyreal Arrow"
/ac "Sidewinder"
/ac "Barrage"

Quick Nock V macro
/macroicon "Quick Nock"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 4 BRD 1
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "Barrage"

Quick Nock W macro
/macroicon "Quick Nock"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 5 BRD 1
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Quick Nock"
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "Barrage"

Venomous Bite S macro
/macroicon "Venomous Bite"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 3 BRD 1
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"

Venomous Bite A macro
/macroicon "Venomous Bite"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 5 BRD 1
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"
/ac "Venomous Bite"

Windbite S macro
/macroicon "Windbite"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 2 BRD 1
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"

Windbite A macro
/macroicon "Windbite"
/macroerror off
/crosshotbar copy BRD 4 BRD 1
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"
/ac "Windbite"

Single-target oGCD macro
/macroicon "Bloodletter"
/macroerror off
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Bloodletter"
/ac "Empyreal Arrow"
/ac "Sidewinder"
/ac "Barrage"

AoE oGCD macro
/macroicon "Rain of Death"
/macroerror off
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "Rain of Death"
/ac "Barrage"

Song macro
/macroicon "The Wanderer's Minuet"
/macroerror off
/ac "The Wanderer's Minuet"
/ac "The Wanderer's Minuet"
/ac "The Wanderer's Minuet"
/ac "The Wanderer's Minuet"
/ac "Army's Paeon"
/ac "Mage's Ballad"

Buff macro
/macroicon "Raging Strikes"
/macroerror off
/ac "Raging Strikes"
/ac "Raging Strikes"
/ac "Raging Strikes"
/ac "Raging Strikes"
/ac "Battle Voice"
/ac "Radiant Finale"

Notes
This takes 18 of Bard's actions and compacts them into 8 context-sensitive buttons. All the macros have "queue window padding" that can be tuned to your comfort. There's redundancy in that there are numerous ways to cast certain oGCD's, so if you prefer one method over the other you can remove the excess. Do you prefer your oGCD's in a different order, either due to personal preference or because the person who wrote this doesn't play Bard and didn't optimize them properly? I encourage you to make those improvements! :)

Also, it's worth mentioning that I haven't tested these macros so there's no guarantee they're bug-free (although I did give them a twice-over with my eyes, so I feel pretty confident they'll work).

As for the remaining Bard moves, I leave those as an exercise for the reader, especially since what you do with them is going to be based on personal preference. You can try to fit them into these macros, make new macros for them, or just use the normal actions. It all depends on what you prefer.

Overall, take these macros not as the way to do things, but rather as one possible way to use macros to your advantage. Hope this helps anyone who's interested!

I'm sorry for necroing last year's thread, but I'd like to share another evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay here. Recently I found the following video.
https://youtu.be/sns_9GhUTqU
Even if you use Macros for GCD actions, GCD delay is only 0.083 sec in 3 min. I'm certain that Macros don't lead to GCD delay as far as they are properly coded and executed.

As a healer I use many mouseover macros. For example,

Quote:

---

/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/action "Adloquium" <mo>
/macroicon "Adloquium"

---

Its pseudo-queueing window is about 0.23sec in 60fps, so it won't delay my GCD. My other macros are not optimal so they may cause delay, but they saves my XHB slots.

3-in-1 Sacred Soil macro

Quote:

---

/action "Sacred Soil" gtoff
/action "Sacred Soil" <t>
/action "Sacred Soil" <mo>
/targetlasttarget
/targetlasttarget
/macroicon "Sacred Soil"

---

It places Sacred Soil on
| if mouse cursor is on the ground then the cursor (without switching into ground target mode)
| else if I target someone then the target
| else mouseover target

4-in-1 Place/Heel macro

Quote:

---

/petaction "Place" <mo>
/petaction "Place" <t>
/petaction "Place" gtoff
/targetlasttarget
/targetlasttarget
/wait 1
/petaction "Heel"
/macroicon "Place" pet

---

The condition is the same as the above. If another macro is executed in 1 sec then Place else Heel. If I want to Place then I execute healing macro, target assist macro, XHB change macro, etc.

Not sure if this is a troll post or bad advice thread....do not use macros on ur ability....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Not sure if this is a troll post or bad advice thread....do not use macros on ur ability....

---

They'll find out not every fight is a training dummy eventually.

Macro user equals grey most of the time lol makes sense for this community

[QUOTE=LilimoLimomo;6333965]The video used as evidence showed a difference in only 23 casts. I did more casts in the same window, which should have shown a more pronounced effect due to the increased number of casts. However, my tests showed the opposite.


"I had never heard there were Balance theorycrafters who would be important to send this to. Tell me a way to respectfully get in touch with them and I'll be happy to."


Balance Discord, Top Channel Selection, there you can selet the Theorycraft Battle Channels, its your best place for it

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikoko_Miko

I'm sorry for necroing last year's thread, but I'd like to share another evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay here. Recently I found the following video.
https://youtu.be/sns_9GhUTqU

---

Oh wow, thanks for sharing this! It's interesting to see that there's someone in the Japanese community doing similar experiments to my own...and that unlike me they know how to edit videos so you can see the comparison side-by-side! It makes me smile not only that others are doing this, but that you thought to share it with me! ^^

I'm hoping to find a way to translate their whole Lodestone post, but my usual go-to (Google Translate) seems to not translate the post part of the page; I'll keep looking to see if there's another tool that can translate the page without losing the formatting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikoko_Miko

/action "Sacred Soil" gtoff
/action "Sacred Soil" <t>
/action "Sacred Soil" <mo>
/targetlasttarget
/targetlasttarget
/macroicon "Sacred Soil"

It places Sacred Soil on
| if mouse cursor is on the ground then the cursor (without switching into ground target mode)
| else if I target someone then the target
| else mouseover target

---

I love seeing the macros of other macro users, it's always so interesting to see what works for different kinds of people depending on their needs!

One question I have is that I notice some of your macros have /targetlasttarget twice in a row. Can you tell me a bit more about that? I'm always interested to learn new tricks!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Not sure if this is a troll post or bad advice thread....do not use macros on ur ability....

---

It's one thing to say they are not optimal when done in certain ways. However, it's wrong to say they can never be. For example, I have intervention macros, nascent flash macros, shirk macros, rescue macros, aetherial manipulation macros, sacred soil/asylum macros, etc. It would definitely be sub-optimal to not macro them and even make me lose whole GCDs.

Where they are sub-optimal, this is often minor unless you macro a combo/combination of things, where the waits cause a whole 0.5 delay minimum or skipped casts in the macro.

For example, you can "macro two things together" to create a priority system where the macro will only actually use one based on factors such as level or if one of them is on cooldown.

Also, I think part of the point of these posts is that it's made more sub-optimal by pressing the macro more than once, restarting the macro before it can even execute.

Okay, I've done a rudimentary translation of the article and it was very thoughtful. I learned a few things and thought it was a worthwhile read, but I'll let it speak for itself. Everything below here is the article, the original text can be found at: https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/4722988/.

As you can see, there is no delay in the GCD even if you change the normal weapon skill pre-entry to the 15-line rapid-fire macro pseudo pre-entry.

The reason why there is a 5-frame delay with the 15-line rapid-fire macro at 60fps is because the pseudo pre-entry acceptance time is too short at 60fps, so some inputs fail to be pre-entered.

As I said before, normal weapon skill pre-entry is a process that "determines whether the GCD has cleared every frame, and if it has, the next weapon skill occurs," while the 15-line rapid-fire pseudo pre-entry macro is a process that "executes a weapon skill every frame, and if the GCD has cleared, the weapon skill occurs."

Although there is a slight difference in the weight of the processing, the frame (calculation result) at which the weapon skill occurs does not change, so it is thought that there will be no significant delay in the GCD even if you change to the 15-line rapid-fire macro. The results of this test also suggest this.

---

However, is it always okay to macro skills? The biggest problem with macroing skills is that the time it takes to input in advance is short. Since macros are processed every frame, 14 lines at 60fps (1 frame is 0.01666 seconds) is only 0.2333 seconds.

Normal weapon skill input is said to take about 0.6 seconds to input in advance, so 0.2333 seconds is quite short. In fact, if you try it, you will find that it is almost impossible to continue inputting in advance for 0.2333 seconds.

Therefore, I think that in order to use pseudo input in advance macros in actual combat, the frame rate will have to be lowered to about 30fps.

However, the problem here is that, as can be seen from the above test results, there is no GCD delay even when you make a pseudo input in advance macro for weapon skills, but if you lower the game frame rate, there will be a GCD delay even when you input normal weapon skills in advance.

---

First of all, as mentioned above, FF14 skills occur "every frame", so even if the GCD ends, the next weapon skill does not activate immediately, but "in the next frame after the GCD ends". This is important.

Ultimately, a game is a 60fps flip book. 60 flip books per second are made to look like continuous motion.

And 60fps means that there is a gap of about 0.01666 seconds between each frame. Therefore, there is a delay of 0 to 0.01666 seconds between the end of the GCD and the next frame (skill activation). If frames always came every 0.01666 seconds, that would be a different story, but there is a slight difference, so on average, the delay is 0.008333 seconds.

If this is 30 fps, then from the end of the GCD to the next frame (skill occurrence), there is an average delay of 0.01666 seconds.

If 60 fps becomes 30 fps, the actual GCD will be increased by an average of +0.008333 seconds, so if you punch for 180 seconds (about 74 times) with a GCD of 2.41 seconds, the total delay will be about 0.6166 seconds.

In the above test, the GCD is delayed by about 0.716 seconds at 30 fps, so it can be said that it is roughly as expected.

---

In addition, if the interval between frames is always fixed at 0.01666 seconds, the GCD can only change in 0.01666 second increments, so there should be a delay of 1.233 seconds when changing from 60fps to 30fps. However, this did not happen, so it seems safe to assume that there is quite a bit of variation in the time per frame.

If you lower 60fps to 30fps, it seems safe to say that the GCD will increase by 0.01 seconds (about 100 in substats). In that case, 60fps would be better, but warriors have no value unless they use macros to send Nascent Glint to others, so I am hesitant to go to 60fps. Well, the mechanics of Nascent Glint are so bad that they should definitely be abolished in 6.0...

Or rather, if you play end content at 60fps, your PC will heat up tremendously, so it's not possible... I guess it's impossible to stick with the top players with just a notebook...

Other than that, the 14-line consecutive tapping pseudo-pre-input macro has the advantage that you can pre-input from outside the attack range. Since you can't pre-input from outside the range of a normal skill, it's difficult to "attack the moment you come within range" manually. However, the 14-line consecutive tapping macro makes this possible, so for example, you can "run up and hit Onslaught the moment you come within Onslaught's range"

---

For now, please remember that

× If you make a weapon skill into a macro, you can't input it ahead of time

〇 If you make a weapon skill into a macro with a 15-line pseudo-pre-input macro, you can input it ahead of time

but the input time is short

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

One question I have is that I notice some of your macros have /targetlasttarget twice in a row. Can you tell me a bit more about that? I'm always interested to learn new tricks!

---

Thank you for your interest. I'm pleased to read your kind words. My intention of doubled /targetlasttarget is for consistency; my target won't change by the macro whether I canceled a target before execution or not. I usually target an enemy and focustarget a tank and my mouse cursor is on a job icon of the tank in a party list. When I want to place something at the target, I just execute the macro. But when I want to place one at the tank, first I need to cancel a target (× button of a controller) and then execute the macro. I wanted to re-target automatically in the latter case.

target A -> target B -> execute macro
first /tlt targets A
second /tlt targets B

target A -> target B -> cancel target -> execute macro
first /tlt targets B
second /tlt targets B

target nonexistent -> target A -> execute macro
first /tlt targets A
second /tlt targets A

target nonexistent -> target A -> cancel target -> execute macro
first /tlt targets A
second /tlt targets A


I was advised several times to not using macros because actions are queued and macros are not. But I noticed that I can't queue actions in certain circumstances by several reasons; target is out-of-range, MP is insufficient, aether flow is empty, etc. In these cases pseudo-queued macros can be executed when available but non-macro actions can't. I expect that macros can be more efficient than actions in these limited cases.

It can be verified by the following procedure.
1) Make a macro that repeats the same instant attacking (or healing) action.
2) Target an enemy (or a party member) and take a distance until an action text colour turns red.
3) Execute the macro while you are out-of-range and move toward the target.
4) Repeat 2) and 3) on another target with a non-macro action.
After several experiments, I found that macros succeeded in the almost all cases but non-macro actions always failed.

I use macros extensively and it's great to see a writeup like this but there's a few additional things I'd add:

1] IME macros are not super reliable with fast keyboard inputs- I use all 10 hotbars and exp crossbars for extra space and toggle them constantly but have dedicated on/off keys because occasionally one gets stuck out of sync with the others, and not from cancellation. I also don't use hotbar copying for branching menus because it broke too often, especially when I had a macro to commit changes to a backup hotbar for basic version control.

2] Not everyone has a stable framerate so pseudobuffering is inconsistent

3] Sometimes I repeat multiple different things to give some extra reliability to anim lock conditional logic; inline waits are good for cramming more stuff in

4] Single weave macros have fixed weave timing- some jobs want to early or late weave specific ogcds, and occasionally change between the two

5] IME macros increase button usage and haven't ever saved space for me. Like many others, I mostly use ogcd ground placement or mouseover macros. But most of the time I'll still need the non macroed version for early/late/double weaves or other stuff; on ground placements I also have both macro to self, and macro to target. For dashes to allies like icarus etc, I have regular and mouseover macro versions, and for PVP I'll often have all of these, especially bishop and southern cross. Ultimately this turns one button into two or three and at best there's no net change with non macroed versions going to click only space.

6] In trusts/duty support, the hard clipping loss from waits is worth it if you use macros to AFK during trash packs. Target of target <tt> on each line then targetting the tank even removes the need to manually target things. Great for glam farming. BLM is prone to getting jammed on swaps between AF and UI if something dies early but disproportionately benefits from sps tuning

7] Not a fan of using it for saving keystrokes in combat; interrupts, losing uptime, or panic triple weaving mits makes things really weird. People who need macros are more likely to do this, and recovering typically needs raw inputs and the ability to play without macros in the first place. IMO it's an active detriment to self improvement and is frequently a crutch for poor hotbar layout, but I'm also of the opinion that jobs that have static rotations suitable for extensive macro automation are poorly designed and uninteresting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

If you lower 60fps to 30fps, it seems safe to say that the GCD will increase by 0.01 seconds (about 100 in substats). In that case, 60fps would be better, but warriors have no value unless they use macros to send rage to others, so I am hesitant to go to 60fps. Well, the mechanics of rage are so bad that they should definitely be abolished in 6.0...

---

"rage" is for "Nascent Glint" by WAR's "Nascent Flash" action. I was amazed that other in-game Japanese jargon were translated into English properly.

In JP community × symbol represents denial, negative or bad, and 〇 symbol represents affirmation, positive or good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

I also don't use hotbar copying for branching menus because it broke too often, especially when I had a macro to commit changes to a backup hotbar for basic version control.

---

This is interesting, I've never had this feature break for me. Maybe it's because I always put the copycrosshotbar command in the first few lines of the macro? Or maybe somehow the non-cross hotbar version works differently? I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by "commit changes" in the context of macros...though that does make me want a Github for macros! ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

2] Not everyone has a stable framerate so pseudobuffering is inconsistent

---

Definitely, this is one of the aspects that make it important to understand your own subjective needs, not only of your human body but of the device your game is running on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

5] IME macros increase button usage and haven't ever saved space for me.

---

Interesting, so you like to have multiple versions of the same ability, so you can take advantage of the different behaviors depending on your dynamic needs. I've never heard of that before, but that's cool!

Perhaps it's because I'm on controller and thus don't use mouseover macros that macros have only ever reduced my button bloat?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

6] In trusts/duty support, the hard clipping loss from waits is worth it if you use macros to AFK during trash packs.

---

Sometimes if I'm out doing FATES with my spouse as a healer, I'll make an /ac Stone <tt> <wait.3> macro because repeatedly casting Stone is so dull, plus it lets my arthritic hands rest. Not my preference for "real fights", but nice when it's casual.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Maybe it's because I always put the copycrosshotbar command in the first few lines of the macro? Or maybe somehow the non-cross hotbar version works differently? I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by "commit changes" in the context of macros...though that does make me want a Github for macros! ^^

---

I wanted to use fast input sequences like fighting game combos or NIN mudras, especially for jobs/settings changes, and this meant coordinating where stuff was on different bars to minimize finger movement, so when making changes I was effectively testing all the bars at once. It'd be too easy to accidentally wipe any changes I made if I didn't update the bar I stored it on when switching, so I used to have a separate macro for each bar pairing to save any changes I made before copying the new one in. But this would then make it hard to keep track of overall changes and revert things if I didn't like it, so I had a second layer of backups for all the saved bars that I could revert from, and write to when I liked the changes I had. I doubt I was doing frame perfect inputs fast enough to frequently interrupt a 2-3 line macro without waits in the middle of execution, so I suspect the game was ghosting lines in the middle of saving changes to files on drive storage, though I don't have any hard evidence to actually back this up.

Wasn't fun to maintain this mess even without the reliability issues so now I just use a lot of keybinds and deal with stretches, including adding some duplicates to cut down on finger movement for really important things like vpr weaves.

You might be onto something with having it early in the macro- the one I use to toggle visibility all 10 bars+crossbars and some other UI elements only fails on something in the second half, even if the rest of the macro before and after works fine.

And yeah a macro github would be amazing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Perhaps it's because I'm on controller and thus don't use mouseover macros that macros have only ever reduced my button bloat?

---

Maybe, though it could just be that I hate target switching in XIV and want nearly everything on keybinds because I came from older shooter games lol. I doubt the average kb/m user cares about being able to toggle /mountbgm while joining a hunts party, flying through tight spaces, and switching jobs all within 2 seconds.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

I wanted to use fast input sequences like fighting game combos or NIN mudras, especially for jobs/settings changes, and this meant coordinating where stuff was on different bars to minimize finger movement, so when making changes I was effectively testing all the bars at once. It'd be too easy to accidentally wipe any changes I made if I didn't update the bar I stored it on when switching, so I used to have a separate macro for each bar pairing to save any changes I made before copying the new one in. But this would then make it hard to keep track of overall changes and revert things if I didn't like it, so I had a second layer of backups for all the saved bars that I could revert from, and write to when I liked the changes I had. I doubt I was doing frame perfect inputs fast enough to frequently interrupt a 2-3 line macro without waits in the middle of execution, so I suspect the game was ghosting lines in the middle of saving changes to files on drive storage, though I don't have any hard evidence to actually back this up.

---

Interesting! What sorts of settings do you save and change when switching jobs via macros? I've never done that kind of thing (I don't have the macro slots to spare XD). I've heard of folks making macros to switch to different HUD loadouts in different contexts, is it that sort of thing?

I generally try to avoid anything that copies multiple crosshotbars (especially trying to swap 2 crosshotbars!) because of the danger of an interrupted macro resulting in the loss of data. So in my combat macros, I generally only copy a single crosshotbar to retrieve a state that I manually setup earlier; I treat crosshotbar 1 (my primary combat hotbar) as a canvas that things only ever paste to, never copy from. The lone exception is that I have a macro that I manually use whenever I update my WVR crosshotbar; it copies my WVR crosshotbars to all the other crafting classes, since they're all the same and I don't do any dynamic hotbar stuff when I'm actually playing them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dysvalence

Maybe, though it could just be that I hate target switching in XIV and want nearly everything on keybinds because I came from older shooter games lol. I doubt the average kb/m user cares about being able to toggle /mountbgm while joining a hunts party, flying through tight spaces, and switching jobs all within 2 seconds.

---

In my opinion that's part of what's cool about macros though; they're a way for every person to tailor certain aspects of the game to their needs. It would certainly be nice if the system were more robust, but it's cool to hear about how you're setting up systems to streamline on-demand transitions! ^^

Normal abilities queue, macros do not. Therefore macros will always be inferior.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Normal abilities queue, macros do not. Therefore macros will always be inferior.

---

Macros queue if you write them to queue. All the details of how that works are in the first post.