If only two of my abilities are on the timer (and my ending combo abilities at that), then I am not sure I understand your logic.
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ok so even if you have 2 skills in combo thats still 1 second longer per combo you are taking. what you dont seem to understand is your wait time in your macro thats set to 2.5 seconds is actually 3.0. the /wait time in macros is either 2.0 or 3.0 it doesnt do .5. So even with 2 abilities you are still extending the duration of your combos and over acourse of a fight you are going to miss out on combos that you could of done if you didnt use /wait timers. Here is an example
Me playing it manually
Heavy swing
2.4 second GCD
skull sunder
2.4 second GCD
Butcher Block
2.4 second GCD
Playing with a macro
Heavy Swing
2.4 second GCD (because you do not have this skill macro'ed)
Skull Sunder(macro)
3.0 second wait time
Butcher block
2.4 second GCD
as you can see from this 1 combo you are .6 seconds behind on rotation, threat. That .6 secodns longer could be the difference between you landing BB and getting agro on the mob or the healer being one shot. Look at turn 4 and how fast and how important it is for the tank to pick up mobs quickly phase 6 of that turn new adds spawn when a dreadnought is up smashing face on 1 tank. This means healers are gonna have agro when the 2nd dread spawns. that .6 seocnds could be you picking up that new dread or it face planting your healer. Not to mention if you happen to need to use another macro between that rotation it cancels that macro out and you have to start it all over. i can tell by your tank gear that you have never tanked anything "hard" or endgame yet. Wait timer macros like this have no place in endgame content Its not optimal, and for endgame raiding you need to be on your toes.
It's not 1 second. It's .6 seconds per your example. I understand that the real time execution is 3 seconds. I didn't know that prior to this discussion, but if you read up a few posts, you will see that I totally understand that issue. People are making a big enough deal about how much time .5 seconds is, let's not add to the burden for the sake of discussion. I already disclaimed I haven't tanked end-game, and that I would need to assess my views at that point in time. I guess my question for you is have you utilized efficiently placed macros and know first-hand they don't work, or are you going off of the assumptions from your math which presumes perfect execution of abilities? In your example, since those are the threat-building abilities, it wouldn't be a huge deal to remove that wait macro. That only adds one button to the rotation. That's a petty thing to debate, but if it can be proven that the lag does not affect overall tanking abilities, then using the macros should not be dismissed entirely based off of math. I mean, that's the whole point of these discussions, right? And personally, I don't think there should be a penalty for using macros. It's not feasible for someone to do a:
heavy swing
skull sunder
butcher block
heavy swing
skull sunder
butcher block
repeating macro. That would be absolutely inefficient since a number of skills and abilities one would need to use could interrupt that chain. I guess that would be my ultimate focus: having the penalty removed. I mean, in a few patches/XPs, we're going to pick up several more abilities. I, personally, would not fare well having to keybind every single ability to its own button. Macros help me clean up my skills so that I can perform efficiently. I will continue to push this limit until I can see a definitive drop in my performance which renders macros a poor choice. Until that point in time, I think the discussion is really sticking to the highly speculative realm of thought.
And to clarify one other thing, my rotation for your example is manual heavy swing, manual skull sunder macro that then realizes the .6 second lag on the butcher's block. That makes a difference in the discussion, too.
As a newbie tank just wanted to through out a thanks for the beserk macro with the call in it.
Was actually asked if I tank end game after a random dungeon due to it.
There's a small downside to calling out Berserk's pacification and having it Esuna'd/Leech'd off. That 5s of not using weaponskills is a great way to gain back roughly 120 TP - though it is literally the same as just not attacking for 5s, you're going to run into some trouble in long fights where you're constantly using TP to keep debuffs up and need to hold on to Inner Beast for big hits. In general, though, it's useful to have. For short fights it allows you to deeps more effectively, so it's very useful in pre-50 content.
It's only 100 TP. You get back 60 TP every 3 seconds on the same server tick as DoTs, which averages out to 50 TP/GCD.
I don't really see the point in the Pacification warning macros, honestly. You're only losing 2 GCDs. Getting it cleansed off of you is still going to lose you some of that, and it's going to require your healer to throw a GCD and some mp at you. It's not like 2 GCDs of tank damage is really going to do much.
[QUOTE=SpookyGhost;1836164]Alright, so, here's basically why using a macro for all 3 combos is a bad idea:
The /wait 2.5 command is actually /wait 3, which means you are missing .5 seconds every hit of your combo macro, which will add up... pretty quickly. Manually pressing each button, which is pretty easy, gives you 0s downtime. You just hit the first button, then mash the 2nd button, then mash the 3rd, then repeat. I understand wanting to be lazy (had macros for my combos way back when too)
And here's why macros are good. For one it is 2.5. If you watch the timer you can see, even on non macro when timer is up your ability waits a quarter second before you can hit the next. Second, while your mashing buttons, I'm throwing in bb, FS, sw, bs, all my ogcd buffs. While you're dodging and mashing, my guys on auto for 7 seconds, all I have to do is avoid aoe
I macro everything lol not really. My best macros are
/p hey bitchface! Provoke!
/ac provoke <t>
/p we got a bleeder! Convalescence! se.6
/ac convalescence <me>
Intro
/p goin in 5
/wait 1
/s I only ask one favor crom. Grant me vengeance!
/wait 1
/p 3
/wait 1
/s but if you do not? Then to hell with you! (spits)
/wait 1
/p hey <t>, suck my ***s!
And I macro my combos cause I'm tank, not dps. It's more important I get my cool downs in while attacking than worrying bout damage