Semi-Advanced Macro Tips

Disclaimer : A lot of people don't like using too many macros, and feel they can make you a lazy player or less able to react to situations needing more precise skill use. These macro tips and suggested macros are not intended to necessarily be optimal, but to provide an option for players with certain playstyles to save a few keybinds here and there and make what macros they -do- use respond better. I highly recommended that even if you heavily macro lots of skills... always try to have the skill available to use outside of the macro, even if it's on a much less accessible keybind.

Hi, I'm Sapphidia from Balmung and I've spent a lot of time fiddling with macros over the past couple of months. A lot of the macro guides I see in class guides do provide the bare bones macros that can help play a DoW/DoM class more easily, but over the weeks I've experimented and found quite a few cool little tips and tricks that I havent seen any guides mention.

A lot of macros work fine in testing, but under combat conditions they don't work optimally due to people pressing them too much when they're supposed to be pressed once, or cooldowns not meshing as they expect, or lag affecting them. These tips help make macros respond better under stressful or laggy conditions, fine tune macros to work with different styles of keypressing, and add some RP flair.

1 - MACRO ICONS

Okay, this one is fairly well known, but figured I should open with it as I see a lot of people posting how to do this or being amazed when they see this in a macro. The command "macroicon" displays a certain skill's icon and cooldown. It wont display the mouseover tooltip though, sadly.

/macroicon "Provoke"
/ac "Provoke" <t>
/ac "Shield Lob" <t>

That's a good example of a paladin macro that lets you hammer the Provoke key to spam Shield Lobs at a target after you've provoked it, and the macroicon obviously ensures you know the cooldown/range.

2 - /WAIT COMMANDS FOR OFF-GCD WEAVING

A lot of Paladins and Bards will macro certain off-gcd abilities to one of their spammable keys. Off-GCD abilities have about a 0.5-1 second long animation which will delay any other skill you try to immediately use. For this reason, it's always best to try and fire off GCDs in the "gap" between two regular 2.5 second cooldown skills so you don't have any delays.

Example - A standard macro a lot of paladins use to keep FoF and Bloodbath up (as both have a 90 sec cd) is Fight or Flight -> Bloodbath -> Fast Blade.

Nothing too wrong here, but if you run at a target and spam this key, your Fast Blade will be delayed by the length of TWO off-GCD attacks, and at the start of combat you really need that threat in early! Ideally you want at least the Bloodbath to be popped AFTER the fast blade, between that and the next attack, as you can weave it in the 2.5 second global cooldown without delaying skills. If you do THIS:

/macroicon "Fast Blade"
/ac "Fight or Flight" <me>
/ac "Fast Blade" <t>
/wait
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>

Your first keypress is FoF, your Fast Blade will go off quickly afterwards, and when you release the key the Bloodbath will fire off AFTER the fast blade but wont delay the Savage Blade you'll press afterwards. It's a small difference, but it means in practise you wont have situations where you have to hammer your FB key three times. It also means you can press the key just once as you run at a target to pop both buffs as you shield lob.

3 - PUT PARTY ANNOUNCEMENTS AFTER A WAIT

Sometimes it's great to have an announcement in your macro. You can tell people you're resurrecting a certain dead player, announce when you've used a certain long cooldown skill, or when your silence is back off cooldown. However, this can really annoy people in the event you spam the skill a bit too much in combat. Simple solution - the Wait command. Take this macro for the seldom-use Cover skill for paladins that needs people to be within 6 yalms of the Paladin to work:

/macroicon "Cover"
/ac "Cover" <t>
/ac "Cover" <tt>
/wait
/p Casting COVER - stay close to Sapphidia!

Every time you hit the key, all Timers are reset, so with the /p announcement after the Wait, it will only announce to the party AFTER you've stopped smashing the key.

4 - MORE ROBUST TWO-SKILL MACROS

A lot of classes use macros that pop two cooldowns at the same time, usually by using a wait command, or by pressing a key twice. If you setup a macro with both options in it though, you get a much more robust macro that lets you hammer the key frantically in a panic, but also will pop both skills with one press. Take Summoners using a macro that pops Spur and Rouse.

/macroicon "Rouse"
/ac "Spur" <me>
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/wait
/ac "Spur" <me>
/ac "Rouse" <me>

This macro looks a bit weird, but it guarantees that whether you press it once or twice, or use another skill or macro too early, both those skills will go off. Having them twice also means the macro isnt as likely to fail if you press the macro a hair too early before one of the two is fully off cooldown, it will just try them in a different order.

This style of "double entry" macro doesnt do anything different, but under combat situations is far less likely to "break" and only make one of the two skills go off. On a similar vein, if you're a healer who always uses Swiftcast on Raises, you can happily macro Swiftcast into Raise without losing its robustness.

/macroicon "Raise"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Raise" <t>
/wait
/ac "Raise" <t>

Again, this kind of macro means that you can just hammer the button multiple times without it breaking, OR just press it once and have it do both skills with a single press, and if Swiftcast is on cooldown it will behave exactly like the regular Raise skill.

5 - ROBUST BARD MULTI-SKILL WEAVING MACRO

This sort of macro combines the fiddling we've done in 2 and 4 to make a Heavy Shot macro that just feels a little more responsive than the traditional one. Most bards macro Bloodletter and Misery's End onto their Heavy Shots, so the macro says Miserys -> Bloodletter -> Heavy Shot. This macro suffers from the problem where you can end up delaying your Global Cooldown abilities if you don't weave things between them, and if both off-GCD skills are available at the same time you're pushing back your Heavy Shots. However, a lot of bards spam their heavy shot key so you can't easily put in /waits. However, try this:

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/wait
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>

If you press this macro ONCE, it will fire a Heavy Shot, then fire one of the off-GCDs AFTER the Heavy but before the 2.5 second global is up, resulting in a slightly smoother weaving of skills. However, because the off GCDs are also next to the Heavy Shot, you can happily spam this button with exactly the same effect as the original simpler bard macro.

Some players like to spam the button, some players like to press it once rhythmically. This macro works nicely for both, and feels especially good for players like me who like to spam a button until they see a skill fire off, then wait a couple of seconds. It's a subtle difference, but it feels nicer.

6 - CHEATING A 2.5 SECOND WAIT TIME

As you may know, macros round up all wait times to the nearest second. If you do Savage Blade -> Wait 2.5 -> Rage of Halone, the 2.5 will actually be a 3 second wait, so this type of macro that pops two skills at once is often very suboptimal as it will be slower than manual pressing. However, if you really MUST save yourself a keybind, you can artificially lower the difference between 2.5 and 3. Here's a Warrior macro for their two major threat combo moves:

/macroicon "Skull Sunder"
/ac "Skull Sunder" <t>
/wait
/ac "Mercy Stroke" <t>
/ac "Butcher's Block" <t>
/wait
/ac "Butcher's Block" <t>
/wait
/ac "Butcher's Block" <t>

This macro looks strange, but it works like this (note that "wait" is exactly the same as "wait 1") - first press of the macro hits Skull Sunder. It waits 1 second. It then tries to fire off Mercy Stroke if available (an off-gcd skill). If not it tries to Butchers, but cant because the 2.5 second GCD is up. It then tries a second later, and still can't Butchers. It then tries a second later, and it -can- Butchers, 3 seconds after the savage blade hit.

However... if you Spam the button a bit, as most people do in combat, often you'll find yourself hitting the macro one or two times AFTER the first skill fires off. It's natural for people in combat to hit the button a bit extra. When you do this, the timers are reset. What this means is... if you press this macro a second time 0.5 seconds after the Skull Sunder goes off, the Checking to see if it can fire Butchers will succeed on the SECOND check, not the THIRD, which could be up to half a second sooner than just waiting for the original press to get there. End result -> spamming this macro a tiny bit past the time it first goes off will often mean the Butchers will fire off a lot sooner.

This one really needs to be used to see the difference between just Sunder -> Wait 3 -> Butchers. It still isnt optimal, it's still going to be a delay, but if you're someone who MUST use a macro to save a keybind for this kind of melee combo (especially if you're on a TP-heavy class), this triple-check macro can make it feel more responsive.

7 - ADDING SOME ROLEPLAY FLAIR TO YOUR MACROS

This one is one to use with caution, but can have some amazing results. If you don't already know, if you put "motion" after an emote, it will do the emote without announcing in the SAY channel that your character has done it. Now, a lot of Emote Animations are superceded by combat move animations, but the FACIAL EXPRESSIONS are not. You can make your character be a lot more emotive in combat without annoying people, by doing things like this:

/macroicon "Provoke"
/ac "Provoke" <t>
/ac "Shield Lob" <t>
/wait
/annoyed motion

One for paladins (and warriors) -> Taunt a target with provoke and your character will remain angry-looking for a few seconds.

/macroicon "Fast Blade"
/ac "Fight or Flight" <me>
/ac "Fast Blade" <t>
/wait
/scared motion
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>

That one above ensures your character will look rather out of their depth when fighting, a constant scared look when tanking something a LOT larger than themselves. You can do similar things with /ouch on tanking cooldowns, or /smirk and /taunt on big DPS hits. Just be sure to ALWAYS use the MOTION afterwards!

Some emotes DO supercede some instant animations. If you're a scholar, for instance, you can Swiftcast Summon a Fairy using a Kiss with the following macro:

/macroicon "Summon"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Summon" <me>
/wait
/ac "Summon" <me>
/blowkiss motion

Use these with caution of course, but it's possible to make your character behave a lot more dynamically with cunning use of these kind of things, it doesnt interfere with combat in any way and if you use Motion it wont annoy anyone with chat spam.

Hopefully some of these will prove useful! As said, I'm not recommending you definitely use all of the macros in the examples, and in almost all cases, a player with a LOT of keybinds and every skill individually bound will perform better than one heavily reliant on macros when playing at their best. But we're only human! I hope some of these will let people fiddle their own macros that best fit the way they personally setup keybindings.