SCH/pet really needs work (battle macros in general)

Yes, in 2.1 they released the ability for pet macros. The intention was, basically for every SCH to macro their heals to include /petattack <target> so you double heal. This is to make up for poor SCH pet AI in general. It is unclear if SE is unable to program an effect or helpful pet, or if they purposely make it bad AI to add a difficulty and challenge for effective users.

Here however is the problem. With the new pet macro system, basically SCH just macro /pac Embrace <t> to everything, so essentially the pet is just empowering their skills a bit. There are problems with this 1) pet cooldown is 3 sec, and your own cooldown is at most 2.5 sec. So they can't be cast in sync, so macro system seems like a failure here unless you are just supposed to non-stop jam keys as the 2 skills will almost always be out of sync. 2) this is boring, since you are basically having your pet copy everything you do it makes you wonder why you even have a pet if you have have to order it to do everything 3) Macro system in this game is broken, so if you do setup a /pac macro to your skills, you will lose your own healing efficiency, since when a skill is under a macro, it will not queue with FFXIV. So cast your macro .01 seconds before the previous cast is up, and it will be ineffective. So essentially everytime you cast a skill that is under a macro, you are losing at minimum .01 seconds, and I would guess an average of .3s for good reaction people. With a non-macro skill (a pure skill), the game queues it I think up to .5 seconds before the previous skill is done casting. So simple cast the skill sometime near the end of the current cast, and the next one will cast immediately with no delays. The problem is you just lost 12% of your healing output by having .3 s wasted each cast by using a macro, it would be like the system being on a 2.8GCD (instead of 2.5 without spell speed). So, it seems the macro system is quite broken in this game, for in combat actions or things besides crafting or automatic buffing before battles should not be used at all.

Ok, so don't use macros or pet macros. OK, well the pet UI is pretty horrible in this game. Your pet will wander around, if there is a target under 70% health, it may wander a bit, cast a heal, walk around a bit, look for another target, maybe heal it, maybe reposition itself. SCH pet has been proven to be inefficient at healing unless you manually spam the action constantly, or possibly put the pet on "place" setting. It is assumed, since the pet AI has less things to do on place setting, it will heal more often closer to every GCD. 2 party members take slight damage? It blows its load and casts your 1/2 minute cooldowns immediately. Since you always wanna use Rouse + Whisper Dawn combo as a SCH, this make its basically impossible to use the normal pet AI as it is so bad no one should ever use it (but yet it is still the default setting everything, even if your pet dies and needs to be rezzed)

So, it seems like there is a lot of issues here. Battle macros in general being bad, SCH pet AI being bad, SCH pet macros not fun just having your pet copy everything you do, and difficult to even work correctly due to different GCD.

It just seems the system is contradictory or poorly implemented relying on macros, but macros will make your gameplay worse.


EDIT: Instead of just complaining, I will add in some solutions that I see possible
-Improve pet UI. Make each pet ability to be toggled 'autocast'
-Improve pet UI. Make pet actually heal targets at 70% health and below, right now it just wanders a lot, heals sometimes, and probably 2 seconds between healing cast once the previous heal is over. So make the pet act faster, if it is purposely "confused" as a tactic to not make the pet overpowered or forcing the SCH to use macros or manually cast heals, then simply lower the healing amount from 300 to preserve 'balance.' If a target is low health, it should heal it constantly instead of wandering around, even using 'place' command it seems to take the pet a lot of time to find 'new' targets that need to be healed and actually figure out what it should do.
-Improve pet UI. Make Whispering Dawn only cast by Eos when at least 3 party members are under 70% health at the same time. Increase the distance, as right now even when manually cast, the range is low and often party members will be outside of range of heal. Since it has a 1 minute cooldown its quite unfortunate if this does happen with an already weak AOE healing class to begin with.
-Improve battle macros: Making skills in macros be able to queue just as normal skills not inside a macro will make macros actually useful in battle, instead of hindering your casts by approximately 10% with macro delay currently implemented.

To be honest, while the macro and pet system certainly could use improvements still, I find it quite convenient.

On Obey and place the pet performs really nicely. It won't blow CD until I tell her to.
Use macros if you need to empower something.
Use single cast Embrace and your own heals if you need to split heals.
Let her do her own thing and do damage if things are not heated.

Just My point of view :)

I do put pet on obey (Selene is often left on SIC)
I don't macro heals(physick, lustrate, adloquium, succor) nor embrace, only macros are for the other skills of the fairy

I spam my current heal while pressing embrace at the same time when I need to focus on one target. If no big heals needed I can let pet heal as she wishes while launching my heals or still use her embrace and do something else.

I can launch the macro rouse + fey illumination + whispering dawn (or only rouse +whispering), once rouse is launched I can heal normally while pet is casting its spell without me interrupting.

I use a controler, so I am often spamming embrace while casting another skill

System is not perfect as the /wait command makes you wait would be nice a /petwait to chain pet actions.

With the changes for wait command coming (/ac "Action" <wait.#>) I wonder if we could make pet wait while we don't.

as SCH main I have pretty much most of my skills as macro
all my offensive skills are <t> and <tt> so i can keep the tank as target and use my spells on monster he is attacking without changing target
all my physik/adlo/lustrate/leeches are macroed with fairy embrace
i always have fairy on obey unless i use selene on trash mobs (dungeon) because she rotate skills well on her own and I usually dont have problems healing

but yes, by design, we should not have to make macros... but it is very efficient to do some :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squa

Yes, in 2.1 they released the ability for pet macros. The intention was, basically for every SCH to macro their heals to include /petattack <target> so you double heal.

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This sounds just wrong, i never macroed Eos/Selene and won't do it in the future, just pull your pet actions to your hotbar and assign some hotkeys. Not to mention that i find it rather wasted to macro Embrace to your heal, as for you only heal one target (yes, of course sometimes it is quite handy, but imo it's wasted most of the time).

I only have one issue with the current pet AI for scholars. I hate that Selene/Eos will still cast Embrace while on Obey. There have been times that I would like to fire off a Whispering Dawn and hit the macro, but at the same time she decides to Embrace someone low on life rather than listen. Having to wait those few seconds to get that Whispering Dawn off is an annoyance. That is my only issue, and with how responsive pets have become, it is really not a large one.

I personally do not tie my Embrace to my heals. I feel that is a great under utilization of my pets abilities. I keep Embrace on a mouseover macro and use it to either supplement my heals or split my heals to multiple people. With the current freedom to control the pet off GCD, it really gives the Scholar a lot of additional healing power that makes the class much more engaging that it would be otherwise.

The OP, claims it is not fun having the pet copy everything you do.... then do not macro them to do so. It is quite simple and not a flaw in design but a flaw in the particular user. You can have your pet work independently of your own heals with a little extra effort and really maximize its potential or you can leave it on Auto and get a watered down version that you cannot control. I do not feel that the pet left on auto should be anywhere near the utility as one that is being controlled by the player.

I just have a few issues with the pet, but they really do irritate me:
-Fairy never goes back to her "place" after knockback: In big arenas this means she might just outright not heal someone because they aren't in her range anymore, not to mention it screws up the AoE CDs. On fights like titan it would be great to place her because if she's on heel she eats practically every attack that you dodge.
-Dawn can be interrupted: Seeing as this is our strongest AoE heal on a relatively long CD it's really annoying that it can be wasted.
-Embrace recast: 3 second really messes up the rhythm when I'm trying to heal, I wish it was tied to our recast
-Pac macros seem to be slow to activate and this just stacks onto the fairy's longer heal recast making us further out of sync

@DantedmcVII

Good points!
1. I forgot about that place issue. I leave her on heel for titan as she does not die for me, but on T5 during divebombs she likes to eat the wall. If she gets smacked by a divebomb she will hangout by herself across the area doing a whole lot of hating from far away. I also wish they would return to the spot they were placed.
2. I don't think I have ever had WD interrupted, but I have had my WD macro interrupted if that makes sense. It ties Rouse to WD and I will cast Rouse and then the fairy will decide its time to Embrace while forgetting completely she was told toe WD.
3. I don't mind this much.
4. They do seem a bit slow, but I think some of that is because of the fairy trying to Embrace at any given time that someone is below 85%. I had to trash a lot of my combination macros for big shield or big aoe because her Embracing would screw it all up and she would ignore the commands. Now I just have everything separate to avoid wanting to strangle her on the occasions she is off doing her own thing embracing random targets and ignoring me. I still have to mash commands a few times on occasion.

I wish fairies were turned into a level 50’s HD event. The way you would not fuss and will learn how to control it instead of them doing nerfes. Either take down the tree’s period and make you level every job from level 1. Making you learn how all your powers work. Avatar’s themselves too removed them and make them a party thing in HD. People in this game do not listen and hate things they did not take time to practice and learn.

I personally don't macro any heals. Reason being, as mentioned earlier is that there are times where you need to split your healing on different targets. I find myself click-targeting through my party, popping Embrace on one target as a I click-target and Physick another. Do I use the Embrace + Physick/Adloquium combo? Sure I do, but it's not hard to hit "1" on my keyboard as I press "1" on my mouse (Razer Naga setup). I know that isn't to everyone's play-style via the hardware you possess and use, but even if I was strictly on the keyboard, there are so many options that it would not be a hard transition to quickly place my main heals along with Embrace close together and easily accessible for rapid fire healing.