macro basics

Is there a good site for learning the basics of macros? I'm getting the impression that the game is very heavily reliant on them so I guess it's time to get started.

http://guide-source.com/ffxiv-guide/...g-ffxiv-macros
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Macro
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Macro_Guides

That said, I wouldn't agree that the game is heavily reliant on macros. In fact, players would tell you that using macros would result in DPS loss and the inability to queue skills. There are definitely useful macros such as the inventory sort macro, pull countdown macros and such. But I would not recommend you to heavily rely on macros for everything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

That said, I wouldn't agree that the game is heavily reliant on macros. In fact, players would tell you that using macros would result in DPS loss and the inability to queue skills. There are definitely useful macros such as the inventory sort macro, pull countdown macros and such. But I would not recommend you to heavily rely on macros for everything.

---

Interesting - and somewhat of a relief! I'm not a big fan of macros, generally speaking, but I do know of several games that are really difficult to play well without them. I'm glad to hear this one may not fall into that category. Thank you very much!

Yeah, the most common macros you see are what id call "social" macros... like announcing a res so the person is ready(and potentially alert other healers so they dont do the same). The DPS math people have run the numbers, and because of the way the system works, they found using more combat-oriented macros(action a, wait, action b, wait, etc) lowers your overall efficiency in most(there is debate if most = all) situations. Some crafters use macros to simplify recipes that their stats basically wont allow them to fail but still may take 10-20 actions to do, but manual crafting gets better results because you can adjust for changing conditions(and even a macro crafter will manually do the hard recipes and/or the ones with super expensive materials). So yeah, i would say you shouldnt worry about it too much.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by _Babble_

I do know of several games that are really difficult to play well without them.

---

SE doesn't want FFXIV to fall into that category. They've done some things with the macro system (like limiting the /wait function use whole seconds only and not fractions of a second) specifically for the purpose of making it inefficient to use macros for your main combat combo chains. There's some useful macros for notifying your teammates of what you're doing, or for selecting an appropriate target (for instance, use a given skill either on your target or your target's target, depending on whether you have a friend or enemy targeted), but using them for taking one action, waiting, then taking another action will come out slower than if you did those actions directly.

Even using them for single actions can be more inefficient than using the "pure" skills since you can't queue the macros like you can queue the skills. (Press the second skill slightly early so it'll start executing immediately when it can).