Please have caster auto-attacks turn on by default

Melee and Physical Ranged classes do this already, where whenever you use a weaponskill on an enemy, the game automatically turns on auto-attacks too, so why not for casters/healers? Obviously auto-make up a much smaller portion of our damage, but it's still completely free damage that can add up to a gcd or two over the course of the fight depending on the class, especially since recent raid design has been to have full or near-full uptime for all eight party members. I've never understood, going all the way back to ARR, why casters and healers have to manually turn on auto-attacks when other jobs don't.

Stand in melee range and it will auto-attack. Don't have to be off in Narnia just cause you have range /shrug

This seemed so ridiculous that I went to a striking dummy and slapped my book on it with a SMN.

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You hit the striking dummy for 133 damage.

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On SCH.

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Direct hit! You hit the striking dummy for 171 damage.
Critical! You hit the striking dummy for 219 damage.
You hit the striking dummy for 139 damage.

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I didn't actually know they didn't do autos automatically. I assumed they did if they were in range after a cast. But I knew it was so little damage that it wasn't worth even testing.

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Originally Posted by MaxCarnage

Stand in melee range and it will auto-attack.

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Not to my experience. Spells or distance will not trigger auto-attacking the target; only physical attacks trigger the auto-attack. So as RDM for example, the dash and melee attacks will set it off but spells do not.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

But I knew it was so little damage that it wasn't worth even testing.

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If you're doing roulettes where you can end up in lower content, it actually is worthwhile in ARR and maybe into the earlier parts of Heavensward, before the stats on gear boost your magical abilities so far beyond your default physical attributes. It adds up to a few extra GCD spells per fight.

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Originally Posted by MaxCarnage

Stand in melee range and it will auto-attack. Don't have to be off in Narnia just cause you have range /shrug

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This is untrue. You have to manually activate auto attacks by right clicking, or pressing the Confirm button (numpad 0 by default, I believe). Go try it on a striking dummy and see for yourself.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

But I knew it was so little damage that it wasn't worth even testing.

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It's free damage though, and there's no reason to not have them automatically turn on. If you've ever had a .1% enrage on a boss before, and your healers and casters didn't have autos turned out, that could quite literally be the difference between a kill and a wipe. It's roughly a free gcd across the course of a ten-minute fight from 3-4 party members. It's not huge, but it's there and it's free, so why not have it turned on by default?

Healer autos even SCH scale really really poorly. They won't do a significant amount of damage. Don't get me wrong OP. I agree that there is no logical reason why it SHOULDN'T work the way you describe, I'm just saying that ultimately it's a non-issue.

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Originally Posted by FlorineC

It's free damage though, and there's no reason to not have them automatically turn on. If you've ever had a .1% enrage on a boss before, and your healers and casters didn't have autos turned out, that could quite literally be the difference between a kill and a wipe. It's roughly a free gcd across the course of a ten-minute fight from 3-4 party members. It's not huge, but it's there and it's free, so why not have it turned on by default?

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I....actually had to check this for my own curiosity, not to prove or disprove anything. I looked up a log of a SCH (since they do the most auto attack damage) and their autos dealt 14.5k damage to the current final boss of the current savage tier within the course of the whole fight.The last boss has 40,192,744HP. .1% of that would be 40,193. So with book smacks alone, the SCH did less than .1% of the boss' health in damage. That's not an amount I would personally worry about, but it is technically free damage yeah.

And this is SCH autos, which hurt the most out of all the healers. The AST in the same party did about 1/10th of the damage in autos vs the SCH.

Red Mage seems to the only caster which has auto attack on default.

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

Red Mage seems to the only caster which has auto attack on default.

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Probably from using Weaponskills (the melee combo)? Just a technicality, but probably what turns it on.

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Originally Posted by Coatl

And this is SCH autos, which hurt the most out of all the healers. The AST in the same party did about 1/10th of the damage in autos vs the SCH.

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Is that about raw damage, though, or about where they were standing and whether they were remembering to activate it?

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

Red Mage seems to the only caster which has auto attack on default.

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As I mentioned earlier, it is not auto-triggered by spells but only by the melee attacks. If you start the fight by dashing at an enemy, then that will trigger it "from the start", but it's not because the basic settings are different.

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Originally Posted by MaxCarnage

Stand in melee range and it will auto-attack. Don't have to be off in Narnia just cause you have range /shrug

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Originally Posted by FlorineC

This is untrue. You have to manually activate auto attacks by right clicking, or pressing the Confirm button (numpad 0 by default, I believe). Go try it on a striking dummy and see for yourself.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Not to my experience. Spells or distance will not trigger auto-attacking the target; only physical attacks trigger the auto-attack. So as RDM for example, the dash and melee attacks will set it off but spells do not.

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

Red Mage seems to the only caster which has auto attack on default.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Probably from using Weaponskills (the melee combo)? Just a technicality, but probably what turns it on.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

As I mentioned earlier, it is not auto-triggered by spells but only by the melee attacks. If you start the fight by dashing at an enemy, then that will trigger it "from the start", but it's not because the basic settings are different.

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All RDM's physical attacks and Enchanted weaponskills, including ranged examples of both, activate auto-attack.

• Fleche
• Contre-Sixte
• Corps-a-corps
• Displacement
• Engagement
• Riposte
• Zwerchhau
• Redoublement
• Moulinet
• Reprise
• Enchanted Riposte
• Enchanted Zwerchhau
• Enchanted Redoublement
• Enchanted Moulinet
• Enchanted Reprise

Spells, including the mana combo spells, do not. Also, auto-attack turns off whenever you detarget something (i.e., the boss jumps) and needs to be turned back on after they become targetable again.