BLM macros

Finally been perfecting my macros for BLM and as I think I'm pretty close to refining my rotation (just in time for the new skills- lolz) I figured I'd get some opinions here..

So, My usual rotation is Blizz3>Fire3>Fire (with F3 when proc ticks) until <600mp >blizz3
rinse repeat.

I throw in the standard Virus, lethargy and thunder2 between rotations while waiting for the ticks on blizz to regain max mp... But I have just started playing with flare as well, so do these sound okay? (playing on ps4 so the fewer x-bar changes I need the better!)

Macro: Flare

/micon "Flare"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me><wait.1>
/ac "Raging Strikes"<me><wait.1>
/ac "Flare" <t><wait.2>
/ac "Transpose" <me>
/p The end is near!


Macro: "defense"

/micon "Manaward"
/ac "manaward" <me><wait.1>
/ac "apocatastasis"<tt><wait.1>
/ac "manawall" <me>


Macro: "debuff"

/micon "virus"
/ac "virus" <t><wait.0.5>
/ac "lethargy"<t><wait.0.5>
/ac "thunder II" <t>

Macro: Run

/micon "Aetherial Manipulation"
/ac "aetherial manipulation"
/p Beam me up Scotty!


I've noticed that during casting, I can complete the rotations much faster than if I were to hit the buttons individually and as a general rule, I use flare while enemies are casting AoE or using abilities with a longer cast time (like the 5-headed dragon) so moving wouldn't be so much of an issue as they'll only be used every few rotations once the skills have fully cooled down..
The last one is a last-means of defense and as of yet, I have never had to use it!

The defence macro would also only be used during potential big-damage attacks..

Any ideas? Good setup? Bad setup?

What are you using Macros for ?

I'm playing on ps4, so can only have 16 icons on the bar at once, so once I've included my main skills and abilities that I need for my rotation, it means I need to use the expanded bar a LOT for the debuffs/procs/defensive skills. I've noticed that quite often I'll mess up on a rotation because while I've been switching to the expanded bar, I've missed a proc and have to restart.

By using macros to chain things like swiftcast > flare, I can condense 2 or more skills into one slot, reducing the number of button pushes and therefore minimising the time needed for each rotation. It may only be a few fractions of a second, but they add up!

You know you have access to another 16 spaces? R2 + L2 and L2 + R2

Check hotbar settings in menu there no need to manually R1 through your hotbars

My main hot bar consists of fire III fire blizzard thunder I thunder III swiftcast sure cast lethargy transpose manaward scathe, i have placed blizzard III in the R2 } L2 bar located in same position as fire to keep movement fluid

2nd bar flare pots and other ability's

Don't they have the L2+R2 and R2+L2 crossbar option on PS4?

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Originally Posted by lacrimosaangel

I'm playing on ps4,

By using macros to chain things like swiftcast > flare, I can condense 2 or more skills into one slot, reducing the number of button pushes and therefore minimising the time needed for each rotation. It may only be a few fractions of a second, but they add up!

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OP, I think you will find some resistance from the comunity when talking about macros, since they cannot be queued and all. (You would waste time instead of saving it).
But as a macro user myself, I have some tips:

/micon "blizzard iii"
/ac "blizzard iii" <t>
/ac blizzard <t> <- This ensures that you will cast an ice spell even with low mp cause you messed up with fire, lol, and saves one slot

/micon flare
/ac swiftcast
/ac flare <t>
/ac convert <- Raging strikes is cool, but has uses other than flare (you could use it for single target rotation) an if it's on cooldown, with your current macro, you would wait 1 second that sometimes you don't have. With this macro, you can smash the button that you will use the skills instantly as they are availabe.

And regarding your defensive macro, my opinion (and my only) is that you should let go of it. All those skills should be used at the proper circumstance not all at the same time.

But I'd like to reinforce that everyone has his/her own playstyle and you're free to use your macros as you see fit. Remember that you can map another Xhotbar on the combination R2+L2 to have more slots and good gaming. ^.^

You wanna use raging strikes earlier than right before flare. Flare macro in general is gonna slow you down.

You're gonna waste cooldowns with the defense one. Manawall/ward are practically never useful at the same time. Same with the debuffs one, you'll want to manage virus and lethargy independently; they're both debuffs but they serve very different mechanical purposes.

AM macro is actually a good call. I'd have the macro target your healer to save you time targeting.

Also, don't just always virus/lethargy during your umbral phase. No offense, but I have no idea where you got the impression that that was standard. That's a loss of dps and utility (odds are that virus/lethargy aren't gonna just happen to be useful then) Do your fire rotation, then blizz3>thunder1>blizz1>fire3>back to pewpewpew. If you get a fast mana tic you can even skip the blizz1.

Short answer: bad idea.

To elaborate:
Flare macro:
- You loose a lot of time for each action
- There is no reason to use Raging strikes for one flare followed by an transpose UI phase. it should be used in the beginning of an AF rotation.
- You dont always want to use transpose after flare, more often then not flare is followed by convert or mana pot.
- /p chat when using skills is annoying as fk

Defense macro:
- Mana wall and ward has completly different usage, should never be used at the same time.
- Apoc with <tt> is a bad idea since this skill is often used to keep ppl not fully healed or with ress sickness alive during big aoes or big unavoidable damage, if you try to use it on a healer it will cast it on whoever they have targeted i'd assume.

Debuff macro:
- Lethargy is more or less only useful in 3 cases that i can think of, t11, t5 dreads and pvp. better to just use virus as it is and have lethargy on an less convenient button.
- Dont understand why thunder is here, it should be used in UI and not whenever you use virus. (edit: didnt see that you mentioned that you only use this one during UI so nvm)

Run macro:
- Again, /p stuff is annoying :p
- i would recommend using <mo> macro for AM but i guess that wont work for you as a console player. so yea, this macro is basically just you spamming chat with an star trek reference while using AM :p

I main BLM and only use two macros, one is for AM on mouseover and the second one is Eye for and eye on target followed by targets target. this allows me to give it to OT before tankswap/akh morn/whatever but still allows me to use it without switching target when i just want to use it on mt. same can be done with apoc

No. So much wrongs! Please don't do any of this. I will be happy to give you lessons and teach you the ways of the BLM, but no, just no, to all of this. First let me just start off saying you shouldn't have any problems with having room on 1 hotbar + expanded. I just rearranged my hotbars for the new skills and I can still make it work. You probably have abilities on your main hotbar that don't need to be there and can be moved to hotbar #2. Its good to have CDs such as Manaward and Apoc on the expanded hotbar since you use them situationally. Putting additional hotbars vertically and horizontally next to your main hotbar is helpful as you can put those Unseen CDs on them so you can see your timers. And while I'm on that, Manward, Manawall, Apoc, Lethargy, Virus, Eye for an Eye are all utilities. They all have their own purpose and you don't use them together. Manaward is magic defense for yourself, and Manawall blocks two physical attacks. You're not taking magic and physical damage at the same time, so why would you use them together. If you have a party member that just rez'd and has weakness and a big magic attack is coming, Apoc them. But you just wasted your manawall and manaward because you wanted to Apoc a party member. Or maybe you just rez'd and that same magic attack is coming, now Manaward should be used, not Manawall or Apoc. Get my point?


On another note your rotation should be Fire III > Fire I x 5 > Blizz III > Thunder 1 or 2 depending on your piety and or preference > Blizz 1 if you have high SS and/or need to wait for another mana tick before going back into Astral Fire. Raging Strikes is mostly used in conjunction with Convert since they share a CD timer. So you would use it like, Fire III > Raging Strikes > Fire I x 5 > Swiftcast > Flare > Convert > Fire 1 > Blizz III.

You really shouldn't use any moacros to string together abilities. It lowers your DPS, and gives you no control over what your doing. Its just bad. Period. You use macros for other purposes. I for one use two macros as a controller player. A Face Target Macro which helps against moving targets to prevent interupts and an Aetherial Manipulation macro which I link with Party member #2 (healer) since I can't really do a mouseover macro and healers usually are standing outside of danger.

Please don't get into the habit of using macros. This won't make you a better player. I promise that.

Macros eww... the only Macros I use on my BLM is




/micon "Limit Break"
/action "Limit Break"
/p I shall make free the colors of the sky and rend thy soil beneath thine feet. Know annihilation! <se.8>

Absolutely only macro i ever use on blm is for Aetherial Manipulation as i just find it easier on PS4 to use a macro for that.
It really is a dps loss in general using macros for any of the dps classes. With that said however it is entirely up to you and you alone.
And true PS4 (and PS3) has more spaces but i have always had issues using more then 2 crossbars so i stick to just using the 2.
That and the fact that 2 crossbars are plenty for blm
Only class i really use macros for is scholar and no i do not claim to be an excellent scholar, lol

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

AM macro is actually a good call. I'd have the macro target your healer to save you time targeting.

Also, don't just always virus/lethargy during your umbral phase. No offense, but I have no idea where you got the impression that that was standard.

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Thank you ^_^ I have it set to <3> because my party list is organised in a way that the healer would be n.3 on the list... unless there is a direct macro command for healer rather than party member number?

Oh no, I didn't mean to insinuate that virus/lethargy during umbral was normal, it's just worked out that more often than not, that's when the cooldown finishes and I'm able to use them as I like to keep them active through the whole fight where possible, but don't want to mess up my rotation! :p I will see how I get on with slotting it inbetween blizz spells though, thanks!

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Originally Posted by Roxas_Andrade

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Thanks ^_^ I wasn't sure about the defensive one, tbh, I rarely, if ever use those skills (except manaward during some trials) So I just threw them together experimenting with things, I will let that one go and use them individually as and when I see the need.

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Originally Posted by Stupiduglytaru

You know you have access to another 16 spaces? R2 + L2 and L2 + R2

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Yep, I'm using them, but again, I'm finding that sometimes I need access to my expanded in microseconds and hitting the wrong L2/R2 combo or my finger slipping can mean the difference between getting hit by AoE or not! I still use it, but for my Flare rotation eg.. I have each set of 4 attributed to particular "groups" of skills and the flare rotation would mean accessing 3 groups of skills - too many button pushes!

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Originally Posted by Skvimpan

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Noted, thanks ^^ I'll take the party commands out, though tbh, I party a lot with my FC and we're always messing around!

I use transpose after flare always as it's the quickest way to gain mana back to restart my rotation, I don't like relying on pots as they generally have such a low mp regain and I'd still end up either spamming blizz I or waiting for mp regain..

As for how fast it is, I played around with the flare macro and to be honest, the way it is set up is the same order I would cast the spells manually, and I don't really understand how it could be seen as wasting time, when it is MUCH faster than I could do it myself? when manually accessing all the skills, it takes a good 2-3 seconds more than this macro does?

As most people said macros on a BLM is a HUGE mistake. You are hurting only your own DPS and will likely lead to people raging on you. You should be manually hitting each skill. Even on a PS4/3 Do Not use Macros!

Only time macros are good for BLM is for AM, EfaE, and maybe Virus.

it is because delays in macros and other such things can potentially happen using macros.
And this is just not for blm but all dps classes.
I have always liked to manually press actions myself however if it works for you then like i said it's up to you.
If there is a scholar in the group i avoid using Virus usually, one reason being to avoid stepping on their toes, haha

Lol OP asks for advice and two pages later there's only one person who actually gives advice.

On a side note though, I don't use macros except for one athereal manipulation taking me to player 2 for when I won't be able to targer someone fast enough. So aside from that I can't really offer anything.

Also I use keyboard and mouse, not sure how people can juggle hotbars on a controller.

Like everyone mentioned, macros are a bad idea since they

I'm on my phone and can't edit lol but yeah macros are a bad idea since you lose the ability to queue your next ability, which in turn delays everything enough to affect your dps. As far as rotation goes I always quelling before the pull and try to blizzard 3 as soon as the tank pulls, then I t1, f3, f1 x5, swiftcast flare, convert, f1, b3, t1, b1, f3, repeat. I play with a controller and have no issues mapping all my abilities. I probably wouldn't virus anything besides boss adds since your virus isn't as potent as smn/such and the antibodies debuff could prevent the application of another virus during a critical moment.

There is one macro I can suggest to you, despite populace's hatred for such:

Aetherial Manipulation to party slot 3 (usually your healer)
Use it when you get hurt and want heals :v
Add a /hug at the end v:

Dont place it in your usual hotbar.

Just FYI to anyone that doesnt know this cause I'm seeing alot of people saying party member #3 for aetherial. While this is fine if you have have your tanks first and then healers and DPS. This would put your healer in the #3 spot on 4 man dungeons. But on 8 man content #3 would be another tank. You can actually setup in config which order you want your party list. I prefer to put healers first, then dps and tanks on bottom. With healers first, you can now aetherial manipulation to party member #2 and it's the healer in 4 or 8 man content.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

Party order

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Well, I was suggesting it for the fun of it anyway, I still rather scroll the party list, use Aetherial manually, and hug my healer by hand :v

I understand where you're coming from, but you're issue just sounds to me like you are relying on macros to do the work which is in turn not allowing to get better and faster at doing it manually. You practice at it and then it becomes muscle memory and you will be much faster than any macro. I also think you are over complicating your hotbars. You should have on your main hotbar fire 1, 2 and 3, transpose, thunder 1 or 2 (depending on which you use) and thunder 3, swiftcast, flare, blizzard 1 and 3. That's it. Those are the abilities you are constantly using in your rotation, single target or aoe. You don't need an aoe hotbar and a single target hotbar and then a buff hotbar and all these macros. I just gave you 10 skills. That leaves 6 on your hotbar to put whatever you want on there. The rest of your skills have cooldowns and you use them situationally. You still have 8 or 16 more slots on your expanded that you can put buffs/debuffs in. My only point is we are honestly trying to help and I think you just need to get in there and start practicing. You'll be far better off in the long run.

DPS macros are bad for GCD abilites, please do not use them if you are serious about your DPS output. You will always put out much lower DPS than a person who can manually perform the skills.

It is like this by design.

I use a gamepad and only have 16 visible slots, I can access other 16's easily by right shoulder button. I personally wouldn't use macros on blm and I don't. lets say you make a macro that combines several spells and abilities. What if you get interrupted. Your macro set would be thrown out and as it cycles you cant do anything until its completed. If your cycle is 20 seconds long including spells then your stuffed. Also during this time if you come under attack and need to use defence spells once again the original cycle is still running causing you more grief.
Macros can make life easier but with blm where you cant do much in the way of spellcasting while moving then its going to hurt. Also, lets say you go through a cycle and fire 3 procs, your not going to be able to use that due to the macro cycling.
Hope it helps

I use macros for a few things, mostly debuffs and buffs.
Virus/EE
/ac "Virus" <t>
/ac "Virus" <tt>
/ac "Eye for an Eye" <t>
/ac "Eye for an Eye" <tt>
I like this one because I can use it on my scholar and black mage. All it does is cast virus on my target, and EE on my targets target and vice versa. It lets me do whichever job I'm doing without switching targets.

Aetherial Manipulation
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <t>
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <f>
ports me to my target, or my focused target, I normally focus the healer to get me out of a tight spot. Also lets me finish a cast without switching targets or running.
Apocatastasis
/ac "Apocatastasis" <t>
/ac "Apocatastasis" <tt>
This one again allows me to not have to swap targets if I don't need to. I like to set up all of my macros to take variables into account.

BlizzardIII
/ac "Blizzard III" <t>
/wait 2.5
/ac "Thunder" <t>
Now this is my only damaging macro I use on my Black Mage and may be the most, it casts Thunder right after Blizz allowing me to keep ThunderIII for procs and an extra slot on the bar.
So those are all of my blm macros, thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Elky

BlizzardIII
/ac "Blizzard III" <t>
/wait 2.5
/ac "Thunder" <t>

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No such thing as wait 2.5. You can enter it but the game rounds up to 3. Add spellspeed into the mix and you're losing around .6-7 seconds every rotation.

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Originally Posted by Elky

I use macros for a few things,
BlizzardIII
/ac "Blizzard III" <t>
/wait 2.5
/ac "Thunder" <t>
[...]
So those are all of my blm macros, thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

No such thing as wait 2.5. You can enter it but the game rounds up to 3. Add spellspeed into the mix and you're losing around .6-7 seconds every rotation.

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I don't know about this rounding-up thing. IMO, the game uses the next skill as soon as the other finishes, considering recast of 2.46... Is that a thing?
But I noticed some latency... I had macros for my mudras (#DumbMe, I know) and I noticed that if I let a /wait of 0.7, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. When I changed it to /wait 0.8, they got better, almost always working... Then I noticed that the cast time is 0.5, and that i'm much faster doing them myself. Only hard at the beginning until you memorize all the combinations...

Elky, now I don't think you should use /wait in macros, they have to be well planned (my exception to swiftcast, wait 1.5, raise, /p raise) or else you may be caught in a situation where you don't want to cast the blizz3, and have to stand there waiting for the thunder to start charging (or not) because you don't have it mapped in another slot...

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

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Oh gosh no, I didn't mean to insinuate that I'm relying on them, I still like to do things myself and do not - under ANY circumstance - use them for any of my fire/blizz skills, I just seem to find that a LOT of the time when I use flare manually, I mess up the timing with transpose and miss the umbral/astral switch. The number of times this has happened has led me to think that perhaps I would be better off just testing a macro.

My X-bar set up:

Fire I, II, III, Blizz III
Scathe, Thunder I, II, III
Sprint, Physick, Convert, Transpose
Virus, Flare, Sleep, aetherial

and then on bar 2 I have my other buffs/debuffs etc. But I don't like using convert for mp gain unless I REALLY need to, I don't like having to rely on healers to get that hp back up, especially as most of the healers I've found in parties are too busy focus healing on tanks!

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Originally Posted by Brabus

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Hehe, 20 seconds?! Woah no way, like I said, the flare macro is ONLY for flare, which I use ONLY when swiftcast is available and usually only after I've done 2-3 of my regular rotations - the macro lasts less than 5 seconds, and is quite a bit quicker than inputting it myself! I'd never use it for standard rotations, just Flare ^_^ Wouldn't use it for fire/blizz either and the only reason thunder was at the end of the other one is so that the procs could tick and I could slot them into my usual rotation without worrying about having to stop my rotation to cast it ^_^


Thanks for all the tips about the party list, I've got the AM set up so that it goes to <4> now (healer in 8 man party) as I have never found that I need it in a 4 person duty :)

only macro I can think of are some <tt> macros for things like eye for an eye or apocatawhatever
BLM don't really need macros

and party chats like:
/p The end is near!

avoid this, everybody hates them and it looks super childish =)

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Originally Posted by Roxas_Andrade

I don't know about this rounding-up thing. IMO, the game uses the next skill as soon as the other finishes, considering recast of 2.46... Is that a thing?.

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It rounds up, dev confirmed and player tested. The game only deals in wait times of whole integers with macro commands, due to server delay and latency this is a required practice. During macro commands, the game cannot queue your next action as you are not performing a next action according to the server yet.

When selecting skills manually you can actually press the button at about 75% complete GCD and the game queues that request to happen as soon as the GCD is up. This is implemented to accomodate for variances in player pingtime to the server at any given time, so that it is a smoother experience, should latency increase and the commands still occur as they normally would.

What this means is when you are doing macros with wait 2.5, it is actually wait 3.0, every time without fail. This can be easily tested as well.

When you choose to macro any GCD ability as a dps player, you are absolutely impacting your own performance in a negative way. Adding seconds to your rotation and going noticably slower than a manual player. This results in an enormous dps lost, which again, can be tested quite easily with a target dummy and just doing a macro vs non-macro rotation.

This is a design decision, so that players who can master pressing all the buttons will have a distinct edge. So if you are at all serious about being a good player and pushing your job to the max, then macros for GCD abilities is something you want to avoid.

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Originally Posted by m3eansean

This is a design decision, so that players who can master pressing all the buttons will have a distinct edge. So if you are at all serious about being a good player and pushing your job to the max, then macros for GCD abilities is something you want to avoid.

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That's one more reason we ps4 players should be able to see our damage with parsers. I don't want to test my skills on a dummy and calculate the damage I see popping to see if i'm doing it ok... PC players have aad-on for this and I take it as an advantage. If I had a clear number to see how much damage i'm doing and I can compare it with other players, I can see where I'm doing it wrong...

Only good ones to use are <tt> E4E, <tt> Apocatastasis, and <mo> Aetherial Manipulation, all of which can be combined with <t> or <mo> to save hotbar space. Everything else is either pointless or detrimental.

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Originally Posted by lacrimosaangel

My X-bar set up:

Fire I, II, III, Blizz III
Scathe, Thunder I, II, III
Sprint, Physick, Convert, Transpose
Virus, Flare, Sleep, aetherial

and then on bar 2 I have my other buffs/debuffs etc. But I don't like using convert for mp gain unless I REALLY need to, I don't like having to rely on healers to get that hp back up, especially as most of the healers I've found in parties are too busy focus healing on tanks!

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Just some tips and words of advice. You don't need Thunder 1 and 2 on your hotbar. You only need to use one of them so pick one and get rid of the other one. There is no difference in dps. I prefer the Thunder 1 > blizzard 1 combo, and if I get a quick mana tick while casting thunder I can just skip blizz 1 and go back into Astral Fire, but thats just me. Secondly you really have no need to have Physick and Sleep on your main hotbar. You can't really sleep anything post 50 and if you have to heal in emergencies, you can just switch to your second hotbar. Free up those spaces. Virus also has a cooldown so its good to put that on expanded hotbar. Plus your Virus is weaker so if you have a SMN or SCH, let them use it.

As far as flare is concerned, you shouldn't be using flare on a single target unless you have convert available. Use Flare in AoE situations with multiple targets. Fire III > Fire II until low > Flare > Transpose > repeat until everything is dead. Flare > Transpose on a single target is a dps loss. Swiftcast should be used for movement. Its on a short cooldown so make use of it. Swiftcast > Fire I while moving is far better than Scathe. Anything is better than scathe really. Scathe should only be used if Swiftcast and Aethrial Manipulation are unavailable and you have to move longer than 2 seconds. Point being is, you are given the tools to succeed. You just need to practice and learn to use these tools properly.

There's only one macro you need

/micon "Summon III"
/shout "Woe is me! I've made a horrible mistake and rolled BLM. Worse yet, I am probably a lalafel! Look upon me and despair!"
/cry
/sob
/reroll SMN

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

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I have just taken T1 off the hotbar and now have T2 and T3.

Sleep and physick are still on the bar because I'm not done with the story yet and with the instanced, I have needed to heal.. I find sleep > physick etc to be useful for that, but when I'm done with the solo stuff, I will remove it (especially during sapsa before Levi, hoardes of ixal... booo

Also, I never use flare on single target O_O I don't quite know where that has been coming across in my posts, but The rotation above F3>F2>Flare>etc is exactly what I've been doing for mobs, but I want the swiftcast in there before flare because of the absolutely horrid cast time ^^

Scathe is on there mainly because in small mobs/1hit ko, by the time the spells have cast, they're either dead or you are because of multiple AoE. Sometimes, I find I'd rather use Scathe to do Some albeit abysmal damage than stand like a lemon :p I don't have a SCH or SMN either :(

Thank you ^_^

You need T1 on your bar in an accessible place. Sometimes (actually often depending on race), you'll be left with less than 319 MP after your B3 and you won't want to B1 > T2 if you can help it.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

On another note your rotation should be Fire III > Fire I x 5 > Blizz III > Thunder 1 or 2 depending on your piety and or preference > Blizz 1 if you have high SS and/or need to wait for another mana tick before going back into Astral Fire. Raging Strikes is mostly used in conjunction with Convert since they share a CD timer. So you would use it like, Fire III > Raging Strikes > Fire I x 5 > Swiftcast > Flare > Convert > Fire 1 > Blizz III.

Please don't get into the habit of using macros. This won't make you a better player. I promise that.

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Well put Garotte! I play on PC but use controller when playing dps. There is plenty of space on the cross bar, especially if you use use R1+L2 setup. Could also just have less used cds,spell,etc on another cross bar and switch with r1.

Macros are for those who don't understand their class which is obvious by the rotation mentioned in the original post.