Macro Delay

For the love of...please bring back decimals for macros. I play on ps4 and theres just too many skills and buffs in my rotations to effectively play. Its not very easy to keep swapping cross bars to get to my skills and it gets easy to get fumbled up and blow a combo.

Setting up macros helps tremendously with this...being able to keep everything i need on one cross bar. The problem is that macros automatically round up to the next whole number causing a noticable delay in skills. Heck even allowing wait timers with .5 in them would be excellent.

You could try the other setup where you hold L2 and R2 to get different cross bars (L2 first then R2 gives one side, R2 then L2 gives the other side. It's effectively 2 cross bars without hitting R1 or holding R1 then pressing a face button). I don't use it, but some people really like it. I prefer the hold R1 then face button. Only macro I use is a party chat one as a general warning that people will need to dodge something big or whatever :P

There is such a function. You can type "/wait" into a macro followed by a number, (up to 60 seconds), and it will delay the macro at that point......

EDIT: Just reread your post. I've never noticed that they round up to the next whole number. Setting the wait at .5 has always seemed to me to have less of a delay than setting it to 1, or even .75......

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by File2ish

You could try the other setup where you hold L2 and R2 to get different cross bars (L2 first then R2 gives one side, R2 then L2 gives the other side. It's effectively 2 cross bars without hitting R1 or holding R1 then pressing a face button). I don't use it, but some people really like it. I prefer the hold R1 then face button. Only macro I use is a party chat one as a general warning that people will need to dodge something big or whatever :P

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I use this. It works pretty well, but does take some getting used to. Because of my class though, it's particularly useful since I can just press R1 to switch between my current hotbar and my pet hotbar, while retaining a static secondary hot bar that this accesses.....

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Originally Posted by Gamer3427

There is such a function. You can type "/wait" into a macro followed by a number, (up to 60 seconds), and it will delay the macro at that point......

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He knows that, he is talking about decimals. If you type "/wait 2.5" it will wait 3 secons

Edit: I just read that you edited your post, forget me

I'd prefer they fix the situation about macros being unable to be queued like regular abilities first.

What is cross bar?

The cross hotbar is what gamepad users play with.

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

For the love of...please bring back decimals for macros. I play on ps4 and theres just too many skills and buffs in my rotations to effectively play. Its not very easy to keep swapping cross bars to get to my skills and it gets easy to get fumbled up and blow a combo.

Setting up macros helps tremendously with this...being able to keep everything i need on one cross bar. The problem is that macros automatically round up to the next whole number causing a noticable delay in skills. Heck even allowing wait timers with .5 in them would be excellent.

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even if macros were made to have decimals, from the sounds of it, what you want would make you play worse, not better.

How would it make me play worse lol? I have two combo macros on my bar. The skills take 2.47 secs to recast...but since macros round up it makes me wait 3 seconds between skills. If i could set the wait timer to 2.5 it would chain my skills much more effectively. Where i really see the issue however is when i want to use an instant cast ability followed by a skill such as power surge into jump. It requires a 1 sec wait timer but manually u can instant cast them. Without a 1 sec wait timer in the macro both skills try to cast at the same time...resulting on a no cast for jump.

What happens if you're in the middle of a macro that has a combo and get interrupted? I'll tell you. You have to start over=DPS loss. What about if you get a lag spike and your next ability in your macro didn't que? I'll tell you.You have to start over=DPS loss. What about if you're in the middle if a macro and need to use a cooldown to mitigate damage? Yep, you guessed it. Point being macros aren't intended for the purpose that you are using them. It makes you dependent, you never learn to get better and develop muscle memory so you don't make flubs in your rotation. I have 8/10 battle classes at i110+ and I play on PS4 and have never had a hotbar problem with finding space for a single class. Macros are just bad news when used that way.

Macros are designed to be mostly useless for combat situations. That way you can't just press one button and AFK for a minute or so. Only call-out macros ( [Silence] [Just used it!] ) certain oGDC combination macros work (Bloodbath + Fight or Flight works well) are generally viable. Healers can use macros a bit more, due to them generally not needing to be as precise with their abilities as DPS or tanks (and when they do, they don't use macros); <tt> Swiftcast macros and Pet macros (Embrace + Physic) are common for them.

I play DRG with a controller...I have extra buttons I don't use and I deal very respectable DPS. So you need to set up your hotbars better.

Really, the only job I see having issues with a controller is SCH, due to all the pet actions they need to micro (sorry SMN, but you have a few too many useless abilities right now)

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I'd prefer they fix the situation about macros being unable to be queued like regular abilities first.

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Indeed, I don't use any macros in combat solely because of this.

How inconvenient. It's almost like the devs are intentionally trying to make you actually use your abilities yourself.

Actually, the developers do want you to play, but not because of any notions of efficiency or maximizing output. They don't want you automating the process of playing the game. This is also why macros can't activate macros. I can understand this fear, with a few well crafted macros you could lazy it up every day. Literally bot your character without any third-party software. But for some people, particularly controller users, they just want to keep things simple. Hence the popularity of macroing combos. To them the lost of damage output is no big deal. Bashing them over the head for 'ignoring the numbers' isn't going to make them stop using macros. It's just going to make them want to use more macros just to spite the naysayers. Honestly, from my point of view, macros work fine as is. Whole second /wait is the cost of convenience, take it or leave it.

So... is it that bad that you actually have to learn rotations and which keys to press instead of pressing 1 macro every 30 seconds?

All jobs full rotations and skills fit on 2 bars that you can toggle with R1, pet jobs can use an additional half bar with L2+R2. In 3.0 you can use the other half bar on R2+L2

Though if you don't want to do this...I really don't see them allowing higher precision waits. Did that ever exist before?

What job do you play?

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

How would it make me play worse lol? I have two combo macros on my bar. The skills take 2.47 secs to recast...but since macros round up it makes me wait 3 seconds between skills. If i could set the wait timer to 2.5 it would chain my skills much more effectively. Where i really see the issue however is when i want to use an instant cast ability followed by a skill such as power surge into jump. It requires a 1 sec wait timer but manually u can instant cast them. Without a 1 sec wait timer in the macro both skills try to cast at the same time...resulting on a no cast for jump.

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garotte already beat me to explaining why your plan is bad. i dont need to say anything else.

The good old fight between float and integer ;)

int : 16 bits
float : 32 bits
double : 64 bits

I guess thats a bandwide problem, not sure about, but its the explanation we mostly hear from square enix when it comes to "speed up" things.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogr...data_types.htm

Let me explain how I do this with my macros. I currently have 5 macros set up on my Dragoon. Keep in mind I am level 45 and have not unlocked my final 3 skills yet.

1. Blood For Blood --> Internal Release (I typically cast this at the start of my rotations when it is up for the obvious damage increase)
2. Heavy Thrust --> Impulse Drive --> Disembowel (My opening combo to buff myself and add piercing debuff to enemies, will be adding chaos thrust to this at 50)
3. Phlebotomize --> True Thrust --> Vorpal Thrust (Beginning of my damage combo)
4. Power Surge --> Jump (I throw this down in between my damage combos for added dps)
5. Life Surge --> Full Thrust (Since FT is currently my strongest ability and its all set up from the previous combos why not guarantee a critical off it)

The rest of my cross bar is filled out by Keen Fury, Leg Sweep, Invigorate, Second Wind, and Potions.

This rotation works great for me. I push a button more than every 30 seconds I assure you. this method just allows me to keep everything on one cross bar instead of trying to flip through them. As far as lag and what not I dont know what kind of dial up you guys are running on but I have never had so much as a hiccup of lag while playing. My combos are never interrupted by "lag spikes" and AoE abilities are easy enough to avoid. So I also never see the issue with losing dps to failing combos, even if that did happen every now and then my macros are small so having to recast one or two abilities is not going to be game breaking.

My whole point was if they allowed Decimals in macros my skills would flow together even better, without any kind of delay at all. As for the damage combos its not even a big deal, I can actually tolerate it just fine. The issue I am running into is buffs such as Power Surge into Jump like I stated. Using the macros how they are now requires an unnecessary wait which makes it difficult to weave in between Thrust Combos. However, I have remedied this by removing the wait timer all together and simply double tapping the button.

As for the question of did it ever work this way...yes actually it did in the beginning. SE made a post about how they were removing it because Bots were abusing the macro system to spam people, and thus they would be removing the ability. It was a shotty excuse because truth be told the bots could care less if they have to wait 2.25 secs to spam or 3.. but I do.. and I know several other ps4 friends and company mates that do also.

This has been discussed many many times before, using macros especially for dps is a loss.
I also play on PS4 and absolute only class i do need and use macros for is scholar as i need more then 2 hotbars and it seems to get messed up if i try and use multiple ones. Like it does not tab back to the menu i want at times, etc..
But if it works for you that is what matters really :)

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

this method just allows me to keep everything on one cross bar instead of trying to flip through them.

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You can have almost all your DRG skills on one crossbar at lvl50, you get about 16+3 major skills. You can choose which 16 you want on a bar. Losing 3 skills is going to be less of a DPS loss than using macros, since the waits round up to 3.
If its pressing buttons that bothers you rather than flipping skill bars well ... I don't know. They designed it so that you have to keep pressing buttons if you want to do good damage even though it can be mindless sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

My whole point was if they allowed Decimals in macros my skills would flow together even better

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I think this is exactly what SE doesn't want you to do

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

As for the question of did it ever work this way...yes actually it did in the beginning. SE made a post about how they were removing it because Bots were abusing the macro system to spam people, and thus they would be removing the ability.

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Can I have source

I can not find the absolute original post, but here is a Dev post explaining why they took it away in the first place. During beta phases you could easily use a Decimal in your macro, and there was a strong push for the allowance of more than one decimal but SE decided to do the exact opposite. Even in this post it claims they are not close minded to changes revolving around the system.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1520788

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Originally Posted by Orbital-Dragon

I can not find the absolute original post, but here is a Dev post explaining why they took it away in the first place. During beta phases you could easily use a Decimal in your macro, and there was a strong push for the allowance of more than one decimal but SE decided to do the exact opposite. Even in this post it claims they are not close minded to changes revolving around the system.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1520788

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Sounds like what you're asking for goes against point 3 of their macro policy.

Having the option to put the lines into queue automatically one after the other would be nice as well; no delay, even as Skill Speed goes into final decimals, and pulling out of melee range wouldn't cost you the middle move of your combo, etc. Even without the built-in nerf to macros I doubt I'd find them useful, but their current state almost makes them feel like a non-option save for the occasional Bard spam button and the like (which still seem a very slight dps loss).

Having no ability to set in conditions (as per their rule 4) makes perfect sense to me, but merely allowing GCDs to go off at their proper times is a far cry from optimization (about a proper double-oGCD off...).

[All this atop the fact that they will still always have the issue of being less flexible than one will often need them to be.]

I'm from PS4, DRG is my fave DPS and I have more macros than expected for sure but not to chain combo skills. I'm not in the tops DPS out there but I find myself doing better than many higher level/main DRG in DF and random parties.

Tips for optimization:
- Activate the L2/R2 combination it's very fast and handy once you get used to it, I use L2+R2 for the gapcloser jumps, AoEs and few utilities of mine and R2+L2 for PvP skills;
- Set a custom cycle (pressing R1) to switch only to choosen crossbars when the weapon is sheated/drawn, I have it sets to cycle only through my main crossbar and the potions crossbar when the weapon is out;
- Macro the oGCD skills before the actual weaponskill, like Power Surge + Jump, and activate the oGCD buff during the animation of the skill you used before so you don't waste time;
- Macro the defensive CD, like keen flurry, foresight, bloodbath etc, into one;
- Activate a non shared hotbar, vertical or horizontal and put in there the skills that are on other crossbars and/or covered by the macro icon so you can keep in check the CD situation.

We'll get even more skills in HW so better get used to a new better set up soon :P though they said we'll get new crossbar shortcuts as well

You can try /chotbar change 1-8 macroing. It's essentially sacrificing a couple sets to cram 5+ buttons into the 4 face buttons (or the dpad).

http://puu.sh/ifMT1/f7a46fb466.jpg

The macro itself doesn't contain any /ac, just the command to switch to 1. Therefore you need to press the macro once and then press the same button slot again to queue skills but if you're a bit mashy like me, that's no issue (double tap as the gcd readies up). And should you switch pages too fast, you can always tap the set select button that only scrolls on set 1 to reset it to set 1 directory.

This one is on pld but you can do it on drg. It just takes more sets and more macros since you have 2 3hit combos. Set 1 would have the heavy thrust, phlebotomize, impulse drive, true thrust. Like a directory of sorts.

One problem is that I've run into with the 2.0 controller hobar vs the one they had in place in 1.0 is my bad luck in breaking certain buttons swapping through their crapola hotbar they invented.
I ended up doing a keyboard main hotbar for abilities to see some things while keeping things like Second Wind and Invigorate on the main cross hotbar to avoid once again, breaking the RB. I've broken maybe 4 or 5 controllers, or parts have broken just swapping or holding combo of triggers and bumpers down to get to things so I know macros are seen as a dps loss but in theory, could save on buying more controllers with my luck.
I haven't really found a hotbar setup I like on bard just yet I'm trying different setups to see what flows so if any of you controller bards out there have one u like mind screening it for me so I can take a look? Thx.
Thing is some ppl don't want to have to remember what hotbar they put what skill on and on what side LT or RT with up to 8 of them to use, or that's what I'm getting from some posters. Keeping everything on one hotbar for a controller user is what keyboard users can already do with the way keyboard hotbars are. One could joke that hotbar swapping on a controller is like performing acrobatics.

I think your iron death-grip is to blame there, not the hotbar.
You should consider a career in competitive hand shaking.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I think your iron death-grip is to blame there, not the hotbar.
You should consider a career in competitive hand shaking.

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No need for that, I've just had a few controllers not hold up. Ever see the 1.0 hotbar in action? If not youtube some 1.0 instance content and see how controller hotbar swapping was then. I'm curious what you think of that after seeing it. This is the risk I take just posting thoughts, someone has to sound like a smartass with sarcasm. Oh well.
Besides, we're getting off the point of the OP.