Mouseover healing macros - some problems

Hey. So i'm coming from wow and needing some help to fix problems with my mouseover macros. I'm experiencing some input lag, which i've been told is just how macros are in this game, but more concerningly it seems that 2-3% of my heals randomly redirect to myself. This isn't mis-targeting, or being out of range, or line of sight: I've noted cases where none of those were happening. Here's an example of one of the macros, very simple:

/micon "Essential Dignity"
/actionerror on
/merror off
/ac "Essential Dignity" <mo>

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

The lag is that you can't queue macro'd abilities, so it doesn't start casting until the first time you press the button after the current GCD/animation lock, instead of readying in the last .5 second or so.

That macro should never target yourself unless you actually mouseover yourself. Are you sure you don't have another line in there with [/ac "Essential Dignity" <t>]?

Yes, those are the only lines.

I think it might direct it on yourself if for some reason it doesn't read you having a valid <mo> target (same thing happens when you cast a heal while having an enemy targeted). This sort of thing is also why it isn't generally recommended to use macros for healing (or pretty much anything) in this game.

Then my best guess is that your hand is sometimes twitching on the party list and causing you to heal the wrong person.

<t> in macros behaves the same way as not specifying a targeting at all; it will attempt to cast on your target, then if that is not valid for whatever reason it will attempt to cast on self, so that can cause some targeting mishaps. <mo> doesn't have a fallback target like that though.

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Originally Posted by Taika

This sort of thing is also why it isn't generally recommended to use macros for healing (or pretty much anything) in this game.

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This hivemind annoys me. There are advantages and disadvantages of it. So long as you know how they work and can make the decision that the advantages are more valuable to you, they're fine. Especially for healing, which is really more about precision and timing than squeezing out every possible fraction of a GCD.

And the behavior you're describing is something that would still be there with click targeting anyway and should be impossible with <mo>.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

This hivemind annoys me. There are advantages and disadvantages of it. So long as you know how they work and can make the decision that the advantages are more valuable to you, they're fine. Especially for healing, which is really more about precision and timing than squeezing out every possible fraction of a GCD.

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It's just that I can't think of a situation in which using macros would be in any way beneficial over not using them. And I also don't see why healer jobs are any less about utilising every gcd and ocd as efficiently as possible than other jobs. This coming from a person who mained healer from 1.0 until the end of HW and healed with mouseovers through Coil 1.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

Then my best guess is that your hand is sometimes twitching on the party list and causing you to heal the wrong person.

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I promise these cases aren't human error: I'm not saying I never do that, but i've replicated this problem while spam healing afk people in town.

On the macro discussion: The macros in this game are horrible and losing spell queueing sucks a ton, and i'd rather not use them. But I've got a decade of muscle memory from wow built in mouseover healing and no longer enjoy or wish to experience the click healing or targeting with the f keys that are my alternatives. If I could mouseover heal without using macros, i'd be all for ditching them, but as it is, I don't want to do f-key targeting or click healing.

Well I mean, I'm looking at the SCH PoV of the world 4th clear of A12S here, and he seems to be fine with macros, so there must be something about using them...

I agree that macros on a DPS/Tank job are usually a bad idea because of the queuing. On a healer though, the ability to <mo> or <tt>/<f> your abilities is just really valuable.

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Originally Posted by Taika

It's just that I can't think of a situation in which using macros would be in any way beneficial over not using them. And I also don't see why healer jobs are any less about utilising every gcd and ocd as efficiently as possible than other jobs. This coming from a person who mained healer from 1.0 until the end of HW and healed with mouseovers through Coil 1.

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I agree with your sentiment re optimisation. I just cannot enjoy the alternative targeting methods, when i've spent a decade using mouseover healing. I tried them and would rather just quit the game then play like that, so i'm hoping it doesn't come down to that choice, and that i'll be able to improve upon the current macro problems.

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Originally Posted by Bradykinn

I promise these cases aren't human error: I'm not saying I never do that, but i've replicated this problem while spam healing afk people in town.

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Not sure then. My healing macros are all this

/micon Physick
/merror off
/ac "Physick" <mo>

and I've never had an accidental self heal happen that wasn't user error from twitching my mouse.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

Well I mean, I'm looking at the SCH PoV of the world 4th clear of A12S here, and he seems to be fine with macros, so there must be something about using them...

I agree that macros on a DPS/Tank job are usually a bad idea because of the queuing. On a healer though, the ability to <mo> or <tt>/<f> your abilities is just really valuable.

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Valuable how? What are the benefits? We already know the disadvantage is not being able to queue your heals and thus using actions slower than you would without macros, and also the possibility of lag messing up your macro by skipping steps, which I guess can cause using the action on wrong target (or not using it at all?), but I'm not 100% confident about this so please correct me if I'm wrong. :)

We all know you can heal with macros (while you can't really play a DPS with macros), but I don't think there's a reason why anyone should. For me, having played healer both ways, it felt much more unresponsive and clunky healing with them, and being able to queue your abilities is an obvious, objective benefit.

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Originally Posted by Bradykinn

I agree with your sentiment re optimisation. I just cannot enjoy the alternative targeting methods, when i've spent a decade using mouseover healing. I tried them and would rather just quit the game then play like that, so i'm hoping it doesn't come down to that choice, and that i'll be able to improve upon the current macro problems.

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There are many healers playing at top level healing with macros, so don't worry, you should be able to play with them just fine, if there are no other issues (such as lag messing up your macros). :)

Are you using mouseover from party menu or having your mouse over the actual player character you're trying to heal?

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Originally Posted by Taika

There are many healers playing at top level healing with macros, so don't worry, you should be able to play with them just fine, if there are no other issues (such as lag messing up your macros). :)

Are you using mouseover from party menu or having your mouse over the actual player character you're trying to heal?

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Mouse over party frames. Which, I wish were better designed ,I miss grid from WoW xD

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Originally Posted by Bradykinn

Mouse over party frames. Which, I wish were better designed ,I miss grid from WoW xD

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Amen to that. WoW had the best options for healer party display of any MMO ever, mostly because they turned it over to modders to figure out.

Mhm. I miss my addons in general, they are so great for a game like this. I hate how rigid and unchangeable the UI of final fantasy is.

I'm pretty sure '/ac "Physick" <mo>' has never targeted myself accidentally unless the macro had a second <me> line in it or I made a mistake. I don't think <mo> defaults to self with no target like <t> does either. There is a 'click on self' setting that enables/disables clicking or <mo> on your own character. Are you sure that is not enabled and you are not accidentally mousing your nameplate?

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Originally Posted by Taika

Valuable how? What are the benefits?

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Mouseover macros give two main benefits:
1. You have half as many key presses to complete an action, since you only have to press the ability instead of clicking to target then activating the ability
Depending on the player and the situation this can more than make up for the minor lag delay, especially with OCD heals.
2. Allows you to heal as needed while keeping something targeted. Given how important healer DPS is in FF14 and how god awful the tab targeting in this game is (had
a hard time believing you could do worse than wow...) and how finicky click targeting can be, not having to reacquire your target after each heal is amazing.

For some reason SE is against supporting macro users because this problem has persisted since the launch of 2.0 and also why we still don't have add-on support for the game officially.

/micon "Cure"
/ac "Cure" <mo>
/ac "Cure" <t>
/ac "Cure" <f>

Is what my macro for my heals all look like to help lower the chances of my cast healing me instead. I still end up getting heals on myself even though I'll have mouseover on the tank, have the tank focus targeted, or also my current target.

For the record, a <t> macro will not self-target if no target is selected, but a macro with no target specified (e.g. /ac Cure) will self-target. For this reason, a <t> macro is nice for benediction, so when the tank dies before it goes off, it doesn't waste it on a self heal.

Personally, I generally don't macro heals, but I do macro all my attacks as healer so I can keep the tank targeted and attack without switching. I find the faster reaction time on healing and mental bandwidth saved not switching targets to be very valuable.

I do use more macros on SCH than WHM, and that is mostly to control the faerie. I have Embrace macro'd on with Physick and Adlo because the faerie won't start casting Embrace if the target is above 80%. The macros help keep her efficiency (and hence my total healing output) up. I also use other macros for faerie control and for saving space (as a PS4 player, I have a limited number of readily accessible slots).

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

This hivemind annoys me. There are advantages and disadvantages of it. So long as you know how they work and can make the decision that the advantages are more valuable to you, they're fine. Especially for healing, which is really more about precision and timing than squeezing out every possible fraction of a GCD.

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It's about should vs is.

The game (in my opinion) should have a good macro system. Macros should be usable in combat and not cost you GCD's. We should embrace macros, like the modern game this is.

But the game isn't that way. Macros have a huge cost to them that, generally, isn't worth paying. Any loss of GCD's is enormous, and SE knows it. That's why they keep macros this way, to keep them intentionally bad.

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Originally Posted by Bradykinn

it seems that 2-3% of my heals randomly redirect to myself. This isn't mis-targeting, or being out of range, or line of sight

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This isn't directly related to your macro--it happens because of otherwise unnoticeable bits of lag. I hard target cast my heals, and if my *last* target was hostile and I target a player and heal, sometimes the game will begin the cast before it has registered server-side that I have a new target. Happens to my FC leader as well, because I otherwise thought I was losing my mind. It's been scary, because I nearly lost a tank when Essential Dignity self-cast, *and* two subsequent Benefic 2's also healed me instead of my target.

The only workaround I've found is if you notice it happen once, take a couple small steps side to side, then heal (targeted or macro) your intended target. Some days are just far from smooth about casting on different targets unless you introduce a small delay between target changes. :/

Hey Bradykinn. Welcome to the community. This is about what you can expect from the forums here. You ask how to solve a problem, and half the thread will be about why you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

That said, I don't have an answer either. The few healing macros I've used have all had a lag to them. I haven't found a solution yet, and have had to retrain for fkey targeted heals.

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Originally Posted by Isrea

Mouseover macros give two main benefits:
1. You have half as many key presses to complete an action, since you only have to press the ability instead of clicking to target then activating the ability
Depending on the player and the situation this can more than make up for the minor lag delay, especially with OCD heals.

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Except you're targeting the target of your next action while you're casting your previous one: if I have to heal someone after casting Stone, I target the healing target during Stone cast and queue the heal instead of waiting until the Stone is finished to target the healing target. You do have to make more clicks though, that is true (but since you're hovering your mouse to target anyway, it's not significant extra effort).

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Originally Posted by Isrea

2. Allows you to heal as needed while keeping something targeted. Given how important healer DPS is in FF14 and how god awful the tab targeting in this game is (had
a hard time believing you could do worse than wow...) and how finicky click targeting can be, not having to reacquire your target after each heal is amazing.

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I don't see how click targeting is more "finicky" than mouseover (I know I did more mistakes with the latter, but that's probably just me http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/i...lies/smile.png) and I don't see switching targets for different abilities as a hassle, but I can understand why someone would prefer not to do that. I still don't think it would objectively lower your healing efficiency though.

Mouseover macros improve my healing response time drastically. Maybe macros slow down some people but in my case they make a marked improvement to the speed at which I heal. They also allow me to get back to dpsing faster because I never lose my dps target by healing.

Mouseover macros are, and always have been, the optimal way to heal in any game as far as I'm concerned. But I feel everyone should go with whatever method they are most comfortable with and which works best for them.

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Originally Posted by Taika

Except you're targeting the target of your next action while you're casting your previous one: if I have to heal someone after casting Stone, I target the healing target during Stone cast and queue the heal instead of waiting until the Stone is finished to target the healing target. You do have to make more clicks though, that is true (but since you're hovering your mouse to target anyway, it's not significant extra effort).

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If you are only casting on the GCD, I agree, but when you add in OGCD abilities it makes more of a difference. For example Bio, Shadow Flare, whoops tank stood in the bad, emergency Lustrate, slightly delayed Miasma... Even without the Shadow Flare thrown in there, having to retarget multiple times in one GCD can get a bit frantic, particularly if you are trying to reaquire the right target in a multiple mob pack.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I don't see how click targeting is more "finicky" than mouseover (I know I did more mistakes with the latter, but that's probably just me http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/i...lies/smile.png) and I don't see switching targets for different abilities as a hassle, but I can understand why someone would prefer not to do that. I still don't think it would objectively lower your healing efficiency though.

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I don't find clicking party frames finicky, it's targeting mobs. I find that often mobs have deadzones where clicking on them won't target them (for example you seem to have to click on the bottom half of Susano), which makes it quite frustrating to target the right one when a pack of mobs is moving and overlapping, players are in the way, and tab targeting insists on going to everything out of range that hasn't been aggro'd yet instead of cycling through the mobs you are actually fighting.

Honestly, I agree with what has been said a couple times already. The big problem is that macros in FF14 are embarrassingly poorly implemented. The lag issues, the lack of modifier macros functions, and other basic things blow my mind. It's a real testament to the quality of the story and content in this game that I bear to play it at all with how terrible the macros and UI are.

my physick mouseover macro:

/macroicon "Physick"
/pac "Embrace" <f>
/pac "Embrace" <mo>
/autofacetarget off
/ac "Physick" <mo>
/autofacetarget on


This toggles my autoface off, so I don't turn to heal.
then forces the fairy to cast embrace on the focus target if I have one (so I can set an override target for her), otherwise she heals my mouseover target too.
I also heal my mouseover target, and turn the autoface back on, in case I use dps skills next.

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Originally Posted by Taika

It's just that I can't think of a situation in which using macros would be in any way beneficial over not using them. And I also don't see why healer jobs are any less about utilising every gcd and ocd as efficiently as possible than other jobs. This coming from a person who mained healer from 1.0 until the end of HW and healed with mouseovers through Coil 1.

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Haha that was how I healed coil 1 As well. Then I switched to controller and haven't looked back.

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Originally Posted by Isrea

I don't find clicking party frames finicky, it's targeting mobs. I find that often mobs have deadzones where clicking on them won't target them (for example you seem to have to click on the bottom half of Susano), which makes it quite frustrating to target the right one when a pack of mobs is moving and overlapping, players are in the way, and tab targeting insists on going to everything out of range that hasn't been aggro'd yet instead of cycling through the mobs you are actually fighting.

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I think the best way to target monsters is to click them from enmity list, similarly to targeting party members from party list. But I at least tend to tab target too much. With single enemy, tab targeting is not an issue of course.

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Originally Posted by Isrea

Honestly, I agree with what has been said a couple times already. The big problem is that macros in FF14 are embarrassingly poorly implemented. The lag issues, the lack of modifier macros functions, and other basic things blow my mind.

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Yup. Someone said earlier in this thread that mouseover macros would be the optimal way to heal in this game. Without all these issues, it could be, but right now they're giving more trouble than they're worth, to me at least.

I have had this exact problem since 4.0 - My <mo> macro does not target the mouse over, or the , <2> (tank) and would go to the last line <me>.

This is incredibly stressful on huge pulls with my crappy physick/adlo shields - one miss can be very bad, but this is worse than a miss, is a whole GCD wasting time and mana healing myself.

My only fix has been to remove the "healspell" <me> line and to spam my skill (it doesnt cast at all on some clicks now, but doesn't heal me at least) - it feels very wonky and I see it as a serious issue to be honest.

NEVER had this happen pre-Storm Blood

It is not "twitching" on the the player list or anything like that - this is a real problem for me only since 4.0.

I appreciate the fact not everyone has had this happen, but your post has confirmed I am not going mad.

I thought it might be something to do with line of sight now - you cant see through certain things (like Garuda's rocks now) and is somehow interfering with ranged skills?