Healing with mouseover macros?

So I've started taking my healer through Stormblood finally and yesterday I tried my hand at healing with mouse-overs.

Basically standard faire to do in any MMO and what I thought was the lack of it had been my major turnoff to healing here.

I tried:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <me>

---

But I found that if at any point during the casting anything moved between me and who I wanted to heal, the heal would fail... I ended up healing myself a silly amount of the time...

A little better if I constantly hovered over the party frames... but that kind of defeats some of the point.

So I tried:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <me>

---

Which should be lock solid...

This is basically FFXIV's default annoying system of having to target somebody... but about 10% of the time... it would fire on me instead...

Does anyone use mouse-over macros here, and if so - what has been your strategy to avoid miscasts?

My thinking is that I should have an enemy mob always targeted, and use mouse-over to heal the party...

I'm guessing my solution is going to come down to making a 'healing layoyt HUD' that just puts the party bar in the middle of the screen...

Is there a way to make that thing expand 'up' instead of down from where you place it, so it won't go 'off the screen' in a full party if I place it low for light parties?

Suspicious of this as even with:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <me>

---

And my mouse right over the tank's line in the party frame... I've seen a heal hit someone else instead...

If you're going to use mouseovers, it's best to use only mouseovers. Introducing multiple targets will frustrate you more often than it does what you intend, because of the way <t> works with heals -- basically any line after <t> won't matter, because once it gets to <t>, it will heal "someone", and "someone" will usually be yourself if you're not targeting a party member.

Also, avoid using models as mouseover targets. Party frames and target frames are the way to go.

Generally people stay away from macros on common abilities like Cure/Cure II because macros don't have skill queuing, so you're always losing a few milliseconds.

On skills that are used every once in a while (like Benediction or Rescue), it's an acceptable loss.

But for more common things, it adds up a lot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squintina

Generally people stay away from macros on common abilities like Cure/Cure II because macros don't have skill queuing, so you're always losing a few milliseconds.

On skills that are used every once in a while (like Benediction or Rescue), it's an acceptable loss.

But for more common things, it adds up a lot.

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Mouseover healing is an acceptable application of macros, as it can increase response time and situation awareness via not requiring that you target party members to heal them. You can also map heals to mouse buttons, which makes healing as easy as clicking on a target in the party list.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rongway

If you're going to use mouseovers, it's best to use only mouseovers. Introducing multiple targets will frustrate you more often than it does what you intend, because of the way <t> works with heals -- basically any line after <t> won't matter, because once it gets to <t>, it will heal "someone", and "someone" will usually be yourself if you're not targeting a party member.

Also, avoid using models as mouseover targets. Party frames and target frames are the way to go.

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So I tried:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <t>

---

And it fails to ever cast on me, even if I mouse over myself

The same for both of:

Code:

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

---

Code:

---

/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>

---

BUT,

Code:

---

/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <me>

---

works to get myself

Code:

---

/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>

---

btw, WILL work on the target bar if I target myself... but not on mousing over my unit

It DOES work on others if for example I mouseover a person adjacent to me...

As for skill queueing vs. this, that's an interesting point but I think the time loss from switching to a target is often going to be a LOT greater than the time loss of not having skill queueing. The most current info I could find on skill queueing was from topics on reddit in 2014 - so not sure here.

I know that in MMOs with heavy demand on the healers the difference in throughput from a healer using mouseovers to one targeting their heals is almost double. Skill queueing means it won't be as great here, but it's likely to be notable.

<mo> on your character model will only work if you are self-clickable. The setting is in /characterconfig, Control Settings, Mouse, Enable clicking on self. I personally don't like being able to click on self, so I leave it turned off and just mouseover the party frame. <mo> will always work on the party frame.

Because of how heals redirect when the target is invalid, <mo> will target yourself if your mouse is over an NPC or enemy. When soloing, it helps to put your mouse over your target frame or the party frame and just leave it there. Doing <mo>,<t> will do what you want it to do when soloing, but will exhibit some unwanted side effects in party play if you are acting just a bit too quickly, as when the <mo> line tries to execute just before the GCD finishes, it'll skip to the <t> line and you'll heal yourself. It's best to use <mo> only.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makeda

As for skill queueing vs. this, that's an interesting point but I think the time loss from switching to a target is often going to be a LOT greater than the time loss of not having skill queueing.
I know that in MMOs with heavy demand on the healers the difference in throughput from a healer using mouseovers to one targeting their heals is almost double. Skill queueing means it won't be as great here, but it's likely to be notable.

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And here i just practiced using F1-8 while healing and switching targets once the cast begins rather than between casts. Mouseover always feels unreliable to me. Was nicer in my WoW days when raid frames weren't garbage.

Mouseover was big when needing to reliably heal targets that weren't assigned to F# keys. This game doesn't even try to make you want to heal the other 16 in a 24m raid.

The only viable mouseover macro is:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>

---

Anything after that is a random draw and may or may not work. The more you mash your buttons the worst it gets.
To target yourself you need to configure it as mentioned by someone above.

If you want to understand why stuff breaks down when you add more consecutive targets here's the explanation:
If you press the skill while still on your GCD it will still execute.

So imagine the following timeline:

Code:

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GCD starts
Time goes by
you use your mo heal and it starts executing
/ac Cure <mo>            < does not execute because we're on the GCD
/ac Cure <t>              < does not execute because we're on the GCD
GCD ends
/ac Cure <tt>            < works but not at all what you were going for, potentially not even a heal-able target and you end up healing yourself

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Basically anything other that a one liner is going to be a pain. Stick to the simple /ac Cure <mo>

Actually I'm finding this IS working now:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <t>

---

The first:
/ac Cure <mo>

Is eaten if I press too early, but if so the second one fires reliably.

Managed to heal a trial without ever having anything but the enemy targeted.

Likewise the Ruby Tide leveling dungeon. The above as a macro across the spread of WHM spells seems to hold. Only targeting errors where human errors of me mousing over incorrectly. This was in a run where I was constant casting and weaving in as much damage as my mana could allow (I made it to 12% of group DPS, 96% of group Healing - in a run where the tank was one of those sorts that loves to take a lot of damage and not use as much mitigation as they should... the mouse-overs afforded me the ability to switch between damage and healing often. Only lost the tank "twice" from "running too far ahead while I was in mid cast" - and on the second time I was able to heal a DPS through a minute of a 3-stack pull until I Swiftcast available again and got the tank rezzed... (human error... thinking the tank would not 'stand in an explosion' I used Swiftcaft on Holy... and then the tank stood his ground as 2 of those exploding fish went off...).

- So... imperfect run... which is a perfect situation to test the macros... Lots of human errors all around the group (self and others) - but the mouse-overs held solid throughout.

The other thing you can do is just have the fallowing macro up and always have the Party list visible (the option is buried somewhere in options) and heal yourself by mousing over your spot in the Party list.

Code:

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/ac Cure <mo>
/micon Cure

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As a general rule, the less lines of code are in a macro the better

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

As a general rule, the less lines of code are in a macro the better

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Excess lines simply error out or don't execute without added delay.

Thus why I'm preferring:

Code:

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/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <me>

---

First 'ac' can either trigger of fail from a GCD, second will then trigger if condition met, if not the 'tt' will cause it to hit my target's target - most likely the tank with agro. If that is an enemy, it was likely because I had a party member targeted, so the <t> fires... and if nothing was valid, it hits me.

This appears to be working now in the runs thus far. But will be keeping an eye on it just to be sure my results thus far are not luck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Excess lines simply error out or don't execute without added delay.

Thus why I'm preferring:

Code:

---

/micon Cure
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <tt>
/ac Cure <t>
/ac Cure <me>

---

First 'ac' can either trigger of fail from a GCD, second will then trigger if condition met, if not the 'tt' will cause it to hit my target's target - most likely the tank with agro. If that is an enemy, it was likely because I had a party member targeted, so the <t> fires... and if nothing was valid, it hits me.

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The <t> line will never fire in a realistic situation. Your target should, in all practical scenarios, have a target, and so either the <tt> line will work on target of target, or the <tt> line will implicit-target heal yourself. The <me> line will also not fire except when out of combat, since when you are in combat you will presumably be targetting something, and therefore the <tt> line will activate.

You're overcomplicating this. Just use <mo> and get used to resting your mouse over your party frame when soloing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OcieKo

And here i just practiced using F1-8 while healing and switching targets once the cast begins rather than between casts.

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This. There is no time loss for selecting targets if you are planning ahead for what you are doing. You should basically always be casting, and while you are on global cooldown (e.g. because of your current heal or attack spell), you can already select the target of your next heal, you have over 2 seconds (your global cooldown) to do that. The only situation where you don't have spare time to select your next target is if you want to cast off global cooldown spells in succession on different targets, but i highly doubt you'd be faster with mouse over. Even so you still have about half a second due to the animation lock, which should be enough to select your next target. The loss of time due to not being able to queue on the other hand is there for every single cast, even if it isn't much (depending on your lag), it adds up.

What I find a little difficult to understand is why you would want to heal anything other than your mo? Like, if you're trying to heal a specific person there's no point in healing someone else. Are there scenarios where you can't hover someone's name?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Excess lines simply error out or don't execute without added delay.

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They actually do get read/executed by the computer, you just don't see the computer try to read/execute them, usually because you are preforming an action. The more lines of code before a "valid" option happens and the action goes off, the more the action is delayed. And the more the action is delayed, the more chances there are for another action to happen (from elsewhere in the fight) that will cancel that action out.

This is also why you want to put the "/micon Cure" line at the end of the macro. The computer has to "read" that line in addition to the "/ac" lines and that adds more delay. If you stick the "/micon" line at the end of the macro though, the computer doesn't have to read it before reading the "/ac" line so that the action goes off immediately.

A good example of how this delay works is with a Swiftcast/Raise macro. You can't just do something like this:

Code:

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/ac Swiftcast
/ac Raise <mo>
/micon Raise

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If you do, the computer won't be able to execute the "/ac Raise" because it's still executing the "/ac Swiftcast" line. Instead you have to put in a manual wait between the "/ac Swiftcast" line and the "/ac Raise" line like this:

Code:

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/ac Swiftcast
/wait 3
/ac Raise <mo>
/micon Raise

---

That gives you time to finish casting Swiftcast before the computer tries to execute the "Raise" (adjust the wait time based on ping).

The only exception I can think of is when you are making a macro of an AoE ability so that it's a targetable ability (Salted Earth, Earthly Star, Shadow Flare). Then you want the computer to execute the same action as many times as it can until it sticks. So you end up with something like this:

Code:

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/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/micion "Shadow Flare"

---

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OcieKo

And here i just practiced using F1-8 while healing and switching targets once the cast begins rather than between casts.

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This can be a problem if you have small hands. I can barely reach the "5" key on my keyboard without taking my fingers off my hotkeys. Reaching any of the Function keys (esspecially anything greater then F4) requires moving my entire hand off the keyboard and by the time I have to cast the next spell my fingers aren't anywhere near those hotkeys.

Given that Tab-targeting in this games sucks, using a bunch of <mo> macros to switch targets often can often be the fastest way to do it without sacrificing something else. In my case, casting the right ability when I need to.

Who said they wanted to heal something else? Apart from the apparently iffy targeting, the main reasoning against mo heals is that you can't queue them, costing you time between heals, and to minimize that time loss you have to trigger the button to lose as little time as possible, which sounds extremely annoying.

But there even is a drawback concerning the mouse cursor: With mo, you have to be with the mouse over your target the moment you want to start casting your heal spell. If you work with targetting, you just have to select the target at some point in the 2 to 2.5 seconds before you have to cast the heal, so if you select early in that time frame for one spell, and late for the next spell, you have about 4 seconds to do something with your mouse. For example you could get a better overview about the battlefield by panning the camera around or something like that. You are simply more flexible with what to do with your mouse, even though in most cases it won't matter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Naryoril

Who said they wanted to heal something else? Apart from the apparently iffy targeting, the main reasoning against mo heals is that you can't queue them, costing you time between heals, and to minimize that time loss you have to trigger the button to lose as little time as possible, which sounds extremely annoying.

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Significant time is lost in switching around targets.

Even more time would be lost if I were to use F1-F8 (keys not normally existent on my keyboard nor my Nostromo Orbweaver, so I would have to emulate them or rebind them onto my Nostromo, losing keys used for other actions. Besides I'm never using my keyboard when active anyway - I'm using the Orbweaver and the Mouse. The keyboard is just for out of combat chat and such). But even if I did plug in an external keyboard with Function keys on it, that is a wide spread to have one's fingers moving over - look into the ergonomics of that. Significant time and muscle strain would be wasted there.

With a mouse-over I can cast immediately on the needed target without interruption of other activities.

By having more than just <mo>, I can be fully fluid in how I select who gets a heal, and have plenty of fallbacks.

Essentially this allows me to heal faster, more like a blend between how I do in games like WoW, Wildstar, or Overwatch - avoiding the mess of 'targeting' - leaving that clunky old outdated gaming system to the DPS side of my actions (just as I have to do in WoW, which also uses to the outdated 'select a target' system).

The time loss of going through a short series of 'if-then statements' for software is in micro-seconds. Not worth noting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Significant time is lost in switching around targets.

Even more time would be lost if I were to use F1-F8 (keys not normally existent on my keyboard nor my Nostromo Orbweaver, so I would have to emulate them or rebind them onto my Nostromo, losing keys used for other actions. Besides I'm never using my keyboard when active anyway - I'm using the Orbweaver and the Mouse. The keyboard is just for out of combat chat and such). But even if I did plug in an external keyboard with Function keys on it, that is a wide spread to have one's fingers moving over - look into the ergonomics of that. Significant time and muscle strain would be wasted there.

With a mouse-over I can cast immediately on the needed target without interruption of other activities.

By having more than just <mo>, I can be fully fluid in how I select who gets a heal, and have plenty of fallbacks.

Essentially this allows me to heal faster, more like a blend between how I do in games like WoW, Wildstar, or Overwatch - avoiding the mess of 'targeting' - leaving that clunky old outdated gaming system to the DPS side of my actions (just as I have to do in WoW, which also uses to the outdated 'select a target' system).

The time loss of going through a short series of 'if-then statements' for software is in micro-seconds. Not worth noting.

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I don't think you're understanding where they're saying the time is lost. Using function keys to select a target and heal without a macro lets you do it well before you have to actually cast the spell, even letting you hit the button to cast the spell before you are able to cast it and have it go off when it's ready and you can be using your mouse to do other actions like rotating the camera at the same time as doing this.

With a <mo> macro you can't pre-cast (just like with any macro) or pre-prepare your target. You have to both have the mouse over the target and press the button after, even if only by milliseconds, when the skill is already ready to cast. You can't press the <mo> macro button ahead of time, since macros don't allow queuing, and if you mouse over early to prepare the target early then you lose the capability to use the mouse for anything else at the time such as camera movement. I.e. With a <mo> macro (or any macro) you have to be really on the ball for timing or you lose GCD time. With function key targeting, you have a lot more leeway for when you can initiate actions and move without clipping into your GCD.

The use of using <mo> macros vs targeting with Function keys and the like is super-personal though. Everyone has a different keyboard+mouse set-up and a different way of setting up their UI which affects how easy it is do do <mo> healing (some people prefer clicking hot-keys with the mouse!). What works great for one person often doesn't work well for other people. If the OP really wants to use <mo> macros then don't just go trying to make them re-learn how to play the game just to suit what you feel is best.

What matters is if they play the game well enough to get though most content with the least amount of frustration for everyone they're playing with. And nine times out of ten that has nothing to do with how they set up controls on their end.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The use of using <mo> macros vs targeting with Function keys and the like is super-personal though. Everyone has a different keyboard+mouse set-up and a different way of setting up their UI which affects how easy it is do do <mo> healing (some people prefer clicking hot-keys with the mouse!). What works great for one person often doesn't work well for other people. If the OP really wants to use <mo> macros then don't just go trying to make them re-learn how to play the game just to suit what you feel is best.

What matters is if they play the game well enough to get though most content with the least amount of frustration for everyone they're playing with. And nine times out of ten that has nothing to do with how they set up controls on their end.

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I fully agree with you, everyone to their own. I'd say it's probably even 49 out of 50 times where the controls were not the issue. But it's better to know all advantages and disadvantages of the various methods when deciding how to play. I don't use the F keys on the keyboard (too cumbersome for my taste), i usually click on the target in the party menu. But honestly, i don't see much of an advantage in the mouse over method, if all you need change to avoid all the drawbacks is pressing the left mouse button since you are already in place with the mouse cursor for the mouse over.