BRD macro

[Gukster]

How does placing bloodletter on a heavy/straight shot, "reduce" DPS? If you're not using that every time it is up you're wrong.

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Heavy Shot" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>

You can spam the macro and get bloodletter off anytime it is up.

I don't recommend macroing buffs, but Bloodletter shouldn't be used if your GCD is up. Also, with how often it procs and the no TP cost, you should be using it anytime it is up between GCDs buffs or not. I can't see how this would reduce your DPS.

[EasymodeX]

How does placing bloodletter on a heavy/straight shot, "reduce" DPS? If you're not using that every time it is up you're wrong.

Because any on-GCD ability in a macro disables ability queuing [or seems to, by all signs]. As a result there's a typical 0.1-0.6s delay on using the Heavy Shot (or Straight Shot) depending on how hard you're spamming the button.


For oGCD buffs, you generally want to stack them anyways, so there's little general reason not to use them on macro together.

The only case where this is not true is:

1. Using BFB because of incoming damage.
2. Saving cooldowns, in which case you can still have all your damage buffs together (you can just not press the button), but you don't want Bloodletter combined with them. So you'd have:

1 - ME + BL
2 - ME + BL + all buffs except BFB
3 - ME + BL + BFB

You'd use #2 in a generic situation. Use #1 when saving cooldowns. Use #3 when the boss won't gib you from unavoidable damage.

[Reiterpallasch]

Because any on-GCD ability in a macro disables ability queuing [or seems to, by all signs]

This is why I don't use them. Even if it was better than having each ability on it's own on the action bar (which it's not) it just feels clunky and slow. In order to make it not be a dps loss you literally have to just sit there and mash that one button as fast as physically possible to make use of it. What it does do for sure however, is give you less control over your actions and when you use them.

BRD doesn't have so many abilities that it would warrant sticking a bunch of them together into a single button.

[Bardo]

BRD doesn't have so many abilities that it would warrant sticking a bunch of them together into a single button.

What?
We have just as many as any other Job...

ON GCD			OFF GCD			Situational

Straight Shot		Misery's End		Ballad
Windbite		Bloodletter		Foe Req
Venomous Bite		Flaming Arrow		Paeon
Heavy Shot		Blunt Arrow		Battle Voice
Quick Nock		Repelling Shot		Shadowbind
Rain of Death		Raging Strikes		Invigorate
Wide Volley		Hawk's Eye		Second Wind
			Barrage			Featherfoot
			Blood for Blood		Swiftsong
			Internal Release
			Quelling Strikes

If you use no macros, you need a minimum of 27 buttons to be effective (not even counting the typical things every other class has such as potions, food, mount, sprint, limit break, etc...)
Even ignoring the situationals, 18 buttons is a LOT when you're having to make decisions 2 (or more) times per GCD about which to press.

So I agree with EasymodeX here that telling people not to macro anything is silly.
The 11 Off GCD skills can be turned into 3 or 4 with little to no detriment to your dps.

[AniCelestine]

.

26* because you can have only 4 cross-class (You had 27 abilities listed and 5 of them were cross-class)

If you're using PC, you can easily bind 1-4(5 if hands are big enough) q,e,f,z,x,(r if you take autorun off) that's 18-22 if you use ALT, and if you add CTRL, you have more than enough for 26 (27-33) + gaming mouse, Razer Naga Hex for example which gives 6 buttons more, if you're willing to sacrifice num pad's bindings, which are useless in my opnion, and with alt and ctrl you have 18 buttons more, and that'd sum up for 45-51.

You'd need hell alot of potions and foods and more than 1 mount binded to use all of those, as a bard.

And when you've played with the same keybinds enough, 1-3h for me, you'll start to get muscle memory of what is where, then it's only 'bout thinking of what you want to/should do next, and that isn't hard either, after a while.

So no. It's not silly to say not to macro anything. For PS3 it's another thing

[Lex_Luger]

snip

This is a bad macro and I am going to explain why, and then give you an example of the 1 macro I use on bard, which is 100% more effective than the one you just listed. The reason this macro sucks is because heavy shot is on the GCD, and BL is not. What can happen with this macro is you press it > Heavy shot fires > BL is currently off CD (was used lets say 5 seconds ago, and you have not gotten a proc yet) > Your GCD Comes up again and you fire Heavy shot, at the same time, BL Procs. Depending on timing, this can cause either A) your BL to be delayed due to the animation lock of Heavy Shot or worse, B) Blood Letter procs RIGHT before GCD comes back up and you're spamming the macro. Due to the ability to que up your next GCD ability during the last .2sec during GCD, this can cause the BL to fire before the heavy shot (thus locking out your heavy shot for a second due to blood letters animation lock).

I recommend using a different macro if you insist on using one, and I've gotten much better results in testing mine. A better HS/BL/ME Macro would look like:
/ac "Heavy Shot" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Blood Letter" <t>
/wait
/ac "Misery's End <t>
/ac "Blood Letter" <t>

What results is a macro that FEELS a lot more responsive. Your heavy shot will ALWAYS fire assuming the GCD is up, and mashing the button will subsequently fire ME THEN BL (which is the correct priority for these skills). Should either ME/BL come off CD or proc during the GCD cool down between button presses, they will fire automatically with that 1 second wait, should you have say, moved your finger to another button to fire another skill. It's not 100% perfect, but it is better than the original macro I saw posted everywhere.

[Thailer]

So why not

/ac "misery's shot" <t>
/ac "Blood letter" <t>
/ac "Heavy shot" <t>

[Lex_Luger]

Because then mashing your heavy shot macro will cause heavy shots to be delayed by the animation of ME/BL everytime they go off, instead of being weaved inbetween GCD's. This is a DPS loss.

[Thailer]

How delayed because testing on the striking dummy it appears to cut BL animation off a little. I'm not noticing any difference