Pugilists/Monks - Tell me about your Hotbars.

[JezeT]

Not using macros at all. Monk is not made for those especially in any raid boss fights or so. For skills/items I am currently using 2 skillbars.

[Shirai]

Not using macros at all. Monk is not made for those especially in any raid boss fights or so.

Neither do I, I do have certain rotations I go by but a lot of mobs/bosses require me to adapt to the situation.
Can't do that with macros.

For skills/items I am currently using 2 skillbars.

Only 2? I use 3 bars for monk alone and have food/items on a seperate hotbar.

[Lemon8or]

Only 2? I use 3 bars for monk alone and have food/items on a seperate hotbar.

Maybe he/she is using a controller's cross-hotbar. I use it and currently only use 2 sets with 16 slots each.

[HakuroDK]

I use a bunch of macros for my Monk hotbar and it works fine, effectively binding 11 different abilities to the same quadrant of my controller's hotbar.

Macro 1 (Flank Combos): /ac "Snap Punch" <t>; /ac "Twin Snakes" <t>; /ac "Dragon Kick" <t>
Macro 2 (Rear Combos): /ac "Demolish" <t>; /ac "True Strike" <t>; /ac "Bootshine" <t>
Macro 3 (Area of Effect): /ac "Howling Fist" <t>; /ac "Rockbreaker" <t>; /ac "Arm of the Destroyer" <t>
Macro 4 (Stuns): /ac "Shoulder Tackle" <t>; /ac "Steel Peak" <t>

I've also set up the macros like that for two reasons. First, I don't want Opo-Opo Form attacks taking priority, so they're at the bottom. Second, if I use Perfect Balance, then I will always use Coeurl Form attacks, which causes me to stack Greased Lightning buffs.

[HakuroDK]

(Sorry for double-post. Max character limit reached and all that)

The reason I use macros isn't to do some auto-attack nonsense. It's that in a battle, I don't really have time to be concerned with which Form I'm currently in at that moment. All I'm concerned about is my positioning and making sure that I'm doing enough damage, 'cause that's my job. It's set up like that without /wait commands because, essentially, whatever form I'm in dictates which move I use when I press a button. If I use a macro when I'm in Opo-Opo form, it'll be different than when I use the exact same macro in Raptor Form or Coeurl Form. For me, it's a matter of convenience, especially when I'm in Coil and I have to pay a lot more attention to my surroundings and my party leader's commands.

[Bixby]

(Sorry for double-post. Max character limit reached and all that)

Edit your posts. There's no character limit on an edit.

[HakuroDK]

I legitimately did not know that. Thanks!

[Lemon8or]

Problem with your macro is any lag at all will make the macro use opo-opo form skills instead of coeurl which usually leads to loss of GL. What if you need to silence ADS and Howling Fist is available? Bam, you're animation locked and your raid is paralyzed which can lead to a wipe in turn 2 since healer can't heal. Or when you forgot about clipping and tried to apply a Demolish on top of a buffed Demolish that doesn't go through (which doesn't give you GL) and you forgot about that and try using AOE macro. Same thing.
Macros are nice and all but it doesn't tell you when the skill is off CD so you have to either guess it or somehow track all the skills CD. This in addition to the fact that you can't queue abilities as fast as manual mode so you'll lose out DPS in the long run. Coil isn't that hard on the monk to use the skills. You can have 3 abilities of the same form in the same plus-sign on the cross-bar so when you get to the next form, you know exactly which 3 buttons to hit. It's not that hard. Monk only need to use 2 cross-bar sets to do their jobs anyway. And yes, I play monk.

[HakuroDK]

A number of problems with your complaints.

First, I've never had that lag happen to me and I've been using this macro ever since I hit 50 on MNK a month and a half ago. Second, if I know I'm in a dungeon where silencing adds is necessary, I'll simply edit my macro beforehand. Because I TOTALLY can't do that, right?

The clipping? I'm well aware of that issue, and if I still have Demolish up, I'll usually use Snap Punch instead, even if I'm not flanking. All it takes to do that is just use a different macro. Boom, done.

And the cooldown issue is why I have all of my extended cooldowns first. And really, there's an easy fix for that. There's a macro command that can change the icon of the macro to one that shows the CD of the extended CD skill in my macro chain. As for the cooldown of the rest, I rely on my un-macro'd Touch of Death and Fracture for that. I don't even watch the cooldowns for my macros because they don't show.

It's probably just a difference of opinion at this point, because quite frankly, just the idea of even considering changing cross-bars in the middle of a battle would drive me insane, and I'd rather avoid that whenever possible.

[JMadFour]

I think it needs to be said that I am playing on PC with a mouse/kb.

A lot, but not all of the anti-macro sentiment seems to be coming from controller users.