Are macros necessary?

[Destous]

I 100% agree with this. I just take the macro as the WAR reminding themselves of how long they have until they can sit on their thumbs for 5 seconds.

This is horrendous. Literally one of worst things I've ever read on this forum.

When I heal, I expect WARs to have a macro for Berserk that gives me a heads up for the esuna. My favorite Berserk macro I've seen is one with a 19s delay, and it's simple the word "esuna" with a sound effect in chat. I hear the noise, and I cast esuna; now the WAR doesn't have to sit with pacify for any amount of time.

Furthermore, when I tank as WAR, I don't expect every call for a pacify cleanse to be answered. I understand that there might very well be something more important than casting esuna on my healer's to do list. I put it out there anyway, because if they have the time to cleanse, they should want to cleanse it.

[seekified]

Furthermore, when I tank as WAR, I don't expect every call for a pacify cleanse to be answered. I understand that there might very well be something more important than casting esuna on my healer's to do list. I put it out there anyway, because if they have the time to cleanse, they should want to cleanse it.

This has been a touchy subject for such a long time. When I play WAR, I want my Pacification to get cleansed as much as anyone, but I feel a little obnoxious if I use a macro directly asking for it with a sound effect. On the other hand, when I play SCH (which I do quite a bit), I always look for Pacification and remove it as soon as possible.

More on topic regarding the necessity of macros - no, I don't think they're required as such, not for any job. But they certainly make my life a lot easier. As SCH, I have macros that summons Eos/Selene, sets the relevant fairy's skills to my crossbar (so I need three less slots) and sets the fairy to Obey. As WAR, I have stance macros that activate Defiance/Deliverence and swap out the relevant skills on my crossbar (again, to reduce button bloat).

I also use callout macros a fair bit for trials and raids, like Bismarck's dragonkillers and debuff color change, or to balance DPS on T11's cube/orb adds, etc.

Not necessary, but certainly helps a lot.

[Destous]

This has been a touchy subject for such a long time.

I don't see why anyone would be touchy about it. How narcissistic would a WHM have to be to take offense at a sound alert macro that gives them a heads up on berserk pacify? WARs getting butthurt over not getting a cleanse is a different story, but a simple alert macro is helpful.

[Arduno]

I use a couple of macros as a bard
They are life! :O

[Alistaire]

I don't see why anyone would be touchy about it. How narcissistic would a WHM have to be to take offense at a sound alert macro that gives them a heads up on berserk pacify? WARs getting butthurt over not getting a cleanse is a different story, but a simple alert macro is helpful.

You shouldn't be stopping what you're doing to esuna a pacification. That's the main reason.

[Alkimi]

Certain abilities I have as mouse over macros, Apocatastasis, Aetherial Manipulation, Goad and Warden's Peaean are a few examples where I prefer to just use macros rather than have to manually select the targets to use them on.

[Lambdafish]

You shouldn't be stopping what you're doing to esuna a pacification. That's the main reason.

Destous didn't ask for that, they are saying that the berserk macro is communication, it's as simple as that. Berserk is the only skill in the game that gives a debuff, which means that it is the only debuff in the game that can be controlled.

As a healer, that is valuable information, and knowing exactly when a debuff goes up is valuable for both healers and bards, meaning that they can plan ahead, and prepare for the debuff, and heal the party optimally. Also, you should be stopping what you are doing to cleanse a pacifism if it is currently the highest priority action of the time, and knowing when it is coming in advance helps in making sure that the higher priority tasks are dealt with before it goes off.

Similar macros I have seen to the berserk macro: provoke, hallowed ground, virus, eye for an eye, living dead. All of these skills having shout outs makes others very aware of what actions you have taken, and allows them to be worked around

[Alistaire]

As a healer, that is valuable information, and knowing exactly when a debuff goes up is valuable for both healers and bards, meaning that they can plan ahead, and prepare for the debuff, and heal the party optimally. Also, you should be stopping what you are doing to cleanse a pacifism if it is currently the highest priority action of the time, and knowing when it is coming in advance helps in making sure that the higher priority tasks are dealt with before it goes off.

Similar macros I have seen to the berserk macro: provoke, hallowed ground, virus, eye for an eye, living dead....

That's the thing though, it's not valuable information. If you react to that you're being a bad healer, both for your sake and the warrior's. That whole topic has been beaten to death. You're either a healer sitting there doing nothing (bad), or you stop dps'ing to cleanse it (bad), or you stop healing to cleanse it (also bad).

Virus and eye for an eye as macros have their place because you don't want 2 people overlapping it. Same goes for a raise macro. Provoke is iffy, I find it's something used infrequently enough to not be a bother but when it comes down to it, a macro for that is unnecessary and nobody's going to change what they were doing because of it. Same for tank's ultimate defense moves. As a healer I'm going to see when a tank uses those.

I will say though, that I considered going that route on WAR and went through the abilities it'd be "useful for others to know to work around." But then it turned out the list included convalescence, vengeance, inner beast, provoke, holmgang, berserk, and it's just too much spam, combined with the fact that the people who would react to those have full capability to see when you've used them without the spam.

Certain abilities I have as mouse over macros, Apocatastasis, Aetherial Manipulation, Goad and Warden's Peaean are a few examples where I prefer to just use macros rather than have to manually select the targets to use them on.

That's fine for anything off gcd really. Also ground target actions. Though when you start adding /p lines to those it can be annoying, and is almost never needed.

[Dzian]

Some can be incredibly useful. Not really necessary though.

For example my ninja has a macro
/ac shade walker <2> which will always put it on the tank so they get the enmity boost.

Bard you can macro flaming arrow to <t> so it will always centre it around your current target. Without having to manually place it.

My scholar has summon macros that swap pet commands. So when I summon eos L2 square is whispering dawn. When I summon serene l2 square is changed to fey wind for example.

Then simple macros like /target <f> or <attack1> can be really helpful.

Or can't remember who told me this. But macroing /levelsync on to your mount. Is really nice for fates.

[Alistaire]

Yeah, it's the /party line announcing you're doing these things that isn't so useful. Ground targets are great, it actually made freeze useful in big pulls that you wouldn't want to get in range to bliz 2, as well as faster casting of all the others.

And yeah for controller some are necessary for the limited space issues. That's more of a sign of how bad controllers are for this game rather than macros being good though.