Really liking Sage but...

[HyoMinPark]

And your lack of queuing with your macro will result in more lost GCDs the more oGCDs you have to use in a fight because macros do not queue in this game. It’s not my responsibility to go out and test your theories. Rather you have to provide evidence to your claim. Regardless, I’m not going to recommend subpar play to anyone. I also do not see the need to make healer DPS abilities inherently <tt> macros. It really isn’t that hard to toggle between party members and enemies.

What Liam means by fail to fire is the failure for the macro itself to go off the first time you press it. This does happen, especially during times of lag/ping spikes, or if you try to press your next button too quickly, resulting in the macro not registering and not going off. It happens with oGCD macros. It happens with Swiftcast+Rez macros. And it will happen with yours because macros are flawed in this game. That is another drawback you are failing to consider with your suggestion. You’ve probably experienced it before and never even noticed.



If you want to suggest people use macros, then fine. But others can also suggest they don’t because macros are not well-built in this game.

[Sylve]

And your lack of queuing with your macro will result in more lost GCDs

What part of:

Make the <tt> part of the macro the default nature of the spell.
Why do i want that? So i can use my damn UI the way I want to use it without being punched in the gut for it. And YOU can use YOUR UI the way YOU want and we get an equal result.

Is difficult for you to understand?
The only gameplay change that occurs if the Devs acquiese to my request is that i can lock my target onto a party member and queue Dosis spells like any regular ability.

You want to target the boss and switch to allies constantly to heal them? You do you.
I want to target allies and have my DPS directed towards my targets target? I get to do that.

We both win. You lose absolutely nothing for this to be added and i stop losing minute amounts of DPS using a <tt> macro.
You are quite literally telling me how you want me to use my UI.

The situation you're describing and calling a "failure to fire" is because your client registers the GCD as being done but the server still sees you being on GCD. Its a scenario that occurs in every single online game that does not have queuing for its abilities. Its not a "failure" of the macro, its a simple disparity between what the server sees and what you see in the client.
My latency is a stable 147 through Exitlag, monitored constantly.
My personal habit, developed over 2 decades of playing on NA servers from Australia is such that the situation you describe does not occur because i do not press my GCDs just once per 2.5 seconds and expect things to work flawlessly.
My spells cast when i want them to because my keybinds ensure that they do.

This may come as a shock to you given your constant harping about lost GCDs and DPS in general, but lemme shout it out for you: I do not care to try to reach absolute mechanical perfection in regards to DPS
Was that clear enough for you? There a good many reasons why i do not care. Chief among them is that if reaching such perfection requires sacrificing my gameplay experience in pursuit of it, i will simply be happy to achieve "Average success" and not force myself into content where that kind of perfection is the expected play.

So i will continue to use this macro and suggest it to others who might benefit from it as i have. Right up until the Devs make it the default effect for the spell. And if they list it as part of the spell effect tooltip, it might even encourage the non-DPSers in the community that its really not that bad to press the buttons every now and again.

And you are quite free to explain why macro's can lead to DPS loss. Just try to understand that there are people playing this game who do actually see improvements to their performance when certain types of macros are used.
The macro system isn't perfect, But it gets the job done.

[HyoMinPark]

You are quite literally telling me how you want me to use my UI.

No, I’m not. I don’t care what you do. I’m just explaining why macros aren’t good for combat and why I don’t recommend them to others; and why I will continue not to recommend them to others. My initial response in this thread against macros wasn’t even towards you. It was in response to someone else. I explained my position then as I have explained it to you.

[Liam_Harper]

This may come as a shock to you given your constant harping about lost GCDs and DPS in general, but lemme shout it out for you: I do not care to try to reach absolute mechanical perfection in regards to DPS

That's fine.

What's not fine is your insistence that you suggest GCD macros to anyone who has the slightest struggle with target switching. How do you know that player doesn't care about performing well? Not everyone who struggles has your mindset. You don't inform them of the downsides, considerations and disadvantages of macro usage, you don't offer them alternative advice to make target switching easier that they can try first before taking the last resort of a macro. Heck, you don't even know what a macro misfire is. That's basic and unrelated to latency. Instead you go out of your way to play it down and state that it's a "tiny loss" and doesn't matter with no math or figures to your claim.

You're spreading misinformation without any research and getting very aggressive with anyone who doesn't agree with you. Quite frankly, you aren't in any way qualified to give advice on the subject.

[Tessmarin]

Reminds me of Blue Mage carnival - trying to interrupt boss in time while burning adds and flipping between targets to not insta die. Setting Focus Target helps but it can be hard to see the cast bar. Maybe its sizeable I haven't tried. I have been swapping from reaction healer to barrier healer so I understand the challenges there. The best thing I ever did was force myself to level a tank so I could improve my attention to the cast bars since blocking and Dmg Reduction CDs are critical to tanking. It made a huge difference. When I got back to scholar it was night and day. And I apologize to every healer that had to put up with me along the way. LOL =)

[MadeOfMush]

You cant scroll party list and use actions like eukrasia or draw at the same time. They're either gonna lock on your current target (unlocking from the mob you wanna attack) or the cursor will just disappear. The only way to deal with it is to macro or eukrasia before scroll or losing DPS.

I wanted to come back to this really quick because I think I found a solution recently, in two parts:

1. Character Configuration -> Control Settings -> Mouse -> Scroll Up/Down -> Scroll up/down through Party List
2. Character Configuration -> Control Settings -> Target -> Switch target circle to target select

Scrolling through the party list defaults as a "soft" target, that would disappear when using a skill/spell. This changes it to a regular target, where it will remain as your target until you change it yourself.

--

On the topic of macros, while I don't recommend them, my favorite thing to do with them in my early days was to make "smart" dps skills. For instance:

/micon "Dosis"
/macroerror off
/ac "Dosis" <t>
/ac "Dosis" <tt>
/ac "Dosis" <ft>

This way, the spell will first be used on whatever you have targeted. If your target is invalid (a party member maybe) then it'll use it on your target's target. If there is no target's target, then it'll use it on your focus target. Since you can't cast Dosis twice instantly, only the first valid line will actually make it to cast, everything after won't be checked. That means if you do something like this, always keep <t> as the first one. Usually if you're targeting something, you're doing it for a reason (especially if it's really important).

Unfortunately you can't do this with heals, since any invalid target defaults to healing yourself. Hopefully this is useful for people who want to use macros.