Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

[Raraka]

Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt black mage have a longer cast than GCD wich is potentially what makes your blizzard macro behave diferently from other jobs?

As far as I understand oGCDs are fine to macro as they dont need to be queued up to avoid clipping, but GCDs on macros wait for the entire GCD to roll to then start the next skill, while with manual presses it queues them as the GCD is finishing to roll. This is what people tend to bring up to the discussion because of the wait command limitation and the 2.5 standard GCD

If what I proposed above is correct then Black mage could potentially be a macro-favorable job as it may mitigate the downsides of macros with a longer cast time, but I would still refrain from using them on other jobs

Another potential candidates would be Ninja and Monk with GCDs around the 2 seconds, as they COULD work with the wait command, with further testing required of course

I still would rather do my rotation manually but I rather keep this discussion thread going, over the 10 titanmen alt threads that are popping recently <.<

[LilimoLimomo]

Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt black mage have a longer cast than GCD wich is potentially what makes your blizzard macro behave diferently from other jobs?

Good questions! Blizzard's cast time is equivalent to the GCD (recast), but Blizzard III has a longer cast time than the GCD. I actually did some small tests with both of these spells and determined that they work the same. Which is to say, when you are queuing an action following a spell with a cast time, you want to time your next cast with the cast bar, not the GCD.

As far as I understand oGCDs are fine to macro as they dont need to be queued up to avoid clipping, but GCDs on macros wait for the entire GCD to roll to then start the next skill, while with manual presses it queues them as the GCD is finishing to roll.

This is a misconception. As I describe in my original mammoth of a post, both macros and non-macros allow for queuing if designed right:
A quick explanation of these macros: if you put the same action multiple times in a macro, that creates a queue window for the macro you've made. Each attempt at casting the spell takes a very short amount of time, and the more you have in a row, the larger the queue window gets. I recommend this technique for any GCD macro, and it can help oGCD's as well depending on when you like to press your buttons.

That said, when pressed macros have a shorter action queue window than non-macros by 0.295. For a person who needs that extra duration, that could be a reason to not use a macro. But for people who don't, macros can help with a lot of cool things!

This is what people tend to bring up to the discussion because of the wait command limitation and the 2.5 standard GCD

Yeah, as I've noted previously, the /wait command has limitations, and macros that were made while ignoring or misunderstanding those those limitations will underperform. My recommendation to new macro-users is to not use /wait.

I'm probably going to end up putting this snippet in half my replies today, but there are so many things you can do with macros that don't require /wait, or that do use /wait but in a way that doesn't lose DPS. Macros are a kind of programming language, and if you understand how it works, you can do very helpful things with them. Here's just one example of what a good macro can do:

/macroicon "Blizzard"
/macroerror off
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Swiftcast"
/wait 0.5
/ac "Sharpcast"

This is a great macro that I actually use on my Black Mage. It does a lot of cool stuff:

• If pressed while targeting a party member, it uses Aetherial Manipulation to teleport to them.

• Otherwise, if pressed in the queue window for a GCD, it casts Blizzard (or Paradox if available). And then, if the cast was Paradox (which has an instant cast instead of a cast bar), 1 second later Sharpcast will be weaved while the GCD is still on cooldown.

• Otherwise, if pressed outside of the GCD queue window, it casts Swiftcast. And if you still haven't pressed another button 1 second later, it will also cast Sharpcast.

As I've previously mentioned in multiple posts, during combat, it's generally a poor idea to use /wait, but this is one of the use cases where I feel it works well. I never need to double-weave after Paradox (which would be the only downside of automating the oGCD after an instant-cast GCD), so this automates my single-weave so that my brain can focus on other things. And it's nice to have all of this functionality on a single button, so that depending on the context in which I press the button I get different functionality.

And this is just one of the great things you can do with macros to make your life easier without losing any DPS. Hopefully this helps clarify that macros are more than ill-fated /wait chains!

[Mikey_R]

1) Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt black mage have a longer cast than GCD wich is potentially what makes your blizzard macro behave diferently from other jobs?

2) As far as I understand oGCDs are fine to macro as they dont need to be queued up to avoid clipping, but GCDs on macros wait for the entire GCD to roll to then start the next skill, while with manual presses it queues them as the GCD is finishing to roll. This is what people tend to bring up to the discussion because of the wait command limitation and the 2.5 standard GCD

3) Another potential candidates would be Ninja and Monk with GCDs around the 2 seconds, as they COULD work with the wait command, with further testing required of course

1) Only on some spells. Blizzard and Fire 1 both have cast times of 2.5 seconds and a 2.5 second recast, so the cast time for the spell equals the length of the GCD (recast). However, something like (High) Blizzard/(High) Fire 2 have a 3 second cast time and a 2.5 second recast time. This means you will still be casting 0.5 seconds after your GCD has finished coming off of cooldown, this also applies to other spells like Fire 3, Blizzard 3, Fire 4, Freeze, Flare and Despair.

There is a unique interaction when going from UI to AF, in that it halves the cast time of the opposite element. This is why, whilst Fire 3 has a cast time of 3.5 seconds and a recast of 2.5 seconds, if you are using it to swap from UI into AF, it will have a cast time of 1.75 but retain the 2.5 second recast, which does allow for a weave window.

2) Also, oGCDs do queue up, you cannot execute them asap. You can test this by making a macro that executes a GCD then immediately executes an oGCD, the oGCD will not go off, however, if you were to quickly mash a GCD and oGCD, the oGCD will still go off, albeit after a slight delay.

3) As for Monk/Ninja, they have a 2.0 s and 2.15 s base GCD with their respective speed buffs, however, as soon as you add some SS, it will throw everything out of whack. My current Monk (not BiS) has a GCD of 1.98, so you would lose out on 0.02 seconds every GCD (though the flexibility of Monk's GCD is what defines the job, macroing it would be silly) and Ninja has 2.05, so you lose even more (cannot use 2 seconds, however, you lose 0.95 over a 3 second wait). Moral, just do not macro.