Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

[Rin_Sato]

But notably it's not every post you've made. Interesting choice to omit those. Even more interesting that you've trimmed the posts you've included so that you can't actually read their content, instead deciding to try to make the entire focus the editing timestamps.

Because I didn't encourage users to look at "every post that Collin has edited and I replied to". I encouraged users to genuinely read "every post that Collin had made in this thread".

The only reason I mentioned editing and timestamps is on the off-chance that like Alt, you might at some point try to scrub your history. But it's the original posts you made that are incriminating, not their timestamps.

You are truly talented, please keep this up.

[LilimoLimomo]

If you can't be bothered to deal with the game and its players as they actually exist, then you don't have anything to say of practical value.

Yes! Exactly this. ^^

The common prescriptive advice of "combat macros are bad" doesn't take into account players as they actually exist. It treats players as a monolith, when in fact they have varied strengths, varied weaknesses, varied preferences, and varied needs.

To that, I have something of very practical value to say: if you don't take into account players as they actually exist, then you don't have anything to say of practical value.

To be quite blunt, the "best data you can provide" has thus far proven to be 100% useless and meaningless

That's simply not true, as it ignores the initial purpose of this thread. There was a widely-cited video showing evidence that using macros caused a 5% APM loss. I provided a video that demonstrated that the aforementioned result was not an inevitability. That adds valuable information to the community's knowledge pool that was previously not there*, regardless of whether it single-handedly overturns the overall idea of "macros bad". The practical value is "it's possible to use macros without an APM loss as large as 5%", and that further opens the door to considering whether some players will be able to take advantage of macros in a way that improves their performance/comfort/whatever. The value of spreading this knowledge has been transparently demonstrated in this thread, as multiple people have given macros a try and found ways that certain macros benefit their play.

As I've mentioned, had I the chance to do it again I would change the title and go about explaining everything differently. But my mistakes in that regard do not negate the fact that this thread contains valuable information of practical value.

you've provided no evidence of..."here's why you should believe the macros were an essential part of the difference in my performance (or personal comfort or whatever)."

I've talked about that at least once in this thread; if you read through it all you'll find it in there. But in summary, my personal experience is that every class requires more buttons than I find that the controller's crosshotbar can comfortably and conveniently hold. There are a lot of reasons for this, from D-pad crosshotbar actions not being able to be pressed while moving without contorting my hand, to things like WXHB and manually cycling crosshotbars feeling clunky and uncomfortable to me, to holding R2 while pressing right-side face buttons feeling significantly uncomfortable for me over the duration of any play session. I make use of features like the R2+L2 crosshotbar shortcut, but that doesn't give me enough comfortable and accessible button real estate to fit all the important buttons.

Without macros, I would likely be opting for significantly sub-par rotations that entirely omitted half the actions I have access to. That or I'd probably quit the game. But I'm really glad that macros have allowed me to play one of my favorite games in a much more effective way.

So if it helps to know a bit about my personal experience, if having my anecdotal use case helps you to tangibly understand at least one example of how macros can provide a meaningful improvement for some players, there you have it.

you've provided no evidence of "here's me in real combat without macros", "here's me in real combat with macros"

After reading my last few paragraphs, is this genuinely something you'd think has value? Because here's the situation: I stopped playing without macros back in the ARR days, because that's when I started looking for solutions to my "button bloat" problem. And ever since then, every class I've played has used macros, because they all have more buttons than I can comfortably fit on my controller.

So if you watched me play without macros, that would involve creating an entirely unfamiliar crosshotbar setup, one that I was unpracticed with. And because I don't want to feel discomfort or pain, there are plenty of valuable actions I wouldn't be pressing due to them being in spots I can't comfortably access.

And then you'd compare that to me doing a fight using macros, where I have comfortable access to all of my actions. And while this second fight would undoubtedly contain a variety of mistakes — as my skill level at actually playing the game is mid — there's simply no way that whatever crosshotbar monstrosity I had created using only half of my buttons would be able to compete with it; no realistic amount of clipping is going to have a more prominent effect than discarding half your kit.


*Which isn't to say that nobody knew this before, as Miko has demonstrated, but most didn't.

[LilimoLimomo]

Thank you for starting this thread in the first place, Lilimo. It came in very handy last year when I was struggling to level up my healers due to all the target switching I had to do (playing with a gamepad). I used that pseudo-queueing for my damage spells (with <tt>) so my targeting can be limited to just the party (which is very easy with the D-pad). Using a focus target macro has also helped so I can always see the boss's cast bar.

Thank you for the kind feedback! I'm glad to hear that you've found a way to use macros to make your play experience better! This is the way that I play my WHM, with manually queued <tt> macros for DPS spells and with the boss focused so that I never have to stop targeting my teammates.

As far as GCD clipping and whatnot, I can't really say much as I don't go beyond the normal/"hard" mode stuff, but I can say that the reason I decided to use macros only on the damage side is because I do still find them unreliable, even with the pseudo-queueing, and even at a locked 30fps (since my computer is a popoto) which should provide a longer "queue". And, I don't mash them, either. At least I don't think I do. Sometimes, they just don't fire, and I don't know why. So I figured it would be better to lose a bit of damage here-and-there than to potentially miss an important heal.

That's totally valid! Your personal experience is the only one that matters. There are plenty of macros I've tried over the years and ultimately decided "this isn't working the way I want it to, I'm throwing it in the trash". You keep what works for you, and discard the rest. ^^

[LilimoLimomo]

Thank you for starting this thread in the first place, Lilimo. It came in very handy last year when I was struggling to level up my healers due to all the target switching I had to do (playing with a gamepad). I used that pseudo-queueing for my damage spells (with <tt>) so my targeting can be limited to just the party (which is very easy with the D-pad). Using a focus target macro has also helped so I can always see the boss's cast bar.

As far as GCD clipping and whatnot, I can't really say much as I don't go beyond the normal/"hard" mode stuff, but I can say that the reason I decided to use macros only on the damage side is because I do still find them unreliable, even with the pseudo-queueing, and even at a locked 30fps (since my computer is a popoto) which should provide a longer "queue". And, I don't mash them, either. At least I don't think I do. Sometimes, they just don't fire, and I don't know why. So I figured it would be better to lose a bit of damage here-and-there than to potentially miss an important heal.

Oh, and also, if you happen to want help trouble-shooting your macros, I'd be happy to help! Just provide the macro and perhaps some context with how/when you're using it, and I can offer what advice I can.

Of course, if you'd rather just be done with those macros, that's entirely valid, too. It's whatever you want, and I just wanted to extend the offer as an option. ^^

[Mikoko_Miko]

I skimmed threads about macros on Chinese BBS. There are variations of ASWC (Action-Set-Wait-Copy) macros. A macro removes wait and uses repeating set as ~0.2sec wait. Another macro uses repeating actions before set-wait-copy. It is a hybrid of pseudo-queue and genuine-queue. There is also a pseudo-queue macro similar to ours. I saw a macro that puts Cure and Stone together into one with genuine-queue. They are very interesting.

宏学(第三版)(Macrology the Third Edition)

I've not read this to the end yet. I found wit and wisdom in the afterword.

Hear Feel Think,
Use your unlimited imagination to push limited macros to their limits.
Keep hearing and hear other people's opinions about macros;
Keep feeling and feel conveniences and inconveniences of macros;
Keep thinking and think about improvement routes of macros;
You can definitely become a better macrologist, create better macros, and create a better world!

In the original Chinese text, words at the end of line (limits / opinions / inconveniences / routes) are in rhyme like a stanza. The word order is different from English.

I was just a little disappointed at a Snake Game. It was an April Fool's joke. It wasn't general-purpose and wasn't implemented using high-level algorithms. It reminds me of an egg of Columbus.

[GrizzlyTank]

Ultimately this is a math problem. And you have yet brought up the math to prove your hypothesis.

[Shialan]

Has anyone already mentioned how interesting it is to see 3 Lalas hyping this whole thing up?

[Rin_Sato]

Has anyone already mentioned how interesting it is to see 3 Lalas hyping this whole thing up?

I hope I am not being counted.

[Mikoko_Miko]

I found information on healing macros in an outdated but still informative guide.
Zyrk’s FFXIV Shadowbringers Healing Guide

Macros, however, are unable to use the skill queueing system. They will not begin executing the action until after the first time you press the key after your current action is finished. Even if you spam the key at inhuman speeds and issue the command the exact moment your current action is finished, you're still subject to latency delay while the game receives that command. This causes a small delay between actions whenever you're using macros, which can add up very quickly to a lot of lost time over the course of a fight. Ultimately, macros reduce your total output the more you use them, which should be avoided whenever possible.

I'm interested in network issue but no further sources could be traced. My experience in Oceanian DC may be insufficient because it is hardly affected by network or server congestion.

Some healers strongly prefer using targeting macros for single target GCD heals (Cure II, Regen, and equivalents), including some of the most talented and successful healers at the highest levels of play. The thing is, at those high levels of play, they can “get away with it,” you could say, because their healing is so optimized that they might cast a single digit number of those spells in an entire fight, so the total effect of that small delay is minimized to the point of being entirely negligible.

I suppose that the downside of macros are overestimated. But I felt relieved because the macros I use seem to be included in the exception even under such conditions.

[Mikoko_Miko]

I found an interesting thread in GameFAQs.
Is Macroing oGCDs as a Healer a good idea?
It was posted in 2021. There are some opinions that evaluates combat macros in certain conditions. There is even an opinion that some macros lead to DPS gain. It is close to my opinion, but it was unexpected for me to find such an opinion in English. There is also an example of Sprint macro with repeating line method.