BRD macro

[GodzillaMagnum]

Misery's End, Blood Letter and Heavy Shot all on 1 button is a huge help.

I mixed up DPS Buffs between 2 buttons. One button is Internal Release and Barrage (since they don't directly affect damage) and then Blood for Blood, Hawk's Eye, and Raging Strikes on another.

Don't let people tell you macros aren't good for bards. The ones that help you use your procs when they're up without having to watch your bars help hugely with raid awareness and the ones that condense all your buffs that do essentially one thing help a ton on saving room on your hotbar.

[dRqmist]

Not to troll but is mixing GCD and oGCD ok in this case?

/ac "Internal Release" <me>
/ac "Wind Bite"

I excluded IR from my Buff macro so i can ensure IR up when i do WB & VB. Otherwise I'm risking 3sec clipping on both WB and VB (IR = 15sec, WB/VB = 18sec).

[Florabee]

I may have not found it yet and if not I would appreciate being told where to look.....but seems to me that people talking about writing macros aren't really talking about writing them but telling others what they are using. I know all of you that have made a comment in here were a noob to writing macros and all the abbreviations used so would someone please point me to the noob area so I can figure out how to write a useful macro from the ground up so it makes sense when it misfires. thank you.

[Anatha]

I didn't learn anything as to the actual topic of this discussion.
Just a lot of bickering.

I'd like to know quite simply that if I'm going to use macros on a BRD, which are the best ones to use? My question isn't about whether or not using macros is better or worse, it's again: "Which macros should be used on a BRD if macros are being used at all?"

Can someone answer this without starting an argument or going into mathematics I really don't want to hear?

[RathSkybreaker]

I didn't learn anything as to the actual topic of this discussion.
Just a lot of bickering

I'd like to know quite simply that if I'm going to use macros on a BRD, which are the best ones to use? My question isn't about whether or not using macros is better or worse, it's again: "Which macros should be used on a BRD if macros are being used at all?"

Can someone answer this without starting an argument or going into mathematics I really don't want to hear?

Hey Ana, Bard here.

I use macros pretty frequently , beat turn 5 on bard weekly, etc, so , here's what I use.

Straight Shot

/micon "Straight Shot"
/ac "Straight Shot" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>

V -bite, wind bit , heavy shot, blunt arrow, repelling shot, and my aoe abilities all have the blood letter / misery's end procs on them. Rationale is to maximize the procs. People will argue semantics, but I only believe numbers, not idealism. People aren't perfect, and macros reduce error.

Buff's are a bit different, I generally only macro a few for turn 5, but for all other content I take the lazy approach and macro them all, for the sake of never missing a buff, if your group doesn't suck you can do that, mainly because you're not pressed to meet dps checks, since you'd meet them without the buffs.

I stagger my buffs though, so I put raging strikes on straight shot, I have Internal release macroed to both of my dots, and I have Hawk's , Barrage, and BfB macroed onto heavy shot. Quelling strike I do manually always, I like to be in control of where my hate sits.

My dps on a dummy ~ 3 minutes sits around 285 with no food / buffs / pots.


Rath

[EasymodeX]

You want 1 macro with all your oGCDs (BL, ME, BFB, IR, Barrage, Hawk's Eye, Quelling).

1 macro with everything except BFB

1 macro with only BL+ME

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Generally, spam the first macro between your regular GCD attacks (which are not on any macro).

If you're in a situation where BFB would be dangerous (Tumult inc), use the second macro instead.

If you're in a situation where you need to conserve or specifically time your cooldowns (Conflags), use the third macro.

If you're in a situation where you have to be careful with every oGCD (ADS silence soon), don't use any of those macro buttons and just use your regular GCD attacks.

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It's pretty simple. Don't know why people make it so hard.

The only error most Bards make is that they get lazy and put the oGCDs with their GCD attacks (HS). This breaks the ability queuing for the ability and will lead to a direct loss of DPS. It works for the lazy, but it's not good for DPS optimization by a landslide. The set of macros I listed above will enable you to optimize your DPS rather well (although not 100% perfectly), and greatly minimize the hassle of 50 buttons to spam.

[Anatha]

I ended up going with just a simple buff macro once I realized the playstyle of a heavy macro user involves mashing buttons over and over.

It seems far better to just hotkey the skills and use them normally.

[DxWings]

Okay so I'm on the side of not using any macros for BRD, and here's my explanation

Usual BRD rotation:

No GCD - Straight Shot
2.5 GCD starts
1.25 GCD interval (halfway through GCD) - Bloodletter
0.5 GCD interval (skill queue) - Windbite
No GCD - Windbite fires from queue
2.5 GCD starts
1.25 GCD - Flaming Arrow
0.5 GCD - Venomous Bite
No GCD - Venomous Bite fires from queue
2.5 GCD starts
1.25 GCD - Any Buff/ShadowBind/Blunt Arrow/ Repelling Shot
0.5 GCD - Heavy Shot
No GCD - Heavy shot fires from queue
2.5 GCD starts
1.25 GCD - Bloodletter (if proc)
0.5 GCD - Heavy Shot
No GCD - Heavy Shot fires from queue
1.25 GCD - Misery's End (if >20%)
0.5 GCD - Refresh DoTs
No GCD - DoTs fired

Now the point players are trying to make for BRD to not use macros, are to maximize your dmg output during GCDs. If anyone is using the macros such as:

/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Heavy shot" <t>

This one does not maximize your dmg during GCD.
1. You will start firing Misery's End, and Bloodletter right off the bat.
2. When Heavy Shot is fired in succession to firing those, you will be standing around doing no dmg for that whole 2.5s GCD.
3. Because Misery's End, and Bloodletter does not trigger GCD, you're locked into their animation(~1.5s) til you can start using another skill. Hence why players say to prioritize GCD skills over oGCD skills. Reason being that when you trigger the GCD with a GCD skill, there's no thought of saying "Oh I'm in animation so I can't use another skill", but more of "I just triggered a GCD with a GCD skill, so I'm locked into animation for about 1.25-1.5s, but hey no biggie cause the GCD is still there, so I'll just fire off a oGCD skill while I wait to queu my next GCD skill." Something like that.
4. Ticks go off every 3s(don't know if there's a way to telll the exact time of tick but), so using Bloodletter during GCD will give it a chance to proc before the next GCD, if it does proc before your next GCD, you have yet another Bloodletter to utilize during GCD for maximum DPS.
5. The fact that macros don't queue skills, you're skill firing will be late 0.5s compared to someone who has really practiced queuing skills and weaving in oGCDs.

So ask yourself, would you rather do dmg during a GCD with animation lock with a oGCD skill, or do dmg oGCD and be locked in animation waiting to fire off a GCD skill yet triggers a GCD, but you can't fire any move during GCD cause you just wasted oGCDs right off the bat.

And also the point of using this macro to save space on the hotbar is moot.
Why? Obviously, you won't have bloodletter, misery's end on your hotbar, so how are you going to know when they're on/off cooldown. Your only choice then is to spam this macro throughout GCD in hopes that they proced/off cooldown. Sure you can use "/micon", but you only get to see one, how about the other one?
If you do spam it, what about your bufs? Your other oGCDs skills? Are you going to stop spamming the macro because you say "Hey look a buff just went off cooldown, I should use it."
But what if your Bloodletter procs/Misery's End off cooldown during that time (and remember you don't know when it procs cause you don't have it on your hotbar/when Misery's End goes off cooldown), you would have wasted a chance to use it so it can have a chance to proc again in the next DoT tick or let the cooldown start again.

[EasymodeX]

3. Because Misery's End, and Bloodletter does not trigger GCD, you're locked into their animation(~1.5s) til you can start using another skill.

Well, this isn't the overriding issue. This is solved by simply placing the GCD ability first in the macro -- you are then strongly mitigating (although not eliminating) the scenario where the oGCD animation delays your GCD.

The core problem is that the ability queue itself breaks for the GCD ability, causing a consistent and pervasive 0.1-.5s delay every single GCD. In other words, a pure 5-15% DPS loss.