Macro/Crossbar layout help needed

[Ehayte]

All three skills are always available (except during GCD). You can SB or RoH at any time, they just won't be combos if you use them out of order.

^^ Exactly - in other words, when you are hitting your macro, it is checking to see if you can use Fast Blade before it checks for anything else. Since Savage Blade and Rage will only be available only if Fast Blade is as well, the macro never reaches those checks.

I would strongly advise against a /wait command for this as well, you are locking yourself into something you may not want, and skill speed will change the /waits as you change gear. You will have to micro manage the crap out of them to get any good use out of it.

[Simurgi]

It sounds like you are looking to save space on your x-bar. As a game pad user myself who has cleared turn 5 as a Paladin, I can say that you really only need two sets of skills. Share skill bars 7/8 for all classes for skills like your chochobo and return. Also make skill bars 7 and 8 available for when you sheathe your weapon. When you unsheathe your weapon, use skill bars 1/2. This gives you 4 bars, but only having to have to switch between 2 at any given time.

[PiedPiper]

I play PS3, PLD main, exp on all game content. You need only your one top bar, one R2+L2 bar, and one macro to fit every pld tool onto your bars with ready access.

Do not macro your roh combo to a single button. Even if the game accepted fractional waits (which it doesnt') it would still be nearly impossible to get it dialed in to going as fast as you can manually (owing to latency and the small gains from skill speed, etc). If you go with the /wait 3... god your combo will be so slow! You'd have such low threat and damage per second.

First, enable the new R2+L2 option. Stick your oaths, stone skin, fracture, stun & fast blade to mana drain combo here. I would also suggest putting flash here so you can use it in aoe situations where you'd want to cycle draining mana and using flash without having to enter and re-enter the sub menu. Alternatively, you can put tempered will in here and just revert back to flash on your top bar. (TW is the only skill left over from top bar and this one sub bar if you put flash here).

Decided how you want to do it, but I suggest dividing all of your offensives skills to one trigger, and defensive skills to the other trigger. For me, I placed offense on R2 (you hold your sword in your right hand, so it seemed more intuitive to me) and defensive to L2 (shield side).

L2:
---------Mark Target 1--------|||-----------Hallowed------
Sentinel------------ Awareness|||Convalesce--------Bulwark
-------------Flash------------|||------------Rampart-------

R2:
---------Spirits Within----------- --|||-------Rage of H-----------
Shield Lob------------Circle of Scorn|||Savage---------Shield Swipe
-----------Provoke-----------------|||-------Fast Blade-----------

Keen eyes will notice that Fight or Flight, Foresight and Mercy Stroke are missing. IMO, foresight is so weak it cannot be used as a cd for emergencies or even big hits. The only real use for it is to keep it on cool down to help level your damage down over time. Similarly, Mercy Stroke isn't really useful for specific situations but rather something to keep on cool down to max your dps. Fight or Flight is also another tool for maxing your dps and threat over time, and there are only a very few places int he game you would want to hold it for. IMO, even these places (conflag, certain dreads in T2, etc) the pld using FOF isn't going to make the difference. If your group is so close you have to be usign FOF every time to get through it... you've got bigger problems. Accordingly, I'd rather use it to max my threat and keep it on cd. As such, I use one macro for pld:

/macroicon "Fast Blade'
/ac "Fast Blade" <t>
/ac "Mercy Stroke" <t>
/ac "Flight or Fight" <me>
/ac "Foresight" <me>

You'll naturally use up these skills while wailing on the button during the gcd after ROH. If you notice one go of, stop hitting it and wait for the gcd to finish (that way you don't clip your rotation by using more than one off gcd skill during a gcd). You can keep hitting it after you land Fast for a moment before moving onto Savage to get max chances to proc these skills and keep them as close to perma-cd as possible.

You really only need one target mark. Throw it up, and right before the target dies put it on the next thing you want the party to pewpew. Since its right there on your top bar its no trouble at all to use.

[SirTaint]

I'm a game pad user. When I get a second I'll take some pics of my cross bars.

I have all my "soft" actions plus ForF tied to one macro.

/macroicon "fight or flight"
/AC ForF
/AC foresight
/AC convalescence
/AC awareness
/AC bloodbath

I don't like ForF on tied to fast blade because on harder content you sometimes need to save it for snap threat.

I also have shield lob and voke on the same macro.

My R2 has
Circle fast
Triangle swift
Square rage
X shield lob/voke

Up shield swipe
Left spirits
Down shield bask
Right riot blade

That allows me to stay in R2 for combos stun silence and swipe of applicable.

L2 has our 4 hard damage down actions on Shapes.

Then stone skin, ForF macro, flash and CofS for the directions.

I use a standard action bar for oaths, tempered and cover. You could easily put those on r2+l2.


Typed this out of my phone so I hope it's clear.

[Gardes]

Making it simpler is nice but I think macros are untrustworthy in this game. Even with stacking non gcds or stacking non gcd with gcd, hence I dont macro my stuns and silences even with announce macros (there's no complicated rotation anyway since it's always just a 2 person pass)

I think it's best use is branching and skillbar changing with /hotbar change X or /chotbar change X:

Bar1:
Fast blade (1), Savage Blade (2), Riot blade (3)

Bar5 (hidden):
Fast blade (1), Savage Blade (2), Rage of halone (3)

On bar1, the savage blade is a macro that executes the savage blade and changes active bar from bar 1 to bar 5 that uses the same key bind (riot blade gets 'replaced' by halone since you just used savage blade). Then on bar 5, the fast blade is a macro that executes fast blade and changes the active bar back to bar 1 (select between savage or riot). Sounds like a lot of work to 'compress' 4 skills into 3 slots but it's alot more precise than /waits and more convenient than manual switching and it works great on controllers and should work on keyboards too. I've also managed to compress alot more with this on war's BB/Storm combos.

[Killabye]

[QUOTE=Seezur_Undies;1723364]OK, so i leveled my my PLD to 50, and i have been playing around with the cross bar setup (got a controller for my PC for christmas) and i tried placing a Macro in it

/ac "Fast Blade" <t>
/ac "Savage Blade" <t>
/ac "Rage of Halone" <t>

My macros, I test them and they work for me but lag can play a factor
/ac "fast blade" <t>
/wait 1.5
/ac fight or flight
/ac bloodbath
/wait 1.0
/ac "savage blade"
/wait 1
/ac "spirits within"
/ac " circle of scorn"
/ac "mercy stroke"
/wait 1.5
/ac rage of halone
Takes two rotations but should buff you

Then I have
Ac fast blade
Wait 1
Ac rampart
Ac awareness
Wait 1.5
Ac savage blade
Wait 1
Ac tempered will
Ac foresight
Ac roh

Buffs in combo and gives buffs I don't really use, takes two rotations but with cool down gives a combo and two buffs in 7 seconds then I have just an roh combo for when I'm saving buffs