SCH macro troubles

[Manuka]

Do you think I can make a macro that involves a stay command to break any of Selene's current cast and have her begin casting Silent Dusk at the same time?

Yup and to great affect too. Try these out;

For Eos:

Whispering Dawn + Rouse Macro
/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
warning!! do not click more than once or you risk breaking WD mid-cast. If you want to be 100% safe put a /wait after stay.

/macroicon "Fey Covenant" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Fey Covenant" <me>

For Selene:

/macroicon "Silent Dusk" pet
/pac "Heel" <me>
/pac "Silent Dusk" <t>
I suggest heel because silent dusk has a smaller range than her embrace, so if she's always following you this macro will allow her to move in-range to cast.

/macroicon "Fey Glow" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Fey Glow" <me>
/pac "Fey Light" <me>
Tap this one whenever light/glow expires an it'll cast whichever one is off CD.

If ya wanna test'em first, manually cast embrace then click these macros and see if you like the feel of it or not.

Actually if you're interested check my post history, I wrote a macro guide for the controller a while back that you might find some useful info in. It's kinda outdated, like back then I had to put a /wait after the "stay" command otherwise the abilities wouldn't work properly (the patch where they changed the Obey behaviour also changed how macro'd pet actions behaved with fairy skills in the same 'line').

Also on the topic of macros and macro trouble, has anyone ever noticed when you create a macro, you don't have the option of hitting the action early anymore to cast it again? For instance, the regular Physick action, when you cast it and the line rotates around the icon, when it lights up again (before the line makes a full rotation), you can hit the button to cast again and it will once the line makes a full rotation. Can't do that with Physick macros though

Yeah it's unfortunate but I believe that has to do with how the server handles skill procedure. When you queue an unmacro'ed skill it's actually your client that is queuing it then sending it ahead of time. However with macros and fairy abilities (contrary to the earlier statement fairy skills do not have the .5 skill queue) you are essentially sending a grocery list to the server asking it to perform these actions in this order, which is also why pressing a macro again deletes the previous one. With this in mind I'd advise against macro'in embrace to any of your core healing skills. Give embrace its own spot to prevent accidentally breaking WD while giving your physick/adlo that .5 queue ability. This is just my preference tho~

[EvianEverdeen]

Whispering Dawn + Rouse Macro
/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
warning!! do not click more than once or you risk breaking WD mid-cast. If you want to be 100% safe put a /wait after stay.

I like this macro a lot now that I found out that Stay breaks current cast. How would you write the above macro if I wanted to include Fey Illumination before Whispering Dawn and only wanted to have to hit the macro button once and be done with it? I'm guessing a second Stay pet action would have to be included in there somewhere? Thanks, you're brilliant!

P.S. Also, I am guessing that if I were to use the above macro and similar, I would not be able to cast any heal spell that has an Embrace macro'd into it. That presents another issue. My setup right now, I have Rouse macro'd with Fey Illumination (and I have Fey Illumination on my hotbar too to make sure it went off) and I have the regular Whispering Dawn pet action also on my hotbar that I will just spam until I see that it has started casting or cooled down.

[Manuka]

I like this macro a lot now that I found out that Stay breaks current cast. How would you write the above macro if I wanted to include Fey Illumination before Whispering Dawn and only wanted to have to hit the macro button once and be done with it? I'm guessing a second Stay pet action would have to be included in there somewhere? Thanks, you're brilliant!

P.S. Also, I am guessing that if I were to use the above macro and similar, I would not be able to cast any heal spell that has an Embrace macro'd into it. That presents another issue. My setup right now, I have Rouse macro'd with Fey Illumination (and I have Fey Illumination on my hotbar too to make sure it went off) and I have the regular Whispering Dawn pet action also on my hotbar that I will just spam until I see that it has started casting or cooled down.

No, no need for a second Stay. Once you have committed a fairy to a macro they're pretty good at following it through from my experience. The macro would look something like this:

/macroicon "Fey Illumination" pet
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Fey Illumination" <me>
/wait 2
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>

Keep in mind I just whipped this up and tested it slightly so I don't know how it'll hold up if you have a spotty connection. Which also is why I really don't advise using macro's that rely on /wait's to fulfill their actions, especially for important things like Rouse +FI +WD. I would advise sticking to the mash macro I posted earlier because not only is it faster (/wait's will always be slower than just pressing a skill) you'll less likely get screwed over by lag which can break your macro, or in the rare case, perform it out of order (WD coming before FI).

As to your PS; If you're gonna use macro's you really only need two "Whispering Dawn's" on your bar. One that combines Rouse, Fey Illumination and Whispering dawn with the '/macroicon "Fey Illumination" pet' to show you its CD. And another that combines Whispering Dawn and Rouse with '/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet' to show you their CDs. Since Rouse and WD share the same 60 sec CD there is really no reason to use them independently and if you are casting FI there is really really no reason to not cast R+WD as that gives you the strongest team-wide HoT available to SCH's. Also you can macro embrace to all your heal abilities if you wish, as long as the other macros are mainly mashro's or 'one-liners' that execute instantly. Like once WD is casting pressing a physick+embrace macro won't break it, only being interrupted by a monster or clicking a pet order will. I just personally don't like it because I oft order the fairies to off heal some melee dps that got nicked or after party-wide damage and casting WD I find letting her AI take-over is pretty efficient in most cases as it's good at picking out the lowest health members in her range. On my bar I have Embrace and Physick side-by-side an mash'em as a pair for those single target cures. It's up to you really!

[Ninix]

I like that Stay idea a lot, I never considered that it could be used to interrupt her current action to make sure she properly executes a cooldown when I order it. Does it work if you only press the button once, though? In my experience any time you have multiple pet actions in one macro they don't seem to work sequentially without a /wait or unless you mash the button.

Which also is why I really don't advise using macro's that rely on /wait's to fulfill their actions

But yeah, the problem with /wait commands is that you can only have one macro running at a time, so if you have a /wait 2 somewhere in a macro, and you also use macros for your regular heal spells (for mouseover healing, for example) then you cannot use those heal spells for two seconds after you use your cooldown macro or you'll break it.

[Manuka]

I like that Stay idea a lot, I never considered that it could be used to interrupt her current action to make sure she properly executes a cooldown when I order it. Does it work if you only press the button once, though? In my experience any time you have multiple pet actions in one macro they don't seem to work sequentially without a /wait or unless you mash the button.

Back when I first discovered this they couldn't be executed at the same time as they wouldn't work properly and Stay was outright broken on Selene (she couldn't cast Silent Dusk while in Stay, even if I dropped her right beside the enemy) so I had to use Obey to break her casts. However the patch where they revamped the fairy behaviour changed how the pet orders work; Like Obey no longer breaks castings, Stay no longer borks Silent Dusk, Heel can break casts just as easily as Stay now (heel would only break casts when she was at a distance, if she was behind you it would do nothing) and the biggest change, orders are now near instant relative to the fairy's moves. I'm not 100% sure what they changed but my guess is that they moved the pet orders client side (which might explain why Sic is now completely locked out) in an attempt to make her more responsive. Basically, you probably noticed how when ya click a fairy skill they take their sweet time in casting it? Well when ya click these macro's that delay acts as a pseudo /wait in-between the Order and Skill which makes these work 99% of the time now I find.

But yeah, the problem with /wait commands is that you can only have one macro running at a time, so if you have a /wait 2 somewhere in a macro, and you also use macros for your regular heal spells (for mouseover healing, for example) then you cannot use those heal spells for two seconds after you use your cooldown macro or you'll break it.

Pretty much!

[ManaKeKz]

I like that Stay idea a lot, I never considered that it could be used to interrupt her current action to make sure she properly executes a cooldown when I order it. Does it work if you only press the button once, though? In my experience any time you have multiple pet actions in one macro they don't seem to work sequentially without a /wait or unless you mash the button.

I've done some tests with the Silence macro for Selene earlier this week, which is /pac stay and /pac "silent dusk" <f>. During a Stone Vigil run I tried to interrupt the ice sprites casts and also tried to use the macro explicitly while Selene was casting Embrace. Granted, the number of tries is very limited, but it worked fine for me with pressing the button once (as in interrupt landed in time).

[Layla-chan]

Yup and to great affect too. Try these out;

For Eos:

Whispering Dawn + Rouse Macro
/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet
/ac "Rouse" <me>
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
warning!! do not click more than once or you risk breaking WD mid-cast. If you want to be 100% safe put a /wait after stay.

/macroicon "Fey Covenant" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Fey Covenant" <me>

For Selene:

/macroicon "Silent Dusk" pet
/pac "Heel" <me>
/pac "Silent Dusk" <t>
I suggest heel because silent dusk has a smaller range than her embrace, so if she's always following you this macro will allow her to move in-range to cast.

/macroicon "Fey Glow" pet
/pac "Stay" <me>
/pac "Fey Glow" <me>
/pac "Fey Light" <me>
Tap this one whenever light/glow expires an it'll cast whichever one is off CD.

If ya wanna test'em first, manually cast embrace then click these macros and see if you like the feel of it or not.

Actually if you're interested check my post history, I wrote a macro guide for the controller a while back that you might find some useful info in. It's kinda outdated, like back then I had to put a /wait after the "stay" command otherwise the abilities wouldn't work properly (the patch where they changed the Obey behaviour also changed how macro'd pet actions behaved with fairy skills in the same 'line').



Yeah it's unfortunate but I believe that has to do with how the server handles skill procedure. When you queue an unmacro'ed skill it's actually your client that is queuing it then sending it ahead of time. However with macros and fairy abilities (contrary to the earlier statement fairy skills do not have the .5 skill queue) you are essentially sending a grocery list to the server asking it to perform these actions in this order, which is also why pressing a macro again deletes the previous one. With this in mind I'd advise against macro'in embrace to any of your core healing skills. Give embrace its own spot to prevent accidentally breaking WD while giving your physick/adlo that .5 queue ability. This is just my preference tho~

Thanks for the tip! Thanks to this I made some fooling around and found that /pac "Heel" <me> also works just as well as Stay for me Indeed, I like Heel better than Stay in most instances

[Gylwin]

With this in mind I'd advise against macro'in embrace to any of your core healing skills. Give embrace its own spot to prevent accidentally breaking WD while giving your physick/adlo that .5 queue ability. This is just my preference tho~

Really glad I came across this. I added one of the many Phys/Aldo macros, but couldn't work out why healing just felt "off". This would be why. It doesn't seem to be a very well known fact about healing macros (or macros in general).

With my latency on a non-macro Physick I can hit the spell once when the cooldown animation on the icon goes past 3/4, and it'll start the next cast right away.

When I try it with Physick in a macro, this doesn't happen at all, the spell has to finish its cast/gcd before the next and depending on your latency this could potentially cut down your healing throughput by a noticeable amount.

Definitely going the way you did and having non-macro heals and Embrace on its own button.

[Manuka]

Thanks for the tip! Thanks to this I made some fooling around and found that /pac "Heel" <me> also works just as well as Stay for me Indeed, I like Heel better than Stay in most instances

Np! and yeah depending on your playstyle replacing Stay with Heel would be the best route. It's just that I personally use a combo'd Place/ Heel macro constantly that gives me both actions in a single click. Actually if you or anybody wants to try it out it's:

/pac "Place" <me>
/pac "Heel" <me>

I love this macro cause not only does save me a slot it makes moving her outta AoE's really easy and re-placing her after a knockback much more fluid (Heel triggers that half a sec wind-up when moving so it's less apparent when you confirm her new placement). Just be sure to wright it in that order, otherwise you won't get the Place reticle.

-snip-

I wouldn't say it isn't widely known, it is the sole reason why there aren't many dps macro setups out there. It's just that most healers don't really care for the .5 sec queue enough to forgo the convenience of combo'in Embrace an Physick, which is why most healer macro guides tend to overlook that aspect. Our class isn't built to to milk the GCD for all its worth like the DPS do. That said there are healing intensive moments due to mechanics or general team f**k-ups where having that .5 queue is glorious and is reason enough for me to want it. Keep in mind though that this doesn't apply to Embrace, so the solo embrace skill you can turn into a mouseover macro and it'll be just as slow as the base Embrace.

Also did you make a reddit thread about this? Cause there's one that sounds a lot like your post on the front page hahah