Skill que's, macros, and off-GCD - looking for some advice! =3

[Eidolon]

Hey there!

Had an interesting subject come up today regarding one of my macro's. I was told that basically, my macro is causing a bit of a further GCD by how I weave them together, and this might cause trouble later on for me if I want to continue tanking. However, I'm not quite understanding conceptually how it's negatively effecting me and I wanted to see what the general issue is with it.


Right now, I have two macros:

/micon "Berserk"
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>
/ac "Unchained" <me>
/ac "Berserk" <me>
/ac "Internal Release" <me>
/wait
/p Self-healing cycles : IR, Zerk, Unchained, Bloodbath

This first one is my Self-healing cycle. Basically, I use it in order to quickly maximize my buffs by constantly bashing it until everything's up. As my GCD comes down, I am hitting the next skill in my chain so that I can quickly go back to being off-GCD and getting the remaining (usually two) skills up. It's similar to the concept of weaving from Dragoons rotation, but a lottabit more spammy to get 2 actions up per GCD.

/micon "Convalescence"
/ac "Convalescence" <me>
/ac "Thrill of Battle" <me>
/wait
/p Conva+Battle: Increased Healing!

This second one is much easier to use in between my GCD's, and it stacks two skills I view as favorable to one another (Basically a self-heal and a way to increase healing on myself.)

================================================

Would anyone be able to explain the concept to me that makes this bad? My understand according to Hayley (Awesome dragoon I ran with who brought this to my attention!) is that it is basically reducing my reaction time by action-locking my character more than necessary. I might be misunderstanding it, but I would like to know if I need to split my Warrior macro's up some more ^^

[Ehayte]

The 2 missing pieces of the puzzle here is the internal global cooldown, or the iGCD, and macro queuing.

The game has an innate cool down on ALL abilities, which is roughly 1.33 seconds. What this means, is that if you are trying to use 2 off-GCD skills between GCDs, you are burning 3.99s (GCD Skill > 1.33s > oGCD Skill > 1.33s > oGCD Skill > 1.33s), which is going to interfere with getting your next GCD off, as you will be well over the average 2.8ish seconds between GCD skills. If you only use one skill between GCDs, you should be golden, only using 2.66s between.

Second, when you macro an ability, it does NOT queue the ability. What I mean by this is that if you have a macro that is "/ac Heavy Swing <t>", you will need to wait for your iGCD or GCD to completely expire before the game will register you having activated that button. AS OPPOSED to a normal hot-keyed action of Heavy Swing, which the game will recognize you have pressed roughly .3 seconds before the GCD or iGCD expires, meaning it will fire off at the exact second it is available as long as you activate it within .3 seconds before the cool down is up, instead of relying on your reflexes of watching the cool-down expire. The computer will ALWAYS win. So if you are waiting on macros, you are definitely losing .05-.3 seconds per skill, which adds up A LOT over time.

Hope that helped.

[Spoekes]

Don't see why this could cause trouble, if you remove your /p spammer line; and for what is that /wait before partychat anyway?

Edit
Tried this on a Dummy, slam Macro till it fires first oGCD Ability, nexr GCD, Macro... no probs at all.
Like mentioned above, try not to use 2 oGCDs between one GCD.

[Ehayte]

Don't see why this could cause trouble, if you remove your /p spammer line; and for what is that /wait before partychat anyway?

The /wait delays the /p "" until he stops spamming the macro.

[Spoekes]

The /wait delays the /p "" until he stops spamming the macro.

makes sense, judgig from this OP, are you trying to activate all oGCD at once?

[Eidolon]

Not at once, trying to do 2 at a time by bashing then going on to my next skill.

But the iGCD thing you mentioned sounds interesting. So more than just the action lock, there's a timer of 1.3 seconds and trying to force two in at once is causing a couple of seconds downtime when activating skills?

I will admit, I do also like this macro particularly for speed runs, where I can activate all 4 before even engaging the enemy (On the approach) and start an overpower cycle. But in content where I need to actually be constantly using GCD's (End-game dungouns, etc.) I try to weave just 2. But I'll reduce it to 1 and simply add a /wait 4 line so that way there's no party chat, weaving 1 GCD between each skill for the self-healing cycle.

[Ehayte]

Not at once, trying to do 2 at a time by bashing then going on to my next skill.

But the iGCD thing you mentioned sounds interesting. So more than just the action lock, there's a timer of 1.3 seconds and trying to force two in at once is causing a couple of seconds downtime when activating skills?

Not only are you burning up 1.33s between each (so a total of 3.99), but you are also burning away the time it takes you to press the button after the cooldown expires. There is no possible way you can be faster than the computer, so even if you are spamming it you are certainly using .1s on each of those, so we're looking at almost doubling your time between attacks, you are approaching 4.3s between using GCD skills.

I will admit, I do also like this macro particularly for speed runs, where I can activate all 4 before even engaging the enemy (On the approach) and start an overpower cycle. But in content where I need to actually be constantly using GCD's (End-game dungouns, etc.) I try to weave just 2. But I'll reduce it to 1 and simply add a /wait 4 line so that way there's no party chat, weaving 1 GCD between each skill for the self-healing cycle.

Honestly, you don't need to let your party know what you are doing. Any good healer will watch your buffs pop up (bloodbath, ToB, Conval, etc). You are gimping yourself by having 1 oGCD skill on a macro at all, because you are not letting the computer work with you on activation of the skill. I would just hot-key them all from your actions list and pop them one at a time between cool-downs. If you are on PC just make another hot-bar that activates with something like SHIFT+q, SHIFT+w, SHIFT+e, SHIFT+r to fire them off. If you are on playstation I would recommend wiring them to the L2+R2>X, L2+R2>O, etc.

[Eidolon]

I appreciate the advice. I hadn't really been aware of the OGCD. I can easily add a Shift+macro bar for adding some extra skill cyclings. :3

[Ehayte]

Glad you found it useful - you can expect my bill for 3 chocobo feathers and an Atma in Moogle Mail.

[Eidolon]

Glad you found it useful - you can expect my bill for 3 chocobo feathers and an Atma in Moogle Mail.

I will give you 2 chocobo feathers, and a bottle containing the collective hopes of the playerbase for a better ATMA system.