macros: bad for DPS?

[Rankina]

Macros are great for DPS. However you need to know when to use them.
Every class i have has a full rotation of their main abilities. However, the only time these are used, is when there are movement-intensive mechanics where more attention has to be payed to staying alive than pressing your hotbar keys. Being able to just stay within hit range of your target but pay full attention to movement and the surrounding area is a big bonus. Cant DPS if you're dead. So that slower rotation is a good payoff for staying alive.
If you can stand still, or have a relaxed fight, having all your abilities on the bar and using in optimal rotation with that .5 less between everything is awesome.

Stop playing Monk.

[Gardes]

Absolutely. Just using macro itself is bad. Mostly because macros can't be queued. Look at your non macro spell and press it. Then as its gcd finishes rotating, press it again before the gcd clock hits 12 (between 9 and 12). Your character will immediately cast the next spell after casting your first one. That's called skill/spell queuing and macro will not be able to do that. Try and see for yourself. Make a spell macro without anything but 1 spell it in it and the /micon and test it.

Imagine [----] is a cast time and ___ is the time for the server to receive your commands after you send it. With spell queuing, it would be something like
[---][---]

With macros, it would be something like
[---]__[---]
because you will have to wait for your first spell to finish before sending out a command that the server will accept and the command will have to travel from your pc to the server in between spells instead before the previous one finishes and it's hugely dependent on your latency to the server. Over time, you will cast less spells than an non macro user and end up with lower dps. I'm not even sure if the /wait is done client side or server side. If it's client side, it's even worse because it'll have the same problems I mentioned above plus the rounded up numbers on /wait. I still use macros but I have cut down on them a lot on my dps classes.

[KamikazeMan]

The only thing I macro is the Flare that comes after Transpose for speedruns. I use /wait 1 followed by Flare. The only reason I do this is because Brayflox got really boring and I tend to lose focus...that macro was made so I never mess up my Flare spam, lol. But like somebody already mentioned: don't use them as part of your regular rotation. It could lead to a lot of mistakes and, of course, it will lead to a significant loss in your dps.

[Billzey]

Another big problem with macros is that they cannot be queued like regular actions. This is particularly pertinent to BRDs who use the all-in-one macro. Heavy shot by itself can be pressed before its recast is up and fire immediately/automatically the moment its recast hits 0. Macros on the other hand cannot be pressed before their recast is up and fire immediately in the same way. No matter how amazing you are at spamming macros, there will always be a slight delay before a macro can fire a second time.

However, b/c you do not need to queue off-gcd abilities, using macros for things like buffs, abilities like bloodletter/misery's end, etc. is perfectly fine and can actually improve your dps. For example, I find it helpful to macro misery's end and bloodletter together, misery's end on the first line, bloodletter on the second, so that I never have to worry about accidentally hitting bloodletter before misery's end. I do the same for repelling shot.

[Kaskel2000]

But to me that's part of the skill of playing a black mage, being able to do great dps and move. (And why I'm glad for the single dps increase rather than movement buff for balm in 2.3). I'd rather that've the flexibility of choice when it comes to skill selection than starting a macro, breaking it by moving, starting right at the beginning killing the rotation. Only macro on blm I use is a flare one and only as I don't normally bed to move when there is a mass of mobs. Whm I macro but only for target selection as it's easier with a controller. I'm glad macros have limited use in ffxiv, used to pvp in rift 24/7 and that was pretty much a one button macro win button on there version of a fire Mage.

[QuCont]

IMO, most people overestimate themselves.
Those at the sharp end of raiding will probably be able to make use of those few milliseconds.

For the rest of us scrubs, saving a few milliseconds here and there isn't going to make much of a difference. Whatever milliseconds you think you saved, you just lost the next time you needed to run/avoid something, or the boss becomes invulnerable.

Use whatever makes you comfortable.
That comfort is what raises your DPS output.

[Morningstar1337]

Okay so I decided to use macros for buffs and a Flare cooldown for BLM. If I can get to a spell speed point where all the cast time are in seconds (which if unlikely if the GBC is fixed) then I may try fitting my MP restoration macro in again (and maybe add Raging strikes to make up for lost DPS)

Still I'd want to see evidence of a macros's DPS both from normal players and those skilled enough to tackle SCoB and/or Leviathan EX so if anyone is willing to make or find comparison videos for DPS performance with macros and DPS performance without I'd be grateful (and I'll add then to the OP for all to see)

[ispano]

Okay so I decided to use macros for buffs and a Flare cooldown for BLM. If I can get to a spell speed point where all the cast time are in seconds (which if unlikely if the GBC is fixed) then I may try fitting my MP restoration macro in again (and maybe add Raging strikes to make up for lost DPS)

Still I'd want to see evidence of a macros's DPS both from normal players and those skilled enough to tackle SCoB and/or Leviathan EX so if anyone is willing to make or find comparison videos for DPS performance with macros and DPS performance without I'd be grateful (and I'll add then to the OP for all to see)

The other problem is like other's have said with skill queueing. Even if your GCD was, say, 1.99 seconds due to Skill/Spell Speed and you set the wait to 2 seconds, you run into a problem. Latency. It very well could be skipping actions even though your GCD is lower than the wait time. Also, this is an intentional design. It's intended for a macro to be worse than do it yourself for things like this.

[Morningstar1337]

The other problem is like other's have said with skill queueing. Even if your GCD was, say, 1.99 seconds due to Skill/Spell Speed and you set the wait to 2 seconds, you run into a problem. Latency. It very well could be skipping actions even though your GCD is lower than the wait time. Also, this is an intentional design. It's intended for a macro to be worse than do it yourself for things like this.

Actuualy I think it serves an indirect purpose tot hat end. When i was testing my MP macro I noticed that Thunder III was skipped because I was I was still casting Blizzard II. I "fixed it by adjusting the /wait time by a few decimals. But if the wait times being rounded is true, then I suspect its to give the illusion of faster queves.

Still I will make my MP macro, but I don't think I'll be using it except for rare situations (and odds are that those will include slow or slowing down DPS anyway.)

[saeedaisspecial]

Still I'd want to see evidence of a macros's DPS both from normal players and those skilled enough to tackle SCoB and/or Leviathan EX so if anyone is willing to make or find comparison videos for DPS performance with macros and DPS performance without I'd be grateful (and I'll add then to the OP for all to see)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...LF4IfFaM#t=255
Watch from 4:15 onwards in the video.