Do macros lower dps? (brd specific I suppose)

[Tiva]

There's been some conversation in my fc that macroing skills will lower dps. I'm curious if this is true since I've been macroing my skills since day 1.

I use macros to make bloodletter or misery's end cast if its up like-
/ac "Straight Shot" <t>
/ac"Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
or
/ac "Heavy Shot" <t>
/ac"Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>

Will this type of macro lower dps?
I always thought it would not since the last two skills are off the GCD. I recently returned to the game an found a new fc to raid with and was told this. I'd never heard it before, so I'm curious if I should be changing my actions.

[SeraviEdalborez]

It does, slightly. If you must have a BL+ME+GCD macro, confine it to 1 button you don't use often (like Straight Shot) and just spam that between GCDs. It's better than having it on everything but only slightly worse than missing a BL/ME proc due to not seeing it. You can of course just get better at noticing when they're up (adjusting your UI to make these more noticeable), but I know a good handful of macro BRDs who all do very well up to and including Final Coil.

The DPS increase from going unmacroed isn't that huge (FOR BRD; for other DPS it's no question, do not macro), and it depends on you executing to the fullest 95% of the time to actually achieve the better results.

[RiceisNice]

From my personal experience, animation lock (however slight it will be) will prevent the skills from going out later than it should. I've had better mileage from using the skill manually and weaving it inbetween my GCD than macroing it to my heavy/straight shots. It's also nice to have the freedom of using BL/ME on selective targets. That's just me though.

Since there's really no buff or visual indicator to BL resets from DoTs, what I did was took a hotbar, enlarged it absurdly and BL on the screen where I can easily see it (similar to a focus bar) just to keep track of it's cooldown. Sorta like this http://puu.sh/cyXTw/33978f3cee.png .

Eitherway, switching to macros is going to take some time getting used to. I've been weaving it since I capped, tried out the macro and didn't really like it, and I'm pulling more than my weight in dps so I don't have any problems.

[ExiaQuanta]

from a technical point of view, I think in the past it has been said:

With macros you can't que up your skills while animation lock is happening. Since the "/wait" wont count any half seconds. You can write 2.5 but I think the system see's it as 3 seconds. So instead doing a skill every 2.50 seconds your doing it every three. which is slower dps

[Judge_Xero]

Exactly. Since you can't pre que a skill in a Macro you are losing about 0.5s per GCD skill and more if you are animation locked by an OGCD skill instead of weaving.

Also consider that it negatively effects skill speed.

I.E.
0.5s loss on 2.5 GCD is 20%
0.5s loss on 2.3 GCD is 22%

[Tiva]

Ok I understand, thank you for the clarification. Coming from other mmos that don't have spell animations I did not understand this. I think my dps is ok, but I want to make sure I am doing maximum. I will take off the macros and see if there is an increase.
Thanks all <3