FFXIV Ultimate Healer Targeting Macro; or Gamepad Done Right!

[Sadana]

I have fairy summon macros that change which embrace is set to a xbar - you can place skills with macros.. or maybe I misunderstood?

You can place skills with a macro, but you can't place macros with a macro. So, for example, an Embrace + Physick macro can't be placed with the chotbar set command.

[Jakeson]

no complaints personally about using the d-pad to change members. I like your system, it's inventive, but it seems like you're literally doing the same thing I'm doing, and prone to the same errors, but you have two less spots on your hotbar. I personally just use the main hotbar and hotbar 8 with the LT+RT and RT+LT combo. I've gotten quite accurate at it and don't make many errors.

I used to heal in everquest online adventures...you had to scroll through members with R1, if you missed one you had to go all the way through. Granted they were only 4 player parties, but it led to a lot of errors. I think there was a combo button to go back a member, but I don't remember and probably never bothered to learn it.

Kudos?

[Gardes]

I personally love how healing is.. on another MMO, I did kb/mouse, then swapped to a controller using a third party program to map the keys (as the game was not designed for controller use). Soft targetting is awesome.

Soft targeting is neat for sure but FFXI had a party cast targeting that I was more used to and expected when I started playing ARR. The way it worked was that you press heal first and then the 'soft' targeting activates and then lets you select your heal target and then you hit confirm to cast the spell.

It's pretty much classic FF single player rpg style and basically just the logic order of what spell and then casted on who instead of cast on who and then what spell do you want to cast on him/her. There's the downside of having an extra step but I would have liked to have that option to try in ARR. Especially how much of a pain it is to set down a shadowflare/sacredsoil (to me anyway) since you have to let go of the trigger hold that activates the skill to confirm the placement. I mean, I already wanted to place an aoe on the floor, why can't I just tap the same skill button again to confirm it or at least press confirm without letting go of the trigger hold?

You can place skills with a macro, but you can't place macros with a macro. So, for example, an Embrace + Physick macro can't be placed with the chotbar set command.

You can get around that by copying whole sets onto your intended cross bar. It requires sacrificing an entire crossbar for each pet but it works since macros from another crossbar gets copied.

[raela]

You know, have you tried /macrolock? I haven't gotten around to using this. Apparently it prevent other macros from cancelling currently running macros until it finishes. I've seen switched back to non /chotbar change for stance dancing but I imagine this could possibly prevent CS not deactivating..

Yeah, I tried using this once.. it actually made things worse. It prevents the casting of any skill while the macro is going and still can get the bars swapped around wrong. Without it, messing up the swap can result in heals under CS.. with it, heals won't go through and you can't instantly swap again (if you hit it by accident/want to swap back for whatever reason).

[UlricCraft]

Watching that YT video made me feel sharp pains in my thumb.

Do people seriously press the X button constantly to cast spells?
He's hitting Stone II over and over and over and over when it's on cooldown.

I've seen SCH's do it with Embrace + Physic 'cus it fails to cast sometimes, but that seems painful and mad.

[Gardes]

Yeah, I tried using this once.. it actually made things worse. It prevents the casting of any skill while the macro is going and still can get the bars swapped around wrong. Without it, messing up the swap can result in heals under CS.. with it, heals won't go through and you can't instantly swap again (if you hit it by accident/want to swap back for whatever reason).

Well that's what would naturally happen if your heals are made of macros. The /mlock locs out other macros from running after all. I tried the setup with no macros on healing and attack spells but the issue of targeting came up and I fixed it with adding target switching on the 2 stance macros themselves. Turning on cleric would make my target jump from main tank to his target (likely the boss) and turning off cleric would make my target jump from the enemy boss to its target (hopefully the main tank) or number 2 on my party list as a fail safe. That part seems to be working well for me so far after a couple dungeon and trial roulette runs (including titan hm).

[radioactive_lego]

no complaints personally about using the d-pad to change members. I like your system, it's inventive, but it seems like you're literally doing the same thing I'm doing, and prone to the same errors, but you have two less spots on your hotbar.

Error reduction comes from not having to press and release the shoulder buttons to (de)activate the chotbar. Less finger strain because of this as well. I am prone to the same errors of targeting the wrong person, HOWEVER, I will never jump, switch chotbars, cancel or open my chraracter drop-dn menu because my chotbar wasn't active. It's always active.

Not being able to target while moving is an error as well.

And as you can see in the vid, I manage my chotbars pretty well (I'm not any more reliant on spell macros than the next elf).

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

I will never jump, switch chotbars, cancel or open my chraracter drop-dn menu because my chotbar wasn't active.

Um.... I never have this problem.. ever... and I don't use your method.

[radioactive_lego]

Um.... I never have this problem.. ever... and I don't use your method.

Way to go! That was not sarcastic. And in no way do I want you to think it should make you feel wrong, convoluted or difficult. Seriously. I even upvoted you.

[Gardes]

Error reduction comes from not having to press and release the shoulder buttons to (de)activate the chotbar. It's always active.

Not being able to target while moving is an error as well.

Well, there's only so much you can do when there's movement, camera, skill access, friendly targeting, hostile targetting and there's only left and right analog and face buttons and dpad counted as one set and triggers counted as one set and each of them having separate pools of options for gamepad calibration.

This could probably be user fixed had SE allowed the gamepad to hold empty functions and we can instead use xpadder to tie the empty buttons and triggers to an unused hotbar set that activates in game macros. For example, if set select can be turned off like auto run does, you can map your targeting macros like you wanted. But then...you would now be unable to use the standard controller tabbing when you're tanking/dpsing because it now only selects friendlies for you.

Same thing if you make the right analog do nothing from in game and tell the xpadder to go up and down the party list as you flick the right analog up and down and tab target enemies as you flick it left and right and... move camera control to the triggers (imagine just constantly holding a skill trigger while moving with your left thumb, selecting targets with your right thumb and using your index/middle finger to rotate camera. You'd still end up sacrificing your camera control (vertical motion and zoom control).