Mouseover Macros

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Personally I macro all my cast time dps spells on my scholar with the pet command to cast embrace on my target's target. That way no matter what dps spell I am casting (love to spam buttons) my fairy is casting embrace on cooldown and not waiting for people to get sub 60%. I tried doing this with my instant casts as well but it felt like their was a few millisecond delay with those that I don't experience with the cast time spells.

For heals I have all as mouseover macros. It improves my response time dramatically. In addition my macros include the pet command to cast embrace on my mouseover target as well. The same is done for Leeches whoever I am cleansing gets healed too.

The response time gains from these macros allow me to more efficiently heal and swap to dps and back when possible without causing deaths among my party members. I have not noticed any queuing issues or delays with this setup.

[GeekMatt]

Ive tried it but now I intentionally don't use macros as a healer. The inability to queue up skills was just too much of a hinderance for me—obviously you can make it work and there's the benefit of hotbar space, but I found I'd need a lot of attention on my CDs, which just drew my eyes away from all the other details such as spotting a DRG standing in an AoE, or a mechanic that I needed to be wary of, etc etc.

I feel like mouse over macros are probably more sensible (I'm PS4), but using macros solely for combining skills will just limit the player. Also, while I originally wanted to use macros to save space, I found that not having access to every skill individually would limit me as as a player, so my swiftcast>Rez macro didn't save me a spot since I needed Swiftcast on my crossbar separately anyways.

I still use a Rez macro just for the novelty of being able to post a message in chat, but every time I do I can clearly see how much attention it's requiring from me compared to standard use of skills. I target the player, wait for my GCD to complete, hit the macro so it can activate and then I STARE at his buffs until he gets the raise. Switching targets before the second macro'd skill activates on your target is a common healer issue.

[Kaurie]

I guess I don't see the point of a mouse over macro if you don't haev both on there? The advantage, that I understand, is that I can have my tank focused and quickly hover my mouse over a DPS to heal them and remove it to continue healing the tank.

Either way, I've tried mouse over macros a couple of times and they've always made me perform much worse, so I don't use em. Great if the work well for you =)

I suppose if my mouse had more buttons it would work - but I have exhausted all my button options. I use CTRL/Shift on my 2 extra mouse buttons to augment my 1-6, z-b, q, e, ~

EDIT: Have been thinking more on it - and I suppose if I can find one unused button, it would be nice to have a mouseover macro attached. I just don't think I have any buttons left.

[Nyalia]

I suppose if my mouse had more buttons it would work - but I have exhausted all my button options.

I guess I'm just used to having infinite buttons. I have six toolbars per class set up, and four that aren't per-class for manual clicking common actions. I can reasonably access 2/3rds of the six toolbars via buttons. I could set the rest to easier-to-press things, but I don't really have a need to. I have like, three different buttons for Benediction - a mouseover mouse button, a targeted keyboard button, and a targeted mouse button so I can hit whatever's convenient.

All of my classes that can use E4E have it set to the same mouse button on a mouse-over macro so I can hit the tank as they go past for a pull. Those classes also have Virus set to the same mouse button on a mouse-over macro, but with shift held down. They're both things I want to be able to do to targets other than my selected target or focus target, and if I hit the wrong one on a target, nothing happens. I guess I could macro those together to a single button, but then I wouldn't get to see the CD.

[Kaurie]

I guess I'm just used to having infinite buttons. I have six toolbars per class set up, and four that aren't per-class for manual clicking common actions. I can reasonably access 2/3rds of the six toolbars via buttons. I could set the rest to easier-to-press things, but I don't really have a need to. I have like, three different buttons for Benediction - a mouseover mouse button, a targeted keyboard button, and a targeted mouse button so I can hit whatever's convenient.
All of my classes that can use E4E have it set to the same mouse button on a mouse-over macro so I can hit the tank as they go past for a pull. Those classes also have Virus set to the same mouse button on a mouse-over macro, but with shift held down. They're both things I want to be able to do to targets other than my selected target or focus target, and if I hit the wrong one on a target, nothing happens. I guess I could macro those together to a single button, but then I wouldn't get to see the CD.

Yeah, I have a decent set up using Shift/CTRL on my mouse - unfortunately, 2 of the 4 extra mouse buttons stopped working some months back Damn you Logitech!!

As mentioned, I use Shift/CTRL 1-6, z-b, q, e, ~ and F. I suppose I could make a mouseover heal macro on 7, but that is awkward to hit and I'm not sure if the convenience of mouseover would offset the awkwardness of 7.

I do a similar thing where I put the same sort of skills in the same location (i.e. swiftcast in the same spot for SMN, SCH, WHM, BLM). I also generally put spells on 1-6, abilities on shift 1-6, AoE on ~/shift ~. With healers I put my DPS spells on CTRL 1-6 due to heals on regular 1-6. etc. etc.

[Nyalia]

I also generally put spells on 1-6, abilities on shift 1-6, AoE on ~/shift ~. With healers I put my DPS spells on CTRL 1-6 due to heals on regular 1-6. etc. etc.

7 for me is a great place to put things I don't generally need, but sometimes want, like Stoneskin for PLD. I don't use it enough to justify putting it in an easier to reach spot, but I need to be able to hit it reasonably easily when I do need it. For non-healers, I generally put spells and weaponskills on 1-7/f1-5/shift1-4, abilities on my mouse 1-12 keys (it has a numpad for your thumb), mouseover macros on the scrollwheel button (and shift+that button and ctrl+that button), and mode changes on the two buttons next to my scroll wheel. I don't usually want many mouseovers for non-healing. For healing, I have more mouseovers on the mouse, which pushes a few abilities to my keyboard instead to make room for them.

For healers, I generally put my single target attack on 4 and my DoTs on 5, 6, and 7. If things aren't tense, I don't need the keys to be super convenient, and if things ARE tense, I'm not going to be DPSing. I save all the easy to reach keys for various forms of heals. I personally don't like having common DPS skills on shift buttons because I like being able to kill easy things with a single finger - it takes less effort and attention, and I can have my hand in any position, where holding shift requires curling my pinky in a way that's not super comfortable.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic here! Sorry ^^;

[Tashim]

I have mouseover heal macros on hotbar slots that are keybound to button 4 and button 5 on my mouse, so I can just click those on nameplates, or over people directly to heal without changing targets.

[Katlyna]

I've been using mouse over heal macros since release. But you have to be a bit careful with them. The core problem is NOT loosing your cursor to someone, or reactive healing. The problem is that macros are not operational switches on repetitive casts. And no ability queuing What this means is the following:

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If you have this macro (NOTE THIS I A BAD MACRO):

/macroicon "Cure III"
/macroerror off
/ac "Cure III" <mouse>
/ac "Cure III" <t>
/ac "Cure III" <tt>
/ac "Cure III" <me>

And you cast that macro repetitively healing say a tank. If you tap the macro each time while not casting it will validly run through the list and do the first available action. Which per the above design would be mouse over first, your target second, target of target (usually tank), and then you. Which is the fairly traditional WoW healer macro priority.

THE PROBLEM is if you cast this same macro while casting BEFORE the next ability queue something strange occurs. Specifically the macro keeps running (each line takes X amount of time to run). IF your ability queue activates while your macro is still running the line its at will attempt to execute (and then all lines below). This means that with a traditional long style mouse over heal macro, you run a notable chance of executing the macro incorrectly, and a heal going to the wrong person. I noticed this when I started raiding and had to debug what was going on.

---

Consequently I changed to the following (NOTE THIS IS AN OK MACRO):
/macroicon "Cure III"
/macroerror off
/ac "Cure III" <mouse>
/ac "Cure III" <tt>

This adjustment limited my macro to two lines. It meant that if I'm moused over the tank (or have nothing targeted and am right clicking - which gives no mouse over targets) I will always heal the tank. No heals can get sucked up anywhere else due to SE strange design. Now while using this macro to heal prey... if heavily spammed there would still be a small chance for a heal to get sucked off to the tank (if I still have the boss targeted). But generally speaking I've found this completely ok for healing savage raid content. The number of heals sucked off to the tank while healing someone else is virtually non existent.

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The last part of the issue is the ability queuing not working. This part sucks flat out. It does result in some loss in healing or DPS with macros. I'm not aware of any work around here except spamming your heals near the GCD.

[Katlyna]

Note that the IDEAL mouse over macro is:

Consequently I changed to the following (NOTE THIS IS AN OK MACRO):
/macroicon "Cure III"
/macroerror off
/ac "Cure III" <mouse>

With ONLY one action. Making a zero chance of your heals wandering from spamming the ability too fast while waiting for your next GCD.

[Rongway]

(NOTE THIS IS AN OK MACRO)

Better is

/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/ac (Healing Spell) <mo>
/micon (Healing Spell)



This gives a pseudo-queueing window of 1/4 to 1/2 second, does not have to step over the /micon line on every run, and doesn't offer alternate targets.
Contextual targeting is great for buffs and binds/heavies, bad for heals.