Are macros necessary?

[FoxyAreku]

Macros are actually inefficient and it's better to not use them in every aspect of the game. Really just a tool for you to be lazy, but they cause lag and make things take longer, and if you use them on battle jobs they will cause you to miss several GCDs in the long run. You can get away with it on crafting jobs if you're geared enough, but it's always more efficient to do it by hand.

So no, not necessary, and actually better if you don't use them at all.

[BorisDaBlade]

Text macros tend to make me do the exact opposite of what the macro says.
I'll go out of my way to not despell any WAR who spams the chat and my ears with his annoying sound-based macro about his buff ending and needing despell soon.

I 100% agree with this. I just take the macro as the WAR reminding themselves of how long they have until they can sit on their thumbs for 5 seconds.

[Canadane]

Text macros are just as bad as regular macros. Even if all you're doing is using a single oGCD ability, it still won't queue, it suffers from the possibility of being ignored due to lag.

[Garotte14]

I 100% agree with this. I just take the macro as the WAR reminding themselves of how long they have until they can sit on their thumbs for 5 seconds.

I don't understand this. First, let me say I'm not a warrior and it's the only job I haven't leveled. Only at 15 so I'm not defending anything, but how is that acceptable? If you are purposely going out of your way to not do your job, that makes you the worst type of player because you're being bad by choice. It's a game and ppl have different play styles. You don't have to like them all. Some tanks mark mobs, and some don't. Well I don't need marks as a dps because I know which target the tank is attacking, so I guess its ok to then just purposely attack the mob marked 3 instead of 1 just because he annoyed annoyed me because I don't like to be told which mob to attack. That's just plain ignorant.

[Knahli]

A basic macro that you may want to consider is a simple one for placing any ground AoE's - assuming that your class has any. Instead of having to aim their positioning manually each time, you can set it to drop directly beneath your current target.

[Jpec07]

Honestly, the animation locks tend to make macros less useful than they could otherwise be. I have Bloodbath and Fight or Flight on the same button, but I need to either spam it in between GCD actions or watch for the animation. Those two are always used together, and it bothers me tremendously whenever the second action fails to fire (which is just enough to annoy me).

They'd also be handier if you could use items in macros, reference other macros, halt execution on error, and/or use conditional logic, but I digress.

[Atoli]

If you are purposely going out of your way to not do your job, that makes you the worst type of player because you're being bad by choice.

90% of the time, I have better things to do than despell the 1 1/2 seconds debuff he has left.
The remaining 10%, I totally do it for tanks who are not being annoying about it. The problem is that many macros are ALSO actively bad by choice.
So you have newbies in the moogle fight and mark the moogles in the first phase in order for the newbies to know what to attack. Oh hey, second phase begins and the tank spams his stupid pull macro that displays all the numbers as a countdown on him, actively destroying any markings we set before
Oh, you are trying to explain something essential in chat or even just have a nice conversation with someone? Here, have my 15 lines macro about my debuff ending, complete with any sound effect the game has offered me to use so any immersion the BGM might have built up is gone!

If people actively destroy my enjoyment of the game, I don't feel to bad about annoying them back, as childish as that might sound.

[Jamillion]

Macros are actually inefficient and it's better to not use them in every aspect of the game. Really just a tool for you to be lazy, but they cause lag and make things take longer, and if you use them on battle jobs they will cause you to miss several GCDs in the long run. You can get away with it on crafting jobs if you're geared enough, but it's always more efficient to do it by hand.

So no, not necessary, and actually better if you don't use them at all.

I think you're underestimating macros. Not saying they're essential or anything but there are a ton of useful macros you can create. Text macros to announce mechanics without voice chat, macros to disable b4b or regen, hunt macros, gearset/sorting macros, the list goes on and on.

To the OP, macros are not essential to enjoying the game but you should experiment with them to see if anything you can do would be enriched with them.

[Mithrahn]

Macros are actually inefficient and it's better to not use them in every aspect of the game. Really just a tool for you to be lazy, but they cause lag and make things take longer, and if you use them on battle jobs they will cause you to miss several GCDs in the long run. You can get away with it on crafting jobs if you're geared enough, but it's always more efficient to do it by hand.

So no, not necessary, and actually better if you don't use them at all.

Good luck HQ-ing 8000 materials (at minimal) in one shot without going crazy.

Jab aside.

I use macros while I craft so I can multitask.
Set up a multi-part craft macro, add some sound effect to alert me when each part is done, so that I can multitask, like browsing the internet or watching videos or doing my work at the office while pressing the button to HQ certain common materials, and basically most of the food items.
Basically I just go:-
Press Part 1 Button > wait for sound, or just wait until I'm free again > Press Part 2 button > wait for sound > etc > rinse and repeat, while at the same time multitasking with other stuff.


Obviously, for serious hi-quali crafts, better do it manually.


Point Being: Macros can be very useful depending on situation, just probably a lot less for combat classes.

[Laerune]

I have never used macros ingame and so far I am doing Oke, but I did hear from my friends that macros are very handy when crafting.