Are macros necessary?

[Rawrz]

Personally I like when a war gives me 5 and 1 second notice for berserk. It helps me time fey caress.

Macros can be wonderful if you use them right.
Repeating lines help a macro queue, since every .05-.1ish seconds, it will try to activate it on each line.
I personally love what I call gateway or proxy macros.
As an SCH I juggle 4 main hotbars and a back hotbar. A healing hotbar and a dps one for each fairy.

When I am on my healing hotbar and I hit Cleric Stance, it moves me to the fairy appropriate dps hotbar. It does not actually activate cleric stance, but the catch is, cleric stance is in the same slot, so pressing the button twice, as normal players often will, I have changed to my dps hotbar and I queued cleric stance. The same is healing. My dps hotbar has adlo, physick and lustrate setup to attempt to use the skill in the macro, but also to change to the fairy appropriate healing hotbar. To some this looks like horrendous madness, but to me it's a beautiful machine that keeps me pressing the core buttons.

Made this and thought I'd share here too:

There actually IS a way to macro this. It's /additionalaction or something along those lines. Look it up in text commands when making a Macro. You can remove one skill and add another. I have that set for my DRG when I swap between PvP and PvE - I keep Mantra on for PvE, and I use Foresight instead in PvP. I can get you the actual macro lines I use for it tomorrow! C:

I made one myself actually! Thanks again so much xD.

I chose the lightbulb for my macroicon but none really matters.

/Macrolock
/echo You are switching your cross class skills. The following skill will be disabled:
/recast "Stoneskin"
/recast "Blizzard II"
/aaction "Blizzard II"
/aaction "Stoneskin"
/aaction "Blizzard II" on
/chotbar action "Stoneskin" 8 13
/chotbar action "Blizzard II" 8 13
/echo Your current Crossclass has been changed to the following:
/recast "Stoneskin"
/recast "Blizzard II"


xD Its Macrolocked, because its kind of slow and I wouldn't want it to mess up. The game just cant do this action as quickly as hotbar/text commands. Bar 8, slot 13 is just where mine is on my cross hotbar (ps4) and youll have to enter your own if anyone wants to use this. If on PC, use /hotbar instead of /chotbar command.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

For the person who said they go out of their way to do the opposite of what an annoying macro might call for, sure, no one likes dealing with those. But I'm pretty sure no one likes uncooperative party members either.

Yes, Berserk macros with sounds and countdowns can be annoying. And snarky, sarcasm filled Raise macros or overdone pull macros can be irritating at times, but it's no excuse to completely do the opposite. In a case like that, who's really the bad guy?

[Alistaire]

Asking if they're necessary is missing the point. There should be 2 categories for people to think about here, macros that are useful and those that aren't.

For battle, most macros are actually counterproductive. The best macros for battle are the new ones for ground target aoes, other beneficial ones like embrace spamming, and /statusoff "Blood for Blood" for times you need it to be gone before a big hit. Anything related to anything on gcd other than those situations will slow you down.

Outside of battle classes go for it, though lag can mess em up.

[Lambdafish]

One useful macro that is widely used is the deliverance macro that changes the skills on your hotbar from inner beast to fell cleave and steel cyclone to decimate.

I also have a macro for every single one of my DPS skills on my healers, which means that if the target is invalid, it will cast it on the targets target (so I can stay on the Mt and DPS), as a healer I'm not really worrying about optimal DPS so having these as macros seemed ok to me, though if that's wrong I'd love to know.

[Yasuhiro]

If I have to hear a Warrior macro his fellcleave to a sound effect so we notice it or their pacification macro again...I will be mildly disgruntled for a few seconds
I don't mind provoke and raise macro's though as long as its not a wall of text trying to be funny, not that I care, too busy concentrating on the battle.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Personally, I only use macros for provoke, Raise, Eye for am Eye, Virus, and Collective Unconscious. Plez don't cleanse my pacification! My arms are tired after triple fell cleaving, I need a quick breather to relax.

[nexas506]

Definitely helpful, like having one for provoke and reviving to better communicate what you're doing to your co healer /tank.
But my favorite has to be the one where you can make a ground targeted AOE can't directly on your target.
I also haven for my bard that lets me hear a sound effect when its time to reapply my DOTS.

[FoxyAreku]

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.

This.

Please use more berserk macros, warriors. That's the only kind I would really like to see more of, hopefully with a sound effect. My bard loves having a reason to use Wanderer's Paean.

[AskaRay]

As a bard, I like certain Berserk macros...the simple ones letting me know you've used it.

That's all I need.

I do not need fifty countdowns. You don't need to time it. The Warden's Paean buff lasts for 45 seconds and Berserk is active for like...what...20? I sing that shit as soon as Berserk is up. No need for a countdown for when it disappears; it's too late then, I won't care.

[Destous]

For tanks and DPS, they're hardly ever worth the effort. Healers should have macros for focus target and mouseover healing.

Outside of skill based macros, macros that have chat alerts built into them are very useful; such as a WAR with a macro on berserk to let the WHM know they'll need an esuna soon.