Controllers, hotbars, cycling... Worried for the future

[LineageRazor]

I'm not sure I can speak well to SCH, as I don't really play it, but I have several macros on SMN that work well for me.

One interesting thing to note about pet actions is that they do not require <wait> command to separate them from player actions. For example:

/micon "Ruin"
/action "Ruin" <t>
/petaction "Mountain Buster" <t>
/petaction "Burning Strike" <t>

With one press of the button, this macro will cast Ruin, and also command your pet to use Mountain Buster or Burning Strike (depending on the pet). I could see this as possibly being useful for SCH, if you want to "direct" your pet's auto-cures to specific targets:

/micon "Physick"
/action "Physick" <t>
/petaction "Embrace" <t>

For other actions, like Garuda's aoe Aerial Slash, putting them on my Ruin macro wouldn't be desirable since use of Aerial Slash is a loss of DPS against a single target (Garuda's auto-attack spell, Wind Blade, does 110 potency, while Aerial Slash only does 90). So, I put this attack on my Bane macro instead. Anytime I'm using Bane, there are at least two targets, so Aerial Slash becomes worthwhile! It could also be put on your Miasma II macro, another attack you generally use against multiple enemies. Personally, I put Contagion on my Miasma II macro, though; after applying my other DoTs, I apply Miasma II last. Since it's instant and Contagion has a casting time, it gains the benefit of Contagion.

Looking at SCH's pet actions, though, it looks like it's a much more complicated case. While I can see some possible synergistic macro possibilities, pretty much all of them have drawbacks. For example, you could put Whispering Dawn on your Succor macro. In a situation where everyone's taken a lot of damage, this works great - you cure everyone and put shields on them while your fairy simultaneously casts a mass regen. Awesome! But it makes applying Succor just before a pull a lot more awkward. Suddenly your tank has to deal with your fairy drawing regen hate while he's rounding up the mobs. A good tank can deal with it, sure, but it's still an irritation.

You could stack Fey Illumination with Emergency Tactics, potentially. There's no point in using Emergency Tactics, after all, unless you're about to cure someone, and Fey Illumination boosts your cures by 20% - but this would be awkward for those cases where you're using Fey Illumination specifically because you want a stronger Galvanize (such as fishing for a crit Adlo just before a big pull or boss to use Deployment Tactics with).

You could also stack Fey Caress with Leeches: you remove someone's status, and your fairy automatically steps up to remove everyone else's. Unfortunately, this combo means that either you're wasting an action, or your fairy is: If the debuff is single-target, your fairy has just wasted a GCD using Caress, and if aoe there was no point in you using Leeches since Caress would've taken care of it as well.

Yeah, compared to a lot of jobs, SCH definitely has a lot less places where multiple skills can sensibly be piled onto one macro. It may be a challenge to keep track of them all!

Edit: After posting, I remembered another trick that might come in handy.

If you have Selene up, you don't care about any of Eos's moves, and vice versa. So here's an idea: Make two identical crosshotbars, different only in that hotbar 1 has Eos's skills and hotbar 2 has Selene's. Now, make these two Summon macros:

/micon "Summon"
/action "Summon" <me>
/chotbar change 1

/micon "Summon II"
/action "Summon II" <me>
/chotbar change 2

When you summon Eos, your hotbar will change to crosshotbar 1, where Eos's skills are. When you summon Selene, your hotbar will change to crosshotbar 2, where Selene's skills are. This way, even if you wind up not stacking these abilities with your job actions, at least you don't have to crowd one hotbar with both Selene's AND Eos's actions!

If you're the type that tends to forget to set your pet to Obey, you can add those to the Summon macros as well. Don't forget to account for the possibility of hard-cast vs Swiftcast!

/micon "Summon"
/action "Summon" <me>
/chotbar change 1 <wait.2>
/petaction "Obey" <me> <wait.5>
/petaction "Obey" <me>