Stormblood MACRO GUIDE

[TouchandFeel]

Generally true, though there are a few situations where the alternative is slower than the inability to queue up skills.
Things like /ac "Name" <mo> are fairly decent for anything that should be targeting a team member, Shirk, Intervention, Cover, etc., or simply <2> or whatever number lines up to the other tank.
For Dark Knights /ac "Salted Earth" <t> is far quicker about getting it off than needing to set it by mouse. Adding a second line of just /ac "Salted Earth" lets you drop it by mouse normally if it can't be dropped where the target is due to range or special boss area details.

For the first example given where you want to use skills like Cover, TBN, etc. on the other tank, I personally prefer to just use the "target's target" selection function assigned to a key press since in most instances you would be using such abilities when you are OTing and you need to cast it on the MT and therefore would be targeting the boss whose target would be the MT.
I also find this useful for DPSing on healer since I can toggle between the tank and their target at the press of a button. For example, I have "tab target (nearest->farthest)" set to mouse scrollwheel left-click, "tab target (farthest->nearest)" set to mouse scrollwheel right-click although I am debating to change this to scroll through party members and scrollwheel down-click to be "target's target". I find this far more quick, easy and versatile compared to trying to bake such targeting into different macros and I always prefer smart keybinds over relying on macros.
If you really want to macro it, you could probably use <tt> instead.

As for the macro for Salted Earth, I've tried it in the past and ended up not liking it. While I understand how the macro can make it easier to quickly just throw it down, I ended up preferring the fine control of placing it manually. For example when doing a long pull I queue Salted up towards the end and drop it in front of the final group right where I am going to stop right as they agro and move towards me so we end up meeting right in the middle of the AoE. I also will sometimes place Salted on secondary targets so it gets more ticks out on them while we burn the primary target, for example I do that on the group of 3 summoners in Kugane Castle and with the 3 sword phase of Zenos in Ala Mhigo. Maybe I'm just being a control freak but I just prefer the manual control and I definitely find that you get used to it and dropping it where you want quickly becomes pretty much a reflex action.

Overall my feeling regarding macros in this game is that they can be useful for certain things such as team communication and call outs but when it comes to actions I feel that smart keybinds and hotbar organization end up serving me better. Reliance on too much automation of your abilities tends to detract from flexibility and being able to quickly adjust imo.

I do have a macro for switching between trash and bosses in dungeons.

/aaction Anticipation off
/aaction Reprisal on

I have another similar one that turns on Shirk for most 8-man content.

This is a really good one and a great idea for every tank to have.



For macros ...

This is a pretty common one so that provoke is followed up with an agro generator.
/ac "Provoke"
/ac "Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend"

[Rongway]

If you're swapping additional actions, and you only /aaaction twice, you'll have to double-press the swap macro every other time (when the second action is already slotted)

so say you have

/aaction Anticipation
/aaction Reprisal

If you press this while you have Anticipation slotted, it will swap it out for Reprisal. However, if you press this while you already have Reprisal slotted, it'll unslot Reprisal but it won't slot Anticipation. You can get around this by doing /aaction with A, B, A.

/aaction Anticipation
/aaction Reprisal
/aaction Anticipation

One press will swap in either direction.

Further, if you add /hotbar (/chotbar) lines afterwards that write to the same slot, it will write the newly slotted ability to that slot.

/aaction Anticipation
/aaction Reprisal
/aaction Anticipation
/hotbar action Anticipation 4 4
/hotbar action Reprisal 4 4

and now instead of having two ability buttons and a swap button, you just have one ability button and a swap button. I don't actually use this for Anticipation and Reprisal, but I find it useful for swapping stuns and silences as necessary, so that my interrupt button is always the same button, but it changes to the appropriate interrupt for the next encounter I'm coming up on (also applicable to BRD/MCH).

[LunaChild]

Rongway already gave the example but I'll add up abit.
In my case, I always swap one button to match each encounter needed (Interject for O3S, Lowblow for dungeon, Shirk for Ex/else), my macro is like this.

/mlock
/micon Shirk
/e Changing actions ........
/aaction Low Blow off
/aaction Interject off
/aaction Shirk on
/hotbar action "Shirk" 3 12
/e <se.7> Ready!

then swap Shirk with above two for other two macros.

[Rongway]

then swap Shirk with above two for other two macros.

If one so desired, one could consolidate all three swap macros into one like so:

/aaction Shirk
/aaction "Low Blow"
/aaction Interject
/aaction Shirk on
/hotbar action Shirk 3 12
/hotbar action "Low Blow" 3 12
/hotbar action Interject 3 12

(Note the first three lines have no subcommand. The final /aaction requires "on")