Mouseover healing macros - some problems

[Taika]

Well I mean, I'm looking at the SCH PoV of the world 4th clear of A12S here, and he seems to be fine with macros, so there must be something about using them...

I agree that macros on a DPS/Tank job are usually a bad idea because of the queuing. On a healer though, the ability to <mo> or <tt>/<f> your abilities is just really valuable.

Valuable how? What are the benefits? We already know the disadvantage is not being able to queue your heals and thus using actions slower than you would without macros, and also the possibility of lag messing up your macro by skipping steps, which I guess can cause using the action on wrong target (or not using it at all?), but I'm not 100% confident about this so please correct me if I'm wrong.

We all know you can heal with macros (while you can't really play a DPS with macros), but I don't think there's a reason why anyone should. For me, having played healer both ways, it felt much more unresponsive and clunky healing with them, and being able to queue your abilities is an obvious, objective benefit.

I agree with your sentiment re optimisation. I just cannot enjoy the alternative targeting methods, when i've spent a decade using mouseover healing. I tried them and would rather just quit the game then play like that, so i'm hoping it doesn't come down to that choice, and that i'll be able to improve upon the current macro problems.

There are many healers playing at top level healing with macros, so don't worry, you should be able to play with them just fine, if there are no other issues (such as lag messing up your macros).

Are you using mouseover from party menu or having your mouse over the actual player character you're trying to heal?

[Bradykinn]

There are many healers playing at top level healing with macros, so don't worry, you should be able to play with them just fine, if there are no other issues (such as lag messing up your macros).

Are you using mouseover from party menu or having your mouse over the actual player character you're trying to heal?

Mouse over party frames. Which, I wish were better designed ,I miss grid from WoW xD

[Tridus]

Mouse over party frames. Which, I wish were better designed ,I miss grid from WoW xD

Amen to that. WoW had the best options for healer party display of any MMO ever, mostly because they turned it over to modders to figure out.

[Bradykinn]

Mhm. I miss my addons in general, they are so great for a game like this. I hate how rigid and unchangeable the UI of final fantasy is.

[Rhinos]

I'm pretty sure '/ac "Physick" <mo>' has never targeted myself accidentally unless the macro had a second <me> line in it or I made a mistake. I don't think <mo> defaults to self with no target like <t> does either. There is a 'click on self' setting that enables/disables clicking or <mo> on your own character. Are you sure that is not enabled and you are not accidentally mousing your nameplate?

[Isrea]

Valuable how? What are the benefits?

Mouseover macros give two main benefits:
1. You have half as many key presses to complete an action, since you only have to press the ability instead of clicking to target then activating the ability
Depending on the player and the situation this can more than make up for the minor lag delay, especially with OCD heals.
2. Allows you to heal as needed while keeping something targeted. Given how important healer DPS is in FF14 and how god awful the tab targeting in this game is (had
a hard time believing you could do worse than wow...) and how finicky click targeting can be, not having to reacquire your target after each heal is amazing.

[Dicejss]

For some reason SE is against supporting macro users because this problem has persisted since the launch of 2.0 and also why we still don't have add-on support for the game officially.

/micon "Cure"
/ac "Cure" <mo>
/ac "Cure" <t>
/ac "Cure" <f>

Is what my macro for my heals all look like to help lower the chances of my cast healing me instead. I still end up getting heals on myself even though I'll have mouseover on the tank, have the tank focus targeted, or also my current target.

[giantslayer]

For the record, a <t> macro will not self-target if no target is selected, but a macro with no target specified (e.g. /ac Cure) will self-target. For this reason, a <t> macro is nice for benediction, so when the tank dies before it goes off, it doesn't waste it on a self heal.

Personally, I generally don't macro heals, but I do macro all my attacks as healer so I can keep the tank targeted and attack without switching. I find the faster reaction time on healing and mental bandwidth saved not switching targets to be very valuable.

I do use more macros on SCH than WHM, and that is mostly to control the faerie. I have Embrace macro'd on with Physick and Adlo because the faerie won't start casting Embrace if the target is above 80%. The macros help keep her efficiency (and hence my total healing output) up. I also use other macros for faerie control and for saving space (as a PS4 player, I have a limited number of readily accessible slots).

[dragonseth07]

This hivemind annoys me. There are advantages and disadvantages of it. So long as you know how they work and can make the decision that the advantages are more valuable to you, they're fine. Especially for healing, which is really more about precision and timing than squeezing out every possible fraction of a GCD.

It's about should vs is.

The game (in my opinion) should have a good macro system. Macros should be usable in combat and not cost you GCD's. We should embrace macros, like the modern game this is.

But the game isn't that way. Macros have a huge cost to them that, generally, isn't worth paying. Any loss of GCD's is enormous, and SE knows it. That's why they keep macros this way, to keep them intentionally bad.

[Adene]

it seems that 2-3% of my heals randomly redirect to myself. This isn't mis-targeting, or being out of range, or line of sight

This isn't directly related to your macro--it happens because of otherwise unnoticeable bits of lag. I hard target cast my heals, and if my *last* target was hostile and I target a player and heal, sometimes the game will begin the cast before it has registered server-side that I have a new target. Happens to my FC leader as well, because I otherwise thought I was losing my mind. It's been scary, because I nearly lost a tank when Essential Dignity self-cast, *and* two subsequent Benefic 2's also healed me instead of my target.

The only workaround I've found is if you notice it happen once, take a couple small steps side to side, then heal (targeted or macro) your intended target. Some days are just far from smooth about casting on different targets unless you introduce a small delay between target changes. :/