Macro for forgetful players?

[LeonTrifang]

I’ve been looking on every guide, and I can’t seem to find my answer. Is there a macro out there that will let you know when a spell or move is ready so you don’t have to check tabs every so often? Normally, if I don’t see the move’s icon, I forget the move exists lol

[Risvertasashi]

Sort of.

So you can do something like this:

/ac "Swiftcast" <wait.60>
/recast "Surecast"
/echo Surecast is ready now!!

This is a macro that will try to use swiftcast, and 60 seconds later show you the recast (should be 0) and put a message in your log that it's ready. But there's a few problems.

The game has a small queuing system where if you push an ability, say, 0.1 seconds before it can be activated, it will still go off 0.1s later. Activating abilities via macro doesn't use this, which can make it feel very unreliable. Often times if you're tightly weaving, you'll find it just doesn't activate.

Then if you use any other macro, it interrupts this one. You'll no longer get the message 1 minute later about it being ready.

There are third party tools/mods with various forms of timer/ability/recast tracking, but of course SE says all that stuff is disallowed so we can't talk about it here. And with plans for official mod support dropped, there's unlikely to be improvements for what's available in game.

[LeonTrifang]

So I should get used to checking every so often then? With the new moves coming in SRB I’ll have even more to keep track of lol great. Thanks for giving advice though!

[Callinon]

So I should get used to checking every so often then? With the new moves coming in SRB I’ll have even more to keep track of lol great. Thanks for giving advice though!

One thing I've done is position a hotbar where I can easily see it. This hotbar isn't keybound and has only half opacity. This hotbar keeps track of vital cooldowns for me.

[Risvertasashi]

One thing I've done is position a hotbar where I can easily see it. This hotbar isn't keybound and has only half opacity. This hotbar keeps track of vital cooldowns for me.

this is also a good suggestions

[Foxkid]

One thing I've done is position a hotbar where I can easily see it. This hotbar isn't keybound and has only half opacity. This hotbar keeps track of vital cooldowns for me.

How do you activate this additional hotbar if I may ask? I don't get super inclined in the systems to that extent, but it sounds useful for watching my machinist for Refresh/Tact as well as dissipation (sch) and the turret abilities.

Sort of.

So you can do something like this:

/ac "Swiftcast" <wait.60>
/recast "Surecast"
/echo Surecast is ready now!!

This is a macro that will try to use swiftcast, and 60 seconds later show you the recast (should be 0) and put a message in your log that it's ready. But there's a few problems.

The game has a small queuing system where if you push an ability, say, 0.1 seconds before it can be activated, it will still go off 0.1s later. Activating abilities via macro doesn't use this, which can make it feel very unreliable. Often times if you're tightly weaving, you'll find it just doesn't activate.

Then if you use any other macro, it interrupts this one. You'll no longer get the message 1 minute later about it being ready.

There are third party tools/mods with various forms of timer/ability/recast tracking, but of course SE says all that stuff is disallowed so we can't talk about it here. And with plans for official mod support dropped, there's unlikely to be improvements for what's available in game.

How come the "echo" command isn't featured when making a macro? It sounds more usable than making a whole new line to notify your abilities are ready again (like "/em has found a storage of wine coolers amidst the fight").

[Callinon]

How do you activate this additional hotbar if I may ask? I don't get super inclined in the systems to that extent, but it sounds useful for watching my machinist for Refresh/Tact as well as dissipation (sch) and the turret abilities.

Like this. The checkboxes on the left column enable or disable the hotbar. The rest of them determine what shape the hotbar takes. Then you use the HUD editor to position it.

Then you just set the hotbar you're using for this to be non-shared so it can be class-specific.



You can pop that image up in its own tab so it's not in eye strain-o-vision. The cooldown-bar is the one kind of out of place, under my job gauges.

[BlueMageQuina]

/recast “Skillname”

E.g.:

/recast “Swiftcast”

I just put all my job cooldowns on one macro and role actions on another
E.g.:

/recast “Benediction” <wait.1>
/recast “Tetragrammaton” <wait.1>
...
/recast “Presence of Mind” <wait.1>
/echo Recast complete! <se.3>

[Callinon]

/recast “Skillname”

E.g.:

/recast “Swiftcast”

I just put all my job cooldowns on one macro and role actions on another
E.g.:

/recast “Benediction” <wait.1>
/recast “Tetragrammaton” <wait.1>
...
/recast “Presence of Mind” <wait.1>
/echo Recast complete! <se.3>

I have a question here. Wouldn't this just spam your chat log? What I mean is, you'd have to stare down at your chat log to read the recast time for your cooldowns this way, right? Furthermore with a wait time of 1 second between each command, it's potentially 4-5 or even more seconds before the one you're interested in comes up. In that amount of time you could have just looked down at your hotbar for half a second, gotten the information you needed, and your tank wouldn't have died while you're waiting to see if you can save him.

[BlueMageQuina]

Snippity snip snip.

Yes, it does spam your chat log. I didn’t find that either the wait between or the spamming to be bothersome when I used this, as people generally don’t say much during the fight, and as a healer myself, my eyes are already all over the screen during any fight—specifically on the party list right which is right above the chat log for me. You also have the option to only put your most important cooldowns on the recast list, or put the important ones first—don’t disregard this. I used a Swiftcast macro as well, similar to the one shown earlier (this was pre <> tags). I found that using other macros often offset the Swiftcast macro’s wait timer, however, so I thought it pertinent to show you other options available.

To be honest I don’t use either of these options nowadays as my primary cooldown reminder. Because I play on PS4, I had had the same issue of not knowing when things are off cooldown as well because of the cross hot bar leaves limited room for more bars to be visible. I’ve remedied my cooldown problem for every job by putting extra vertical hotbars on the outermost edges of either side of my screen, which contain the complete cooldown list for the current job I’m playing.

I’d have a picture if the game were currently up.