Healing Targeting/Macro

[Yuyuka3]

Please don't bring that no macros bs here. Everyone has their own preference.

How is it bullshit. Macros hinder me more than they help me, unless it's a text macro for a countdown or something, or a crafter macro maybe. Everything else only leads to frustration when your skills just refuse to go out as quickly as you would like them to.

[Nethereal]

A. Any combat related(skills/abilities) macros with wait in them(compile macro) are garbage and should never be used.
B. The only time a macro is worth it is if it is faster to use the macro than it is to use it physically, such as <mo> and a ress macro without a wait command like
/ac "swiftcast"
/ac "raise" <mo>
/ac "raise" <t>
/ac "raise" <1> and then from 2 to 8.

[Rongway]

/ac "raise" <1> and then from 2 to 8.

<1> is an alias for <me>, so you can skip that one.

It might be helpful to go in order of healer-tank-raisers-nonraisers. So if your party list is you-healer-tank-tank-DDs, the order should be <mo> <t> <2> <3> <4> <8> <7> <6> <5> (the DDs are in reverse order because RDM and SMN are at the bottom if you're using the default sorting). This creates a macro that does a great job of raising anyone without having to target them if only one person is down, and will do a fair job of raising "probably the right person" if you press it without changing targets while multiple people are down. And if you want to be sure, you can mouseover or target. If you've changed your sort order, you'll need to change this order a bit.

/ac Raise <mo>
/ac Raise <t>
/ac Raise <2>
/ac Raise <3>
/ac Raise <4>
/ac Raise <8>
/ac Raise <7>
/ac Raise <6>
/ac Raise <5>
/micon Raise

[Nethereal]

<1> is an alias for <me>, so you can skip that one.

It might be helpful to go in order of healer-tank-raisers-nonraisers. So if your party list is you-healer-tank-tank-DDs, the order should be <mo> <t> <2> <3> <4> <8> <7> <6> <5> (the DDs are in reverse order because RDM and SMN are at the bottom if you're using the default sorting). This creates a macro that does a great job of raising anyone without having to target them if only one person is down, and will do a fair job of raising "probably the right person" if you press it without changing targets while multiple people are down. And if you want to be sure, you can mouseover or target. If you've changed your sort order, you'll need to change this order a bit.

/ac Raise <mo>
/ac Raise <t>
/ac Raise <2>
/ac Raise <3>
/ac Raise <4>
/ac Raise <8>
/ac Raise <7>
/ac Raise <6>
/ac Raise <5>
/micon Raise

Yeah I can probably change that I think I left it in there because I d/c and the party order got changed to something random. This macro is probably the most useful one I have outside of <mo> in general just because having the ability to press a button twice and not think about anything while reviving someone and dodging mechanics is amazing.

[Leiloni]

Am I missing something here - why can't you just click the party members in the party/group UI with your mouse? It's fast, easy, and always accurate.

[Rathael]

I find using macros like:
/ac physick <mo>
/ac physick
To be very risky. If you miss your mouse-over it will either heal your current target or yourself. There is no way to distinguish the heal's target before it fires. FFXIV is prone to crappy mouseover detection and you will often find your heals firing on the wrong person (which will get you wiped in savage).

I haven't checked but assuming you can disable auto self-target, it would be much safer to use <t> on the second line. This requires that you target the boss / enemies at all times. This way your missed mouseovers will not cast on the wrong target and you can actively see the bosses casts without needing to focus-target them.

Some people will tell you dont use them because of queueing. This is mostly applicable to DPS classes (and your dps actions) where you will lose an enormous amount of dps for not being able to queue GCD actions. At times where healing is extremely intensive, not being able to queue heals could be a problem due to having lower burst output.

All a matter of personal preference, but if you can get used to the 0.1s it takes to click the person you are already mousing over, it's better... especially if you can spare focus target for the boss so you can see the casts.

[Liam_Harper]

Healing is one of the few areas where macros can be acceptable, as long as you don't overuse them or rely on too many. Mouseover macros for ST heals can help some players because you never have to tab or switch target. If you fumble even a little doing this then the loss is much larger than the fraction of a second loss of ability queue, especially since ST heals are used much less often than dps abilities.

One important thing with mouseover macros is never to add any line other than <mo>. For example:

/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <t>

...has a chance to heal yourself if the <mo> line fails due to pressing the button a split second early or your target isn't in range. In a dungeon you might not notice you're spam healing yourself due to panic and there's a dead tank. Where as:

/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>

Will either always work on your mouseover target, or simply not work because you aren't in range so you notice and adjust immediately.

[Marc-Vigar]

Macros on healing spells are just terrible, except Swiftcast+Raise which is a good QoL.

I come from WoW and it took some days to adjust myself to not use mouseover macros, in fact at the beginning I refused to change my old style of healing because I was used to it (in WoW mouseover macros are extremely good).

I must say though, that adapting myself to this new system of healing where you target allies instead of enemies is the best thing I could have done. Sometimes mouseover macros don't work on the desired target because you have to be very precise, it's also kinda bugged when you're too fast swapping targets and they are slower which means more react time to dangerous situations.

My advice, don't use macros for your healing spells but instead use them for your DPS spells, so you can keep targeting your allies and DPSing without having to change targets. I recommend this one:

/micon "SpellName"
/actionerror off
/merror off
/ac "SpellName" <t>
/ac "SpellName" <tt>
/actionerror off

[Sciwolf]

The idea behind a mouse over macro is that it saves time, supposedly. But what people don’t realize that you can’t queue up spells the same way that you can with hard targeting. I think that is a pretty big disadvantage but to each his own.