Help needed with a DRG macro

[SnowX]

I mash buttons regardless, so "having" to hit the button 4 or 5 times is no big deal, I do that anyway.
I want to use it as a macro simply because there's way too many actions to take care of, they are cluttering the buttons on my controller and stuff that's not on the front Cross Bar is harder to access and makes the game less fun for me to play.
But it's okay, if you guys say there is no feasible way to do this, I'll simply leave it be.

Thanks for your response!

Maybe this thread will help you.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/368682

[SnowX]

The thread is just a help for controllers players no Macro help.

[Kleeya]

Apart for all the problems the other players have already talked about, i kinda dont even understand the point of your first macro.

Since you want to have less buttons to press, i suppose that true thrust is not on another button ? But then you keep using true north each time it is available before being able to use true thrust, even if you dont need true north in the first place. True north is to be used when you can't hit your positionals properly (for example when there is an aoe behind or on the side of your target and you can't go there anymore). If there is no need for it you just move and do your positionnals normaly. If you spend one charge of true north each time you want to use true thrust, it might not be available when you really need it.

Plus true north duration is only 10 seconds long. It is a waste to launch it so soon in your rotation. If you need to move away from your target to avoid some mechanics which will delay the use of the next skills in your combo, true north's buff will not even be up anymore for the later skills using positionals.

I apply the same logic I described in the first post to Full Thrust and Life Surge, works like a charm.
Each time Life Surge is off the cooldown it will be used right before I use Full Thrust.
Love it, and it's one less button for me to check/manage, making the actions flow simpler and more streamlined.

Might be a waste too. For example if when about to use full thrust the target you are trying to kill is at 1% life left and that your life is full, you might want to keep life surge for the next mob (if you are getting hit and/or because life surge crit will be more useful on a mob with more life left). But with your macro you can't even do that.

While i don't doubt that your macros are lowering the number of different buttons you need to press, they are also cutting you from some on the fly choices to play better.

[Monsalvato]

Hello everyone, thanks for all the useful insight, but please allow me to offer a better contextualization.

I have All the 4 combo related actions on one Cross Bar (True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust, Fang and Claw). On this group I use the LifeSurge/FullThrust Macro. True Thrust here is the action itself, not a macro.
On the other Cross bar I have the other 4 combo related actions (True Thrust, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Wheeling Thrust). In this group I wanted to use the TrueNorth/TrueThrust Macro.

Reasons for that?
1) I noticed I was using Life Surge not even half of the times I could. Despite me having a button in a secondary action bar (which I don't use, it's there just to remind me when cooldowns are ready) there's way too many things to watch out for, and I was forgetting to use it most of the time. Plus having to swap back and forth constantly between cross bars was super annoying and was cutting away a part of my enjoyment while playing the game.
2) The same was happening pretty much with True North. Which correct me if I'm wrong but for DRG is best used for Disembowel and Chaos Thrust (and at level 80 I guess for Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw too, but I'm still level 74 only). I was forgetting to use it most of the time plus I was finding it super annoying to have to swap back and forth so I thought about using it in a macro, given my LifeSurge/FullThrust macro was working so well for me.


For those who said that with this setup I'm going to occasionally waste my Life Surge. Like on a monster about to die, or when I'm full HP etc.
That's absolutely true but it simply doesn't matter for me because, like I said before, I was barely using the action before, so the current situation is still miles ahead of my previous one.
Furthermore DRG is not exactely the job I'm using to make progression in grouped content. I barely do group content in general tbf, but when I do it's definitely not on DRG lol.



Edit:
What do GCD and oGCD mean?
I guess GCD is "Global CoolDown", which is the global wait there is after you execute any action. You can slightly reduce it with spell/skill haste but you can't remove it and during this time you cannot execute other actions...
...except actions which are off the global cooldown. I guess this is what oGCD means? "Off the Global CoolDown"?
Like for DRG some self buffs and jumps are oGCDs, which is exactely why I tipically use them one by one in between the actions of my combos.
Not sure that's the "correct way to play" tbf, DRG is my only melee in FFXIV, I guess it came "natural" to me from my experience in other MMORPGs before FFXIV °-°

[Rongway]

What do GCD and oGCD mean?
I guess GCD is "Global CoolDown", which is the global wait there is after you execute any action. You can slightly reduce it with spell/skill haste but you can't remove it and during this time you cannot execute other actions...
...except actions which are off the global cooldown. I guess this is what oGCD means? "Off the Global CoolDown"?
Like for DRG some self buffs and jumps are oGCDs, which is exactely why I tipically use them one by one in between the actions of my combos.
Not sure that's the "correct way to play" tbf, DRG is my only melee in FFXIV, I guess it came "natural" to me from my experience in other MMORPGs before FFXIV °-°

A GCD action is classified on its tooltip as a Spell or Weaponskill. When you use it, it triggers a roughly 2.5s lockout where you can't use another GCD action. When a combo is active, using a GCD that is not the next combo action will cancel the combo.

An oGCD action is any non-Spell non-WeaponSkill action--either an Ability or blank (like Sprint). These do not trigger the GCD and are not locked out by it. They also do not interrupt combos. If you don't macro your actions you can fit up to two of these in between GCDs. If you're macroing your actions, your next GCD will be delayed if you try to use two oGCDs, and may even be delayed if you try to macro just one.

[Monsalvato]

If you're macroing your actions, your next GCD will be delayed if you try to use two oGCDs, and may even be delayed if you try to macro just one.

I'm sure this is the case for plenty of Macros but it's not the case for the LifeSurge/FullThrust one I'm using.
I use Vorpal Thrust and the GCD starts, then I press my macro and Life Surge gets used, press it again and by the time I do that the GCD will be over and Full Thrust will be used, empowered by Life Surge.
All of that without having to manage extra cross bars or extra buttons.

Love it! <3

[Rongway]

I'm sure this is the case for plenty of Macros but it's not the case for the LifeSurge/FullThrust one I'm using.
I use Vorpal Thrust and the GCD starts, then I press my macro and Life Surge gets used, press it again and by the time I do that the GCD will be over and Full Thrust will be used, empowered by Life Surge.
All of that without having to manage extra cross bars or extra buttons.

Love it! <3

The thing is, you definitely are delaying your Full Thrusts by at least 0.2s. Because macroed abilities cannot be queued, you must press the button after the GCD is complete. Whether you perceive this or not, this will result in a loss of at least 0.2s per macroed GCD action.


Click image for larger version. Image shows timelines of a 5 GCD microrotation (one 1-2-3-4-5 combo on DRG) with and without macros. Macro timeline shows GCD drift due to action locks.

When not using macros, you can press an action button up to 0.5s before the current action finishes. This enqueues the action for immediate execution as soon as the current action lock releases (this is 0.7s for most instant GCDs and oGCDs, but closer to 1.0s for Jump family actions).

When you use macros, your actions do not queue. If you press the macro button before the current action completes, you get an error. This means you must press the button after the action lock releases. If you are able to press a button 4 or 5 times per second, this will cause a delay of about 0.2s every time you want to execute an action.

This is not an issue for a single oGCD action since the GCD gives you about 1.0s more than you need for the one oGCD action; however, all macroed GCD actions are affected by this delay. Worse, if you have two oGCDs that should be used in the same GCD, the combined delays will delay the next GCD action even more than it would have been just on its own.

You might not perceive this or you might not think it's significant, but it is happening if you macro combat actions. Even if you didn't have additional drift from double weaving oGCDs, the delays from macroing GCD actions would add up significantly.

Maybe you're only using one or two macros right now, but to put it in perspective, let's look at what would happen if all your GCD actions were macroed... Each 5-action DRG microrotation would accumulate at least 1.0s of drift. In a 7 minute fight, with a 2.4s GCD, you can typically use 175 GCD actions, or 35 microrotations. If we add up all those macro delays, you would lose 35s, which is 15 actions, or 3 whole microrotations. That's a lot--about 8.6% of the DPS you could put out if you just didn't macro your combat actions. This is a loss of something like 1.3kdps at current endgame.


tl;dr: macro GCD drift is real whether you believe in it or not, and macroing your GCDs will result in a loss of at least 1kdps at Lv80.

[Hasrat]

All that said, if player is fine with being suboptimal, with no intention of running/clearing high-intensity fights, can probably still get away with it. Not like there's very much necessity for full optimization. 'sides, every player can be prone to fat-fingering or brain-delays causing just as much drift.

It's not ideal. But that doesn't strictly make it wrong. Kinda varies by what content player intends to clear. As a BLM, I'm terrible at properly utilizing things like Sharpcast, Swiftcast, Triplecast, A.Manipulation, etc. Little areas that could absolutely improve my output. But, rather than stressing over not being perfect, I just don't run the things that expect near-perfection.

[Monsalvato]

All that said, if player is fine with being suboptimal, with no intention of running/clearing high-intensity fights, can probably still get away with it. Not like there's very much necessity for full optimization. 'sides, every player can be prone to fat-fingering or brain-delays causing just as much drift.

It's not ideal. But that doesn't strictly make it wrong. Kinda varies by what content player intends to clear. As a BLM, I'm terrible at properly utilizing things like Sharpcast, Swiftcast, Triplecast, A.Manipulation, etc. Little areas that could absolutely improve my output. But, rather than stressing over not being perfect, I just don't run the things that expect near-perfection.

Exactely my point. The potential loss of performance is irrelevant, the gain in QoL is intense :-)


Oh and Rongway I see what you meant with queueing now and yes, I can confirm it does NOT queue before the GCD is over, unlike all other normal un-macroed actions which do queue just fine. Not like you needed my confirmation of course, I'm not that arrogant lol, I just meant to say that I see what you mean now and yes, it's real. But it still doesn't bug me at all. It's not like I'm going for world firsts, for current content clearance or stuff like that.
It doesn't really make a difference when you're doing fates, Duty PUGs etc.
If I really wanted to seriously give a boost in performance on my DRG I'm pretty confident there's a plethora of other things I would have to improve with much bigger gains than the loss I get from that ~0.2 seconds from lack of queueing, if you get what I mean :-D

[Liam_Harper]

Ah, reminds me of my first time playing ff14, after coming over from WoW. I thought it'd be a brilliant idea on Ninja to macro an oGcd to my each of my combo actions. In WoW that wouldn't have been bad at all, in ff14 it was clunky. I also cut Aeolian Edge from my rotation to save a button, using Armor Crush as the sole finisher. I played that way up until lv70 before finally transitioning over to a macro free SAM and never looking back.

Interestingly it wasn't as terrible as people make out, in Normal raids and such I was often near the top on dps. Maybe I was losing 8-10% dps total, but since most people don't even press buttons or do their rotation right at all and lose 40-60%, it wasn't that much loss.

But it's still a loss and as someone who used to have the same mindset (QoL increasing performance more than small min-max), I'd really recommend transitioning eventually. Macros are just clunky and sometimes stick or fail. A full GcD rotation flows better, feels better and learning how to handle all the different oGcd's in your rotation is like training for your reaction times and muscle memory that makes you a better player overall.