Hello, where would be the best Place to make a suggestion relating to Macros

[SennaIshigami]

Hello, so i have been playing the game for about 2 weeks, and learned this game didn't just allowed macros it supported it. I'm not looking for a macro to do stuff for me i'm wanting something that changes what a key is.

Example. If i press 1 = Fast Blade. 1 would then become Riot blade and so forth. The macro would just be changing the button. so i can press 1 1 1 to execute my basic combo.
- Now i was told this wasn't possible.

Note: i had an idea in how to make this work which id get into below, which i would love someone whos smart in these macro things help me. I couldn't find a suggestion thread and all the contact them, was related to support issues.
Where could i create a suggestion, that they would actually read?
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Okay how i could see it working. If the Macro itself was on 1. I press 1, it then simultaneously presses Hotbar 3 slot 1, and then has a macro that makes it the next time i press 1. it simultaneously press Hotbar 3 slot 2. [And so on] Or if i press 1 it presses uses the skill Fast Blade and changes the macro in slot 1. to maybe macro #7. which in turn would be Riot Blade

[Stepjam]

If you mean like other players, it won't matter, the game doesn't let you make macros like that.

If you mean the devs, it, uh, also doesn't matter because they don't want it to be like that. They made combos a single button in PVP since it's a lot more twitch based than standard PVE, but for PVE they are likely to keep it the way it is for the foreseeable future.

[EmmetOtter]

Someone in another thread asked for that same kind of macro-functionality and most respondents eviscerated him for even considering to use macros in his dps rotation. While there's some truth to the criticisms, there was also a good deal of hate put forward.

A few tried to actually create the desired macro for the person. I pasted my attempted below.
Not as elegant as I would like since it requires 2 separate macros and 2 hotbars.

This assumes that you are putting the 1st ability macro on hotbar 1, because that's the one that can be rotated to show a different hotbar without changing position. Not sure if this will work if you are using a different hotbar

1st Macro "Test1"

/micon "True Thrust"
/ac "True North" <me>
/hotbar change 2

2nd macro "Test2"

/micon "True Thrust"
/ac "True Thrust" <t>
/hotbar change 1

NOTE: could also have used "hotbar change next" and "hotbar change prev" if you are switching between hotbar 1 and 2

You basically have 2 hotbars that are identical except for the spot you put the macro. On one bar you put Test1 and the other you put Test2. They will not flip bars every time you hit the keyboard # its assigned to. The downside is you're basically using 2 bars to do this and if the spell can't be cast just yet, it still flips. Also if you have "happy fingers" and repeatedly press a button when trying to activate this ability, you may end up on a random bar showing.

[Stepjam]

I mean there were some pretty bad ideas in that thread.

I guess if you aren't planning to go beyond casual content (I don't even mean that in an insulting way), you can mess around with macros for your combos and stuff. But if you have any desire to eventually tackle extreme or even savage content, it's best you just learn to play the game properly and avoid most combat macros altogether.

There are a few very specific times that macros are okay in combat, and they never involve combos. Having a shirk macro that always targets person number 2 on the list as Tank is one, a rez macro with a message is another one (Don't actually put swiftcast and raise on the same macro, just put raise and the message together, lets other healers know what you are doing and hopefully avoid wasting their swift cast), and having aetherial manipulation always target the 4th or 5th slot as BLM (so you'll always instantly warp to a healer). Finally, having a macro that makes salted earth directly target whatever you are targetting isn't bad.

These are all pretty specific macros and are all generally for situations where not doing them would waste more time (atherial manipulation is nearly impossible to use effectively on controller otherwise). But if you put your combo abilities on macros, you WILL lose DPS, there's nothing ambiguous about this. You lose the queue up that you can normally do with abilities, which will cause you to clip and will lose you damage over the course of a fight.

So yeah to reiterate, I guess if you have no intention to tackle more "serious" content, then you are more free to do what yo want. But if you even think you might want to do Extreme content later on, you really should nip bad habits in the bud, and this would be one of them.