Thread: Question regarding patch 5.3 Sleeve Draw

Originally Posted by Seraphor

Macro's are unable to queue skills, which means if the precise milisecond that Macro is trying to play the card, you are unable to (still in animation lock or have just used another oGCD <0.5~1s ago depending on latency) it will fail. Then the next line of the macro that swaps your hotbar back will kick in.

You could mitigate this a little by repeating the /ac "play" <#> line a few times, so that it will have multiple chances to get it off before you swap back.

Otherwise play around with different set ups.
I don't use macro's for anything that targets party members on AST. Instead I macro the DPS skills to target of target.
e.g.
/ac "Malefic" <tt>
/ac "Malefic" <t>
It will first try to use it on my targets target, if that's not viable, it'll use it on my target. (again, I repeat each one a few times)
This way I'm always targeting a party member (can focus target the boss to watch for cast times) and have become more proficient at quickly playing cards by tabbing down the party list.
All macro set ups have a downside, and mine is that my dps skills have a slight delay, but this isn't a huge deal because AST does the least personal dps of any job, and any dps lost by the slight delay on Malefic is made up for by not fumbling card plays.

For Anyone reading this in the future, while doing the macro stated is extremely convenient it is not Optimal. I used this for a long time but after it being pointed out that I was actually slowing my GCD with it. I went and tested it. I ran a 3m test on a striking dummy, keeping track of total casts, and found I was losing about 1 whole GCD per minute.

If doing this however helps you to keep uptime while weaving, and therefor brings you more GCDs per minute, then by all means use it! However I would recommend a targetting macro or keybind instead. I use M+KB and I keybound my F key to the first Tank and Shift F key to second tank. This allows for very fast switching for emergency heals and lets me move away from the macro above.

For controllers... idk. I tried and I just cannot play on controller so you will need to find controller guides to help with this, sorry.

I do realize this comment already states that, but figured Id expand on that and give alternatives available.