Are Macros bad?

[Rongway]

Using mouseover macros to heal will delay the starts of your heals by about 0.2s; but if this is the only control scheme that lets you reliably cast all your heals on all the correct people, then that is worth the slight drift. There are three generally fine use cases for combat macros:

• Mouseover heals/buffs
• Fixed-target or mouseover party member actions (e.g., tank always using Shirk on <2>, or DRG always using Dragon Sight on <4> in a light party)
• Ground AoE placement without having to fiddle with the ground target cursor

Other combat macros are generally considered bad because they cause this to happen:


This drift is a result of macros not participating in the action queue. They have to be pressed after all GCD and animation locks are released, which means you'll always activate them at least 0.2s after you could have activated them with the raw action button. For attacks this results in many lost GCDs over the course of a fight. A healer will also lose GCDs over the course of a fight from mouseover healing, but as I said before, this is generally worth it if it lets you heal the right people without hesitating or wasting heals on the wrong people.