Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

[LilimoLimomo]

Edit: A lot of folks seemed to be misunderstanding what I was saying here, and based on their reactions I've tried to retool this post to hopefully reduce further misunderstandings, partially by getting out ahead of some of the misconceptions that folks are bringing to the table as well as being more holistic in the way I discuss macros. I encourage you to give this new version of the post a read!

In addition, special thanks to ForteNightshade for pointing out that my initial video contained an error that I hadn't noticed; thanks to their feedback, I was able to remake the video without said error. The new video is now linked instead of the erroneous one. Also, thank you to Sindele for providing data about how FPS affects the rate at which macro lines are executed.

What Is This

The major thrust of this post is that I'm going to demonstrate how macros don't innately cause GCD delay or lost casts, which is something I hear in the FF14 community quite regularly. But in order to give you any possible reason to care about that, I'm going to first demonstrate some of the benefits of macros, while also taking an honest look at their cons; that way, we can all individually make educated decisions about whether there are contexts in which macros will give us a more preferable experience.

Why Should I Care?

• Because macros can add convenience to your play in a variety of ways that most players haven't heard of before.
• Because you want to know more about how game systems really work in FF14.
• Because you want to mitigate the chance of spreading misinformation that could hinder your fellow players.

Do Macros Have Downsides?

Similar to normal actions, macros have both benefits and drawbacks. Depending on each individual's preferences and needs, sometimes the drawbacks will be worth the benefits, and sometimes they won't be. To be able to make an informed decision, we need to first understand these factors, so let's dive in.

Benefits of Normal Actions (relative to macros)

Normal actions have a larger action queue window

You're probably accustomed to being able to press the button for a GCD skill shortly before your GCD is actually ready, and then when the GCD is available the skill you pressed moments before gets cast. Similarly, you can press the button for a GCD spell shortly before your previous cast bar has finished, and when that cast finishes, the next one will start. This is what I'm referring to when I talk about action queuing.

Based on some tests with a level 90 BLM with 1196 Spell Speed (2.36 recast) on the PS5 version of the game, I found that a normal action will be queued if pressed up to 0.59 seconds before you can actually cast it; however, a well-designed macro can only be pressed up to 0.295 seconds early to get a cast. So for my system, macros provide half the action queue window. However, this won't be the same for everyone; according to Sindele's comment, tests show that the length of the action queue window for macros is affected by your FPS, so depending on your circumstances your window may be longer or shorter than this.

Successfully chaining casts without gaps between casts will result in more optimal actions-per-minute compared to casts that aren't chained. So for players who find it difficult to queue actions in the smaller macro queue duration (whether due to their system's performance or their ability) that could be a worthwhile reason to avoid macros in your play.

Macros are not one-size-fits-all

With the exception of /wait commands, only one line of your macro will run on each frame. This means that depending on your framerate, macros will run at different speeds. So a macro that feels comfy for me on my PS5 in "Performance Mode" (60 fps) might no longer feel comfy if I was playing at 30 fps on a PS4, and vice versa. And even for players with the same framerate, personal preference can result in one person not liking the feel of macro someone else enjoys. In many cases you can make simple adjustments to such macros to tailor them to your system and your preferences, but that takes effort and fine-tuning that you simply don't have to do with normal actions.

You don't have to make a macro

Macros are code, and making code is work. Most people play FF14 to have fun, and coding may not be the way you want to spend your fun time. Code takes time and effort to make, test, and debug. Learning how macros work and what their limitations are, as well as getting practice using them, that costs you time and energy that you may prefer to devote to something else. And like all code, a single typo or misunderstanding can be the difference in a macro that works beautifully and a macro that causes you headaches. For some people, this will make macros not worth it, and that's valid.

You shouldn't button mash macros

Only one macro can run at a time. So if you already pressed a macro and it's on line 5 of the macro, and then you press that same macro button again, it will not proceed to line 6; instead, the first "instance" of the macro is cancelled, and a new "instance" will start at line 1. This can be detrimental if the functionality of the macro you cared about was on line 7, or if line 1 contains non-functionality like /macroicon. Because of this behavior, it is generally recommended to only press macros once and not to button mash them. For people who like to mash, or simply do it by habit, this has the potential to make macros a no-go.

Entirely unrelated from the issue of macros, as a person with arthritis, I'd recommend against mashing too much if you can avoid it, as it can lead to repetitive motion injuries; the older you get, the more likely such injuries (whether short-term or long-term) become, so please take care of yourself so that you can comfortably play games without pain for decades to come!

Benefits of Macros (relative to normal actions)

You can reduce button bloat.

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest benefits of macros. When I started BLM in ARR, all the actions I needed to play could fit on a single crosshotbar. But as time has marched on, that is no longer the case. Especially if you're a controller player, you might struggle to find comfortable, convenient places to put all the different actions you use. You can manually swap through multiple crosshotbars or make use of features like the double-tap W-crossbars, but if those aren't quite cutting it, macros can make a huge difference.

For example, as of patch 6.48, there are 10 Dragoon combo skills — 7 for single-target, 3 for multi-target. That's a lot of button real estate! But if you'd prefer, you can use macros to make all of these skills pressable with only 4 controller buttons, without any damage loss. I made a short video demonstrating this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsZo2iWJDrs

What's actually happening here is that when you press a combo macro, it copies the buttons from a different crosshotbar onto you current crosshotbar. In this way, you can make macros so that when you press combo 1 it populates your crosshotbar with combo 2, then when you press combo 2 it populates your crosshotbar with combo 3, and so on.

It's worth pointing out that there is a cost to this specific method: the buttons that are being copied have to be stored in a different crosshotbar. Luckily, these can be literally any other crosshotbar; if you prefer, you can store your Dragoon crosshotbar configurations in your extra Dragoon crosshotbars, but you could also store them on any other class, including any of the 8 crosshotbars on non-combat classes like Botanist or pre-job classes like Gladiator. In this way you're unlikely to run out of space, but the initial setup and any modifications you make down the road will be that much more involved.

And you can do similar things with other classes as well. I cast Fire III with a macro that puts my fire spells front and center, and similarly when I cast Blizzard III my ice spells get put in those same spots. If you feel like you've got more buttons to press than you have UI to press them, then macros might be worth trying.

You can make single buttons that perform different actions depending on context.

You want a single button that casts Nascent Flash if you're targeting a party member, but if not casts Bloodwhetting? Macros can do that for you. Do you want a single button that does Heavy Swing if pressed within the GCD queue window, but performs Upheavel if not? Macros can do that for you.

You can automate single-weaves.

Generally speaking, it's not recommended to use the /wait command to chain several actions in a single macro. But if you have a situation where you want to do a single-weave after an instant-cast GCD, that can be done! For example, when my BLM casts Paradox(ice), that's when I always like to toss in a Sharpcast. With macros, I can automate that, which makes one less button to worry about.

You can automate chains of actions (though this comes with a meaningful caveat).

Because the /wait command only operates in multiples of 1 second, it's generally not recommend to use the /wait command to chain multiple actions; the reason is because to make this work in most cases, such macros will likely end up clipping the GCD, which results in action loss compared to pressing buttons manually. But that said, it's still worth talking about as a benefit. For people with certain disabilities or other needs, using such macros could possibly help them play the game more effectively and comfortably. That's why I'm listing this as a benefit, because for some players this will be.

Macros are code, so they can do other stuff, too.

I'm mainly putting this bullet point in as insurance, because I wouldn't be surprised if there are helpful things you can do with macros that I've never thought to do. If you have something combat-related that fits here, let me know! (I know there are plenty of great non-combat uses for macros, but I don't want to focus on those because I don't think anyone is genuinely saying not to use non-combat macros).

I Was Promised Evidence!
That you were, sorry for the delay! Hopefully now that we've gone over the pros and cons of macros and can see some use cases for them, we can see the value in verifying whether macroing GCD's actually results in lost casts. Let's get our hands dirty with some data! And please, don't just take my word for any of this. I encourage you to be a critical thinker, to look over my data and my methods. If you see problems, please, let me know!


What Evidence is There That Macros Cause GCD Delay?
So I went to the Balance Discord, which I frequently hear is the go-to spot for technical gameplay know-how. I found a bot macro that explained:

!faq macrogcd
Why you shouldn't macro your GCDs
Macroing GCDs adds up to lost casts overtime, significantly harming your potential.

Check this video for a striking dummy comparison:
https://youtu.be/VgpUCgExvbA

I encourage you to watch the video, but if you don't, here's the summary:

The video shows two side-by-side captures that are each 1 minute long. In each one, the player is manually casting Glare; the video on the left is casting Glare via the standard action, while the video on the right is casting Glare via macro. And after only a minute, there's a clear disparity between the two: the standard action has completed 24 casts, while the macro has fallen behind by almost a full GCD and has only completed 23.

So according to one of (if not the) most respected sources of FF14 combat knowledge, this is evidence of why players shouldn't macro GCD's. So here's the question: can we identify flaws in this comparison, and thus call into question the validity of this evidence?

I've been playing with macros for years, so I immediately noticed a few issues:

• First, the player is mashing the macro button, which you generally shouldn't do since it restarts the macro instead of allowing it to complete; even in a well-made macro, this has the potential to prevent action queuing and delay the start of a cast.

• Second, the video doesn't show the macro being used (which is a problem in itself because we can't verify the methodology of the test) but I suspect that since the player felt the need to mash, the macro probably wasn't implemented to make use of the queuing functionality of macros, which requires repeating an action on multiple lines of the macro. Presumably the macro looks something like the below:

/macroicon "Glare"
/macroerror off
/ac "Glare"

And to be clear, I mean absolutely no judgment or shade to the player who made this video, nor the folks at Balance who linked to it; I think this was a good faith effort, as it's quite difficult to find good information on FF14 macros. We're all just doing the best we can!

Anyway, now we've identified some areas where the test might contain flaws. But at present, these flaws are theoretical. To actually invalidate this test, we need to perform our own test between macros and non-macros. If we don't end up with a similar disparity, then it's safe to conclude that the disparity was caused by the player's methods rather than some feature innate to macros. So let's do that.

The Test
For my test, I decided to do basically the same test as the video I found on the Balance Discord: 1 minute of casts, then count the number of cast for macros vs non-macros.

My methodology was as follows:

On my PS5 version of the game in Performance Mode, I went to the level 90 Stone Sky Sea and started The Final Day (normal). Then I cast Blizzard repeatedly until 1 minute had passed on the timer. Afterwards, I saved a video of the attempts and manually counted the number of Blizzard spells that hit the target before the timer had been reduced from 3:00 to 2:00.

The only difference between my two tests was:

• For the non-macro Blizzard test, I took full advantage of the larger queue window in an effort to ensure no slippage between casts.

• For the macro Blizzard test, I needed to press the button later because of the smaller queue window, so I pressed it at the time I am accustomed to pressing the button when playing a caster: a split-second before the cast bar fills (kind of like a rhythm game). Since I've been playing this way for years, I didn't experience any problems with casting consecutively this way.

Here's the macro I used for the test:

/macroicon "Blizzard"
/macroerror off
/ac "Fire"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/ac "Blizzard"
/wait 1
/ac "Sharpcast"

With one exception, this is a macro I actually use when playing Black Mage. When Blizzard is available, it just casts Blizzard, because Blizzard has a cast-time longer than 1 second, and thus Sharpcast doesn't get cast. But when Blizzard becomes Paradox, it becomes an instant-cast, and then a single-weave of Sharpcast follows Paradox. If you prefer using Sharpcast at other times, this probably isn't the macro for you, but I've been enjoying it.

Some players may wonder why there's so much repetition in this macro. Basically, if you put the same action multiple times in a macro, that in effect creates a queue window for the macro you've made. Each attempt at casting the spell takes a very short amount of time (according to Sindele's data, each line takes 1 frame to execute), and the more you have in a row, the larger the window within which your spell tries to cast will be. I recommend this technique for any GCD macro, and it can help oGCD's as well depending on when you like to press your buttons; depending on your circumstances, you may prefer more repeats or fewer repeats to get the timing just right for you.

The one thing that I definitely don't have in my actual Black Mage macro is that "Fire" at the beginning. I wanted to make it easy for both myself and my audience to tell if one of my macro Blizzard casts wasn't chained, which is why I put Fire as the first cast. This way, if I press the button at a time when the GCD is already available, it will cast Fire, which will tell everyone that my Blizzard cast didn't chain. But if I press the macro at a time when the GCD isn't available and Blizzard still gets cast, then that means it was a successful chain. You won't see any Fire in the video because every chain was successful, but hopefully that explains the incredibly dubious inclusion of Fire in the macro.

The Results
The result of the two tests was identical: both macro and non-macro had 25 casts with no disparity. If the cast disparity from the video linked to by Balance was caused by something innate to macros, we would expect to see an even more pronounced effect in my test, since my 25 casts is more than the 24 casts of the video cited by Balance. However, there is no disparity to be seen. Thus, we can conclude that the video the Balance Discord uses as evidence that macroing GCD's results in lost casts owes its disparity not to something innate to macros, but rather to the flawed methodology of the test.

I invite you to see the test and its results for yourself; here's the video of my tests: https://youtu.be/H-LgAGXETgA

If you can see any flaws in my test, please let me know!

Conclusion
With this experiment, we have demonstrated that there is currently no evidence to support the hypothesis that macros result in GCD delay or lost casts.

So if you're someone who thinks macros could make playing FF14 more comfortable, whether due to accessibility needs or just because you'd benefit from the convenience they can offer, I encourage you to learn about them without fear that they will negatively impact your effectiveness at the game!

And if you read this to the end, I greatly appreciate your patience in engaging with this novel! <3