This kind of behavior from a level 50 tank? Seriously?Follow

Well no, but time isn't an issue because I am using Heavy Swing on GC rotation. I want it to be applied to what I am attacking basically, and if the target changes Heavy Swing is about the first ability I am using on a mob. I am beginning to rethink this strategy. I am using a controller and macro spots are at a premium. I may try to keybind the signs... but when I'd like to use just the controller to accomplish this.

Noooooo I say to your evil keyboards!

But I think you're right. I may have to go KB&Mice for tanking. I totally love the controller for a lot of functions in this game, but targeting and cross bar limited buttons can help me get a party killed quickly. Yes, I do know that I can access more cross bar slots by holding R1 and pushing a corresponding button for a new page.. but that becomes too much work when in group play.

I recently experienced this. But it's really tough to see what mob they are attacking, unless I'm eyeing the mob's health bars. I may mark things myself for them once I figure out what they are hitting.


Edited, Sep 18th 2013 9:21am by TwilightSkye

Explain the Heavy Swing followed by a Tomahawk macro? Or was that just an example, because I was not aware that is something to do. What is length of wait you can apply to a macro line? I'd feel weird applying too much to one macro.. like I'd lose a bit of control when reacting to different situations. he defensive macro is a good idea, rate up.



Oh yeah, that's been done long before now. A good tip for others out there though. And while this can help solve controller cross bar space issues, it does little to fix the issue of controller targeting.



That's what I am discussing here. I think, and it is my opinion, I know.. that throwing out many marks are fine in raid settings.. but I think simple dungeon runs will require less marks. I like to throw up one. Just one, of the mob I am currently attacking. My stance is.. if you can pull hate off that one, then I deserve some lip about it. Pull hate off the others than it's your own fault. (excluding healers)

Far from a Macro expert, but I spent a few good hours messing with them last weekend:

/ta <t>
/ac "Heavy swing" <t>
/wait 2.5
/ac "Skull sunder" <t>

….ect and added /waits and /ac as wanted

At first I did not have the /ta <t> and was noticing my weapon skills were hitting whatever mob hit me last. So in a dungeon of 3 mobs hitting me, it would be chaotic, and I would not want to use that in Duty Finder.

Like I said though, far from an expert and this is just what I happened on while trying to find things out on my own.

Of course, that only goes so far. There have to be conditions that exclude one ability over the other. In the case of your Heavy Swing / Tomahawk macro the condition is range, and that is only true if you don't spam keys while the GCD is happening. What I have noticed is that when you have two or more actions on a single macro it tries them sequentially. If you spam your HS/Tom macro you will occasionally get a Tomahawk while in-close because at the moment you hit your macro HS was on GCD and by the time it reaches the second line the GCD has expired and thus Tomahawk is fired off. This happens a lot with my defensive cooldown macro and my MNKs combo macro. On my MNK I have a progressive combo macro since one thing enables the next, but you cannot spam it because you will miss the timings on GCDs and fire off the incorrect action.

As for the 2.5sec wait it is especially problematic since you can only use whole numbers for /wait and the GCD is a fraction so you lose a lot of efficiency by trying to string together combos to a single button press. For example, if you wanted to chain together a full combo you would have to do the following:

/ac "Heavy Swing" <t>
/wait 3
/ac "Skull Sunder" <t>
/wait 3
/ac "Butcher's Block" <t>

Now, the GCD does not rise above 2.5sec so that is the ceiling (unless slow has an effect here) so at the very least, you're losing 1.5sec with each macro press. This only gets worse and worse as you apply +SkillSpeed and the GCD is reduced even more (that becomes a lot of DPS over time). If you stacked enough +SkSpd to bring your GCD down to 2sec (if that is even possible) then you could probably do something really nice with it, but even then you will likely encounter latency issues that eat up some of your attacks and ruin your combos.

Edited, Sep 18th 2013 11:10am by Azoria

Okay.. I am switching back to KB&M and I've done keybinding. It's an old keybind setup I'd use healing in another MMO before and I loved the hand positioning associated with it. Basically I've gone from a horizontal position (1-0) to a more vertical. If I can somehow crudely illustrate below:

1 2 3 4
Q W E
A S D
Z X

What this does for me is allow my hand to rest completely over the key bound area. My middle finger rests over the number 2 key. (I've also applied a drop of super glue giving a raised bump for physical verification) while my index finger is resting on the letter E key, and my ring finger likewise over the Q key. My index finger is a busy little finger in all of this, as it controls what I've got slotted in the number 4 and 5 key (5 is optional because the finger can slide comfortably over) Also note my hand can slide upwards slightly giving my index and ring finger easy control over the number 1 & 3 key without losing positioning for the middle finger's number 2 key.

My pinky is easily able to reach the TAB key for targeting that way if needed. And I've reset the CTRL keybinds for the 2nd hot bar to ALT, this way my thumb, usually resting over the far left side of the space bar can hit and hold ALT for my now 2nd hot bar set. Now this will take a bit of getting use to, especially the hand slide south to activate A,S,D and Z & X (if you needed those two assigned for anything) but now I have complete control with little hand movement.

I haven't used this set up in a long time, so I'll go test run on some guildleves, then a couple guildhests before committing to tanking a dungeon.

Oh, and in case you are wondering my keykind set up, it's as follows,

Hot Bar One
1 - Flash
2- Skull Sunder
3 - Overpower
4 - Tamahawk
Q - Heavy Swing
W - Brutal Swing
E - Butcher's Block
A - Maim
S - Mercy Strike
D - Storm's Path
Z - Attack Sign 1
X - Attack Sign 2

Hot Bar Two
Alt+1 - Foresight
Alt+2 - Bloodbath
Alt+3 - Convalescence
Alt+4 Inner Beast
Alt+Q - Fracture
Alt+W - Limit Break
Alt+E - Thrill of Battle
Alt+A - Berserk
Alt+S - Unchained
Alt+D - n/a
Alt+Z - n/a
Alt+X - n/a


I've also key bounded to 5 through 0 various things.. food, choco, sprint, Defiance, etc.. And yes, this eliminated WASD movement.. but I haven't used WASD to move an MMO character for many years.

This is absolutely not true.

/wait 2.5 works perfectly well.

So does /wait .5 and /wait .1 and any other combination of #.#

The cooldowns are specifically 2.49 so that this will work. Check it out.

:)

It's np. That issue your are having where the stacked macros sometime go off in the wrong order is spot on. Latency can also cause this /wait 2.5 kind of macro to fail, so the extra .5 can sometimes work better. Still, you do lose DPS over a long fight as you said.

For DPS especially it seems much better to keep your attacks spammable.

/macroicon "Vorpal Thrust"
/ac "Raging Strikes" <me>
/ac "Vorpal Thrust" <t>

I really like to add Raging Strikes into my main attack. Works well for spells to:

/macroicon "Fire"
/ac "Virus" <t>
/ac "Raging Strikes" <me>
/ac "Fire" <t>

This way I will always cast Virus and Raging Strike at the start of the fight. Just keep spamming until Fire goes off. The /wait 2.5 equivalent would be sub-par IMO.

Any discussion about Macros should include sharing /macroicon with anyone who is not aware. It is not on Lodestone's text list. It makes the Icon appear as the Ability named would, including cooldown and MP cost. To keep the macros straight in your big Macro Page you can still assign a matching an icon to it. /macroicon will overwrite whatever you pick when you set it to your hotbar. (I just make them match so I know which is which on the Macro Page.)

I really like this one for ARC too:

/macroicon "Aetherflow"
/ac "Aetherflow" <me>
/ac "Energy Drain" <t>

Notice in this one the icon that is displayed is Aetherflow, since you want to actually watch the Aetherflow cooldown to know when Energy Drain is ready again.

Here's a couple more for THM:

/macroicon "Blizzard"
/ac "Transpose" <me>
/ac "Blizzard" <t>

Now when you are low MP you just have to start spamming this. The cooldown for Transpose is generally long enough for your MP to refill, so it won't go off a second time until you are ready. At almost full MP I usually cast:

/macroicon "Fire III"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Fire III" <t>

It's nice to shortcut the casting time of Fire III, and immediately get the full stacks of Astral Fire without casting Transpose to go back to fire.

Here's InstaSleep:

/macroicon "Sleep"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Sleep" <t>

And a good one for WHM and "Oh-sh*t" is:

/macroicon "Cure III"
/ac "Swiftcast" <me>
/ac "Cure III" <t>

Another one where short-cutting the casting time is doubly beneficial.

Hope this ends up helping someone. :)

Edited, Sep 19th 2013 4:26pm by Gnu

The targeting for melee isn't much better.

Oh, there are two mobs in front of me but tab grabbed the thing 2 levels down and behind me? Oh, that's super.. thanks.

Thanks for sharing that /macroicon, Gnu. I'm going to add that to mine starting now. As far as macro timers go, I started with them at 2.6 but may go down to 2.5. Most if not all of my skills sit at 2.46.

The equivalent of the X button for PC is the Keybind "Confirm" under the system Keybinds.

This usually functions similarly to "Target Nearest Enemy". It has the added bonus (or drawback) of being able to target NPC's and objects. Because of that, it's great to use for Gathering or talking to NPC's in town, or even crafting. It is NOT good for trying to target enemies in big mobs like fates, because the target filtering under "While weapon is Drawn" is currently not filtering out NPC and minions as it should be. After that is fixed I may change my go-to "Target Nearest Enemy" button to be "Confirm" instead.

Callinon, if you use "Target Nearest Enemy" first, and THEN use Tab (which is default set to the Keybind "Cycle Enemies Nearest to Furthest") you will have an easier time getting to the mob you wanted. I think the TAB = "Nearest to Furthest" is a bit broken sometimes because of differences in elevation, which are not properly accounted for in the distance equation. Just a guess. Probably they will be fixing this as well since most players use Tab as the primary means of targeting.