The macro of POWAR!

[sevenpointflaw]

Personally I think it makes it more difficult for me when people put in /p that isn't absolutly neccessary. But then I have my filters set to show no damage save my own, and status effects, and specials. My screen is just a see of yellow So and So redies and Whoever casts...

The only time I really care for /p are things like promies with a voke and anima order, Hakutaku with a stun order, and things like that. I mean, if you are tanking and the mobs run away, you voke. If its not up, you don't. No ammount <callwhatever> or /p will change that.

Likewise, its not overly difficult for melee players too look at the HP/MP gauge to tell if people are low on MP, nor is it hard for mages to prevent double-cures by watching the yellow text.

Still, i know sometimes its just hard to see whats going on, so I don't mind if people request certain things in /p, but if I'm in a party and people use <callwhatever> I ask them to stop. If they don't, I leave because it really makes the game more annoying than fun, IMO.

The humurous ones I don't mind at all if they lighten the mood, make me laugh, etc. Makes the game more fun, so long as they don't become annoying by being spammed.

[Murphie]

It's sad how few people (non mages) who bother to look at the lower right hand corner of the screen. Hence the (stupid) need for MP macros. Generally I just type it out though.

I don't need constant updates as to your spell or jobability status. I don't even have a /p in my provoke macro. I provoke when it's available. If I'm not the main tank, I provoke when the NIN is casting Utsusemi, or when the main tank loses hate. It's not hard. It just requires that you pay attention for crying out loud.

[Telal]

What is normally considered appropriate for macros?

Silence?

as a whm, to announce who you are healing?

Just curious.

[Ellipses]

What is normally considered appropriate for macros?

Silence?

as a whm, to announce who you are healing?

Just curious.

Depends on the party and their level of experience. Personally, the only things I want to see in macros are the puller's pull macro, TP reports and {Ready to start skillchain!} from the melee, and something to let everyone know about a slept link. In parties with multiple healers and/or backup healers, some people prefer to have party chat for cure macros. I can't stand it. I know when I'm curing, I know when someone else is curing, and if either of us is not curing at any given time, the rest of the party will know by the rapid, unabated depletion of their HP, and possibly my corpse on the floor.

There isn't a single standard that will guarantee you either repeat invites or an instant kick from the party. Most people tolerate them silently, don't mind them at all, or ask you to remove them (sometimes even politely). It's easier to say what's inappropriate: needless <call>s, all caps, stupid jokes about the mob's mother, testicals, current level of heat/cold/wetness/etc., cuss words, important information un-auto-translated, etc.

[Taskmage]

It's been my experience that any party with {Bee} {Ready!} in the puller's macro is going to be a bad party. This has played out infallibly multiple times in the past few days.

It always made good sense to me to give information about who you're curing and what your mp level is on a regular basis, but now that I'm reexamining this behavior there's no reason to do it. Your cure and who you're targeting with it are already displayed in the chat log, and any good puller is going to be keeping an eye on your mp anyway if you're main heal. I'd been using the /p line for a long time without questioning it, but that probably means it's "wisdom" I picked up as a newb from my Brady guide. I'll be rewriting my Cure macros shortly ...

[Telal]

Understood, I have no idea what the translator is, or how to us it, or what it does (other than translates things), I assume, from screen shots a translated text shows up between the green and red arrows?

[Tirrock]

I avoid using /party macros unless I feel they're absolutely neccessary... TP reports I do, only because we can't assume everybody has the windower with the TP plug-in loaded. I don't even bother with /party chat on my WS though. The WS is obvious enough. And if the BLM/RDM/SMN can't land the magic burst, no amount of saying what weapon skill you're using is going to change that.

Unless your WS macro goes something like this:

/p Starting skill chain in 20 seconds!
/wait 20
/p You can stand up now.
/wait 5
/p No, don't cast freeze.

/p Skillchain in 60 seconds, once BLM gets their MP back!
/wait 60
/p DAMNIT, enough with freeze! We're not even doing distortion!
/wait 5
/p Screw it.

/ws "Raging Fists" <t>

Anyway... I got a bit carried away there. I like the limit on party chat to be for useful information to the whole (or at least half) of the party only. I don't care if you're summoning an avatar. Avatars announce themselves quite well as it is. I don't need to know you're boosting. I don't even really need to know if you're provoking. (If I'm on BLM, I'll keep track of if you provoked or not by hearing the distinctive sound.)

I don't even do macros to prevent overlapping spells any more. I couldn't get people to stop wasting MP during LS events by casting raise III on people I had just started casting raise on a few seconds ago with this macro:
/l (x_x)p (|Raise|)@<t> _/>O
And raise takes forever to cast...

...I'm ranting again. Switching subjects slightly... My chat log goes past too fast on WHM to deal with people having random flavor text for every macro they do. Yeah, I can filter more stuff, but I'm already down to as many things filtered as I can without effecting my preformance. I like seeing how much damage people take because it's a lot easier than remembering every melee's max HP and doing mental math every time they get hit... I have to see special effects caused by/on party so I don't miss debuffs landing on the party. (They really should make those seperate filters.)

Double Post Edited:

Understood, I have no idea what the translator is, or how to us it, or what it does (other than translates things), I assume, from screen shots a translated text shows up between the green and red arrows?

Yeah.

[Taskmage]

I'll agree on most things except for the weapon skill. Back when I bothered to try to double MB with rdm, I had to start casting the first spell one or two seconds before the closing WS went off so that it would land at the beginning of the MB window and give me time to cast the second nuke.

More than half of the people I PTed with used their closing WS very predictably and reliably 3 seconds after the opener. Some others would wait a looong time after the opener to use their WS, or used a slew of ja buffs before the WS, which threw my timing off and caused the spell to land too early and miss the MB.

I've stopped bothering since then (too much trouble for not enough return), and now I just cast whenever I see the WS. That works for me, but I've got 4 levels of fast cast and I'm using tier 2 nukes still. For blms my level who are using tier 3 nukes or tier 2-3 -gas, some advance warning might be helpful.

So for that reason I support the use of "Using WS Viper Bite in 3 seconds! <call2>" type lines to help blms and overachieving rdms time their spells. It also makes things a little easier on you to set up your macro that way, since you can just mash the macro when the opener goes off instead of timing it in your head.

[Murphie]

I'm all for coordinating things like the Skillchain and Magic Burst via /p macros if necessary. We want the mob dead ASAP. If that's what the party needs to get it done, who am I to complain?

[Tirrock]

Eh, I never needed help with landing bursts on BLM unless it was with freeze. And when I did freeze (for things like promyvion-vahzl) I ended up doing the macro for the melees. I haven't exped with BLMs where their only problem was landing a magic burst because of lack of warning. (I can't say that about SMN though. But SMN have a good excuse...since it takes them 10 seconds to summon and another 5 to be ready to magic burst. When exping with a SMN that magic bursts, I usually give a 75% TP warning.)

WS macros don't bother me though. I took mine off because of preference. It got old watching myself accidentally saying something like "(|Viper Bite|) @ <t> - - - THF TP:[<tp>]" multiple times due to lag, or in THF's case...me spamming it at the start of the fight to make sure it went off. >_> I switched it to /echo, since echos don't get delayed with lag, and it's usually pretty obvious when a WS goes off in my opinion.

Still, if somebody really wanted me to have a party chat in a WS macro, I'd just change /echo to /party and that'd be that.

[Murphie]

Well, I certainly don't need any indication of when to burst or use my closing WS. I just figure that if other people need it, it's not unreasonable of them.

[Ellipses]

Understood, I have no idea what the translator is, or how to us it, or what it does (other than translates things), I assume, from screen shots a translated text shows up between the green and red arrows?

Wiki page on the auto-translator. (Please check it.) Even if 95% of your interaction is with English-speaking players, you'll want to know how to use it for the other 5%. What little macro text I have is auto-translated, because probably at least 1/4 of the parties I join have Japanese players.

[Irisjir Callard]

I've never had /p chat in my macros. Not so much because I was never noobish enough to think it was a good idea...but because I was too noobish to know how to code for it. By the time I learned how to write out macros, I never bothered to think of anything funny enough that I wouldn't mind seeing it spamemd across my own chat filter.

So it winds out that I am usually an absolutely silent whitemage, quietly ticking along in the background of the skillchains and magicbursts...so quiet...

Until someone worth flirting with shows up

Then it's

/p Oooohhh he's a cutie pie.
/p Come sit with me ^^
/em uses Gender Ability Flirt on Flirtable.
/grin


And usually there is no response, and I pout to myself for awhile, or complain to my LS about how utterly boring EXPing is.

[Veve]

Remember to eat your meats, TP burn, and use your boost macro of power!

[Murphie]

Today I discovered that one of my LS members has various macros in /linkshell. Everyone thinks it's hilarious except for me, apparently. I'm just an old stick in the mud for daring to ask what that was all about.