macro mastery

[Centurion]

Re: macro mastery

StealthSoul-
check out this site, a good reference for all things summoner related-

http://www.ukg.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ability.htm#ability8

hope that helps

[aegina]

Re: macro mastery

that was an excellent site, centurion. i think i'll transfer that info to this site, just so we can have all the info in one place.

edit: here is the start of a macro pallet for summoners. some of this info is copied from that site, but i added in a few ideas of my own.

SUMMONER MACRO PALLET

first you need macros for summoning your avatars. personally, i use <stnpc>, which works very, very well with a controller.

edit: Changed my summon macro. this one works much better:

CTRL-1:Carbuncle
/ma "Carbuncle" <me>
/ta <bt>
/pet "Assault" <stnpc>
/recast "Blood Pact"
i like the <stnpc> way much better you target the mob while summoning, and there is next to zero chance of attacking the link by mistake. this setup can be used with any summon, and it works quite well

CTRL-2:Garuda
CTRL-3 Ifrit
CTRL-4 Shiva
CTRL-5 Titan
CTRL-6 Ramah
CTRL-7 Leviathan
CTRL-8 Diabolos (not diablos. that was ff-8 )
CTRL-9 Fenrir

CTRL-0 Ice Elemental
/ma "Ice Spirit" <me>
/ta <bt>
/pet assault <stnpc>

ice elemental? wtf??? lol i noticed that the casting time for the elementals is very short. it's a good idea to have one elemental macro'd so that, if you get aggro'd when you don't have a pet out, you can summon SOMETHING quickly, and sic it on the mob. once your pet has hate, un for zone. this idea i had has already save my summoner's life a few times, and my summoner is only lvl 19

PARTY CHAT

pet summons are one of the few times i think it's ok to have party chat macros. i've noticed players don't get annoyed at chatty summons the way they do for chatty cures, provokes, and jumps. i for one still LIKE to hear silly summoner's macros, and have partychat in my own summons. keep /p out of the blood pacts though.
some players may still disagree, but i still believe partychat for summons is ok. go knock yourself out

i'll post the rest of the summoner macros in a little bit...

Double Post Edited:
this one is just in case you need to change which mob your pet is targetting.
Alt-1 Dissmis
/recast "Blood Pact"
/pet "Release" <me>
/wait 32
/echo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Blood Pact Ready!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i'm not sure if <t> or <bt> is better with these. i guess it's up to you...

ALT-2 Damaging blood pact
/pet "Megolith Throw" <bt>
/pet "Double Punch" <bt>
/pet "Double Slap" <bt>
/pet "Thunderspark" <bt>
/pet "Camisado" <bt>

ALT-3 Damaging blood pact 2
/pet "Meteorite" <bt>
/pet Axe Kick" <bt>
/pet "Double Slap" <bt>
/pet "Tail Whip" <bt>

ALT-4 bust
/pet "Water II" <bt>
/pet "Fire II" <bt>
/pet "Aero II" <bt>
/pet "Stone II" <bt>
/pet "Blizzard II" <bt>

use these for magic bursting

ALT-5 Enfeeble
/pet "Poison Nails" <bt>
/pet "Rock Throw" <bt>
/pet "Shock Strike" <bt>
/pet "Lunar Cry" <bt>
/pet "Solomense" <bt>

ALT-6 buff 1
/pet "Aerial Armor" <me>
/pet "Earthen Ward" <me>
/pet "Crimson Howl" <me>
/pet "Lightning Armor" <me>
/pet "Eliptic Growl" <me>
/pet "Phalanxga" <me>

ALT-7 buff 2
/pet "Shining Ruby" <me>
/pet "Hastega" <me>
/pet "Frost Armor" <me>
/pet "Shock Spikes" <me>
/pet "Eliptic Howl" <me>
/pet "Dream shroud" <me>

ALT-8 cures, sleeps, and slowga
/pet "Healing Ruby" <me>
/pet "Spring Water" <me>
/pet "Sleepga" <bt>
/pet "Slowga" <bt>
/pet "Nightmare" <bt>

ALT-0 mp
/p (summoner) MP = <mp> thats <mpp>


as always, this is a work in progress. i'll come back and do some more work here later, but i think you get the general idea of a good system for summoner's macro's

[StealthSoul]

Re: macro mastery

Wow thanks LOADS on the SMN macros aegina and centurion! :D

[aegina]

Re: macro mastery

you're welcome!^^

WHITE MAGE MACRO PALLET

edit: i just came back and updated this one, so some of the comments about it may not make sense now. i used to have more than one regen macro on it, which was unneccessary. also, i just removed a bunch of <bt>'s from my macros.

CTRL-1 Regen
/recast "Regen III"
/ma "Regen III" <st>
/echo regen 3 >>> <lastst>
/wait ##
/echo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~REGEN 3 READY~~~~~~~~~~~~
/echo last cast on >>> <lastst>

controller players keep the icon over this ctrl-1. you can then click left one time for erase, or you can click right one time for haste. keep your cures at the top of your menu, so to cure you just open menu and press left to autoscroll to the top of the list.

CTRL-2 haste
/recast "Haste"
/ma "Haste" <st>
/echo hasting >>>>> <lastst>
/wait ##
/echo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~haste is ready~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/echo last hasted >>>>> <lastst>


CTRL- 3, 4, 5 -cure II-IV.
this is mostly intended for the keyboard.
/equip "Current gear that boosts cures"
/recast "Cure IV"
/ma "Cure IV" <st> then press the appropriate F key to target the player you want.

CRTL 6, 7, 8 leave blank
use these spots when needed. certain spells are needed only at certain camps. for example, at some camps, stona is vital, while at others, it's just a waste of space. some status ailements, like poison, aren't cured with erase ( wtf??? lol). also, if you don't have erase, put your status cures here. personally, i have erase, and i just leave poisona and stona here until i'm at a camp where i need something else. i also happen to have cure 5 macro'd, but i believe that one to be unneccessary.

CTRL-9 party buffs
/p party buffs! (protectra) (shellra)
/ma "Protectra" <stpc>
/wait 8
/ma "Shellra" <me>

CTRL-0 Erase
/recast "Erase"
/ma "Erase" <stpc> and press the apprporiate f key to target if you're on a keyboard. on a controlley, <stpc> is self explanitory XD

---ALT KEYS---

ALT-1 Dia 2 (or dia 1)
/ta <bt>
/ma "Dia" <stnpc> (not /ma "Dia" <bt>! you might wake a sleeping link by mistake!)
/recast "Dia"

ALT-2 slow
/equip swap proper mnd gear if necessary
/ma "Slow" <bt>

ALT-3 paralyze
/equip swap proper gear
/ma "Paralyze" <bt>
use /ta <bt> to target the mob the rest of the pt is targetting. if you happen to have targetted the link by mistake, you put <stnpc> under the spell itself so that if you targetted the link by mistake, you still have a chance to re-target.

ALT-7 non-resting gear
/equip
after using alt-8, press this macro to put your gear back the way you want it for battle

ALT-8 resting gear
/equip main "Dark Staff"
/equip body "Seer's Tunica"
plus whatever other gear you may have that helps with mp recovery. Baron's Slops adds to mp recovery i think, vermillion cloak adds refresh, etc...

ALT-9 mp say
/s MP = <mp> THATS <mpp>
i found this useful when powerlevelling. you may or may not want it.

ALT-0 mp party
/p MP = <mp> THATS <mpp>

at the earlier levels, it is ok to have seperate pallets for cure <p0> through cure <p5>, but you will quickly find that you are running out of room before the higher levels. learning how to use <st> and <stpc> is an excellent idea. might as well learn how to use it at the lower levels, so you don't have to relearn it at level 40, or whenever you start to run out of room on your pallet.

notice how i put precedence on regen. regen is an awesome spell ! if you keep regen on key players all or most of the time, you end up almost never having to cure except in emergencies, and you can keep your mp bar high to make chains easier to get.
for a controller, i recommend you not macro your Cure spells, but rather just cast them from the menu. sort your spells menu so that your Cure spells are on top, and cast them from there. I keep my macro icon over regen.
part of the difficulty in writing a macro list for white mage is that which spells you need macro'd change a lot, depending on what camp you are at. at one camp, having stona is vital, while at other camps, having a stona macro would just take up space.

i'll add more in later. i also plan to come back and tweak this macro setup a bit, after i test this out in-game for awhile.

[Aeni]

Re: macro mastery

I was wondering why the emphasis on regen, until I saw your comment below. But Aegina, I think a good tip is to forget about low level regen spells when you're really high. Monsters tend to hit roughly the same % of your max HP, no matter what level, but the regen spells all cast a flat amount (The higher the level, the more it heals for over time) So 10% dmg on a level 15 WAR might be 25 dmg while on a level 70 MNK might be 130 dmg. I think, for the appropriate level, you keep the current regen and one below. That means once you're a level 70+ WHM, you shouldn't be casting that regen I at all since it does nothing for anyone ...

I would probably do something like this:

Regen ## and ## -1 (e.g., Regen III and Regen II)
Cure ##, ## -1 and ## -2 (e.g., Cure V, IV and III)

This should free up two or three macro slots for which I would leave blank or have a master template in place. This is so that, depending on where you're going and what you're fighting, you'll put in the proper healing spells. For instance, a 40s PT to LoO, you'd put Stona in one slot, poisona in another (For gobbies that cast poisonga I, II) and maybe a bar spellra for a commonly encountered elemental spell casted against the party.

[aegina]

Re: macro mastery

good idea^^ i'll go back and change it

[Dux]

Re: macro mastery

Maybe I mis-understood your original post but are you suggesting use <bt> when using a keyboard and <t> when using a controller? I dont understand why it is significant if its keyboard or controller, they are just different input mechanisms, nothing more.

I am using a keyboard and none of my macros have <bt> in it. As a mage I can't find a single use for <bt>, I have woken too many mosters from sleep/cast sleep on the wrong monster because of <bt> so it is now banned from all my macros.

Perhaps a melee will have use for <bt> but I can't think of one for any job that I have played.

At the earlier levels, it is ok to have seperate pallets for cure <p0> through cure <p5>, but you will quickly find that you are running out of room before the higher levels. learning how to use <st> and <stpc> is an excellent idea.

This one really is a matter of personal choice but I dont feel that <stpc> is necessarily the "best" choice. The use of <stpc> results in the introduction of additional key presses when changing targets. Ultimatly this results in additional time needed to cast a spell, to me this is the biggest drawback of <stpc>. This penalty is most obvious when you have enemys that spam silence and/or paralyna on your party and it is for this reason alone I dont like <stpc>.

The counter argument is, of course, that by using so many macros to you need to switch between panes to use your spells, and I agree 100% thats there is additional time required to switch panes. Fortunately you get 20 spells per pane so you can get Cure III, Cure V, Regen, Haste, Silena, Paralyana, Posion and all your buffs into just 2 macro panes resulting in very few switches between panes in "normal" EXP situations. The time spent switching between macro panes is actually pretty small if you lay everything out in a sensible order and IMO considerably less that <stpc>.

[aegina]

Re: macro mastery

ok, i don't use a keyboard much, so maybe i misunderstood how keyboard macros are made. i use a controller most of the time.
i also banned <bt> from all my macros because of links, too.

edit: hmm... ok, i changed my op a little. now, it doesn't reccomend <bt> targetting to keyboard players. now, it only shows how to write good macros, and lets you choose which tagetting method you like the best.

[Aeni]

Re: macro mastery

Dux, the thing about controllers on the PS2 (I use it on my PC as well) is that with the directional pad, you can jump to the party list in the lower right hand corner and keep the pointer there. I then open up my small menu (in the lower left hand area) and using "memory cursor" place it on some barspell (e.g., Dunes PT fighting pugs and crabs will require Barwatera) Then I have macros. This effectively gives the illusion that you have 3 macro sets open up at once and seamlessly jump from each of them at a flicker of the directional pad, something most video game enthusiasts find second nature and thus does not feel encumbered like some players do on the keyboard of a PC. I'm able to place Cures almost on the dot and to whom with greater precision. I find that expanding the chat log window as well as using color filtering makes my job so much easier. I then zoom out as far as I can w/o destroying the graphical view to get a better angle of the environment (to warn about pops and other things) ... I find the mage job as now most fun with this setup than I did before ...

[Dux]

Re: macro mastery

Dux, the thing about controllers on the PS2 (I use it on my PC as well) is that with the directional pad, you can jump to the party list in the lower right hand corner and keep the pointer there. I then open up my small menu (in the lower left hand area) and using "memory cursor" place it on some barspell (e.g., Dunes PT fighting pugs and crabs will require Barwatera) Then I have macros. This effectively gives the illusion that you have 3 macro sets open up at once and seamlessly jump from each of them at a flicker of the directional pad, something most video game enthusiasts find second nature and thus does not feel encumbered like some players do on the keyboard of a PC. I'm able to place Cures almost on the dot and to whom with greater precision. I find that expanding the chat log window as well as using color filtering makes my job so much easier. I then zoom out as far as I can w/o destroying the graphical view to get a better angle of the environment (to warn about pops and other things) ... I find the mage job as now most fun with this setup than I did before ...

I dont have a control pad so its tricky for me to say exactly how that would work. I have tried to understand what you are saying.

I think its best for me to try to explain what I mean and also for you to help me understand the advantages of using a controlpad +<stpc> if we have an example to work through together, consider:

Person 1 Need Cure III, Person 3 needs Cure V, Person 5 needs Silena and Person 2 needs Paralyna. This type of situation that requires utmost speed and this is what I orient myself towards, most other spells that you use can usually tolerate some kind of latency but these spells however are generally required ASAP.

My Macro setup is:
Top Row
Cure III: ALT+ F1 to F5, Cure V: ALT+F6 to F0
Bottom Row
Silena: CTRL F1 to F5 Paralyna: CTRL F6 to F0

Using my macros:
A) Cure III person 1 (press and keep depressed ALT +F1)
B) Cure V person 3 (press F8)
C) Silena person 5 (press and keep depressed CTRL +F5)
D) Paralyna person 2 (F7)
Total key presses 6.

Using a control pad +F keys to target people and assuming all spells are on ALT keys
A) Cure III person 1 (F2 + ALT + Spell Key)
B) Cure V person 3 (F4 + ALT + Spell Key)
C) Silena Person 5 (F6 + ALT + Spell Key)
D) Paralyna Person 2 (F3 + ALT + Spell Key).
Total Key Presses 12
Assuming you dont need to repress ALT every time: 8 Key presses.

Using the directional keypad assuming all are ALT keys
A) Cure III person 1 (Max of 2 key presses + ALT + Spell Key)
B) Cure V person 3 (2 Key Presses + ALT + Spell Key)
C) Silena Person 5 (2 Key Presses + ALT + Spell Key)
D) Paralyna Person 2 (2 Key Presses + ALT + Spell Key).
Best case Key Presses 14.
Worst case Key Presses 16.
Assuming you dont need to re-press ALT each time, best case is 10 key presses.

If this isnt correct then please help me understand by provide an example of your method. A comparison against the 3 possible alternative and the number of key presses will help me understand as well. As I don't understand how it actually works all of this is me theorising how I would do it.

[aegina]

Re: macro mastery

I dont have a control pad so its tricky for me to say exactly how that would work. I have tried to understand what you are saying.

Using a control pad +F keys to target people and assuming all spells are on ALT keys
A) Cure III person 1 (F2 + ALT + Spell Key)
B) Cure V person 3 (F4 + ALT + Spell Key)
C) Silena Person 5 (F6 + ALT + Spell Key)
D) Paralyna Person 2 (F3 + ALT + Spell Key).
Total Key Presses 12
Assuming you dont need to repress ALT every time: 8 Key presses.

when you use a controller, the macros are not under the ctrl/alt keys. they are under the L3/R3 buttons on the controller. targeting people is fast, what is slow is choosing which macro you need. you have to think ahead and pre-set the cursor over the macro you will want to be using.

when you play on the controller, you play the ENTIRE GAME on the controller, and the game plays just like a normal ps2 game. you never touch the keyboard for anything except to speak to the other players.

edit: although some players like to use both a keyboard and a controller.

and in your example, you forgot casting time. if that many paople needed that many cures at once, someone is probably gonna die anyway, cuz no matter how fast you can press the buttons, you can only cast one spell at a time!

the difference between the speed of a controller and a keyboard is not so much how many buttons are pressed, but how they are pressed. controller buttons are very close together, and easy to reach. but when it comes to targetting pt members, both the controller and the keyboard work good.

[Enialas]

Re: macro mastery

I have 1 <bt> macro and that is my:

/ta <bt>
/equip neck "enf. torque"
/equip main "whatever wand"
/equip sub "yada yada shield"

while most of my spells are like:

/ma Gravity <stnpc>

and if i /ta <bt> and i'm not facing it, i can still cast on it, if a link is targeted with <bt> you can easily switch off of it with <stnpc>. if people do not attack that mob, <bt> will fix itself.

this way i can either go straight into casting spells and lets me see if any links are <bt>, and as such the mob doesn't have to be on the screen before i start slinging spells. I can be watching that gob that looks like it's getting a little close.

in the Den of Rancor there's a tunnle right before the Cloister of Tides, it is not a normal pop zone for pugils, but after you camp there for an hour or so, they will pop between you and the zone. back line mages need to be able to look around and not have it affect thier ability to perform for the party.

[framerate]

Re: macro mastery

when you play on the controller, you play te ENTIRE GAME on the controller, and the game plays just like a normal ps2 game. you never touch the keyboard for anything except to speak to the other players.

This may be true for you But you forget some people use both quite frequently. The more I play, the more I use my keyboard (I'm on a PS2 right now). If my keyboard was wireless I'd use it ever more.

I may be wrong, but it does seem like keyboard white mage players can cure with better accuracy than us PS2 controller users since like you said, we can just use ctrl-1 - ctrl-6 to hit each party member..

but... using <st> does seem to be pretty accurate. I think SE did a pretty good job letting us both have good macros.

But don't assume all controller people ONLY use the keyboard for chat (Although I agree it's mostly the case).

Also, <bt> is really that bad? I just started using it from advice of a high level player. I was using <t> and manually selecting until someone I targeted the mandragora, they killed it, and somehow my nuke hit a nearby lizard....

[x1ang]

Re: macro mastery

<bt> isn't all that bad, when there's just one claimed mob then it stops you from having to target it or having the chance of miscasting and hitting a random mob nearby... however it gets all random when there are 2+ mobs claimed by your PT. let's say you get an add and the BLM sleeps it and your macro says /ma "Dia" <bt> you have a chance of casting dia on the add that just got slept by the BLM... and that just sucks :D

plus, if your macro is like /ma "Sleep" <bt> then you cannot cast sleep on an add/link that is unclaimed.

<stnpc> is slower and risks the chance of targeting a wrong mob, but it gives you more control and has more uses, etc etc.

[Aeni]

Re: macro mastery

I have to post a brief reply since I need to run to a meeting (at work) but what Aegina said is correct. Controller has everything in one place and minimizes mistakes made and the responsiveness is quicker (Keyboard response are very slow on FFXI and I have timed this before) Whereas the keyboard faces the redundancy of having keys much further apart, experiencing problems with pressing the wrong keys or even the wrong macros and the complexity gives it a higher curve or degree of having to memorize the layout and what does what. Add to this the very real issue of carpal tunnel (or even just a bad cramp in your hand) and you got yourself many reasons why a controller is preferable over a keyboard. Unless you buy a programmable macro keyboard (Logitech has one for $89 I think) I believe that most players feel comfortable with a controller.

FYI, majority of JP players are on PS2s, not PCs, and I've never encountered problems with receiving a cure or what have you. I've always seen people in parties, however, complain about when key stroking the wrong macro on their keyboard ...