Voke Macro???

[Crizto]

Well, I have just started my Paladin, and I'm starting to do some parties. But I've been having some problems with my Provoke Macro. It goes like this:

/p Using Provoke on <t>
/ja "Provoke" <t>
/wait 15
/p Provoke in 15
/wait 15
/p Provoke ready <call>

I haven't been able to see the "Provoke Ready <call>", so I've been getting late on using it. Any suggestions to help??

P.S if you have any other suggestions that could help, please tell me. Thank you

[Loial]

You aren't seeing it for one of 2 reasons...

1) Too much battle spam.

2) More than likely, you are engaging another macro that "overwrites" your provoke macro while its in the /wait.

FFXI doesn't allow for concurrent macros. Once you start up a second macro, the first one (if still in progress) is removed.

Ways around this... don't use other skills/abilities via macro if you really need to see that provoke is refreshed. Select them from the job abilities menu.

Now, for some unsolicited advice: You don't need to tell your party if Provoke is refreshed, or if Provoke is ready in 10 seconds or whatever. Your job is to tank, and you should be provoking every 30 seconds anyway.

For some further non-critical advice: make use of the /recast commands to help you keep track of what abilities are up w/o checking the "recast" times manually.

Example:
/recast "Provoke"
/recast "Shield Bash"
/recast "Flash"

Putting that all on one macro will give you a snapshot whenever you want of when your hate tools will refresh.

[Mithrael]

Yes, best provoke macro:

/recast Provoke
/ja Provoke <t>

That way you can spam it all you want and never bug your party members. There is one problem... /recast reports some odd results at times... Sometimes it will report dead on the mark ([Provoke] 00:15) when you have 15 seconds left. Other times, when you have 15 seconds left it'll tell you have you have 25 :/ Thisis especially noticeable on long cast time abilities like Defender. I've seen the /recast report be off by as much as 45 seconds for a 5 minute ability.

[Loial]

I hear many THFs mention that Sneak/Trick timers are off 5-10 seconds sometimes.

After provoking every 30 seconds for who knows how long... you just get a built in timer in your head that makes you "know" when to provoke again.

[Suntan2]

/ja provoke <t>
/wait 30
/ja provoke <t>
/wait 30
/ja provoke <t>

[ibroyles]

If you really want the provoke timer in there, you should use /echo, it helps with party spam.

[Macht]

Originally posted by Loial

For some further non-critical advice: make use of the /recast commands to help you keep track of what abilities are up w/o checking the "recast" times manually.

Example:
/recast "Provoke"
/recast "Shield Bash"
/recast "Flash"

Putting that all on one macro will give you a snapshot whenever you want of when your hate tools will refresh.

Very usefull info right there

To bad I didn't think about that first :p

[Ghostraven]

throw a <tp> at the end of your provoke macro so you dont have to cancel your provoke timer to let your pt members know how much tp you have.

/p Provoke <t> <tp>
/ja "Provoke"
/wait 15
/p Provoke in 15 <tp>
/wait 15
/p Provoke up <tp>

Even if you arent skillchaining at the moment, maybe they can work you into the SC if they see you have TP. Just tanking is boring, sometimes you want to jump into a SC and do some damage.

[Sathington]

By pressing back your provoke macro, it will automatically tell you how much time you got left before recasting it.

I don’t quite understand the need for creating recast macro.

It’s like any other JA, you get to see how much times left when you press your macro.

[Mithrael]

I don’t quite understand the need for creating recast macro.

Two reasons for me...

1.) If you're using several job abilities at once, it can occasionally confuse you as to which JA [00:19] refers to in the chat log. This is especially true if you have something macroed with provoke like defender (though not likely for a PLD).

2.) The Dark Blue text that is from the JA counter is a lot less easy to read as the battle spam flies by than the Bright Yellow text from /recast.

Just a matter of style. Only point is that you don't need to tell your party when you're provoking or when provoke is ready again. Just provoke every 30 seconds and all will be ok.

throw a <tp> at the end of your provoke macro so you dont have to cancel your provoke timer to let your pt members know how much tp you have.

Pretty much all the tanks I've partied with since lv.50 or so have a provoke macro similar to this:

/p [Provoke] <t>: (<tp>)
/ja Provoke <t>

Only one line of text every 30 seconds and prevents them from having to move around on that macro pallete as much.

[Loial]

don’t quite understand the need for creating recast macro. It’s like any other JA, you get to see how much times left when you press your macro.

Let's say you want to know when Shield Bash is up again... you hit the macro and it was already refreshed. You just used your Shield Bash when you didn't need it.

I originally made my recast macro like such:
/recast "Provoke"
/recast "Flash"
/recast "Sentinel"
/recast "Shield Bash"
/recast "Rampart"
/recast "Defender" <--- used to estimate battle length for chains

But, that's 6 lines in my window and I quickly learned that the ones that I really care to see are Provoke and Flash... so if you use a macro like that... switch the order around so that Provoke and Flash are at the bottm and won't be scrolled up to quick.

[onorok]

Originally posted by Suntan2
/ja provoke <t>
/wait 30
/ja provoke <t>
/wait 30
/ja provoke <t>

The only time I'd use a macro like this is in a low risk skill-up party where I just need to make sure I'm keeping the mob on me and not the 5 to 8 other people in the party. The /recast is great, I have the same set-up filling up the space on my macros with the /recast messages, and have a recast macro that is just my recast times. It's great how quick you'll know when you can fire stuff off.

[ZQM]

Originally posted by Mithrael
2.) The Dark Blue text that is from the JA counter is a lot less easy to read as the battle spam flies by than the Bright Yellow text from /recast..

I find the /recast to be VERY hard to read since it looks like so many other chat colors. The only other blue chat color is /tell, so it's VERY easy to read. :sweat:

Then again, I'm partially colorblind.

[foobar]

With provoke I have no need for recast since when used it will give you the wait time if not available. I did add a /recast before my flash macro and IMHO its really useful since you cannot tell the wait time left unless you open the spell menu.

[LawDawg]

personally, for my voke macro, I have a recast for flash, and for my flash macros (and cure macros) I have a recast for voke. Honestly, however, I don't really look at these much, however, there rae times where I happen to pay attention and notice that my flash is ready. Usually I keep my abilities menu on voke and magic menu on flash, so I just constantly switch between the 2 when I think one of them is "about" ready. Plus, by the time you are level 50-55, you should have no problem "feeling" when your next voke/flash is ready.... Also I have to agree... please don't tell your PT that voke is ready in 15, and voke is ready... that information is useless in higher level parties, and just adds meaningless spam.