Button Mashing 2014: Now with more "real BRDs" and invisible tests from both contestants

[Yugl]

I'm not sure what you mean by buffering. If you mean the time period where you press a GCD skill while it's down and it will go off still, macros do nothing to change that.

Also, what's gearswap, was that the spellcast equivalent/successor for that open source windower replacement that was getting popular around the time I quit?

Pretty much. Much faster, less system stress, lua, packets, etc. You can literally precast any amount of FC/Quickcast/Instant cast and still equip midcast before landing the spell.

[Elcura]

A bard is a support job

Bravo sir, bravo.

[Berabouman]

A bard is a support job

I see someone just won the thread.

[StUfF]

There has been this discussion multiple times in multiple threads and it all started here. It's the same everywhere, with every job. Some stick to macros, some say no fucking way. No need to discuss it again in here when there was and entire thread about it already that went nowhere.

I don't follow Bard so I've never seen this discussion before - it it generally accepted that macros + delays are bad in Monk threads and has not been much counterpoint or following for it. Clash of cultures I guess? hah.

Anyway, I went through the thread you posted and it doesn't seem to address my concerns. The majority of that thread seemed to devolve into you shouldn't use macros because you can't choose what skills to use (which is invalid since you can have both...).

The only documented tests that I can see to measure the delay you get from not being able to use the queue system is from Spider-Dan, his test show that using a Turbo button + Macros eliminates the delay almost entirely and there is no detriment to using Macros. BUT, I don't see any testing for people without Turbo buttons. Using some basic logic/rough math, if a person can press a button 10 times a second when spamming (very high) you would expect roughly an average of 0.05 delay for each GCD skill you use. This is equivalent of 50 skill speed, this isn't game-breaking but it's a decent amount of stats to be losing.

I don't know how this actually works in game but I can't see anything in that thread that actually disproves it. Would need to do some similar timing tests as Spider-Dan's original test. You would roughly be losing 1 GCD every minute or so if I'm correct, I'll probably spend some time over the weekend trying to prove this but it's not a very exact test with all the erractic variables.

[Spider-Dan]

So when you're busy testing whether or not humans can push a button as fast as a turbo controller, are you also going to be testing whether or not non-macro-users are queuing every single GCD (i.e. their GCD timer literally never stops spinning) for the entire duration of a battle? Because otherwise, this seems like a one-sided comparison of "limits of human ability."

Also: MNK mechanics are nothing like BRD. MNK does not have to reaction respond to random procs that reset off-GCD abilities, which is the primary purpose of BRD macros.

[Seravi Edalborez]

A middle ground option that lets you minimize space/buttons and still queue GCDs is to map all of your (offensive) oGCDs to 1 button and spam that between GCDs. EasymodeX, resident DPS mathy test person of OF, advises these variations depending on occasion.

1: BL/ME only (when saving cooldowns for other stuff)
2: cooldowns -> BL/ME
3: cooldowns (except Blood for Blood) -> BL/ME

I generally agree with the above though. Non-macro is better potentially but I've seen plenty of manual BRDs who just kind of derp out and do nothing while they move about, which is losing their 1 GCD per 50 or so actions that a macro person would "miss" due to not being able to queue up actions right there.

[StUfF]

So when you're busy testing whether or not humans can push a button as fast as a turbo controller, are you also going to be testing whether or not non-macro-users are queuing every single GCD (i.e. their GCD timer literally never stops spinning) for the entire duration of a battle? Because otherwise, this seems like a one-sided comparison of "limits of human ability."

Also: MNK mechanics are nothing like BRD. MNK does not have to reaction respond to random procs that reset off-GCD abilities, which is the primary purpose of BRD macros.

Queuing an ability takes pressing a button in a 0.5 second time window. Getting perfect ability usage without a turbo button requires hitting an ability in a practically 0 second situation. I think the comparison is a bit unfair?

When using macros you are always losing time, the point of interest is how much time are you losing and is it worth the dps gain from automating your reactionary skills? I'm not familiar with BRD I won't presume to make assumptions but for MNK who have zero reactionary skills macro usage is not worth it if you want to maximise your dps.

I'm not here to critisize BRD macro usage, but I was pointed here to find out why macros should always be used whereas monk conventional wisdom is that they shouldn't.

[TheDirtyHobo]

I see that test as more a confirmation that macros may have some incredibly marginal delay OR that button mashing can actually hurt rather than proving any information about turbo buttons in particular.

[StUfF]

Macro vs non-Macro testing.

I did 30 bootshine attacks with/without it being on a macro.
I used act to extract the log and pulled out the last and first bootshine attacks and compared the difference.

For reference my gear has 421 Skill Speed with a listed GCD/recast of 2.42 seconds - I should expect the first and last to occur at 70.18 seconds difference (29x2.42)

[23:01:22.00 082b] You use Bootshine.
[23:02:32.00 082b] You use Bootshine.

This is non-macroed. The time difference between the first and last attack is 70 seconds (as roughly expected)

[23:06:42.00 082b] You use Bootshine.
[23:07:56.00 082b] You use Bootshine.

This is with bootshined macroed. The time difference is 74 seconds. Since I don't know how FFXIV round's its combat log, this is a fairly rough number. You can probably get better statistics by repeating the test for much more than 30 attacks. But if we give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the numbers were all rounded badly for the macro I've still lost 2 seconds of time over 29 GCD. This would roughly be 0.07 seconds per GCD. 70 Skill speed.

This to me shows it is definately not worth macroing abilities for a monk, and is a significant dps loss otherwise.

I don't play a bard myself so I don't know this affects bard DPS but it seems that Seravi's proposed solution where you keep GCD abilities off macro and spam OGCD/reactionary buttons on a macro would be optimal for BARD dps.

[Spider-Dan]

Queuing an ability takes pressing a button in a 0.5 second time window. Getting perfect ability usage without a turbo button requires hitting an ability in a practically 0 second situation. I think the comparison is a bit unfair?

You're focusing on one part of the equation (command input speed) while totally ignoring another part (command input consistency).

Yes, you can queue actions easily and indefinitely, when that's the only thing you have to do. But if you're going to talk about real world mashing vs. turbo, then why are you ignoring real world unused GCD downtime vs. perpetually-queued-GCDs?

If you aren't literally queuing every single GCD, whatever marginal advantage non-macro-users have instantly evaporates.

I'm not here to critisize BRD macro usage, but I was pointed here to find out why macros should always be used whereas monk conventional wisdom is that they shouldn't.

Outside of a more convenient way to spam buffs, I'm not sure why MNK would use macros anyway.

[Kirbyprime]

Eh... to be able to gauge real applications of macro vs non-macro you would at the very minimum require a 10 minute dummy simulation with a second party member randomly using various skills / call outs to simulate plumes, aoes, etc that need to be avoided, or stop attacking for boss invincible phases.

While we're at it, we'll probably need to quote papers on psychology and the limits of human concentration when dealing with multiple tasks and varying adrenaline levels.

Since I'm no longer in Uni nor do I wish to do another 15page paper that's not even going to get graded, fuck that, not bothering, macros please.

[Deadgye]

Outside of a more convenient way to spam buffs, I'm not sure why MNK would use macros anyway.

Since you actually can't use most moves unless you're in the correct stance, bar perfect stance, you can make some nice multiple moves in one key macros iirc.

[StUfF]

You're focusing on one part of the equation (command input speed) while totally ignoring another part (command input consistency).

Yes, you can queue actions easily and indefinitely, when that's the only thing you have to do. But if you're going to talk about real world mashing vs. turbo, then why are you ignoring real world unused GCD downtime vs. perpetually-queued-GCDs?

If you aren't literally queuing every single GCD, whatever marginal advantage non-macro-users have instantly evaporates.


Outside of a more convenient way to spam buffs, I'm not sure why MNK would use macros anyway.

I'm not really sure on your point of making mistakes.
It's impossible to measure how much "easier" using a macro makes and how many less mistakes you make - this is purely subjective and up to each person to measure and decide. I know I do not make mistakes that cost me on average 1 GCD every minute. Also making mistakes is also something you can do when using macros - in this case whilst macro makes it less likely you will make mistakes it is also much more punishing, you have a 0.5 second grace period when not using macros but if you miss your timing when using macros every millisecond that passes is lost dps.

If you are confident you don't lose 2-4 seconds of time per minute playing manually you are better off not using macros.

[Spider-Dan]

Your categorization of not-perfectly-queued GCDs as "mistakes" is disingenuous; the question is your ability to focus and maintain a continuously uninterrupted GCD for x seconds. If you're going to ignore focus as a concern, then turbo controllers are unneeded: macro users will simply make sure to time their button presses at the end of GCDs.

Furthermore, the amount of time it takes to recognize and change your input command to BL on a DoT proc (as opposed to continuing to mash a macro) chews up your GCD advantage pretty quickly. And finally, as previously stated, if you really think the compounded difference in 30 uninterrupted GCDs proves that macros are inferior, you should already be mathing out skillspeed vs. DET vs. DEX.

[Carraway]

Comparing macro usage vs manual input to skill speed vs X/Y/Z is silly because the former is a debate about GCD efficiency (how many actions performed in a timeframe vs maximum actions allowed in a timeframe) and the latter is whether X more maximum actions allowed in a timeframe results in more damage than Y more damage per action in a timeframe. They're completely separate issues, and conflating them serves no real purpose.

If you care about maximizing your damage, it's worth interrogating forced dropped actions vs personal human-error dropped actions and other related issues. In real-world scenarios like Titan (Extreme), I can review footage and find myself manually dropping maybe one to two GCDs per five minutes and then sometimes running into pushback on the macro because I use a mix of manual input and macro usage.

Here's a question I've posed to my FC and others that I'm not sure I'm personally suited to answer due to how long it'd take me to formulate a methodology to tackle it: what's better, having a macro fire a Bloodletter on-time and push your subsequent GCD-based action back, or firing the GCD-based action on-time and pushing the Bloodletter back?

[Soul Side]

I'd rather do 5 less DPS and play a job that involves more than just pressing 4 buttons. Bard is easy enough as it is.

The fact that some people on here and the OF seem to be so defensive about their precious macros is actually hilarious. I hope I never reach the rock bottom of trying to prove to other gamers that having less ability at video games is something to hang my hat on.

[Judai]

I'd rather do 5 less DPS and play a job that involves more than just pressing 4 buttons. Bard is easy enough as it is.

The fact that some people on here and the OF seem to be so defensive about their precious macros is actually hilarious. I hope I never reach the rock bottom of trying to prove to other gamers that having less ability at video games is something to hang my hat on.

If any job you play requires you to only press 4 buttons, you are playing that job completely wrong.

[Deadgye]

Here's a question I've posed to my FC and others that I'm not sure I'm personally suited to answer due to how long it'd take me to formulate a methodology to tackle it: what's better, having a macro fire a Bloodletter on-time and push your subsequent GCD-based action back, or firing the GCD-based action on-time and pushing the Bloodletter back?

If you're only fighting one enemy, the latter, since you're very very likely to still have time to fire off bloodletter before the next possible reset.

[StUfF]

Your categorization of not-perfectly-queued GCDs as "mistakes" is disingenuous; the question is your ability to focus and maintain a continuously uninterrupted GCD for x seconds. If you're going to ignore focus as a concern, then turbo controllers are unneeded: macro users will simply make sure to time their button presses at the end of GCDs.

Furthermore, the amount of time it takes to recognize and change your input command to BL on a DoT proc (as opposed to continuing to mash a macro) chews up your GCD advantage pretty quickly. And finally, as previously stated, if you really think the compounded difference in 30 uninterrupted GCDs proves that macros are inferior, you should already be mathing out skillspeed vs. DET vs. DEX.

As I said previously "focus" is not universal. This can only be measured per person but somewhere between perfect focus and herp derp there is a break point where macros are perform worse and manual user input is better and vice versa.

Most of my input is from a MNK POV where we have no reactionary abilities which pushes MNKs more to the non-macro side of the equation, whilst for BRD it may skew more towards the macro side, but at some point of mastery you can get to the point where using macros is a dps loss. This can probably only be determined by personal testing and examination.

Have you considered the solution where you do not macro your GCD abilities but macro your O-GCD abilities? i.e. press your GCD ability to queue your heavy shot/steady shot and then spam your BL/OGCD abilities within? I don't know if this is viable but it would seemingly give you the best of both worlds, your GCD abilities would Queue and your O-GCD abilities would go off the instant they proc.

[Deadgye]

Since you need to be spamming the macro anyway in order for it to be worthwhile, you can literally just overpower it's usefulness by spamming the actual abilities instead of a macro. Pretty sure I mentioned that already in this thread, but it got passed over because they couldn't say anything to refute it.