The pain of gearswapping! (macrohelpprz?)

[Michaera]

Ok, so last night I was xping in Caedarva as DRG/SAM in a crummy party with no refresh, it sucked. But it was my first time out there with the new-and-improved SAM sub and my Love Halberd. SAM sub really doesn't keep me alive as well as I'd hoped, and I'll probably switch back to /NIN, but I encountered a ridiculous problem: in almost every macro I have on this job there is at least one, sometimes two gear swapping events that cause my character to flicker, and it's like gear is changing every second for the duration of the battle so that nobody can cure me, Haste me, Cover me, whatever the case. The only time I found that the flickering stopped was when a fly would start his Cursed Sphere as I was switching gear and I had to wait for the animation to finish before flickering.

It looks something like this:
Jump macro: swap in jump gear > wait 1 second for the game to figure it out > Jump > wait 2 seconds > swap gear back
High Jump: swap in jump gear + different pants > wait 1 > High Jump > wait 2 > swap gear back
WS gear macro: simply swap in all the WS gear
TP gear macro: swap back all the TP gear, changes situationally
Angon macro: equips Angon > wait 1 > throws angon > wait 1 > equips virtue stone

I guess the problem lies in a "normal" fight going something like...
Mob pulled >> Angon macro (two separate swaps) >> WS gear >> actually use WS >> TP gear >> gimpy meditate >> Jump macro (two swaps) >> High Jump (two swaps) >> WS gear >> actual WS >> TP gear >> probably dead at this point because the healer couldn't ever target me and I'm fumbling around for Seigan/Third Eye

So what I'm looking for is some ideas for restructuring these macros. I'm using Windower of course, and after seeing Ruke's LJ macro tutorial post (btw, the barfire gear really does rock for Tiamat), I converted everything that should take more than the SE-allotted six macro lines to Windower form. Unfortunately part of my problem does lie here, since pre-windower I could hit my Jump macro and then my High Jump macro shortly after and interrupt the Jump before the second gearswap happened. Windower macros can't be interrupted. :/ As far as I know, anyways. I guess I hope that some of you are more fluent in solving Windower macro puzzles than I am.

Few things I'm considering are: get used to hitting TP gear macro after jumps and remove the second swaps from them; stop using Angon or stop using Love Halberd and thus virtue stones, depending on the situation (can't even parse it since Spyle's is busted atm so I won't go with use x because it's better in that regard); use the same Jump gear for both jumps; be loldrg and just not swap gear except for WS.

Ideas? :/

A giant image of all the macros

[Janice]

Tell all the mages in your party to change their macros. Just tell them to put your name in everything so dissapearing doesn't matter. You're a DRG, you don't have to take this shit.

[Ruffles]

Tell all the mages in your party to change their macros. Just tell them to put your name in everything so dissapearing doesn't matter. You're a DRG, you don't have to take this shit.

LOL ya if you don't like the pt just leave I'm sure you'll get another one real quick.

[Nirokun!]

Im not even in your PT but~

i hate you already for your gearswapping blinking whoreishness

we're never meritting together ever

[Janice]

Speaking for a WHM, niro sucks. I could care less if someone blinks like that every second. I'm still going to get my spell off.

[Moggy]

jump macro doesn't need wait for the AF boots to register, and my friend parsed that my love halberd infact did less dmg overall than mezraq :\

[Daahan]

It's a falacy of the game's macro system. You can only make macros so long because there is limited space in each pallet. When don't have a wait time at the beginning of gear swaps, your current action and the gear swap happens at the same time, which is probably the result of your problem.

If you can't find a solution but want to insist and changing gear for jump, just make a second macro for jump gear, similar to your WS and TP build macro. It's in efficient but it's not going to change much.

edit: Spirit Link is a fun way to piss off WHMs, RIGHT NIRO!?!?!?!?!

[Masterofshade]

Few things I'm considering are: get used to hitting TP gear macro after jumps and remove the second swaps from them

There ya go. That way if you really do Jump and High Jump every fight, insteda of using High Jump after WSs, you can go Gear Change > Jump Jump> Gear change. That eliminates 2 blinks.

Angon macro is fine, just get over the blinking.

If using windower macros, there's no need to put waits. My Jin macro looks like
/console exec "JinDay.txt"
/ws "Blade: Jin"

that works fine, no wait needed.

then as soon as you see your TP go white in windower (used tp for the WS) hit ur TP gear macro. that will give you just a single blink because it LOOKS like you're WSing in your TP gear (sorta like when you have haste going off on you and you macro a change, the change starts after the spell is done) but trust me it's your WS gear.

This works for my NIN. I personally stay away from Gear > Command > Gear in one macro, because I often have 1 set of gear that works for a couple things (sorta like your jumps cept for the high jump gear swap).

Mages complain about my blinking on NIN (as im the focus of more spells than most melee DDs) but you can eliminate quite a few "blinks" by having your macros go off very quickly, and the game will only process the current image of gear from a change. Animation lock (getting cast on and the gear pre-macro is on and you can't move) can me manipulated to work in your favor, by using utsu/TP moves/the WS itself to prolong your visible gear change and yield you just the single character blink.




Hope that helps ^^

loldrg

[Michaera]

Tell all the mages in your party to change their macros. Just tell them to put your name in everything so dissapearing doesn't matter. You're a DRG, you don't have to take this shit.

I did LOL. xD I've already got Ryph to make a pallet for me when we duo because of the AF helm swap.

And moggy, your Mez+1 is cheating. >.> .. ;-;


But ok. Now I'd always had those waits in my Jump macro just because I wasn't sure one way or the other if they were necessary or not. I'm pretty sure that Healing Breath, for example, won't allow you to macro in AF pants and macro them back out because it takes the game a few seconds to figure out teh wyvern HP+. x.x So I assumed it would be like the same for JAs. I'll try that on Jumps, and I'll remove the second swap. With respect to WS, macroing the gear with the WS is giving me a red flag for some reason, I guess there's some case where I don't want the gear swapped (maybe soloing?) but I can't figure it out right yet. It looks so much easier that way though.

I do try to take advantage of whatever's going on, especially spell lock sometimes, to get in maybe 3 of my swaps in one flicker motion, but especially after WS I hate to change back right away. Odds are the mob is looking at me, and odds are I'm going to need a cure unless I've got NIN sub on. x.x

Thanks for the responses so far, I'll give this all a shot when maint ends.

[Nirokun!]

Speaking for a WHM, niro sucks. I could care less if someone blinks like that every second. I'm still going to get my spell off.

Im not saying i cant do it (*'-') its just annoying, and destroys my monotony if i have to keep targeting him (*'-') however, i do agree that i suck (**************'-')love it

No daahan, whats really annoying is putting up the appropriate regen for your dmg, then having someone cure you to full ((((((((((((

[Kurohyou]

Few things I'm considering are: get used to hitting TP gear macro after jumps and remove the second swaps from them; stop using Angon or stop using Love Halberd and thus virtue stones, depending on the situation (can't even parse it since Spyle's is busted atm so I won't go with use x because it's better in that regard); use the same Jump gear for both jumps; be loldrg and just not swap gear except for WS.

I recently started using Windower macros myself, and I found that, while it's difficult to avoid the temptation to cram gear swap>WS>gear swap into one macro, it does work better in practice to separate them out into 2-3 macros.

For my WSs I have one macro to switch into all my WS gear, then a second macro that uses a specific WS (typically Rampage), pause 3's, then switches in all of my TP gear.

You might want to consider just separating out your eq swaps for jump.

Angon is <3, never stop using it.

[Ploid]

Oh you PC people and your fancy advantages.

[Moggy]

healing breath takes like 10 secs to register @_@ i never bother swapping gear and waiting for that, but jump is easy to test, u won't see big numbers if the boots aren't on, and i've always had it without wait X)

[fussel]

If using windower macros, there's no need to put waits. My Jin macro looks like
/console exec "JinDay.txt"
/ws "Blade: Jin"

Candidate for getting banned for "Just using windower" next month...

For the WHM side of this:

I use macros for equip changes (e.g. Light Staff when curing) and only have a set of Cure III macros for <p0> to <p5>. Those are, IMO, the only spells where quickness is absolutely critical and there's nothing better than just pressing alt-1 to alt-6 to cure somebody, no actual targetting involved. Since the name of the party member will be used for a macro, there's only one time when I can't catch a Dragoon, and that's when he's Super Jumping (naturally). For almost everything else, I'm typing

/ma Spell Playername

while the current spell is going off. Also, never misses, because you're using the name. Sometimes people have stupid names, then I'm just using <p0> to <p5>...

[Masterofshade]

If using windower macros, there's no need to put waits. My Jin macro looks like
/console exec "JinDay.txt"
/ws "Blade: Jin"

Candidate for getting banned for "Just using windower" next month...

As long as you're not retarded you can do the same thing easily by just hitting 1 macro. It's called having fast fingers. I used to do this pre-windower macros, but only for NIN because I used to switch fewer pieces of gear (not almost my entire set like i do now).

I mean, maybe if you're retarded, you would have a hard time repeating this, which would explain your need to be a total dickhead when I'm here trying to help someone else.

Also: I don't think GMs really give a shit about windower in the first place. I've been in jail a couple of times with windower going. They prolly know it's there, they just don't give a shit.

/end annoyance at retard who can't F# + Alt 2 with any decent speed.

[Fng]

Holy jebus. If you are in a party w/o refresh.. do you really need to measure your e-peen 5 diffrent ways?

Make some sacrafices, i am sure your party wasnt getting past say chain 7 w/ refresh, so you really dont need 15 million gear swaps. The extra 100 damage on every jump is not going to make our break this party.

[Michaera]

It wasn't my fault they didn't have a RDM or BRD (ninja edit) or COR. And I don't think they even got past chain 6. It was something like PLD/WAR RNG MNK/WAR DRG/SAM (tank) WHM and BLM. But this post wasn't started in the interest of e-peen, but reworking my macros to have similar effectiveness without all the target-breaking flickering that gets me killed. I really don't care if my party is shit, I like to try my best, especially since loldrg.

But on the topic of WHM macros as well, do you guys have an experience/opinion on <stpc> for meripo situations? I had always thought that if I leveled a healer I'd have my macros set like that so I had less problems with swappers, but does it work in practice?

[Fng]

I didnt say it was your fault the party sucked..

It is your fault for mashing 18 macros and not letting a normal XP minded mage the abality to cure / haste / whatever you. Especially when the end result is not improved by your actions..

Idiots that think they should do the best for thier job / damage numbers whatever vs what is best for the party are annoying.

You fall into the former catagory.


edit

<stpc> drops on every swap so if you are p5 and the <stpc> hits a gear swapper at p3 the mage has to re hit the macro and page down to you, then have you blink out... start all over again... about the 5 th time that happens I say to hell w/ p5.

[RakEx]

<stpc> drops on every swap so if you are p5 and the <stpc> hits a gear swapper at p3 the mage has to re hit the macro and page down to you, then have you blink out... start all over again... about the 5 th time that happens I say to hell w/ p5.

Press up? Instead of down. It will take you to the bottom player, P5.

[Fng]

true, it was just an example.