Blm macros help?

[Olbohn]

So, its always been on my mind "How do some blms have so many freakin macros?"

I don't mean macro lines, I mean macros.

For example, say we're in limbus or einherjar. X mob with fire weakness is the target, some blms just nuke Ice/Thunder as long as its not resistant to it anyways but some blms (typically the good ones) always nuke the weakness.

Now as much as I would love to follow their footsteps, I just don't have my macros organized to do that nor would I know how to.

These are my macros for the time being;
Ctrl Alt
1: Target 1. Elemental Enfeebles
2. Healing 2. Equipping Obi
3. CureIII 3. Stun
4. Drain 4. Aspir
5. BlizzIV 5. Stoneskin
6. ThunderIV 6. Bind
7. BurstII 7. Gravity
8. FreezeII 8. Sleepga
9. Sleep 9. SleepII
10. Eseal 10. Manafont

Also I only have 3 macro palettes; 1 for subbing rdm, 2 for subbing nin, and 3 for subbing rdm when we do kirin (my alt1 macro becomes aero IV and ctrl9 becomes tornadoII).

As you can see, most of those spells are important and not removable, wheres the room to put in Fire, Earth, Water nukes?

I'm thinking of perhaps a Fire palette, Earth palatte, etc. Or maybe a palatte for different events? Sky/Sea/Einherjar/Limbus?

But do Blms really cycle through their macro palettes against X mob weak against X element? If you have a more organized way of doing this, I would love to know please. Thanks.

[Seanr]

Actually.. I dont have enough.. but here., it's not all of it.

http://i40.tinypic.com/969tuq.jpg

[Kaylia]

If you can use windower macro, do yourself a favor and use that instead.

For my blm, I use 4macro bar, but there is many repeat (failsafe)

Ctrl+3 = Stun, always
Ctrl+6 = sleep 2 always
ctrl+8 = sleep 1 always
ctrl+9 = sleepga1 or sleepga 2
Elemental nuke = alt 1-6 (i have tier 4, 3 and fire/ice/thunder/fireII/iceII/thunderII (aga and ancient 2 are used from menu)

No dot are macroed ever either.

Macro bar#1
Cure, na spell, para, blind, slow, stoneskin, dispel, blink, stun...basically, most support spells

Macro #2
The "default" one, with tier 4 nukes, stun, aspir/drain ES, 4 sleep, gravity, bind, /map , "Pulling >>>> <t> <<<<", cure 1/3

Macro #3
Almost the same as above, except tier 4 are replaced with tier 3, utsu: ichi instead of ES (not a great idea...I dont know how many time I ES'd utsu) and utsu:ni


Macro #4
Tier 1 and Tier 2 nukes, + many many repeats

[Olbohn]

How do you deal with mobs that you need to nuke/enfeeble Seanr? From my experiences, I like to keep grav/bind handy because, well u never know when your in a bind(ok bad joke) and need those enfeebles asap.

For example, Puddings. If you were soloing them, you'd need sleep/bind macroed and ready to use right? Like when a mob resists or has a partial resist, I tend to fall back on grav/bind for a quick disable. However, if I went by your macros that might be difficult.

Also, if I manage to find a way to organize my macros which AM2 would you suggets after Torando, Burst, and Freeze? My blm is getting boring to me and I need a new am2 spell lol

Edit: @Kaylia

You said you use spells from menu? What about macroing in the proper gear to do it? Do you have a macro that switches based on element? For example: Ice Elemental Macro, macros in all nuke gear + aquilo's?

Do you ever have trouble swapping between Macro bar 1 and 2? Keeping SS up is usually a must before nuking, so it must be kinda troublesome to already have to swap every 5mins. Though I really do like the idea of having a support palette instead of incorporating it all in one.

Lastly, I notice you two don't have any type of /target <bt> macros. Do you normally just tab for the mob or F8?

[Seanr]

I have the rest of my spells in a specific order in the menu, It's easier for me to use it through there...

[Kaylia]

Edit: @Kaylia

You said you use spells from menu? What about macroing in the proper gear to do it? Do you have a macro that switches based on element? For example: Ice Elemental Macro, macros in all nuke gear + aquilo's?

Do you ever have trouble swapping between Macro bar 1 and 2? Keeping SS up is usually a must before nuking, so it must be kinda troublesome to already have to swap every 5mins. Though I really do like the idea of having a support palette instead of incorporating it all in one.

Lastly, I notice you two don't have any type of /target <bt> macros. Do you normally just tab for the mob or F8?

I hit the corresponding tier IVmacro to swap gears. Select burst II from menu --> hit thunder 4. Because elements are always at the same place (stone/water/wind/fire/ice/thunder for alt1-alt6), it's pretty hard to fuck up. Ancient could be macroed (instead of the stone3/water3) I guess, but never macro "aga" spell for the obvious reason.

Swapping bar isn't really an issue. I do it all the time on blm. Hold alt and press up/down to go to your next bar. For stoneskin, it's alt ->up->5-> down. It takes 0.5sec sec more than it would if it was on the same bar, which is nothing compared to SS casting.

I'm personally not a fan of stoneskin thought. With gravity, the monster should rarely hit and you could save the mp/casting time for something else. Of course, there is many situation where it's useful, but if the monsters is likely to hit me, I'm just going to sub nin.

And yes, F8, tab and shift+tab. Battle target is asking for trouble in party imo. Having a peripheric vision, and being able to target anything quickly (especially for sleep) is important. No point limiting certain spell to a particular target.

[Kaylia]

After reading your first post again, I realize you don't seem to realize you can change macro palette holding ctrl/alt +up/down. I think it will solve most of your problem


Also, make sure to macro sleepga II on your main bar. It's definively one of the "must have" spell.

And get ride of manafont and "target" thing. Get used to F8, because it's work just as good, and manafont is asking for "macro accident". Sure, it's not mijin, but no point risking a macro accident. Ctrl+j -> enter if you want to do manafont.

[Izlude]

How do you deal with mobs that you need to nuke/enfeeble Seanr? From my experiences, I like to keep grav/bind handy because, well u never know when your in a bind(ok bad joke) and need those enfeebles asap.

I feel the same way in regards to my macro setup on BLM. So I keep all my enfeebles up top on the CTRL and majority of my nukes on ALT.

So from CTR1-10 I have . . .

Drain Aspir Bind Dispel Silence Slow Paralyze Choke Burn Shock

and my ALT1-10 I have . . .

blank Stun Gravity Burst II Thunder IV Blizzard IV Freeze II Fire IV Bio II Poison II

This allows me to have quick access to extremely important spells like drain aspir grav dispel stun etc. I like have my stun readily available. And dispel has to be near by because if something casts shell on themselves, it's either a waste to cast a spell on them or to have to look through your macro palette for where ever dispel might be.

I keep all my sleep spells from ALT1-4 on my 10 slot and move up in my book as I want to reach tiers 3-1 and their respective -ga's.

I feel this has a lot of utility and room to move stuff around cause there's still a blank macro spot, as well as paralyze and slow which aren't necessities for immediate use.

[bungiefan]

You can also set macro commands that switch bars for you, so you can have a command that switches you to an enfeeble bar, a buff bar, and a nuking bar. I use such a set for my SCH and SMN to have a full book just for that job. SMN I have a bar for each avatar, plus one for utility spells. Summoning the avatar switches me to their bar, giving me their pacts commands the next time I open the bar.

[Olbohn]

After reading your first post again, I realize you don't seem to realize you can change macro palette holding ctrl/alt +up/down. I think it will solve most of your problem

lol I do know it but I was seeing if there was a way to avoid swapping between palettes so much because its easy to get lost.

For example, on my Rdm I have all 10 macro palettes taken up. So it can become really a overload sometimes. I remember one instance where I saw a Mamool casting ThundagaIII, my instinct kicks in and I hit the ctrl-5 which is typically my Silence macro. You guessed it, it was actually my PoisonII macro because I was on a different palette. So while I understand switching palettes isn't difficult, I wanted refrain from doing so as much as possible. However, from majority responses it seems that switching palettes is a must.

What I gathered from everyone's macros is that there are 4 different types of BLM spells in our arsenal.

That is; Support, Nukes, Enfeebles, and Necessary.

Support: Stoneskin, Blink, Cures, Na spells, etc.
Nukes: Self explanatory
Enfeebles: Binds, Gravity
Necesary: Sleepga, Stun

I believe the problem I'm having is that I'm trying to incorporate all four types of spell into a single palette. It seems that most of you are typically implementing the three types, typically nukes + neccessary spells + enfeebles or support. I'll definitely give that a shot, and start making a new macro palette and I"ll even give macro palette swapping a try during battle and see if I can adapt to it. Thanks for all the responses.

You can also set macro commands that switch bars for you, so you can have a command that switches you to an enfeeble bar, a buff bar, and a nuking bar. I use such a set for my SCH and SMN to have a full book just for that job. SMN I have a bar for each avatar, plus one for utility spells. Summoning the avatar switches me to their bar, giving me their pacts commands the next time I open the bar.

I've heard of the macro palette swapping command, but I don't know what the command is, could you tell me? Honestly though, I wouldn't have the slightest clue how I could use that with the blm spells. Seeing as how you link avatars to particular macro palettes, perhaps linking a certain element spell to a macro palette sounds like a good idea?

Example: Have a macro that says "Fire IV or Flare II" and switches you to the fire Palette, which would contain all the Fire spells Fire I, II, III, IV and FlareII. Definitely a great suggestion, sounds like a whole shit ton of macros I'd have to make though lol.

[bungiefan]

The downloadable macro set for SCH on the wiki gives a good start to understanding it. Essentially you have a main pallet that links to others, and you categorize spells into types. Then you just have to double-press a macro to switch to the type and use the spell. You try to keep a link to every other category in every pallette, in the same space in all of them. I use Alt for a few specific category switchers, and some other things I'm hitting. I use Ctrl for the spells in those categories. For BLM though, I don't know specifically what I'd set it out as yet. I'm getting by with a single pallette since I don't have enough gear yet to be doing swaps. I'm still trying to get my main gear set up to par for being level 66, so I don't have any alternate gear sets built yet. I'm still on my first job to 75 after 6.5 years since activating my account, so I don't have funds to get all the nifty gear, and I have no idea what I'd want for endgame yet (not that I have any sort of regular times to play to even do endgame, since my work schedule is different every single week).

Pallette change command is:

/macro set #

You can set gear swap to be on that macro after the /macro command, in case you have an enfeebling set, a nuking set, and a resting set.

/macro book # also works to change books, if you need to do that too.

[Vejitta]

I have each macro set for each tier (II, III, IV, AM, AM II, ga II and ga III).
It's quite handy with enough practice, still have to switch some stuff manually though (like Uggi, and Sorc Ring in future I guess). But, thanks to that have enfeebling magic in the same macro set than nukes, which cuts time I need to cast enfeeble considerably.
Oh, and I have Cure III and Ichi in the same macro, lol >.>

[arshesney]

Ctrl palette
Sleepga 2, Sleep 2, Sleepga, Sleep, Stun, Gravity, Bind, Bio 2, Drain, Aspir

Alt palette
Cure 3, Stoneskin, Blink, Aquaveil, -Enmity gear, Low ele skill, Mid ele skill, Uber ele skill, Blizzard 4 without swaps, Ohshit set

I'm using spellcast, most of the times I'm picking spells from the menu, and a G15 (blue) so I have all T3/T4 nukes on one palette, ele debuffs/-ga 3 on another and a gimphealer palette with various -na and stuff.
Stun is also bound to various key combinations and on every palette (and to a pad bumper).

[Ruzaki]

I use macro palette switching on RDM (mostly for quick access to -na and every enfeeble), but often I'll press the switch button and it won't switch. Instead of the -na I wanted, I'll end up throwing a Cure IV. I dunno why, but it happens enough that I'm gonna try switching palettes manually.

[Neoex]

spellcast will free up slots for you, best thing you could ever do to your BLM, not only in macro effciency but gear effciency, if you want to be the best BLM you can be, you need to be running spellcast.

I use 1 pallete for BLM and the only thing I switch palletes for is elemental debuffs, everything else I have on one pallete and its all I need at a quick touch. If you have Stone4/Fire4 crap like that wasting slots on your main pallete your never going to get it to fit on one. If there is a need for that, with spellcast /ma fire4 and your done, no need for a quick touch macro for a spell like that.

[Ultimagi]

My first macro page for Black Mage is just gear swaps and an index to other macro pages. For example, if I want to cast a nuke, I hit 2 macros to change 11 equipment slots and forward to the nuke macro page. On that page I have every tier IV and Ancient Magic II, as well as Blizzard III, Thunder III, Blizzaga III, and Thundaga III. There are also macros for equipping Uggalepih Pendant, Sorcerer's Tonban, and a subtarget option to equip Obis for each nuke. I have similar macro pages for Enfeebling Magic, Dark Magic, and White Magic, and Elemental Magic has different sets for more Magic Accuracy or more Magic Attack. This is all done without Windower or Spellcast, and works great.

[Akairyu]

I use spellcast so I don't have any equipment swaps written into my macros, that's all handled in my XML. I use 4 macro sets in my BLM book to hold all the nukes I'm likely to use, as well as the utility spells I use most often. On each of those 4 sets, ctrl and alt 5-0 are exactly the same, since I don't want which set I'm on to throw me off.

sets 1-3
ctrl: 1. T4 2. AM2 3. T4 4. AMII 5. Bind 6. Sleep 7. Sleep II 8. Drain 9. Aspir 0. Stun
alt: 1. T3 2. -gaIII 3. T3 4. -gaIII 5. Gravity 6. Sleepga 7. Sleepga II 8. Stoneskin 9. Blink 0. Aquaveil (probably going to change to Phalanx soon)

For each of those sets Ctrl/atl 1&2 and Ctrl/Alt 3&4 are the T4 AMII T3 and ga3 of a given Element. Set 1 is ice/thunder, 2 is water/wind, 3 is earth/fire. I chose that setup based on which element spells I cast most often, making the ones I use less the ones farther from set 1.

Set 10 is a bit different, that has Burn/Shock/Choke/Bio II on ctrl1-4 and Drown/Rasp/Frost/Dia II on alt1-4. Any other debuffs like silence/dispel/paralyze etc I just type out since they aren't as heavily used or as time critical to cast.

I also use the blue G15 keyboard, so if i find myself needing a spell not on those macros a lot, I'll make an alias for it on g7-12. I've got aliases on g13-18 that control which nuking set I swap to when I start casting (Ele skill, INT, and damage), as well as an alias that equips my Sorc Gloves for MBs and one that toggles Uggy Pendant on and off in case I decide I don't want to use it on a particular mob and keep my Ele Skill or INT neckpieces on.

(g1-6 hold aliases to swap me into various melee builds for stuff like campaign or skilling up staff)

[Neoex]

My first macro page for Black Mage is just gear swaps and an index to other macro pages. For example, if I want to cast a nuke, I hit 2 macros to change 11 equipment slots and forward to the nuke macro page. On that page I have every tier IV and Ancient Magic II, as well as Blizzard III, Thunder III, Blizzaga III, and Thundaga III. There are also macros for equipping Uggalepih Pendant, Sorcerer's Tonban, and a subtarget option to equip Obis for each nuke. I have similar macro pages for Enfeebling Magic, Dark Magic, and White Magic, and Elemental Magic has different sets for more Magic Accuracy or more Magic Attack. This is all done without Windower or Spellcast, and works great.

as much as I believe you that it works great, spellcast works better, it never misses a latent, it never misses a weather/day condition. It can also put on the right amount of magic accuracy.

[Ultimagi]

It also violates the terms of service.

[hypnotizd]

My only pallet for BLM is setup like this:

CTRL
1WaterIV 2ThunderIV 3StoneIV 4AeroIV 5BlizzardIV 6FireIV 7Drain 8Aspir 9Stun 0SleepgaII
ALT
1n/a 2Gravity 3Bind 4BurstII 5FreezeII 6n/a 7Blink&Stoneskin 8HPDown 9Idle 0hMP

Any other spells I need I just type them out. All of my macros have a windower macro gearswap behind them, so /ma sleep <t> and then CTRL+0 for the gearswap if I need a single target sleep. I'm sure its not the most efficient way to do it, but it has always served me well. Besides, typing 80~90 wpm makes typing spells out trivial.