Macro suggs for Swashie playing in small groups

[Kitsune]

<p>Anyone got suggestions for Macros for my toon? I play normally with 1-2 other folks, or occasionally solo. I don't Raid and a lot of the advice here is for Raiders - not that I mind, of course, but I'd appreciate some for my play style too.</p><p>Thanks for any help.</p>

[Keyh]

<p>Only macros I have are one for the mez, and one for the hate transfer (so I'm not an idiot and put it on someone I didn't mean to) and those are just "Mezzing %t" and "Hate transfer to %t" respectively.</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>I can't use Hate transfer as our Guild is small and Tank lower than me and can't take the aggro boost. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Never did quite get the nack of the mezzing. How good is it? I got Disarm (am L 80) and I have been using it as part of my usual skills. Does it mezz a nearby mob effectively while we hit another one?</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Kitsune wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I can't use Hate transfer as our Guild is small and Tank lower than me and can't take the aggro boost. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p><p><span style="color: #00ffff;">I don't understand this.  Unless he's not tanking, he needs all the aggro he can get.</span></p><p>Never did quite get the nack of the mezzing. How good is it? I got Disarm (am L 80) and I have been using it as part of my usual skills. Does it mezz a nearby mob effectively while we hit another one?</p><p><span style="color: #00ffff;">It's ok for soloing, and has limited usefulness in groups.  It's generally broken within a few seconds of casting, because of uncontrolled AoE effects, like our Hurricane.</span></p></blockquote>

[Kitsune]

<p>Our L 72 Zerker in our Guild tanks as we don't have any other tank class among the 3 of us. Even when I was L 52 she couldn't take the extra aggro without dying as we usually didn't have a healer.</p><p>With the Necro he has his Pet Undead knight (He's also L 80)Tank and I hit obviously through him or his pet. I have had to turn off Hurricaine permanently at his request, and not use any AOEs unless I am positive there are only the mobs hitting us in range of my Lucky Whirl & the other similar AOE (forget name, has 3 blades on it, blue background).</p><p>Now I know it has saved our lives many times, and I do use AOEs carefully, should be doing that by L 80 despite lack of varied and larger groups to fight in, but I dunno if I am doing it right or not as if I don't do lots more smaller hits & save larger ones like the Walk the Plank combo till last, I die a lot. I also seem to die as I have to go behind the mob now as one of his root or whatever spells stops my Walk the Plank happening, and that kills me as I  am out ahead with the Pet and behind them so neaer mobs no matter how careful I am. Had to make an ADD macro, heh.</p><p>Would appreciate advice, please.</p>

[DngrMou]

<p>Hmmm.  I don't think I've ever tried casting hate transfer on a pet.  Try that....and give the tank pet plenty of time to get aggro, (target through it), and use Blame Blade as well early on in any fight.  Use Baffle whenever it's up, and hideaway if/when you rip aggro.  Ask your Necro to pull the mob back to the group so you can position yourself behind it, and use all your offensive debuffs as soon as possible, to help keep the pet up.</p><p>P.S.  This strategy will only work until the GU-51 nerf goes live.  It seems SOE did not take into account that others besides the officially approved tank classes can tank...including pets.  Blame Blade will only be half as effective, and you'll have no hate transfer at all.</p>

[stondgoat]

<p>imo you should just do the tanking, that way you can use all your tricks and the mobs will die faster. You should be able to stay alive just fine if you guys are doing level 70ish stuff.</p>

[Greevo]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hmmm.  I don't think I've ever tried casting hate transfer on a pet.  Try that....and give the tank pet plenty of time to get aggro, (target through it), and use Blame Blade as well early on in any fight.  Use Baffle whenever it's up, and hideaway if/when you rip aggro.  Ask your Necro to pull the mob back to the group so you can position yourself behind it, and use all your offensive debuffs as soon as possible, to help keep the pet up.</p></blockquote><p>I've never been able to hate transfer to a tank pet, it only works on actual group members.</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>We were doing L 79 to 83 mobs in Ykesha Moors.</p><p>Thanks for the advice. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[TygerMeow]

<p>I use macros a *lot*. I have like 4 pages of them on my swash (although some are social).</p><p>I have 5 macros total for buffs, including hate transfer. Hate x-fer includes Avoid (since I don't need it when soloing) and also an emote to let everyone (including me) know who it's been cast on. I have my solo buff and pathfinding in one macro, Hurricane and Weapon Blur in another macro, then my stance and Spurious Bravado each in other macros. So I cast the first two, then either def or off stance, which both include the other buff. Then I hit the hate transfer if I'm in a group.</p><p>I have both AEs in a macro. I have Eye Poke and Whirl of Blades in a macro. Then I have a macro with all the rest of the regular melee attacks (like 6 inc AA CAs). I have a macro with the two backstabs, one side/backstab and also pickpocket, although with the other two CAs have a chance at pickpocket, you almost never have a chance at getting to a straight pickpocket anymore. I have a macro with Evasive Maneuvers first, which fires by itself, although it fails to go off like 60% of the time, so I have to spam it. Also in that macro are Boot Dagger and the strike that you have to be invised for. I had a bit of trouble with those firing correctly a couple months ago, but that seems to be better now. They fire correctly about 80% of the time now.</p><p>I used to use Swathe a lot because it was my biggest hit. However, DPS-wise with my Epic, it's casting time is taking away from DPS, so now I only use it for the knockback to slow down incoming DPS.</p><p>I have a pull macro. It has an incoming message for when I pretend to tank, but that's usually not active (it says //g instead of /g so it doesn't fire normally). The macro has the message, fires Velium Throw (our Thrown Weapon CA) and kicks off the HO. I've considered adding in Evasive Manuevers, since it's got a 25 meter range, the same as Velium Throw. However, I haven't tried that yet. I freaking love Evasive Maneuvers.</p><p>I have a macro that kicks off our second HO starter (Trickery). HOs seems to be pretty useless. The only reason I keep this around is because our second HO starter has a defense debuff, which is really helpful when soloing above con mobs. I believe it will also land you more crits, so I use whenever it's up, since it requires so little casting time, however, it may not give you any more crits. Feel free to correct me if lowering DEF will increase crit chance.</p><p>On duoing/grouping without a healer... I don't run hate x-fer. However, I do use avoid and I love to ping-pong aggro. I watch their health and mine, and I usually start with aggro, wait til I'm down to orange or red, then drop it likes it's hot. You can definitely duo much higher mobs without a healer that way, rather than relying on one person 'tanking'.</p><p>I have a macro for Disarm (our mez). When I get an add, I switch targets to the add, and hit this macro. The macro sends a message to the group (if I'm in one) that I'm mezzing for 20 seconds, casts Disarm, then targets myself, so I don't accidentally hit the target and break mez. However, I'm severely disappointed in our mez. I have it mastered and it freaking got resisted by an even con yesterday in JW. I understand when it gets resisted by a an 83 ^^^ named maybe once, but a an even con? It's pretty ridiculous for a utility class to have a mezz that doesn't work on epic to begin with, then gets resisted by trash. Not to mention the fact that our own class epic weapon has a DoT. Brilliant.</p><p>Finally, I have two macros for our temp buffs - one for the 2 minutes recast ones and one for the 5 minutes recast ones. Oh, and I've also got Baffle and Hideaway both in a macro. I just realized that Baffle is first, but Hideaway is much, much better, even though it's recast is longer, so I should reverse those.</p><p>So out of 36 hotkeys, 19 are macros.</p>

[Kitsune]

<p>Wow! Extensive. Thank you. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I have Copied this and will try them all out to see how they work. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>