New Macro System

[bensilvi]

Very Nice!!

So easy a Caveman can do it!!

[Galithdor]

Yeah i like the new macro system!

Macros...so easy a caveman can do it! or in a EQ1 piece...

Macros...so easy a Trogladyte can do it!

lol dang annoying things on luclin!

[Mikkahl]

I see the new macro system still has some of the same quirks about combining spells/abilities.  My old harvesting macros (Trapping shown here) were like this:

/target_nearest_npc

: ; usea trapping ; usea trapping

Now I added the equipping of the sandalwood harvesting tool as the first step, and made the macro icon look like the harvest tool, both of which are very nice. 

Then I tried splitting the 2 trapping commands up in to 2 separate steps, with /usea trapping on each line, or with the new Use Ability: Trapping on each line.  Neither one worked, as it won't queue the second harvest command - I only get one.  So, I went back to my original : ; usea trapping ; usea trapping as the third line and it works fine - I get 2 harvests per button press.

There has always been a lot of trial-and-error between putting /usea command on separate lines or stringing them together on one line.  Could SoE please make it work the same no matter how you arrange the /usea  (or Use Ability) commands?

[Dejah]

I'd like the macros to show the tooltip of the spell or ability that is used for the tinting.  I often mouse over my abilities so I can see the recast timer more accurately and I lose this with the macros still.

[Killque]

I love it too...

I do have one question.

I have longed to make a macro, that equips an item, uses its ability and then requips the previously worn item.

SO, as you can imagine, I am more than excited about the new system...

I have set a macro to Equip a Breatplate, use its ability and then requip my previous BP.

It works, however, I can tell that the BP switches back and forth, but I do not think the use ability of the firstly equiped BP has time to use its ability before the previous BP is requiped again.

Is there some sort of pause  or delay feature I can use?

Thanks!

[Bozidar]

Killque wrote:

Is there some sort of pause  or delay feature I can use?

The ultimate answer to this is no.. there is no pause.

If you're smart though, you can probably find an ability you have that takes very little time that you can put in between the commands, to CREATE a delay.

It's tricky.. but possible, from what i've read.

I haven't gotten around to doing it myself   My sk is only 19.. when he hits 20.. equip int gear, equip int gear, offensive stance, HT, equip sta gear, equip sta gear..defensive stance..

gonna have to make that happen

[Killque]

Thats the problem however. I belive the equiping of  items doesnt wait for any spells to be cast etc.. ill have to test that out... if what Im thinking is right, you wont be able to have one macro that equips Int gear, HT's/MT's and eqips sta gear. I am thinking you have to end with the /useability and only other /useability 's wait for the previous. I think the equip of STA gear would interupt your HT even if its near instant.

Hmm, testing to do...

[Bozidar]

Killque wrote:

Thats the problem however. I belive the equiping of  items doesnt wait for any spells to be cast etc.. ill have to test that out... if what Im thinking is right, you wont be able to have one macro that equips Int gear, HT's/MT's and eqips sta gear. I am thinking you have to end with the /useability and only other /useability 's wait for the previous. I think the equip of STA gear would interupt your HT even if its near instant.

Hmm, testing to do...

yeah, i probably can't fit all that into one macro anyway

equip gear, equip gear, off stance, HT

equip gear, equip gear, deff stance... prolly how it'll work

[Tyrani]

Killque wrote:

I love it too...

I do have one question.

I have longed to make a macro, that equips an item, uses its ability and then requips the previously worn item.

SO, as you can imagine, I am more than excited about the new system...

I have set a macro to Equip a Breatplate, use its ability and then requip my previous BP.

It works, however, I can tell that the BP switches back and forth, but I do not think the use ability of the firstly equiped BP has time to use its ability before the previous BP is requiped again.

Is there some sort of pause  or delay feature I can use?

Thanks!

I think the main problem you're going to run into is the 2s delay when equipping things during combat (not sure if it applies to armor as well as weapons).

I have a macro that equips my hammer, uses my AA ability, then switches back to my sword.  I actually have to hit the macro twice to do everything because of that delay.

[Brigh]

We just have to wait for the day when they decide that it is ok to add a pause feature, just like there is one in EQ1.

[rubels]

I am sure the guy above me just answered my q , but is there ... a way to set up a macro for this on one button. I currently have it as two buttons , no biggy but.

I tried :

Equip Tower Shield

Use Ca Tower Of Stone

Equip Buckler

It whould switch to tower cast the Ca but I think there needs to be a pause for it to switch.

Currently

using to macros for the switch

Equip Tower Shield

Use Ca Tower Of Stone

2nd Macro

Equip Buckler

I tried it a few times and did get the message for u must wait 1 second or something like that before you can equip this item.

If the guy above answered it cool , im set but if theres a way to set it in one macro please let me know.

- Krovax

[Mantell]

I made two macros for every resist. Heat 1 gives me about 8500

Heat 2 gets me to 12000 when I'm sacrificing everything for heat resist.

Same with all the others.

I have different macros to tank, tank with max mitigation, tank with max avoidance, DPS, ranged fights, etc.

I made one to equip the vampire gear from the League questline.

I made a macro for little-used attacks that include my Corpsecrush and the bug zapper that I can hit when I'm waiting for timers on everything else.

And I have a standard gear button to take me back to a baseline after I mess up everything with the macros. I'm lovin' it. (Copyright McDonalds Corporation, all rights reserved)

[Tyrani]

rubelson wrote:

I am sure the guy above me just answered my q , but is there ... a way to set up a macro for this on one button. I currently have it as two buttons , no biggy but.

I tried :

Equip Tower Shield

Use Ca Tower Of Stone

Equip Buckler

It whould switch to tower cast the Ca but I think there needs to be a pause for it to switch.

Currently

using to macros for the switch

Equip Tower Shield

Use Ca Tower Of Stone

2nd Macro

Equip Buckler

I tried it a few times and did get the message for u must wait 1 second or something like that before you can equip this item.

If the guy above answered it cool , im set but if theres a way to set it in one macro please let me know.

- Krovax

You can do it in a single macro, but you'll need to hit the macro twice.  The first time you hit it, it will equip the shield, do tower of stone....then you have to wait 2s and hit the macro again, which will equip your buckler back.

[Barbai]

has anyone figured out how to let the macro do more then 2 spells in a row assuming its possible , what I am trying to do it just create one key to use my 3 encounter debuffs one right after the other. With the casting que system  it just seems to want to cast the first one then cast the 3rd one bypassing the 2nd one.

[Valdaglerion]

No, I think they need to still do some cleanup on the new macro system. Dont get me wrong, its a huge improvement and I love the changes they have made so far. Here's what I have experienced so far-

(1) Before creating anything in a new macro I dragged the icon from my mining tool over to the macro - it automatically created two commands - one to equip the mining tool in my inventory and the other to use the mining tool. Problem - the command /equip Overclocked Automated Pickaxe is unrecognized. I deleted the commands and used the new drag and drop piece to equip the pickaxes and the added a command to /usea mining. This works perfectly

(2) You can add up to apparently around 10 lines to the macros; HOWEVER, only 2 spell usages and then the same old que occurs. Would be nice if they would limit the number of spell lines to 2 for the macro if only 2 are going to fire. I got all excited thinking I could put together my pet summons and buffs all in one macro but alas, it was only a pipe dream. I would be grateful if we could have an increased number of spells that are say summons and buffs but not damage and heals. Seems as though the limits are there to protect against unattended gameplay and allowing us to put together a macro to automate augmentations and pet summons doesnt give us unattended gameplay so I am all for that. (Developing carpal tunnel at early ages is not fun, so give us some reasonable breaks from the keyboards

[Sotaudi]

Barbai wrote:

has anyone figured out how to let the macro do more then 2 spells in a row assuming its possible , what I am trying to do it just create one key to use my 3 encounter debuffs one right after the other. With the casting que system  it just seems to want to cast the first one then cast the 3rd one bypassing the 2nd one.

You cannot, and probably never be able to, put more than two casting spells in a single macro the way you are talking about, and it has nothing to do with the macro system.

The reason you cannot cast more than two spells has to do with the queuing system.  You can have no more than one spell executing and one spell queued at anytime.  Thus, if you put three spells in a macro, when you execute the macro, the macro will execute the first spell and if nothing is currently casting, it will start casting immediately.  The macro will then execute the second spell.  So it will queue.  Because the first spell is still casting, the second spell will sit in the queue.  Then the macro will execute the third spell.  Since the first spell is still casting, the third spell will queue, overwriting the second spell.  If there are more than three spells, each subsequent spell will overwrite the previous in the queue.  Thus, if you put multiple spells in a macro, you will always see the first and last spell cast, missing any in between.

The only exception to this is when a spell has no cast time.  The only spell of this nature is the Heroic Opportunity starter.  Thus, you can create a macro with the HO starter, followed by the skill that completes the HO starter chain, followed by a spell to complete the most common HO ,and that would work.  This is because the HO starter execute and cast immediately.  So by the time the second spell was excuted, there would be nothing in its way, and it could start casting, allowing the third spell to queue and wait.

Both of those situations also presume that nothing is currently casting when you run the macro.  If that is the case, the first spell would have to queue and wait for the current spell to cast, meaning it would be overwritten by the second spell.  This would be true of the HO starter as well as it would also have to wait for the currently casting spell to cast before it could cast.  So if that was the case, only the last spell of the macro would execute.

So, there is no way to put more than two spells (with the one exception mentioned) if you want all spells to cast on a single run.

You could, however, put more spells in the macro if you did not expect them to run every time.  For instance, you could put all your harvesting skills in a single macro knowing that only the spell appropriate for the node you currently have targeted would cast.  All the others would fail.  This is the same principle people used for the master strikes macros before the master strikes were moved to a single button.  Likewise, you could put groups of spells in knowing that if a spell was on cooldown, it would not cast, allowing another spell in the macro to cast.  So if you created a macro with four spells in it, you could press the macro once and cast the first and last spells.  Then after they cast, press it again and cast the middle two spells because the first and last should fail since they were still on cool down.   (Note:  I have not tried this, but in theory, it should work).

But what you are talking about is not possible because there is no way to pause the macro until a spell casts.  And this will likely never change because allowing a macro to pause would aid people in setting up AFK macros, and that is a good thing.

[Mantell]

Sotaudi wrote:

You could, however, put more spells in the macro if you did not expect them to run every time.  For instance, you could put all your harvesting skills in a single macro knowing that only the spell appropriate for the node you currently have targeted would cast.  All the others would fail.  This is the same principle people used for the master strikes macros before the master strikes were moved to a single button.  Likewise, you could put groups of spells in knowing that if a spell was on cooldown, it would not cast, allowing another spell in the macro to cast.  So if you created a macro with four spells in it, you could press the macro once and cast the first and last spells.  Then after they cast, press it again and cast the middle two spells because the first and last should fail since they were still on cool down.   (Note:  I have not tried this, but in theory, it should work).

This does work, by the way, and greatly increased my DPS once I started using them.

[Voq]

Can you switch gear, like armor, during combat?

If so that's beyond cheesey.

I would hope that a modern MMORPG like EQ2 would not allow cheese of this level.

[Lornick]

I'm LOVING the new macro system.

[Tomanak]

Sotaudi wrote:

Barbai wrote:

But what you are talking about is not possible because there is no way to pause the macro until a spell casts.  And this will likely never change because allowing a macro to pause would aid people in setting up AFK macros, and that is a good thing.

I can certainly see why they dont want to allow a macro to call another macro, but I fail to see how allowing a pause will cause excessive AFK macroing. If limited to 10 lines, I can only do 10 actions before I stop, thats what 20 seconds of AFK? What good is that? Its not going to help the botters, they already have 3rd party software and hardware that allows them to do way more already. It may well be my ignorance but Im just not seeing how allowing a pause in a macro is going to destroy gameplay. At the very least, allow macros to execute the steps in order not simultaneously..that way i could write a single macro to equip item/cast CA/unequip item and have it work..and while I know there is a work around that requires clicking twice..woopdee..I only click 3 times now..

[Tyrani]

Voq wrote:

Can you switch gear, like armor, during combat?

If so that's beyond cheesey.

I would hope that a modern MMORPG like EQ2 would not allow cheese of this level.

Yes, you can.  However, there is a delay associated with it so that you have to wait 2s before switching it out again.

Case in point...I have a macro for my AA ability that requires a crushing weapon.  I, however, don't really have what I would consider a decent crushing weapon so my macro looks like this:

Equip 1h Crush-->Hammer Ground-->Equip 1h Slash

When it practice, what this will do, is equip my 1h Crush, use Hammer Ground, and generate a message that I can't switch out equipment for 2 seconds.  Two seconds later, I can hit the macro again and it will re-equip my 1h Slash.

[electricninjasex]

Barbai wrote:

has anyone figured out how to let the macro do more then 2 spells in a row assuming its possible , what I am trying to do it just create one key to use my 3 encounter debuffs one right after the other. With the casting que system  it just seems to want to cast the first one then cast the 3rd one bypassing the 2nd one.

Unless one of the first two is insta-cast, it's not gonna happen.  The spell macro command doesn't cast a spell per se, it feeds it to the spell queuing system, the same as when you click a hotbar button.  If it waited for a spell to complete before executing the next one, then it would trivialize botting.

[Maranatha]

There is simply no reason to not have a pause command in the macro system.  To be honest, there's no reason to not allow macros to call macors.  If a person wants to do things like AFK macros, bot macros, etc., there are plenty of applications available on the web to do this.  And, by all reason of logic, if a person is wanting to do something that is illegal in game, they probably won't mind using illegal software to do it. I can't help but wonder if the real reason no pause is in the macro language might be, once again, the queue system.  Maybe it isn't able to handle something like a server-side timed pause. Ok, no problem.  I'd give SOE a plat and an ale if they would at least give us a client-side pause.  Something that would, say, recognize that you have pressed the macro button, would see something like "/wait 5" as the first instruction, and would hold the release of the button's commands to the queue for 5 seconds.  At least that way, when you wanted to use macros for something like rebuffing after a rez, you could punch all the macro buttons, and let them have pauses to put them in a timed execution order. This would provide a ton of utility for the macro system, would take minimal effort on Sony's part, would not help botters, would not lead to premature hair loss, and would even stay crunchy in milk.

[Hollywood]

bensilvi wrote:

Very Nice!!

So easy a Caveman can do it!!

"I'll have the roast vulrich with the murdunk salsa..."

[Mikkahl]

No one answered my first post, in which I found that the only way to get the second harvesting command to queue was to put it on the same command line.  Now I've seen the same thing for combat spells.  I've got 2, 3, up to 8 combat spells on separate lines, and I only get one (1) spell to execute each time I hit the macro, not 2.  What I expect is for the first spell to execute and the last one queue.  Then hit the macro again before the first 2 spells' recast timers expire I would expect to see the second spell execute and the next-to-last queue.

 Can anyone else confirm that they can get two spells (on separate lines) to execute when they hit a macro under the new system?

[Mikkahl]

OK, more experimenting.  One thing better about the new macro system is I haven't been able to find the line length limit for a command line.  Used to be I could only get in about 4 usea commands before running out of room on a line.  Now, I was able to put all 8 on a single line!

 But I found out that unlike harvesting, putting combat spells on a single line doesn't seem to matter.  I reduced it to 6 simple single-mob attacks, with recast times of 10-60 seconds.  The first and last spells are 10-second recasts.  The first time I hit it I get the first and last spell executing, as expected.  But then, what seems to happen is the second time I hit it, I get just the second spell executing right away, and the last spell seems to be "remembered" in that it executes later - as soon as it's 10-second recast expires.  So I can never get the middle spells to "queue-up" and execute immediately.

[Vonotar]

Mikkahl wrote:

OK, more experimenting.  One thing better about the new macro system is I haven't been able to find the line length limit for a command line.  Used to be I could only get in about 4 usea commands before running out of room on a line.  Now, I was able to put all 8 on a single line!

 But I found out that unlike harvesting, putting combat spells on a single line doesn't seem to matter.  I reduced it to 6 simple single-mob attacks, with recast times of 10-60 seconds.  The first and last spells are 10-second recasts.  The first time I hit it I get the first and last spell executing, as expected.  But then, what seems to happen is the second time I hit it, I get just the second spell executing right away, and the last spell seems to be "remembered" in that it executes later - as soon as it's 10-second recast expires.  So I can never get the middle spells to "queue-up" and execute immediately.

True, a better way around would be to have your longest recast time spells first and your shortist last, the first available 'long' spell would be cast, and your standard 2-3 sec spell would be queued and cast second each time. A neat addition would be a conditional statement, just something you can put at the start of the line so that it is only run if the previous line completed successfully.. e.g. (in english, not commands) 1. Mezz Mob 2. IF_Success Gtell Mezzed a %T! You break it, you Tank it!

[kellan123]

Random thought inc: Anyone else remember macroing in EQ1 where you could put: /sit /dance /bow /dance /sit /crouch etc... all in one button and your character would spaz out when you pressed that hotkey? Brings a smile to my face...

[Dark Miasma]

Tyranire wrote:

Voq wrote:

Can you switch gear, like armor, during combat?

If so that's beyond cheesey.

I would hope that a modern MMORPG like EQ2 would not allow cheese of this level.

Yes, you can.  However, there is a delay associated with it so that you have to wait 2s before switching it out again.

Case in point...I have a macro for my AA ability that requires a crushing weapon.  I, however, don't really have what I would consider a decent crushing weapon so my macro looks like this:

Equip 1h Crush-->Hammer Ground-->Equip 1h Slash

When it practice, what this will do, is equip my 1h Crush, use Hammer Ground, and generate a message that I can't switch out equipment for 2 seconds.  Two seconds later, I can hit the macro again and it will re-equip my 1h Slash.

I created a similar macro that will allow me to switch to my hammer, use an AA ability and switch back, though I can't seem to create a macro that will allow you to just swap out a weapon (without using an ability) and swap back with just one macro.

[SkinnyFats_EQ2]

I am having a fair bit of difficulty with the new macro system (or maybe it has nothing to do with the "new" part of it - I dunno). 

Example1:  Create a very simple two step macro.  Step 1 - Cast SoW with target Char1.  Step 2 - Cast SoW with target Char2.  At least a quarter of the time, SoW is cast both times on Char1.  Sometimes it works OK.  Huh?

Example2:  Macro is: Step 1 - Target tank.  Step 2 - Cast damage spell 1.  Step 3 - Cast damage spell 2.  Since two things things can be queued, I expect this to work.  However, only spell 1 is ever cast.  If I remove Step 1 from the macro, then both spells are cast.  Huh?

Example3:   Macro is: Step 1 - /pet attack.  Step 2 - Cast damage spell 1.  Step 3 - Cast damage spell 2.  Damage spell 2 is never cast, and most of the time the pet does not attack until spell 1 has been cast, instead of attacking before spell 1 is cast.  Huh?