Training to use Click macros

[moosejaw]

Since timing is the critical aspect of maximizing click macros for best dps, I want to train myself to use a more consistant keypress beat. I have terrible timing in the heat of battle, as many of us do.

A Metronome would be perfect but I don't want to buy one. So I found one online.
Webmetronome (http://webmetronome.com/) is what I am going to use. Set your bpm to match your macros and train away.

120 bpm=2 keypress/second
180 bpm=3 keypress/second
and so on.

Have fun.

[Redbeard]

How do you combat uncontrollable variables such as lag etc? For example, say you have casters and with haste their GCD is down to 1 second, so you want to hit the button every 1 second... you hit it, your main casts... the other 4 are just a little slower due to latency. You click again in 1 second, first char casts, all others do nothing, because theyre still waiting on GCD, etc.

Just a contrived situation, just curious what your plan is.

[Ualaa]

I think if you're pressing multiple times per second, it won't make that much of a difference.

Personally, I used a stopwatch and spammed for 15 seconds.
Counted how many times I had pressed the key.
Personally I click twice per second, on average.

If you click say 2 times per second, then at most you wait half a second for something to happen because of the GCD.
If you were to click 5 times per second, a toon stuck on the GCD would only be delayed at most 0.20 seconds.

No system is perfect, but click macro's are far and away the best solution so far.

[moosejaw]

The metronome is meant as a guide to help your timing. Certainly going slower means your spammed spell/action will get cast more (the last line of click). Even at 2 presses per second you won't miss a cast with tons of haste. The point is to not spam too quickly and get the macro stuck on a long cooldown spell because you ripped through the comma's too fast.

I have to slow my self down at times. Mostly at the beginning of fights. I made the cast bars on the slaves as large as I could (ecasting bars) so I can see the difference in haste procs imediately when I glance at them. They are never in sync. I think slower keypressing is better with shaman because LB is so darn good. Not so sure with the mixed teams especially the Lock or Druid.

[suicidesspyder]

Lol. All i do is say on ym destro locks for example. I open with immolate, conflagrate, choas bolt then shadow bolt times 5. This way no matter how fast i blow thru the cds by the time i get to conflagrate then 10 sec cd is done and then for chaos bolt the 12 secs is done. I dont even think about it i do the math at the beggining and add one or two more casts that have a cast time and no cd to make sure my cds are all up so i can use it again. So i have no worry about not casting nething due to cd not being up. So just add in more spells with cast time and no cd and just click mash away.

[Ualaa]

If you're running x number of toons of the same class, you can go with a keybind per spell.
And then play them as if you were one boxing.

You could also generate a castsequence as easily as a click castsequence.
As your haste changes or you gain newer ranks of a spell with a different cast time, either would need to be adjusted.

I personally like the click castsequence because assuming you spam at a consistent rate, you can prioritize spells and have them recast just as they expire, or close enough anyway.
And you can easily mix any combination of dps, and have them each perform close to the efficiency of single boxing each.

With a click sequence, you'd look at the duration and recast time of your spells.
I'm assuming glyphed, Conflagrate does not consume Immolate.
I don't have durations in front of me, so I'm just picking numbers here.
Immolate lasts 15 seconds, Conflagrate can be cast every 12 seconds, Chaos Bolt every 18 seconds and Shadow Bolt every GCD.

You have 4 spells to prioritize.
Shadow Bolt is the fall through, which is clicked when others are on cooldown, so its the 4th spell.
Immolate is more important then Conflag since it needs to be up for Conflag to do anything.
Let's say you go Immolate - Conflagrate - Chaos Bolt - Shadow Bolt.

You put these macro's on the far right vertical cast bar.

Spam Macro.
#show Shadow Bolt
/cast [mod, target=focustarget] Shadowburn
/click MutliBarRightButton1
/click MutliBarRightButton2
/click MultiBarRightButton3
/click MultiBarRightButton4

On button 1.
#show
/castsequence [target=focustarget] Immolate

--- Counting Immolate as a keypress and assuming 15 seconds before it expires, put as many comma's into the sequence as (15 x your avg spam's per second).
--- If you spam at 4 clicks per second, then 4x15=60, which means 59 comma's after Immolate.

On Button 2:
#show
/castsequence [target=focustarget] Conflagrate,,,,

--- Again (4x12 = 48), which assumes 4 clicks per second and a 12 second recast delay.
--- So 47 comma's after Conflagrate.

Do the same deal with Chaos Bolt on button 3.

Then put Shadow Bolt on button 4.




The strength of this system is that as your haste increases, you might be able to cast six shadow bolts before another immolate instead of five.
Since the other spells are on cooldown and your click castsequence is on a comma, a shadow bolt is the fall through spell, and the system automatically casts another shadowbolt for you.

[Flekkie]

One way to get consistent timing:

Czx9AjhPn28

..I'll just get my coat!

[Multibocks]

LOL!!! That is soooo wrong.

[Gadzooks]

Since timing is the critical aspect of maximizing click macros for best dps, I want to train myself to use a more consistant keypress beat. I have terrible timing in the heat of battle, as many of us do.

A Metronome would be perfect but I don't want to buy one. So I found one online.
Webmetronome (http://webmetronome.com/) is what I am going to use. Set your bpm to match your macros and train away.

120 bpm=2 keypress/second
180 bpm=3 keypress/second
and so on.

Have fun.

Not a bad idea - I can keep a beat from years and years of playing guitar, and if I can maintain the process for a week, I can make it a habit, and not even think about it. I'm close to that, I just havent played in 2 days. Also, count it out, out loud or in your head: "One two three ONE two three One two three".

I've found I have to do this, or the keyboard buffer fills up, and fills up fast. I've been keeping an eye on that, and 120 bpm seems to be the "sweet spot" for it - faster, and my key buffer fills up.

Actually, it's the key repeat software, ClonedKey, doing it. If I forget and spam in a fight, my characters will keep casting for up to and over a minute after - I lose dps and heals because the key repeat software not only clogs up, it slows down, and my toons are completely out of sequence. I thought it was a Mac thing, but when I was watching my toons trying to fire/heal after a fight, I stopped ClonedKey, and they stopped immediately.

So, I'm looking for alternatives. If I maintain 120bpm, I'm fine - any faster, I'm fooked. 120BPM, I get heals when I need them, and my dps skyrockets.

I was thinking of a "/stopcasting" button, but it has to get through to them first, so it's a no-go. Maybe a "no combat - stop casting" button, or final step in the macros?"

[Otlecs]

Wow. That would be intense. I'm a button spammer through and through and would be totally screwed if I had the buffering problem you have, Gadzooks.

Between varying haste rating across my team, pushbacks, interrupts and pressing the wrong key at the wrong time, any sort of rhythm goes out the window even before I come under stress!

A web-based metronome is an interesting idea though :)

[Psych]

Here's a question regarding click and such.

Let's say you've got your click macro and it's firing 3 or 4 macros for you, each containing a castsequence of one single spell. In this case, let's say it's one for Moonfire, one for Insect Swarm, one for Wrath and one for Starfire. All of these are clicked by the click macro.

Now, all of the castsequence macros that come from click macros, at least that I've seen, are riddled with commas after the actual spell, that's the buffer of clicks until you'd want to recast it. Question is, could you not just put ", null" in there and have the reset condition on the castsequence reset whenever you'd normally want to recast it? ie:

"/castsequence reset=combat/target/12 Insect Swarm, null"

Would that not fire Insect Swarm once, until out of combat, target changes or 12 seconds passes, and do nothing else until one of those conditions was met?

Maybe I'm missing something that would prevent that from working, but if that DID work, that would mean you could garauntee a re-fire of the spell exactly when either the cooldown was up, or when the spell dropped off the target, which would be ideal.

[Khatovar]

"/castsequence reset=combat/target/12 Insect Swarm, null"

Would that not fire Insect Swarm once, until out of combat, target changes or 12 seconds passes, and do nothing else until one of those conditions was met?


No. The point of the commas is timing. For a spell like Insect Swarm, you want it to reapply every time it is dropped {or better, every time it is about to drop}. Combat and target are acceptable reset conditions, but /click is still performing actions on that sequence, even if it is not actually doing anything, so that castsequence will not have 12 seconds of inactivity.

[Ualaa]

If you were a warlock with say four dots.
Each dot had the same duration.
You could have /castsequence reset=mod:alt Corruption,Null
And the like for each.

I've not messed around with reset on modifier keys, so am not positive if that is the correct syntax even.
But I'd assume, a reset as a mod key would then reset each sequence, resulting in another cast of each.

In the case of actual wow, pretty much any class, we have different timings on ideal recast.
For example Lava Burst cannot be cast more then once every 8 seconds. So we want enough comma's in there that is doesn't get stuck trying to recast while its on cooldown.
Or Flame Shock lasts 18 seconds before it needs to be recast, so there's no point in recasting before then.

If there was a reset condition such as the Alt modifier key, we'd be reapplying Flame Shock even while its still up, or Lava Bursting every 18 seconds even though we could recast after 8.

So technically, you could use a reset condition in the place of comma's.
But in practice unless every ability in the click sequence had the same desired refresh there would be no point.

[Otlecs]

Question is, could you not just put ", null" in there and have the reset condition on the castsequence reset whenever you'd normally want to recast it

Hang on.

Are you saying that null is actually a reserved word in macros? I always thought that was urban legend, and the word "null" is treated just like any other spell that the client doesn't understand.

What does it do if that's not the case?

[Gadzooks]

Wow. That would be intense. I'm a button spammer through and through and would be totally screwed if I had the buffering problem you have, Gadzooks.

Between varying haste rating across my team, pushbacks, interrupts and pressing the wrong key at the wrong time, any sort of rhythm goes out the window even before I come under stress!

A web-based metronome is an interesting idea though :)

I've pretty much narrowed the issue down to ClonedKey, the software causes the back-up. I'm going to try that new Mac keycloner that's posted in the Software forum this weekend (can't play until then), and if that does the same thing, then I'm going to back my drives up, and install Windows 7 on a BootCamp partition and just play in Windows, and I'll buy KeyClone.

When it happens, and I turn ClonedKeys off, the backup clears immediately, nothing else will stop the lagged commands. It's pretty annoying, I ran and cleared the Nexus the other night, and my team was casting for over a minute after the elemental boss fight, because I did'nt know the fight, and started spamming keys.

Try the steady beat thing on a target dummy, tho - my dps goes way up when I do it. Granted, I'm using a lot of tweaked /click macros, and been adjusting them to my beat, but it's pretty significant, the boost I get - I'm hitting more procs, and there's a lot less "That spell is not ready" spam. Plus, when you get it to be a habit, you can do it and keep an eye on heals, procs, DBM messages - I think of it like learning to drive a clutch, after a while it's habit and you don't think of it, and you can do other things while driving. :)

[Psych]

Hang on.

Are you saying that null is actually a reserved word in macros? I always thought that was urban legend, and the word "null" is treated just like any other spell that the client doesn't understand.

What does it do if that's not the case?

Beats me, saw it in a macro once, added it into my Faerie Fire click macro and it fires it the first time, then never again until the reset condition happens on the castsequence. Not sure if that means it's a reserved word or if it's just jamming up my macro in a very pleasing and expected way... :)


No. The point of the commas is timing. For a spell like Insect Swarm, you want it to reapply every time it is dropped {or better, every time it is about to drop}. Combat and target are acceptable reset conditions, but /click is still performing actions on that sequence, even if it is not actually doing anything, so that castsequence will not have 12 seconds of inactivity.

Ahh, right, I forgot that whole "inactivity of the macro, not a cooldown timer" bit. Oh how sweet would it be if it was a "timer since macro started" thing.

[Flekkie]

Hang on.

Are you saying that null is actually a reserved word in macros? I always thought that was urban legend, and the word "null" is treated just like any other spell that the client doesn't understand.

What does it do if that's not the case?
I heard it is not a reserved word, and that any other unrecognised word has the same effect - ie stalling the cast sequence but allowing it to fall down to the next line of the macro and continue. However, 'null' is easy to remember, so people use it.

Since I can't put it off any longer I'm hitting the macros myself for the first time (properly) over the next week (or 2, or 3), so I can't quite confirm it yet. At least I finally transferred my FTL away from macaroon. That only took me 3 months of procrastination, so CC / DPS / healing macros should be a breeze, right? >.<

[Otlecs]

Ah, so if the sequence is stalled then the reset clause triggers even if you're still hitting the castsequence keybind?

That's handy!

[Flekkie]

Ah, so if the sequence is stalled then the reset clause triggers even if you're still hitting the castsequence keybind?

That's handy!
Good question. No idea! But I wouldn't have thought so.

Mind you, the reset on modifier looked like a good idea, it that works. If I play with either this weekend I'll report back..