Ok, let me explain where I'm coming from. I run one of every class. Some are more spell intense than others, and the fact that I have one macro that I largely spam doesn't restrict me from keeping interupts, or CC (not that CC has EVER been important) or healing individual characters. Suffice it to say, if something needs done, I can do it at the push of a button. That said, I have two options with my key bindings: I can either bind most abilitites to an individual key, which works fine if everyone was the same class. Problem is, I have a tank, a healer, and 3 seperate dps who all potentially funtion much differently from each other. I could be looking at weaving shots with my hunter, putting up DoTs with a lock, and spamming spells on my mage. Alternatively, I could we chopping away with my rogue, warrior, and throw in a DoT class for fun. All said classes function fundamentally differently, which leaves me the choice of pressing a dozen different keys, or I can make them work a rotation for their general DPS purposes. Now, as much fun as wasting half my potential abilities sounds, I'd rather have an intelligent cast rotation working that maximizes dps and uses all applicable abilites.Originally Posted by 'Vyndree',index.php?page=Thread&postID=153925#post 153925
Bottom line, I'm not controling a bunch of clones whose sole purpose is to kill things through shear force of numbers. I want each character to be played smart and to their potential. Any castsequence I use on my characters is one I gladly use in an individual capacity, because there is no point in trying to manage all your DoTs and cool downs by hand when you can do it with a macro that isn't going to forget to push a button or lose track of how many seconds its been since you applied X debuff.
Specific instances of elemental immune mobs rarely come up nowadays, and yes, they can be dealt with rather easily by a quick switch of a button.
Well then we agree. One button doesn't rule all, but its certainly easier to have a mage that casts intelligently as opposed to spamming Fireball. Makes more sense to me have my mage put up her scorches, spam fireballs and fireblasts, and then unleash a Pyroblast with a high statistical potential to be instant cast instead of trying to manage her and 9 other classes' abilities individually. Makes more sense for my Warlock to keep her dots up in an intelligent manner than trying to eyeball 3 lines of debuffs and micro manage that things. Makes more sense for my warrior to dump her rage than to sit on it at 100 because I was too busy managing everyone else to hit her buttons. And all with one button instead of 4 or 5.ONE button does not rule all. ONE button can be used more OFTEN than others, but it doesn't mean the others aren't useful or necessary.
In a situation where you've got upwards of 10 classes, that's a LOT of stimuli and responses that need managed, and the only differences I see in doing it manually versus macroed is difficulty and some sort of idealistic dislike for castsequence and castrandom.
Situational efficiency does indeead change, and is a scenario entirely suited to the player at hand. I don't PvP much, so I don't consider it too much when I write my macros. If I ever do get back in to PvP, I'll invariably have to adjust things, but a castsequence/random will still be my primary form of ability utilization. Now I don't know what impression you are operating under, but when you ask "Well what if you want to do this?" my reponse will usually be "Well why would I want to?" The macros I write aren't simply a matter of being too lazy to press a few extra buttons, its a matter of carefully calculated spell rotations that extend anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. If something happens that delays the macro, its not a big deal since I could, theoretically, start the macro at any point during the sequence and in a matter of seconds be operating at on or near the same level as though the macro had started over. (Granted, the one exception to this I've come across is conflagrate)Efficiency is relative. Is a castsequence efficient in raids? Depends on the class and how well they fit into a rotation. Is efficiency your ability to react to PvP situations where the same thing almost never happens twice? Certainly. Is efficiency the ease at which you can power through quests and level because you have 5x the firepower designed for the encounter? Sure, but personally I still think you can do that without relying totally on /castsequences.
/castsequences are not efficient for DPS that cannot easily be put into a reliable sequence. They're also unreliable because "reset=12" does not mean "reset 12 seconds from the first time I pushed the button". It means "reset 12 seconds from the LAST time I pushed the button" -- and that means if I have 3 DoTs with different timers, it's not efficient DPS uptime. If I have 3 DoTs, pressed the button once, ran around for a little bit, and pressed the button once more, my timers will be "off" so that, if I wanted to skip DoT #3 and go straight back to refresh DoT #1, I can't.
That's what I meant by dynamic.
At this point, every class can operate on an efficient /castsequence if you know what rotation you should be using. The only classes I DON'T have one set up on are my Paladin and Warrior, and thats only because I've found /castrandom to be more effective for them.
Checking the link now.
Edit: Checked the link. I'm not convinced. For elemental shamans? Probably. But then, elemental shamans have relatively few spells and are a natural disadvantage with getting Lava Burst to fire off at just the right moment, much like the problem I encountered with Conflagrate on my Warlock. When you have spells that are excessively timing based, a delay by any number of seconds can and will throw off your DPS. But that's a matter of a spell rotation I haven't even looked at or leveled in to. Will a cast sequence ever be as efficient as a single boxer driving the character? No, but the objective isn't to perfectly immitate, it is to achieve a reasonable facsimile and get as close as possible with a minimal amount of attention put in to it. At this point, my castsequences out perform actual pleyers. Not the best of them, but the type you find in PuGs, and honestly that's good enough for me.
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