Utilizing /click to run concurrent castsequences

[Khatovar]

So, are you spamming your main button or trying to hit it in a certain rhythm as alluded to by the OP?

I am a spammer. If I had rhythm with my hands, I would have been able to play an instrument instead of just sing, hehe. But, people do tend to spam in a certain interval. It isn't too difficult to create the /click macros, put a copy of your spells up on an inactive bar and spam away at a targetting dummy. This way you can see X goes off right but Y is not getting hit soon enough and Z is causing my macro to stall and add or remove nulls accordingly.

You could do: /castsequence Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Wrath, Wrath, Wrath, Warth, Moonfire, Wrath, Wrath, Insect Swarm, Wrath, Wrath

Except not. This doesn't account for things like Nature's Grace, which hastes your next spell after a crit, or other haste procs which is why castsequence doesn't work as a spam button for certain classes. However, using /click covers that by allowing you to put things that never change {cooldowns} on a certain priority via the null macros and things that don't have cooldowns or timable uses {wrath, starfire} into a castrandom to be used to fill in the "idle" time.

[Bigfish]

You use castsequence in many of your macros also ...

Ok, I shouldn't have to be explaining this AGAIN. This is another fact about macros that should be stickied. But since we're here, let me explain about castsequence lag. Again.

ok, there is a difference between

/cast lightning Bolt

and

/castsequence Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt

In the case of the first ,by spamming that command you are constantly issuing a command to the sever to cast a spell. As soon as the server recognizes that spell is done being cast, it immediately starts to cast the next.

In the case of the second, you spam the macro, but it doesn't send a command to cast the next spell until the cient gets a message that the first one has gone off. What this means is that the first lightning bolt casts, and before the macro sends the command to fire the second, it has to get a confirmation that the first fired off successfuly. In 0 latency world, its not an issue. Out here wher people play with 100-200ms latency, using /castsequence ends up tagging on .1-.2 seconds to your effective cast time, reducing the number of casts per minute from say 30 to 27.

Now there are a few exceptions where this doesn't apply, namely, using /castsequence to induce artificial cooldowns ala my method (because you're not casting anything) and instant cast spells, which still require a confirmation from the server for a success, but that confirimation falls within the GCD anyway, (hence why the 9/6/9 paladin macro works).

[Sam DeathWalker]

I stand corrected.

I play with 50ish ms lag (Im in San Jose and choose server who data center in LA), so I guess it might be a bit different for me.

Good plan all around, although its legality might be questioned I think with the macrosequencer add on from Clogswheel being OK there should be little question that its 100percent legal. Plus I can't get the macrosequencer thing to work, so Bigfish Click method seems superior anyways.

[weeep]

I stand corrected.

I play with 50ish ms lag (Im in San Jose and choose server who data center in LA), so I guess it might be a bit different for me.

Your network latency which you see in game performance statistics is not the only thing affecting spellcast delays. Server lag is not displayed there but it adds 200-250 ms on high pop server. Install Quartz and you'll see the actual combined lag. For my usual 300ms ping lag is around 450-600ms

[Owltoid]

I thought I found the answer, but I'm back to square one... how can I tell which button my macro is on if I'm using Bartender4?

[Owltoid]

I thought I found the answer, but I'm back to square one... how can I tell which button my macro is on if I'm using Bartender4?

Heh, playing on a TV 6 ft away from me wasted about an hour on this...

/click BT4Button112;LeftButton

Note the ";" is not ":"... that makes a world of difference :cursing:

[Tonuss]

Thanks for posting this, Bigfish. Since I'm using a mixed group, this should make for some interesting challenges. But being able to run the group through a standard tank/spank sequence with only one or two buttons seems pretty amazing. You can even queue up heals, if I understand this correctly.

Just a thought here, you are going through an aweful lot of work in the making of macro's to get around a limitation they specifically put into macro's... I would personally consider this to fall into the very dark gray area right next to exploiting.

I think that aside from the fact that it can be done via the basic macro UI (in which case it wouldn't be an exploit, though Blizzard could change or remove the functionality if they felt it was better than they intended it to be), we need to take into account that this works well when you're facing a standard fight without too many different phases or factors to consider. If things break down or you need to address a sudden change in the fight (something as simple as an aggro switch, even) I think it's likely that your efficiency would dip severely. If you could one-button spam your way through instances without a hitch, I could see the problem. But there aren't that many straight-up tank/spank fights in instances anymore.

[Memn]

Is it correct to infer that the seperate button macros can each attempt a cast without prohibiting an attempt in the next macro?
Could this be used to create cast priorities?
For example:
Purge > Flame Shock > Lava Burst > Chain Lightning > Lightning Bolt

//MAIN MACRO - Assuming 4 keypresses per second
/assist focus
/click MultiBarRightButton1
/click MultiBarRightButton2
/click MultiBarRightButton3
/click MultiBarRightButton4
/click MultiBarRightButton5
/use 13
/use 14

//BUTTON1 MACRO	Purge instant	50% of keypresses
/castrandom Purge, 

//BUTTON2 MACRO	Flame Shock instant, 12s duration, 6s cooldown
/castrequence reset=target Flame Shock, Earth Shock

//BUTTON3 MACRO	Lava Burst 2s cast, 8s cooldown
/cast Lava Burst

//BUTTON4 MACRO	Chain Lightning 2s cast, 6s cooldown
/cast Chain Lightning

//BUTTON5 MACRO	Lightning Bolt
/cast Lightning Bolt

Or would I have to use /castsequence or /castrandom in all of the macro's such that

//MAIN MACRO - Assuming 4 keypresses per second
/assist focus
/click MultiBarRightButton1
/click MultiBarRightButton2
/click MultiBarRightButton3
/click MultiBarRightButton4
/click MultiBarRightButton5
/use 13
/use 14

//BUTTON1 MACRO	Purge instant	50% of keypresses
/castrandom Purge, 

//BUTTON2 MACRO	Flame Shock instant, 12s duration, 6s cooldown
/castsequence reset=target Flame Shock,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,,

//BUTTON3 MACRO	Lava Burst 2s cast, 8s cooldown
/castsequence reset=target Lava Burst,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,,

//BUTTON4 MACRO	Chain Lightning 2s cast, 6s cooldown
/castsequence reset=target Chain Lightning,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,, ,,,,

//BUTTON5 MACRO	Lightning Bolt
/cast Lightning Bolt

[Taliesin]

Is it correct to infer that the seperate button macros can each attempt a cast without prohibiting an attempt in the next macro?
Could this be used to create cast priorities?
For example:
Purge > Flame Shock > Lava Burst > Chain Lightning > Lightning Bolt

Or would I have to use /castsequence or /castrandom in all of the macro's such that

Using macros with the sequential /click method will work so long as each macro has a chance of trying to do nothing. Your first example will not work because once it hits your shock macro, it will ALWAYS be trying to cast one or the other.

Your second example is a good method of trying to get all this to work. The extra commas means that there will be times when nothing is attempted, and so the next macro in the chain is able to fire off, and tries to add the timing needed so that a prior /castsequence has not reset yet before the rest in the chain has at least had a chance to fire off. There's a bit of rhythm assumed into these macros, so you need to learn your own button mashing speed and modify the number of commas to match it.

I personally shy away from rhythm tapping out of preference, but can be very effective. I'm a pure /castsequence button masher.

EDIT: Just noticed that you put /use 13 and /use 14 at the end. I would recommend putting those after the Purge macro so that all your damage spells gain the advantage of the spellpower boost. Having them at the end means that you never use your trinkets because Lightning Bolt will always fire off.

[Memn]

Using macros with the sequential /click method will work so long as each macro has a chance of trying to do nothing. Your first example will not work because once it hits your shock macro, it will ALWAYS be trying to cast one or the other.

I was under this impression too; but some of the sxamples in this post would seem to be suboptimal if there weren't some sort of scoping benefit involved with breaking the macro's up into their own macros. Otherwise, this technique is really only beneficial in that it provides a workaround for the macro length limit, since you can have multiple sequences in a single macro.

I personally shy away from rhythm tapping out of preference, but can be very effective. I'm a pure /castsequence button masher.

As do I, but if this technique could be expanded to cast priorities... that would interest me a great deal

EDIT: Just noticed that you put /use 13 and /use 14 at the end. I would recommend putting those after the Purge macro so that all your damage spells gain the advantage of the spellpower boost. Having them at the end means that you never use your trinkets because Lightning Bolt will always fire off.

The timing would be identical. The Purge is first, but we are assuming that in most cases it won't fire. The trinkets are fired at the end because we anticipate that Flame Shock will be the first cast, and Lava Burst the second.. Ideally, we would be able to test to see if Lava Burst is off cooldown... and if it was, we would fire the trinkets right before Lava Burst...


I'm at work, so I can't test these out. I had read Vyndree's writeup on /click, but didn't see a great deal of use for it in my seup at the time. I suppose it can also be very helpful for script branching using /stopmacro [] within the macros on the clicked actionbuttons.