Macros and you...

[Fuse]

Macros and you...

While SWTOR doesn't allow us to set our own macros (yet) those of us with gaming keyboards might have the ability to assign them to special keys. I have the Anasi keyboard which has 5 macro keys on the left, and then 7 "thumb" macro keys just below the space bar. I will outline the thought process behind my macros, and hopefully it will help you guys with yours.

One purpose of a macro is to do a whole bunch of stuff at once... I use them to be assured I get every bit of "unf!" out of my hits, and I can never blame a death or a lost point on forgetting to hit my CDs.
Another great use of macros is to deal with hotkey space. You'll see in my hotkey setup that I use many odd modifiers. This is because my fingers actually will never hit Shift with something on the right side of my keyboard for instance - It's setup that way specifically for the macro to use without getting in the way of my other important keybinds.

After much tweaking, I consolidated my needs into two macros: An offensive, and a Heal macro; with some abilities overlapping.

Offensive
The purpose of this is to blow my "make dmg numbers go up" CDs hit all at the same time, and immediately use a powerful ability. I choose project due to the fact that it's ranged and isn't reliant on being at their back like shadow strike. With that said, however, that is simply for my opening. I get enough time in most CDs for multiple attacks, including subsequent Projects.

(Lowercase s and c = shift and cntrl)

M5 Key = U, sU, sI, sO, s[, A, =
U: Deflection - 12 second melee and ranged resist
sU: Adrenal
sI: 20s Force Potency - Increase Force Crit Chance
sO: 20s Battle Readiness - Technique modifier
sP: Relic
A: Project
=: Blackout - Only useful as infiltration

The last thing I want to do is Project, but the delay between hitting my abilities and project is so small that I'm essencially hitting them al lat the same time, allowing me every bit of GCD for other abilities. EVERYTIME I PROJECT, IT's BECAUSE I HIT THIS BUTTON! I never use "A".
What happens when one CD is down and another is up? That one is used. I project sooooooooo much that it doesn't really matter because I'm hitting it probably once every 7-10 seconds. I pop my deflection because I figure if I'm attacking someone, there's a damn good chance I'll be getting attacked. I also was sure to keep an odd modifier off this because I do use it on it's own occasionally, but does not have a force cost associated with it (unlike Kinetic Ward).

Heal
Very similar to my Offensive one, but heals me and does not project.

T6/T7 Keys = cH, H, U, sU, sI, sO, =
cH = Medpack
H = Rakata Reuseable Medpack
U: Deflection - 12 second melee and ranged resist
sU: Adrenal
sI: 20s Force Potency - Increase Force Crit Chance
sO: 20s Battle Readiness - Technique modifier
=: Blackout - Only useful as infiltration

Why T6 AND T7 keys?
Because when I need a heal quick, I mash butons, so I assigned this to both keys in case I miss.
Why the "=" to hit blackout at the end of both of these?
Because the tallent "Masked Assult" in the infiltration build allows Blackout to be used out of stealth and grats 10 force (which you JUST used on Project) and an additional force regen. For my current build, I rarely use Blackout.
How to setup your macro?
With the razer software I have, you hit a record button, mash away, then hit stop. The only trick I found that's very useful is bing able to mark the "Ignore delays between events during recording". This sped up my macro-to-project time by about ½ of a second, and now it's essencially instant.
Pair with your hotkey bindings!!!
If you look at my hotbar setups below for Fuse and Bez, they're slightly different, but not by much. I made sure to keep it where the macros could be used for both. The primary thing that I changed is that instead of T6 AND T7 hitting the macros, I set the thumb keys to s1, s2, s3, and s4 for my healing abilities, and then just T7 for my Healing macro which will hit my medpacks.





The most important thing is to think ahead and group the abilities you see yourself using all the time together. Find a way to make it work. I don't know every class out there, and am constantly reconsidering changes to my macros, or adding new ones for specific situations, but if I can help with something specifically, let me know.

Please contribute to this thread with your own thoughts.

[Tbone]

I happen to be working on macros tonight. It can get a little complicated when working with a mouse and keyboard. I also use Razor gear. One of the frustrating things I found is that binding my mouse buttons to macros didn't really work. If I bound 5 to a macro, for instance, shift+5 would no longer work as a keybind in game. Any time I'd try to hit shift+5, it would run my macro that hits a different ability. Because of the GCD, this would essentially negate the ability I was originally trying to do (the bind I was trying to set up was to fire off a relic every time I hit a certain ability).

With they keyboard, the trick is to set up macros that aren't going to screw up with your typing. For instance, let's say I want "g" to cycle through all four of my relics (PvE and PvP) and fire whichever one is currently available. Don't bind any of those to anything like shiftG or h or shiftH because then whenever you want to type something that has a "g" in it, it will come out "gGhH". So you need to choose obscure keybinds. Shift+F1-10 works well for this.

I'm still working on my macros, but when I'm done I think I'll be even more efficient!

[victoriah]

How do you account for the timing of gcd between abilities?

[Fuse]

T makes a great point for you Naga users.
He also demonstrates why I think having a gaming keyboard with dedicated macro keys is required for efficient macro execution. I wasn't sold on this keybaord, and was going to return it for a naga until I finally started to play with the macros. Now I'm glad I got this instead.

Again, the steps are setup your hotbars, then setup the macros to match.

How do you account for the timing of gcd between abilities?

For my examples, it's not an issues because items like stims, medpacks, deflection, relics etc... do not trigger the gcd. With that said, the razer software does allow you to add in delays between keypresses, so the ability to do that exists.

I'm generally against macroing multiple gcd triggering abilities together because I play based on second-by-second decisions and would hate to hit a 3 second long macro, stealth away in the middle of it and have the macro I hit ages (2.5 seconds) ago pop me out of stealth, for instance. I PvP very quickly, so for me personally, I wouldn't piece together anything longer than maybe .75 of a second - and definitely not triggering two gcd.