Hey peeps, let me preempt this by saying IM DISABLED.
OK let me explain, I enjoy playing ff14 but unfortunately I have arthritis and carpal tunnel which makes it painful to stretch my hands too much to press all the buttons necessary. When I played wow I was able to get by with the use of their extensive macro communities and add-ons.
Unfortunately the same communities and add-ons don’t really exist and the community seems to be by in large unintentionally ableist, at least by my research. All I see is variations of ‘don’t use macros because you’ll lose .5 seconds and suck!’.
I don’t play hardcore endgame content not do I have any intention to play it with random. I mostly play with friends and they don’t care if I use macros or not, they understand my situation and just want me to have fun.
But here I am asking for help with macro creation and possibly class choice. I’m currently playing a summoner as they don’t seem to be very hard and I can macro a couple of things together to ease my pain.
What tank and healer class would be the easiest to play for someone like me and possibly what macros could they use to give me a hand?
For summoners, is there a way to macro the summons with gemshine? Plus add a modifier in there for aoe. That way I can trim down 5 buttons to 3. I know it was possible in wow but as I understand it ff14 has a limited macro system on purpose.
I hope some of you understand my situation and spare me the criticism. Most of the ff community has been lovely and understanding, I just get the rabid folk when I mention combat macros.
So macros in FFXIV basically just run a sequence of commands. You can also include wait times in seconds (whole seconds only, you can’t do 2.5s for example) after the action is complete.
Actions do respect trait upgrades too, so you can specify Gemshine as the action for example and the game knows to cast the appropriate action.
If you wanted to make a macro to summon Ifrit for example and use both casts, you could write something like this:
/micon “Summon Ruby”
/ac “Summon Ruby” <wait.4>
/ac “Gemshine” <t> <wait.4>
/ac “Gemshine” <t> <wait.4>
This would summon either Ruby Carbuncle, Ifrit or Ifrit II (depending on your level in the content you’re in), wait for 4 seconds, then cast whatever Gemshine turns into for that summon, wait 4 seconds and then cast it again. You can then assign that macro to your hotbar. The micon command lets you pick a custom icon for the macro, and it will show as active, inactive or lit up like the real icon would (useful for summons).
The wait time here needs to be a bit longer than you think you need. Partly because you can’t specify fractions, and partly because macros don’t queue commands - if you’re not quite ready to cast again when it reaches the next line in the macro, it’ll just drop the command and not run it.
You get up to 15 lines in a macro, so you can add in the level 90 abilities for example (the gap closer for Ifrit probably doesn’t make sense but Titan’s Mountain Buster probably does) so they’re all fired off in one go.
You can’t do conditional logic. You can kinda fake it by putting commands in that can’t fire if another condition isn’t met. For example if you need to cast Bahamut to activate your other summons, the above macro would fail. So you could put two commands back to back knowing one would fail to kinda combine two skills into one. Combining Bahamut and Phoenix casts for example (although now I think about the base skills are the same so you probably wouldn’t need to there).
If your goal is to consolidate buttons, half the challenge is working out what skills it makes sense to chain and then load them up with appropriate wait times. As you said it won’t be optimal but it can definitely be done.
You won’t be able to combine single target and AOE target spells in a way that would make sense though. You might need to get creative with button setups for that. I don’t know if double tapping a button is something you’re able to easily do for example but if it was you could set up a single tap to get to single target macros and a double tap to get to AOE ones so it’s mostly the same sequence to cast.
Thanks for all the info. I was able to find a macro online of someone who combined the 3 normal summons, ifrit and the other 2 into one button. So you would just press it once and then press gemshine or the aoe gemshine then go back and press it again for the next summon. It consolidated some of the buttons even more. The one thing I wasn’t able to find, and I think it might not exist, is a way for the icon to also change based on what ability is next in the queue. It’s not to hard with summoner as the class is easy but it would just be a qol thing.
I figured it wouldn’t be possible. Currently I have the aoe version of skills set to the same keybind but with the ctrl modifier. I’m able to press it with my palm so I don’t have to twist my fingers weirdly but it helps keep my muscle memory as it’s mostly the same rotation.
Again, thanks for the info. I’ll keep trying and see what I come up with, maybe I’ll make further posts here with my progress and what I end up with to help other people like me. Be the change you wanna see in the world and all that.
You’re right I think, I can’t think of a way to change the icon to what comes up next. The only reason you can change icons at all is because you’re linking it to a skill if you use /micon and it will show as whatever that icon currently would be (and icons like Gemshine change based on the active summon for example).
I’m glad you’ve been able to find something that works though!
I would look for a program outside of the game to make your macros as the macros you can make in game are extremely limited and are purposely programmed to be terrible for use in combat, at least for your rotation.
I was thinking about that but I don’t wanna risk a ban, I do genuinely like the game and would prefer to use their own tools. I might have to look into it this weekend. I’ve heard they ban for stuff that’s cosmetic even and that people who’ve used their damage counter add on have also gotten banned for taking about it.
It’s a big change from what I was used to playing wow. Their only rule really was one button press has to equal one in game action.
I’m not sure what you can manage given your condition, but if the problem is specifically stretching you hand around I have a bit of experience since I hate doing that too:
-
Modifiers: you’ve said you have set Control to give you another set of buttons. This is a good idea, you could do the same for Alt and Shift if they are confortable enough for you to use (I personally don’t like using shift in games)
-
Binding more convenient buttons: you don’t have to use only 1 to 3 or 4, Q and E are also close to the resting position of a traditional WASD setup and could give you a few more keys (don’t forget to bind them to modifiers as well!). Maybe there’s one also where your thumb rests on the keyboard?
-
Consider jobs with low APM and buttons. you are already playing summoner that has few buttons, even at max level. You could also consider playing healer (White Mage is a good choice here) since you only need to use 2 damage skills and can get away with using one or two healing spells in most casual content. I don’t think there are any tanks that would work since they need their defensive skills to reduce damage, so you’d have to bind them.
-
Consider different input devices. If you have one you could try, FFXIV is completely playable on a controller, and you would be able to access all skills there, assuming it’s confortable enough for you. Another option, if you end up really enjoying the game, would be to get an mmo mouse. 12 buttons plus modifiers is more than enough to play even some of the more complicated jobs.
-
I know that Dalamud has some addons that can reduce button presses. If you search for PVP it should pop up. It makes jobs have a single button press for entire combos in a lot of cases.
I’m using one from dalamud for summoners but the macro creator himself said he would only do it with buttons that didn’t need to be on separate buttons. I’m looking for a little more than they provide. Like including my mana regen button with my filler spell. I’m working on learning macros better but I’m just not that good at it.
