Facemashing-macro

Post by twsX

So, i've started playing a retloladin.

Until now, i have always played a mage, so macros for using skills were never something i needed.

Now, with my pally, i have 3 different skills which i need to use to beat up them evil NPCs. (in my case, Judgement of Wisdom, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. AMIDOINITRITE?)

Now, of course i could just spam 3 buttons. However, this gets tiresome (and being a compute techno wiener i already am tired when i get home) so i wanted to make me a macro for the purpose of spamming all those skills.

I tried it with a normal castsequence:
/castsequence Judgement of Wisdom,Crusader Strike,Divine Storm
This works "ok"; All three skills are being used.
However, i noticed that sometimes (can't really tell under what exact circumstances) spamming the button won't do anything until a certain skill's cooldown is gone, eventhough another one of the 3 skills is already available.

So, my question basically is: How do i do this?

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Post by Stargazer

/castsequence will only cast the spells in the exact sequence you list them in the macro. It will not skip over a spell that is still on CD. Your macro will eventually reach a point where you have finished casting Crusader Strike and Divine Storm will still be on CD for 7 more seconds. While you are waiting for that, both Judgement and Crusader Strike will also come off CD but cannot be used by your macro. No matter how many times you mash the button, nothing will happen until Divine Storm comes off CD. The next time you hit the button, Divine Storm will cast and the macro will reset back to the beginning.

I know of no way to create a macro to do what you want. Perhaps a stand-alone mod could but I am thinking Blizz would work very hard to prevent that from being possible. They have said many times that they do not want anything to happen that is not a conscious decision on the part of the player (macros cannot make decisions). The best thing for Retadin is to learn the priorities. For most fights you just need those 3, adding Consecration in some cases and tossing in Exorcism and/or Holy Wrath in others.

I believe the best Ret rotation for solo/farming to be Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike. You should avoid trying to cast CS right after Judging whenever possible. When you do this they both come off CD at (almost) the same time and one has to wait to be cast. Any ability that is not on CD is wasting dps.

Using your rotation, Judge and CS will both come off CD ~8 seconds after you start. With my recommended rotation you can go through the cycle twice before CD conflicts arise. Any non-elite mob will be dead by then.

For a single target farming macro you can use this:
/castsequence reset=combat/target Judgement of Wisdom, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judgement of Wisdom, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm
The "reset=" option will reset the macro to the beginning whenever you enter combat OR change targets. Beware though, this won't work real well if you're pulling multiple mobs at once since the target change reset will happen when you still have spells on CD.

You could also create another /castseqquence using Exorcism for undead pulls. Take time to figure out the optimal rotation to eliminate CD conflicts. In the end though, I think you're better off learning the spell priorities; what to do when more than 1 spell is ready to cast. Check this link Retadin Bible
This will better prepare you for "Oh &*!@!" moments as well as long Raid encounters where /castsequence macros are completely worthless.

Post by twsX

Very interesting post Stargazer, thank you.
I'll do that, and thanks for the hint with 2 spells getting off CD at the same time, i never even though that far.

I guess i'll just l2p then and press the appropriate spells myself. :)

Post by RedwoodElf

/castsequence reset=combat/target Judgement of Wisdom, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judgement of Wisdom, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm

Replace the combat/target with a number, equal to the cooldown of the quickest of the abilities in the sequence that has a cooldown, and put the abilities with the quickest cooldown at the front of the list. If you're cycling through and you run into one of the abilities that's still on cooldown, simply don't press the button for (number) seconds, and it will go back to the start of the list.

JOW: 10 seconds
DS: 10 seconds
CS: 6 seconds

So, put Crusader strike FIRST, and use reset=6

Post by twsX

I hope i understood your correctly, RedwoodElf, as i've just spent over an hour making a chart displaying the function of such a macro. :D

Ret. Palas have a talent reducing their Judgement CDs to 8 seconds. This is what screws the whole thing up. If weren't for that, the macro would work perfectly.

To my findings, this it will work significantly better than my original macro. However, after a couple of cycles, problems arise.

Here's the chart: PDF, Excel 2007

I'm not very good at this stuff, so if all of this is nonsense, screw it.

If it is correct however, as you can see, in the 5th cycle the whole rotation will be enough out of sync, that the macro will block you from using DS for over 5 seconds. Killing trash mobs, you are unlikely to ever reach the fifth cycle (which is why i might use this macro anyway), but if your doing instances, soloing elite quests, raiding, etc., this will be bad.
I think i'll propbably just have to stick with doing it the hard way - manually.

AMIRITE?

Post by RedwoodElf

Post by twsX

Well yes, but having to reset my target every now and then puts me in a place where it's probably easier to just do everything myself..

Thanks nevertheless. :)

Post by RedwoodElf

well, you could always just string em in there:

/cast Crusader Strike
/cast Judgement of wisdom
/cast Divine Storm

- so whichever one it runs into first that is ready for use will go off. Keep in mind that you could wind up having Divine Storm never go off, if you just happen to keep taking long enough to hit it a third time when GC is gone before one of the others recharge (with Crusader Strike's short cooldown, that would happen a LOT.) Maybe

/cast Crusader Strike
/castsequence Judgement of wisdom,Divine Storm

would work?

Post by gameldar

As long as you take the quicker cooldown into account, and put the spells in order of their cooldown and you can force a reset by adding noharm to the reset list and de-targetting with the escape key if you get stuck and don't want to wait 6 seconds (if you're correct, it would be
/tar targettarget
/castsequence reset=6/noharm Crusader Strike,Judgement of Wisdom,Divine Storm

noharm isn't a valid reset condition as far as I know. The list is n/target/combat/shift/alt/ctrl where n is the idle time to reset on.

/cast Crusader Strike
/cast Judgement of wisdom
/cast Divine Storm
This also won't work... and is the reason that castsequences exist. As written it will always try and do Crusader Strike and never get any further.

I think i'll propbably just have to stick with doing it the hard way - manually.
Looking through the timings I came to the same conclusion - that you are going to be better off doing things manually (not that I play a ret pally... my pally is holy - not that I use castsequence macros much at all)

Post by RedwoodElf

Post by gameldar

Actually, I believe that the global cooldown is shorter than 5 seconds (Crusader strike's cooldown)...so crusader strike would be on cooldown on alternate keypresses and the next spell would be attempted....and if THAT spell is on cooldown, the third would be attempted.

No it doesn't work like that. It will attempt to cast the first spell every time - it doesn't care about whether it is on cooldown or not - basically it does the evaluation to check if the spell is ready or not - and this blocks the other spells from being cast. The only exception to this is those that are off the GCD - they don't block the other spells from being cast. To quote from the wowwiki link in my sig:
In general, you cannot cast more than one spell with a single click of a macro. Most spells and some items trigger the global cooldown (GCD) which keeps you from taking too many actions at once. Even if a spell fails to cast, if it would trigger the GCD, it prevents subsequent /casts in the macro from running. This was not the case prior to patch 2.0 which is why you may still come across macros like the following:
/cast Overpower
/cast Execute
/cast Mortal Strike
/cast Sunder Armor

Macros like this do not work anymore. As soon as Overpower fails to cast, the game will block all the other spells from casting as well, even though the GCD is not actually triggered.

The only other theory (I've not tried this out) is that you could use a /castrandom - some purport that that has some sort of 'on cooldown' check and so it will only cast a random spell from the list if it can be cast... so you might get the desired behaviour from:

/castrandom Judgement of Wisdom, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm

And yes - the GCD for is generally 1.5 seconds (rogues and cat form druids have a 1 second GCD)

Post by RedwoodElf

Read your quote more carefully...we're not TRYING to cast more than one spell per keypress. Since they're in different /cast lines, if the first spell fails for any reason (out of range, on cooldown, whatever) then the macro WILL proceed to attempt to process the other /cast commands. FAILING to use an ability or spell doesn't trigger GCD.

Post by 73066

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Post by RedwoodElf

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Post by gameldar

Er, not that I've ever seen. In actual use, I've always had to use "/stopmacro " to stop a macro.

In any case, you're reiforcing MY argument. If the spell won't go off, it wouldn't trigger the global cooldown, therefore, it wouldn't stop the others from being activated.

For example, if you had:

/cast Fireball
/stopmacro
/cast Alchemy

Without the /stopmacro line, it will open the alchemy window, even if you're in combat and casting your fireball.

When I was writing my reply before I did start it as 'Macros are evaluated all at once' and then decided that would just confuse the issue and deleted it... And is is true the whole thing gets evaluated and it will try and do all the steps of the macro - however it is done in sequence and so the steps above affect the ones below (hence why the /stopmacro works). Therefore if you put more than one spell in the macro that would trigger the GCD you don't end up casting the other ones because the first one fails and triggers the internal cooldown that stops the others casting - as far as I can tell there isn't any output to say that the others have failed however.

Post by RedwoodElf

Yah, I know that...it tries to evaluate each line of the macro, in order, unless it runs into a /stopmacro command.

Once it hits a spell that ACTUALLY GOES OFF, and triggers global cooldown, no further spells that use global cooldown will go off, even though they will be attempted. The only thing, however, that would prevent later spells from EVER going off, if there is an instant/no cooldown earlier in the list. Since Crusader Strike has a 5 second cooldown, it will, at least occasionally, fail to activate and thus allow the later spells to work.

Further proof against the "Macros will stop when they hit any spell that would trigger GCD, whether it can be cast or not" argument is the following pair of macros:

(On actionbar 1):

/cast Ritual of Summoning; Searing Pain; Rain of Fire
/stopmacro
/cast Inferno
/castsequence reset=20 Siphon Life,Corruption,Unstable Affliction
/changeactionbar 2

(On actionbar 2):

/cast Ritual of Summoning; Searing Pain; Rain of Fire
/cast Inferno
/stopmacro
/castsequence reset=20 Haunt,Immolate,Dark Pact
/changeactionbar 1

Even if the spell currently displayed is on cooldown, or the target is out of range, or the spell goes off, the actionbar will change. It will also change if it hits the Mod:shift spell, but not the ones with mod:alt or Mod:ctrl

Post by gameldar

Once it hits a spell that ACTUALLY GOES OFF, and triggers global cooldown, no further spells that use global cooldown will go off, even though they will be attempted. The only thing, however, that would prevent later spells from EVER going off, if there is an instant/no cooldown earlier in the list. Since Crusader Strike has a 5 second cooldown, it will, at least occasionally, fail to activate and thus allow the later spells to work.

I think you're arguing two points.. just clarifying:
1. Macros don't stop when they hit any spell that would trigger GCD
Agreed - I never argued that point but didn't clarify it either.

2. If a macro has more than one /cast line that casts a spell that triggers the GCD then it will under some circumstances (the example given is that it is on cooldown) cast the one later in the macro. Taking our example from earlier:

/cast Crusader Strike
/cast Judgement of Wisdom
/cast Divine Storm

it will sometime cast Judgement of Wisdom and Divine Storm.

This isn't true. Best explanation I have for this is that the evaluation triggers another cooldown - this will always stop the later /cast (on a GCD triggering spell) from happening after the first one is called (but does not stop the macro).

The one exception to this rule that I've seen is hunter's Kill Shot pre 3.0.8 (it is now off the GCD). And the theory is that it was performing its < 35% health check locally and returning before the internal cooldown for casting was triggered. The assumption therefore is that the reason why two GCD triggering spells can't both be cast is that there is a check against the server to determine if it can be cast and so there is a local check to say "currently querying server ignore this cast call".

Facemashing-macro

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