Hey guys, Sorry, last post, I swear! Bottom line, I have a bit of a neurological problem with my hands. I find complex rotations pretty challenging. Is there a DPS class that can be largely played with macros, instead of a ton of individual button mashing? I'd solo to cap, then hope to solo and group for fun and profit. I have no idea if I'd ever want to or be capable of raiding. Thanks again!
Swash/Brig would be pretty simple to do imo. Ranger as well. Probably stay away from Beastlord/Assassin for pure macroing. Mages your best bet would probably be a necro, but if it'd be that great macroed I'm unsure.
OK, thanks! Are either Swash/Brig or Ranger highly positional? What kind of merc do you use with them, cleric?
All 3 have some positionals, but nothing I'd imagine would cause huge harm, You could likely solo with them all fine. just keep positionals in a separate macro if soloing
OK, thanks again. I think I'll try Ranger. I imagine I will be melee rather than ranged, and need to use a cleric merc?
My advice for macroing is to not make 'all in one' macros, but rather group together like abilities. I'd agree with Errrorr's assessment for class choice as well. I think most of the bad feels toward macro usage that I see in the community is based on the assumption that people are just throwing everything into one button haphazardly instead of making smart choices. The biggest thing, IMO, is to not macro things that have significant gameplay implications. What I mean by that is, some abilities don't really do anything beyond 'X to Y damage'. Others are going to give you temp buffs, some may trigger special class-specific mechanics. You may have some high value abilities that get reset by others triggering, and having those buried in a macro can make that difficult to see. I also don't like macroing ascensions at all, so a lot of the space I used to recover in the past by grouping things together has been lost to ascensions over time. Some examples of groupings I like to do: Debuffs with the same duration, so all the 1m12s debuffs are on the same button. DOTs, sorted by duration from short to long. Depending on class this can require a bit of thinking rather than mashing through it, based on how the timers of them align. 'Filler' CAs/spells, basically things to mash through, sorted by damage relative to cast & recast time (bust out your spreadsheet). These are all the things that just 'do damage' and have minimal gameplay implications beyond keeping your hands busy. I would log in and show some actual examples but it's about time to go to work.
Conjuror is great like this, swashbuckler, Shadow knight is great for macros. I have 1 button for single target and 1 for aoes, 1 for encounters. Easy peasy Like above poster said try to group similar abilities. can be done with most classes.
OK, thanks guys! Is SK considered DPS in EQ2, or is it more of a hybrid with some good tanking abilities like in EQ?
Sks seem to be the favorite spoiled rich kid class. They just have almost everything : FD, evac, massive blue, CC immunity (death march). I m not too sure about abilities consolidation since many do different things with damage as side or main effect : - damage that include taunt - positionnal - interrupt - self heal So that is already 4 type for melee abilities, and then we have the blue and the green. On my conjurer shattered earth and icestorm are consolidated and HO starter and animated dagger are consolidated on crystal blast. I m not too sure about how macros with more than 3 abilities do work, you can make macros with as many abilities as you want and with a clearability command at the end. I read somewhere that indeed it is not the first ready from the top which is used. It may read from the bottom ..
I will have to check when I log back in, but I am pretty sure that macros read from the top down. My tanks always had a few macros which worked well and let me focus on the fight mechanics more. What does the clearability command do? I never used it. What I did was had the same ability as the first and last steps of my dps macros. I don't remember why other than it was to overcome some glitch.
Its a tank class but its a LOT of fun to play, get yourself a healer merc and look out. you can run through crowds of stuff and burn it down. Its a great power leveling class. and if you decide to tank for groups, you are ready to roll. as for pure DPS, if not shadowknight a scout, swashbuckler also a lot of fun with lots of AOES to and IS considered more pure DPS based.
Alright! Just so I can get most PvE done with macros on that Ranger, I think that's my first step. Then a SK.
With clearability you just do ONE ability the one that is ready, so as example my druid as self heal macro with all the heals on her, so if hit once and keep needing more heals i hit twice and so on. This way i don t waste time doing the 4 heals if one is enough.
