[ZOS, Confirmation Please?] Are macros allowed or not? Yes or no.

hamon · May 2015

Erock25 wrote: »

hamon wrote: »

i,m not sure. ive read lots of explanations about animation cancelling, i even sometimes do it myself by firing skills while pressing attack. if animation cancelling doesn't allow you to weave more attacks and skills into a shorter time how would it be benefitial and allow increases in dps?.

The first thing you need to know is that light/medium/heavy attacks have a global cool down and abilities have a separate global cool down. You can smash left click 1,000,000 clicks a second and no matter what you will only fire off a single light/medium/heavy attack about once every second. You can spam 1 (or whatver key you bind your abilities to) likewise and always end up with around one ability use every second. You can however, overlap these two cooldown so you can get a light/medium and an ability attack in every second (full heavy attacks take to long to properly weave).

Animation canceling can refer to a few different things. The version people talk about the most in my opinion is a medium attack (partial heavy ... literally holding left mouse for a fraction of a second) canceled with an instant ability and then canceling that instant ability with a block and/or bash. The block/bash part is basically optional (unless you are actually intending to block something) but it does allow you to end your instant abilities animation faster which can result in a quicker ability activation. For instance, say I have a proc'd crystal frag... pressing block immediately after activating crystal frag will fire off the crystal faster than letting the crystal frag animation fully play out. BUT, and this is a big BUT... the delay until your next crystal frag or whatever ability fires off is exactly the same as if you didn't cancel the animation.

hamon wrote: »

now if it does allow more skills/attacks in a shorter time , then surely it follows that a macro could be set up to maximise that efficiency gain to flawless timing ?

Flawless timing is super easy to achieve without a macro as flawless medium attack weaving only takes about 2 inputs every 1 second (more if you are block canceling but that doesn't increase your overall speed), which is really nothing. A macro will do nothing for you and in fact even be a hindrance as the global cool downs get wonky sometimes (lag maybe?) and you have to rely on animation cues to adjust your timing. A macro can't do that.

I'm sure there are people out there using macros. I easily picture a NB macroing a Lethal Arrow -> Ambush attack that lets them press one button to fire off their from stealth opener, but there is little point because it is super easy to do it without a macro at maximum efficiency.

thanks for the explanation man , thats as concise as any ive read, i guess the point i was missing was that auto attacks and skills have seperate timers thus making animation cancelling worth doing.

sKorcheD · May 2015

olemanwinter wrote: »

sKorcheD wrote: »

(Blizzard clearly states 1 keypress must do 1 action, anymore and you will be banned.)

And a standard macro does exactly that. Zos can't tell if someone's finger does it or a program does it.

Key pressed....key lifted....skill activated....key pressed....key lifted....skill activated.

It matters not if your finger or a program does it. It's the same thing.

Macros are not cheating for this reason. There are other forms of real cheating that I won't get into, but they aren't macros.

I hope this doesn't get the thread locked, but I'll just tell you one of the most common used macro in PvP is a potion macro. It simply pops the potion every X number of seconds, so the player doesn't have to worry about it.

Fight begins, player activates macro, fight lasts 2 minutes, and it results in him drinking a potion 4 times across the length of the fight.

But Zos says this is not cheating because it's not doing anything your fingers can't do. It's not a "keypress" issue. It's a "input" issue. You can't tell if it originated from a keypress or not. And don't try to sell me on "it's too regular".

I don't use a macro, but I do use addons that flash the word "potion ready" across my screen and I bet my actions are pretty regular and repetitive.

Anyway, my point is that THAT example is the only useful macro I can even think of, because it wouldn't get in the way of your dynamic combat decisions. Trying to script out an attack sequence is a "no go".

Macros most often are used to do a series of keystrokes(animation canceling good example) And no your reflex is never within a couple hundred millisecs especially if you're going off "potion ready", you are not superman. If you used a macro it's ALWAYS within 10ms. People only use them if they feel it gives an advantage. Even drinking a potion every 45 secs. That frees you up from pressing q or what have you, a tiny advantage if you could call it that but an advantage none the less, but I really don't think macros became a hot topic lately because someone has a potion sipping macro.