Your favorite macros

As you all may know macros are a crucial part of Final Fantasy XI so why dont you post some of your favorites. Heres one of my favorite macros for my White mage (ma "Cure II" <stpc>) (p Now casting "Cure II" on <lasts>) basicly this macro allows you to cast Cure II on a selected player character and the second part alerts your party that your casting Cure II on that person so nobody has to worry about healing that person.

[Andromeda]

My paladin lives by this macro, takes up all six lines.

/recast "Provoke"
/recast "Flash"
/recast "Defender"
/recast "Sentinel"
/recast "Shield Bash"
/recast "Rampart"

The most important are Provoke and Flash, since I use them all the time, so they are at the top followed by Defender, which is good to know that why I can have 24/7 defender. Though sometimes I let it go to do better WS in a SC, but at my level I have not SC in like 5 lvls, when I was killing lizards in Den of Rancor, which was tons of fun.

Sentinel and Rampart are super important to for me to know, especially when I prefer to alternate them in battles, one get used in one battle and then the other in the next. If the battles are one minuters, then I usually get screwed on that, but normally they are 2 minuters to 3 minuters, so I have enough time to start off with the battle with one. And Shield Bash, well I do not use it a lot, but it comes in handy with Goblins. Since I am on six already I cannot put in Warcry, a less important one. So I just Warcry Rampart together, that way I always know when Warcry is ready again. This way I prevent the endless spamming or checking of menus like I used to do.

Literally the second I found out about this great command I went and made the above macro minus rampart, since it was a 62 ability and I was not there yet. But every mage and half of the jobs in the game should use this ability. I know a lot of mages live and die by this.

It is about the only macro I use, because I need to know when to provoke again. Its made me a better tank because of it. And now unless melee are doing crazy damage like MNK or WAR or RNG, I keep hate all the time.

[Dawezy]

Wouldnt excatly call these "Favorites" more or less essential for any DRK with half a brain, we have *one* of the most essential spells in the game - that being Stun. But lately I've been getting out of the habit of putting some stand-out text behind the macro since I dont really have anything new or special at 75.

/ma "Stun" <t>

Other handy things I got macrod are;

/ma "Poisonga" <t>

/ra <t>
<t>, {You can have this}

/ja "Weapon Bash" <t>

Etc. Got all my regular WS's behind a Trick/Sneak and my Souleater, I decided *against* putting Blood Weapon on a macro since I could accidently hit the damn thing and boom -.- heh.

[ZRO]

Pretty much the same macro for me as for Andro, except I replaced Defender with Warcry, as I don't use Defender except for rare occasions anymore. As to why, it's because I noticed that a lot of times I lose hate more often with it on. The boost to my DEF is nice, but it doesn't help when you hit for 0-5 damage constantly. No Defender means I take maybe 5-10 more damage on normal hits and 10-20 on Crits, BUT I manage to do almost the same damage as the DDs on my melee strikes, allowing me to hold hate better. ^^

Also of note on that fact tho is that Mithran AGI allows me to pull that off a little easier maybe, due to a slightly higher rate of shield block, cutting damage anyway. ^^

And you forgot the Zing! macro D XD

[Merlin]

My favorite macros are my Taru Dance macro and my Taru Dice Roll, but I'm not about to tell you how I do them.. haha! The dice roll is freaking priceless, but I hardly use it because it starts a chain of rolls by spammers.

As for Recast, it depends on what job I am. For NIN, it is pointless at this time. The only thing that slows me down is those damn WHMs healing me when I'm trying to recast Utsusemi. That has got to be the worst feature of FFXI that they added in patch... whenever any magic spell is being cast on you, you can't do a damn thing. That's a good 3-5 seconds per cast that mobs are getting free hits on you and you can't do shit about it. Since it interrupts your cast, you have to wait for the penalty time to wear off before trying again and guess what? They are healing you again! Its annoying. I would kill for Utsusemi Ni right about now.. haha.

For WHM, I never use <stpc>. It sounds like a great idea, but it is a bane. If it only targeted party members, it would be the greatest thing ever, but it doesn't. <t> selects the nearest target to you and cycles through them by distance to your screen, etc. <stpc> seems to randomly pick any PC it wants to and jump between them. Not only that, there is a distinct difference in timing. With <t>, you pick your target before casting, but you will always have the target you want immediately. Why is this good? If you have to cast on the same person multiple times, you don't have to retarget the person. With <stpc> you have to pick your target each and every time. It doesn't remember the original target, which creates a lag of time. Plus, you have to have a totally separate macro set if you want to PL, which is just stupid.

Overall, <t> simply is superior, IMHO. The benefits far outweigh the accidental targetting of a mob. I mean.. if you're stupid enough to cast a spell on a mob.. its your own damn fault.. Plus the whole problem of if you accidentally hit the wrong spell, you cant instantly cancel it with <stpc>. It is sitting there waiting on you to select a target and you are wondering why the **** it isnt casting so you can cancel it. Annoying? Yes, please.

[KingSephiroth]

[/comfort motion
/em pets <t>.]

[/doubt motion
/em delivers a death poke.]

[/hurray motion
/em throws up a Viking style salute to <t>!] If you saw my profile in the FFXI profile thread, you'd understand why.

[/anger motion
/wait 2
/em slaps <t>.] It might be the other anger related one, I might have spelled this one wrong too, I haven't used it in awhile... Anyways, I made it so that as the motion finishes, he backhands <t>. I'm Elvaan, so it works. +1 for superiority factor!

[Sean]

It's beena while for me, but I had normal enfeebles and "tough" enfeebles on my RDM. The "tough" enfeebles were for fighting difficult mobs that would resist my neccesary enfeebles a lot (like paralyze and the such) so I used an equip command to toss my wand in my hand first, then cast the enfeeble. I tried to do this for everything but stopped because of the 1 second delays of equpping, casting, and reequipping my sword.

For my warrior I liked to use Provoke, then echo to myself when it was ready again. I think the max wait was 15? so I had two /wait 15 then /echo Provoke ready in 15! /wait 15 /echo Provoke ready! or something. I can't really remember. It's been well over 18 months since I've played FFXI.

I will say this, however.

FFXI's Macro System is FAR superior of World of Warcraft's. WoW's lets you script in variables and such, but the lack of a wait command CRIPPLES the WoW scripting abilities.

Example:

I play a sword Rogue. Certain abilities like Backstab and Ambush are only usable with a dagger equipped. Casting stealth and then equipping a dagger is simple, casting ambush and then reequipping my sword is just as simple. Casting ambush and reequipping my sword ONLY if Ambush went off is impossible. Ambush is dependant on being behind the mob, and awards 1-2 combo points. As such, I would use my combo points as a variable to determine if my Ambush went off right? If my combo points are > 0 then my sword should be reequipped, if they aren't, my dagger should stay.

Well, the problem with this is the scripts all go by instantly, so it goes Ambush > Combo Point Check > Combo Points Awarded. If I could script in a half second wait it would award my combo points before the script checks my points, but since I can't script a wait it's checking for combo points before Ambush equips them. My point is, the WoW scripting potential is VERY limited.

That, amongst many other reasons, is why I think FFXI's Macro system is much better. My problem with both, however, is the lack of space. FFXI only allows 7 commands, WoW only allows so many characters.