SCH MacrosFollow

With so many spells now available to us, it seemed prudent to start a macro thread. Sometimes what takes me longest in a party is switching over and finding the spell I need. Up until now I've had one palatte for quick use, another dedicated to enhancers, and still another dedicated to dmg dealing (both black magic and helix). All three of course having the light and dark arts macros along with job abilities applicable to each palatte. Now with the introduction of AF, it seems most of my equipment macros will fit in the current spell macros, but I was wondering if anyone else had idea on a workable system. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Alright I will share some tricks of the trade as a long time rdm, and leveling SCH.

1. Not every spell needs a macro, macroing things like protect/shell are pointless they are not an emergency cast. And are found extremely easy near top of spell list.

2. Seperate defensive and offensive spells between ALT and CTRL macros, ALT 1-0 would be all light arts regens heals for example while Ctrl 1-0 would contain Dark arts nukes etc...

3. Prioritize and when first starting out leave a few blank for adjusting until you find the perfect pallet. One pallet may be used for your common most used spells while the one down from it would be sometimes used but not as often.

4. For the love of all that is good Macro in the correct staff and gear. I can not stress this enough I am sick of crappy mages keepin a dark/light staff on for every single spell.

5. Determine what is your default macro pallet and get so comfortable with it you flow between spells without pause.

6. Write a personal thank you note to SE for not giving you haste and refresh, allowing you to enjoy a multispell class to its fullest without being pigeonholed into a single role for all eternity.

I'm taking full advantage of the 10 palettes per book.

I use my Control macros to create a pyramid, and my Alt macros to keep basic spells of each kind (cures, Aspir, etc.) Each Alt+1 macro is a "Return" macro that does nothing but bring the book back to palette 1.

Essentially, my Control macros look like this:
Palette #1 - Light Arts Macro, Dark Arts Macro
Palette #2 - Strategems for Light Arts and a macro to go to Palette #4
Palette #3 - Strategems for Dark Arts and a macro to go to Palette #5
Palette #4 - Light Arts affected Magic and a macro to go back to Palette #2
Palette #5 - Dark Arts affected Magic and a macro to go back to Palette #3

Palettes 4 and 5 are going to be filled with spells on both the Ctrl and Alt sides because those are the macro sets that will see the most use.

For me, this allows the use of gear swaps in each macro without relying on Windower macros (PS2 ftw... or ftl...). The redundancy on each macro set lets me cast general spells necessary to most applications (Cures under Dark Arts, etc.) as well as navigate through the palettes themselves without much issue. The only significant problem I have is speed, but given that I've got a pretty firm handle on Ctrl+M and Ctrl+J, it's not much of an issue for me.

Regardless, it's extremely difficult to run out of macros on a single book now, unless you're trying to do it, or unless you're reaching such a specific level of intricacy that several macros are devoted to a single spell.

I have been messing around after the patch as well and also took advantage of the 10 Pallettes. 9 of them are for spells and JA's, while #10 works as a switchboard.

1- TeirIV
2- IIIs
3- IIs
4- MAIN (Its more of a medley of my favorite Dark Arts ones)
5- Helix
6- Weather
7- Cure
8- Enhancing
9- Enfeebling
0- SwitchBoard

The way this concept works is fairly simple but takes some gettin used to. For starters the CTRL line in each is more or less the same. It has macros for:
hMP/Casting Gear/Stratagems/Other JA's/Macro Link to #10 (Switchboard)

Switchboards ALT and CTRL lines are identical, they are just lists linking you to the diff types of magic. These macros also have Arts/Adds. included into them.

Example:
Enfeebling
/macro set 9
/ja "Dark Arts" <me>
/wait 1
/ja "Add:Dark" <me>

Once that macro kicks you into the Enfeebling set you will have the same CTRL JA macros from the other sets, just the spell list on ALT will be different. ^^

Another more specific macro that I have been enjoying is for Helices. As far as I understand they should be used to their full potential if you are goin to bother casting them at all. My macro goes like this:

/staff
/ma -storm
/wait6
/ma klimaform
/wait1
/ma -helix <stnpc>

The beauty of this macro is as follows... The <stnpc> lets you time it for MB, as long as you dont hit enter until after Klimaform is finished doing its thing. Also ElementalSeal/Ebullience are not consumed by storm/form, they wait for the Helix.

Other notes. My CTRL panels have 2 gear macros for the spells in the sets. The only other gear that gets macroed into spells themselves are the pieces of gear that swap between spell/hMP. That alone fills my spell macros.
The only other thing i plan on changing now is nixing the II's to install a Light Arts favorites list like i did for Dark Arts. On paper it seems fine, in a pt it was obvious Light Arts needed to be streamlined. thx for reading.