mouse over healing?

[Himothy from Himsville]

is there a macro i can use that allows me to heal someone without targetting them?

Update: So after some testing and tweaking of my own I was able to find a macro suitable for my needs.

/micon "Cure"
/ac "Cure" <mo>
/ac "Cure" <me>

So the way it works is if you have your mouse hovered on someone (without targetting them) you will heal that target. but if you want to heal yourself you just leave you mouse over somewhere else and you will automatically heal yourself with the macro. this also works with party/raid frames. hover your mouse on the desired ally to be healed on the nameplate and it will heal that target without needing to target them.

This strategy allows you to also target an enemy and deal dps without needing to switch to an ally for healing. makes life as healer 10x's easier.

[Kiana]

There is, but you really shouldn't use it. Macros prevent you from queueing up a skill, which adds a delay to every cast and makes using off-global cooldown abilities difficult to weave in as well. Mouse targeting macros are also really unreliable when characters are overlapping.

The method is <mo>. Example:

/micon "Cure"
/ac "Cure" <mo>
/ac "Cure" <t>

A macro with that will have the icon for Cure and will try to cast Cure on whatever you have your mouse pointer over - this works whether it's a party member's model or their name on the party list - and if it can't, it'll instead cast on your current target (or on yourself, if you're currently targeting an enemy.)

[Himothy from Himsville]

and there isnt a script you can write to make it queue up another spell if already casting?

[Om3ga-Z3ro]

People have tried but doing things manually is faster and much more reliable.

[Arso]

You can use something like:

/ac "Excogitation" <mo>

It is true that macros prevent skill queues but often times if your ping is good enough, you can spam the line above 14-15 times in the macro and it generally does a half-decent job of being responsive.

Furthermore, you can hover over your party list to heal players rather than targeting their characters in game.

This actually works rather well with ogcd healing such as excog, essential dignity, tetragrammaton, etc. I wouldn't recommend doing this for gcd healing but I've encountered many raiders (including myself) that use mouse over macros for ogcd healing. This also really helps with cards on astro, aetherial manipulation on blm, and left eye on drg.

Hope this helps.

[Selvokaz]

So i dont know if you're using a controller or not as well as the mouse, but as a healer myself, there are two terms you should know, "Focused Targeting" and "targeting." Focused Targeting is when you on the party list bring your highlighter down to a persons name and click on it, you are now locked into that person as a target, after you do this you can scroll down still and "highlight" but not click and focus on another target and still cast heal without ever leaving your focused target, so that once you heal the 2nd person the next spell or action that can target a ally will go back to the "Focused Target".

I use a controller and its fairly simple, i focus target on the tank, then in the case of a dps needing healing, i just push down on the directional pad until i highlight their name, then push the button for my healing that i want to use after that spell is cast im immediately focused on the tank again.

[end_nina]

Originally posted by RIGHT MEOW:

and there isnt a script you can write to make it queue up another spell if already casting?

The <mo> action causes a natural delay in the cast command, so even with a script to queue another spell, it would still have to resolve the action before it could start, which makes it pointless because of the extra delay <mo> causes.

Using <mo> actions is perfectly fine in most situations. Don't let people scare you away by telling you otherwise. The only time the delay will cause problems is in pvp and some savage content. Unless you're group is really under performing, the minimal delay between casts won't be a deal breaker for clearing.

[Himothy from Himsville]

Originally posted by end_nina:

Originally posted by RIGHT MEOW:

and there isnt a script you can write to make it queue up another spell if already casting?

The <mo> action causes a natural delay in the cast command, so even with a script to queue another spell, it would still have to resolve the action before it could start, which makes it pointless because of the extra delay <mo> causes.

Using <mo> actions is perfectly fine in most situations. Don't let people scare you away by telling you otherwise. The only time the delay will cause problems is in pvp and some savage content. Unless you're group is really under performing, the minimal delay between casts won't be a deal breaker for clearing.

thats unfortunate. i was really hoping to optimally use this method as it is how i heal on WoW. the method helped me target enemies and do dps while also mouse-over healing my group and moving.

[Kiana]

Originally posted by RIGHT MEOW:

thats unfortunate. i was really hoping to optimally use this method as it is how i heal on WoW. the method helped me target enemies and do dps while also mouse-over healing my group and moving.

I used to do the same as a resto druid, so I know where you're coming from. It was handy when multi-DoTing with moonfire, at least.

Personal opinion: I've never felt a particular need for it in XIV. The tendency of mobs to spread out a bit more, along with having the enmity list available and tab targeting feeling a bit more reliable in its quirks than WoW, makes it work out better for me. And the slower GCD makes retargeting a little less frantic.

I do hope you can find a setup that feels comfortable to you.

[NASTY]

as long as you dont use more than 1 skill for a mo macro, there should be no delay. I have tested it.

[Himothy from Himsville]

Originally posted by DHL NASTY:

as long as you dont use more than 1 skill for a mo macro, there should be no delay. I have tested it.

what do you mean by this? do you mean having more than one spell in the same macro or do you mean chaining more than one spell on 2 seperate macros? when i was healing on WoW i was only using mouseover macro to heal my team. if i could target someone to heal with a spell it was put into its own macro. for example: esuna would be its own and cure 1 would also be on its own.

[RopeDrink]

As another healer who plays both (WoW + FFXIV) - I've never felt the need for mouseover in FFXIV due to the pacing of combat, which typically involves mechanical dances followed by downtime. Being able to mouseover with no detriment would certainly make things more comfortable, but it never feels necessary. FFXIV is more of a preemptive deal once you've done the learning, whereas WoW - even when you know what's up - forces a lot more reactionary healing, hence mouseovers and macros help a lot.

Boss encounters are just as scripted and timed as they are in FFXIV, yet there's certainly a lot more chaos involved (and at a somewhat faster pace), whereas FFXIV is more about periodic damage windows with (mostly) controlled randomness and its own version of chaos, such as bullet-hell or highly overlapping mechanics.

I enjoy both and have done for years, but again, mouseover just isn't necessary. Having said that, one thing I see a lot of people do is designate a hot-bar beside their party frame which contains a macro'd version of important CD's (like Benediction) so that instead of having to click the party member and then use the ability, they can just click the designated button/macro which is scripted to cast X on [Y Party Member] - removing the need to target them at all -- but even that isn't necessary, just a nice aid.

For the most part, I simply use focus-target to ensure I'm always one click away from the main-tank (who will be taking the brunt of damage for the most part), preempt mechanics with AoE's or OGCD's, with 'reactionary' mostly boiling down to Joe Soap DPS accidentally eating a mechanic and needing a heal/dispel.

[Minka]

If you're looking to get into mouseover healing, as others have said the function and programming for it working is there... but it's tied to their intentionally fickle and unqueueable macros system that prevents automating the game, for whatever reason. It's a very common setting or feature in even just other MMOs, let alone a bunch of other games, so it really should just be available normally.

Third-party tool XIV Launcher/FFXIV Quick Launcher has the Mouseover Action plugin that lets the function be usable without macros, making it feel like a normal part of the game. Just the usual third-party tool warning: not usable by the ToS, they won't and can't detect them, don't talk about them ingame.

[Lusus Symphonia]

No! Don't use macros in this game if you want to stick to the active GCD system.

My trick is to assign target nearest enemy to E and position the party list next to the hot bars which your eyes pay attention to majority of the time.

Using mouse over seems silly when you can just move your mouse over a positioned name, click and press a number and then immediately press E to continue DPS casts.

[Last Place]

While a fun novelty, it's not reliable and takes more time then a normal casting. Keep in mind that reliance on this will weaken your skill set overall and slow you down in the long run. I would implore you to just learn to do the moves naturally.

[Taran Tatsuuchi]

Re slowdowns....
If using the mouseover macro is faster for them than switching targets back and forth it's probably not a problem.

Mouseover healing is one of the types of macros where I've seen people say it is acceptable, due to the QoL nature of mouseover.



Queueing.
You can't queue the macro...

But you could put the command in it multiple times and as each line in the macro takes a miniscule amount of time, it will give it a slightly larger window to get it off sooner.