I'm sad this got moved to class discussion =(

Pretty much every single battlemaster on my server that I talk to thinks that tab-targeting is the single worst part of this game's combat system. Why has this not been fixed yet, or even mentioned by the developers? Scorn for the way tab-target behaves is near universal!

I've always wondered about the discrepancy between two "mirror classes" with Heat vs Ammo. 12 Ammo feels natural...Your abilities are 1, 2, or 3 ammo. 100 Heat just seems really weird, though. Your abilities are 8, 16, or 25 heat? But actually, they're 8.33333, 16.333, and 25 heat? Or maybe your 1 ammo is actually 1.0416 ammo? Obviously, 100 is not divisible by 12. Which means that at some point in the development process, they had to decide to intentionally make either Heat or Ammo a non-integer quantity, simply so that the Mirror classes would not be ~4% off from each other in DPS. How did this come up? Was it like "we have 12 ammo because it feels cool, so we're not gonna measure heat in arbitrary units up to 100, and have some awkward math!"? It just seems....so odd to me. Why not have 120 heat? Or just have 12 heat? Or design everything so that you have 20 ammo, or 10 ammo?

Ah yes, which is why all of the top professional Arena players in Warcraft, and all of the top raiders in guilds that competed for world first kills, didn't use macros, right? OH WAIT THEY ALL DID.

No, a WoW-style macro system doesn't "gimp the game", it allows you to play against the encounters rather than against the targeting system or against your keybinds. At the end of the day, WoW-style combat macros increase the skillcap of the game, not decrease it. This is because it allows combat (especially in PvP) to be determined more by reaction time, situational awareness, and coordination, as opposed to a macro-less game in which combat is slowed down by adding a few pointless extra clicks to abilities. Let's take a realistic scenario from high-level PvP, shall we? Say I'm a Vanguard, fighting a little duel with an enemy Marauder, while my Sage healer buddy runs around trying to Line of Sight a Mercenary's tracer missiles. All of a sudden, the Sage gets hit really hard by a Rail Shot, and the Marauder switches targets to the Sage. I realize what's happening very quickly, and try to cast Guard at the Sage to save him so that we can win the fight. Oh, but since SWTOR doesn't have a macro system that would allow me to automatically cast Guard on my target's target, I have to waste an extra key press to assist the Marauder (or target the Sage some other way) before I can hit Guard. Then, I have to hit tab (and hope it works like I think it will) to target the Marauder again to try to use other abilities to slow down his damage. Those extra clicks matter. They take time. Tenths of a second of time, each....and since human reaction time is give or take a third-of-a-second *at best*, those extra clicks essentially make it as though I have an abysmally slow reaction time. And in those extra half-seconds, too much damage has been done, and the Sage can't recover, and we go on to lose the fight. So. How does slowing down the game do anything positive, in any way? Instead of placing the emphasis on elements of competition that should matter (situational awareness, reaction time, coordination), the lack of a reasonable macro system places emphasis on fighting the UI and targeting system. This uniformly decreases the value of player skill.

+Voidstar -Alderaan I used to love Alderaan's Civil War warzone...but now that people have gear, it's getting all but impossible to actually capture nodes, and that's after the nerf to the side speeders and to DoTs preventing caps. The warzone is just extremely frustrating now, because it's so *********** poorly designed. Stop with the *********** role-playing speeders and just add a graveyard / gate area like a regular warzone for ****'s sake.

Also notable: I've heard anecdotal reports that the Cybertech stun grenade bypasses resolve and will always stun for a second or two.

Which is exactly why WoW-style macros can't be said to "trivialize" the game. I used macros like #showtooltip /cast [modifier:alt,@player][@mouseover,help][help][modifier:shift,@targettarget,help] Flash Heal; Smite That's a lot of possibilities bunched into one macro (which I won't go into here)....and I sure as hell needed to be very clear on what my macro was doing to make use of it correctly. I couldn't just give this macro to anyone: most people would hate it. But for me, it smoothed out my gameplay immensely and took away a lot of UI-induced barriers to healing, allowing me to react extremely fast to various situations in both PvE and PvP. And since it was personalized to what I wanted, any baked-in equivalent ("mouseovers as a default UI option!") would have been insufficient for me, even if someone else was satisfied with it....That's how user customization works, though: you can keep more people happy by giving them a bit more freedom. That's something that the developers of SWTOR don't seem to realize.

The abuse of macros we saw in wow ....SIX YEARS AGO?!? Point me to a single abuse of macros that exists in WoW *right now*. And since you can't do that because it doesn't exist, describe how WoW's *current* macro would be bad for the game.

Exactly. So long as they keep to WoW's philosophy and macros have the following restriction: 1) One GCD possible per macro 2) Cannot select spells off of target class, health, energy, buffs, debuffs, or state 3) Cannot select spells off of own class, health, energy, buffs, debuffs, or state 4) Cannot change targets based on class, health, energy, buffs, debuffs, or state Then everyone is happy. We players that want [@targettarget] macros, and [help] vs [harm] macros, and [modifier, target=X] macros are happy. People that don't want the game trivialized or automated are happy. Everyone's happy.

Please refer to the post I wrote right above yours (which probably was posted when you were still writing this). But the summary is this: people do not want that type of capability. In WoW, a macro can only determine what spell is used based on who you are targeting, what buttons you are holding, and your mouse state. In WoW's macro system, you *cannot* do the following; 1) Determine your spell based on the class of your target 2) Determine your spell based on the health or state of your target 3) Determine your spell based on your own health or state 4) Determine your spell based on your energy, mana, rage, etc. Additionally, castsequence macros will completely break in all but the most trivial situations: they will do nothing if any of the spells in the castsequence are on cooldown or unusable. So, to conclude: all of your fears are alleviated if SWTOR uses a macro system inspired by WOW.

This is a complete lie. Have you played WoW since 2.0 came out? Since Wrath came out and completely broke /castsequence macros? I'll admit that such capability existed in Vanilla WoW, but it absolutely does not exist right now. This is the WoW Macro API. Point to me the places that allow the capability you're claiming. The only exception to "one spell at a time" per macro for WoW is that spells off the global can be activated simultaneously, along with on-use items/trinkets (also off the GCD). You can have "multi triggered" functionality with a lot of fancy target changing, but that does NOT give you "timed" or "rotational" scripting ability. At all. For example, the macros I used were extremely complicated. #showtooltip /cast [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover,help][help][target=targettarget,help] Flash Heal; [harm] Smite. I'll walk through what this does, in order of priority: 1. If I'm holding alt when I hit the button, I cast Flash Heal on myself. 2. Else If my mouse is over a friendly target, I cast Flash Heal on the mouseover. 3. Else If I'm targeting a friendly directly (and not mouseovering a friendly), I cast Flash Heal on them. 4. Else if I'm targeting an enemy (and not mouseovering a friendly), I cast Flash Heal on that enemy's target (if possible). 5. Else, if I'm targeting an enemy, I cast Smite on that enemy. That's a lot of capability into one macro. But it's also extremely predictable what happens, and is completely up to ME what spell is used, based on who I'm targeting, whether I have alt pressed, and whether my mouse is over a friendly. One action per key press (disregarding off-the-global effects), but lots of possible contexts that I, as the player, have to completely understand. Show me a macro that works in WoW *right now* that has the capability that you describe. They don't exist. CastSequence macros are all-but-broken, and only work in the most trivial cases. You cannot use scripting to analyze the health of your target, what debuffs are on your target, the amount of energy/mana you have, etc. You cannot use scripting to change your target based on the health of your target, etc. The capability you claim DOES NOT EXIST right now. I will grant you that it existed pre-BC, though. Scripting in pre-BC was completely broken in that way, and that's exactly why Blizzard completely rewrote the macro system for BC: to prevent the behavior you're referring to. I obviously do not want such automation in the game.

Perhaps it really is this simple. But it still doesn't really make sense. 1. Awkward, unresponsive combat. 2. No macros, awful UI. 3. Low skillcap 4. ??????????? 5. Profit?

Target nearest enemy is not at all what I want. I actually want tab to cycle through "next enemy", but I want it to do so in an intelligent and intuitive way (e.g., like the "target next enemy" key in every other MMO that preferentially targets enemies directly in front of you, even if they're 20 yards ahead.)

As a great example of the type of person that you're referring to: Read the rest of what I said before you try and fail to insult me.

You mean you don't want to target a guy 30 yards behind you instead of the guy right in front of you? Tab-target makes abilities like Guard super hard to use. I often find myself attacking an enemy that's attacking a friendly. I want to Guard that friendly while still attacking the enemy. Since this game bafflingly doesn't have macros (and thus I can't have a guard macro like "/cast [harm, @targettarget][help] Guard" that would do this in one click), you have to assist your first target, press Guard, and then hope to the tab-targeting demon-gods that hitting tab will actually target your original enemy. It won't, of course. Not on the first press. Baffling. Truly baffling to me.

What exactly are you afraid of? If it's a WoW-Style Macro system that allows one and only one action per click, WHAT IS THE DANGER? This game needs macros because some abilities are extremely awkward to use dynamically. Take, for example, Guard. If I'm chasing an enemy that's targeting a friendly, and I want to guard that friendly target, I have to jump through a ton of hoops to perform this action. First, I have to assist my current target so that I can target the friendly. Then I have to press the Guard key. Then I have to hope that tab-target (which is abysmal) will target the enemy again, or I have to manually click-target them. This takes like 3 seconds sometimes, given how awful the targeting system is. In WoW, I could just make a macro: /cast [harm,@targettarget][help] Guard If I was targeting an enemy when I pressed the macro, I would attempt to guard that enemy's target. If I was targeting a friendly, I would attempt to guard that friendly. Now, in your ignorance, you might claim that this "trivializes" the game somehow. That would be absolutely false. What a macro like this does is allow you to maximize the use of your abilities, which *increases the skillcap in the game* because it makes player decision making more important. Right now, if I want to Guard someone, it takes multiple buttons and a lot of targeting luck. This means that the time it takes me to make a decision of whether or not to guard someone doesn't matter at all. With the above macro, the decision to guard can almost instantly lead to a successful guard. I'm fighting my opponents and out-maneuvering them through decisions, not fighting the UI to actually make the actions I want. Without macros like that, playing this game is like trying to run in water: all of your actions are slow and awkward. You're not trying to run, you're trying to fight the water. The same logic applies to [help] vs [harm] that allow one key to be mapped to both offensive and defensive abilities. It applies to [@mouseover] macros, that allow healers to cast heals tenths of seconds faster without that unneeded key click. It applies to [modifier, target=X] macros, that allow a single spell to (for example) cast on different targets (yourself, your focus target, your main target, etc) depending on whether you hit the button with alt, shift, ctrl, etc. So I'll ask you the following: how are such macros bad for the game? Are they bad because you don't want to use macros, and thus don't want anyone else to use macros? Are they bad because it makes the game smoother to play since (with macro assistance) you can actually fight other players instead of fighting the uI? HOW IS THIS BAD?

Wait...I did not know that they actually changed in it beta! And yet they managed to make it worse, huh? Wow. What I don't understand is why the tab-target doesn't prefer people IN FRONT OF YOU.

Sigh. Shameless bump because this is a huge, huge problem in the game. Everyone I talk to agrees that tab-targeting in SWTOR is the worst implementation of targeting in any game they've ever seen, but no one seems interested in talking about it on these forums. It is seriously impossible to target people accurately, and it is killing the ability to react quickly and efficiently in PvP situations.

Wait so...does this mean you *MUST* have 8 players to queue a ranked Warzone? There's only like....2 guilds with more than 8 serious PvP'ers on republic side on my entire server. How is this going to have any participation at all?

Do tell me how Autohotkey will replace [@targettarget] macros, or [help] vs [harm] context macros.

If they just copy-pasted WoW's macro system into this game, perhaps with a few slight changes (remove castsequence completely, for example), I would be extremely happy. There would be no automation of combat, just a streamlining of ability use that would only lead to an increase in the skillcap in this game for things like using Guard in PvP ([@targettarget]) and reducing keybinds ([help] vs [harm]).

Title says it all. Tab targeting is awful and extraordinarily unintuitive. "Target next enemy" should preferentially select enemies that are directly in front of you: this is the behavior that every other MMO has. Right now, "target next enemy" seems to love targeting people that are behind you, to your side and out of line of sight, or in some other random direction besides the way you're looking. This makes PvP far more awkward than it needs to be, because selecting the correct opponents takes shockingly large amounts of time (especially compared to warcraft). Fix tab-target. To me, it's the single largest skillcap limiter in objective-oriented PvP right now. And no, "target nearest enemy" is not a solution. Nor is click-targeting with your mouse, which is almost impossible due to how small the targeting boxes are, how fast characters move, and the inability to target enemies by clicking on the nameplate/healthbar floating above their head (like you can do in every other game).

Do you consider [harm] vs [help] macros things to be something that "automates combat"? What about [@targettarget] macros (to, for example, make Guard faster to use)?

I would rather see Sage DPS and Mitigation increased at the expense of some of the (in my view as a Sage) overpowered utility spells. Force Lift does not need to be instant when sages already have an instant stun. Telekinetic Throw does not need a 50% snare when sages already have a 50% snare. And finally--when 1.2 comes out they will almost certainly break double-dipping of Barrage for back-to-back 1.5sec Telekinetic Throws. This will break the only burst that the hybrid spec has and force people into either Deep Balance//Madness or Deep Telekinetics//Lightning. At which point every Sage's overall damage meter numbers in battlegrounds will fall 25% without instant Telekinetic Wave // Chain Lightning. The problem is that both of the deep talent specs suck on single-target DPS, and probably need to be buffed.