Tips needed for Bard song twisting

Gildas

Greetings. I am looking for tips regarding the best way to play a bard regarding song twisting, instrument swapping, etc. I had seen a few tips in various discord threads (now removed) regarding macros, key binds, swapping instruments, and such - but hoping to compile tips from multiple people here.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Also full disclosure: I plan to play bard using controller (as I do now with other classes) using a custom Steam controller layout - to hopefully make twisting easier on my fingers. But that shouldn't matter too much for this conversation, as I'm basically just mapping button presses on my controller to abilities and the hot bar.

Gildas

@Fidric - In another post you mentioned:

currently you can /macro a maximum of 2 songs to a single /macro as
/cast 9
/cast 0
and it will weave between the two as you press that macro button.
it won't work for more than two songs in one /macro

Can you then weave four songs by alternating between two of these macros?

Also, I'm wondering if this is a glitch that needs to be fixed. I want to practice song twisting for playing Bard long term.

Phlyn

theres very little to macro, i have never heard of what you're referencing from fidric but i dont think it'd work that way.

there isn't really any secrets to twisting. you press 12345, repeat. sometimes you need to mez so you ahve to drop a song or start your rotation over or pick upwhere you left off... theres no real way to macro it.

Geldrey

Do people make macros with /stopcast before each song? I had this same question as OG poster so following for any tips

Gildas

Geldrey It seems like it. From what I can tell, adding /stopcast in the macro lets you interrupt any other casting you are doing such as another song. So it just makes it easier to start a song exactly when you mean to.

Fidric

Gildas you can make two macros with two songs each to cover four songs yes

E.g. something like

hp regen / mana regen

Primary haste / secondary haste

It's not a bug. It functions like this because the first press will stop song, causing it to rotate between two songs just from a simple

/Cast 9
/Cast 0

Set up

Also with steam controller profile you can easily make it cycle songs without a macro from a single key (e.g. cycle sub commands e.g. B key 0,9,8,7

or split that across two buttons too

Fidric

Honestly the main macro I really use for bard is for mez and charm as two separate identical macros of

/attack off
/stopcast
/stopsong
/cast X

For fine cc timing control.

Everything else is regular spell buttons, inc. songs.

i needed the space on my utility for other things, i did not want to mirror 10 slots for all powers.

otherwise in terms of control set up you want a keybind to cycle targets and to target nearest enemy. and a way to target your charm friendly.

Candora

Geldrey /stopcast is needed if you want to be able to interrupt the 3 sec cast time of songs. If you don’t add that you will have to wait for the song you’re casting to finish casting before you can start another one. Very useful especially for mez/charm songs, maybe not needed for all of them but I use it for all my songs.

Macroing 2 songs to 1 macro works but you always have to sing the first song before the second one as far as I understand it. So if your have a macro with:
/cast 1
/cast 2
when you press this macro you will always sing song 1 unless you’re already singing song 1 in which case you’ll sing song 2. This macro locks you to singing songs in the order they are macroed.

Geldrey

Fidric is macro’ing in that way with steam commands allowed?

Gildas

Geldrey I think it is allowed because it is not automation. It is closer to binding keys.

Gildas

Fidric Oooh! I didn’t know about the Cycle Commands feature on the Steam Controller Profile. That’s excellent. Thanks!

Shoklen

If you can trigger more then 1 ability using a single keypress, that is against TOS (its a macro at that point). A dev stated this in discord not too long back. This is the simplest way to know something is against TOS or not.

I swapped my two action bars. I now have my ability bar with all macros going across, with my spells bar full of songs.

my macros:

/stopcast
/cast # (number on the spell bar)

Rebound all the keys on the ability bar to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ect... Now I can just hit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ect.. and interrupt my own songs. Works great.

Tying multiple songs together on one button is against TOS, macroed, hardware, mouse software, ect... This has been stated over and over. If you do, it's your access... your risk... they can detect it though...

Whats changing in the deep dive to help with APM (button presses)? No one knows yet.

Fidric

Shoklen if the functionality is in the in game /macro system then it being "against TOS" is really dumb (n/a for bard largely, this applicable for multiple melee instant abiltiies like strikes etc)

Mesh

Fidric
I would seek confirmation from NWC before advertising or recommending this.

Policies differ from game to game but I know some would view this as automation (even though it isn't.)

Mesh

Shoklen

If you can trigger more then 1 ability using a single keypress, that is against TOS (its a macro at that point). A dev stated this in discord not too long back. This is the simplest way to know something is against TOS or not.

True but this is a grey area.

Most MMO's use a "one action per keypress" rule which this Fidric's suggestion isn't violating. Each individual keystroke is triggering each individual action.

Tying multiple songs together on one button is against TOS, macroed, hardware, mouse software, ect... This has been stated over and over. If you do, it's your access... your risk... they can detect it though...

Have you got a link to anyone from NWC saying this? I think you might be misunderstanding the policy.

Using 3rd party software to automate multiple actions per keystroke is certainly against the ToS but anything you can achieve via the in-game macro system is allowed AFAIK.

Fidric

Mesh they have taken on board the discussion around accessibility control mapping egc but their final stance tbd. bard is obivously at the forefront of that discussion.

e.g. https://forum.monstersandmemories.com/d/324-accessibility-as-it-relates-to-button-and-key-presses/9

as someone else said, anything i have suggested is one manual active button press for one in game action

Mesh

Fidric
Will be interesting to see what they come up with.

The policy should simply be one in-game action per physical keystroke plus whatever is achievable via in-game macros.

As long as you're adhering to that, no game developer should be in the business of dictating how you bind keys or use your property.

Shoklen

Fidric I agree this is a problem area as both are true. its two actions with one button, against TOS; but at the same time we can /cast 1 and /cast 2 and it casts two abilities. This a bug? Will it remain since it clashes with TOS stance?unintended interaction?

Don't know and is a good question for the devs. I have to default to unintended in it's current state as devs/GMs have said 1 action 1 button.

your guess is as good as mine. haha. But Beta be beta.

[note: by actions I do mean abilities and spells]

Candora

The way I understand it is as long as each key press only triggers 1 action that’s ok even if each time you press that key it’s a different action. However if you press a key and it triggers an action then after few seconds later another action and so on without you having to press the key again that’s not ok.
But I might be wrong. Verification from devs would be nice.

Geldrey

Gildas did this get changed? Set up a macro like this

/cast 1
/cast 2

And it doesn’t do the second cast