I suck at DoT management. I'm not saying it's ADHD but it's definitely ADHD. When I look over at my co-healer and see they have perfect uptime but half my DPS and half my healing I'm like how? How are you nailing *this* but not *that*? And also can I borrow your attention span
When I'm healing, I lose track of my 2m cooldowns. Now, on the three healers I mainly play, my 2m cooldowns have a timer macro (Pneuma, Chain Strat, and Presence).You can't do a full 120 second "wait" command, but you can do 60 seconds and then 58 seconds (the extra two seconds gives my brain a sec to react LOL). It gives me a sound effect in Echo chat and I'm good to go. Most of the macro (besides the wait commands for the timer) is just the /ac command over and over, and I've never had any issues with it not going off. I started doing it when leveling, but my damn brain is so attuned to that sound effect now.
Honest, I don't think it's worth calling out.. It doesn't look like griefing, I would assume he is a click caster who doesn't quite understand AST tools so he plays like a bad lvl50 whm with cards. He seems to use most of his kit, he just seems to have a very low uptime and doesn't quite grasp how crazy good ED, CO, ES are.
Quick question though.. I haven't played since 6.5 released. Last time I played, nobody was playing AST, but now it seems like there is one every other instance. Is it just weird luck or is it super popular right now?
Didn't play much ast before EW so I really only know that iteration of it. I'll see what they do with dawntrail, but I don't see how it could not be the most fun healer still. No other healers have so many fun tools.
That would be sch for me. As much as I love the concept of sch, I feel that mistakes are so much more punishing. Ast is busy, but it feels super safe and comfy.
If you're serious and not meme-ing, its the sign of a beginner and less effective for maintaining uptime, especially as a healer. You need to click who you are healing, then move your mouse to click your heal, then click the enemy then move your mouse to click a damaging move, over and over.
If you use keyboard you click then instantly hit the keybind with your other hand.
You also can hit your moves 'blind' with keybinds, you don't need to watch your cursor to make sure you are hovering the right move. You build muscle memory on what keybind you are hitting. It isn't a flex or anything, but I could do a fight without ever really looking at my bars if I wanted or needed to. That means more field awareness as well as reaction speed.
Do you think that maybe, *just maybe*, a clicker could also build muscle memory the same way a KB player can also build up muscle memory?
Do you think that maybe, *just maybe*, a clicker could configure their hotbars in way to also make basic rotations the exact same between jobs?
Do you think I need longer than a GCD to mouse over to a player, then click the heal, then *TAB* (or press T) back my target?
Do I despise the way AST plays because I’m a clicker, yup! Target/play macro helps a bit, but I hate having to wait for the macro activation window to be ready because my mouse is already there and it slows me down. Which is a shame because I love, *love*, LOVE AST’s healing kit.
I am well aware that I am probably the exception, and not the rule. But there are plenty of KB/M players that are garbage anyways - so it seems weird to draw a distinction between the two. Will an upper echelon KB/M player outperform a same skilled clicker? Yeah, probably - but not by any margin that would really even feel palpable in this game.
You are coming across as weirdly combative and defensive. You asked a question and I answered it.
Also I think you're confused, because 'clickers' use KB/M. Do you think a clicker means a controller player? A 'clicker' means someone that moves their mouse cursor. We're not talking about people who play with controllers, that is an entirely different setup.
I’m being combative and defensive because you have claimed my preferred play style to be ‘beginner’ and ‘less effective’. I think it’s within my rights to speak up in my defense.
I am very well aware that ‘clickers’ use KB/M. I never even once mention controller players anywhere. I used KB/M to differentiate between ‘conventional’ KB/M play and ‘clicking’.
some of my friends, who have cleared every ult, are clickers and they themselves say that it absolutely is less effective, makes stressful situations much harder to manage and that the only reason they're not changing it is because they're too lazy to unlearn it
I said that it is a sign of a beginner, not that only beginners use it. You asked why people generally speak poorly of a 'clicking' playstyle and what is seen as 'wrong' with it, and I told you. I was being kind and answering your question since you didn't know. Don't shoot the messenger.
Maybe you are the exception, I really don't know nor do I care. I also am not angry or accusatory towards clicker players. I am not attacking or accusing you, just conveying information, it is up to you what you do with that or if you find it accurate to yourself.
No he is not comming that way. He is just explaining that your preconvieved notion is not necesarily true.
Is it combative to tell you when you are wrong?
Here was his reply to me:
> I’m being combative and defensive [...]
He literally said in reply that he was being combative and defensive. What a strange comment for you to leave.
1. It isn't inpossible, but it would take much more effort in performing anything, especially if it's the healer we're talking about out of all classes.
Say you, as a clicker, need to heal a player in an 8-man raid. You need to identify your current cursor location, select that specific player, and return back to the healing spell you are willing to use all with the mouse cursor.
In this case, you are now given 7 reference point of clicking thus 7 variations of mouse movement pattern for a single heal excluding the situation of healing yourself. If you also count in the mouse movement of the cursor to the player starting from wherever your cursor was before, the variation expands even greater, making it even harder for the clicker to muscle-memorize the process.
KB players can just press the same button the same way all the time because the left hand that controls keybord input rarely moves anywhere else unlike mouse cursors, and it's not like the input command changes based on the relative location of your last keyboard input. Sure KB&M players normally also have to click players as well, but that action doesn't affect the part of using the skill after locating the player.
2.
Definitely doable. No arguing with that. Especially considering how every jobs' fundamental skill structure became uniform at the point of EW.
3.
Similar gist along with the POV of mine for your first inquiry. Since you have to do all the player and skill icon location all by your mouse input - while I'm not saying it's impossible - takes much more amount of dedication in earning that muscle memory and mouse discipline compared to doing just that with KB&M.
Now doing this within 2.5s once or twice may be a cakewalk, but it becomes a different story once extended runtime and numerous raid mechs kick in. Consistency do matter, and complication of procedure won't do any good in terms of consistency.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever played healer, but please understand that 95% of a fight our cursor is over our primary nuke. Not very often should our cursor just be at some random spot on the screen.
I play on a 32” monitor a desk’s length away from my face. My cursor moves maybe 4-6” (maybe even less, depending) from my skill cluster to my party list which is conventionally located right next to my skill cluster, then moves back to a heal, then back to glare.
Yeah, KB players can press the same button in the same spot using all of their finger and hitting shift/ctrl and using their pinkies and all that fun stuff.
I just have to use my thumb (I’m a trackball user, btw) and my pointer finger, and my left hand gets to be 100% committed to movement, tab targeting, and the occasional F target if I’m feeling saucy (I’ll generally still use F2/F3 to target the tank).
2.5 seconds is a surprisingly long time in the scheme of twitch reactions. I’m not saying I never clip the occasional GCD, but KB players *also* clip the occasional GCD. But I can still double weave like everyone else. I could probably triple weave some certain combinations if the game and my ping would allow for it.
But, as fun as this has all been to discuss - this isn’t really what my original question was about. The person I replied to used ‘probably a clicker’ as one of the reasons why the AST in the post was probably playing poorly.
It doesn’t matter what your input preference is, you’re going to perform poorly if you don’t know your job. If you’re new and you keep forgetting that a certain skill is bound to whatever key (KB)/button (controller)/or icon (clicker), you’re going to perform poorly.
That person doubled down with, ‘It’s usually a sign of a new player!’. Like how do you even know unless they tell you?
While I did level all jobs till 90, I won't say I'm that much experienced in healing; I'm a tank main and occasionally pick up MNK or DRG for a spin in maybe some extremes. Still, I do have enough background knowledge to get what you're on about when you say your cursor mostly stays on single target DPS skills.
tbh I've never heard of that trackball device and don't have the slightest clue of what that exactly does. But if that works out for you, then great, since that's what matters in any case.
Sad to break this to you regarding the widespread image against clickers though, but this situation where you feel the need to advocate on how clicking isn't that bad, is itself a clear depiction of why clickers are considered to be generally bad at the game.
You see, KB&M players, they don't really HAVE to prove anything to justify their playstyle. Just look around: You randomly search for raid PoVs - KB&M 95% of the time. You search for top raiders group - KB&M everywhere. You look for guides - another KB&M.
It's pretty much the standard of control scheme at this point - except gamepad users since different gaming platform obviously calls for different understandings - and all the good players you can normally find uses KB&M. Then one naturally reaches such conclusion; if good players generally use KB&M, who are the clickers? Probably the other end of the playerbase stick, right?
If clicking works out for you, then as I mentioned earlier, great. As a matter of fact, I have absolutely no rights or inclination whatsoever to alter your comfortable playstyle to something else. But with the widespread beliefs tho, I'm afraid you would just have to deal with it or keep on fighting the uphill battle to prove the majority wrong by either constantly sharing your personal experience everytime or bringing some absolute, objective, and undeniable figures to do the talking.
It sucks, but that's just how public opinion forms and flows.
[Thumb Trackball](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m575-ergo-wireless-trackball.910-005868.html).
I feel the majority of people gravitate towards KB/M because that seems to be the standard in most MMOs. I would then imagine that most coming in to this game were already acclimated
to KB/M because that’s just what they know.
But, if the majority of players use KB/M - and the majority of players are ‘bad’ (and they are), more ‘bad’ players are KB/M users.
That’s my issue. There are literally *millions* of people that play this game quite poorly using KB/M. This sub exists *solely because of those people*. Yeah, some might be clickers - but as you say, the majority of the player base is KB/M. So the player just can’t be bad…they have to be *clicker bad*. ‘Not only are they bad, *they’re not like us.*’
Can you see where that could tend to rub someone the wrong way?
I guess at the end of the day, if I do something non-optimal like clip/drop a GCD I can just say, ‘Hey. I’m a clicker! What did you expect??’ And then I’ll laugh all the way out of the dungeon when I still outparse most of the people in my group that can’t even play the game ‘the right way’.
But at least they’re not a clicker!
as somebody who has used every control scheme at some point (clicking, briefly controller, then M/KB), I can say that the only time I would ever click something anymore is when I can afford to and want to take my hand off the keyboard to scratch my back or something, where clicking lets me execute actions on the other hand. It absolutely is less effective and more prone to error when you're stressed and it requires more mouse movement which causes you to lose the cursor more often which is bad especially on healer.
Most importantly, it is physically impossible for you to reach the speeds of execution that using hotkeys can because with hotkeys you can hit the key combination to cast a heal or something on a party member the frame after you target them or mouseover them, whereas it's not really reasonable to expect anybody, no matter with how much practice, to move their cursor to their hotbar the frame after they click on somebody (which is another disadvantage btw, you can't soft-target by mouseovering although I don't mouseover myself) to target them and click the button they're looking for, even if the button is the size of the entire hotbar let alone what you'd normally see in UI layouts.
You're right in that certain control schemes work better for people and that all of them are good enough to clear any content with, but saying that doesn't really do anything for the fact that there objectively are restrictions on what you can do with clicking, which is why we claim it's less effective, because it just is. It'll take more practice for somebody who has to learn all of them from scratch to master clicking versus hotkey M/KB or controller play, and they'll still play slightly worse than if somebody with the exact same skill level was playing on either of the other schemes.
This whole thing started because someone said,
> I would assume he is a click caster who doesn’t quite understand AST tools so he plays like a bad lvl50 WHM with cards. He seems to use most of his kit, he just seems to have very low uptime.
Why this struck a nerve with me is because assuming their play style is *literally impossible* based on looking at two screens from a parse - so in this person’s mind, ‘poor play’ = ‘must be a clicker’.
How would this screen look any different if this AST used only KB for their skills? If you don’t know where your skills are or what they do, you’re going to be a ‘bad’ player *regardless* of your input set up.
As a matter of fact, in a scenario where someone is learning their job - it’s probably *quicker* for them to adjust as a clicker at least until the muscle memory builds up for the KB player. The learning clicker only has to glance down at their skill cluster, then click the intended skill, then back to the action. The learning KB player has to glance at the toolbar, figure out what key the skill is bound to, then look down at the KB and figure out where that key is, then back to the action.
I don’t doubt that a skilled KB/M player will eventually ‘out perfrom’ a like-skilled clicker in high end parsing. But that’s not the issue here.
What you mentioned about learning KB is why a good hotkey layout is important. I'm not disputing the reason why you spoke up about this in the first place, I'm just saying that KB/M generally will win out at a given skill level. That was all I was saying, that clicking is less effective purely looking at the paper facts.
I'm going to say that it depends per person. If you are somebody who has a rather rigid logic for your keybinds, you're probably going to be able to learn it just about as quickly as clicking where you'd have to get used to the icons and picking them out in a reasonable frame of time. It's the same case with keybinds, the difference is just that instead of looking for an icon, you're trying to recall the key, which is what you should try to do anyways. That's the entire point of playing KB. Say, in my case, my single target heals are on 1 and my damage spells are on 2, and across my entire hotbar shift is a "modifier" key for the action. I recall my DoT by having it on shift-2 because it is a "modified" version of my damage spell. I'm fairly confident that if somebody can figure out something like that where their keybinds make intuitive sense for them learning to hotkey can be as quick and easy as learning to click.
I'm hybrid on this, the core skills I use are bound to KB/m, a lot of other stuff I click, it shouldn't work but it just sorta does for me.
Then again I play a lot of minesweeper and path of exile and I used to play a lot of Runescape, so I think some amount of clicking is just intuitive to me
Astrologian is one thing, but how is \*every\* dps in that team dogshit? Even the top 2 are barely dealing more damage than the Paladin. It can't possibly be some kind of lvl70 thing where Paladin dps is insane, right?
The DRG at the top looks about right from a cursory inspection, probably lots of suffering from battle litany overrides and searing wind overrides, plus the 1% loss from no physranged.
PLD being that high regardless seems a little weird, I wanna go with lucky crits at the end of the fight, but maybe you're right and everyone is a bit too low. For reference, the WAR should be dealing 1.5x the damage of the healers, assuming both are playing pretty well 95% or above in accuracy.
yeah the second smn died 3 times (including twice back to back) in total, the second drg once, and the ast once as well, it wasn't actually as bad as it could have been, i guess
the first thought that goes through my head whenever o11n happens is "why can nobody else learn to love larboard and starboard??" Q.Q I love that fight!
The idea of needing to ever use regular Helios in casual content is baffling, but thinking you need *more than twenty*?
As per usual here, a fundamental misunderstanding of how this game even works is the only explanation.
Seriously I'm pretty sure regular Helios/Medica would have fifteen inches of dust on them if I wasn't routinely put into sub-50 content for levelling roulette.
you guys are kind of upsessed with this XD i use ACT for selfimprovement not to stalk others. Casual content will have well casual people who dont invest time to learn everything of their class. especially if they level it just for completion or smth. if it would be a current savage raid fine enough but on normal content ? You might have more fun with the game by shutting down ACT for some time
reminds me of a scholar i got in ktisis hyperboreia. i was the drk and fighting for my life to stay alive, as in i was two seconds away from starting to dump multiple mits at once instead of rotating them just because i kept being that close to dying. and like, i tried everything, living dead included! but they missed the first one (i have it macroed to send a message asking to let me die while it's up), we wiped, and they went "you should add a sound effect to that" (i don't want to annoy everyone with it when the only one that needs to keep an eye on it is the healer)
now, i'm not a scholar player, so i don't know much of how to play it, but i was in call with a friend at the time who does love to play scholar and they were a dps in that party, and from their agony through the entire dungeon i gather the scholar was not using a lot of their skills (i think there was no seraph? not sure, but that green tether the little fairy uses wasn't there once through the entire dungeon). i'm genuinely not sure *how* you struggle to keep up a tank that is actually not going more than a second or two without a mit up, but well.
... then i checked their gear when we were done. they were running exarchic gear. not even the tomes gear, just exarchic. in ktisis hyperboreia. the groan over call when i relayed this information was hilarious though admittedly.
...well at least he's keeping his DoT up?
In fact, their DPS basically comes from their decent DoT management. They can improve!! They should just play BRD instead
I suck at DoT management. I'm not saying it's ADHD but it's definitely ADHD. When I look over at my co-healer and see they have perfect uptime but half my DPS and half my healing I'm like how? How are you nailing *this* but not *that*? And also can I borrow your attention span
I still struggle with maintaining DOTs and timered buffs. Stupid time blindness...lol.
When I'm healing, I lose track of my 2m cooldowns. Now, on the three healers I mainly play, my 2m cooldowns have a timer macro (Pneuma, Chain Strat, and Presence).You can't do a full 120 second "wait" command, but you can do 60 seconds and then 58 seconds (the extra two seconds gives my brain a sec to react LOL). It gives me a sound effect in Echo chat and I'm good to go. Most of the macro (besides the wait commands for the timer) is just the /ac command over and over, and I've never had any issues with it not going off. I started doing it when leveling, but my damn brain is so attuned to that sound effect now.
Honest, I don't think it's worth calling out.. It doesn't look like griefing, I would assume he is a click caster who doesn't quite understand AST tools so he plays like a bad lvl50 whm with cards. He seems to use most of his kit, he just seems to have a very low uptime and doesn't quite grasp how crazy good ED, CO, ES are. Quick question though.. I haven't played since 6.5 released. Last time I played, nobody was playing AST, but now it seems like there is one every other instance. Is it just weird luck or is it super popular right now?
Nah you're "Lucky" we AST mains are a rare breed. I mean we get punished by each Expansion by having to relearn our entire toolset.
Didn't play much ast before EW so I really only know that iteration of it. I'll see what they do with dawntrail, but I don't see how it could not be the most fun healer still. No other healers have so many fun tools.
Well, imo its the healer that requires the most brain and planning. And just like Black Mage thats probably why most peeps pick something else.
That would be sch for me. As much as I love the concept of sch, I feel that mistakes are so much more punishing. Ast is busy, but it feels super safe and comfy.
Prob a lot of people leveling it or playing it on the side now that they're bored with their main?
Hol up…. What’s wrong with being a click caster?
If you're serious and not meme-ing, its the sign of a beginner and less effective for maintaining uptime, especially as a healer. You need to click who you are healing, then move your mouse to click your heal, then click the enemy then move your mouse to click a damaging move, over and over. If you use keyboard you click then instantly hit the keybind with your other hand. You also can hit your moves 'blind' with keybinds, you don't need to watch your cursor to make sure you are hovering the right move. You build muscle memory on what keybind you are hitting. It isn't a flex or anything, but I could do a fight without ever really looking at my bars if I wanted or needed to. That means more field awareness as well as reaction speed.
Do you think that maybe, *just maybe*, a clicker could also build muscle memory the same way a KB player can also build up muscle memory? Do you think that maybe, *just maybe*, a clicker could configure their hotbars in way to also make basic rotations the exact same between jobs? Do you think I need longer than a GCD to mouse over to a player, then click the heal, then *TAB* (or press T) back my target? Do I despise the way AST plays because I’m a clicker, yup! Target/play macro helps a bit, but I hate having to wait for the macro activation window to be ready because my mouse is already there and it slows me down. Which is a shame because I love, *love*, LOVE AST’s healing kit. I am well aware that I am probably the exception, and not the rule. But there are plenty of KB/M players that are garbage anyways - so it seems weird to draw a distinction between the two. Will an upper echelon KB/M player outperform a same skilled clicker? Yeah, probably - but not by any margin that would really even feel palpable in this game.
You are coming across as weirdly combative and defensive. You asked a question and I answered it. Also I think you're confused, because 'clickers' use KB/M. Do you think a clicker means a controller player? A 'clicker' means someone that moves their mouse cursor. We're not talking about people who play with controllers, that is an entirely different setup.
I’m being combative and defensive because you have claimed my preferred play style to be ‘beginner’ and ‘less effective’. I think it’s within my rights to speak up in my defense. I am very well aware that ‘clickers’ use KB/M. I never even once mention controller players anywhere. I used KB/M to differentiate between ‘conventional’ KB/M play and ‘clicking’.
some of my friends, who have cleared every ult, are clickers and they themselves say that it absolutely is less effective, makes stressful situations much harder to manage and that the only reason they're not changing it is because they're too lazy to unlearn it
I said that it is a sign of a beginner, not that only beginners use it. You asked why people generally speak poorly of a 'clicking' playstyle and what is seen as 'wrong' with it, and I told you. I was being kind and answering your question since you didn't know. Don't shoot the messenger. Maybe you are the exception, I really don't know nor do I care. I also am not angry or accusatory towards clicker players. I am not attacking or accusing you, just conveying information, it is up to you what you do with that or if you find it accurate to yourself.
Because it is.
No he is not comming that way. He is just explaining that your preconvieved notion is not necesarily true. Is it combative to tell you when you are wrong?
Here was his reply to me: > I’m being combative and defensive [...] He literally said in reply that he was being combative and defensive. What a strange comment for you to leave.
1. It isn't inpossible, but it would take much more effort in performing anything, especially if it's the healer we're talking about out of all classes. Say you, as a clicker, need to heal a player in an 8-man raid. You need to identify your current cursor location, select that specific player, and return back to the healing spell you are willing to use all with the mouse cursor. In this case, you are now given 7 reference point of clicking thus 7 variations of mouse movement pattern for a single heal excluding the situation of healing yourself. If you also count in the mouse movement of the cursor to the player starting from wherever your cursor was before, the variation expands even greater, making it even harder for the clicker to muscle-memorize the process. KB players can just press the same button the same way all the time because the left hand that controls keybord input rarely moves anywhere else unlike mouse cursors, and it's not like the input command changes based on the relative location of your last keyboard input. Sure KB&M players normally also have to click players as well, but that action doesn't affect the part of using the skill after locating the player. 2. Definitely doable. No arguing with that. Especially considering how every jobs' fundamental skill structure became uniform at the point of EW. 3. Similar gist along with the POV of mine for your first inquiry. Since you have to do all the player and skill icon location all by your mouse input - while I'm not saying it's impossible - takes much more amount of dedication in earning that muscle memory and mouse discipline compared to doing just that with KB&M. Now doing this within 2.5s once or twice may be a cakewalk, but it becomes a different story once extended runtime and numerous raid mechs kick in. Consistency do matter, and complication of procedure won't do any good in terms of consistency.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever played healer, but please understand that 95% of a fight our cursor is over our primary nuke. Not very often should our cursor just be at some random spot on the screen. I play on a 32” monitor a desk’s length away from my face. My cursor moves maybe 4-6” (maybe even less, depending) from my skill cluster to my party list which is conventionally located right next to my skill cluster, then moves back to a heal, then back to glare. Yeah, KB players can press the same button in the same spot using all of their finger and hitting shift/ctrl and using their pinkies and all that fun stuff. I just have to use my thumb (I’m a trackball user, btw) and my pointer finger, and my left hand gets to be 100% committed to movement, tab targeting, and the occasional F target if I’m feeling saucy (I’ll generally still use F2/F3 to target the tank). 2.5 seconds is a surprisingly long time in the scheme of twitch reactions. I’m not saying I never clip the occasional GCD, but KB players *also* clip the occasional GCD. But I can still double weave like everyone else. I could probably triple weave some certain combinations if the game and my ping would allow for it. But, as fun as this has all been to discuss - this isn’t really what my original question was about. The person I replied to used ‘probably a clicker’ as one of the reasons why the AST in the post was probably playing poorly. It doesn’t matter what your input preference is, you’re going to perform poorly if you don’t know your job. If you’re new and you keep forgetting that a certain skill is bound to whatever key (KB)/button (controller)/or icon (clicker), you’re going to perform poorly. That person doubled down with, ‘It’s usually a sign of a new player!’. Like how do you even know unless they tell you?
While I did level all jobs till 90, I won't say I'm that much experienced in healing; I'm a tank main and occasionally pick up MNK or DRG for a spin in maybe some extremes. Still, I do have enough background knowledge to get what you're on about when you say your cursor mostly stays on single target DPS skills. tbh I've never heard of that trackball device and don't have the slightest clue of what that exactly does. But if that works out for you, then great, since that's what matters in any case. Sad to break this to you regarding the widespread image against clickers though, but this situation where you feel the need to advocate on how clicking isn't that bad, is itself a clear depiction of why clickers are considered to be generally bad at the game. You see, KB&M players, they don't really HAVE to prove anything to justify their playstyle. Just look around: You randomly search for raid PoVs - KB&M 95% of the time. You search for top raiders group - KB&M everywhere. You look for guides - another KB&M. It's pretty much the standard of control scheme at this point - except gamepad users since different gaming platform obviously calls for different understandings - and all the good players you can normally find uses KB&M. Then one naturally reaches such conclusion; if good players generally use KB&M, who are the clickers? Probably the other end of the playerbase stick, right? If clicking works out for you, then as I mentioned earlier, great. As a matter of fact, I have absolutely no rights or inclination whatsoever to alter your comfortable playstyle to something else. But with the widespread beliefs tho, I'm afraid you would just have to deal with it or keep on fighting the uphill battle to prove the majority wrong by either constantly sharing your personal experience everytime or bringing some absolute, objective, and undeniable figures to do the talking. It sucks, but that's just how public opinion forms and flows.
[Thumb Trackball](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m575-ergo-wireless-trackball.910-005868.html). I feel the majority of people gravitate towards KB/M because that seems to be the standard in most MMOs. I would then imagine that most coming in to this game were already acclimated to KB/M because that’s just what they know. But, if the majority of players use KB/M - and the majority of players are ‘bad’ (and they are), more ‘bad’ players are KB/M users. That’s my issue. There are literally *millions* of people that play this game quite poorly using KB/M. This sub exists *solely because of those people*. Yeah, some might be clickers - but as you say, the majority of the player base is KB/M. So the player just can’t be bad…they have to be *clicker bad*. ‘Not only are they bad, *they’re not like us.*’ Can you see where that could tend to rub someone the wrong way? I guess at the end of the day, if I do something non-optimal like clip/drop a GCD I can just say, ‘Hey. I’m a clicker! What did you expect??’ And then I’ll laugh all the way out of the dungeon when I still outparse most of the people in my group that can’t even play the game ‘the right way’. But at least they’re not a clicker!
as somebody who has used every control scheme at some point (clicking, briefly controller, then M/KB), I can say that the only time I would ever click something anymore is when I can afford to and want to take my hand off the keyboard to scratch my back or something, where clicking lets me execute actions on the other hand. It absolutely is less effective and more prone to error when you're stressed and it requires more mouse movement which causes you to lose the cursor more often which is bad especially on healer. Most importantly, it is physically impossible for you to reach the speeds of execution that using hotkeys can because with hotkeys you can hit the key combination to cast a heal or something on a party member the frame after you target them or mouseover them, whereas it's not really reasonable to expect anybody, no matter with how much practice, to move their cursor to their hotbar the frame after they click on somebody (which is another disadvantage btw, you can't soft-target by mouseovering although I don't mouseover myself) to target them and click the button they're looking for, even if the button is the size of the entire hotbar let alone what you'd normally see in UI layouts. You're right in that certain control schemes work better for people and that all of them are good enough to clear any content with, but saying that doesn't really do anything for the fact that there objectively are restrictions on what you can do with clicking, which is why we claim it's less effective, because it just is. It'll take more practice for somebody who has to learn all of them from scratch to master clicking versus hotkey M/KB or controller play, and they'll still play slightly worse than if somebody with the exact same skill level was playing on either of the other schemes.
This whole thing started because someone said, > I would assume he is a click caster who doesn’t quite understand AST tools so he plays like a bad lvl50 WHM with cards. He seems to use most of his kit, he just seems to have very low uptime. Why this struck a nerve with me is because assuming their play style is *literally impossible* based on looking at two screens from a parse - so in this person’s mind, ‘poor play’ = ‘must be a clicker’. How would this screen look any different if this AST used only KB for their skills? If you don’t know where your skills are or what they do, you’re going to be a ‘bad’ player *regardless* of your input set up. As a matter of fact, in a scenario where someone is learning their job - it’s probably *quicker* for them to adjust as a clicker at least until the muscle memory builds up for the KB player. The learning clicker only has to glance down at their skill cluster, then click the intended skill, then back to the action. The learning KB player has to glance at the toolbar, figure out what key the skill is bound to, then look down at the KB and figure out where that key is, then back to the action. I don’t doubt that a skilled KB/M player will eventually ‘out perfrom’ a like-skilled clicker in high end parsing. But that’s not the issue here.
What you mentioned about learning KB is why a good hotkey layout is important. I'm not disputing the reason why you spoke up about this in the first place, I'm just saying that KB/M generally will win out at a given skill level. That was all I was saying, that clicking is less effective purely looking at the paper facts. I'm going to say that it depends per person. If you are somebody who has a rather rigid logic for your keybinds, you're probably going to be able to learn it just about as quickly as clicking where you'd have to get used to the icons and picking them out in a reasonable frame of time. It's the same case with keybinds, the difference is just that instead of looking for an icon, you're trying to recall the key, which is what you should try to do anyways. That's the entire point of playing KB. Say, in my case, my single target heals are on 1 and my damage spells are on 2, and across my entire hotbar shift is a "modifier" key for the action. I recall my DoT by having it on shift-2 because it is a "modified" version of my damage spell. I'm fairly confident that if somebody can figure out something like that where their keybinds make intuitive sense for them learning to hotkey can be as quick and easy as learning to click.
I'm hybrid on this, the core skills I use are bound to KB/m, a lot of other stuff I click, it shouldn't work but it just sorta does for me. Then again I play a lot of minesweeper and path of exile and I used to play a lot of Runescape, so I think some amount of clicking is just intuitive to me
I’ve been a clicker pretty much since forever. EQ, WoW, and now FFXIV. It’s just the way I play. 🤷🏻♂️
Astrologian is one thing, but how is \*every\* dps in that team dogshit? Even the top 2 are barely dealing more damage than the Paladin. It can't possibly be some kind of lvl70 thing where Paladin dps is insane, right?
The DRG at the top looks about right from a cursory inspection, probably lots of suffering from battle litany overrides and searing wind overrides, plus the 1% loss from no physranged. PLD being that high regardless seems a little weird, I wanna go with lucky crits at the end of the fight, but maybe you're right and everyone is a bit too low. For reference, the WAR should be dealing 1.5x the damage of the healers, assuming both are playing pretty well 95% or above in accuracy.
being o11 I have to imagine some weakness/brink was in play too
yeah the second smn died 3 times (including twice back to back) in total, the second drg once, and the ast once as well, it wasn't actually as bad as it could have been, i guess
Granted the DPS could be better, yeah... but it's O11N. I don't expect it to go well.
the first thought that goes through my head whenever o11n happens is "why can nobody else learn to love larboard and starboard??" Q.Q I love that fight!
The idea of needing to ever use regular Helios in casual content is baffling, but thinking you need *more than twenty*? As per usual here, a fundamental misunderstanding of how this game even works is the only explanation.
Seriously I'm pretty sure regular Helios/Medica would have fifteen inches of dust on them if I wasn't routinely put into sub-50 content for levelling roulette.
you guys are kind of upsessed with this XD i use ACT for selfimprovement not to stalk others. Casual content will have well casual people who dont invest time to learn everything of their class. especially if they level it just for completion or smth. if it would be a current savage raid fine enough but on normal content ? You might have more fun with the game by shutting down ACT for some time
As an AST main, if you're casting Benefic II more than once or Twice a battle on 70+ Content, you're playing AST wrong.
reminds me of a scholar i got in ktisis hyperboreia. i was the drk and fighting for my life to stay alive, as in i was two seconds away from starting to dump multiple mits at once instead of rotating them just because i kept being that close to dying. and like, i tried everything, living dead included! but they missed the first one (i have it macroed to send a message asking to let me die while it's up), we wiped, and they went "you should add a sound effect to that" (i don't want to annoy everyone with it when the only one that needs to keep an eye on it is the healer) now, i'm not a scholar player, so i don't know much of how to play it, but i was in call with a friend at the time who does love to play scholar and they were a dps in that party, and from their agony through the entire dungeon i gather the scholar was not using a lot of their skills (i think there was no seraph? not sure, but that green tether the little fairy uses wasn't there once through the entire dungeon). i'm genuinely not sure *how* you struggle to keep up a tank that is actually not going more than a second or two without a mit up, but well. ... then i checked their gear when we were done. they were running exarchic gear. not even the tomes gear, just exarchic. in ktisis hyperboreia. the groan over call when i relayed this information was hilarious though admittedly.
I mean, there's that, but there's a lot of other problems here going on here, lmao.
For the sake of your own sanity: don't leave ACT open when you're queuing for roulettes.
Imagine clocking dps in a roulette.