Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

To be clear, I stay engaged even when I’m not recording, my GearSwap scripts are publicly available on GitHub and you can verify that they’ve had code in them to disable disengaged WS for years. That’s just my personal sense of what I’m comfortable with, though. Some people in my group do use disengaged WS. I can’t speak for any other groups. All I can say is it’s absolutely possible to win without them. Back when I used to be the RDM, I would engage for Black Halo then immediately disengage again, and on the off chance I accidentally took a swing I’d just communicate that to the group and we’d wait for an Absorb-TP before continuing. You do whatever works for you, I don’t pass value judgments and I don’t take any pride in “cheating less” than anyone else. I just do what I feel like is in the spirit of the game and don’t do what I feel isn’t.

Mofo's we do this while playing on PS2!

Pardon me, but I am in this video and I am not WSing while disengaged.

/attack
/wait 2
/ws "Chant du Cygne" <t>
/wait 1
/attack off

super duper easy to do

Sir, we do almost every run live on Twitch. What's with this libel?

2 seconds is short enough for no melee swings?

Elvaans are untrustworthy even with video evidence. The people only blindly trust galkas, the best race in the game.

Yes

Generally yes. In rare cases it results in one swing, which is almost never an issue if the party's on top of Absorbs. Back when I used to disengage between every WS, I'd accidentally take a swing once every 2-3 fights. Aminon gets a move off on us less than one run out of 20.

We've had a few issues with him since we have come back to get another 4 Meisos. We had him on lockdown before we stopped, but now he's getting TP moves off on a fair bit of runs for seemingly no reason most of the time. A few of them are definitely from someone meleeing him, but that's identifiable. Most of them are fairly inexplicable. We will absorb 300 tp, do a WS or two and then he just gets one off even though he didn't hit the PLD or anything.

The frustrating part is, despite checking the logs and videos, we don't see any real mistakes on most of them (in the sense that cause him to get TP) and it's bumming us out quite a bit.

Is that the weird definition of "legitimate" now? Ws while disengaged?

Never mind the curious case of no-knock-back-sies like you have some kind of anchor tied to your feet or something.

Better not WS while disengaged while using 200 other addons, no sir-ee, that's cheating.

Yes. I use that macro when I fight aminon. Never fails. You can also incorporate job abilities into it. I think this is my climactic macro offhand.

/attack
/wait 2
/ja "Climactic flourish <me>
/wait 1
/ws "Rudra's storm" <t>

It does not work 100% of the time. There will be melee attacks. Don't con the rubes.

But every attack is free tp to drain.

If you watch any of the backliners and have any idea what that macro looks like, they're not using it. They go from no weapons out to WSing and then instantly back to weapons sheathed with no animation.

I didn't look at Velner, admittedly, because his WS frequency wasn't high enough so I didn't see one in the ~30 seconds of Aita I watched. He might be using that macro, but I know for 100% certain that loads of those players aren't. Their animations are incredibly telling.

For reference, here's a video of Maletaru using that macro, from Mekillthings' perspective. Tell me that looks like the people in the video and I'll tell you you're blind.



For the record, I don't think "WS while disengaged" is the worst offense most people are doing, I was just answering the question someone asked about whether or not the source video players were using lua to WS while disengaged which, in my opinion, at least BRD COR GEO RDM are.

Fair. I find it easier to manually disengage personally. I actually shaved off the

/wait 1
/attack off

tidbit at the end so every time I hit the macro as soon as my weaponskill animation goes off I just disengage via the menu. In my experiences that cuts down on errors. But the

/attack
/wait 2
/ws "weaponskill name" <t>

part is very reliable. I can't remember the last time I've seen a melee hit go off before the weaponskill itself. The biggest room for error is the disengage part at the end.

To be 100% crystal clear, nothing in this post is meant to be sarcastic, ironic, or a joke.

I've said this plenty of times in plenty of threads but just to be clear: I do not care if anyone uses any programs they want to play FFXI. Use any script, plugin, addon, lua, whatever the hell you want.

I think it's all cheating, I've been over that before too, but I don't personally care if other people cheat. I do not report players for cheating. Other than messing with my friends, I don't give people a hard time for cheating. I wish they'd be honest with themselves and with the community about the fact that they're cheating, but I don't care if they do it. I just think it's disingenuous to pretend like the 300 programs you're using aren't giving you an advantage and they're "QOL" or whatever other BS. They all provide advantages and that's fine.

I have no problems with the people in this video, any of them. I appreciate that they're willing to share their strategies, in writing and videos. I appreciate their skill and I'm not trying to say they COULDN'T do this without all their code. I'm not trying to say that the reason they're winning this fight is because they're WSing while disengaged, or any other tools that are shown in these videos. I'm sure these are extremely capable players and what they're doing is very impressive.

I do think it's funny when players who play with 100 addons try to look like they're not using any by selectively removing 50 of them though, because they have no idea what the original game looks like and can't spot all the abnormalities of the 50 they left on. That's the way the game is these days though, c'est la vie, I've accepted it and you should too! If we only accepted 100% Vanilla runs as proof of accomplishment, we'd have 0 YouTube videos of endgame FFXI content, let's be honest with ourselves.

edit: I also don't think these videos were shared to prove their skill or to show off. I think they are trying to help the community to replicate what they're doing and I think that's admirable and I appreciate it. It has definitely helped my group and probably countless others.

That was what I was bringing it back round to. Yeah it is killable, but would it be anywhere near as killable without ws disengaged, JA0, anchor, etc.? Do SE design content assuming we will use them?

It's easily doable without any tool whatsoever, without even changing gear at all too.

It's just not efficient. That's the the part that matters. You got an hour to kill it, but they want an hour to kill it AND everything else.

No, they aren't designing content assuming you're using any programs. You can complete absolutely everything in this game 100% Vanilla.


This. But also: like all the other stuff (Timers, Debuffed, Distanceplus, Cancel, etc.) it lowers the burden on the player. There are fewer ways to screw up and fewer things to track. Tools make runs more consistent, efficient, and easier to execute.

You can do this and any other content without all that stuff, but it will be harder and you will win fewer fights, IMO. You add all these layers on top of the base game so that you can get more consistent results and not have to be constantly on the ball and every aspect of the fight isn't subject to player skill.

It just seems like a weird line in the sand to have, WS while disengaged, even going as far to take it out of the official gearswap release just because of some self conceived notion of cheating, while also using 200 other addons and tools at the same time.

Slippery slope etc etc, it just seems like a weird thing to have a hang up on.

Especially on videos that show vanilla macros for WS and also no one gets knocked back ever in a fight with AoE knock backs. What, you think viewers are too stupid to realise what's happening? Or playing the "oh that's just lag" game.

If everyone is "vanilla" no one gets banned for third party tools I guess.

They think they're being cute with said boundaries as though they matter. "At least I'm not doing X that makes what I am doing ok."

It's never not entertaining to watch them twist themselves in knots qualifying everything and then whatabouting everything and then taking everything to the illogical extreme.

If we're being honest with ourselves here though, everyone draws weird lines in the sand and has their own opinions about what is and isn't OK. I think it's best to give everyone as many options as possible about where they want to draw the line and what they consider "too much" and just let them do it.

If SE decides to ban people for any infraction, regardless of what the public's opinion is about that specific tool, that's on the user because all of this stuff is against SE's (official at least) stance on this stuff.

It is kinda funny when people get banned or suspended and come out with "I was only using XYZ and tons of people use ABC and they're not banned!" as if SE gives a flying *** about levels of severity, or has a history of being consistent with their banwaves. If you use tools, any tools at all, you should know your account is at risk. I think most people are aware of this, but somehow there are still people who are shocked when they get popped because they figured their line in the sand was the "safe" one or something.

Like I said earlier though, more power to you, just be realistic with yourself about what you're doing and why you're doing it, stick to your own personal arbitrary rules, and own it.

Exactly. Particular emphasis on the own it bit.

Use whatever, no one cares.

Just don't get on a high horse pretending to be legitimate while everyone can see a dozen other not legitimate tools that do a lot more than just WS while disengaged. It's hypocritical to the extreme.