Shenanigunner

Swiping this for the Guide. With credit. :D Now, if you can figure out those damned chat-bubble color codes...

FOUND A WORKAROUND. Create your pet emotes as macros. Store them in, say, Tray 9. /macro PD "petsayall <emote DrumDance>" - move to slot 9/1. Write your binds to call the macros: /bind ALT+1 "powerexectray 1 9" (note that it's slot first, tray second...) Bingo. Until binds are fixed or something.

I definitely have binds from Live that activated multiple powers - not all of them, it was selective - and worked then but don't now.

Well, I discovered the hard way that pet emotes *do not work* in binds. I am at a loss as to whether this is a new problem or has always been that way. /petsayall <emote Burp> works fine. /macro PB "petsayall <emote Burp>" works fine. /bind ADD "petsayall <emote Burp>" makes all the pets say "<emote Burp>"... I have such binds in old MM files and I am pretty sure they worked back then. I thought I had tested this just recently to update the Guide, and it worked. But last night there was a confused Help convo about it and I had to switch to my MM to check... and sure enough, pet emotes don't work in binds. Only in binds. Can anyone confirm that this did work, in either the distant or recent past? I tinkered around with various quotes, using < and > for the brackets, etc. with no success.

Nope, that's it. The commands and bind/macro capabilities were deliberately designed to prevent any kind of self-actuation or perma-loops. In searching for general macro or key info, I often run into clots of wisdom about how to get around this block in various other games. I do wish they'd allow firing of more than one power (as I am pretty sure they did at one time) or at least not be blocked by a power activation time. But oh, well.

Hey, I even tried a rolling-macro setup today, to switch a difficult power using two tray slots in swapping trays. What a PITA to manage. Again, a simple bind worked better. I give you Maslow's Law. :D

Annnnd... I lived with my pretty little Rest macro for two days before realizing it worked better, was easier to manage and paired with a cancel bind better as a bind. But macro away, folks, macro away... :)

It works fine in a bind. I can use /bind Shift+Q "powexec_location target quicksand" Yep. See the Guide for complete details on how to use all the command's targeting options.

Awright, awright, pal - Arena. Now. Macros vs Binds: the Final Showdown. :D The truly great thing about this insanely multilayered game is that 'whatever works, works.'

Adding custom windows is a pretty advanced technique, up there with editing PIGG files and the like. I use some of those techniques myself, but I'd hesitate at recommending them to novice and average players. I'm not at all down on macros - I just think they are used as a general solution in many cases where a bind would be far more effective. The GABB bindset doesn't change most of the main gameplay keys. It just clears out all the bizarre old comma, semicolon, Alt-F-this stuff and sorts the functions into sensible intuitive order. Removing a lot of keys that if accidentally hit will screw up a battle is part of it. Putting a full array of chat responses on intuitive keys is another. But I fully understand staying with something living in your digital memory. :)

It may be easier, overall, to just assign your costume slots to the NumPad if you don't use it for anything else. Put your main combat look on NumPad0, so it's easy to hit, and your street look on NumPad1... then any others on the rest. I use (numpad) Multiply, myself - bare, it switches to Slot 1, my combat armor; Ctrl+Multiply switches to street look. Shift and Alt could be used for other looks. I'm not sure combining the change with, say, armor activation is all that great an idea, appealing as it is.

The key to using binds effectively is to start with a sensible keymap - like, ahem, the GABB layout - and then use a similarly sensible, consistent keymap for all added functions. I run a tank, sentinel, blaster, stalker, corruptor and mastermind and have found ways to make intuitive mappings for all of them. A cheat sheet helps if I haven't played the alt for a while, but even on first return and using old, old bindfiles I could make reasonable guesses about how I'd mapped the powers. Trying to use random associations around the original keymap and having them be different across alts is... not necessary. :) And the /macro_image command, while needing a little work and experimentation to find good power icons that don't blend into your standard powerset, is a big help for macronauts. It is, by the way, amply documented in the Guide. No need to chase discussion links. The Guide is in my sig. I should have repeated the link in the text for clarity.

Well, there are nine trays you can stack macros in. That's not too big a limitation. The game having solid built-in support for bind management is a huge plus, IMHO. Manually writting, saving and loading macros from offline sources is... good, but not nearly as seamless. They're also dependent on search-and-activate, which is an unnecessary hurdle in combat situations. I know I'm a lot faster with a key combo than finding, pointing and clicking a little screen dot when the fur's flying. As for remembering binds, anything that starts with the original key mapping is going to be a disaster. That's why I rewrote mine over years and now offer the polished, modern-era, intuitive GABB model as a much better starting point. It even comes with a cheat-sheet. :)

I have always preferred keybinds to macros, but in yacking with players and the community I found that there's a faction that sees macros as the way to manage special commands, while leaving the key mapping largely the same. So today I wrote a cute lil' macro to combine Rest with a team message (so the wankers don't run off to the next battle while their big gun is catching up). Works great. But then I realized the big difference between the two, and the big, big drawback of macros: you can't save them. You can't easily transfer them to other alts or players. If you accidentally delete one (which, of course, I have never ever done), it's gone forever. Binds have a whole set of management tools built in. (OTOH, macros are a tad easier to edit on the fly.) Macros have their place, especially in rolling-tray command sets. But they're written on the wind, as it were...

Running a squishie for pretty much the first time since return, I discover the frequent need to Rest. I also discover that teammates don't notice their big gun is not available for the next battle. My practice is to keep Rest in slot 10 of tray 1, so that a quick 0-key activates and releases it. I've moved the actual Rest icon to tray 2, slot 10, and put this macro in its place: /macro_image DayJob_SingleTargetHeal REST "powexectoggleon Rest$$g ***RESTING!***" This toggles Rest on and sends the team-channel message that you need to hold up, guys. If necessary, you can click or 0-key it again to send the message again, without interrupting Rest. Since you usually have the luxury of time to come out of Rest, clicking the Rest icon above it works fine. You could also write a quick un-Rest bind or macro. Adding a whistle emote or other noisemaker might help teammates notice your absence. This uses, BTW, the cool macro_image command that summons any power icon from the game set. I've selected the nice gold Heal icon by default; you can find others in the complete list on the Guide website.

Quotes are only optional on binds and macros if you accept the occasional mis-parse. They do help, IME. There isn't really any need to double-call the power. If the _location placement fails, it leaves you with a targeting circle anyway. (The most common failure is trying to place outside a power's range - the notable one being Recall Friend, which has only about a 24-foot incoming range.) It's a very well-implemented command that by all preceding development limitations shouldn't work at all. :)

The magic bullet you're looking for is the /powexec_location command. Full docs in the Guide. Basically, this power replaces the need for a mouse-click with a targeting command. For your purpose, try this: /bind P "powexec_location target Lightning Rod" ...and that should cast the power right on whichever foe you have targeted. You could add a target_near command to make it a one-stop target-and-attack, too. I use a variation to call Voltaic Sentinel: /bind U "powexec_location 0:50 Voltaic Sentinel" ...which casts it 50 feet right in front of me (0 degrees). This command works with any point-and-click power and opens up a whole barrel of bind/macro possiblities.

I don't think so. They're just wired to the macro, which has no recharge time. Any powers triggered would have an active icon; I guess you could stack them in trays for recharge monitoring.

Wikis are when many people participate to build and update the info. From what I've seen, Paragon Wiki has barely been touched since the return and update of the game. And the practice of bookmarking and linking to discussion posts is just too awkward to take seriously. So, sorry if as a writer I put it all in a concise, fully-updated, instantly-accessible and searchable book. :D

Any serious macro-users who would like to use power-tray icons instead of 2- and 3-letter gray ones, the /macro_image command has been sorted out and documented. See the updated Guide and the accompanying long, long, long list of power icon names at www.dgath.com/coh!

Anyone using Dual Pistols and the Swap Ammo powers... here's a bind set that will make swaps fast and easy on a standard keyboard. Not recommended for compact/laptop layouts. /bind SYSRQ "powexecname Cryo Ammunition" /bind SCROLL "powexecname Incendiary Ammunition" /bind PAUSE "powexecname Chemical Ammunition" /bind INSERT "powexectoggleoff Cryo Ammunition$$powexectoggleoff Incendiary Ammunition$$powexectoggleoff Chemical Ammunition" Puts three essentially useless keys to good order and remaps one not-very-useful key as well. The only glitch is that you might exit the game with Scroll Lock activated; a tap fixes that and there aren't ten programs in the world that actually read that setting. Note that there is sometimes a bug in which the key will only bind using 'SYSREQ' even though the bindfile saves it as 'SYSRQ.' Reports back on this would be useful.

That's the old-school bind. (Insert very smug face for having just discovered this new trick.) /bind LeftDoubleClick "powexec_name Teleport" - or Translocate. That's the way (uh huh, uh huh) you dooooo it... now. :)

Yep, rollover binds and macros can get around a lot of limitations, but it's still one-keypress-per-power with very few exceptions. You can't make a newly loaded bind line or macro self-execute.

Has anyone gotten a PS4/DS4 controller to work well with CoX, using DS4Windows or an equivalent? Between the game's controller/joystick button mapping and DS4W's configuration, I have a pretty good setup working, but absolutely nothing on either side will recognize motion of the right joystick. Anyone?

Underscores are ignored by the command processor; you can use them or not, as they help you parse someofthelongercommandnames. There isn't even a standard 'spelling' with them: powexectoggleon, pow_exec_toggle_on and powexec_toggle_on are all equivalent. Underscores are stripped out; the letters remaining have to be correct, though. Not sure if a double underscore will be ignored. Have to test. ETA: Yup, scads of underscores, even in series, are just ignored. OP, I suspect you're mistyping your bind commands. All those you list should work. I refer you to the Technical Guide for comprehensive, updated information: http://www.dgath.com/coh/