Soothing Wave macro - need the ICON

[Sinfinite]

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this so if not, sorry in advance 🙂

 

I'm playing an Ice Control/Marine  Controller and love /Marine but was annoyed with the healing cone. Specifically, in a busy battle if a party member was injured, having to turn to face them to ensure they got the heals.

 

Came up with this macro which is working great:

/macro HEAL "face $$powexec_name Soothing Wave"

 

I wanted to update the macro icon with the correct Soothing Wave icon but any of the consolidated icon websites I found don't include this powerset.

 

Is there a way to look up a powers icon info in game and if not, could somebody tell me what the one is for Soothing Wave please?

 

Thanks!

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

Try:

 

/macro_image "MarineAffinity_SoothingWave" "Heal" "face $$powexec_name Soothing Wave"

 

No guarantees but that follows the general naming convention (which isn't always correct).

 

Good luck!

[Sinfinite]

Thank you very much!

 

That works perfect

 

 

[Psyonico]

TIL about face.

 

I've been using follow

[Maelwys]

Soothing Wave needs you to face the target BEFORE activating the power.

 

If you simply include both "face" and "powexec_name Soothing Wave" in the same single-line bind/macro then the game engine will simultaneously activate Soothing Wave in whatever direction you're currently facing and THEN you'll turn to face your target. So quite often its heal won't affect them.

 

What you want instead is a rotating bind that triggers "face" whenever you hold down a key, then triggers "powexec_name Soothing Wave" whenever you release that same key.

 

 

 

[Vanden]

The HC wiki should have up-to-date lists of power icons for macros.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Macro_image_(Slash_Command)

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Soothing Wave needs you to face the target BEFORE activating the power.

 

If you simply include both "face" and "powexec_name Soothing Wave" in the same single-line bind/macro then the game engine will simultaneously activate Soothing Wave in whatever direction you're currently facing and THEN you'll turn to face your target. So quite often its heal won't affect them.

 

What you want instead is a rotating bind that triggers "face" whenever you hold down a key, then triggers "powexec_name Soothing Wave" whenever you release that same key.

 

I thought the response (in that thread) to prefacing the bind with the "+" key alleviated the need for a rotating bind; pressing the (bind) key starts the follow (or I suppose face, but I don't use that) and then releasing the key triggers the soothing wave. Did this not work?

 

[AFAIK, we would need a rotating macro, but should not be needed for a keybind]

 

[Sinfinite]

I have been using the macro as posted and it has worked great this afternoon.

 

I put it on the #4 spot on Hotbar 1, hit the number 4 and my character turns to face the selected party members and uses the power.

 

/macro_image "MarineAffinity_SoothingWave" "Heal" "face$$powexec_name Soothing Wave"

[Maelwys]

6 hours ago, tidge said:

I thought the response (in that thread) to prefacing the bind with the "+" key alleviated the need for a rotating bind; pressing the (bind) key starts the follow (or I suppose face, but I don't use that) and then releasing the key triggers the soothing wave. Did this not work?

 

[AFAIK, we would need a rotating macro, but should not be needed for a keybind]

 

Prefacing a bind with + makes the entire bind activate on both keypress and keyrelease.

 

If you stick multiple power activations in the same bind (like "+$$powexec_name mystic flight$$powexec_name translocation") then yes it'll only trigger one of those powers at a time, because CoH can't trigger two powers simultaneously, so the rightmost power call supercedes the rest. However "Face" is a movement command. It doesn't clash with "powexec", meaning that each time you activate the bind you will both simultaneously face the target and trigger the power.

 

I'll admit the last time I personally poked at this was prior to i28p2... but on my  /Marine MMs often a Henchmen is too far off to the side or directly behind me. And I found that if I tried to call both "face" and "powexec_name soothing wave" simultaneously then it would appear as though I faced them and then triggered the heal, but they were not actually being hit by that heal according to the combat log (and their HP bar didn't move). However whenever I called "face" FIRST the target always got successfully healed.

Personally I prefer double tapping a button (rather than triggering different functions on keypress/keyrelease) for important functions like heals as it gives me more leeway for server lag, but either should work in practice.

[Maelwys]

Right, have just spent a few minutes in PI stress testing various Soothing Wave binds/macros.
I positioned a targeted teammate directly behind me before attempting each of the below:

 

(i) MACRO with both "face" and "powexec" commands in a single line

macro HEAL "face$$powexec_name soothing wave"
--> Both commands fire simultaneously. When clicking the macro you will turn and face the target and simultaneously fire off Soothing Wave.
--> Sometimes the heal will actually affect the target; but often it won't (I imagine this is to do with server ticks and ATBE) so at best this is unreliable.

(ii) REGULAR KEYBIND with both "face" and "powexec" commands in a single line

bind z "face$$powexec_name soothing wave"

--> Both commands fire simultaneously. When pressing the key you will turn and face the target and simultaneously fire off Soothing Wave.
--> Sometimes the heal will actually affect the target; but often it won't (I imagine this is to do with server ticks and ATBE) so at best this is unreliable.

(iii) KEYUP/KEYDOWN KEYBIND with both "face" and "powexec" commands in a single line

bind x "+$$face$$powexec_name soothing wave"
--> Both commands fire simultaneously. When you press the key down you will turn and face the target and simultaneously fire off Soothing Wave; and then when you relesae the key again it will turn and face the target and simultaneously fire off Soothing Wave AGAIN. (although it's highly likely that Soothing Wave won't have fully recharged in the split second it takes you to release the key; so you'll just queue it up again and it'll end up with a red circle around it!)
--> Sometimes the first heal will actually affect the target; but often it won't (I imagine this is to do with server ticks and ATBE) so at best this is unreliable.

(iv) REGULAR ROTATING KEYBIND with "face" on one keypress then "powexec" on the next keypress

_{[c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_face.txt]}
NUMPAD0 "face$$bind_load_file_silent c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_heal.txt"

_{[c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_heal.txt]}
NUMPAD0 "powexec_name soothing wave$$bind_load_file_silent c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_face.txt"
--> You always FACE on the first keypress and activate the power on the second keypress.
--> The heal will always affect the target. Extremely reliable but needs two keypresses.

(v) KEYUP/KEYDOWN ROTATING KEYBIND with "face" on keydown then "powexec" on keyup

_{[c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_key1.txt]}
NUMPADENTER "+$$face$$bind_load_file_silent c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_key2.txt"

_{[c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_key2.txt]}
NUMPADENTER "+$$powexec_name soothing wave$$bind_load_file_silent c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_key1.txt"
--> You always FACE when you press the key down and then activate the power upon releasing the key.
--> The heal will almost always affect the target. Extremely reliable and just needs a single keypress.

The issue with (iv) and (v) is that sometimes the bind execution order can get out of synch - and that's particularly troublesome on (v) because it'll start activating the power on keydown then facing the target on keyup! So you'll likely need to "reset" things by performing bind_load_file_silent c:\Games\coh\binds\hc\marine_key1.txt every now and again (I typically append this to my travel power activation keybind).

I've also found that very occasionally in areas of major lag (like Mothership Raids) if I press and release a key too quickly then a power might not end up being activated properly; which is why I tend to use a regular rotating "double-tap" bind for allied heals instead of relying on a keyup/keydown bind... but for regular gameplay it'll be perfectly fine.

As an aside... for keyup/keydown keybinds if you just use "+$$" at the beginning then currently it should work as expected on HC. However in the past it's been a bit temperamental from patch to patch. You can also use "+down$$-down$$" (the "+down" gets cancelled out by the "-down"; so nothing untoward happens!)

- - - - - - - - - -

Finally... if you really hate keybind files then there is an alternative option: append "$$face" after your teammate targeting binds.
e.g:
/bind numpad1 "team_select 1$$face" 

/bind numpad2 "team_select 2$$face" 

/bind numpad3 "team_select 3$$face" 

/bind numpad4 "team_select 4$$face" 

/bind numpad5 "team_select 5$$face" 

/bind numpad6 "team_select 6$$face" 

/bind numpad7 "team_select 7$$face" 
/bind numpad8 "team_select 8$$face" 

That way you can press a button to SELECT AND FACE a particular team member; then press another button to reliably heal them.
You can do something similar for cycling between non-teammate allies e.g. "target_friend_next$$face"
(The problem with this setup is that occasionally you may need to target things manually with the mouse!)
 

Edited 16 hours ago by Maelwys