So much speculation and complete lack of understanding.
If you use Autohotkey, Razer Synapse, Logitech GHub with WoW you are risking your account and can be banned. This isn’t new and isn’t news. Input Broadcasting Software + GSE Bots, Botting and the thin grey line.
100ms is a myth - any value has risk and you can be banned for any value. Using AHK to click a button for you according to WoW’ TOS is classed as cheating. Now before you go but what about this legislation etc by agreeing to play the game you as a player agree to abide with this rule.
As I have been quoted People are constantly being banned for using AHK. This again IS NOT NEWS!!! The “but we have always done this” people read this: STOP BEING AN IGNORANT DUMB ASS AND LISTEN: If you continue to do this you are playing Russian roulette. You may not get banned but don’t cry if you do.
What can be done to minimise the risk - there are some things that can be done.
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Blizzard are concerned with unfair advantage. If you spam your macro you can click at speeds that are unable to be sustained by the average person. Slow down your MS - as a rule of thumb I wouldn’t go UNDER 250ms. That is the absolute bottom ceiling. This is still 4 clicks a second. “Oh but my macro runs crap at that speed”. Let me fix that for you - “Your macro is crap!” Fix it. You are trying to stuff way harder than you need and it’s costing you DPS but I will cover that later. If you are running at 100ms (or a complete tool running in the 10’s and 20’s) you are waving a big flag at Blizzard saying “Please ban me I am an idiot who doesn’t care that I am exploiting the game.”. I have been talking about running at higher speeds > 250ms long before work even started on GSE3. Again this isn’t new!
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Blizzards rules are in place because they want you the player making decisions not a mod or a macro. A bit can be written in AHK that watches pixels and performs very detailed actions. This means that if you are using AHK - let the buyer beware - you can be banned outright because you are using software that is botting software. Again this isn’t news - see links above.
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control when your macro runs. In the last week a couple of special dumb asses got banned because they walked out into Maldraxxus, toggled their macro on, and walked off made coffee and came back 3 hours later. Or they toggled their macro on and went back to Oribos and left it running. Again don’t be an ignorant dumbass. Using a hold down approach is not perfect but it is safer than a toggle. “Why can’t GSE tell me that my macro is toggled on?” How can GSE tell what you have setup in a third party tool outside the game? GSE has no third party components. It solely is in game.
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you cannot get banned for Using GSE. It is totally contained within what Blizzard exposes for mods to use. It cannot break the rules. If it does try it cannot operate and you have to do a /reload. Using third party apps OUTSIDE the game (ahk, GHub,etc) are what can get you banned. If Blizzard doesn’t like how GSE works within those rules they will change the API and stop mods, not just GSE, from accessing the parts of the API that GSE uses. This is important.
Now having said all that these are things that are different that need to be taken into account:
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Changing CVar x - CVars are client variables. Changing a CVar has NO EFFECT on how the server side of the game operates. WoW is not a twitch based game. It is designed that there is a 1.3 second gap between actions to account for people’s reaction times and lag. What that means is there is a fair amount of tolerance and you don’t need your macro clicking 13 times or more within that window. (100ms in a 1.3 second window is 13 clicks - that’s 12 skipped actions in your macro between one line and the next).
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Now server side when you send a command to WoW it is buffered into a queue and this is collected periodically. This is why changing that CVar has no effect. You change what you send the server but you are not changing how fast the server processes the information you send. If you send a bunch of actions a bunch will be ignored. This means that your [mod] commands will be sluggish and laggy and slow to respond.
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GSE2 had a ton of internal lag. When you pressed a button in GSE2 it would spend 130-300ms figuring out what command was next and then sent that. If you clicked again in that window it would just skip and ignore what you pressed. At 100ms every 2-3 clicks were just being dropped client side and not even sent to WoW servers. Icons would cycle and it “looked” like you were doing something but it actually wasn’t. GSE3 had exposed this as it doesn’t have this lag. If you are running at 50MS GSE keeps up but it costs you FPS and as you are flooding input queues WoW will cut your connection as a defence as it thinks you are running a Denial of Service attack. The follow on from this is the faster you run your macro (ie the lower the MS) the more random the next line becomes. This is based on simple maths. 100ms in a 1.3 second window = 13 actions. 50ms in a 1.3 second window is 26 actions. If you macro is 10 actions long it will run through multiple times before the next action. - USE YOUR BRAIN it’s not rocket science.
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putting a random value in AHK so it appears like you are not using AHK is a sign that you are trying to exploit. They already know you are using AHK/GHub etc via Warden. This is a flag that you are trying to exploit and a dumb ass.
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macros are like cars - smooth is fast. You also have more control the slower your ms and can write better macros making it a lot easier to interject with things like [mod] and manual actions.
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the sweet spot MS wise will be different depending on each macro, your gear, your class and your connection. Just because the author runs at 250ms doesn’t mean this is the best number for you. You need to do some testing and investigation. 90% of people won’t do this and get crap results and then blame the author. This is the behaviour of an ignorant dumbass! Don’t be a dumbass. “But I can’t write macros” guess what no one could. We learn by doing not by whinging.
Now despite me saying the bulk of this for 4 to 5 years guys like ScarryLarry has gone “the sky is falling” and attempted to induce a panic. I have repeatedly informed SLG that what he is saying and trying to do needs to change. It has been “when agSE3 comes out I’ll change.” Then it was “I just want to get my macros working then I’ll change”’. And now it’s “Why didn’t you tell me to change earlier now I have to spend all this time reworking things as I’ve done it wrong? Why don’t you ban people for doing the wrong things. Why doesn’t GSE block things from happening?” In answer to all those things, I have repeatedly and GSE can’t control what you do OUTSIDE the game. It also can’t control how often you click your macro as it simply doesn’t know and can’t tell. If it could know this - it would t be able to run your macro.
In the last two days unfortunately SLG still hasn’t gotten it and completely misinterpreted what had been said to him. He has now thrown the baby out with the bath water. The rules around GSE haven’t changed with GSE3. The rules are exactly the same as in GSE2. It is however exposing the ignorant who have no clue and want to remain in their ignorance.
As for other things in this thread - Yes Blizzard reached out to me, or someone claiming to be from
Blizzard, prior to when the IBS stuff started. GSE has 8.5 million downloads and yes they care about people with disabilities. Their stance is that no number is acceptable as the practice of using a third party tool to press buttons for you is not acceptable. AGAIN this hasn’t changed. Are they religiously enforcing this - no. They are evaluating on a situational bases on what is the player doing. Translation if you act like a dumbass you may be banned.
Do they read this forum? I don’t even read this forum. I poke my head in once or twice a week and even then I don’t read 95% of the stuff written here as honestly so much of what I read is so completely wrong full of subjective and “I think x so therefore it must be”. This is a community that uses GSE but it is neither the sole community or even the largest. One of the questions I get asked by other people in other communities is “Why are the WLM macros so bad?” The answer I have to give is people here don’t want to know the truth and how to be better they just want to stay in their bubble and pretend they are the only ones in it.
None of this is written to offend however If anything in this offends you I would perhaps go back and look at why does this offend you.