Settings

Automatic as of v2.3.14

This is the WoW setting ActionButtonUseKeyDown. It controls whether your abilities fire when you press a key or when you release it. GRIP-EMS fires on the press, and it needs this set to on to work correctly. Leave it off, and your sequence either does not advance at all or advances on the wrong event, with an extra 50 to 100ms of dead time on every single press, eating into your rotation.

It is also the one setting on this page that is not a preference. Everything else here is tuning, and this one is mandatory, because the press is what advances the sequence to the next step. As of GRIP-EMS v2.3.14 you do not have to do anything about it: every time you log in, while you are out of combat, the addon checks the value and sets it to 1 if it is anything else, whether or not you have ever opened the settings and whether or not Auto-Fix CVars on Login is turned on. On the current releases, v2.3.14 through v2.4.21, it has no row in the CVar Health tab at all, since a setting the engine cannot run without is not a recommendation you weigh up. Run /gems status any time to read the live value.

While you are in that part of CVar Health, Hold to Cast (ActionButtonUseKeyHeldSpell) is the neighbour worth knowing about. It should stay off, which is the recommended value, because turning it on enables a press-and-hold cast path that retries on errors in a way some macros do not expect, and the default of off works for almost everyone.

Added in v2.4.0 · Works on any channel as of v2.4.14 · Set per sequence version

This setting decides what happens when your keypress lands in the middle of a channel. Without it, a press mid-channel casts nothing and still burns a step, which is the same dead-step problem covered elsewhere on this page, just triggered by a channel instead of a cooldown. With Hold cursor on, a press landing mid-channel casts nothing and leaves the step counter where it was, so the channel finishes and the next real press picks up from the same step instead of one further along.

There is a third option, Hold + release at max, that ends an empowered spell the moment it reaches maximum rank rather than wasting time sitting at max charge while you keep pressing.

This matters beyond convenience. As of the v2.4.14 release, using Hold While Channeling properly is the addon author's own stated replacement for hand-writing [channeling] and [nochanneling] guards into your step conditionals: fewer characters spent on conditionals per step, and more consistent behavior than chaining bracket logic by hand. It does not remove the need for [combat], which still matters for the reasons covered on the How it works page.

If you are sequencing a charged or empowered spell like Fire Breath or Upheaval, Hold While Channeling, and specifically Hold + release at max, is now the first thing to reach for rather than the guard-step or separate-key workarounds on the Building sequences page. Those workarounds predate this fix and existed specifically to route around the automated-cancel hitch that Hold + release at max is built to solve directly. Try the setting first; fall back to the guard-step or separate-key approach only if it does not behave the way you need for your spec.

Settings > CVar Health > Macro Sequencing

The WoW setting SpellQueueWindow. This controls how many milliseconds before a GCD ends WoW will accept your next cast input. Blizzard's default is 400ms, which is also the ceiling. You can also set it by hand with the /console SpellQueueWindow command, which takes 0 to 400. GRIP-EMS surfaces it in CVar Health so you do not have to go hunting for it.

The way it works: say your GCD is 1.5 seconds. With SQW at 400ms, the queue window opens at 1100ms into that GCD. Any press inside that window gets queued. The last press before the GCD ends is the one that fires, replacing anything queued before it, and anything you press before the window opens is ignored.

Settings > CVar Health

This is the setting that does the SQW math for you and keeps it updated as your connection moves around during a session. It is off by default, so nothing described in this section happens until you tick Dynamic SQW Optimiser in CVar Health (or type /gems sqw on). Once it is on, it continuously monitors your world latency, using a smoothed average sampled every 10 seconds, ignoring one-off spikes that would otherwise throw your numbers off. From that, it sets SQW to your current latency plus a configurable Safety Buffer, kept inside the 50 to 400ms ceiling, and it only touches the CVar when the new number differs from the current one by 15ms or more, so it settles instead of flickering.

So if your latency is 120ms and your Safety Buffer is 50ms, SQW lands at around 170ms. Your latency jumps to 160ms mid-key, SQW adjusts.

While the Optimiser is running, it has exclusive control over the SQW value. You will see "Managed by SQW Optimiser" in the manual control and the slider locks. If you want to set SQW by hand, turn the Optimiser off first. The health score treats a managed SQW as handled, so it will not cost you points while the Optimiser is running.

With the Optimiser on, the panel also shows a Recommended click rate under the Safety Buffer slider, worked out from your live GCD, the SQW it just set, and your latency, as GCD minus SQW plus latency, with a floor of 100ms. If your GCD is 1500ms, your SQW is 170ms and your latency is 120ms, that comes to 1450ms, which is the pace of one press per GCD. A line underneath compares it with your own setting, something like "Your setting: 10ms (1440ms faster than the recommendation)", coloured green when you are within 50ms of it, yellow within 100ms, and red beyond that. Treat it as a guide and not a rule, and know that it is the same number for every sequence you own, because it knows nothing about your sequence; the per-sequence version of the idea is the Tempo Advisor further down.

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The Optimiser managing SQW automatically. The slider locks and shows "Managed by SQW Optimiser" while it's running.

Settings > CVar Health

The CVar Health dashboard grew to 255 game variables across 14 sections in v2.3.13, up from 212 before that, and on v2.4.21 it covers 284 across the same 14 sections. The exact count is printed at the top of the tab, so go by that and not by any number written here. The newer sections cover Combat Audio, nameplate content toggles, accessibility motion and vision settings, raid graphics mirrors, and dragonriding comfort options, alongside the SQW setting this page already covers in detail.

With that many CVars, finding a specific one by scrolling is no longer realistic, so the tab got a few navigation aids. A search box lets you type part of a CVar's name and jump straight to it. A show-only-issues filter hides every row that is already correctly set, so you see just what needs attention. Section headers are colour-coded, meaning a section containing a misconfigured row shows red before you even expand it, so you know where to look without opening every section in turn.

Numeric CVars, more than fifty of them, are sliders rather than typed fields, and on/off CVars are tickboxes. The graphics dropdowns pull their tier names directly from the game client, so options like shadow quality, SSAO, and liquid detail match the wording in WoW's own System menu instead of using GRIP-EMS's own labels. maxFPS goes up to 300.

Up at the top of the tab you get a CVar Health score out of 100, with a Why this score list underneath that names the settings costing you points and how much each one weighs, and the colours mean what you would hope: green is optimal, yellow is suboptimal, red is critical, and grey is informational. Fix All Critical repairs the red rows (it skips anything you have pinned, and it skips SQW while the Optimiser is running), and it also marks those rows as opted in for Auto-Fix CVars on Login, which is off until you turn it on and, once it is on, only touches the rows you have opted in. Reset All to Blizzard Defaults does exactly what it says. A row you pin with Pin My Choice is yours: EMS will not change it. If WoW or another addon moves a CVar between sessions, a banner reads something like "1 CVars changed since last session" and names the likely cause, a game patch reset, another addon or the UI, an auto-fix, or a profile swap, so you can see who touched what instead of guessing. Set all of this out of combat, since WoW locks some of these CVars mid-fight and the Fix buttons grey out until you leave it.

Automatic as of v2.3.12

GRIP-EMS ships with built-in CVar profiles that swap automatically based on the content you are in, and as of v2.3.12 Delves get their own dedicated profile rather than running on the same baseline as general open-world content. Before this, a Delve run used your General graphics profile even though the addon already knew you were inside a Delve, which meant nameplate range and soft-targeting were tuned for the wrong context.

The built-in Delve profile turns on enemy minion nameplates, extends nameplate range to 41 yards, and widens the soft-target arc, all automatically the moment you enter a Delve, at any tier, with no setup required on your part.

Settings > General

How fast you are pressing your sequence key, in milliseconds. GRIP-EMS advances one step per keypress and does not cap how fast you press, so this number is really a reference point that also controls the timing of any imported pauses in a sequence. This is the global value, shared by every character you play, the default is 250ms, and the slider runs from 100 to 1000ms in steps of 10, so it will not go below 100ms.

The reason it floors at 100ms is that nobody is realistically pressing a key faster than ten times a second, and at that speed, you would be running past steps before the spells they contain can land. GRIP-EMS calls 100ms the human and hardware floor.

Per-Character Click Rate, under the same menu, is a setting scoped to your current character only and overrides the global value while that character is active, unless Auto-adjust below is supplying a number for the sequence you are running. You set it on each character separately. Range is 0 to 1000ms in steps of 10. Set it to 0 to fall back to the shared global value. This is also the only way to go below the 100ms floor if you have an edge case that needs it, down to 10ms. GRIP-EMS will pop a warning on screen when you drop under 100.

Settings > Faster, Slower

This is a checkbox, it is on by default, and it quietly overrules the number you typed in. With it on, GRIP-EMS uses the Tempo Advisor's recommendation for the sequence you are pressing in place of your Click Rate and your Per-Character Click Rate for as long as that sequence is the active one, and you can tell it is happening because the Click Rate slider's label changes to something like "Auto: 1350ms" followed by the sequence name. The order of who wins is Auto-adjust first, then your Per-Character Click Rate, then the global Click Rate, and Auto-adjust only gets a say once the Advisor actually has a recommendation for that sequence.

Turn it off if you would rather your manual number always win, which is the fix for anyone who set a Per-Character Click Rate on purpose and wondered why it never seemed to do anything. Because EMS does not rate limit your presses, none of this changes how fast you actually press; it changes the reference number EMS uses for the Faster, Slower recommendation and for the timing of imported pauses.

Added in v2.4.0 · /gems keys or the Keybind tab

Run /gems keys, or click Check Conflicts on the Keybind tab, and GRIP-EMS checks every key your sequences use, plus vehicle and pet battle slots, against your saved bindings: what the keypress actually reaches, cast-redirect modifiers, and click bindings. Where it can identify the addon behind a conflicting binding, it names it directly, and it clears two known kinds of conflict for you automatically.

This is the tool for the recurring question of why a key works on one character and does nothing on another. Different characters can carry different addon-set or click bindings on the same physical key, and this check surfaces that instead of leaving you to hunt through every addon's keybind panel by hand.

Three things changed in v2.4.21. The panel now reads branches written with a modified-click action, such as [mod:SELFCAST], and it checks the key each modifier variant is bound to, where before a key taken by something else could still show as clear. It also tells you, under that sequence's key, when a branch can never run, which is what happens to [mod:SELFCAST] when Self Cast is set to None in the game's options. And with Per-loadout keybinds on, it checks the keys saved to your active talent loadout, the same ones the game binds, and follows a switch of loadout or spec while it is open.

The Fix button changed too, and this one is worth reading before you press it. Clearing a cast redirect means setting Self Cast, Focus Cast or Mouseover Cast to None, and that stops every branch that checks the same setting in any of your sequences. With account-wide key bindings the setting is shared, so it stops those branches on your other characters that use account-wide bindings as well. Fix All no longer touches those rows, and a row's own Fix names the setting and the sequences that use it and asks before it changes anything.

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Check Conflicts run against a sequence's key. It names whatever else has claimed the bind, including the modifier combinations.

Settings > Faster, Slower

This is a different system from the SQW Optimiser above, and it is worth being precise about the difference because the two get confused constantly in the Discord. The SQW Optimiser tunes a WoW CVar based on your latency. The Tempo Advisor analyses your actual sequence and your actual play to recommend a click rate, in milliseconds between keypresses, that fits how that specific sequence is built and how you actually play it.

It starts from a theoretical estimate the moment you save a sequence: it classifies every spell into one of seven timing categories (off-GCD, on-GCD instant, on-GCD with a cast time, a long cast, a channel, a pause step, or unknown if the spell data is not cached yet), builds a transition graph between your steps, and sums GCD durations and cast times across that graph to estimate the time between presses your sequence actually needs.

That estimate gets more accurate the more you play. After 30 logged samples from the addon's execution tracer, the Advisor blends real combat data into the recommendation at a 70% theoretical, 30% empirical mix. It only counts samples taken while you are actually pressing and casting, and it falls back to the theoretical number whenever that live data has gone stale, such as when you stop playing the sequence for a bit. Which of your spells count as off the GCD is stamped with the game build and cleared automatically after a patch, because Blizzard moves spells on and off the GCD between patches and an old classification would skew the number. Every sequence stores its own recommendation, sample count, and blend ratio, and it persists across sessions rather than resetting every login, and it also reads your live SQW and latency in that math, so the Optimiser's value feeds straight into it when the Optimiser is on.

The Faster, Slower page has five checkboxes. Auto-adjust click rate per sequence is covered just above. Show click rate overlay puts up a movable overlay that shows your current click rate against the recommendation, with a delta bar so you can see at a glance how far off you are. Show CPS sparkline adds a rolling line of your actual clicks per second over the last few presses. Enable mismatch alerts is off by default, and once you turn it on it warns you when your pace drifts too far from the recommendation, with a visual cue and a sound by default, which is useful if you are not watching the overlay during a pull. The fifth, Enable Hold Mode, lets the Advisor manage Hold to Cast and is off by default.

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A Tempo Advisor readout in chat, showing the recommended click rate for the sequence actually being played.

/gems spellcache

The cached spell data GRIP-EMS uses for icon resolution, autocomplete, and the Tempo Advisor's spell classification all lives in one place you can inspect directly. Run /gems spellcache, search by spell name or spell ID, and see exactly what the addon has resolved it to: the icon and the spell ID behind that name.

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The Spell Cache Viewer. It's a lookup of name-to-icon-and-ID, not a tooltip — there's no cast time, cooldown, or spell school breakdown here.

This is the tool to reach for when a spell icon is not resolving on your tracker or action bar, or when the Tempo Advisor is classifying a spell as unknown instead of one of its real timing categories. A stale or missing cache entry, usually from a spell getting renamed or reworked in a patch, is the most common cause of both. Search for the spell here first before assuming something is broken in your sequence itself.

The cache populates on login and updates automatically when you change spec or talents. If a spell is genuinely missing rather than just stale, /gems revalidate forces a fresh re-tag of every sequence with current spell IDs, which usually resolves it.

You press the key and GRIP-EMS turns each keypress into one sequence step. The GCD is the actual ceiling on how fast spells can land, regardless of how fast you press. SQW controls the window in which your next press is queued into that GCD, and the SQW Optimiser, once you turn it on, ties that window to your real latency so it is always sized correctly for your connection. The Tempo Advisor is the layer above all of that: it watches your specific sequence and your actual play to tell you the click rate that fits both.

Key Down Casting takes care of itself as of v2.3.14. SQW is yours to either leave at WoW's 400ms or hand to the Dynamic SQW Optimiser, which stays off until you switch it on. And with Auto-adjust click rate per sequence on, which it is by default, the Tempo Advisor's number is already being used for the sequence you are pressing without you touching a slider. Everything else on this page is fine-tuning from there.

Everything on this page except Key Down Casting is optional and down to taste. A sequence that runs perfectly for the person who built it can run badly for you without anyone having done anything wrong, because click rate and SQW are only part of the picture: movement, buffs and debuffs, the fight or scenario you are in, and your gear and stats all change how a sequence feels. There is no one size fits all setting and no one size fits all sequence, so tweak it, test it, and keep what works for you.