Screen Info management during fights

Hello All

A completely different question today.

Problem: During fights, even if it goes better by now, I still struggle supervising my skills (ready to cast again) at same time than managing area + boss mechanics and checking on team members + chat.

My question: How do you do that? Where are you skill bars on screen? At eyes height, or down or up? Is there a trick allowing you to know that your skills are ready without looking at their icons? Any hints welcome. :)

You will probly get a better answer for this question from someone else, but i will provide my answer anyway.

So my solution for this is a mix of things. For starters, on most fights ill have the boss set as my focus target. I have the focus target info pulled down by my hotbars on the bottom of the screen. That lets me see health and incoming attack names(since the name is the key to dodging some attacks) both on the top and bottom of the screen. For abilities i cheat a little. As much as i have every class leveled, i do all serious content on the same class. This means i have many many hours of practice with said class, and the basic parts of the rotation i can do just by feel. For the abilities with the longer cooldowns, my class only has a four. The defensive skill i either hold for emergencies or if i know the fight well ill pick a time to purposefully use it to cheese some mechanic(essentially deciding on a mech that ill eat knowing the shield will negate it). I have a movement based CD, which i hit during periods of extended movement. That leaves the 2 damage ones. I will squeeze both into my opener if the phase is long enough(if it isnt, ill use either one or none depending on exactly how short it is). But the main one requires me to stand still to recieve any benefit, so im very bad about using it every time its available and instead look for specific times in a fight that i know its safe to pop.

So yeah, this is a case where im not the best person to follow. I hold or skip using some cooldowns when it isnt convenient thus leaving some damage on the table. The bit on focus target could be useful though.

Over the years, they have made managing skills much easier. Now, the next attack often glows yellow. This used to be much less common. We used to only have 3 seconds to do it. Pressing out of order would often cut our damage output in half. Most jobs had to "keep up" a buff and if they didn't, it also cut damage in half and lost access to half our attacks. Melee DPS had to hit a positional (specifically attack at back or at side) or they lost significant damage. You could only auto-attack or block when facing the enemy.

Truth is, that was always meant to be the main challenge of the game. And so, the answer is you will just get it wrong sometimes - even the best players will eventually fumble managing all those things at once. But as I've said, they've made it so much easier over the years, so that the main focus can be on the fighting. There isn't anywhere near as much consequence for the aforementioned mistakes anymore.

The most common setup is to organize the /hudlayout like:

• Target bar and focus target above the hotbar. That way, you can see the enemy HP and casts. Alternatively, put the target cast bar there, so you can see the attacks being casted, since when the cast bar complete is when it snapshots your location for attacks. Progress bar is your own cast bar, so best not to overlap it.
• Status effects near the hotbar. I put mine right above my own HP bar, which is right below the hotbar. I enter the settings and set it to "Left Justified I". This makes negative status effects appear first, so I immediately notice if there is poison on me or anything.

With this, I only need to look at the bottom of my screen for everything, and the left (when checking on my party members). With how my camera is positioned, the fight mechanics mostly happen in front of me, near the hotbar. So my eyes mostly stay in the same place, checking on party when I know there is a moment to do so.

It also helps a lot if you go to /characterconfig, go to Control Settings and set it to Legacy Type and disable "Activate standard type auto-fly/auto-dive". It means that if you press backwards, your character immediately turns around to run out of an attack, whereas the default setting has you turn the camera with your mouse then begin running. The default setting is slower and potentially taking valuable time away from other things. I really believe the default setting makes the game like "hard mode" for new players, for no reason.

Unrelated, but since we are adjusting settings, a default setting under Mouse is also to "Enable clicking on field to remove target." That's a very annoying setting, and disabling it stops you losing target always. I find it preferable to remove my target by pressing ESC instead. I also recommend setting battle effects like this so you can see what mechanics are going on in the area:

• /bfx self all
• /bfx party simple
• /bfx other off