You also need to bind the hotbar to hotkeys, or are you a clicker?
A comfortable amount of hotkeys (only to play the class/job) is 16-20 hotkeys maximum. right now almsot all jobs in FF go far over that.
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I play on PS5, I have a PS5 dualsense edge controller with back paddle's. I also don't put frivolous actions on my maain hot bar.
Anything with a long cooldown (Passage, Hallowed, all my long cooldown mitigation, etc) are on the expanded cross hot bar.
I also have no AOE on my main hot bar...as you don't need aoe in a raid (P3S was the only raid recently that needed aoe for a tank).
Honestly, I have built up SOOO much muscle memory with tanking over the years....I don't even look at the hot bars hardly anymore. Once you learn a fight....you know exactly when a cooldown is going to be up again. P6S you can basically count on your 30% mitigation to be up for every tank buster.
Now that I have dual sense edge...I can now bind 2 more macros to my controller. The game for me is like playing tekken or street fighter. It's all just hitting the right combos, and have a stupid amount of muscle memory.
If that is fine for you, good, but put yourself into the perspective of a keyboard/mouse player, we don't use the crossbar, and rotation through multiple bars is very unintutive for PC.
i use all those hotkeys just for spells/skills:
F1 F2 F3 F4 F5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
RTFGH
and 10 buttons on my mouse.
and that isnt even enough to cover all abilities for some jobs.
I have the impression the game devs themself don't play the game on PC, otherwise they would be aware of this problem
After seeing this later, yes I can after work. I'll show my main bar, expanded cross hot bar, and secondary hot bar, explain the reasoning why I place things where I do. I'll also do one better and run a target dummy for P8S and post the video via youtube into the forums and how simple my setup is. I will also deliberately weave in my mitigations to show how fluid it is.
I suppose I should keep an open mind when asking why it's so difficult for some players...I have however been playing on controller for 10 years and grown accustomed to the X-Hotbar.
It's a very good design and I don't think we give it any praise for how good the controller UI is.
So if you bare with me, I will back up what I say.
You should try it.
Plus I play Legacy movement. I decided a long time ago that I needed to learn legacy to tank more effectively. Playing standard on controller is horrible as a tank.
Legacy on M/K can make ppl puke...like literally. It can cause nausea due to the way your eyes and inner ear equilibrium are. Kind of gives you vertigo.
But once you get past the strange disconnect from character/camera...it's SO much more freeing. I move the left stick in the direction I want to go...but my camera is unlocked....I can turn my camera one way and my character another way. Gaze mechs are wizardry that legacy players can pull off...I just flick my character 180 degrees but I can still turn my camera towards the gaze.
I mentioned this to my static team and it just completely puzzles them. I just tell them my character model is not married to the camera. I go left...camera stays static. I turn my camera right...my character faces the same direction.
The ONLY thing that I have noticed are really difficult mechs are when I have to move then face a direction. P6S is a perfect example with snake/wing and N/S or E/W cleaves...you have to move to safe area...and immediately face a specific area to not hit a team mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWG5uagHT1Q this explains it the best.
Have you never used modifier keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) before? I play the game on PC with a whopping 42 keybinds on hotbars only - without an MMO-mouse. I have two thumb buttons and that's it.
(the following is translated for QWERTY users)
Normal: 12345, FGVRTY, ZX, Tilde, Tab, F1-F4, M4+M5 (21 binds)
Shift: 12345, FGVRTY, F1-F4, M4+M5 (17 binds)
Ctrl: M4, M5, M3 (mousewheel press; using this for potions) (3 binds)
Alt: M3 (Limit Break) (1 bind)
[total: 42 binds]
The absolute greatest hand stretch im doing is reaching the Y key, which is hardly an issue. Not only do I fully cover every job ability in the game, even on jobs as loaded as Paladin - I also have Sprint, Mount, Limit Break, a potion key, both duty action keys comfortably bound AND still have space for additional in-fight macros with four hotbars. Again, without even using an MMORPG-mouse.
I highly encourage getting the hang of using Shift keybinds. The game is only as uncomfortable for PC players as they make it for themselves.
I used to do that back in WoW , when my Deathknight had 30+ keybinds which was also way too much, and before MMO mice were a thing , my problem was often that i pushed alt+tab and went to the desktop by accident so i went away from that.
But your example only shows furthermore how bloated it is,
btw how do you push shift+1-5? that would give my hand a cramp.