I use gaming mouse with lots of buttons.
I use gaming mouse with lots of buttons.
Erm.. the pet hotbar is TERRIBLE. Pet actions are much better placed on normal hotbars. Protect/summons are on easily accessed (L2->R2/R2->L2) bars for situations where someone dies during a fight. Stoneskin I cast at the last few seconds of every pull, timed so that I'm not left behind when the party runs off, but it's on the tank for the start of the next pull. On scholar, I have a macro to hotbar swap between "heal" and "dps" set, plus expanded controls. Also have potions/limit break (since they are very rarely used) bound to numpad.. I only have 4 quick access spaces left on main bars. I am interested to see what the expansion will bring..
That's a load of time, considering it takes a fraction of a second to do, especially if you have it committed to muscle memory. Playing any fighting game you do way more spectacular inputs than that and in way less time. I don't have too much of an issue with the Pad setup, in fact i couldn't fathom playing this game on a KB + Mouse. Regular, L1+R1 / R1+L1 is more than enough to fit a 50 job, all CCs, Limit Break and potions on, and that's not even counting switching main bars.
Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar on the other hand, i'm not sure, since it's the only DPS class I haven't really put any time into. But getting it to 15, I kind of felt like it may get a bit tedious. I remember feeling like it was more the class feeling non-intuitive more than the UI though.
I'm also in the "when in doubt, macro" crowd. But my SCH macro set still takes up three lines on PC, not counting the pet bar, which seems about equal to everyone else having 32 on the cross hotbars. There just isn't a lot you can effectively macro on SCH. I have my DOTs in one long sequence, but pretty much everything else has to be cast when it needs to be cast, and not any sooner or later, if that makes sense.
It's much easier on DPS classes, where you can have a nice "buff" macro and your weapon skill sequences tied together and just sneak your off global cooldown abilities in between the macros WS sets.
I don't want any of my buffs macro'd with any other ability. I need to see when they are ready and I apply them when I can get the maximum use/damage out of them. For example, I don't want to use blood for blood when a mob is almost dead and there will be let's say 6 seconds til the next mob - just for an example. There are many instances where I save my buffs to maximize damage. If they are macro'd, I would be inefficient.
Same with raging strikes on blm. I like to use it with flare, but sometimes I can sneak in a flare right before some stupid mechanic ties me up or makes us wait. And if it was macro'd then it would have been wasted.
As a BRD I put all my buffs into one macro and that opens up 5 or 6 slots.
I swear I've looked for this option at least 4 or 5 times and couldn't find it. I guess I will take another look tonight because I would definitely find this helpful for shared cross hotbars that I don't want to use in battle. For the time being I just setup mouse hotbars to click on for these shared bars but I would rather have them on the controller.