Need PS4 players advice!!!

Hello I recently came to ffxiv on ps4. I have played many mmorpg over the past 10 years and decided to give this one a try. To those of you who use a controller answer me this. What is thw most effective way do certain things like simply target switching. It's like it doesn't do right for me. I always play a healing class first to learn the content and I cant seem to switch between party members effectively. I was just wondering if I am missing something on the controller settings. It says the d pad switches but it doesn't act right tyvm

try pushing x and then down on the d pad to select a party member

You have tab targetting in the from of hold r2 and then hit l1 to cycle.

You can also cycle party members via up/down on dpad - you need to confirm your selection by hitting X else it works like mouse over... it will only cast that one spell on the person then switch back it whatever party memeber you had targeted.

You can cycle via enmity list by holding l1 and using up/down on dpad - again X to confirm.

There's also target filtering that will work with just left/right on the dpad but you need to configure that how you want it to be like in character settings I believe. Then you switch to those filters using I believe r1+face buttons then you can cycle through those targets using left/right on dpad.

Think that about covers all the possible targeting options for controller users.

For players in your party, up/down on directional pad.

To reach players not in your party (or NPCs you need to heal for some of the solo instances), set up filtering in character settings:
Go to the target filtering tab in Character Settings. It has two sections. At the top it has an option for switching target filtering based on whether your weapon is drawn or not, and below that an option for switching it based on up to four filters you select. You should only have one of those two types enabled. (If you enable both, they'll interfere with each other.) I disable the weapon drawn/sheathed part and enable the four manual filters in the bottom section. I have it set so that L1 + square sets me into "Enemies" targeting mode, L1 + circle sets me to "Friends" targeting mode and L1 + triangle sets me to "All" targeting. (I've occasionally also used L1 + X for various "Custom" targeting modes.)

With this pattern set up, L1 + a face button determines your targeting mode, and then left and right on the directional buttons will only cycle between those types of targets until you switch your targeting to a different mode. (Unfortunately, it doesn't fix the fact that which friend or enemy is first or next on its list seems random rather than based on proximity or direction.)

Note: this works well if your controller is set so you hold R2 and/or L2 while triggering actions. I've heard it gets more awkward if you use toggle or mixed mode, but haven't tried those myself to know another good workaround for that. I just think of this as a good reason for favoring the "hold" method over "toggle" or "mixed".

This was pretty helpful for me.