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So, "All" and "Other" become your valid targets when sheathing or unsheating, and I understand that, at least as a healer, this is useful to know as it allowed you to target players outside of your party with cure, protect, stoneskin etc.
I'm not completely understanding of the system though; as in I'm sure there's some info I'm missing out on that I wouldn't know specifically to look for-
Can someone blast me with info that could be potentially helpful? It'd be greatly appreciated.
I am not sure what you are talking about. I have targeted people outside of my party before while both "sheathed" and "unsheathed" for healing. Protect, however, can only be used on party members and Stoneskin cannot be used on NPCs, so maybe that is what you are referring to?
It's also possible to change your settings so only certain hotbars are selectable when sheathed or unsheathed, handy if you use a controller and hit RB to cycle through a couple. Makes it easy to have a combat and non-combat set.
In character configuration - control settings - filters, there are a couple of different ways you can configure what to target. You can either (as you appear to have) use "Target Filter Settings" to select one group of objects to target when your weapon is sheathed, and another set when it's drawn, or using "Filter Customization" you can configure four different sets of filters that you can manually change between. (It doesn't work well to try to use both, however, as they'll keep interfering with each other. You should choose one method or the other and disable the one you're not using.)
Within each section, there's a collection of checkboxes for which characters/items/etc to include in your targeting:
- Non-party PCs
- Party Members
- Alliance Members
- Pets/Minions
- All Enemies
- Aggroing Enemies
- Duty-specific Enemies
- NPCs/Objects
- Minions
- Signs
There are also named pre-selects you can use to choose a common collection of those, by setting it to "All" (which is just what you'd expect, all of them), "Friends" (which is all player characters and NPCs/objects), "Party Members" (where only that one checkbox is set), "Enemies" (the three enemy checkboxes), "Engaged Enemies" (just the aggroing enemies), or "Others" (which is all the enemy selections plus NPCs/Objects).
If you set the checkboxes to something that doesn't match any of those presets, it will show up as "Custom".
If you're using the "Target Filter Settings" version, then whenever you draw or sheathe your weapon, your targeting filter will change to what you have set for that drawn/sheathed status. If you use the "Filter Customization" version, you can use button combos (on PS3/PS4 controllers it's: L1 + square/circle/triangle/X) to switch between your targeting filters.
When you use the right/left controller buttons to change targets, it will only switch between targets of the type(s) chosen in your current targeting filter.
Well, all of that was how it's set up. As for advice on using it: Personally, I prefer the four selectable filters provided by "Filter Customization" better than just the weapon sheathed / weapon drawn settings in the top "Target Filter Settings" section, since I find the four selectable filters to be more versatile. When I'm healing in a dungeon, I prefer using the up/down buttons to target my party members, which lets me leave the left/right filters set for targeting enemies. Yet when I'm healing at a big FATE or hunt, I may want to heal or raise players who aren't in my party, so aren't reachable using the up/down buttons. In that case I want to be able to switch my left/right buttons to "Friends" mode so I can target them. And in either case, I'll want to be targeting enemies when DPSing. Filter Customization lets me switch back and forth depending on what I'm trying to do at the time, rather than limiting it to just whether my weapon is drawn or sheathed.