Advice needed - Healing on a gamepad (from KB/Mouse)

Hey all,

I play on PC and have WHM and SCH at Lv90 and AST at 75, all done on KB and Mouse. So I'm very used to that setup.

I've been playing around with a gamepad and found that DPS jobs are more fun to play and I'll probably stick with it for those, then I tried healing and its been, shall we say, anywhere between a horror show or passable.

My first problem is target switching, especially on AST where I have to manage cards as well as healing and DPS duties. I find the directional buttons cumbersome so I created a bunch of custom hotbars on the extended (hidden) crossbar to select players 1 through 8 which is better. However, I'm finding that I'm still much slower having to go through a longer sequence to switch from enemy, select player, hit skill and switch back to enemy again. With KB and Mouse I just tap the relevant F key and tap the keybind and jobs done.

My second problem is accessing the WXHB with double trigger presses which I also find awkward, especially with AST cards. I want my main healing and DPS skills on the primary cross bar and my buffs and cards on the WXHB which leaves me having to go through 3 hotbars to do something that I can do in a flash on KB/Mouse.


So, I was wondering if anyone had any tips for the cross bar setup? whether will get easier or whether healing is awkward with a gamepad? (I don't like wiping groups in content I can normally breeze through) or whether I should just stick with KB/Mouse for healing.

Im gonna be brutally honest with you.
Don't play AST on a controller.
I mained WHM and SGE fine on a controller (SCH is basically green SGE so its also fine) AST is just ridiculous for controllers right now.

It's a good question.

WHM and SGE are entirely doable on controller. You basically drop Repose and everything else fits just fine. After that, it's just putting buttons to taste where you think they're easiest for what you want. Each has 30 total abilities, I think, so adding Sprint, Limit Break (you WANT these), and a slot for Potion/Tincture (or Mount when not in combat) works just fine, you just remove either Rescue or Repose.

SCH is a little trickier, but you can kind of cram most everything in to make it fit. You probably have to remove Physic from your bar, but...we don't cast that anyway. When I do low level content, I just put Physic in the place I have Chain Strategem for higher end stuff and then swap back once I'm out. You have to manually trigger Potion/Tincture because there's no room for it like WHM/SGE, but that's not TERRIBLE. Alternatively you could always fine something you never ever use and swap that for Tincture when in high end fights. Lustrate maybe, since between Soil, Excogitation, Indominability, and Energy Drain, and even Aetherpact, you don't REALLY need it in most cases. Many fights you could probably drop Esuna (fights that have no debuffs to dispell, which is most right now). But basically as long as you can find 1-2 buttons to sacrifice, SCH can work on only two crossbars. You won't have room for all that and Rescue or Repose.

AST, on the other hand...is a mess. SCH has a lot of buttons and they're all useful, but a couple like Physic, and Lustrate or Esuna situationally, you can live without. AST kind of needs most of the ones it has. And then there's the targeting. I've gotten REALLY good at pressing up/down on the D-pad for quick party selection, but it's always going to be a bit slower than F-keys.

But I agree with you that the press and hold stuff is annoying. I have a similar issue with PLD and most melee just having too many buttons while WAR and SMN can fit everything they need easily.

Definitely a challenge. But for the Jobs it works, I definitely prefer controller.

EDIT: AST is just the perfect storm where you need lots of abilities but ALSO to individually target party members (the other healers don't need to do this much) where macros could be handy, but then you have even MORE buttons!

Instead of using 8 macros to target people you want to throw cards at, use 8 macros that throw cards directly at specific people without targeting them.

For non-card oGCDs, use soft targeting so you immediately retarget your original target after you use the oGCD action.

If you want to see this through, I'll say don't give up yet. For what it's worth, this game was my first MMO that I put effort into learning and it probably wouldn't have happened without the extensive controller support this game has. I've gotten to a point where I personally feel I can comfortably play all healer jobs. Part of the issue is that playing AST is a lot of busywork, and giving cards to party members is the most cumbersome part of the job. It's not impossible to manually give a card to a party member in between GCDs, but it does require some fast reflexes and preemptive targeting.

I would start by recommending you turn on "Expanded Hold Controls" and use the corresponding hotbars. These are the hotbars where you hold the triggers in a certain order to access them (L2 > R2; R2 > L2). I personally find them more intuitive to use. WXHB double-tap is doable, but the sensitivity is finicky most of the time imo, even if you can change that value. Personally I use WXHB as a last resort for when I can't fit all of my skills, and even then I make sure to put skills that have long cooldowns on them.

The game never tells you this afaik, but if you hold a trigger button (L2 or R2) and then hit a bumper button (L1 or R1), it allows for quick enemy targeting relative to character and camera position. I believe this is equivalent to what KBM users call "tab-targeting" (correct me if I'm wrong on this). You can change the properties of how this function targets enemies in Character Configuration > Control Settings > Target > Target Type: Target Closest Enemies.

Make sure to fiddle with the cursor speed for ground-targeted skills in Character Configuration > Control Settings > Target > Ground-Targeting Settings (Controller Mode). Less useful for AST since the AOE range was massively buffed on Earthly Star, but useful nonetheless.

Something to also note is that there are two different types of targeting.

I would say the first kind of targeting people learn to do is hard targeting. Let's use the party list as the example here. This is when you scroll down to the party member on the list you want to target and then hit the confirm button. Your target selection is hard-locked until you manually cancel out of it. This is what you normally want to use for targeting enemies.

The second is soft-targeting. This is just when you highlight your target without pressing the confirm button. You can tell if you're soft-targeting when you see the targeting ring continuously circle over the target's model. This form of targeting allows you to still cast your skills on that target, but after using any one skill, it will return to your original target automatically. This is extremely useful when trying to maintain DPS uptime as it saves you an extra step having to retarget the enemy.


The last thing is just general expectations. You're undoing muscle memory. You're going to mess up, and that's okay. I get that it sucks when you fail to do the most basic of actions, but give yourself some time and patience, and you'll click with it eventually.

Double-tap should be a last resort for your least-used skills. I have Swiftcast, Limit Break and Repose down there, and a few things like target markers and waymarks.

The L2>R2 and R2>L2 hotbars are a much more natural choice for your second hotbar.

AST cards are frequently used and I put them right on top, on the left side of the L2 hotbar, where I can easily shift across to them between other skills.

Thanks for all the replies, and advice. It sounds like I'm not configuring my cross bars/buttons/macros in the best way and AST is just special with a controller. So, I'll have a play with your ideas and give it a little more time to get used to, and to build muscle memory. :)

I main AST on controller (PS4) and I have to say that card macros have never been very helpful for me. I’ve found that you cast cards way too often for the macro delay to be conducive to good gameplay, and that macros are way too buggy to use on a button you’re going to press every 30 seconds. I also found that having 8 extra macros for each party member takes up too much real estate in your cross hotbar (although you being on PC may work out differently if you can hybrid controller-mouse.)

Honestly, I just use the up and down on the DPad to target the players while looking at the party list, not looking at the players in the fight. This has the added benefit of telling me who has higher aggro and is therefore likely doing more damage.

Secondly, when I first played AST on controller in Heavensward, when I had any real trouble targeting players, (which mind you wasn’t very often even then), I used to just rearrange my party list.

For example, putting the melees at the top just beneath myself in order of descending expected damage so that the best person to give a card is one click down, and the ranged at the bottom in order of ascending expected damage so the best player to give a card is 1 click up (me, SAM, NIN, Tank, Tank, Healer, RDM, BLM).

The last thing I can say that really helped me is how I have my crosshotbar set up. My card skills are all together in the left trigger side while the right trigger is mostly attacks. This is done because cards are mostly thrown out between Malefic and not normally between heals. Any additional spaces on that page are macro heals. All my normal heals are on a different hotbar page.

I think you need to play around with different things, to see what feels natural to you especially if you’re new to gamepad/controller for this game. The last point is very important. The placement of all skills, spells and abilities is inherent to how well you will perform on any class on controller. Anything that feels unnatural and jank to switch from one skill to another means you need to find a better location on your hotbar.

Having sat down and looked at it...I think AST can work. There are a few sticky points, but...I think it can be massaged into functioning.

Buttons I don't have on my bar to fit everything I want:

Benefic (I have Divination in that spot - I figure if I do low level content, I can slot in Benefic there since I can't use Divination until level 50 anyway, and above level 30, I have Benefic 2 if I need a relatively spamable cure on the Tank in those low level dungeons.)
Undraw (Does anyone REALLY use this...?)
Repose (No use in 99% of the content in the game anyway: I could trade something for it for a solo instance if I was desperate, but I doubt I'll ever be.)
Rescue (The only time I use this on WHM/SGE, where I can fit it, is Hunt Trains, specifically due to Yilan [Thav], both Moon Marks [each has some kind of stun/mesmerize you can Rescue people out of], and MAYBE Haldur in Laby, but have to be quick; I can live without this.)

I could probably swap out Esuna for 90% of the content inthe game, but at this point I've removed enough things to not need to. Note for Benefic, I've started doing this same thing with SCH Physic <-> Chain Strategem, so it's basically the same thing (SCH can in theory heal low level dungeons without it thanks to Eos but...whatever. It takes less than 15 seconds to swap. Plenty of time before a Sastasha or Tam Tara Tank is going to pull the whole instance.)

[EDIT: That is, the only time you REALLY need Cure 1/Physic/Benefic is in low level content below level 40 or so. After that, you have better tools. And so you can swap it for some high level ability that you don't get until well after you don't really use Cure 1/Physic/Benefic anymore and be GENERALLY okay. Things like Chain Strategem and Divination you don't have in low level dungeons, and Physic/Benefic 1 you aren't really ever going to use in high level content, so the two being mutually exclusive/hot swapping that hotbar slot shouldn't be a problem. Since the use case is pretty niche of "If you need a quick heal in less than 2.0 sec such that Cure 2/Adlo/Benefic would be too slow AND have no CDs to use OR you never hit Lucid and have 0 MP", which are...pretty much never issues. Especially for AST, which has the best MP economy AND regen of all the Healers. Note SGE does NOT have this easy swap-out with Diagnosis, since that button becomes your Adlo under Eurkrasia so you still need to slot it. Thankfully, though, SGE has good hotbar economy already anyway and doesn't need to.]

And doing this, I have room for Sprint, Limit Break, and Potion (Mount in the field)

Everything fits. It's a little awkward (I have Redraw on the second barset, for example, vs Draw and Play on the first...but this is fine). Trying to put the CDs I want to watch and my most often hit buttons on the first set. Will play around some with it later...but I don't think this isn't feasible...I think this setup might work for me.