Controlling a White Mage / Healing with a computer

A few questions.

I'm a fresh level 50 White Mage. (I've go a very well geared lvl 50 BLM so I'm not an utter novice)

Now that we are getting into 8 man content, I'm having issues being a healer. I play on a PC with a keyboard and mouse. My mouse has buttons for 1 through =. And I can easily press the Control and Alt buttons for the other two bars. (I have 5 bars in total, two of them can only be activated via click)

I have macros set up to heal specific positions in the party for the super basics: Cure, Cure II, Regen, Esuna.

There simply isn't ROOM on my hot bars for all of that for 7 other people, and everything else I don't have attached to a macro. I've been trying to get used to click on the names, and hitting buttons, but this seems to produce lots of fumbling on my part. Or I use the wrong ability on the wrong person. Or any number of other things can go wrong.

Am I just *missing* something?

What are your best practices for healing in an 8 man group? How do you get all of the various abilities on the right people, so FAST? >.> Maybe I'm just fumble fingered, but I have to ask. It's driving me nutz.

Practice.

Having macros for every single skill on every possible target is very uh... space inefficient and will only be worse when Crystal Tower comes out and you have to worry about 24 people total. You just need to practice with more people.

I haven't used them but many people speak highly of the mouseover target macros ( /ac Cure <mo> , for example) so you might want to try those out. You just have to hover over someone's name in the pt list and hit the macro to start casting on them.

I switched from controller to mouse/keyboard about a month ago. I'm still adjusting cause I keep rearranging stuff. But I just target using F1-8 keys. I also tried having a cure macro for every single person. The /ac "Cure" <me> - <8>, for Cure II as well. That is what made me fumble. Having to adjust to who was in what slot each time. Even after putting the tanks and the top in my party list.

I had also tried the MO macros, but maybe I'm not coordinated enough; I had trouble moving out of AOE stuff in time. I would end up choosing between me living sometimes, and letting someone die while I moved the cursor off the party list. It was too hard for me to break the habit of moving with the keyboard instead of the mouse.

I went back to easier dungeons to experiment with what felt most comfortable to me.

Call me old school but I use no macros. I just use 1-5 with cntrl and alt as well. I click on the players name in the party list and hit the key for the move I want. You can select someone else while you are casting so I have no problems.

Mouse driving... mmmmmmmm.... I had not considered that. XXXXXXD

My multi button mouse, has made me a keyboard driver. Hadn't even thought about moving back to using the mouse for driving.

Macroing skills via specific targets is a terrible way to do things. It's over complicating your playstyle and I'm fairly certain gets pretty frustrating and out of control pretty quick. Macros let you do a lot in the game, but just because it's possible doesn't mean you should.

Clicking on individuals seemed too slow to me, so I tried reorganizing my UI and putting in <mo> and <tt> macros. My group window is right next to my onscreen avatar. I keep hostile creatures targeted most of the time (except when I need to heal myself occasionally). <mo> macros will allow you to heal people via your group window without actually having to target them. Just place your mouse over their name and click your key bound button to cure/dispel/resurrect/etc. Works out for me very well and if you haven't tried it yourself, I'd suggest you give it a shot.

I have 1-0 as primary skills 1-5 typically being the dps side of the healer while 6-0 is stuff like sleep or esuna, half of the 2nd hotbar is binds for q/e/r/f/v which are the most essential spells for me (cure/med/swift/lustrate). The other half are skills that are important but not ones you use often and these I just manually click with the mouse. Though I have run into some ugly situations where I would have to quickly click a teamate on the team bar then click a spell on the hotbar with speed and precision. Doesn't always work out so well :p

In the settings you can make more hotbars visible up to 10 of them, and you can also position the party bar in another spot with he UI controls. It helped me to move the party list to where my mouse rests anyways so that I'm not moving around awkwardly trying to click it on the fly. Less wrist strain.

I heal by using F1 through F5, and clicking on Party members 6-8 to target.
My keybinds are: 1-6, alt+1-6, Q, E, R, C, X, F, and ALT+ Q, E, R, C, X, F. I click on a very select few nonpriority spells (Such as Aero II for example.)

If I need to constantly switch healing targets, I switch target mid heal/while global cooldown is going on for instant spells. GCD is rather long in this game, so it isn't that hard, and it is incredibly fast if you are good at it. If you aren't used to it though, I would imagine it would take some practice.

Another alternative is to use MO and targetoftarget macros for your spells. The way this works is you mouse over the party members HP bar and press your heal. It will heal them as if you targetted them. targetoftarget causes the spell to stick to whatever your targets target is (Good for things like Virus).

I would strongly disadvise making macros for each individual party member, as this is incredibly taxing on space, memory, efficiency, and well... It's a little silly to be walking around with 16 keys just for Cure and Cure II to be honest :) Even if you could make that many bars for skills, its very bad to have that much stuff on your screen. You want your screen and UI to be as clear as possible so you can see whats going on.

Just chiming in... I'd say you're over complicating your UI by having so many individual target macros. I feel like you're working much harder than you need to in order to play efficiently!

I would scaling way back on the amount of macros and just get better at switching targets mid-cast. Like somebody mentioned, there's plenty of time during cast/gcd to switch. It'll just take some getting used to, but when you do you'll be able to sip your coffee while healing! xD

quick selecting party member 1-8: F1-F8.

simple enuff. lol

I use <mo> <t> <focus> macros for all my healing spells, in that order. Always Focus your tank. Keybind my heals with 1-6 - Cure, Cure II, esuna, Medica, Medica II, Cure III - Alt 1-6 are my DD spells. My mouse has 4 side buttons (Steel Series Sensei RAW), these are all of my buffs WHM (6) - SCH (5) with ALT mods changing out the easiest to click for embrace. Always keep the tank or Boss targeted. Then mouse over to heal myself or others. While on SCH I target another player if they need a lot of healing so I can spam embrace and cures. Otherwise I'm always pressing embrace for the tank and MO for anyone else. So you can micro and multi task easily. I also change my movement keys. I only use strafe left (w) right (r) and forward (e) and I use the mousse with those to move. DON'T NEED MOVE BACK OR RIGHT LEFT!!! For Regen (D) Eye for and Eye (A) Stoneskin (S) and Virus (Q) and also benediction (F) I use the buttons that are all close to my left hand at all times.

I personally hate <mo>.
Well, not hate, is just that I do so much and move so much that <mo> is simply not a good option for me.

I do use F1-F8 to target party members, combined with actually clicking on the party list.

As far as macros go I have lots of them, but they are all used on special occasions.

Macros for:
-Swiftcast+Raise
-Swiftcast+Holy
-Swiftcast+Protect
-Swiftcast+Stoneskin

-/ac Stoneskin <me>, /ac Stoneskin <2>,..... /ac Stoneskin <8>
-/Focustarget + Virus + Eye for an Eye

Misc macroes for party shouts:
-Bards use MP song
-Use limitbreak
-Use Esuna+Regen (on me)
-/p <2> has the Allagan Rod <se.4<se.1> + /y #2 has the Allagan Rod!

My hotbar is messy for lots, its Godly for others, Ive been using the same set-up for about 10 years of gaming as a healer.

-ALT+1 - Alt+= --> Healing Spells
-Ctrl+1 - Ctrl+= --> Damage Spells
-Shift+1 - Shift+= --> Buffs/Debuffs
-F1 - F8 --> Swap Party Members

People tend to make their job as a healer more complicated than it needs to be
Others summed up pretty much how I have played healer for 10 years or so:

* F1-8 for party target combined with mouse selecting in party window, whichever I feel like at the time. (I have had to deal with raids of 24 people - so I'm used to using both)
* Macros for special skills/combinations - not normal healing. I tried healing via macro and I just find it Bleh
* I personally don't like <mo> because I use my mouse for camera panning constantly and it leads to some awkward situations
* I don't use shortcuts for switching Hotbars - I use mouse therefore all healing based skills are on Hotbar 1
* Rearrange my HUD layout for ease of use = My Layout
Switching it around can make the world of difference
That combined with the suggestions others have offered should help you a lot

I use macros for my skills
For healing its set to heal mouseover target
Then target
Then target of target
Then me

So if one isnt available it goes down the list until it heals me.
Its helpful for a variety of situations and leaves my keybinds to more important things

I keybind all my skills with the help of a razer naga. The usefulness of this mouse is underrated, theres 12-16 buttons to use, and they can be used with combination of the alt and ctrl keys too.

My binds are a little different then the standard ones people use
I use t f g h for movement
And for skills i use "z x s a e r y u j n" along with the mouse buttons and alt/ctrl
Sometimes if i really need to, i use 1-10 o the keyboard (my mouse uses numpad)

I switched my movement keys to the number pad. I can move around with my right hand or reach over and target things with my mouse while keeping my left hand on my hotbars/macros at all times so I can cast immediately. I use the F keys to target players before pressing my hotkeys, which are just set to <t>. I have one row set to just the numbers, one row set to Alt+[number], and one row set to Ctrl+[number]. The Ctrl row is less common things, like Raise, Protect, and food, and I have it as a vertical row on the far right side of my screen.

I have the same default setup for both Tank + Healer roles:

Numpad 1-8 targets party members, Numpad 9 targets pet.
The various Numpad keys around those ones (/*-+0.) are heals and buffs and other stuff that I want to cast on those teammates (6 abilities total)
Holding Control or Shift or Alt gives me other sets of stuff to cast on those teammates (4 x 6 = 24 abilities total or two full hotbars)

The standard numeric keys and function keys along the top of the keyboard are also affected by Shift/Control/Alt modifiers (for another 8 hotbars total!) so I've access to all ten hotbars worth of stuff directly from the keyboard.

Target swapping can seem a little iffy if you're not using mouseover macros for everything, but the /targetlastenemy command (bound to an easy-to-hit key such as "Pause") is your friend :)
If I'm targetting an enemy to DoT it up, and suddenly want to heal player 2 I'll hit (Numpad2) (Numpad0) (Pause) - it's practically instantaneous to target the player and queue the heal, and I've already switched back to the enemy again by the time the cast bar appears.

For more raidy stuff, I just set the Main tank as the Focus target and use [Heal Focus target] macros
(e.g. If Numpad0 is my usual Heal, I'll bind this so it triggers a Focus Target Heal when I hold Control and Press Numpad0).

I am a game pad user (mainly because I mostly play on PS3 as it's easier for me). I played FFXI for years also using a game pad. The only challenge with a gamepad is larger party sizes where it's not so quick to use up and down to scroll away from your focus target. Am not high enough yet for this content yet so will have to see! But my thought was to have shortcuts to the 6th, 12th, 18th member perhaps. So far I haven't been held back at all using cross bars and pad but will be interesting to see how adaptable this is with larger groups. I may need to switch back to PC yet!

I use F1-F8 for members.

Click target through the party window. Once you start casting you are free to change targets, move the party window near your character so you can see when to dodge and watch health/debuffs at the same time. The best hotkeys are often overlooked, its the mouse scroll, it eliminates the need to spam a button and is so easy to use, unfortunately FF14 doesn't let you map mouse scroll so you have to progam your mouse to use keyboard inputs (I use -=). I have cure (MS up), regen (MS down), cure II (MS shift + up), medica (MS shift + down), sprint (M3), then I use the side buttons on my razor naga mouse for cooldowns/esuna, I use 234 for damage spells and click holy/cleric stance. I also make a vertical hotbar and set it to the left of the party window, I put cure II and cureIII (for the rare click heal) there so you can easily see when your free casts proc, I also put revive there and click it if needed. I use WASD to move and hold right click to steer with the camera.

With my setup above I never have to move my hands unless Im DD'ing, so I never missclick and dodging or looking around is easy. I also play BLM. For that I use: fire (MS up), thunder III (MS down), fire III (MS shift + up), blizzard III (MS shift + down), sprint (M3). I put the cast bar slightly above my character and the enemy health slightly above that, that way I can make sure I'm not not loosing cast time while monitoring my thunder timer and watching for things to dodge.

Hope this helps some people.

EDIT: oh forgot to mention, I don't use any macros. Mouse over can screw up by unintentionally mousing over things. I also use "Q" and "E" for targeting mobs, nearest NPC to farthest on E and assist target on Q, I switch out assist for BLM.

For any game, I always just try to use 1-4 keys since using anything past 5 is kinda cumbersome for me. I moved the party display to middle left of screen, and also made it small for 8man groups. I haven't tried the mouse over macros, but I don't find it a problem to just click names of players in the player box to target them using my mouse while moving with WSAD. I don't use ctrl since it places my pinky finger in an uncomfortable and awkward position, so I just use alt button and do that with my thumb, so I have 12 keybinds I can comfortably and quickly use.

For 1-4 I have cure, esuna, cure II, regen. For alt + Q,W,E,R I have stone II, aero, holy, stoneskin. For alt+ 1-4 I have medica, medica II, swiftcast, and sleep. I do have keybind for 5 which is cleric stance, but most of the time I click with mouse. All the other spells I don't have keybinded and just click with mouse.

I use mouseover macros and have things bound to buttons like T, G, F, Y, B, etc. I also have a few CTRL + number macros, and CTRL + T is my "oh shit!" for Benediction.

I highly recommend mouseover macros. There's really nothing faster, and you should have no trouble moving and casting if you work with it enough.