PS4 Healer Guide?

Hello, I been playing the game for awhile but recently I have decided to transfer from my PC to PS4, can anyone share a guide that is useful for both white mage and scholar. Because currently I feel like a new player when I try to dps, and when healing it feels very awkward.

Thank You.

I don't think anyone can offer you the guide that works for you when it comes to button layouts. Best kind of advice I can offer is to make a certain button layout that seems logical to you and stimulates muscle memory:
D-pad for single target healing, action pad for AoE healing - For example.

You'd want bread and butter spells and ability easily accessible. Perhaps have multiple copies of it at the same spot.

I'm not at home right now with my PS4 so going by memory but I'd be happy to post something as I've always played on PS4 (tried PC a bit but find it too hard to control). I'm really good on PS4 now and find the controls to be awesome. As the other poster said it's all up to the actual person but I can post what I do after. It might not make logical sense as some things are just where they happened to be or what I got used to.

First thing I did is set the hot bar to the custom mode where you can hold down L2+R2 to bring up another cross bar quickly. I try to keep everything on my main crossbar plus the L2+R2 one. My secondary cross bar or R2+L2 I keep for non essential things like sprint or emotes. Here's my cross bar set up:

L2+UP - Presence of Mind
L2+RIGHT - Divine Seal
L2+DOWN - Shroud of Saints
L2+LEFT - Cleric Stance

I like this for the left side because it keeps my buffs and so on all together so can hit them easily.

L2+Triangle - Fluid Aura
L2+Circle - Holy
L2+X - Stone II
L2+Square - Benediction

Those are a bit more random, but it works for me as I can quickly hit L2+Left to go into cleric stance, then just keep holding L2 and pressing X to attack with Stone II. Feels natural to have X be attack.

R2+UP - Swiftcast
R2+RIGHT - Medica II
R2+DOWN - Medica
R2+LEFT - Esuna

R2+Triangle - Cure II
R2+Circle - Cure III
R2+Down - Cure
R2+Left - Regen

So for this I prefer all my main heals on the action buttons, so I can hold down R2 while running and hit square to do a Regen, or similar to above pressing X to Cure easily and Medica is right nearby as well, so all main heals on this side. Only area that might be a bit weird is where Swiftcast is but I'm just used to it there.

Then on the secondary bar where you hold down L2+R2 I have:
UP - Macro for Swiftcast + Raise + saying to the parting "Raising <t> next raise in 60 seconds."
RIGHT - Stoneskin II
DOWN - Stoneskin
LEFT - Protect
Triangle - Normal Raise (for when I don't want it with Swiftcast or when I don't want to announce to the party I'm raising)
Circle - Aero II
X - Virus
Square - Repose

For me I find this works really well because using the L2+R2 ensures that if you raise someone, do protect, stoneskin etc, you don't accidentally keep it on that bar, like if you had those on Crossbar 2. I was having issues where I'd hit R1 to flip to the second bar, but in the middle of battle it's easy to not switch back and then be on the wrong bar, so using L2+R2 avoids that. I use my bar 2 for things like sprint, journal, hunting log etc.

I just find this works well for me. Start of battle I hit Swiftcast with R2+Up, let go then L2+R2 and hit Stoneskin II, then Protect and off you go. Then when a boss starts, I do L2+LEFT for Cleric Stance, followed by L2+R2 again but this time Aero II and then Virus, then let go, L2+LEFT to remove Cleric Stance etc.

Remember that pressing up and down on the D-Pad cycles the party members. It's also helpful to target the boss first and hit square then select Focus Target so you can keep an eye on what it's doing. I'm going by memory but it's good to customize the targeting when weapon is out to allow you to select alliance members as well. That way you can press left and right on the D-Pad mid battle to select other members of the alliance should you need to raise or heal someone in another party.

Biggest challenge I find with the PS4 is that without a mouse it's harder to quickly target someone random (like a dead person in another party). Also keeping yourself zoomed out all the way is almost necessary. Hope that helps a bit! My biggest tip is just don't give up. I was seriously ready to quit at one point when I was new since it seemed so hard to do anything with the controller. But the controls are actually REALLY good in this game, and once you get them you'll be awesome. Like I don't even have to look at my cross bar to see what things are, everything is just by memory now, so I can be running around popping CS doing some DPS, removing it, healing etc without having to look and see what's what.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brightshadow

.../snip.... when I try to dps, and when healing it feels very awkward.

Thank You.

---

Mainly because of targeting issues right?
Pretty much had to macro skills with <t> and <tt> (target of target) so you can stay locked on the Tank for example and use Stone & other skills without breaking target lock.

My advice would be to have similar spells on the same bars/buttons for both jobs. For example I have Cure/Physik on R2+X, Medica/Succor on R2+Square. Makes life much easier when swapping between jobs.

I actually used to have targeting issues so made macros like <t> and <tt> but I only used that for like a week and haven't touched it since. I don't find there's ever a time that I need to keep the tank targeted where I want to do other things as well. I mean if the tank is taking so much damage that I need to stay locked on him, then I'm probably not going to be doing any DPSing on his target. I guess because I played Bard for awhile first and was very used to R2+R1 and L2+L1 to cycle through targets (it targets the one you are facing and only what is on screen, hold down R2 and press R1 to cycle right and L2 and L1 to cycle left). So before I'd have Virus or whatever set to <t> and <tt> but was finding it much easier to just actually cycle target the enemy, cast virus then go back to whoever else like the tank. The only big drawback to the controller where PC players have a slight advantage is if someone starts taking big damage, on PC they can literally just mouse over and click the target and heal, where we have to D-Pad up and down to get to them, so if it's the 4th player down it's a touch slower to select them than on PC but not by much. Honestly my biggest thing is practice, there's SO many ways to customize the controller it's crazy, so just trust me it just takes practice to get it the way you like!

Also check this guide it's really handy! https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._general_tips/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VisRalis

Mainly because of targeting issues right?
Pretty much had to macro skills with <t> and <tt> (target of target) so you can stay locked on the Tank for example and use Stone & other skills without breaking target lock.

---

This is some pretty solid advice as a WHM PS4 player. I didn't learn about this until I started doing Primal EX fights.

you can play with mouse and keyboard on PS4 too if you like

with gamepad one of the best things is that semi-target. if you have the tank in target and go with the D pad through the grouplist to another person you can start the heal without pressing X (and make him to your target) and your target will jump back to the tank.

with R2 + L1 you will target the next monster, usefull for stance dance...

I found this https://sites.google.com/site/ffxivcontrollerguide/ helpful for determining my controller layout when I heal. The biggest takeaway for me was use of /chotbar copy for my pet hotbar, so I could press L2+R2 or R2+L2 and get to my fairy's actions, & the use of /chotbar change # for Cleric Stance. I settled on this Cleric Stance macro

/micon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance"
/chotbar change 3
/target <f>
/echo <se.6>DPS MODE

and

/micon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance"
/chotbar change 1
/target <f>
/echo <se.9>HEALING STANCE
/target <tt>

This macro targets my focus target (a boss) when I go into Cleric Stance & brings up my 3rd hotbar, which has my DPS skills. The other macro brings back the 1st hotbar, which has healing skills, and targets the target of my focus target, which should be the tank. When there's no focus target, it targets the target of the current target, which should also be the tank, but sometimes you'll target an enemy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 416to305

First thing I did is set the hot bar to the custom mode where you can hold down L2+R2 to bring up another cross bar quickly. I try to keep everything on my main crossbar plus the L2+R2 one. My secondary cross bar or R2+L2 I keep for non essential things like sprint or emotes.

---

Do this. Im on ps3 which is basically the same thing. I would have trouble while switching hotbars during battle and get mixed up and fall behind easily. I found a video on youtube where a guy explained how to do this and i have had zero troubles since switching to this method. Since you need your left hand to move the joystick around, put most on your important spells on the R2 side of you hotbar. You can find it in the options somewhere to do this. You have a choice to make certain hotbars disabled during combat but you can still switch them using the R2 then L2 without switching your main hotbar. Play around with this option. It is amazing with a controller.

One helpful thing I didn't learn for a long time: you can set R3 or L3 to "Assist." Go to the system preferences menu and then to the setting for the controls. I used R3 as Assist and then found another preference (I think it was in character preferences somewhere) to do 1st person if I zoom in far enough on the camera instead.

What Assist does is it changes your target to whatever your current target is targeting. It is great for switching back and forth between boss and tank, especially if they are not in your party (Fates, helping another Alliance tank, etc). For WHM, using Assist may eliminate the need for <tt> macros, although there it is still nice to not switch targets at all.

Good advice above, a couple things I thought I'd add:

I use crossbars 1-3 on pretty much all my classes, and all the main skills I need instant access to are on two of them, with holding L2 & R2 (and the reverse) pulling up the second crossbar with things I need instant access to- so that's 2 full crossbars I have instant access to. And as for the third crossbar, hitting R1 flips between my main crossbar and that third crossbar only and not any of the others when my weapon's drawn. That way I can use the triggers to pull up my secondary crossbar and if I let go I still l have the main one up, or R1 only flips me between my main one and the third one and back again without cycling through the ones I don't need in battle. For my Scholar, things like Protect, Stoneskin, Raise macro are on my third one because I need occasional quick access but not instant access like with stuff on my secondary crossbar.

The other thing I use in addition to the target of target type macros for a couple of healing spells, is a couple of macros that hit a certain party slot which is where the tank is in 4 man instances (and where I move the MT in 8 man ones). Still want to have the regular version of the spells accessible for when you need to choose the target but when you need someone to go off without having to swap target the tank it saves a second at least since by setting it to cast on <2> it will go off on that party member even though you still have something else targeted.

This last part is Scholar specific but I have a Physick <2> Embrace <2> combo macro and while it's not usually good practice to lock Eos's healing to your GCD and target it gives you a stronger single target heal on command when you need it, and I use it more to heal the tank when dodging since the Physick cast will interrupt but the Embrace one will go off if she can do her cast without moving. When falling a tank through a dungeon who keeps pulling mobs where their HP gets to below 50% before they even stop to let you cast anything, this macro lets you spam Eos's cure with relatively low enmity generation on the run.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by giantslayer

One helpful thing I didn't learn for a long time: you can set R3 or L3 to "Assist." .../ What Assist does is it changes your target to whatever your current target is targeting.

---

Holy crap O_O Been using /target <tt> macro all this time when there was such a handy function!
Thanks!

The other thing I found helpful is I think it's L3 by default does lock on target, but it's also dismount from your chocobo. So normally you're riding the chocobo, hit L3 and you hop right off. The problem I was having was if an enemy targets you or tries to attack you while you're on it, pressing L3 would automatically lock on target on that enemy, instead of jumping off the chocobo. So you'd have to press it again, then circle to deselect that target, and THEN L3 to get off the chocobo. There's a setting in the options, can't remember where as I'm not on it now, but you can change L3 so that it only dismounts or whatever it is and doesn't lock. I've never used auto lock, so that was a huge help for me since now anything can target me and I can hop off the mount easily.