What do you use for movement?

DPS have more freedom as far as movement goes: often, they can just move holding down both mouse keys.

As a healer you often have to be able to move and have your mouse free for target selection. I'm going to unbind S cause backing up serves little purpose. I know some people unbind left and right turn but keep stafe. I'm considering keeping forward, left strafe, right strafe, working mouse movement in as needed. I need to decide soon so I can get my binds in the right spots. Seems you can get away with using some jump momentum for target swaps as you mousemove but that's not always going to work and air time is FFXIV is a bit shorter that what I'm used to in WoW. It would free up a lot of binds but I can see it being clumsy as well.

I want to know what you guys do.

BTW this is my first post and I just started playing FFXIV a week ago if it matters. I'm a veteran WoW player looking for something fresh. I only have this lvl 39 white mage so far.

Hiya and welcome to the game <3

Big important note, I play left handed, mouse in the left, right hand over WASD.

First up, I'd strongly recommend trying out party targeting via the function keys assuming you're not running a tiny keyboard. Clicking party members is cumbersome, slow and distracting by comparison which is dangerous for healers given that we can't huddle in corners like WoW used to allow back when I played it.

I'm guessing your disdain of back-pedalling comes from a PvP habit? ;) I actually wouldn't recommend unbinding it, just avoiding it, it does have it's use for slight adjustments if you're trying be precise with your positioning in PvE. Even if it's marginally useful, it's still a tool in your toolkit and unless your desperate to hotkey something else more valuable there, I wouldn't suggest throwing it out just because it's a bit smelly :o

My binds are super super old school, no mobastyle hotkeys here, WASD for movement with Q and E for backup turning on the rare occasion I'm actually clicking something (Or more likely, drinking). 1 to = with control and alt modifiers, auto run on R, Focus target on F, Tab targeting, F1-F8 for party targeting.

Using the Function and tab keys for targeting is invaluable as you say, it makes it easier for me to keep instant GCDs and oGCDs rolling through movement. You can also still use jump momentum even with turn to face enabled via holding down the right mouse button and making small mouse movements as you cast. An example of this is here 9 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdU4tRrX984

Hope that all helps.

Thanks for the reply but how is F1-F8 any less cumberstone? I can't even reach those keys while keeping my hand near my healing keybinds, especially not F5 - F8. Click targeting seems viable and I've been doing it in WoW for 15 years. Granted I also had click-to-cast functionality via Vuhdo or Clique but that's not a big deal.

I guess it does make a little more sense if you are left handed with right on keyboard, having your thumb down by shift and ctrl. Most people are right hand dominant though and keep their left hand on their keyboard with their fingers around WASD and use their pinky for tab and shift modifiers in my experience. BTW healers definitely can't huddle in corners in WoW. They do tend to keep more distance than healers in FFXIV.

I'm going to be bold and say your set up might not be how most players choose to do it but I'm still a newbie here. More answers please!

For targeting, I have mouse wheel set to scroll up/down through party.

That's an interesting idea, though I don't think I'll be using it. Would make spreading Regen really simple. Manual clicking makes me feel like I have great control and target swapping efficiency. Come on healers, reveal your secrets. Don't be shy.

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Originally Posted by Stratus9

Thanks for the reply but how is F1-F8 any less cumberstone?

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Left handed + big hands I guess, left control = is no problem for me, thus the caveat.

However, I promise you that function keys are faster than clicking once you get the muscle memory down (assuming you can reach them of course). Function keys are always in the same place, your mouse cursor and potentially the thing you're trying to click on might not be. Whilst I've never considered myself a particularly quick healer, I can triage and react exceptionally quickly which was a huge boon in WoW BGs and open world.

I use legacy settings without the strafes on WASD. Allows me to move only with one hand if I need to, though 99% of the time I'll lock camera view with right click and move with the keyboard. No awkward slow backwards steps pretty straightforward. You can also point your camera an shoot straight which can help with some mechanics (while not having to hold any mouse keys down).
I use simple single action mouseover macros for my healing spells. There's no real harm in doing so and it removes having to switch targets entirely from your "workflow".

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Originally Posted by Stratus9

I'm going to unbind S cause backing up serves little purpose.

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Backpedalling will get you killed, yes.
The Legacy control scheme changes it so you move backwards instead of step backwards. This helps with many things. Getting out of AOEs, looking away from mechanics that require you to not look at them (these are more often than you think), and just generally feels better to do imo.
I would suggest keeping S as backwards movement and changing your control scheme from Standard to Legacy.

First of all, as other people mentioned, don't unbind S. Change to legacy camera so you don't walk backwards.

I personally don't like using the function keys to select party members because that takes my fingers away from my movement keys (I use WASD). I just use my mouse to click.

Third, and most important tip is, get a MMO mouse. I use the Logitech G600. It gives you access to 20 keys just on your right hand so your left hand is almost always on WASD. I only put very limited skills on my left keyboard area, mostly skills with longer cooldowns. It takes a while to get used to but I guarantee you it will take your play to the next level, especially on melee dps.

I don't work for Logitech btw.

There seems to be a lot of different styles. I considered changing the F1 - F8 to other keys but ultimately that seems like too many keybinds used up on targeting even with the ones it frees up on movement. 8 targets feels like too many for me. It is tempting because this would completely free up the mouse for movement and the mouse is the best way to move is most circumstances. I can see the benefits in pvp as well.

I'm not comfortable with party scroll so I think I'm left with click targeting. I considered mouseovers but I heard they aren't as efficient in FFXIV due to the way macros register spellcasts or something like that. Mouseover macros are a staple to MMORPG healing for sure as well as click-to-cast which I use in WoW. That generally always requires add-ons, which of course there will be none in FFXIV.

I just play on controller and use the dpad to go through the party list

Well I was thinking of swapping F1 - F8 to Shift QWERASDF and just watched a video of a guy doing just that. Tried it out a bit. It felt awkward but it does free up the mouse for movement. Alternatively I can target click or mouseover click. This feels way better to me but limits some movement to keyboard. I think either method can work in PvE.

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Originally Posted by Stratus9

I considered mouseovers but I heard they aren't as efficient in FFXIV due to the way macros register spellcasts or something like that. Mouseover macros are a staple to MMORPG healing for sure as well as click-to-cast which I use in WoW. That generally always requires add-ons, which of course there will be none in FFXIV.

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They aren't as efficient because you can't queue them and if you try to macro instants onto another ability they have a 1 sec wait inbetween by default. One reason I dislike swift+raise macros. They're fine enough for ST heals and probably one of the very few "acceptable" combat macros, especially if your reaction time is slower than the fraction of a second you lose from being unable to queue. You don't ST heal that often in most content anyway.

If you go with mouseover macro, make sure you only put the /ac "ST heal" <mo> line in your macro (not counting /merror off or /micon), don't try to be fancy and add a <t> line at the end to try to make it default to yourself or a target in the case of no mouseover, it'll just mess up and heal you 90% of the time.
Also fill every spare line of your macro with the /ac mouseover line to reduce the chance of it not registering.

Like the person above me said, healing single target spells are perfectly fine to make mouseover macros for. Follow his advice.

The reason macros are generally discouraged are twofold. 1) They don't queue properly so you lose out on a few milliseconds which make them simply unusable for DPS spells because a few milliseconds every gcd means a lot of dps loss over the duration of an encounter. 2) They don't guarantee order of execution within the lines of the macro, so if your macro has 3 lines of actions it could very well start on line 3 and skip line 1&2.
For healing/mitigation/buffs this isn't an issue because you don't use them often enough in this game when optimized to take any serious hit due to time loss. It's negligible. But you need to make sure you only make single action macros to avoid 2). You can spam that single action within the macro though.

I use QWES. On one character I still use A and D (Legacy Mode, but with A and D as Turn Camera Left/Right), but on the other I relegated them to other functions.

A quick note: You can backpedal even while in Legacy mode by holding QES together, if you need to do that while tanking to not disrupt your melee while moving mobs, though this is largely unnecessary now that you can attack, dodge, block, and parry against enemies directly behind you... somehow.

Personally, I wish there was an additional Keybind option for "Flip Camera and Character Direction" after "Flip Camera" and for flip camera to be an available as a macro command. "Flip Camera" is nice for aiming Elusive Jump, but allowing for both at once would make Legacy Camera unnecessary for those who generally prefer Standard Mode but want Legacy Mode's backward movement.

Getting a mouse with a 12 button side pad helped so much. 7 of the buttons are for party member targeting, 3 of them are single purpose spell activation (lightspeed, rescue, swiftcast), 2 of them are dual purpose depending on whether or not shift is pressed (1 is malefic or gravity with shift and the other is a resurrection macro or /party resurrection time remaining with recast:Swiftcast)

Then mapping some of the keyboard keys like the F1-F5 keys and other keys / combos you can hit without moving your hands for abilities, it's possible to be able to use every spell for your class without having to shift your hands off of movement keys, you can move, select party members, cast and look around independently of each other and only have to use the mouse pointer for earthly star / sacred soil / asylum.

The only downside is that you have to buy a mouse like that and then practice with it ^^

Are you using mouse for movement so that you can more readily use actions? Mouse can be fast if it's freed up. You could shift your single target heals to surround the movement buttons, like Q E Z X F V G ` 1 2 3. In legacy W A S D is plenty control for movement while doing other things with the mouse. I basically never use mouse for movement in combat. For adjusting my view yes, but not exclusively. I also use the arrow keys for view changing when not using the mouse, because I mostly set damage actions to the numberpad. Even on top of moving my hand between keyboard and mouse a tiny distance selection can be really fast. But it's also a matter of where you leave your cursor. When I'm not using it I try to leave the cursor in a consistent place right next to the party list. However I do also often use T to select target's target

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Originally Posted by Lethros

Are you using mouse for movement so that you can more readily use actions? Mouse can be fast if it's freed up. You could shift your single target heals to surround the movement buttons, like Q E Z X F V G ` 1 2 3. In legacy W A S D is plenty control for movement while doing other things with the mouse. I basically never use mouse for movement in combat. For adjusting my view yes, but not exclusively. I also use the arrow keys for view changing when not using the mouse, because I mostly set damage actions to the numberpad. Even on top of moving my hand between keyboard and mouse a tiny distance selection can be really fast. But it's also a matter of where you leave your cursor. When I'm not using it I try to leave the cursor in a consistent place right next to the party list. However I do also often use T to select target's target

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This is how I would normally play, yes. I do, however, acknowledge that party targeting with keybinds can be useful. It depends on how many mechanics there are that require fancy footwork. It does feel good to move with the mouse and any DPS has the advantage of doing this without much thought to it. But, yes, keyboard movement tends to be sufficient for most PvE content in my experience. I'm only lvl 44 in FFXIV though so I've yet to see the interesting stuff.

I'm not sure about party scrolling. I've never really considered that and suspect it doesn't have the most efficient target swapping capabilities.