What's your combat hotbar limit?

I sometimes see people talk about their class having too many abilities, so I think the devs could benefit from a clear limit on the number of abilities people are willing to work with. I'm currently satisfied with three combat ability hotbars. My shortcuts usually involve SHIFT and CTRL (presumably everyone uses these shortcuts), and I use an MMO mouse. I might be willing to throw ALT and a fourth bar in there for the abilities I use the least often.

every single class can fit in 3 hotbars, imho. i used to use shift+ctrl+alt, with 1-5 and a few letters that i forgot, but now that i have an mmo mouse, i use shift and ctrl with 1 through = and have even less issues. in fact, im working on taking my entire hotbar setup down and squishing sprint, tele, return and a mount onto my 3rd hotbar and going fully 3 hotbars (right now i have 3 battle hotbars and 1 shared hotbar that hosts that and a few other misc buttons)

DPS and Tanks:

Top bar: Role abilities and LB (plus healing and rez if the job has it)
Middle bar: Mitigation, buffs, and cooldowns (arms length goes here if playing tank)
Bottom bar: All damage abilities

Healers:

Top bar: Role abilities, rez, and any "oh god everyone is going to die unless I use this" abilities
Middle bar: Panic buttons, cooldowns, and buffs
Bottom bar: Damage abilities and core rotation healing

Following this I've been able to comfortably fit every job thusfar onto three bars.

I use a controller and utilize 6. Several of them are partially empty just to emphasize and segregate their uses (AOE, Defense, Procs)

I have never EVER reached even close to this limit.

For anything like standard combos or rotation stuff:
1 2 3 4 and alt+1 2 3 4
These are the only hotkeys that are quick and easy for me to hit in combat. Naked 5 is a very niche maybe, the alt+ version is right out the window. I'll still put some other stuff on the 90-= side that's not time-sensitive where I don't mind clicking for it. If a job really truly requires more than that, well... something(probably utility or side-combo WSs) is never going on the hotbars and will be treated as if it doesn't exist.

Honestly, to me, people talking about 'button bloat' or too many abilities.... To me that's... well the first thought that comes to mind is this:

"Too many buttons? Are you... not willing to learn the entirety of your kit..? Is it so bad that you're expected to.... what.... learn and use your spells? Oh the horror of...! having to...... play your class/job.. Ig uess? Oh the shock and horror of it all!"

But mind you, I'm a pretty jaded individual who actually likes having more than 5 buttons.

On PC, I have 3 hot bars I use with regular keys, shift and alt versions. I've never needed more than that. Most classes have several blank spaces.

Then I have several side hotbars that contain non-combat things like sprint and mount, and a bunch without keybinds like job changing, crafting macros, etc.

I use 1 through 5, Q through T + F, and Shift/Ctrl/Alt ` through 4. On Scholar and Astrologian I'm brimming full and pray that next expansion nothing more gets added. Haven't even bound something like potions/tinctures. This is my limit.

I used all the following, in separate rows:
• ~, 1 to 6
• Q, E, R, T
• G (F is my ‘target closest’)
• Z X C V B
• F1 to F4
• Alt + all above keys except T, G, V, B, and 6
• Shift + D & A for Duty Actions.
• Shift + W for quick mount/dismount (I dedicate 1 hotkey for this).

There is 7 and 8, in addition to other remaining empty hotkeys because I use 4 hotbars but all these are the buttons I just manually click and/or does not utilize really often like tincture/pots, rez macro, certain ground targeted aoe macro, callout macro, etc. I switch around these part of hotkeys as needed.

Please SE, don’t add anymore skills lol. Don’t make me learn some more weird finger gymnastics lol.

4 + a streamdeck

Three hotbars I use actively :- on number row, + MMO mouse + tartarus
And one bar for mouse clicking special purpose spells.

Streamdeck does classes and mounts using the /commands associated with those.
As I am reaper this second, Tartarus has my avatar actions, 1,2,3 are the slices, 6,7,8 the AOEs MMO-1,2,3 are Harpe plus the jumps, MMO 5 is Crest and so on.
Limit break is a mouse press, like rescue is when I am healing.

Personally i like to go by my thumb reach on my MMO mouse.
The Razor Naga, and most MMO mouse 12 side buttons are really awkwardly positioned and they never seen to fix that.
Without removing my hand from a good position i can hit 1-6,

As such i like to be able to play a class on 6 buttons per bar.
1-6
Shift 1-6
CTRL 1-6
(ALT causes too many game breaking problems since it has so many Windows/background program hotkeys that can mess things up.
q
e
r
(Also the shift and CTRL versions of above)
Mouse wheel click (And its Shift+CTRL options)

If i cant fit things within that button range then i feel things are far too bloated.

FFXIV both does and doesn't fit depending on Job BUT that's not the main problem/bloat issue with XIV> the problem is it has many buttons/ability's that do the same thing, Dancer for example, how many ability's that "Hit all enemies in front of the dancer doing 50% less damage per enemy hit, requires proc to cast" does one class need? (Dancer has 3. They are all the same ability by a different name.)

3 combat hotbars would be my max.

But unless we're going to have far more actual depth, 2 bars seems like it ought to be plenty.

Can fit everything in 3 bars. F1-F12 are on the mouse (MMO mouse).
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...90/unknown.png

I really don't get the complaints of button bloat on some jobs.

the rough limit of 30 buttons se makes is nowhere near the 48 i can have easy access to on controller.

Active usage on the jobs I play, I have two full bars plus 2-4 extra buttons depending on the job. Except summoner now, which I can't really even fill two bars with.

When I started playing and realized I was going to break two bars, I had to start completely reprioritizing how I assigned the different abilities, like putting the longest cooldowns on the extra buttons, etc. Worst in this regard is my AST, which given the fact that I love healing on that so much I'll be happy if they leave it as it is.

https://imgur.com/33OSJjU.jpg

I don't have keybindings assigned to the class/job bars, just the first 4 hotbars. I could probably remove the "2" marker, because it's really just a habit from 2.0 when I mained PLD and attack order mattered. Now I just occasionally use the "1" marker to call attention to something.

But I really do think 2 full bars is about as much a job should be using for job-specific buttons. It gives enough room to add role actions and miscellaneous stuff (macros, pots, sprint etc) and still stay under 3 bars. Anything more and it starts to feel bloated for me.

i use 3 hotbars for each class:
Top row: abilities you spam a lot
Mid row (ctrl): abilities you regularly use, but usualy have a longer CD to avoid spamming (and abilities that become obsolete but are still required for level roulette).
Bottom row (still forgot to bind it to shift): abilities that you dont use very often or simply have very long CDs.

And i have an assisting hotbar for all classes, to which i have bound common actions (M4 for sprint and M5 for mounting, return, teleport). And some other hotbars for gimmicks of which im lazy (like certain emotes). And i have one for consumables. Still, in total i use like 8 hotbars (some are partialy off screen because there is no setting which allows for simply less buttons in the hotbar like for example just 8 buttons)

Alt is a modifier button i cant use, because thats my standard push to talk button. So for me 3 would be the limit, although a 4th one without any button shortcuts (like my 3rd bar is now) could still be doable.

The only type of abilities i could accept on a 4th hotbar are toggles like for example the emnity generation. These should rarely be used and therefor not need a button assigned to them (at the start of a dungeon manual clicking isnt too hard).

It's too much when I need to use 1 xbar + the extended xbar + the number pad on my keyboard for 1 job.

For some reason they wont set up combo actions to be 1 button like for PVP and when we control NPCs.

2 and a half hotbars is about where i can get a comfy amount of hotkeys for as someone forced to play only using the keyboard due to wrist issues with extended mouse usage, the only job i'm struggling to do that with right now is AST thanks to the new bloat in it's kit

This is outdated since I've swapped it around a little and also Bunshin + PF are now one button.
But I rly have a hard time taking the '' too many buttons '' argument seriously, most of these buttons are either fluff or utility too and not part of the single-target rotation.
And NIN is one of the busiest Jobs...
I really hope they don't ever listen to the '' auto-combos '' crowd because holy shit the combat would become so boring...

https://i.ibb.co/cQcRhPQ/111111111111.jpg

Edit: More updated hotbars.

https://i.ibb.co/93m50Kf/132132.jpg

The single-target rotation could almost fit on one bar it'd just be a little bit over and that's with mudras and all.

If the buttons are overwhelming for anyone, don't be afraid to slap them up there and click on the ones that look interesting occasionally. You will figure out where their utility is! Especially as a healer where you have to be a little more reactive. Don't feel bad about not having everything perfect right away. Keybinding for mmos is a skill that doesn't happen fast.

LB and rescue I put on my vertical side bar with the teleport and stuff I don't use as often. Your "oh kupo" button should always be accessible but not where you can accidentally use it!

The problem for me is less hotbars than it is keybinds. Most of my stuff fits on 3 hotbars, with a bit on a 4th, but there's only so many ways I can mod keybinds and move my fingers before it starts getting awkward lol
I have about 28 keybinds and anything much beyond that is imo too much

I use 3 battle hotbars. 0-9 (plus . And /) on my numpad. Then the same with ctrl and alt. I only recently added the third hotbar about a 2 months ago and still, on occasion, mix up my skills.

My spouse is on PS5 and he only plays with 2 sets of cross hotbars. As he has to manually switch between which hotbar he is using, he finds it annoying if he has to scroll through rather than just switch back and forth, as there isn't a back cycle (as far as we know) for hotbars.

So in total, I have 36 spaces and he has 32. But I also have a hotbar on the side of my screen for teleport, return, journal, food, mount, and eternity ring that is not keybound.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

I really don't get the complaints of button bloat on some jobs.

the rough limit of 30 buttons se makes is nowhere near the 48 i can have easy access to on controller.

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If you are asked three times to confirm a given decision, does it stop being annoying just because you haven't yet hit some button cap to pressing 'Yes'?

Bloat isn't determined by running out of space, only by a function's taking up unnecessary amounts of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

If you are asked three times to confirm a given decision, does it stop being annoying just because you haven't yet hit some button cap to pressing 'Yes'?

Bloat isn't determined by running out of space, only by a function's taking up unnecessary amounts of it.

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This exactly. For example with AST, redraw could be the same button as draw because you'll never draw a second time when redraw is available...same thing with crown draw/crown play. That's immediately two keybinds you can eliminate with zero change in functionality.

I like to keep things to 3 hotbars. I have small hands and my fingers aren't super flexible or coordinated.

I use 1-6, Q,E,Z,X,C,V along with alt + shift modifiers. Rarely used skills such as fairy placements I don't bind, I just click them when needed.

For the most part I can fit all my jobs on 3 hotbars. I'm finding AST to be the exception - I hate that there are separate buttons for drawing and playing cards and arcana. I've relegated some lesser used skills to a new hotbar with ctrl modifier bindings. I hate using ctrl through because it is not comfortable for me. Thinking I'll break out my mmo mouse and get it programmed and set up to make AST easier on me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

This exactly. For example with AST, redraw could be the same button as draw because you'll never draw a second time when redraw is available...same thing with crown draw/crown play. That's immediately two keybinds you can eliminate with zero change in functionality.

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This I can agree with, stuff like '' make the 123 combos into 1 button '' I absolutely fundamentally disagree with.
But this is something that would make sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

This exactly. For example with AST, redraw could be the same button as draw because you'll never draw a second time when redraw is available...same thing with crown draw/crown play. That's immediately two keybinds you can eliminate with zero change in functionality.

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I noticed when I played my GNB again, the Gnashing Fang/Continuation abilities are just one button each, too, rather than separate like they were. Threw me off a second because I was like "Wait, why are these three buttons changing to the same thing-ohhhh" Let me tidy up my bar a bit. And it doesn't change functionality since they were never available together when they were separate. Someone on another thread about this mentioned DRG with High Jump and Dive and that's another good one.

Ideally around 26 unique Job actions. This gives me room to place Mount, Sprint, and four role actions within 32 slots with Cross Hotbar.

I don't differentiate between L2->R2 and R2->L2 or double tap L2/R2 because that just feels uncomfortable and prone to messing up in the heat of the moment.

Exceptions can always be made. I never want to accidentally completely screw myself or my party over so once in a blue moon things like Limit Break and Tank invulns can be squirreled away on one additional hotbar accessed by R1. This is almost always a deliberate clone of my base Cross hotbar with a few key buttons swapped out. The main exception is AST which basically has one entire side of the Cross hotbar dedicated to macros that play a card on specific party members and immediately swaps back to my main cross hotbar (the other side used to be the Minor arcana equivalent but that got scrapped with Endwalker.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

I noticed when I played my GNB again, the Gnashing Fang/Continuation abilities are just one button each, too, rather than separate like they were. Threw me off a second because I was like "Wait, why are these three buttons changing to the same thing-ohhhh" Let me tidy up my bar a bit. And it doesn't change functionality since they were never available together when they were separate. Someone on another thread about this mentioned DRG with High Jump and Dive and that's another good one.

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The only potential issue with that consolidation, as any mod-users would probably have already encountered, is that you can't button-mash (favored by many a high packet-loss player) High Jump without causing GCD clipping when Mirage Dive is likewise queued. Unless, of course, they add specific safeties for that.

Other famous examples: Fire 4 <-> Blizzard IV, Ley Lines <-> Between the Lines, Fire I <-> Firestarter, Fire III (not from AF and with sufficient MP) <-> Blizzard III, Freeze (now that it can't be used outside of UI) <-> Flare... and that's just from a single job.

I have 3 hotbars for most classes. Once it goes beyond that, my mind = this is horrible.

I started playing MMO's with Ultima Online. I liked the drag 'spell icons' onto your screen instead of having assigned hot bars. Macros were generally pretty simple affairs. It took me years to get used to "accepting" hot bars. I still don't like them or the way they look in any mmorpg I've ever played.