Troubles with Scholar

[Gokki]

Eos summon:
/hotbar pet "Embrace" "Eos" 1 2

Selene summon:
/hotbar pet "Embrace" "Selene" 1 2

1 being the hotbar #
2 being the slot within that hotbar
So that example is swapping slot 2 on hotbar 1

I didn't do it for the other 3 skills because I have them placed in different locations based on category (Selene's Fey Caress is right next to my Esuna, for example. Whereas I have Fey Covenant next to my Sacred Soil), however you certainly could do it for all of the pet skills. This would allow you to use only 4 slots for actual pet skills instead of 8 and have no macro icon/queuing/cooldown-display issues because it's done during the summon.

Other macros I use:

Whispering Dawn + Rouse:
/macroicon "Whispering Dawn" pet Eos
/ac "Rouse"
/pac "Whispering Dawn"

Sacred Soil auto targeting
/merror off
/ac "Sacred Soil" <t>
/ac "Sacred Soil" <me>
/macroicon "Sacred Soil"

Shadow Flare auto targeting
/merror off
/ac "Shadow Flare" <t>
/ac "Shadow Flare"
/macroicon "Shadow Flare"

I'l look into that and see if i can work around the default inadequecies of the UI. And yeah, i don't use crosshotbar. I tried using a controller but it very quickly became too limiting and slow. I also don't want more than two bars on the bottom of my screen because the UI is already taking up a lot of space on my screen. Adding a third bar is out of the question. If i can't play it like that then i'll play another class. :S

SCH is definitely on the higher side of class button counts. While I'd hate to have a huge ability squish, I'd agree something needs to be tweaked in terms of accessibility.

That said I don't have any problems with the current setup. In fact I love classes with lots of buttons. I've also got a 12-button mouse, which I use to supplement keyboard layout. A big part of it is making sure I'm using as many keys as possible. I currently use

QERTYUFGHZXCVBN12345 F1 F2 F3 F4 `
and
SHIFT+
QERTYZCVBFG

Plus ~6 of the 12 buttons on my mouse.

Which winds up being more than enough to map to. However I've heard folks with smaller hands can have trouble reaching some of those keys.

I use WASDQE for movement, 12345 for main spells, CVB for AoE, R for CC, \ for interrupts. These also have another bar with the same+Shift. Then i have a 3x4 bar for mmo mouse and another two bars for clickable stuff. Everything has to fit in those 20 buttons, more than that is too much. If a game requires me to use more than this i simply don't play it.

[Squintina]

I'l look into that and see if i can work around the default inadequecies of the UI. And yeah, i don't use crosshotbar. I tried using a controller but it very quickly became too limiting and slow. I also don't want more than two bars on the bottom of my screen because the UI is already taking up a lot of space on my screen. Adding a third bar is out of the question. If i can't play it like that then i'll play another class. :S

It's slow at first while you get used to it. I played on a mmo mouse for years, and at first controller was weird (but I really wanted to sit back lol so I persevered).
Now I can't imagine playing scholar without it (in pve. In pvp, I switch back to mouse/kb when I'm playing seriously). I use 48 slots (even more than you lol) and it's SO easy to access them all via a controller setup like the one I have, and it's so easy to dodge things thanks to the analog.

I think you should reconsider it

But even if you don't...
You could probably make a 2-hotbar set up if you just don't have some of the less used skills (like dissipation or Sustain) at all, and you use the summon macro to swap out all pet skills.

Another way to come around it is to have hidden hotbars, and then reserve 2 of your main hotbar slots to copy them.

Example

Hotbar 1 - whatever skills you want, except #11 and #12 are going to be macros. This should be mapped to your mmo mouse buttons directly.
Hotbar 2 - don't bother putting anything there, this will be visible to you but will be overwritten. This should be mapped to something like Ctrl+button or Alt+button.

HIDDEN hotbars (show only while you are editing them). Because these are hidden, buttons do not need to be mapped to them.
Hotbar 3 - put skills here
Hotbar 4 - put skills here

Make 2 macros (which I will call A and B)
Macro A copies Hotbar 3 to Hotbar 2
Macro B copies Hotbar 4 to Hotbar 2
Put macro A on Hotbar 1 slot #11
Put macro B on Hotbar 2 slot #12

Ta-dah, now you have 2 macros to switch hotbar 2 into 2 completely different hotbars at will!

What I'd do in that case:
Hotbar 1 = Common healing spells + Big cooldowns (you want to see your cooldowns) + switch macros
Hotbar 3 (hidden) = Attacking skills + Pet skill switch off + healing skills that didn't make it to hotbar 1
Hotbar 4 (hidden) = Summon skills + Pet management skills (because both of those would be lesser used) + whatever else didn't make it to hotbar 1 & 3

So while you might need to use multiple hotbars, by using copy you can make it so only 2 are visible and button-mapped at once.