Is AST bad?

[tesni_g]

I'm a controller player, I'll admit it gets fiddly, but how I've got it set up works for me when I play AST. However, I've spent a little time trying to optimise my settings to get it as fluid as I can across 2 cross bar pages then get used to playing like that (it doesn't take long, but feels weird to start). There's options to bring up a different set of abilities if you combine both back buttons and which set of abilities you get depends on which back button you hit firsts. There's also an option for double tapping for a similar effect, though I find the former more reliable and less clunky than "RB + A", "RB+X" etc. This in effect makes it not too awkward to access up to 32 buttons (if I added the double tap on top I'd get an additional 8, but I could get into the flow of doing that and 32 slots is plenty). At least I find this helps me play jobs on the controller that have more buttons.

Absolutely second using multiple cross bar pages. Outside of healing, it's a lifesaver to have a universal bar for travel and social stuff (gpose and vital chat macros) that is exactly the same no matter what I'm playing. For healing, I like to put sects/summons/prepull junk on a secondary page to free up buttons for my main bars. It does feel super weird to switch in combat but it's wonderful once I got used to it.

The double-tap + directionals are a bit more awkward but having more cooldowns on my front page helps me track them. I've seen some controller players activate a secondary hotbar specifically to visualize cooldowns, too, but they use the "hidden" page of combining back buttons to access them. One thing about double-tap is that it takes a bit more mental prep. Since it's all off globals, I access the page as soon as I begin casting and hold until it's time to weave.

And with all these extra button spaces, there's enough room for me to macro cards. I feel dirty doing using macros in combat, but it's the only way I can imagine getting through the opener in a raid setting. Not having to physically target for cards has salvaged the class for me. It doesn't always work though, because macros can't queue the way that spells and abilities do, so I just try to get the card out on the next GCD instead. I wind up smashing buttons a lot during the Sleeve Draw.

If anyone has more coping mechanisms for AST on controller, I would really like to hear them.