Number of Abilities per Job, if this helps anyone.

[Reclusegamer]

I'm left handed on Mouse/Keyboard and I can comfortably reach for at least 8 buttons (10 if I count 5 and Cntrl 5 on my bottom 2 hotbars) Everything else I have to mouse over(and thereby have to dip my vision away from looking at the boss for a brief moment from time to time) I wish I could optimize this better while not having to buy an MMO mouse with extra buttons. I want to step up my gameplay a bit. Granted I do pretty well in my current state but I have a lot of room for improvement.

Any suggestions? If I could somehow bind my third hotbar to Shift + (1,2,3,4,5) that would be excellent but I'm not sure currently if it can be done without removing currently existing keys.

(I'm not sure if this is the right thread to be requesting this.)

[Iyrnthota]

I'm left handed on Mouse/Keyboard and I can comfortably reach for at least 8 buttons (10 if I count 5 and Cntrl 5 on my bottom 2 hotbars) Everything else I have to mouse over(and thereby have to dip my vision away from looking at the boss for a brief moment from time to time) I wish I could optimize this better while not having to buy an MMO mouse with extra buttons. I want to step up my gameplay a bit. Granted I do pretty well in my current state but I have a lot of room for improvement.

Any suggestions? If I could somehow bind my third hotbar to Shift + (1,2,3,4,5) that would be excellent but I'm not sure currently if it can be done without removing currently existing keys.

(I'm not sure if this is the right thread to be requesting this.)

Can't speak for the left-handedness, but I personally find I can only comfortably hit 1-5, so I use Ctrl, Alt, and Shift 1-5 as my numbered buttons.
Then I also bind R T F and G, with Ctrl R T F G.
That's usually enough for me, but I do have to dip into the Shift letters as well.

Top to bottom my hotbar will be:

Shift 1 2 3 4 5 R Ctrl+R Shift+R
Alt 1 2 3 4 5 T Ctrl+T Shift+T
Ctrl 1 2 3 4 5 G Ctrl+G Shift+G
1 2 3 4 5 F Ctrl+F Shift+F

Then I also have Q E bound to food/pots on all jobs.

[redheadturk]

I don't like using "alt +" or "ctrl +" combinations, so my comfortable range is summoner lol, which explains why I love it so much. I should set up my side button on my mouse to act as a "mouse3 +" set up, that would increase my range a lot.

I have everything set up so I can reach my skills with a single finger on my left hand, though it has eaten up a good number of my system hotkeys and removed my ability to strafe lol. Edit to add: I use my arrow keys for movement instead of WASD, so my setup makes sense for me.

[Reclusegamer]

Then I also have Q E bound to food/pots on all jobs.

This right here!

I just realized I had my strafe and turn buttons swapped around because my lower diagonals were making me backpedal slowly(and yes it caused me some problems in certain situations.)

and ever since I made that switch it's been much easier to dodge, so technically I don't need strafe buttons anymore. I can use those buttons for other skills.

[Iyrnthota]

This right here!

I just realized I had my strafe and turn buttons swapped around because my lower diagonals were making me backpedal slowly(and yes it caused me some problems in certain situations.)

and ever since I made that switch it's been much easier to dodge, so technically I don't need strafe buttons anymore. I can use those buttons for other skills.

Yeah, I never really used strafe anyways with the movement config I have (legacy? always get them mixed up)

[Petite]

RPR has more than DRG, yet DRG feels much busier.

Simple.

DRG has more abilities (oGCD) and they're mostly on short recast timers. Nastrond: 10s (3x per minute), Jump: 30s, Mirage Dive: 30s, Gierskogul: 30s, Life Surge: 45, Spineshatter: 1m, Star Diver: 1m.

RPR's skills are mostly weaponskills (tied to the GCD).

More importantly, it's a huge mistake to judge how busy a job is based on the number of buttons it has. Most jobs have useless buttons, some have GCD speed increase skills/traits and AOE rotations very rare in EX, Savage and Ultimate content.

Ultimately, you should be looking at CPM (casts per minute) on dummy parses if you want an accurate picture of how busy jobs are.