WXHB long-term carpal tunnel

[Darkstride]

You should be able to fit everything for a job's rotation on the main Cross Hotbar and Extended. I use the WXHB for actions that are more situational such as healing potions, Limit Break, Tank Stance, Raise, etc.

Also, I would not follow the macro advice above. Jobs can be played comfortably without them - you may just need to rearrange your setup. Macros don't queue, and they really mess with the flow of combat and will often result in a DPS loss. You'll probably also end up mashing buttons even more to get the macros to actually go off, which isn't going to help your hands.

[Iscah]

Currently, the shoulder buttons are used for hotbar switching (an outdated thing you shouldn't be using in combat), autorun, and for tab targeting in conjunction with the triggers. I would personally be fine all of those inputs were instead moved to double presses as they are either not necessary or don't come up as often.

I thoroughly disagree.

Autorun and tab-targeting are both things I use non-stop, and I use the R1+button combo to switch hotbars both out of and occasionally during combat – particularly for accessing the limit break which is on shared hotbar 5 instead of trying to find a place for it in each job's regular combat hotbars.

[LilimoLimomo]

You should absolutely not use macros like this. This is so bad, unbelievable.

I'm disappointed to hear that when a person's physical health is at risk, there are people who would urge that person to not utilize the tools that can improve their situation.

[LilimoLimomo]

i cannot imagine trying to use macros like that on a weave heavy class like gnb, good lord. this is honestly really bad advice

I'd recommend not imagining it and simply trying it, because it works swimmingly. If you know how to make an effective macro and then tailor them to your system's framerate and your personal needs, you're going to be able to consistently weave without clipping your GCD. The only hurdle is learning how macros really work so that you can take advantage of their strengths while avoiding common pitfalls.

[LilimoLimomo]

Macros don't queue

They actually do if you write them to queue, but you have to be intentional about it. All of the macros I've suggested using can be written as macros that queue.

[gllt]

While I agree macros are finicky due to their nature I also agree that it's a player's business how they play the game even if you can argue it's suboptimal, especially when it comes to matters of health.

Basically, if it comes down to it, yeah, use macros for whatever you need to use them for. I'll always look for other solutions first but if a macro turns out to be the realistic last resort, eh screw it, it's a video game. I don't even know what content you go into. Not everyone has to be perfect.

[Miki_L]

I thoroughly disagree.

Autorun and tab-targeting are both things I use non-stop, and I use the R1+button combo to switch hotbars both out of and occasionally during combat – particularly for accessing the limit break which is on shared hotbar 5 instead of trying to find a place for it in each job's regular combat hotbars.

I'm advocating for more customization options of course. Nothing should be taken away but rather more capabilities added.

[Claire_Pendragon]

do you use toggle for WXHB, or hold? if you use hold, toggle might help

unfortunately only works with hold. toggle/mix wont allow wxhb

[gllt]

I actually wish you could set hold or toggle separately for jobs, mainly because I'd use toggle for stuff like FSH and hold for my battle jobs

[Bibine_Bine]

Macros
You're using the WXHB because there are too many buttons to fit on your normal crosshotbars; thankfully, that's the problem that macros are the best at solving. A well-written macro generally will do a single action every time you press the button, but the action that it performs will be dependent upon context. In this way, you can reduce the amount of buttons you actually need to press by combining multiple Skills/Abilities into a single button. There are a few flavors of this:

• You can make a single button that does a Skill (like Keen Edge) if pressed within the GCD window, but instead does an Ability (like Danger Zone) if your GCD is on cooldown.
  
  
• You can make a single button that does a melee action (like Keen Edge) if you're within melee range, but instead does a ranged action (like Lightning Shot) if you're outside of melee range.
  
  
• You can make a single button that does a resource-requiring action (whether that resource is mana, some sort of charge, or the ability not being on cooldown), but if that resource isn't available it does a different action. For example, you could put Burst Strike and Keen Edge on the same button.
  
  
• You can put multiple resource-requiring actions on the same button, giving yourself what is in effect as "spend resource" button. Personally, I like to do this with my tanks' generic mitigation abilities so that I have a "mitigation button".
  
  
• You can make a single button that does one action if you're targeting a teammate, and another action if not. For example, you could make an "enmity management" button that uses Shirk if you're targeting a party member, but uses Provoke if you're not.

A really big problem with using macros like this is that you can't "queue" a macro like you can just a straight action, meaning this entirely defeats the earlier point you made about not mashing because the only way to not clip your GCD with a macro is to mash, at least a little.

Also, please never, ever use macros for combo chains. You are, at best, losing 0.5s on every single GCD you use with a macro for this purpose. That adds up a LOT over the course of the fight.