Controlling a White Mage / Healing with a computer

[thegodthatwas]

A few questions.

I'm a fresh level 50 White Mage. (I've go a very well geared lvl 50 BLM so I'm not an utter novice)

Now that we are getting into 8 man content, I'm having issues being a healer. I play on a PC with a keyboard and mouse. My mouse has buttons for 1 through =. And I can easily press the Control and Alt buttons for the other two bars. (I have 5 bars in total, two of them can only be activated via click)

I have macros set up to heal specific positions in the party for the super basics: Cure, Cure II, Regen, Esuna.

There simply isn't ROOM on my hot bars for all of that for 7 other people, and everything else I don't have attached to a macro. I've been trying to get used to click on the names, and hitting buttons, but this seems to produce lots of fumbling on my part. Or I use the wrong ability on the wrong person. Or any number of other things can go wrong.

Am I just *missing* something?

[thegodthatwas]

What are your best practices for healing in an 8 man group? How do you get all of the various abilities on the right people, so FAST? >.> Maybe I'm just fumble fingered, but I have to ask. It's driving me nutz.

[Estellios]

Practice.

Having macros for every single skill on every possible target is very uh... space inefficient and will only be worse when Crystal Tower comes out and you have to worry about 24 people total. You just need to practice with more people.

I haven't used them but many people speak highly of the mouseover target macros ( /ac Cure <mo> , for example) so you might want to try those out. You just have to hover over someone's name in the pt list and hit the macro to start casting on them.

[Shyluv]

I switched from controller to mouse/keyboard about a month ago. I'm still adjusting cause I keep rearranging stuff. But I just target using F1-8 keys. I also tried having a cure macro for every single person. The /ac "Cure" <me> - <8>, for Cure II as well. That is what made me fumble. Having to adjust to who was in what slot each time. Even after putting the tanks and the top in my party list.

I had also tried the MO macros, but maybe I'm not coordinated enough; I had trouble moving out of AOE stuff in time. I would end up choosing between me living sometimes, and letting someone die while I moved the cursor off the party list. It was too hard for me to break the habit of moving with the keyboard instead of the mouse.

I went back to easier dungeons to experiment with what felt most comfortable to me.

[Frankenberry]

Call me old school but I use no macros. I just use 1-5 with cntrl and alt as well. I click on the players name in the party list and hit the key for the move I want. You can select someone else while you are casting so I have no problems.

[thegodthatwas]

Mouse driving... mmmmmmmm.... I had not considered that. XXXXXXD

My multi button mouse, has made me a keyboard driver. Hadn't even thought about moving back to using the mouse for driving.

[Imakles]

Macroing skills via specific targets is a terrible way to do things. It's over complicating your playstyle and I'm fairly certain gets pretty frustrating and out of control pretty quick. Macros let you do a lot in the game, but just because it's possible doesn't mean you should.

Clicking on individuals seemed too slow to me, so I tried reorganizing my UI and putting in <mo> and <tt> macros. My group window is right next to my onscreen avatar. I keep hostile creatures targeted most of the time (except when I need to heal myself occasionally). <mo> macros will allow you to heal people via your group window without actually having to target them. Just place your mouse over their name and click your key bound button to cure/dispel/resurrect/etc. Works out for me very well and if you haven't tried it yourself, I'd suggest you give it a shot.

[NeonC]

I have 1-0 as primary skills 1-5 typically being the dps side of the healer while 6-0 is stuff like sleep or esuna, half of the 2nd hotbar is binds for q/e/r/f/v which are the most essential spells for me (cure/med/swift/lustrate). The other half are skills that are important but not ones you use often and these I just manually click with the mouse. Though I have run into some ugly situations where I would have to quickly click a teamate on the team bar then click a spell on the hotbar with speed and precision. Doesn't always work out so well

[Little_Lulu]

In the settings you can make more hotbars visible up to 10 of them, and you can also position the party bar in another spot with he UI controls. It helped me to move the party list to where my mouse rests anyways so that I'm not moving around awkwardly trying to click it on the fly. Less wrist strain.

[Slark]

I heal by using F1 through F5, and clicking on Party members 6-8 to target.
My keybinds are: 1-6, alt+1-6, Q, E, R, C, X, F, and ALT+ Q, E, R, C, X, F. I click on a very select few nonpriority spells (Such as Aero II for example.)

If I need to constantly switch healing targets, I switch target mid heal/while global cooldown is going on for instant spells. GCD is rather long in this game, so it isn't that hard, and it is incredibly fast if you are good at it. If you aren't used to it though, I would imagine it would take some practice.

Another alternative is to use MO and targetoftarget macros for your spells. The way this works is you mouse over the party members HP bar and press your heal. It will heal them as if you targetted them. targetoftarget causes the spell to stick to whatever your targets target is (Good for things like Virus).

I would strongly disadvise making macros for each individual party member, as this is incredibly taxing on space, memory, efficiency, and well... It's a little silly to be walking around with 16 keys just for Cure and Cure II to be honest Even if you could make that many bars for skills, its very bad to have that much stuff on your screen. You want your screen and UI to be as clear as possible so you can see whats going on.