Advanced Crosshotbar Management – Example – Summoner

[DarkReed]

I can not take full credit for this. I have used information from other people, and just combined ideas to try and make a comfortable control system.

The crosshotbar system is for use for controllers. A system designed to try and supply easy use of skills, abilities, items and macros. With some thought, you can create some unique control setups. To this end, I will be trying to give an example of how I use macros and a bit of creative thinking to create a more intuitive control.

This first part is personal preference, and 100% from a ps3 player. The credit for the out of combat and in combat system goes to Jonathan12uiz in the forums. He has awesome youtube guides for crosshotbar setups (http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicResetGaming/videos)

The first Idea is to focus on the idea of in combat and out of combat. When running around the world, you don’t need every ability on you bars. For the same fact, when fighting in dungeons, you don’t need the ability to summon a chocobo.

The person for mentioned, pointed out something I did not consider. Create 2 bars just for out of combat, then 6 for in combat. You toggle between them by having the weapon drawn.

How to do this..

Step one, in the Character options, go to the “Hotbar settings” and then across to “Cross”.
Near the Top, there is an option called "Use pet hotbar". Untick this option, because we will be creating our own one to use.
At the bottom there is two options set under Set Selection. Enable both “Enable customisation” and “Enable customisation for when weapon is drawn”.
Under this “Enable customisation” option tick Hotbar 1 & 8, untick rest.
Under “Enable customisation for when weapon is drawn” tick Hotbars 5,6 & 7, untick the rest. (I will come back to this later why crosshotbars 2,3 &4 are unticked in both.)

Ok, so, so now you have two bars for out of combat (1 & 8), three crosshotbars for in combat (5, 6 & 7) and finally 3 unassigned (2,3 & 4). The unassigned ones will be used for macros, but never shown.

Let set up Abilities…

In hot bar 1, I setup out of combat items. For Summoner, I have macros for summoning each avatar. A few support abilities (Aetherflow, Raise, Swiftcast), Basic pet commands (heel, place, steady, guard, obey and sic). Chocobo control (summon, ride, stances).
Hot bar 2, Setup carby (blue)/garuda abilities. Basic Pet Commands (see above), Aetherflow and related abilities.
Hot bar 3, Setup carby (orange)/titan abilities. Basic Pet Commands (see above), Aetherflow and related abilities.
Hot bar 3, Setup ifrit abilities. Basic Pet Commands (see above), Aetherflow and related abilities.
Hotbar 5, Just Dot’s and damage spells + Limit break
Hotbar 6 Blank
Hotbar 7, Healing (normal Physick & physick <tt> versions), Res, Summon pets spells.
Hotbar 8, Anything else you need out of combat, Chocobo summon/control, food, pot’s, ether and medicine (in my case I have assign numbers to mobs aswell).

Right now, if you have your weapon sheaved, you will have out of combat setup, but with drawn, you will only have two crosshotbars. Your DoT’s/Damage and Support. You have the pets but no real access right now other than manual selection of the “hidden” crosshotbars. What to do now? Simple..

Create new summon macros so when you summon, say for example Ifrit, it will copy crosshotbar 3 into crosshotbar 6. Completing your Crosshotbar set.
You need to make 4 macros.
I use 3 commands…
/macroicon – When used with an ability or skill behind it. When placed on the crosshotbar, it will act like ability.
/ac – This is the command to “do something”. Like..
/ac “Protect” <me>
It will cast Protect on the target me. In FF macros, there are many different types of targets you can use. For this, I will be using <me> (for me) and <tt> (Targets Target – This means, if you are targeting the boss. Whatever the Boss is targeting will be the target. This Is handy for quickly healing tanks in boss fights or FATEs)
Lasty, /crosshotbar copy
This one took me a while to work out how to use. Here is how I have found it works..
/crosshotbar copy {from Job/Class Abreviation} {crosshotbar number} {to Job/Class Abreaviation} crosshotbar number}
The way it works, is that crosshobars are store under job/classes. This command allows you to copy from class to class, job to job or class to job.

Say you just hit level 30 and completed you job unlock quest. When you equip the soul stone, you need to reset up all your abilities. You don’t, you can copy them from the class using this command.
Example:- /crosshotbar copy mrd 1 war 1
This copies crosshotbar bar 1 from mrd to crosshotbar 1 on war.

With that in mind, here are the macros need to finish this setup.

1 – Summon Carby (blue)/ Garuda
Name: Garuda
/macroicon “Summon”
/ac “Summon” <me>
/crosshotbar copy smn 2 smn 6
(Note: What this does is copy the crosshotbar from smn set crosshotbar 2 to smn set crosshotbar set 6 (see why I left number 6 blank?))

2 – Summon Carby (orange) / Titan
Name: titan
/macroicon “Summon II”
/ac “Summon II” <me>
/crosshotbar copy smn 3 smn 6

3 – Summon Ifrit
/macroicon “Summon III”
/ac “Summon III” <me>
/crosshotbar copy smn 4 smn 6
(note: Once these three macros are done, replace all versions of the normal abiltitys on your hotbars with this maros)

4 – Heal – To heal your targets target. When targeting a mob, this target should be the tank
Name: Heal tt
/macroicon “Physick”
/ac “Physic” <tt>

Replace all the pet summon abilities on your crosshotbar with this macros both in combat and out of combat. And once you use the summon spell, crosshotbar 6 will be filled.

You end up with 3 crosshotbars in combat. First your Dot’s and Damage, then your pet skills relevant to the pet out and lastly your support abilities.

I have also done the same for my sch. It still works well. I can see this being handy for other classes. So, I thought I would share this idea

[DarkReed]

Low Level Black Mage Example..

Do as above, but in Crosshotbar 2, put all your Fire Spells.
In Crosshotbar 3, Put all your Ice spells.

In both sets you should have enough room to put some stand / core abilties in the same places.

Next, Macros..

1 - Change to Fire
Name: Fire Spells
/macroicon "Transpose"
/ac "Transpose" <me>
/crosshotbar copy thm 2 thm 5

2 - Change to Ice
Name: Ice Spells
/macroicon "Transpose"
/ac "Transpose" <me>
/crosshotbar copy thm 3 thm 5

In crosshotbar 2, but Ice Spells macro, and in crosshotbar 3 put Fire Spells macro.

The icon will work just like the abiltity, so once used, the cooldown visual will be there. But now, when you use Transpose, if you have the buff up, it will change and load the spells that benefit from it.

As the abilities are copied into crosshotbar set 5, when weapon is drawn, this will be the default crosshotbar displayed.

[DarkReed]

Reserved............

[kristerrr86]

Awesome stuff ^^

[Runeseeker]

The crosshotbar copy doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't give me an error, but it won't actually change my hot bar 6 to have anything in it. Do you type it exactly like you have it, or are there any brackets that change it to work?

[Syrellaris]

i'm not sure if I follow the copy hotbar commands? What would it copy, if you havent set anything on them in the first place?

[DarkReed]

@Runeseeker
If there is no error, the command is working. The first example I have given is for summoner. This will only work on summoner. If you use the idea for scholar or acancist, you need to set new summon macros for those jobs. For summoner, the macros have to be the same as I put above, macro commands are oftern case sensitive,so do type in exactly how I have in the examples. For sch or acn, change the smn parts in the macro command to the relivant job.
Edited:
Looking, at your info in your post. It says your ACN is 27, so summoner job isn't unlocked yet.
Manually select crosshotbar 6, right now, it should be empty.
Then use "/crosshotbar copy acn 2 acn 6" in the chat box. If this works, and abilties for pet now appear.
Go through the macros you created in the guide, and change the word smn to acn. This should solve your problem.
When you unlock smn, if I remember right, when you equip the soul of summoner stone, you will have blank hotbar set for that job. Just use this command..
/crosshotbar copy acn X smn X
Where I have put the X, put the number of the hotbar to copy, like "acn 1 smn 1". Do this for all 8 hotbars, and your smn crosshotbars will be the same as your acn ones. At that point, you will need to make another set for macros for summoning pets excatly for as they are above, and replace the summon pet macros on the crosshotbars for it to work.

@Syrellaris
The copy hotbar/crosshotbar command is nice and simple to use, just can be hard to wrap a head around. SE's macro references doesn't help much (See bottom of this page for full list of macro comands http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...de/win/manual/.)
The copy command will copy and entire crosshotbar setup. In game, using the crosshotbar system, you have access to 8 per job and class. It allows you to copy an entire setup of both Left and Right Trigger/Button configurations to another location. As it is a copy, it doesn't delete the orginal.
In your question, if the crosshotbar you are copying from is empty of all abilities, then the command will "Blank" or empty the destination crosshotbar.

[Runeseeker]

Oh, no my smn in my photo is far less than my actual smn! That's an older character lol. I'm on turn 5 with my actual smn.

Here is my macro:

/micon "Summon"
/ac "Summon" <me>
/crosshotbar copy smn 2 smn 6

It summons the Garuda just fine, but I watch my hot bar 6, and it doesn't change at all; it's completely blank. No errors at all, zero red text. Is it a problem on my end?

Either way, telling me about the option to change bars for combat has dramatically improved my pad play for all my classes, so thank you!

[DarkReed]

Thanks for the update Runeseeker.
I am glad you like the out of combat and in combat idea. But like I say, I can not take credit for that.
I have these macros setup and working on both ps3 and pc. So, I must be missing something simple.
From what I see, the macro is fine.
So, lets rule out basic things. I am going to put a couple of ideas on what the problem is.

This just come to me. On my setup, I have no crosshotbars shared. I think the shared set of hotbars is another setup, but i don't think we can access them through macros at this point. This option is again in the crosshotbar section in settings.
I would suggest checking that shared crosshotbars 2 - 7 are unticked.
If there was any of the above was ticked, you might want to cycle through your hotbars to see if you missing anything and reset up hotbars as needed.
The more I think about it, I think this might be the problem. If I remember right, unless you change it, by default the last 4 crosshotbars are shared.
(If it is this one, then I will modify the guide above to avoid such problems in the future.)

What happens when you type the last line of the macro directly into the chatbox?
If this works, then doublecheck that you replaced all the summon pet abilties on your crosshotbars with the formentioned macros.
The easiest way to double check, is to go into your macros and delete what follows the /micon command. This will replace the summon macro with the default macro icon. This will make the macros stick out when you cycle through your crosshotbars.

I know its in the guide, but I work on the idea of if you don't ask, your never know.

The three "hidden" crosshotbars (2,3 & 4), you have setup for each pet?
Is it just Garuda not working? If this is the case, double check you have the pet hot bar turned off in the ccrosshotbar settings. If I remember right, the pet hot bar defaults to crosshotbar 2, so if it is enabled, it might effect the macro working.

Let me know how it goes.

[Gardes]

What can /chotbar copy do that /chotbar change cant? With copy, you're using an extra bar to mediate between 2 or more bars. With change you just jump straight to the bar?

Like the black mage example, for example. You use a 3rd bar and then directly modify that 3rd bar by taking copies of set 1 (fire) and set 2 (ice). With change, you would only need the transpose macro on set 1 (fire bar) to tell the bar to change to set 2 (ice bar) and then do the reverse on bar 2 (ice bar) by telling the transpose to change to set 1 (a second macro, still the same with your change setup). Then you'd only switch around between set 1 and 2.