How many keys

[Kydi]

I'm a long time Star Wars player and am just moving to FFXIV. I find in TOR that I really don't need that many keys to do fine. I think my tank gets by with about 20 hotkeys for my rotation and defensive cool downs, although that's about the limit for where I can comfortably reach. Watching get YouTube video of endgame raiding, it looks like people have 30+ things on their toolbars. Do you need that many? If so, shall I invest in a G600?

Thanks in advance.

[JustARTificial]

Suffice to say you can manage with a controller.

Simplifying it like this, since I have it on PS4; 8 buttons to L2 and 8 buttons to R2 is a single "Hotbar". Simply pressing R1 allows me to switch to another "Hotbar". I CAN have 8 "Hotbars", effectively having 64 unique buttons to utilise. Though that is extreme and well beyond unnecessary.

You can do with 2 Hotbars but I would assume most go with 3. 2 for Combat and 1 for Travel. You'd probably use as many buttons here as you would in SWTOR.

You can customise the layout, though I don't know to what extent for K+M.

[zemogFC]

I play on PS4 as well. I have one generic hotbar for all classes with sprint, food, markers, mount, emotes etc on it. I then have a class specific hotbar for each class.
I've managed to get away with having only 1 hotbar with dragoon and paladin at 50.

You have 16 slots to work with if you don't want to be cycling through hotbars.
You just have to utilize macros. My 2 main combos for both classes only take one spot each. I put all offensive cooldowns, healing buffs and defensive cooldowns in a macro together to only take one spot. You can use an abilities image for the macro icon so you can still see the cooldown timer when its on your hotbar.

The biggest disadvantage to this method is with the combos. Since you can only put /wait in for .5 of a second, skill speed does absolutely nothing. You'll always have to wait 2.5 seconds between attacks.

[Kydi]

Thanks for the replies. I generally use 1-6 and q, e, r, f, t and g for my skills, then assign shift to my mouse thumb button, so 24 in total. I can use v and b although those are a bit more out of the way.

It sounds like I should have more than enough to be going on with though. Still, perhaps I'll look at the G600 in any case and try and do away with shift almosf entirely.

[Lemon8or]

If you have enough buttons to assign 24 skills, try to make room for 3 more. Each jobs, save for Scholar and Summoner, has 27 skills total, 17 from class, 5 from cross-class and 5 from job crystal. The reason Scholar and Summoner have more is due to pet skills as well as pet command skills. Each pet has an auto-attack skill and 3 skills you can activate separately and the Place/Follow/Sic/Obey type of commands. Each of summoner pet then have a special attack but it can be lumped into the job ability, Enkindle. G600 never hurts with more button on the mouse, you can fit even more skills or sometimes macros like the one that keeps up timing. Try not to rely on skills macro as that'll lower your DPS or not allow you to pop CD as you need.

[Kydi]

I might see if I can find a cheap one then. I've got a G13 but I reall don't get along with it.

[Orophin]

I use a Razer Naga and have 3 primary rows of keybinds. 1 through = and then the same keys comboed with shift and ctrl.

[peaches]

You honestly don't need that many. I play on PS4 now but when I was on PC, I would make sure 1-5 was the abilities I used all the time and 6-0 were less used abilities. For example, on my Scholar (healer) my main heals would be 1-5 with my DPS abilities 6-0. I'd have a hotbar directly above it using Shift as a modifier, and I'd use this hotbar for buffs, abilities with long cooldowns, that sort of thing. Again, the more used ones on the 1-5 slots. I'd only ever use 1-5 and Shift 1-5 with the keyboard, I'd usually click the rest. Honestly it is SO much easier on a controller, I have 32 abilities within such easy reach.