Tips for a gamepad user

[File2ish]

A good thing to do is keep your most used abilities on the face buttons instead of the D-Pad. More specifically, the most used global cooldown abilities. It's easier to avoid AoEs that way since your left thumb doesn't need to leave the stick as often.

I set up my bars kind of organized, attacks mainly on R2 face buttons and heals on heals on L2 (with some exceptions). The D-pad abilities are generally off GCD with the exception of like instant cast spells (regen, aspect benefic), and abilities that have a relatively long cooldown or GCD abilities that aren't used as often in battle (stoneskin, protect). Ultimately whatever setup you memorize will work fine.



On both AST and WHM I like my heals on left face buttons, targetable on bar 1 and AoE around you (medica, helios) on bar 2. Swiftcast left bar 2 on up with the raise ability on down to make it quick to swiftcast rez. Keeping the heals on the same side is a plus, and I didn't need to relearn the positions switching from WHM main to AST main lol. The rest of my bars setups are kinda self explanatory from there, I hope. I tried to keep them fairly similar to one another.

I also like Cleric Stance on bar 1 R2 triangle, makes it easy to reach in my opinion. Others may disagree, but it's how I've had it since I was a wee conjurer lad.

I also have other bars with macros, markers, and such, though I don't macro any abilities. I had a few ability macros, but I find it more reliable to just manually do it. I like manual control, more finger work is kinda fun for me. But I play a lot of fighting games.