How can I manage all of my skills on hotbars?

[FinaSel]

When I leveled Summoner and Black Mage, I didn't have much trouble managing my skills on hot bars.
I also don't have this issue with WHM.

But I am leveling Ninja now and there are so many skills and it seems like I need to use all of them very frequently.

I play on a PC.
I have 3 main hotbars I use for skills. Bottom hot bar has the basic combo attacks, plus Trick and Sneak attack and Death Blossom toward the middle. (which is very uncomfortable for me, but I can't find a better place.)
Second bar has ninjutsu, Kassatsu, Mug, Jugulate, Throwing Knives
Top bar has Assasinate, Mutilation, Internal Release, Blood for Blood

Other skills used less frequently are scattered about (Second Wind, Goad, Invigorate etc)

I use the shift key to target the second row and the Control key to target the top.

But my hands are not very big and I can't comfortably reach beyond the 4 key.
I sometimes need to use the mouse to click on a skill, which seems so inefficient.

I often sometimes can't even see the location of the mouse on my screen.

I am only level 51 now, but it's still overwhelming trying to reach every skill!

Do I need to buy one of those mouses with like 10 keys on them? (mine only has 3 extra programmable keys)

Please teach me how I can better manage my hotbars for efficiency and comfortableness.

[Krindor]

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control. Another modifier if you can't reach further than 4 and R is Alt, while it might be uncomfortable at the start getting used to it is probably the only way for you to not be forced to use a 10+ key mouse. Also how do you hold your hand over the keyboard, while 6 is quite far to reach, 5 shouldn't be hard to reach even with a small hand if you position your hand correctly.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control. Another modifier if you can't reach further than 4 and R is Alt, while it might be uncomfortable at the start getting used to it is probably the only way for you to not be forced to use a 10+ key mouse. Also how do you hold your hand over the keyboard, while 6 is quite far to reach, 5 shouldn't be hard to reach even with a small hand if you position your hand correctly.

Can you not just use the other alt and control on the right for the other half of the keyboard?

[Krindor]

Can you not just use the other alt and control on the right for the other half of the keyboard?

Would have to let go of the mouse to do that, that would be dangerous in any scenario where you need to dodge, don't see a way to quickly control your character without the mouse.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Would have to let go of the mouse to do that, that would be dangerous in any scenario where you need to dodge, don't see a way to quickly control your character without the mouse.

Can you not lift up your hand and move it to the other side of keyboard and press the other control/shift? Your other hand can still stay on the mouse.

[FinaSel]

Can you not lift up your hand and move it to the other side of keyboard and press the other control/shift? Your other hand can still stay on the mouse.

I don't remember what an English keyboard looks like, but the Japanese one has a lot several more keys in the top row and bottom row.
The Ctrl key is quite far from the number keys.

If I move my hand to reach the control key on the other side, the only keys I can comfortably reach are 0 and 9, and it's quite awkward.
Not to mention the size of the Ctrl keys are smaller, and the right shift key is also very small.

When I'm playing with the standard movement controls I move the camera with either "A" and "D" (which turns your character as well) or I use the arrow keys with my right hand. If I need to quickly see behind, I press "V" which reverses the camera.

I see. The arrow keys move the camera as well. It will take some getting used to, but I will test it out.

The number pad keys though seem to have several functions, none of which I've ever used. Are they important? Can I safely remove / change them? Or do I need to reassign those keys somewhere else.
Now I can see how it is possible to control the camera without a mouse.

Q and E are my target left to right, and R and F are my target up to down.

That's interesting. I've been using Tab or the mouse to select targets (Or a keybind for "target target's target" so I can always target the tank's target or the tank.)

[Atoli]

Just play with both hands, one for 1-5 and one for 6-´

[FunkyBunch]

SNIP

Use a controller?
I have one hotbar plus cross tabs (32 skills) and that's all the skills minus four that I need (Wasp, Viper, Sneak Attack,Shade Shift) which I relegated to hotbar 2 that I almost never use.

[FinaSel]

I have considered using a controller, but I don't have one. I'd need to buy one...

If I used two hands, how would I use the mouse?
I constantly use the mouse in battle to look at my surroundings. It is often more efficient for clicking on enemies than "Tab", which is just...I can't even.

I have considered using the ALT key, but I play with a Japanese keyboard and the key to switch language settings is directly next to the ALT key. It also means the ALT key is about half the size of the ALT key on non-Japanese keyboards.
It creates three problems.
1.) It's quite hard to hit the ALT key while playing.
2.) Due to the position of it, it's hard to press the ALT key and number keys at the same time. I need to position my hand in a very strange way.
3.) If I press the language settings key by accident and suddenly need to type, I find myself in a predicament, since I might have the press that key several more times to switch back to the desired input.

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control.

Thank you. I will try using those keys too.

[Shurrikhan]

If you need another easy to reach modifier key, you can always turn Caps Lock into a Function key or either Alt. I use a large variety of keys, but I never have to reach very far. I left Q, E, R, T, F, and bound lock-on to C as per 1.x, but I use Caps 1-4, Shift 1-4, Ctrl 1-4; Caps, Shift, and Ctrl -Q, -E, and -R; Shift-F, -Z, -X, -C, -T, -G, -V, -B; Alt -S, -D, -F, -G, -X, -C, -V, -B; and Ctrl -A, -S, -D, -F, -Z, -X-, -C, -V. It may sound overly complex, but it keeps everything in very easy reach, and supports more than just rotational binds (including multiple tab types, target of target, set focus target, target focus target, target last attacker (only really use in PvP), signs, macro commands, mouse-overs, etc, and of course the bloating PvP skills). Its really hard to run out of binds on a keyboard.

You can also bind some abilities to the mouse, along with modifier key uses for each.

If you haven't gotten too used to your current setup yet, I'd recommend trying to systematize according to a given priority, focusing on a particular setting, such as raids. For instance, I'd keep CDs that you want to have immediately visible for setting up burst or making snap decisions in a highly visible position, such as the top-left corner or whatnot, and then set up the remaining CDs of similar length or priority in order by said cooldown length or their usage order in burst, etc.

If you don't need binding reminders and want to free up space, you can also set your bindings across hotbars 1-3, and then place duplicates of just the abilities you need to track on 4-6, swapping between the two for a binds-visible or compact mode.