How in the world am I supposed to play SCH on PS4?

[Wintersandman]

Use W - Cross Hot Bar, so that you will have 32 slots to play around. You just Hold L2+R2 or R2+L2 to access the other 16 slots.

This and also someone post screenshots that if you enable the WXHB you can get an extra 8 buttons. 40 buttons should be more than enough to manage the pet. The WXHB is a pretty cool setup as you just set the page and it will be either your D-pad or Geo buttons.

I just discovered this a few weeks ago and it revolutionized all my jobs and the buttons I have out.

[Terkhev]

This and also someone post screenshots that if you enable the WXHB you can get an extra 8 buttons. 40 buttons should be more than enough to manage the pet. The WXHB is a pretty cool setup as you just set the page and it will be either your D-pad or Geo buttons.

I just discovered this a few weeks ago and it revolutionized all my jobs and the buttons I have out.

48. You can set them to be 8 each side for 16 more in total.

[Wintersandman]

48. You can set them to be 8 each side for 16 more in total.

I thought you could only select either the D-pad or 4 buttons not both since it is circle (selection) vs a checkbox.

[Risvertasashi]

I wanted to get my SCH to 70 with the quick easy Q's so I could get my SMN to 70 as well but just looking at all the abilities + pet commands this looks nearly impossible!

Any tips? And what are "keybinds"?

For dungeons you don't really need every last obscure ability. The most essential basics of your kit would be physick, adlo, succor, lustrate, and indom. Probably emergency tactics for a little more party healing. Then for the pet, you'd want rouse and WD easily accessible. That's all you need to get through any dungeon in the game. The rest of the stuff, work in as you go, you'll get a feel for it as you play.

[Naria]

I'm not a hard core raider so if that's your goal I'm not sure how much this will help but I do use a fair amount of macros on sch, although not as much as some. I don't macro embrace and DPS spells together. My main macros are:

I have two different "primary cross hotbars" for SCH, one for Selene and one for Eos set to cross hotbars 7 and 8. I have it macroed that when I summon the appropriate fairy it copies the correct hotbar to cross hotbar 1.
/chotbar copy SCH 8 SCH 1
/ac "Summon" <me>
/micon "Summon"
This way I don't have to have abilities for a fairy I don't have summoned taking up space on my bar.

I have a macro to make casting manual embraces while DPSing easier:
/pac "Embrace" <t>
/pac "Embrace" <tt>
/micon "Embrace" pet Eos
This way if I'm hard targeting the mob, I can still cast embrace while the GCD is cycling on the tank without changing targets.

I use interupt macros for Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination and Fey Covenant, i.e
/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Whispering Dawn" <me>
/micon "Whispering Dawn" pet "Eos"
This will interrupt whatever the fairy is doing to start casting that ability so don't spam it b/c it will keep interrupting itself.

I also use macros mentioned earlier for Shadowflare and Sacred Soil to make them easier to place, and I have heel and place macro'd together, in that order. Most of this is tricks or macros from or inspired by the How to Train Your Fairy thread.

Past that, it is like others have said of making use of the various ways to configure hotbars to make things convenient for you. I use four hotbars for SCH, but I have it set up using the various hotbar config options (under character config) to make them all easily accessible. I have it set that while my weapon is drawn taping R1 will swap between cross hotbar 1 and 2, pressing L2 and then R2 and holding will bring up the left side of cross hotbar 3, pressing R2 and then holding L2 will bring up the right side of hotbar 3 and double tapping R3 or L3 will bring up the face button sets for the right or left sides of cross hotbar 5. Cross hotbar 4 is general use hotbar that is shared across all my jobs with things like chocobo commands, mounts, minions and potions/ethers.

[MercuryAcetylene]

PC with controller player here. there used to be a guide about this on how to set up for ease of use for PS3/4 and controller players. it's buried deep within this section of the forum. While I can't remember what it's called, I still have my hot bars and setting the same as when that guide was around. Note about the Pet Bar, you do not need to set pet actions to your own personal hot bar (I have some set, but only because sometimes I forget which ones do which just by looking at the picture) you can press R1 if a pet is summoned to go straight to the Pet bar. Sorry for the extra big pics... These settings work fine for me and are easy on my hands (the reason I don't go keyboard+mouse). I ripped this from an old thread back during ARR. it's helped me this far. I won't post my hot bar setup since everyone is different and that specific setup may feel clunky to others.


Character Config:

[RiyahArp]

if you aren't doing hard stuff, don't bother micromanaging the fairy apart from fey union at 70. The bulk of your heals are from proper use of OGCDs. The fairy also will survive virtually anything the dungeon or raid will throw at it, so placement is less important. You also tend to triage some abilities pretty quickly. The ability that lets you spread galvanize and eye for eye is a lot less useful than you think for one.

Generally what you should do is keep all your frequently used abilities on the main crossbar, and less used ones on the extended. Things like rouse, sacred soil, lucid dreaming, etc, can go on the extended, since you use them rarely. main crossbar should be your heals, your three DOTS, your aetherflow abilities , and thinsg you find you need a lot. The problem is that everyone seems to think you need direct control over the fairy for casual content, which adds an absurd amount of buttons. You really don't.

[Clouse_Cleyra]

I play sch since ARR doing end game content (proging in unending coil now) on ps4 and I never had a problem.
Also i dont use macros and I manage my pet.
Basically what i find more easy.
I use 4 hotbars, 1 for only healing, 1 for dps and some healing just in case, the pet default bar and long cooldown plus swiftcast res and limit break bar.
Just dance on them presdimg R1+ assing buttom and its gg.
Its not hard, just getting used to it

[Gemina]

First, I don't recommend your method of leveling SMN. I understand DPS queues are long, but playing SCH and SMN is day and night, especially post 50 when their HW abilities are introduced. I would highly recommend queueing up as both to get your ACN experience points.

With that out of the way, what I recommend is what I do whenever playing a class/job for the first time. What I do is slap all the abilities on my crossbars and start doing some FATEs. From this I figure out where I want what, and make changes accordingly. As an example, Physick feels more natural to me pushing R2+down on the control pad, but it took trial and error to figure out that is exactly where I want it. After you 'feel' you have everything where you want it, then spam FATEs and kill outside mobs to get things transferred over to muscle memory. When you feel you are ready, then head into some content. If your squadron is qualified to do command missions, you can go into those dungeons to get some practice with a true healing requirement. Chances are you will again feel the need to make adjustments to your crossbars.

Once you are truly in an instance with RL players, it is definitely helpful to have some FC mates and/or buddies come along. Even more so if one of them is a career healer who can give you tips along the way. Eventually though, you will want to queue with randoms to get a taste of those lovely intangibles that keeps you on your toes, and improves your response time. This is where everything I previously mentioned will be very helpful.

Next, I also highly advise that you go to your menu and set up a hotbar or two to be displayed on your UI. These are not for you to interact with, these are for you to view your coolddowns without cycling through your crossbars. So the abilities that you want to put on these displayable hotbars are your abilities with a long CD duration. Put your fairy abilities there, your role skills, and job abilities like Indom.

As far as actual healing goes. Just go out there and heal. Seriously, you don't need a play by play guide on how to do it. Reading about how to perform in a party, and actual performing are very different. All you need to know are the basics, which for healer is:

- Stay out of bad
- use the ABC rule
- healing always takes priority over damage, and tanks take priority over everyone except you.
- help your tank by not stripping agro, and go to him/her if you do by accident or a mob slips through their fingers when they gather everything up.
- use offensive spells and abilities when healing is not needed

Mana, pet, and CD management, and how to optimally use your toolkit comes with experience. I know you're probably wanting something about micromanaging the fairy. The only advice I have here is put them on Obey 100% of the time. Try to think of Lily as an extension of your own abilities and not someone to micromanage.

The learning stages can be a very enjoyable experience, so the most important advice I can give you is go out there and have fun! I hope your experiences as SCH are very positive.