PLD Advice - Skill bloating?

[x_zenith]

So, I recently returned to the game after not playing since late HW, and joined an FC full of tanks so I decided to run dps to 70 first.

That's done. I'm working on my PLD now, which I main'd in most of HW.

There seems to be.. a LOT of skills. Much more than my WAR is subjected to, simply because certain abilities become one ability or another depending on stance.

If I consider role abilities, general skills, GLD and PLD skills as well, I actually have MORE than 36 buttons. This.. seems like a bit much. Are there any less-than-useful abilities that I won't really miss by not having them on my bars? My paladin is 69 now, and if I include sprint but DON'T include the stances and even the final level 70 ability. my 36 slots are already full. I could do more.. I just really don't want to. 36 buttons is already a pretty tedious amount of screen real estate.

Suggestions? What can I remove? For argument's sake, I already have a gaming mouse & keyboard and even with a total of 16 buttons on my mouse, it's still pretty tedious.

[Orbus]

I was actually having trouble with this when I maxed out the pld class.
I use a controller with a setup that effectively gives me 32 buttons without having to manually swap to another crossbar and it's still not enough.
I've tried to limit the cross role abilities to stuff I might actually use in any given scenario including dropping low kick in favor of just opting for shield bash, but there's only so much fat you can cut before you're left with either dropping essential skills or being forced to manually swap crossbars mid combat.

It's unbelievable that they still haven't merged shield oath and sword oath into one button.

[Nedkel]

You could merge the deffensive cooldown into one button with the macro.
That will save a lot of space.

[x_zenith]

Could you think of any REALLY efficient way to do that though?
Personally, I see multiple cooldowns with different durations, different downtimes, and different effectiveness so wouldn't that be bad in a lot of situations where a healer makes one too many an 'oops' and dies, or has an unfortunate disconnect?

I'm not saying it's not possible btw, I'm simply stating I don't know how to make that macro and NOT lose the effectiveness of each defensive utility

[Izsha]

Cross hot bar.
Set your bars to toggle between 2 sets (32). L+R for an extra 8. I put rarely used stuff there. Hallowed, potion, stun/silence, etc. 40 slots, only two hotbars because cycling between 3 is a nightmare. 2 is ezpz.

I personally put sprint, lb, teleport, mount on my 4 keyboard arrow keys, but that depends on preference.

L+R gives the space without 3bar cycle issues, macroing lots of stuff (please dont fo that) or removing skills (please PLEASE dont do that)

[Nedkel]

Could you think of any REALLY efficient way to do that though?
Personally, I see multiple cooldowns with different durations, different downtimes, and different effectiveness so wouldn't that be bad in a lot of situations where a healer makes one too many an 'oops' and dies, or has an unfortunate disconnect?

I'm not saying it's not possible btw, I'm simply stating I don't know how to make that macro and NOT lose the effectiveness of each defensive utility

You could merge in the order you wish to be executed. With each button press of the macro it will execute one action from the list, so for example you press once you activate convalescence, then second time you activate sentinel and so on.
You could also merge few others like Circle of scorn with total eclipse, that way the first one will be circle of scorn and then after next button press eclipse will go.
You could also merge spirits withing with any GCD ability you want, or requiescat with holy spirit.
I have them, its easy.

My deffensive cd macro is this :

/macroicon "sentinel"
/ac "sentinel"
/ac "rampart"
/ac "bulwark"
/ac "convalescence"
/ac "anticipation"

You could edit it if you want, from top to down each button press will activate one CD after another.
You could put sentinel after rampart or convalescence, whatever you like.

The other one spirit withing i have with fast blade

/macroicon "spirits within"
/ac "spirits within"
/ac "fast blade"

So using fast blade will activate the CD skill first, but i have to press it again to do fast blade, you could put any GCD in the place of fast blade you want.

As for AOE abilities, it looks for me like that

/macroicon "circle of scorn"
/ac "circle of scorn"
/ac "total eclipse"

You press once you activate CoS, pressing again will use eclipse until CoS will be up.

Same you could do with requiescat and holy spirit (i dont use it personally, but maybe i will set it up later)

/macroicon "requiescat"
/ac "requiescat"
/ac "holy spirit"

With those macro you save about 6 buttons.

/macroicon ""
Is a command that will show you the skill you want to be shown on the macro button.

This is how it looks like for me, i have no problem with button bloat at all and i am playing on ps4 pad.



I just set up the separate action bar for CD's just for the sake of knowing their cooldowns.

[Nedkel]

It's unbelievable that they still haven't merged shield oath and sword oath into one button.

Try out this one

/macroicon "sword oath"
/ac "sword oath"
/ac "shield oath"

The icon doesnt change only, but it works the same way. You cant change the order of them to this if you like, i prefer the shield one.

/macroicon "shield oath"
/ac "shield oath"
/ac "sword oath"

[Baalfrog]

You can also drop the following skills from hotbars to make room.
-Riot blade
-Royal authority
-Goring blade
-Holy spirit
-Requiscat
-Fight or flight
-Sword oath
-Spirits within

You are a tank, all these abilities are dps skills, not your job to do it!

[Kurando]

snip

You must be a very exciting tank to play with!

[AleXwern]

Hold on, nononono NO! Macroing skills like that is the absolutely worst idea you could come up with. I did that when I was super new back in ARR and I can tell from experience it causes WAAAAAAY more problems than fixes. Also by macroing HS you WILL lose the 5th one from Req window. GCD macros in general are the absolute worst and you can't double weave oGCD macros and they take longer to go off because you can't queue them like normal skills.

First off, what if you need a specific (set) of cooldowns? You need Sentinel now and then Rampart for fluff and after 3 minutes you first need rampart and then Sentinel. What if you need HG for TB? You'll need burn all your cooldowns to use it and if you fix that by putting it earlier then you'll just use it first. Rampart for pull and Conva for added bonus? Just Bulwark for boss autos? Burn them all!! You'll end up wasting skills and not having necessary skill at hand when you need them.

Secondly, that sword/shield macro just doesn't work or if it works it's very error heavy. Both skills are on shared GCD and the game will prioritize the first one that available. Only way to activate the second one is to use the macro 1 frame before your GCD is ready and I don't think human reflexes can do that reliably.

For good measure:
DO *NOT* MACRO COOLDOWNS!

Solution: L2R2 and R2L2 hotbars are a godsend. As PLD I can fit pretty much everything that way. Only compensation I do is I switch between Flash and Passage because there is no instance in this game where you need both (I haven't found use for Passage in 4-mans and Flash in 8-mans)
here's my own tank hotbars for reference. They've gotten me pretty far in this game so I'd consider them passable.