PLD Advice - Skill bloating?

[Nedkel]

My heart is bleeding when I see this x.x
Pls don't do this






You will clipp your gcd with this macro, which is a higher Dmg loss, than missing the last HS in the Req-Buff.
Anyway it's easy to get all 5 HS in the Buff. Just press Req when the GCD is ~3/4 finished

What do you mean by clipping?

[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)

[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.

[Nedkel]

snip

With requiecast + HS macro you dont miss the fifth HS hit enchanced by the buff. It doesnt matter if your HS will deal damage after the buff is gone, damage is increased at the time you press the button. If you would press HS 1 sec before the buff will wear off and your character will cast the spell after the buff is finished, you still will get the bonus damage boost for that spell. I have just tested it, I had never miss the bonus for fifth spell with my macro.

About those cd's.
I dont have holy ground in macro i do not recommend anyone to put it there, it always should be separate. Deffensive cooldown whichever you will use they are good enough to keep you alive, i dont think people actually think which one def CD should they use, having it in one button at least guarantees you that you will never forget about the CD and you will use every one available instead of traveling across the button thinking which one should you use, you just press one button and here you go, little to no place for mistakes here. In raids you could predict when to use them, you dont have to be on deff cd's all the time. One button with all the cd's takes very little attention, which allows you to pay more focus on the stuff happening around you instead of thinking how to press X or Y or which should you press.

As for mixing oGCD skills with the GCD, i dont see any problems here. Pressing macro with oGCD first and GCD second will work exactly the same as you would use them on two separate buttons. You still have to wait for part of the animation to go through with any skill you use, i believe its something between 0.2-0.25 sec of delay between oGCD and GCD skills. Making a macro of them could potentially affect your dps and raise it up, since you dont waste time to travel across buttons so much, it prevents you from forgetting to use oGCD which will have significant impact on your performance.

And secondly, that sword/shield macro works perfectly fine, each press of the button will switch you from one to another. Its just that you cant turn off the stance like you would do with a separate button, but who would want to turn the stance off anyway, at least you will never turn off the stance by a mistake that way.

Btw i dont see the place for gauge limit on your hotbar, this thing could be useful a ton when playing trials and failed to do some mechanics.

[x_zenith]

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.

For good measure:
DO *NOT* MACRO COOLDOWNS!

Yeah, I understood already that macroing defensives in a particular order could be bad. I like to pop specific defensive abilities at specific times, especially when I'm familiar with the content and know exactly what's going to hit me next.

I have moved both Shield & Sword Oath, LB and Shirk to a cross-bar slightly on the side since I use them much less than required to be hot-keyed, yet even then just keeping sprint in my major 3 bars I'm at a full 36 buttons.

I see that the AoE taunt isn't on your bar, I've thought about removing it myself because I never have threat as an issue and I mean NEVER. Also, even though I do completely understand it's usefulness, Tempered Will is on the fast track to getting cross-bar'd because as long as I 100% understand a fight and it's mechanics, it's possibilities and it's accidents, then I shouldn't need knockback or heavy protection. I should never need it to recover. I understand accidents happen, but for someone who strives to either memorize the content to not need certain skills, or memorize content to manipulate it's mechanics in my favor (sometimes knockbacks are manipulated in favor of the group or myself), I don't really find it as useful as others might.

You yourself stated that you swap out Flash for Passage of Arms - They're two separate abilities that provide two completely different functions, but even then, if you swap them out, is that not your own admittance to there being too many damn buttons on this class? lol it's a like a MOAB went off on the skill page

[Orbus]

I did work back in HW, but the job gauges didn't exist then either.
Very annoying that I have to use an extra button because square can't be bothered to just design the tank stance buttons like every tank player was already doing before SB.

[Izsha]

Take the time to get used to toggling between two full sets of 16. Just suck it up for a couple days and you will have years of comfortable play on every class by never running out of space. You already use the L+R bars. 40 buttons is ample space on every job in the game. No bad macros. No removing skills. Just fluid use of your entire toolkit at all times.

[Lumadurin]

The only tanking macro I'd advocate is Shirk and maybe a Cover/TBN one if you -know- you're only be going to using it on one (focus) target.
PLD definitely suffers from skill bloat though. Far more so than the other two tanks. Especially once you factor in role actions.