The players I have the most respect for?

[Amnmaat]

I paid £90 for my Naga Trinity. The flexibility of it (3 mice in one basically, with those adjustable sideplates) makes it well worth the cost to me. So I don't see that as raising the Naga Trinity. Sure, yours is cheaper, but mine is more flexible. Plus, combined with the keypad I use, it's just insane. It's how I play the game.


That and my Naga Trinity is a perfect combo. It also all runs through Synapse 3, creating endless possibilities. How about a hypershift key for example to change things on my mouse (like I could have a hypershift key to change the DPI switch buttons on my mouse to toggle party members temporarily while I hold the HS key).

Context for members who didn't see my previous post, here is the mouse I'm referring to:

EDIT: I am officially an idiot. Just remembered, I could use the scroll wheel for party members, hypershift it to target enemies. But the hypershift being able to affect the mouse AFAIK still exists. I can definitely however map multiple profiles to my mouse and use my keypad to change the profiles.

Why do you need the side-panel that isn't the 1 through 12 buttons? The other 2 panels are vastly inferior.
As for keypad vs keyboard...well I like to be able to type messages on the spot. A keypad wouldn't allow me to do the miracles + macro miracles you can do on a keyboard (so many more keys); but that's another topic altogether. When comparing the Razer against the Utech they're the same mouse just different prices. The 2 extra panels don't really add much in my opinion since they're not as good as 12 side buttons.

[AnnaRosa]

Wizardry. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

That's me not sure how you can do differently and with that mouse from the cave times my husband tried to offer me a complex mouse with buttons in both sides like the one above but don't know how to use it.

[Berret_Snow]

I'm a clicker. When I first started I did use my keyboard but once I got to 7 I couldn't do it anymore. Now I just click everything. I think I've done well enough with SMN, AST and MCH. I will say MCH took the most practice to get my wildfire rotation down but I do pretty good I think. Honestly it's just muscle memory and knowing just how much and where to move my mouse. Plus you don't have to have to look at your hot bar that long just quick glances to make sure your mouse is where it should be also setting up your HUD layout just right. Aoe aren't really an issue and if they are it's usually my own poor reaction time.

I do however want to learn Monk cause it looks like a fun job but my issue isn't clicking everything it's remembering positional. I also play to main DNC and based on the videos I've seen it will take some getting use to but honestly I'm not that worried just gotta practice and get my hotbars just right.

I will say that I did try a controller but honestly being this late in the game I just couldn't do it. I don't want to have to relearn my jobs and start from scratch. Maybe one day I'll make an alt and give it another go but at this current moment I see no need.

I'm a clicker in every single MMO that i play. 1-5 use the keyboard while the other buttons get clicked with the mouse. Never really had a problem to be honest. I mean I clicked in WoW for 8 years on a laptop trackpad!

[Selova]

I'm a clicker in every single MMO that i play. 1-5 use the keyboard while the other buttons get clicked with the mouse. Never really had a problem to be honest. I mean I clicked in WoW for 8 years on a laptop trackpad!

It's a habbit a lot of people have a trouble breaking. Trust me I know, I played just keybinding 1-5 and clicking all my abilities in WoW for over 6 years. Once you sit down and attempt to learn how to use 100% keybinds It's a world of difference. I could never go back to clicking any of my abilities after it become muscle memory. I'd convince people to at least give it a try and practice it, it makes a world of difference.

[Friske]

I'm a pure clicker as well, in fact I'm more impressed that many of you are able to fumble around with shift/alt/ctrl while also moving your character to dodge aoes. I've tried using the keyboard, but spidering my fingers across it feels awkward to me - enough so that my fingers scream the beginnings of RSI the more I do it. If I click, it makes moving with WASD a complete breeze, and the energy expenditure to activate abilities consists of a small swipe of my mouse. My entire left hand is completely focussed on the mobility of my character, and my right hand clicks all of the actions. I'll admit, rotating the camera may be a little more difficult by swiping in between GCDs, but I think it's offset with how much easier it is for my character to move around.
It also helps that I mostly play BLM which has arguably the easiest rotation and the fewest OGCDs to press for a DPS job, thus allowing me to fine tune stutterstepping to a degree that I don't think I could've done if I used my actions via the keyboard. Other GCD heavy jobs like RDM, WAR, PLD follow suit with its low complexity. After playing all of the jobs up to 70, the only difficulties with min/maxing I've had are with the healers, and a few of the melees: monk and ninja.

For healer, most of the issue stems with having to click twice: Once on the party list and second on the healing action, with the delay being the travel time inbetween the first and the second click. If I was using keyboard actions however, that delay between the first and second click would probably be non-existent, since you could click the party list with your mouse, and then immediately follow that up with a keyboard hotkey. To counteract this delay, I try to put as many useful abilities to the left side of my hotbar, as my partylist is placed near there. And I'll try to preselect party members in between casts of stone 4, aero 2 etc so I can immediately follow it up with a healing action. Combine this with a good number of pretargeted macros, and it's a fairly chaotic, slightly doubtful 'Ok'. I'll admit that playing healer with keyboard hotkeys has an advantage, but with enough practise, I've managed to minimise downtime to an extent where it doesn't cause too many major issues.

Astrologian is a special case however. That job feels like I'm on a rollercoaster with 30 consecutive inversions. Min/maxing that job's GCD and uptime is so difficult, and I'm sure most of those problems stem from me clicking through the eye watering amount of OGCDs it has. The cast time reduction on malefic helped massively, though even then it's still a hassle min/maxing all of the OGCDs. In the next expansion, those OGCDs like royal road and time dilation are going to be removed from Astro, and I can't shake the feeling that maybe Yoshida has an eye out for the clickers out there...

[Selova]

I'm a pure clicker as well, in fact I'm more impressed that many of you are able to fumble around with shift/alt/ctrl while also moving your character to dodge aoes. I've tried using the keyboard, but spidering my fingers across it feels awkward to me - enough so that my fingers scream the beginnings of RSI the more I do it.

This depends on what mouse you use. If you're using a simplified mouse that only has a few buttons and you're still using the number buttons on your keyboard then yeah it's going to feel awkward reaching for those far away keys. I'd recommend getting a 18 button mouse (12 numbers on the side) Corsair Scimitar is a great gaming mouse. It makes it much easier to do shift/ctrl keybinds by combining them with using your 1-12 buttons on your mouse. It's daunting at first, but the end result is worth it.

[Labyxt]

To be honest I’m impressed at anyone who can use mouse/keyboard efficiently, no matter if with hotkeys or clicks. PC player with controller here and without it doubt I could play nearly as comfortably as I can now.
Then again, sometimes I show my crossbar setup to friends who only use keyboard/mouse and they feel the same as me but about controller users, so guess it’s just preference.

[Paladinleeds]

Why do you need the side-panel that isn't the 1 through 12 buttons? The other 2 panels are vastly inferior.
As for keypad vs keyboard...well I like to be able to type messages on the spot. A keypad wouldn't allow me to do the miracles + macro miracles you can do on a keyboard (so many more keys); but that's another topic altogether. When comparing the Razer against the Utech they're the same mouse just different prices. The 2 extra panels don't really add much in my opinion since they're not as good as 12 side buttons.

For FFXIV it is indeed just the same (as the 12 button works best), however when you compare other games, the 7 or 2 button option becomes better. The biggest MOBA on the market benefits most from the 7 button one (comfort/ergonomic reasons) and FPS games I've heard are vastily beneficial with the 2 side button option (but I don't play these so can't confirm). As for the keypad vs keyboard, I also have a keyboard (Razer Blackwidow Chroma V2) for typing messages on the spot. And the macros are still an option even on the keypad. Remember that every one of those keys can be reprogrammed. I find it much easier to play with the keypad and MMO mouse than I do with the simple keyboard and mouse. That thumbgrid on the keypad goes a long way too. It's helped me so much with targeting.

It seems that you can't see the benefit of it compared to your current setup and that's fine. Not every setup is going to work for every person. But for me, this is the best possible setup. Due to space constraints, I have to have my keyboard and mouse on different levels, which throws me off as well. Plus the keypad I showed a picture of feels much more natural for me to use when gaming compared to the keyboard (and that's WITH a wrist rest). So while it might not work for you and that's OK, it works perfectly for me.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Easy: Muscle Memory.
The moment you have your skills position in, you don't really need to look at them. I also don't have tunnel-vision.
I play all sorts of classes (I call myself rather a main-healer but have fun with dps'ing and tanking aswell). My HUD is a bit more clutted on the left side, so I don't look across the screen on partylist, enmity list etc.

I could be entirely wrong and it probably requires a poll, but it seems most of the Clickers main healing or tanking where positionals dont exist. (the person I quoted is the exception so far).
But I agree, it seems to be down to mostly preference. Maining strictly Melee-DPS, I prefer to be able to move my camera a lot with my mouse at all times and I have no issue moving with WASD while im still hammering my rotation/hitting those damn positionals. And I guess my post seemed kind of dismissive, but I'm actually really enjoying seeing everyone's perspectives on this topic as its very new to me, so I apologize if that was the case.

[Fenefab]

I've clicked all of my skills ever since I started. It's just a lot easier for me than trying to mash buttons on the keyboard or using a controller. I have all of my skill placements in my muscle memory so I hardly ever need to look directly at my hotbars (unless I'm playing astro and I need to see my card actions) and my left hand is completely reserved for character movement. I don't have a fancy mmo mouse either, I just use left click for clicking actions and right click to move the camera lol