Chain combo button

[HyoMinPark]

"Hotbar space" doesn't always mean "I'm 100% out of hotbar space, and I need more slots." It can also mean "this hotbar layout just feels awkward and no amount of moving skills around seems to improve things."

I spend a lot of time rearranging my hotbars—especially when I’m playing the job for the first time. If I find something in an awkward spot, I either opt to move it to somewhere more intuitive or I find a way to get used to where it is if the latter isn’t an option. Using the extended cross helps with this a lot, since I can access my second bar fully with R2+L2 or L2+R2 without having to swap the crossbars.

But while you were setting up all your hotbars for various jobs, did you ever say to yourself, "gosh, I wish I didn't have to put this skill here." My biggest issue recently that a chain combo button would solve has been with my AOE skills. Many jobs gained an increased number of AOE skills, and I like to keep them on keyboard numbers 7+8+Ctrl7+Ctrl8, but some classes now have so many AOEs that I've had to shove stuff over onto Alt#, 9, or elsewhere, which I'm not accustomed to using for that purpose.

If I say that, I usually shift things around. When I was learning how I wanted DNC to be, I had originally made a hotbar sim as a rough draft for my in-game hotbar. When I saw that I didn’t quite like where I had placed some of my skills, I simply moved them around until it felt more intuitive.

For the most part, I keep single-target rotations and AOE rotations in roughly the same spots across all of my jobs when I can. That way, I’m used to AOE being L2+ O > X > square or the like. On my tanks, their combos are mostly mapped out the same way (with DRK being a little different since they only have the one, so other buttons match where my Goring Blade or Storm’s Path would be).

It's cool that you don't seem to have this problem, but do you just reset all your muscle memory between expansions or something so you can re-place all your actions in new spots now that the new actions have juggled all your shit around?

Most of my jobs that I play often going into ShB kept most of their skills in their original spots. Skills that were pruned/removed are usually replaced with the newer ones—for example, on BRD: since we lost Straight Shot and it was replaced with Refulgent Arrow at level 70, I removed where my original Refulgent was, and replaced that skill with Shadowbite, our new AOE Sidewinder (which works, since it’s with Quick Nock, so it’s with my other AOE skills). I didn’t have to retrain my muscle memory for Barrage > RA so much as I just had to remember I no longer have to wait for it to proc or settle for Empyreal while doing my burst.

I also have an auxiliary hotbar that uses the NUM pad on my keyboard for things that are not used as often—like tank stances. Most of the time now, I’m probably not going to turn them off in a dungeon or raid (save for a swap in the latter), so I just have it keybound to NUM5 since it’s a one-and-done button. Same for AST sects—usually in raids I cannot swap between Noct and Di, so they’re also on the NUM hotbar because they’re one and done. Only time I swap them is for dungeons to pre-Shield a tank before a pull, but that’s not entirely necessary to do. And it only works if they don’t immediately start pulling stuff, since combat locks you into a sect.

I’ve managed to make it work simply because I practice my new layouts. Most of the “relearning” isn’t a super human feat—it just takes a bit of practice to break old habits and form new ones.