Wiped Hotbars

[Iakobos]

Hpw do you do! I do not know if this is the correct forum, but two days ago, I had to uninstall and reinstall Final Fantasy XIV. In the process, my Black Mage and Red Mage hotbars got deleted. I play on a laptop, so I am/was wondering if anyone knew/knows what the default versions are? Google Images yields/yielded no results outside of Playstation Four's and Five's. Thanks in advance!

[Rongway]

The default bars are absolutely not worth using at all. They are just every action from 1 to your current level in order of level acquisition. You're better off ignoring them completely and rebarring everything yourself.

There are two backup and restore options at the character selection screen--one for your global settings and one for each character's settings--which can help make this less annoying next time, but isn't useful right now unless you've previously backed everything up before. Would not be a bad idea to back up this time after you've set everything up. Remember to use both the global system settings backup and the character settings backup.

[ZathrusPrime]

you can save your character config in the main menu, characte select screen, the little cog wheel next to your character

[Iakobos]

I had to uninstall and reinstall the game to get back my lost spells, but any layout besides the game's defaults is leaving me struggling. I am unable to locate screenshots of a Black Mage and a Red Mage's hotbars at level 90.

[Rongway]

I had to uninstall and reinstall the game to get back my lost spells, but any layout besides the game's defaults is leaving me struggling. I am unable to locate screenshots of a Black Mage and a Red Mage's hotbars at level 90.

I don't understand why you're even trying to use the default hotbars. The default hotbars are literally the actions from the action list in level order from 1 to 90. They do not make any sense, at all, as far as any job's rotation is concerned. Really. It's just

Riposte Jolt Verthunder Corps-a-corps Veraero Scatter Verthunder2 Veraero2 Verfire Verstone Zwerchhau etc

Look how far away Zwerchhau and Riposte are from each other. They should be right next to each other because it only ever makes sense to use Zwerchhau after Riposte. Play how you want, but just putting everything on your bar in level order will objectively make things more difficult by breaking lots of UI/UX/cogsci principles.

[Iakobos]

It is just what I have memorised, and now, I am struggling with the changed hotbars.

[Rongway]

It is just what I have memorised, and now, I am struggling with the changed hotbars.

You might be struggling now but you'll have an easier time getting back into things if you put your bars together in a way that actually makes sense and then relearn the motions from there. For RDM this means Verstone and Verfire should be near Veraero and Verthunder, the melee combo should be on three sequential buttons, Corps-a-corps and Engagement next to each other. The spells should be closer to resting position than the melee buttons because you use the spells far more often than the melee attacks.

Fitts's Law states that the difficulty of hitting a target (clicking on a button or pressing a hotkey) increases the farther your hand or mouse has to move to reach the button. Because of this, you should put frequently used actions on hotkeys closer to resting position so your fingers don't have to move very far to reach them, and actions that are used together should be next to each other so you don't have to go searching your bar--or memorizing overly complex nonsensical motions--to find the next action.

None of the default arrangements for any job respect these principles and trying to learn a job using the default bars will objectively make learning (or relearning) a job unnecessarily harder.

[Iakobos]

Thank you for the input. I will figure something out.