Yay! Looking forward to that vid -- your keybinds helped me tremendously with my PLD, once I got used to the new layout. MUCH easier on the hands and sped up my reaction times. Hopefully you'll do PCT and VPR before doing a full vid on everything else, please?
The biggest change I ever made in this game in terms of control settings was binding the side buttons on my mouse to ctrl and alt, so that I could use those as modifiers for my skills. That way I never really have to stretch and press two buttons at the same time with the same hand while also moving around with WASD. It was a huge game-changer for me.
that is genius I put 2 most important skills, where I need to use it quickly in emergency on my 2 side buttons on my Zelotes, but your idea doesn't sound so bad
As someone who just started playing the game 2 weeks ago this video couldn't have come at a better time. Thanks so much for providing resources like this to new players!!
I would also suggest if you have a little extra money to buy a gaming mouse that has multiple keys on the side. I am using the logitech G600 which has 12 buttons on the side which I just set up to hit keys 1 through =. The only downside I had was that the mouse I received wasn't preprogrammed when I got it so I had to use a second mouse to bring up the software to program it before the left and right click would work. They are not too terribly expansive anymore with most ranging from $25-60
Coming into this game w a 12 button mouse thinking its gonna b ok but i found out it didnt work 4 me and soon as saw this it made sense and copied all ur keybinds lol. Ty
started playing 4 days ago on controller currently level 80 and using samurai and since there's so many abilities I kinda swapped off controller and wanna use mnk
I have the corsair scimitar(mmo mouse) but for anyone out there I strongly advise every so many levels just going to a dummy and completely redoing your keybinds and playing around with them until you find them comfortable. Doing it on the fly has never been as comfortable for me as breaking down what I want grouped together, to be the most accessible, the most comfortable and have a pretty comfortable flow between combos and buffs or ranged pulls, aoes, and mitigation. Even looking at the setups other people use online initially always felt weird and served little more than a reference for what I found to be best for myself.
My friend borrowed me an mmo mouse for a month but I never really got the hang of it… My right hand fingers have learnt, that there are just 5 buttons and I could not deal with more 🤣
That's a great idea but it gets a little confusing when going back to old content and not having most of my skills and the ones I can use are all over the place... I do play on controller though.
As a controller player I was mostly watching this because I was curious what playing on keyboard was like. I didn’t get a whole lot out of this except for noticing you’ve set up Shirk as a macro. That’s a really great idea, I can’t believe I’ve been manually selecting my cotank from the party list this whole time.
I hope you end up updating your hotbars for dawntrail, ive been shamelessly ripping off your hotbars since they're so intuitive, and frankly have too smol brain to make my own with the new actions and picto/viper. Thanks for the video!
I came back to this video to comment this so I'll just thumbs OP notices and adds it to Postimages album that I SHAMLESSLY have bookmarked. (Which came in handy actually just this week because my hotbars decided to spoof on me out of nowhere and had to redo every single one of them. So thank you OP! ❤
I recently tried controller because my hands started to hurt from all the clicking and holding shift/ctrl down with my pinky. While there's some negatives with controller too. The cross-hotbar system is a godsend! It makes weaving and doing long chains of abilities so much more intuitive!
Opposite for me. I just went from controller to k/m (after playing ff14 for the last year on controller, whew). What made k/m work for me was getting an mmo mouse and binding shift control and alt to the mouse buttons. I can now play so much more smoothly, even better than I could on controller. Also, no finger pain! Don't forget to stretch your hands and forearms after playing!
I can see the advantage of a controller. But as primarily a PC gamer I'd have a hard time swapping. Plus, for some reason, the PS4 controllers always dig into my hand in one spot after a while. As a drummer my hands and wrists never really get tired on a keyboard. I play PoE a lot too and I remember back when you hand to piano your flasks all the time. I was one of the very few people who actually liked doing that lol
I have played MMOs for decades now with a similar setup to what you described. The only tweak that I have made is this: I have 2 button on the L side of my mouse, I have rebound these buttons to Shift & Ctrl. This allows me to stop using my L pinky to awkwardly hit L-Ctrl. Instead I am using my R-Thumb to push Shift & Ctrl. This has been a game changer for my playstyle. Thanks for the video.
Sent this to some friends who are just starting, I love how concise this is, and also the mention of having similar buttons between classes to help with muscle memory. Really great video, thank you!
I had this on in the background as something to listen to while working. I’m going to _have to_ sit down and _watch_ it. It’s giving me some good ideas, but it’s definitely a thing that needs to be seen. My brother just started playing, and I think it’s his first MMO although not his first FF game. I’ll definitely share this with him.
The biggest game changer for me was purchasing an MMO mouse. Went with the Logitech G600. Definitely worth the money. Align my abilities in 3 3x4 groups and modifying the 2nd and 3rd groups with ctrl and shift respectively. Took a little while to get used to, but now I'd be lost without it.
I've been feeling like I'm terrible at video games because I've been having the problems you're describing in the beginning. I'm glad to know it's not just me. Thank you so much for making this video!
I used a similar layout when I first started and I used to click with mouse for stuff like buffs and defense, but after getting an MMO mouse, my life has been so much better. If anyone is inclined to try an MMO mouse, I highly recommend it. ( A tip for what I do is I fashion my hotbars into 3 square so that it mimics my mouse button layout, and then I use SHIFT and CTRL as modifiers :3 )
revisiting this vid a year later, just to express my gratitude for it ! Still enjoying the game a year later all because of this video, making keybinds reachable for me - many thanks again for making this vid
A simple mmo mouse is very comfortable. I wasn't used to using one, and at first couldn't think of ways to use it. But I gradually moved skills that were even the slightest bit uncomfortable to it. This also eased up how much my left hand was working. Can't imagine playing without it.
I just recently started playing this game again. I've had it for over 4 years but only last night did I get my first Soul Stone. I got White Mage and Pali and both due to watching so many other FF14 videos in the last month and me playing MMOs for probably 15+ yaers I'm glad to know that I have a very similar layout by deafault that you do. My mitigation is all on C top row, Shift 2nd row is mostly for heals and other support actions, and Bottom row is obviously instants and default combos. I'm gonna have to show my friend this video because he's new to MMOs only ever playing SWOTR and it physically hurt me to see how he ended up laying out his hotbars accross his screen. He tunred them into 6x2s and put about an inch between each one and placed them across the bottom of his screen like a trifold for a presentation. But seeing as though he was level 1-10 he had like 5-6 skills all smooshed up on the far left 6x2 and was individually clicking most of the skills.
I fully endorse this setup...it also helps that I use almost an exact keybind set up, so I feel validated :D Only thing I do differently is I use "v" instead of "t". Going even further, I bind non-combat commands like soothe, beckon, mount, potions to my F keys, and I go even further and have the various panes spearate into 3 different groups that I assign by rows: row 1: t,y,u,i,o,p - "info" panes like map, abilities, logs. Row 2: g,h,j,k,l,; - "social" panes like duty finder, party, free clan. Row 3: b,n,m,",","." - "item" panes like bag, character, collections. Yeah...I went a bit nuts but it all makes sense.
that is honestly not a bad idea as this setup in the video gets rid of c for character gona try this out do you happen to have a full list of the changes so i can copy and fine tune?
@@WarMonkeyPlays its all good i chose to use a macro hotbar menu setup and mix your idea into it i just started playing 3 days ago so its best to learn early
What is sticking with me most is that I should probably pick a main job. Right now I’m trying to level everything together. And sometimes my muscle memory has betrayed me when I switch to a job I haven’t used in a while. Still, great to hear many of my ideas about hotbar setup are shared by even more experienced players!
Honestly, I don't have a main job either. There's a few jobs I've played a lot that I hover between right now. Interestingly switching between jobs makes you understand the game better and actually helps me memorize rotations and so on faster. Something about taking a break and coming back to it just makes it stick way more. So if you want to play well, I would actually recommend a few main jobs rather than just a single one. But that's just a theory I have :)
It might be better to get every job to 90 before deciding on your main job(s). You get to learn them all somewhat, figure out what you like, then you can knuckle down and build the muscle memory.
I've been playing FF14 for almost 10 years now and although I'm playing on Controller - and I think I've mastered it - I still learn something new every single day. This video is very informative! Keep the good work up! 👏
Thank you! I'm new to the game and have been using the default keybinds for all of the 230h I have on the game, needless to say this has made playing much easier and comfortable! It is a bit confusing at first since my muscle memory still presses some of the old keybinds but it's an amazing and needed change, thanks!
I was searching for a guide to keybind the skills of my WAR at the time I start to become a heavy player in FFXIV. After one year I'm here to leave my thanks. Your hotbar layout is very similar as one I found for red mage in a blog when I begin to play FFXIV for the first time and I can say yours is very comfortable to use. Thank you very much!
I've been playing for years but I always felt like some of my key bindings were weird but kept them for the habit, your video gave me a clear idea on how to improve it !
I started off playing the game with the default keybinds and just clicking the farthest abilities from 12345 with the mouse, and this vid finally gave me the motivation to set up proper keybinds for everything I used in the game. a month later, content plays so much more smoothly for me with the new keybind setup, and I really have this vid to thank for getting me to finally play smarter. for a tip, if you have trouble hitting Ctrl for certain casts (hand injury, pinky can't reach easily, or you just really don't like having to hit Ctrl for your third hotbar) and you play on a keyboard that allows you to remap individual keys (custom mechanical keyboards, a USB translator that can remap your keys on a non-customizable keyboard, etc), rebind Caps Lock to Ctrl. it will allow you to cast your Ctrl abilities without having to pretzel your pinky to do so. This was a great QoL change for me when I was setting up my keybinds, and I never use Caps Lock very often either, so nothing was lost for my use case.
Excellent video, changing my hotbar and keybinds was a pretty daunting task but watching this video made me take the leap, already getting very comfortable with the setup i have and now my fingers wont be sore trying to reach for buttons :) thanks!
I changed my hotbar to this exact system after seeing yours from an older video. This made progressing & learning jobs very smooth for me as a new player.
This helped a lot, recently got back into the game and I can't believe I never thought of this. Except I'm swapping it to where the number keys are on the end.
This video was amazingly helpful. I'm sure other people have said something similar in other comments but I want to reiterate it because it was a game changer for me. If you have a gaming mouse with at least 2 additional buttons which can be remapped, remap them to your modifier keys (shift & ctrl, or you can make them keys which are even farther out of the way since you'll never actually click them on the keyboard). Using my pinky finger to hit the modifier keys and still hitting my other keys was a struggle for me. Holding down a mouse button instead so I don't have to change anything with my left hand is so much easier.
For people who started with the standard keybinds and became clickers i can say that while the setup in this video is probably more comfortable, you can still play optimally by clicking your skills in savage and ultimate content and parse 90-99. Your personal skills are more important than your setup and if you struggle to change or you find yourself comfortable with clicking then you can stay the way you are without influencing your performance.
yeah, people are on some mad copium if they think the game isnt 100% clickproof. The combat is slow enough that you only really need to keybind your main rotation and main ogcds. Clicking the 60s-120s stuff is totally fine, nooone needs to keybind their 2min cd lol
@@lunaticmode638 I mean, oshit coldown like benection would be useless without bind, or just higher chance you push it late. Dunno how fast is experienced clicker.
Im actually much better when I just click tbh especially with my small hands that can't reach ctrl or shift + other key at the same time. And it's not like I look at the hotbar for the entire time. I actually don't and have very good awareness of whats happening. I can look at my hotbar AND my surroundings at the same time. And like the person above said, the combat is slow enough and a lot of spells have a high cooldown. I played wow as a clicker and let me tell you it's much harder
A year late, but THANK YOU! As someone who has always struggled with UI setups in MMOs, this video gave me tons of help figuring mine out. Now I'll just have to find a new excuse when I end up tanking the floor XD
good video, i was already thinking that 6 is getting too far from my hand and was thinking on changing it like moving asdw to somewhere else and use this part of the keyboard, you just did something even better
Thank you very much sir. I have been running your set up and it has made things so much easier in FFXIV. It is rocky as you said in the beginning but it works so well once you get the muscle memory down. So once again thank you very much :)
Thank you so much for this! Being a lazy DPS I used to click for a fair few actions, but trying healer opened my eyes 😅 Your pics were really helpful for inspiration too!
I noticed I had been looking at my hotbar way too much and was missing mechs in raids, so this was extremely helpful! Only suggestion I might make is using alt instead of ctrl as it's far easier to hit by just moving your thumb from space
Thank you so much for the video it has made my ff14 experience so much better now! went all the way thru Endwalker doing the normal keybinds and it was terrible. Been testing out the new keybinds and can say I'm honestly in love.
I have been running this style of set up for many years. Long enough I am getting arthritis in my fingers and carpel tunnel. I tried the MMO mice, but my hands are simply too big for them to work. So I went with a standard mouse with two thumb buttons I use for my control and shift. This gives me everything I need and all three rows are just as accessible as any of the others. You could also add a fourth row if you wanted to. Shift on your keyboard, ctrl and alt+ctrl on your mouse. I would highly recommend switching to the modifiers on your mouse and keyboard for all the functions.
been playing for a few months now and have basically been clicking the right half of my hotbars but this has convinced me to try using a similar setup, the troublr now will be getting my hand to actually press thr buttons correctly and not instinctively clicking
Thank god for this video! I'm started the game for like 2 months ago from now and its like you said the eye in the bar always tend to be a mess. I was thinking to myself i need to redo these keybinds in order to do a proper rotation, proper opening and THANK GOD you made this video, i will definetelly master this keybinds because i have a feeling that i will feel way more comfy with this buttons than the default ones.
I just finished End Walker and wanted to start getting more into raiding but I knew I had developed bad habits in terms of my key binds. This video is really useful information!!
I'm using a mouse that has 2 thumb buttons (which most mice have nowadays) and a dps control button. I usually map Ctrl and Shift on those buttons while the tab targeting function to the dps button, which to me is easier to press compared to pressing them on your keyboard. You just have to make sure that your mouse is compatible with mapping keyboard keys to its buttons.
also nice about mapping the mouse 4 and mouse 5 buttons to modifier keys is that u can easily press them together with any keyboard key (so no need to worry about hitting CTRL+T for example) and on most mice they are easy to press together for the 4th hotbar to set up ur bars in a more convenient way or to not need as many keyboard keys (like if u dont like having to use zxc or t, those abilities could be moved to the 4th bar instead)
Mine's the usual MMO Mouse (Corsair) with 12 Buttons. I do the same thing, I have the two buttons (5 & 8) that are closest to what the double thumb button combo would be set to be Shift and Alt Modifiers, which means it's a lot easier for me to just use those keybinds without ever having to worry about reaching them on my keyboard for any of my keyboard-based binds. And because the 12 buttons set up has other great easily accessible thumb buttons, it also provides me with more than just modifiers to bind, I've effectively gained a third of the viable binds I can comfortably use on keyboard as extra buttons I can use for binding.
Amazing guide. I changed the buttons up a bit but I actually never thought of using something other than standard. It will take a while to get used to but this will make jobs a lot more comfortable during high level fights
I've played this game for years and years, this will probably make my life a lot better. I had recently adjusted to clicking certain actions and adding more hotbars for lv90s, like click the hotbar and place the thing down for healing for example. I'm not sure why I was so afraid of making these changes, they make a lot of sense. I personally like my tank aoe buttons on Q and E since I think that's comfy, but that's just personal choice lol. I know dps aoe is probably going to have to be shift 123 or something I'll have to check your link. I do like the templates you gave but I definitely will be toying with it for my perfect fit, I thank you for your time and tips.
Everyone ends up eventually forming habits in their key binds. - Like a friend of mine has his movement re-bound from WASD to ESDF so he can put an extra three key binds between movement and shift. - He has big hands, so it's no big deal, but really, you gotta adapt this to your particular setup. Best advice for me is just to put your fingers on Shift, A, W and D like you would in a "ready" position, and see which keys on the keyboard you can reach without lifting more than one finger off those keys at a time. I can reach all the way to T and G comfortably with my index finger, while I still have my hand on Shift, A and W. And same for the 5 key. And my thumb can comfortably reach to the B key. - So that's a whole half a keyboard I have easy access to. Your hands will likely be different, or maybe you have a different keyboard layout, maybe you've got more spacing there, or you hold your keyboard at a slightly different angle. - If your mid and index finger are a bit longer, then your WASD position will come from a slightly different angle that might make it hard to even reach C with your thumb, or maybe you got longer fingers and can reach all the way to 6 Y and H. Feel around for what key combos you can comfortably reach by just making subtle motions of your fingers, while your hand is at rest, and work from there. Come up with the setup that feels best to you.
I'm a clicker. Thanks for this video. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to change, but this is the most clear, understandable tutorial I've seen. I've listed as a fave - thanks again.
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but if you are going to use Legacy controls, the A/D = Strafe is even more important, because the normal Legacy movement actually makes a curve instead of going in a straight line. Also, Legacy has a slight advantage over default for moving away and attacking; Default will kind of make your character stutter step backwards but Legacy you just keep moving normally. This small change can be huge in content like solo Deep Dungeon because you can kite while using your ranged attacks without getting drawn backwards, but it can also let you greed mechanics more often without getting hit.
I enjoy my Razer Tartarus v2 Gaming Keypad. The great thing is that I have 57 binds the way I set it up. Took a while to get right, but now I can't live without it.
I've always used 1 thru = when playing wow but seeing vids of all the abilities each classes get later on was definitely an eye opener. Will definitely give this keybind a try since the best time to get used to something is early into a game than way in.
Very good video! I think it's very important, especially for new players to directly have a good setting with keybinds and hotbar, and placement for skills I also use 1 2 3 4 5, Q, E, R, T, F, G, Z X, V! and all of them with Shift. It's pleny enough to be good! I just use 5 T G B (and with Shift too) for long cd (90 seconds and more), because they are far away. And i use also Shift + W A S D for some very specific skills. (Shift + W in Mages and Healres is for the instant cast, and otherwise it's my "attack buff", and Shift+S is the opposite, the "defense buff") But i never use Ctrl+ something, because i struggle to hit Ctrl. (yes i have little fingers, but of course if you can use Ctrl too, you can have more options, or just not use 5 T G B, and just the closest binds only with Ctrl too) And, it's pretty rare to see video speaking about which skills/spells put where! But yes, i think it's very important to have the "almost same abilities" on the same keybinds! I have almost the same settings than you, Jolsn. Using Q for the ranged attack, and E R F and 2 3 4 for 2 differents combos (for exemple the 2 combos of the Samuraï. And for the "only 1 touch", it's on V). 1 is most of the time a charge/dash. I have also the knockout/stun on Shift+C. All the AoE are on Shift. For exemple, the "AoE combo" is simply on Shift+E, Shift+R, Shift+F OR, depending of some classes, on Shift+2, Shift+3. (for the Bard for example) Same for healers (i don't play tank), my heal skills are always on the same configuration between every jobs! F is my damage AoE (with White Mage it's so useful for trash mobs), Shift+F is my Healing AoE. Q my main attack (Earth/Ruin), E the DoT, 3 the main heal, 2 the "little heal". C the HoT mono-target, Shift+C the HoT for the party. etc... It's so good because you can easily switch jobs and you just have to use the same keybinds! You always know what it will do! (in the past, when you have more DoT, my DoT was on C or V/Shift+V etc) The only thing you have to remember is the specificity of your job, and that's all. But it's more easy to remember it like that! I starting MMOs with Aion, and i directly try to find a good system to handle so many skills, and i naturally did that. And i use this system since then! (2008) I used it in SWTOR too (Shift+C was my interrupt, and it's fun because with the Jedi it's also a high turn kick, like for the melee class in FF XIV), Tera (even if you had less skills to put in your hotbars), WoW (when i finally played this game for Mist of Pandaria), etc... And i ALWAYS asked myself... why the default setting is not using a system like that? It's so good, more intuitive, more fun to use. Why 1 to 0, on top of your keyboard... It's so stupid. No one can use 7, 8, or 9 easily in a fight! It will force new players to become "mouse clickers"... When with a good setup, it's so much fun to use keybinds! (and yes, of course you can setup your hotbars to visually have your "almost same" skills on the same column, it can help a lot, at least at the beginning! i don't do that really, but i understand it ;) )
Huge help - I’m new to the game and thought the settings would eventually kick me in the butt with how many abilities are in the game. Glad I found this while I’m still early on in leveling 😅
Newbie here, making your recommended changes has helped me tremendously. Took some time to get used to the different keybinds but much more effective. Thanks so much for your input and tips!!! 🙂
Funny thing to counter one of your first points, you can turn the camera without the mouse, it's helping me in fights plenty of time to use A&D to rotate while using Q&E to strafe
While I haven't rebound my keys quite yet, I do want to suggest something extra heretical - Rebind your movement keys from WASD to ESDF. This will shift your fingers' position so that you have more readily available buttons (the lowest row of keys can be very awkward to use) without really limiting your accessible keys.
What I did is, I keybined the two side buttons of my mouse into CTRL and SHIFT, and I use the exact same hotbar keybinds that you showed in the video, I find it more comfortable to press these two through my mouse side buttons rather than pressing them on the keyboard, and is actually faster.
I 100 recommend the mmo mouse. Also a pro tip, change your hotbar to the 3x4. It puts it in the same way it is set up on the mouse, giving you a visual cue where to put your finger.
I use an MMO mouse so any advice I have isn't as applicable if you're trying to set up a mostly keyboard hotbar, but early on I made sprint bound to the mouse scroll wheel click and I can never go back to any other setup without it. I happened by chance to realize one day I could bind something to it and idk if other people have realized too! I have it on a shared 'non-combat clickables' hotbar where I keep teleport/return or ghysal greens so it doesn't clog up my regular job hotbars, and just set that one slot to mouse scroll wheel click so it's there regardless of job. It's great for quick use and takes hardly any work to build up muscle memory for because the mouse is already so tied to movement anyway!
honestly this is an eye opener for me! I've been playing for quite a while and comfortable with my hotbars (some default some modified) but now I feel like my hotbars aren't effective anymore and I was wondering what can I do for it! This video came at the right time, thank you so much I'll definitely try this :)
For my keybinds I use F1-F6, 1-5, Q E F Z X C V, and shift/alt modifiers for the letters including WASD. I can hit Alt comfortably with my thumb. The only catch is that Shift/Alt WASD don't work well with skills that have a cast time (if I move accidentally, it gets interrupted), so I only put instant casts in there. F5 and F6 I tend to use for rarely used abilities like tank stances or Quickcast on F5 and Revive on F6. I use 1-5 for single target rotations and Z X C V for AoE rotations. It's easy to move and spam. I dont use R, Shift+R, T and Shift+T for battle, because I have those for toggle Run, Sprint, Mount and Teleport respectively. Glad to see some of my reasonings for keybinds were mentioned here as well. Also I see other people are mentioning using the mouse side buttons for modifiers, which sounds like a good idea, but I like having one of those for select nearest enemy, and the other for selecting the 2nd party member (the tank when I'm healing). I'm already pretty comfortable with my current setup.
I'm going to be pretty honest bro, this guide of yours help so much, I'm new playing FFXIV and my problem was always how to set up my keybinds and I didn't have idea, but with your tips I can play more comfortable, you are great content creator I really appreciate it, greetings and new subscriber from Mexico. Peace.
I'd like to suggest a next step to your suggested layout. I played a lot of Black Desert and obviously in an action combat PVP game keybinds are mega important. The way Black Desert sets up its keybinds is like how you do it but they also put keys in place that are logical. Examples: the Space key is normally Jump which is a form of movement so when you bind Shift+Space you make this another movement skill, something like a forward leap/engage skill (Tank leap, a dragoon jump, ninja teleport etc), you could also do Shift+W as a "forward" skill, either a movement skill or a ranged attack. A heal and a shield are both anti-damage so if you put a shield skill on Q, you put the next step after a shield (a heal) on Shift+Q. If E and R are attack skills then Shift+E and Shift+R should be augmented versions of those attacks (example the AoE version of those skills or the follow-on combos skills off those skills). What they are basically doing is to try and relate the binding to the natural use of the keys so for example when playing a particular class in BDO that had a "forward torpedo" attack where your character forward rolled through the enemy and often used this to dodge due to invuln frames this was bound to Shift+W because it was a natural extension of forward movement with W. So when you're binding keys don't just base it on finger distance but also create a sort of keyboard mnemonic, it makes gaining muscle memory 100x easier.
Been playing ffxiv for three years now and I had no idea you could modify a keybind for the 3rd hotbar. I use the mmo mouse and it's extremely convenient.
As someone who used to play a lot of mmos and is recently getting into ffxiv, rather than having the "least used"/long cd hotbar as ctrl+something, I always manually click my long cds. The main reason I do this is because when you're stretching your hand in all kinds of ways to hit a button, fatfingering gets so much more likely at least for me, and the negative effects of accidentally hitting a longer cd are felt much longer than they would if you were to just mess up the order on your basic rotation once or twice. Also, for those who don't want to get used to an mmo mouse, I highly recommend picking up a mouse with a smaller amount of programmable buttons, that way you can bind one of them as the modifier key for your bar 2
BLM main; I use 4 hotbars, but I don't use every slot on all of them. The reason being that this lets me put all my Fires and Blizzards (and both Thunders for that matter) on single keys, switching between them with the modifier keys - alongside this, I can have all my AoEs on the same modifier key.
I honestly figured this out within weeks of starting the game and it was such a game changer. I also use a reduced size mech keyboard, so I have no (easy) access to F keys, since they're bound under the top row number keys using the Fn modifier key. My fingers can't comfortably reach 7-0, nevermind - and =, so setting the hotbar keys around WASD made the most sense. (Having a mouse with even just two extra buttons can help with other kinds of keybinds, as well.) And same with the concept of keeping similar action buttons in the same spots on the hotbar(s) between jobs. In my opinion, healers are the odd ones out for this kind of set-up since, obviously, most of their skillset comprises healing actions. So you have to organize them completely differently as opposed to any of the attacking classes, which can all have the same (or similar) hotbar set-up.
A couple of things that have helped me are: 1. After getting a job stone, looking at all of the job's future abilities and add every ability to my hotbar to start getting the right muscle memory for each ability 2. as far as the hotbars go, rather than pressing control or shift with a finger, I use the bottom edge of the palm of my hand. I press control+ability for the second bar and control+shift+ability for the third bar by angling my hand forward a bit more. This keeps more fingers available for abilities. 3. As Jolsn said in the video putting similar abilities in similar locations for muscle memory. That's what has helped me, but most importantly I think experimenting and finding what works best for you will ultimately be the best option
I thought I was an odd ball for setting up my Keys this way! Having someone with your skill level do the same, makes me feel WAY less crazy. I’ve had my layout nearly identical to yours for 3.5 years! I also have a Logitech mouse that has a M4.M5 button I use for Instant Casts, gap closers, or escapes. Thank you for sharing this!
Yeah, I also find that keeping certain types of abilities bound to the same grouping helps with remembering. Me personally, I like to bind my AOE abilities to T, F or G and I like to bind my sprint to Ctrl R. I also usually bind my long cooldown abilities to my number keys, whilst using Q E and R for the combos and abilities I use most in rotation.
THANK YOU!!! I've only just been trying new classes and roles over my go-to Dragoon. Everywhere I looked for layout ideas, it was all controller layouts or noting to explain what keybinds people have been using. It's wonderful to have a better idea over what I was told by my FC of "Do what feels comfortable." Hard to be comfortable if your not used to a class/role.
I'm hoping that you'll make an update to this when Dawntrail comes out for the job changes! I still reference the hotbars album often for setting up alts. 🙏
One thing instarted doing years and years ago back in WoW is using tilde for my "1" key. This adds one less modifier key bind to my rotation. Since you can press tilde through 4 with zero issues.
I use to play wow with almost the same key bind set up. I very slowly developed arthritis which overtime ruined the game for me. The story in FFXIV made me give it a try, and it's controller system has made me stick around. I owe the controller hotbar scheme an awful lot. :)
Something I did that helped me immensely is binding a separate hotbar with 2 shift shortcuts(or at least one shift, but 2 shortcuts is essential) and putting sprint and Limit Break onto that 2 bound hotbar spaces. This lets you have a dedicated sprint button similar to games that let you do so and an easy access to your Limit break since you might not want to waste your remaining hotbar spaces with more essential things like consumables for it. It's also very useful in PVP since you need at most 2 hotbars because of the the shared actions, specifically (PVP) Sprint and (PVP) Potion are better in those same hotbar spaces I talked about earlier. That separate hotbar can then be used for less essential things in combat , but still useful in game, like mounts, maps, social macros... (I usually put it next to my character and make it transparent for visibility and ease of view, but that's optional, you can put it wherever you want if you want something clean).
I love your hud so much. I just watched a video and reorganized everything to be closer to the center of the screen, but now my screen is so cluttered in the center and the sides are bare. Not to mention it's really annoying to use just walking around in the world and doing fates/questing because everything is meant to be congested to make your eyes not strain. I really like how yours is just pretty much default with a few things moved around and an extra hotbar. It's really sleek.
Another suggestion--consider moving from WSAD to EDSF. You will then have more keys to bind and if you ever have to move your hand from the home position you can easily find it without looking at the keyboard by feeling for the raised part on the F key.
A lot of you are asking for updated keybinds for Dawntrail! I will post these as soon as I have leveled all my jobs.
lol literally came here to ask about updated DRG suggestions. Looking forward to it
Yay! Looking forward to that vid -- your keybinds helped me tremendously with my PLD, once I got used to the new layout. MUCH easier on the hands and sped up my reaction times. Hopefully you'll do PCT and VPR before doing a full vid on everything else, please?
thank you based goobbue enjoyer :D
yay! cant wait for that, idk if i'd be playing this game without ur keybinds. (kinda sad yea lol) the help has been tremendous! :)
Literally just getting back into the game and was going to ask for this since I've had this video saved for years! You're awesome!! :D
The biggest change I ever made in this game in terms of control settings was binding the side buttons on my mouse to ctrl and alt, so that I could use those as modifiers for my skills. That way I never really have to stretch and press two buttons at the same time with the same hand while also moving around with WASD. It was a huge game-changer for me.
Thats the solution i used i even used the clicker for the mouse scroll so i can use alt , shift and ctrl
Genius. I plan on doing this today
that is genius
I put 2 most important skills, where I need to use it quickly in emergency on my 2 side buttons on my Zelotes,
but your idea doesn't sound so bad
I use a mouse on PS5 but can't assign those buttons???
@@Manudyne time to join the PC master race
As someone who just started playing the game 2 weeks ago this video couldn't have come at a better time. Thanks so much for providing resources like this to new players!!
hey, we started the same time! hope your journey is as fun as mine is being o/
I would also suggest if you have a little extra money to buy a gaming mouse that has multiple keys on the side. I am using the logitech G600 which has 12 buttons on the side which I just set up to hit keys 1 through =. The only downside I had was that the mouse I received wasn't preprogrammed when I got it so I had to use a second mouse to bring up the software to program it before the left and right click would work. They are not too terribly expansive anymore with most ranging from $25-60
@@Midnightgamer00 Best mouse by far
Coming into this game w a 12 button mouse thinking its gonna b ok but i found out it didnt work 4 me and soon as saw this it made sense and copied all ur keybinds lol. Ty
started playing 4 days ago on controller currently level 80 and using samurai and since there's so many abilities I kinda swapped off controller and wanna use mnk
I have the corsair scimitar(mmo mouse) but for anyone out there I strongly advise every so many levels just going to a dummy and completely redoing your keybinds and playing around with them until you find them comfortable. Doing it on the fly has never been as comfortable for me as breaking down what I want grouped together, to be the most accessible, the most comfortable and have a pretty comfortable flow between combos and buffs or ranged pulls, aoes, and mitigation. Even looking at the setups other people use online initially always felt weird and served little more than a reference for what I found to be best for myself.
100% Try getting a MMO Mouse to help with button pressing.
I also use an MMO mouse I have one from Razer. I find it even helps in none MMO games mostly RPGs.
My friend borrowed me an mmo mouse for a month but I never really got the hang of it… My right hand fingers have learnt, that there are just 5 buttons and I could not deal with more 🤣
That's a great idea but it gets a little confusing when going back to old content and not having most of my skills and the ones I can use are all over the place... I do play on controller though.
i actually bind every ability for the entire class before i even unlock them so i can get a feel for how it will slot together
As a controller player I was mostly watching this because I was curious what playing on keyboard was like. I didn’t get a whole lot out of this except for noticing you’ve set up Shirk as a macro. That’s a really great idea, I can’t believe I’ve been manually selecting my cotank from the party list this whole time.
I hope you end up updating your hotbars for dawntrail, ive been shamelessly ripping off your hotbars since they're so intuitive, and frankly have too smol brain to make my own with the new actions and picto/viper. Thanks for the video!
I feel you. My pictomancer bar is such a mess haha
Would be also cool to see your layout for DoH/DoL
I came back to this video to comment this so I'll just thumbs OP notices and adds it to Postimages album that I SHAMLESSLY have bookmarked. (Which came in handy actually just this week because my hotbars decided to spoof on me out of nowhere and had to redo every single one of them. So thank you OP! ❤
Yessss we need an updated version!
Hmmmm… :(
I recently tried controller because my hands started to hurt from all the clicking and holding shift/ctrl down with my pinky. While there's some negatives with controller too. The cross-hotbar system is a godsend! It makes weaving and doing long chains of abilities so much more intuitive!
Opposite for me. I just went from controller to k/m (after playing ff14 for the last year on controller, whew). What made k/m work for me was getting an mmo mouse and binding shift control and alt to the mouse buttons. I can now play so much more smoothly, even better than I could on controller. Also, no finger pain! Don't forget to stretch your hands and forearms after playing!
Yep, controllers are ace. I'll never go back to kb/m.
I can see the advantage of a controller. But as primarily a PC gamer I'd have a hard time swapping. Plus, for some reason, the PS4 controllers always dig into my hand in one spot after a while. As a drummer my hands and wrists never really get tired on a keyboard. I play PoE a lot too and I remember back when you hand to piano your flasks all the time. I was one of the very few people who actually liked doing that lol
I have played MMOs for decades now with a similar setup to what you described. The only tweak that I have made is this: I have 2 button on the L side of my mouse, I have rebound these buttons to Shift & Ctrl. This allows me to stop using my L pinky to awkwardly hit L-Ctrl. Instead I am using my R-Thumb to push Shift & Ctrl. This has been a game changer for my playstyle. Thanks for the video.
Sent this to some friends who are just starting, I love how concise this is, and also the mention of having similar buttons between classes to help with muscle memory. Really great video, thank you!
One of the best guides for keybinds, logical and practical. Very intuitive for keyboard players who don’t have an mmo mouse
I had this on in the background as something to listen to while working.
I’m going to _have to_ sit down and _watch_ it. It’s giving me some good ideas, but it’s definitely a thing that needs to be seen. My brother just started playing, and I think it’s his first MMO although not his first FF game. I’ll definitely share this with him.
The biggest game changer for me was purchasing an MMO mouse. Went with the Logitech G600. Definitely worth the money. Align my abilities in 3 3x4 groups and modifying the 2nd and 3rd groups with ctrl and shift respectively. Took a little while to get used to, but now I'd be lost without it.
I've been feeling like I'm terrible at video games because I've been having the problems you're describing in the beginning. I'm glad to know it's not just me. Thank you so much for making this video!
I used a similar layout when I first started and I used to click with mouse for stuff like buffs and defense, but after getting an MMO mouse, my life has been so much better. If anyone is inclined to try an MMO mouse, I highly recommend it. ( A tip for what I do is I fashion my hotbars into 3 square so that it mimics my mouse button layout, and then I use SHIFT and CTRL as modifiers :3 )
I did exactly the same! 3x4 hot bars, LCTRL/Shift for modifiers.
@@commandopengi yep xD
As a brand new sprout this video is like music to my ears ❤🎉
revisiting this vid a year later, just to express my gratitude for it ! Still enjoying the game a year later all because of this video, making keybinds reachable for me - many thanks again for making this vid
A simple mmo mouse is very comfortable. I wasn't used to using one, and at first couldn't think of ways to use it. But I gradually moved skills that were even the slightest bit uncomfortable to it. This also eased up how much my left hand was working. Can't imagine playing without it.
I just recently started playing this game again. I've had it for over 4 years but only last night did I get my first Soul Stone. I got White Mage and Pali and both due to watching so many other FF14 videos in the last month and me playing MMOs for probably 15+ yaers I'm glad to know that I have a very similar layout by deafault that you do. My mitigation is all on C top row, Shift 2nd row is mostly for heals and other support actions, and Bottom row is obviously instants and default combos. I'm gonna have to show my friend this video because he's new to MMOs only ever playing SWOTR and it physically hurt me to see how he ended up laying out his hotbars accross his screen.
He tunred them into 6x2s and put about an inch between each one and placed them across the bottom of his screen like a trifold for a presentation. But seeing as though he was level 1-10 he had like 5-6 skills all smooshed up on the far left 6x2 and was individually clicking most of the skills.
I fully endorse this setup...it also helps that I use almost an exact keybind set up, so I feel validated :D Only thing I do differently is I use "v" instead of "t". Going even further, I bind non-combat commands like soothe, beckon, mount, potions to my F keys, and I go even further and have the various panes spearate into 3 different groups that I assign by rows: row 1: t,y,u,i,o,p - "info" panes like map, abilities, logs. Row 2: g,h,j,k,l,; - "social" panes like duty finder, party, free clan. Row 3: b,n,m,",","." - "item" panes like bag, character, collections. Yeah...I went a bit nuts but it all makes sense.
that is honestly not a bad idea as this setup in the video gets rid of c for character gona try this out do you happen to have a full list of the changes so i can copy and fine tune?
I'm sorry, I don't. If I was a content creator, I'd probably put together a spreadsheet. Thank you for the compliment though@@alex140i3
@@WarMonkeyPlays its all good i chose to use a macro hotbar menu setup and mix your idea into it i just started playing 3 days ago so its best to learn early
What is sticking with me most is that I should probably pick a main job. Right now I’m trying to level everything together. And sometimes my muscle memory has betrayed me when I switch to a job I haven’t used in a while.
Still, great to hear many of my ideas about hotbar setup are shared by even more experienced players!
Honestly, I don't have a main job either. There's a few jobs I've played a lot that I hover between right now. Interestingly switching between jobs makes you understand the game better and actually helps me memorize rotations and so on faster. Something about taking a break and coming back to it just makes it stick way more. So if you want to play well, I would actually recommend a few main jobs rather than just a single one. But that's just a theory I have :)
It might be better to get every job to 90 before deciding on your main job(s). You get to learn them all somewhat, figure out what you like, then you can knuckle down and build the muscle memory.
I've been playing FF14 for almost 10 years now and although I'm playing on Controller - and I think I've mastered it - I still learn something new every single day. This video is very informative! Keep the good work up! 👏
Thank you! I'm new to the game and have been using the default keybinds for all of the 230h I have on the game, needless to say this has made playing much easier and comfortable! It is a bit confusing at first since my muscle memory still presses some of the old keybinds but it's an amazing and needed change, thanks!
I was searching for a guide to keybind the skills of my WAR at the time I start to become a heavy player in FFXIV. After one year I'm here to leave my thanks. Your hotbar layout is very similar as one I found for red mage in a blog when I begin to play FFXIV for the first time and I can say yours is very comfortable to use. Thank you very much!
I've been playing for years but I always felt like some of my key bindings were weird but kept them for the habit, your video gave me a clear idea on how to improve it !
I started off playing the game with the default keybinds and just clicking the farthest abilities from 12345 with the mouse, and this vid finally gave me the motivation to set up proper keybinds for everything I used in the game. a month later, content plays so much more smoothly for me with the new keybind setup, and I really have this vid to thank for getting me to finally play smarter.
for a tip, if you have trouble hitting Ctrl for certain casts (hand injury, pinky can't reach easily, or you just really don't like having to hit Ctrl for your third hotbar) and you play on a keyboard that allows you to remap individual keys (custom mechanical keyboards, a USB translator that can remap your keys on a non-customizable keyboard, etc), rebind Caps Lock to Ctrl. it will allow you to cast your Ctrl abilities without having to pretzel your pinky to do so. This was a great QoL change for me when I was setting up my keybinds, and I never use Caps Lock very often either, so nothing was lost for my use case.
This was incredibly helpful. I'm just getting to mid-30s on my main job, and the hotbar situation was starting to seem like a looming problem.
Excellent video, changing my hotbar and keybinds was a pretty daunting task but watching this video made me take the leap, already getting very comfortable with the setup i have and now my fingers wont be sore trying to reach for buttons :) thanks!
Glad I could help!
I changed my hotbar to this exact system after seeing yours from an older video. This made progressing & learning jobs very smooth for me as a new player.
This helped a lot, recently got back into the game and I can't believe I never thought of this. Except I'm swapping it to where the number keys are on the end.
This video was amazingly helpful. I'm sure other people have said something similar in other comments but I want to reiterate it because it was a game changer for me. If you have a gaming mouse with at least 2 additional buttons which can be remapped, remap them to your modifier keys (shift & ctrl, or you can make them keys which are even farther out of the way since you'll never actually click them on the keyboard).
Using my pinky finger to hit the modifier keys and still hitting my other keys was a struggle for me. Holding down a mouse button instead so I don't have to change anything with my left hand is so much easier.
For people who started with the standard keybinds and became clickers i can say that while the setup in this video is probably more comfortable, you can still play optimally by clicking your skills in savage and ultimate content and parse 90-99. Your personal skills are more important than your setup and if you struggle to change or you find yourself comfortable with clicking then you can stay the way you are without influencing your performance.
yeah, people are on some mad copium if they think the game isnt 100% clickproof. The combat is slow enough that you only really need to keybind your main rotation and main ogcds. Clicking the 60s-120s stuff is totally fine, nooone needs to keybind their 2min cd lol
@@lunaticmode638 I mean, oshit coldown like benection would be useless without bind, or just higher chance you push it late. Dunno how fast is experienced clicker.
Im actually much better when I just click tbh especially with my small hands that can't reach ctrl or shift + other key at the same time. And it's not like I look at the hotbar for the entire time. I actually don't and have very good awareness of whats happening. I can look at my hotbar AND my surroundings at the same time. And like the person above said, the combat is slow enough and a lot of spells have a high cooldown.
I played wow as a clicker and let me tell you it's much harder
A year late, but THANK YOU! As someone who has always struggled with UI setups in MMOs, this video gave me tons of help figuring mine out. Now I'll just have to find a new excuse when I end up tanking the floor XD
good video, i was already thinking that 6 is getting too far from my hand and was thinking on changing it like moving asdw to somewhere else and use this part of the keyboard, you just did something even better
Thank you very much sir. I have been running your set up and it has made things so much easier in FFXIV. It is rocky as you said in the beginning but it works so well once you get the muscle memory down. So once again thank you very much :)
After a while of struggling with tab target MMOs for the longest time, this here is a godsend. Thank you for the very helpful pointers, my friend.
just started playing and have been wondering whether it was better to keybind everything or just click, so this is really useful to me. thank you!
Thank you so much for this! Being a lazy DPS I used to click for a fair few actions, but trying healer opened my eyes 😅 Your pics were really helpful for inspiration too!
I noticed I had been looking at my hotbar way too much and was missing mechs in raids, so this was extremely helpful! Only suggestion I might make is using alt instead of ctrl as it's far easier to hit by just moving your thumb from space
Just started back after a long hiatus, this info and the hotbar layout has helped a lot, cheers!
Thank you so much for the video it has made my ff14 experience so much better now! went all the way thru Endwalker doing the normal keybinds and it was terrible. Been testing out the new keybinds and can say I'm honestly in love.
I have been running this style of set up for many years. Long enough I am getting arthritis in my fingers and carpel tunnel. I tried the MMO mice, but my hands are simply too big for them to work. So I went with a standard mouse with two thumb buttons I use for my control and shift. This gives me everything I need and all three rows are just as accessible as any of the others. You could also add a fourth row if you wanted to. Shift on your keyboard, ctrl and alt+ctrl on your mouse. I would highly recommend switching to the modifiers on your mouse and keyboard for all the functions.
Just today I was changing the keybinds but was not convinced with how it turned out. I'm going to try this setup
been playing for a few months now and have basically been clicking the right half of my hotbars but this has convinced me to try using a similar setup, the troublr now will be getting my hand to actually press thr buttons correctly and not instinctively clicking
Thank god for this video! I'm started the game for like 2 months ago from now and its like you said the eye in the bar always tend to be a mess. I was thinking to myself i need to redo these keybinds in order to do a proper rotation, proper opening and THANK GOD you made this video, i will definetelly master this keybinds because i have a feeling that i will feel way more comfy with this buttons than the default ones.
I just finished End Walker and wanted to start getting more into raiding but I knew I had developed bad habits in terms of my key binds. This video is really useful information!!
I'm using a mouse that has 2 thumb buttons (which most mice have nowadays) and a dps control button. I usually map Ctrl and Shift on those buttons while the tab targeting function to the dps button, which to me is easier to press compared to pressing them on your keyboard. You just have to make sure that your mouse is compatible with mapping keyboard keys to its buttons.
also nice about mapping the mouse 4 and mouse 5 buttons to modifier keys is that u can easily press them together with any keyboard key (so no need to worry about hitting CTRL+T for example) and on most mice they are easy to press together for the 4th hotbar to set up ur bars in a more convenient way or to not need as many keyboard keys (like if u dont like having to use zxc or t, those abilities could be moved to the 4th bar instead)
Mine's the usual MMO Mouse (Corsair) with 12 Buttons. I do the same thing, I have the two buttons (5 & 8) that are closest to what the double thumb button combo would be set to be Shift and Alt Modifiers, which means it's a lot easier for me to just use those keybinds without ever having to worry about reaching them on my keyboard for any of my keyboard-based binds. And because the 12 buttons set up has other great easily accessible thumb buttons, it also provides me with more than just modifiers to bind, I've effectively gained a third of the viable binds I can comfortably use on keyboard as extra buttons I can use for binding.
Amazing guide. I changed the buttons up a bit but I actually never thought of using something other than standard. It will take a while to get used to but this will make jobs a lot more comfortable during high level fights
I've played this game for years and years, this will probably make my life a lot better. I had recently adjusted to clicking certain actions and adding more hotbars for lv90s, like click the hotbar and place the thing down for healing for example. I'm not sure why I was so afraid of making these changes, they make a lot of sense. I personally like my tank aoe buttons on Q and E since I think that's comfy, but that's just personal choice lol. I know dps aoe is probably going to have to be shift 123 or something I'll have to check your link. I do like the templates you gave but I definitely will be toying with it for my perfect fit, I thank you for your time and tips.
This has helped me as a new player. Though i personall use alt instead of ctrl because it just feels more natural for me personally
Thank you for this, I'm making the swap from console to PC and trying to setup all my bars on PC. This is a godsend.
Everyone ends up eventually forming habits in their key binds. - Like a friend of mine has his movement re-bound from WASD to ESDF so he can put an extra three key binds between movement and shift. - He has big hands, so it's no big deal, but really, you gotta adapt this to your particular setup.
Best advice for me is just to put your fingers on Shift, A, W and D like you would in a "ready" position, and see which keys on the keyboard you can reach without lifting more than one finger off those keys at a time.
I can reach all the way to T and G comfortably with my index finger, while I still have my hand on Shift, A and W. And same for the 5 key. And my thumb can comfortably reach to the B key. - So that's a whole half a keyboard I have easy access to.
Your hands will likely be different, or maybe you have a different keyboard layout, maybe you've got more spacing there, or you hold your keyboard at a slightly different angle. - If your mid and index finger are a bit longer, then your WASD position will come from a slightly different angle that might make it hard to even reach C with your thumb, or maybe you got longer fingers and can reach all the way to 6 Y and H.
Feel around for what key combos you can comfortably reach by just making subtle motions of your fingers, while your hand is at rest, and work from there. Come up with the setup that feels best to you.
I'm a clicker. Thanks for this video. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to change, but this is the most clear, understandable tutorial I've seen. I've listed as a fave - thanks again.
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but if you are going to use Legacy controls, the A/D = Strafe is even more important, because the normal Legacy movement actually makes a curve instead of going in a straight line. Also, Legacy has a slight advantage over default for moving away and attacking; Default will kind of make your character stutter step backwards but Legacy you just keep moving normally. This small change can be huge in content like solo Deep Dungeon because you can kite while using your ranged attacks without getting drawn backwards, but it can also let you greed mechanics more often without getting hit.
I enjoy my Razer Tartarus v2 Gaming Keypad. The great thing is that I have 57 binds the way I set it up. Took a while to get right, but now I can't live without it.
I've always used 1 thru = when playing wow but seeing vids of all the abilities each classes get later on was definitely an eye opener.
Will definitely give this keybind a try since the best time to get used to something is early into a game than way in.
Very good video! I think it's very important, especially for new players to directly have a good setting with keybinds and hotbar, and placement for skills
I also use 1 2 3 4 5, Q, E, R, T, F, G, Z X, V! and all of them with Shift. It's pleny enough to be good!
I just use 5 T G B (and with Shift too) for long cd (90 seconds and more), because they are far away.
And i use also Shift + W A S D for some very specific skills. (Shift + W in Mages and Healres is for the instant cast, and otherwise it's my "attack buff", and Shift+S is the opposite, the "defense buff") But i never use Ctrl+ something, because i struggle to hit Ctrl. (yes i have little fingers, but of course if you can use Ctrl too, you can have more options, or just not use 5 T G B, and just the closest binds only with Ctrl too)
And, it's pretty rare to see video speaking about which skills/spells put where! But yes, i think it's very important to have the "almost same abilities" on the same keybinds!
I have almost the same settings than you, Jolsn.
Using Q for the ranged attack, and E R F and 2 3 4 for 2 differents combos (for exemple the 2 combos of the Samuraï. And for the "only 1 touch", it's on V). 1 is most of the time a charge/dash.
I have also the knockout/stun on Shift+C. All the AoE are on Shift. For exemple, the "AoE combo" is simply on Shift+E, Shift+R, Shift+F OR, depending of some classes, on Shift+2, Shift+3. (for the Bard for example)
Same for healers (i don't play tank), my heal skills are always on the same configuration between every jobs! F is my damage AoE (with White Mage it's so useful for trash mobs), Shift+F is my Healing AoE. Q my main attack (Earth/Ruin), E the DoT, 3 the main heal, 2 the "little heal". C the HoT mono-target, Shift+C the HoT for the party. etc...
It's so good because you can easily switch jobs and you just have to use the same keybinds! You always know what it will do! (in the past, when you have more DoT, my DoT was on C or V/Shift+V etc) The only thing you have to remember is the specificity of your job, and that's all. But it's more easy to remember it like that!
I starting MMOs with Aion, and i directly try to find a good system to handle so many skills, and i naturally did that. And i use this system since then! (2008)
I used it in SWTOR too (Shift+C was my interrupt, and it's fun because with the Jedi it's also a high turn kick, like for the melee class in FF XIV), Tera (even if you had less skills to put in your hotbars), WoW (when i finally played this game for Mist of Pandaria), etc...
And i ALWAYS asked myself... why the default setting is not using a system like that? It's so good, more intuitive, more fun to use. Why 1 to 0, on top of your keyboard... It's so stupid. No one can use 7, 8, or 9 easily in a fight! It will force new players to become "mouse clickers"... When with a good setup, it's so much fun to use keybinds!
(and yes, of course you can setup your hotbars to visually have your "almost same" skills on the same column, it can help a lot, at least at the beginning! i don't do that really, but i understand it ;) )
Huge help - I’m new to the game and thought the settings would eventually kick me in the butt with how many abilities are in the game. Glad I found this while I’m still early on in leveling 😅
Newbie here, making your recommended changes has helped me tremendously. Took some time to get used to the different keybinds but much more effective. Thanks so much for your input and tips!!! 🙂
Funny thing to counter one of your first points, you can turn the camera without the mouse, it's helping me in fights plenty of time to use A&D to rotate while using Q&E to strafe
While I haven't rebound my keys quite yet, I do want to suggest something extra heretical - Rebind your movement keys from WASD to ESDF. This will shift your fingers' position so that you have more readily available buttons (the lowest row of keys can be very awkward to use) without really limiting your accessible keys.
they're out of line, they're right, but they're out of line.
What I did is, I keybined the two side buttons of my mouse into CTRL and SHIFT, and I use the exact same hotbar keybinds that you showed in the video, I find it more comfortable to press these two through my mouse side buttons rather than pressing them on the keyboard, and is actually faster.
I 100 recommend the mmo mouse. Also a pro tip, change your hotbar to the 3x4. It puts it in the same way it is set up on the mouse, giving you a visual cue where to put your finger.
The most useful thing i learned from this video is how to turn off direct chat, so I can actually put everything you taught me to use now 😄
I use an MMO mouse so any advice I have isn't as applicable if you're trying to set up a mostly keyboard hotbar, but early on I made sprint bound to the mouse scroll wheel click and I can never go back to any other setup without it. I happened by chance to realize one day I could bind something to it and idk if other people have realized too! I have it on a shared 'non-combat clickables' hotbar where I keep teleport/return or ghysal greens so it doesn't clog up my regular job hotbars, and just set that one slot to mouse scroll wheel click so it's there regardless of job. It's great for quick use and takes hardly any work to build up muscle memory for because the mouse is already so tied to movement anyway!
I originally bound it to assist target, but I have never been using it that much...
honestly this is an eye opener for me! I've been playing for quite a while and comfortable with my hotbars (some default some modified) but now I feel like my hotbars aren't effective anymore and I was wondering what can I do for it! This video came at the right time, thank you so much I'll definitely try this :)
The couch mount on the Black Mage hotbars cracked me up.
For my keybinds I use F1-F6, 1-5, Q E F Z X C V, and shift/alt modifiers for the letters including WASD. I can hit Alt comfortably with my thumb. The only catch is that Shift/Alt WASD don't work well with skills that have a cast time (if I move accidentally, it gets interrupted), so I only put instant casts in there.
F5 and F6 I tend to use for rarely used abilities like tank stances or Quickcast on F5 and Revive on F6. I use 1-5 for single target rotations and Z X C V for AoE rotations. It's easy to move and spam.
I dont use R, Shift+R, T and Shift+T for battle, because I have those for toggle Run, Sprint, Mount and Teleport respectively.
Glad to see some of my reasonings for keybinds were mentioned here as well.
Also I see other people are mentioning using the mouse side buttons for modifiers, which sounds like a good idea, but I like having one of those for select nearest enemy, and the other for selecting the 2nd party member (the tank when I'm healing). I'm already pretty comfortable with my current setup.
I'm going to be pretty honest bro, this guide of yours help so much, I'm new playing FFXIV and my problem was always how to set up my keybinds and I didn't have idea, but with your tips I can play more comfortable, you are great content creator I really appreciate it, greetings and new subscriber from Mexico. Peace.
such a helpful video along with those pictures of your set up for each job !! 10/10 tysm (:
I'd like to suggest a next step to your suggested layout. I played a lot of Black Desert and obviously in an action combat PVP game keybinds are mega important. The way Black Desert sets up its keybinds is like how you do it but they also put keys in place that are logical. Examples: the Space key is normally Jump which is a form of movement so when you bind Shift+Space you make this another movement skill, something like a forward leap/engage skill (Tank leap, a dragoon jump, ninja teleport etc), you could also do Shift+W as a "forward" skill, either a movement skill or a ranged attack. A heal and a shield are both anti-damage so if you put a shield skill on Q, you put the next step after a shield (a heal) on Shift+Q. If E and R are attack skills then Shift+E and Shift+R should be augmented versions of those attacks (example the AoE version of those skills or the follow-on combos skills off those skills).
What they are basically doing is to try and relate the binding to the natural use of the keys so for example when playing a particular class in BDO that had a "forward torpedo" attack where your character forward rolled through the enemy and often used this to dodge due to invuln frames this was bound to Shift+W because it was a natural extension of forward movement with W. So when you're binding keys don't just base it on finger distance but also create a sort of keyboard mnemonic, it makes gaining muscle memory 100x easier.
this is why I love my Razer Naga Pro with the 12 buttons on the side, it makes keybinds easy peasy
That is by far the best explanaition video for this topic i found. Great work Jolsn, keep this passion and quality up.
Been playing ffxiv for three years now and I had no idea you could modify a keybind for the 3rd hotbar. I use the mmo mouse and it's extremely convenient.
An excellent guide! Thank you so much for sharing this helpful information for those of us who are accustomed to WASD gaming.
As someone who used to play a lot of mmos and is recently getting into ffxiv, rather than having the "least used"/long cd hotbar as ctrl+something, I always manually click my long cds. The main reason I do this is because when you're stretching your hand in all kinds of ways to hit a button, fatfingering gets so much more likely at least for me, and the negative effects of accidentally hitting a longer cd are felt much longer than they would if you were to just mess up the order on your basic rotation once or twice.
Also, for those who don't want to get used to an mmo mouse, I highly recommend picking up a mouse with a smaller amount of programmable buttons, that way you can bind one of them as the modifier key for your bar 2
WOW this is exactly what I’ve been looking for! Absolutely killer video. Thanks!!!
awesome guide I did mine a little different but this feels so much better
It seems obvious to put all tank mitigation spells on the same row but somehow it didnt occur to me. It's been very helpful so far. Thanks a lot.
BLM main; I use 4 hotbars, but I don't use every slot on all of them. The reason being that this lets me put all my Fires and Blizzards (and both Thunders for that matter) on single keys, switching between them with the modifier keys - alongside this, I can have all my AoEs on the same modifier key.
I honestly figured this out within weeks of starting the game and it was such a game changer. I also use a reduced size mech keyboard, so I have no (easy) access to F keys, since they're bound under the top row number keys using the Fn modifier key. My fingers can't comfortably reach 7-0, nevermind - and =, so setting the hotbar keys around WASD made the most sense. (Having a mouse with even just two extra buttons can help with other kinds of keybinds, as well.) And same with the concept of keeping similar action buttons in the same spots on the hotbar(s) between jobs. In my opinion, healers are the odd ones out for this kind of set-up since, obviously, most of their skillset comprises healing actions. So you have to organize them completely differently as opposed to any of the attacking classes, which can all have the same (or similar) hotbar set-up.
A couple of things that have helped me are:
1. After getting a job stone, looking at all of the job's future abilities and add every ability to my hotbar to start getting the right muscle memory for each ability
2. as far as the hotbars go, rather than pressing control or shift with a finger, I use the bottom edge of the palm of my hand. I press control+ability for the second bar and control+shift+ability for the third bar by angling my hand forward a bit more. This keeps more fingers available for abilities.
3. As Jolsn said in the video putting similar abilities in similar locations for muscle memory.
That's what has helped me, but most importantly I think experimenting and finding what works best for you will ultimately be the best option
I thought I was an odd ball for setting up my Keys this way! Having someone with your skill level do the same, makes me feel WAY less crazy. I’ve had my layout nearly identical to yours for 3.5 years! I also have a Logitech mouse that has a M4.M5 button I use for Instant Casts, gap closers, or escapes.
Thank you for sharing this!
Yeah, I also find that keeping certain types of abilities bound to the same grouping helps with remembering. Me personally, I like to bind my AOE abilities to T, F or G and I like to bind my sprint to Ctrl R. I also usually bind my long cooldown abilities to my number keys, whilst using Q E and R for the combos and abilities I use most in rotation.
THANK YOU!!! I've only just been trying new classes and roles over my go-to Dragoon. Everywhere I looked for layout ideas, it was all controller layouts or noting to explain what keybinds people have been using. It's wonderful to have a better idea over what I was told by my FC of "Do what feels comfortable." Hard to be comfortable if your not used to a class/role.
I'm hoping that you'll make an update to this when Dawntrail comes out for the job changes! I still reference the hotbars album often for setting up alts. 🙏
One thing instarted doing years and years ago back in WoW is using tilde for my "1" key. This adds one less modifier key bind to my rotation. Since you can press tilde through 4 with zero issues.
I’m really debating trying the game again, thanks for these tips!!
This has helped me a TON! Thank you so much, have a blessed day! ❤
I use to play wow with almost the same key bind set up. I very slowly developed arthritis which overtime ruined the game for me. The story in FFXIV made me give it a try, and it's controller system has made me stick around. I owe the controller hotbar scheme an awful lot. :)
Simply brilliant, I have been looking for something like this. Thank you!
Something I did that helped me immensely is binding a separate hotbar with 2 shift shortcuts(or at least one shift, but 2 shortcuts is essential) and putting sprint and Limit Break onto that 2 bound hotbar spaces. This lets you have a dedicated sprint button similar to games that let you do so and an easy access to your Limit break since you might not want to waste your remaining hotbar spaces with more essential things like consumables for it.
It's also very useful in PVP since you need at most 2 hotbars because of the the shared actions, specifically (PVP) Sprint and (PVP) Potion are better in those same hotbar spaces I talked about earlier.
That separate hotbar can then be used for less essential things in combat , but still useful in game, like mounts, maps, social macros...
(I usually put it next to my character and make it transparent for visibility and ease of view, but that's optional, you can put it wherever you want if you want something clean).
I love your hud so much.
I just watched a video and reorganized everything to be closer to the center of the screen, but now my screen is so cluttered in the center and the sides are bare. Not to mention it's really annoying to use just walking around in the world and doing fates/questing because everything is meant to be congested to make your eyes not strain.
I really like how yours is just pretty much default with a few things moved around and an extra hotbar. It's really sleek.
Another suggestion--consider moving from WSAD to EDSF. You will then have more keys to bind and if you ever have to move your hand from the home position you can easily find it without looking at the keyboard by feeling for the raised part on the F key.
"strafe" is definitely my preferred way to move left/right
thankyou so much! im only lvl 30 on my rogue but im already stuggling on my binds and im definitely going to give this a try!
Thank you my kind sir I'm making the switch from the controller, and I was LOST for Mouse and Keyboard binding.
Your guide so much help for beginners like me,much appreciate for you dude👌🏼
This is so awesome of you to post this. It took so long to figure out what layout works best for me.
I was waiting for this to pop up in my algorithm
You can also add 5 and tilde(~) to the bindable keys. You use 5 which is around the same area as T and tilde is next to 1 so it's really easy access.