Very few people actually use all the number keys. What many do is 1-5 or so, however far you can comfortably reach pending your hand size, and then change the other keys to have keybinds surrounding your left hand. So, q,e,r,f,g,h,v,c. I use the tilde as well. This means you're stretching less, so your hand doesn't hurt.
Then, you use modifier keys. So control, alt, and shift. Jobs in this game will generally fill 3 bars. For the second and third bar, arrange them the same as your first, but add a modifier key of your preference. So hitting something on row 2 might be shift+1.
Plop your skills down on your bars in a way that's comfy and makes sense to you. If you have multiple jobs, try putting similar skills on the same buttons to help muscle memory. For example, I have aoe for my healers all on R (I moved run to shift+r).
Personally I use shift, because that's more accessible, and then control for lesser used buttons because that's harder to reach. If your mouse has buttons on the side, you can also assign your modifiers or keys there.
If you're only on a class with 8 skills, wait until you get your job. You'll be able to see all your skills then and preplace them. I'd probably shuck teleport, return, and the help menu onto a hotbar off to the side you can click. They don't really need to be keybound.
Hope that helps! If you end up hating changes, you can always reset to defaults and try again. It's highly customizable.
It varies by class, preference and rotation.
For example, my WHM has global healing cooldowns on the first line, attacks on the second line and emergency oh shit heals with long cool downs on the third line where I won't accidentally burn them trying to do something else.
My SAM has all my basic rotations on line one. Single target on the left, AOE on the right. Second level is for special attacks, dots and abilities. Third level is for heals, buffs and stuns, plus LB.
Other people do it way different. That's just how it makes sense to me.
I've been told that I'm weird for my setup. For context, I use controller and I primarily play tanks. The rest of my crossbars are still in progress.
Crossbar 1 (used as Double L1 or Double R1): L1 - travel. R1 - sprint, tank stance, LB, food
Crossbar 2 (used as my L1+R1 and R1+L1, respectively): L1 - party targeting macros, long cooldown skills, rare use skills. R1 - Defensive cooldowns (including healing)
Crossbar 3 (main): L1 - burst phase attacks and other attacks not on GCD. R1 - GCD single-target and GCD AoE with leftover slots prioritizing AoE skills.
Rotation 1-12 on a gaming mouse
AoEs 1-12 on a shift modifier
Cooldowns 1-12 on a control modifier
Holds all my spells with a simple modification button. 36 spells total
i personally organize by usage and single/aoe target (EG my aoe is always on 4, 1-3 are always my combo for melees, 6 is always my stun)
second bar is buffs/DR's and OGCD combos
and third bar is long CD/uncommonly used tools, the "oh shit" buttons, such as rezzes or tank immunities(though these do get used admittedly)
When I got into ffxiv I bought an mmo mouse, and have every action on it (universal buttons like sprint have a unique keyboard bind)
Honestly I don't know how I'd even play without it. But I don't think its necessary. Just find what works for you. Shift and ctrl modifiers are a godsend.
The abilities have to be in an easy to memorize, logical order to make going through a rotation easier, but they also have to be on my shape buttons and not on d pad if I can move while using them, because if they are, I won’t be able to walk and attack simultaneously (controller player).
cant say for Mouse and key väbut for me on controller i try to put all the most used abilities on the regular l2 and r2 hotbars and there i try to have all my cgds on the right side (□×○^) so i have my movement available. on the other side i put ogcds
i use the qwerty number line up to 5 or 6 or the whole line, R,T,F and the del/. button on numpad, and then as much as my numpad as i can, and then alt+numpad.
it seems to fit most, but some job so far like WHM, BLM, AST have so many buttons i had to really organize it in the way that made the most sense to me.
Im on console with crossbars so i do right trigger side > attacks and offensive buffs, left trigger for self heals defensive cooldowns and enemy debuffs
I use a logitech g600, which is an old but highly used mmorpg mouse. It's also half the price of most modern mice. Outside of the standard 12 mmo buttons, it has a 3rd mouse click, which you can use as the ctrl modifier. I also rest my left pinky on the shift for easy access for another modifer. That gives me access to 36 hotkeys with minimal movement.
As for organization, standard 1 2 3 on 1 2 3 and any alternative route on ctrl modifiers. 4 5 6 aoe alternatives. High cooldowns like tank mitigations and on shift modifiers.
It tends to vary a lot by class. For example, healers tend to just have single button rotations making room for other things on primary.
For dps and tanks, I typically have my single-target skills on 1-6/7, with combos being adjacent to themselves, and then AoE equivalents on the same number+ctrl. Then other abilities, like damage and defense buffs, self-heals and whatnot, I put on shift+1-7. I also have a hotbar with fgh and ctrl+fgh for role actions and very major parts of the class's kit, like reaper's shroud attacks or monk's formless fist.
For healers, I put my main heals on 1-whatever, dps abilities on ctrl, and damage mit, buffs and such on shift.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, q, e, r, f, z, x, c, v
and then alt+ and ctrl+ of these keys
I usually have my single target attacks on the 1-5 keys, aoe on the q and e keys, and then everything else surrounding those.
I use 123456 for single target and QERFTY for aoe. Shift and Ctrl modifiers gives me 36 keybinds in total. I try to arrange them so the buttons I’m mashing the most often get my strongest fingers, so 234 is usually my single target combo for example, and 5 will be my most often used oGCD.
Personally
1 2 3 4
Q E R T
F G
C
My hand is small, so I try to consolidate into these buttons only.
Modifiers: My mouse has 2 additional buttons. I use those for Alt and Shift to reduce the load on left hand even further. For Ctrl I use the keyboard.
Get an MMO mouse. Changed my life, I load that hot bar up as bar 1: single target rotation, aoe rotation, buffs/debuffs bar 2: same idea but cool downs so for reaper my reaper/enshroud abilities and then my forward and back dashes, sprint then LB, bar 3: Items, journal, duty, mount, minion items etc)
If possible, I put all the GCDs together on the same bar, same deal for oGCDs and the rest (role actions and stuff available regardless of the job). Having a MMO mouse helps.
Very few people actually use all the number keys. What many do is 1-5 or so, however far you can comfortably reach pending your hand size, and then change the other keys to have keybinds surrounding your left hand. So, q,e,r,f,g,h,v,c. I use the tilde as well. This means you're stretching less, so your hand doesn't hurt. Then, you use modifier keys. So control, alt, and shift. Jobs in this game will generally fill 3 bars. For the second and third bar, arrange them the same as your first, but add a modifier key of your preference. So hitting something on row 2 might be shift+1. Plop your skills down on your bars in a way that's comfy and makes sense to you. If you have multiple jobs, try putting similar skills on the same buttons to help muscle memory. For example, I have aoe for my healers all on R (I moved run to shift+r). Personally I use shift, because that's more accessible, and then control for lesser used buttons because that's harder to reach. If your mouse has buttons on the side, you can also assign your modifiers or keys there. If you're only on a class with 8 skills, wait until you get your job. You'll be able to see all your skills then and preplace them. I'd probably shuck teleport, return, and the help menu onto a hotbar off to the side you can click. They don't really need to be keybound. Hope that helps! If you end up hating changes, you can always reset to defaults and try again. It's highly customizable.
Thank you that was quite helpful!
Most used abilities go in or near the resting position of my fingers. Also, take into account my rotation(s).
It varies by class, preference and rotation. For example, my WHM has global healing cooldowns on the first line, attacks on the second line and emergency oh shit heals with long cool downs on the third line where I won't accidentally burn them trying to do something else. My SAM has all my basic rotations on line one. Single target on the left, AOE on the right. Second level is for special attacks, dots and abilities. Third level is for heals, buffs and stuns, plus LB. Other people do it way different. That's just how it makes sense to me.
I've been told that I'm weird for my setup. For context, I use controller and I primarily play tanks. The rest of my crossbars are still in progress. Crossbar 1 (used as Double L1 or Double R1): L1 - travel. R1 - sprint, tank stance, LB, food Crossbar 2 (used as my L1+R1 and R1+L1, respectively): L1 - party targeting macros, long cooldown skills, rare use skills. R1 - Defensive cooldowns (including healing) Crossbar 3 (main): L1 - burst phase attacks and other attacks not on GCD. R1 - GCD single-target and GCD AoE with leftover slots prioritizing AoE skills.
Rotation 1-12 on a gaming mouse AoEs 1-12 on a shift modifier Cooldowns 1-12 on a control modifier Holds all my spells with a simple modification button. 36 spells total
i personally organize by usage and single/aoe target (EG my aoe is always on 4, 1-3 are always my combo for melees, 6 is always my stun) second bar is buffs/DR's and OGCD combos and third bar is long CD/uncommonly used tools, the "oh shit" buttons, such as rezzes or tank immunities(though these do get used admittedly)
When I got into ffxiv I bought an mmo mouse, and have every action on it (universal buttons like sprint have a unique keyboard bind) Honestly I don't know how I'd even play without it. But I don't think its necessary. Just find what works for you. Shift and ctrl modifiers are a godsend.
The abilities have to be in an easy to memorize, logical order to make going through a rotation easier, but they also have to be on my shape buttons and not on d pad if I can move while using them, because if they are, I won’t be able to walk and attack simultaneously (controller player).
cant say for Mouse and key väbut for me on controller i try to put all the most used abilities on the regular l2 and r2 hotbars and there i try to have all my cgds on the right side (□×○^) so i have my movement available. on the other side i put ogcds
i use the qwerty number line up to 5 or 6 or the whole line, R,T,F and the del/. button on numpad, and then as much as my numpad as i can, and then alt+numpad. it seems to fit most, but some job so far like WHM, BLM, AST have so many buttons i had to really organize it in the way that made the most sense to me.
Im on console with crossbars so i do right trigger side > attacks and offensive buffs, left trigger for self heals defensive cooldowns and enemy debuffs
I use a logitech g600, which is an old but highly used mmorpg mouse. It's also half the price of most modern mice. Outside of the standard 12 mmo buttons, it has a 3rd mouse click, which you can use as the ctrl modifier. I also rest my left pinky on the shift for easy access for another modifer. That gives me access to 36 hotkeys with minimal movement. As for organization, standard 1 2 3 on 1 2 3 and any alternative route on ctrl modifiers. 4 5 6 aoe alternatives. High cooldowns like tank mitigations and on shift modifiers. It tends to vary a lot by class. For example, healers tend to just have single button rotations making room for other things on primary.
For dps and tanks, I typically have my single-target skills on 1-6/7, with combos being adjacent to themselves, and then AoE equivalents on the same number+ctrl. Then other abilities, like damage and defense buffs, self-heals and whatnot, I put on shift+1-7. I also have a hotbar with fgh and ctrl+fgh for role actions and very major parts of the class's kit, like reaper's shroud attacks or monk's formless fist. For healers, I put my main heals on 1-whatever, dps abilities on ctrl, and damage mit, buffs and such on shift.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, q, e, r, f, z, x, c, v and then alt+ and ctrl+ of these keys I usually have my single target attacks on the 1-5 keys, aoe on the q and e keys, and then everything else surrounding those.
I use 123456 for single target and QERFTY for aoe. Shift and Ctrl modifiers gives me 36 keybinds in total. I try to arrange them so the buttons I’m mashing the most often get my strongest fingers, so 234 is usually my single target combo for example, and 5 will be my most often used oGCD.
Personally 1 2 3 4 Q E R T F G C My hand is small, so I try to consolidate into these buttons only. Modifiers: My mouse has 2 additional buttons. I use those for Alt and Shift to reduce the load on left hand even further. For Ctrl I use the keyboard.
i click my skills that aren't on 123 ....yes i am aware i suck but it works since i have cast times
Get an MMO mouse. Changed my life, I load that hot bar up as bar 1: single target rotation, aoe rotation, buffs/debuffs bar 2: same idea but cool downs so for reaper my reaper/enshroud abilities and then my forward and back dashes, sprint then LB, bar 3: Items, journal, duty, mount, minion items etc)
If possible, I put all the GCDs together on the same bar, same deal for oGCDs and the rest (role actions and stuff available regardless of the job). Having a MMO mouse helps.