Hotbars
You get 8 cross hotbars (XHB) with 16 buttons each. You can select the current active XHB by holding down R1 and one of the face buttons/d-pad directions, or tapping R1 will cycle through all of them in order (skipping any that donât have any abilities assigned to them).
By default, all 8 of your XHBs will be populated individually for each unlocked job you have. If you want to set some of your XHBs as shared across all your jobs, go to Character Config > Hotbar Settings > Sharing > Cross Hotbar and then tick the ones you want to share. I have XHB 1-4 as individual to each job, and 5-8 as shared. This is really nice as you can set up stuff you always want access to (chocobo, mount, spell book, inventory, character sheet, duty finder etc.) once, and itâll be there for all your jobs.
Another useful option is set selection. Look in Character Config > Hotbar Settings > Set Selection. Thereâs a checkbox - Enable Customisation For When Weapon Is Sheathed, and another set of checkboxes for each XHB. This lets you set which of your hotbars the R1 button cycles through when youâre out of combat - you wonât need access to your full set of job specific XHBs. I have mine set to 1 and 5. So when out of combat, tapping R1 switches between my primary job specific XHB and my primary shared one. Itâs hard to explain but honestly really useful.
The basic XHB controls use L2 and R2 to select which side of the currently active XHB youâre using abilities from. Thereâs an option in Character Config > Hotbar Settings > Custom > Enable Expanded Controls With L2 and R2. This gives you access to another two sets of XHBs by holding down R2 then L2, or L2 then R2. Thereâs a couple of dropdown menus here that let you specify which XHBs are accessed with R2 > L2 and L2 > R2.
Thereâs another useful thing called the WXHB. Dunno what the W stands for. Itâs basically another 2 sets of onscreen hotbars, and you can access them by double tapping L2 or R2. To use them, go to Character Config > Hotbar Settings > Cross Hotbar > Always Display WXHB and Return the XHB after WXHB Input, and also Character Config > Hotbar Settings > Custom > Enable WXHB with L2 / R2 Double Tap.
Other stuff - in System Config > General > Movement Settings, you can choose between Standard and Legacy movement modes. Legacy is camera based, you run in the direction you push the stick. Standard is similar to WoW - left and right strafe, forward and back move forward and back, you use the right stick to steer via the camera. Moving backwards is painfully slow in this mode, and Iâd strongly advise again it. It just makes you much too slow.
Other random stuff :
L1 + right stick up/down zooms the camera in and out from your character
Hold L1 then click R3 to enter mouse pointer mode. You can then move the mouse about with the stick and click with R2. Not all that useful but sometimes nice for moving spells around on your hotbars.
D-pad up/down will cycle through targeting your party members.
L1 + d-pad up/down will cycle through enemies (as will R2 + L1/R1).
When holding L2/R2 to select a XHB, click the touchpad to enter XHB edit mode. Click it again to exit.
Touchpad bottom left/right click cycles through selecting all active UI elements.
You can move, resize and hide pretty much every UI element using the HUD Layout menu option
Macros - generally speaking try not to use them for combat spells/abilities. Thereâs an input buffer that lets you queue your next spell/ability while one is casting. If you use a spell/ability via a macro, you canât buffer it like this, which makes everything slower. Also, macro-ed spell/abilites on hotbars wonât light up when the appropriate proc happens (e.g. for black mage, Fire 3 lights up and is instant cast when you get a Firestarter proc - you wonât see this if you use a macro to cast it).
In the User Macros page, macro slot 98 and 99 are special. Any macros assigned to these slots are automatically mapped to L3 and R3. I canât remember where I found this out, pretty sure the game itself doesnât tell you. Anyway, two really useful macros that go well on L3/R3 are sprint and focus target.
Sprint :
/micon âSprintâ
/ac âSprintâ
Focus Target :
/target <f>
Sprint is self-explanatory, and there are tons of bosses where you need to either get to or get away from an area rapidly, so always useful. Focus target makes you target your focus target, if you have one. This is incredibly useful if youâre a healer. Set the tank as your focus target, put that macro on R3 and you can alway target the tank quickly. You can use the following macro to set/clear your focus target :
/micon âwind-up cursorâ minion
/focustarget
(it doesnât have to use the wind-up cursor icon, I just like that one)
Target the tank and use the macro to set them as focus. Target nothing and use it again to clear your focus target.
