Tired of screen clutter? This FFXIV HUD guide will make your content clearing experience better than before! We’ll go over design theories and menu options you can use to untangle the messy web of information Square gives you by default. These tips are mainly aimed at sprouts or those new to raiding, but an older player may still learn a thing or two.
Also, sorry to controller players, but a few of these ideas and layouts are targeted at PC players, but again, there will still be some stuff for you.
All game knowledge is current as of Patch 6.2 in FFXIV Endwalker!
0:00 Intro
0:41 Good Controls
2:24 Hotbar Expansion
3:36 Centered Recast Timers
3:47 HUD Positioning
4:46 Rescaling the UI
6:05 Splitting up Target Elements
7:36 Ground Targeting Options
8:08 Limited Battle Effects
8:37 Fixing Tab Target
9:02 Outro
———–
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Very very sprout here (started 20th of september), found you because you got THE BEST sage guide (i've watched about all of them already) out there.
/petsize all small
this makes the summoner and scholar's pet in the party a lot smaller, default is medium & this is a tooltip/ui thing, nowhere.
if you want to RP large is kinda fun, but absolutely not for any content.
edit: 1. what's that damage meter out there & from reading other comments 2. maybe slap some puppies/kittens over that too
edit2: I've been LOVING my collapsable hotbar for stuff like changing jobs and keeping some system ui elements out of mind/sight during combat
I use a very different system. I almost never use WASD to move. 99% of the time I use mouse to move and only use WASD when I need mouse to roll on loot. I have a MMO mouse, so the only keyboard keys I use are Tab, Shift, Alt and the function keys to target heals.
6:15 Lmao!!! Either a shrink referring to a patient or vise-versa X'D
Hey, I was wondering, what monitor do you use? I’m planning on upgrading soon so I figured I might as well ask
I highly disagree with the placement of your health bars. Your blocking a giant section of visual cues in battle. Basically anything that is to the front left of you is potentially a danger zone.
I can't believe people still play this with mouse and keyboard. As a MMO gamer of 25 years, FFXIV feels so bad to play with m+k.
Switched to controller around 2.5 and never looked back.
You wanna know something crazy? I move with my mouse. Right and left buttons pressed at the same time make your character move and lets your left hand free to do whatever you want.
There are slash commands for many different settings. For example /nameplatetype /nameplatedisp and /battleeffect
You can make little macro buttons for some presets, so you could go into a raid and hit one button and have names abbreviated and battle effects to minimal. And then another button when done to put names back on and show all spell effects again.
Makes it simpler than going into the settings menu each time.
(I keep intending to do this, but keep forgetting to. One of these days…)
The best tip for a cleaner hud (which I notice even you are not using) is that you can turn off active quests.
To do this go to System > Character Configuration > UI Settings > HUD and check the box labeled “Hide duty list during instanced duty.
This will make it so that when you are in a dungeon/raid/trial or whatever,, your active quests will go away (because when raiding, you don't need to know that Minfillia yet again wants you to return to the waking sands xD) , then when you leave, they come back
7:40 This wasn't added a few years ago, it was added shortly after Endwalker.
8:45 Another thing they just added (I think a recent patch, like 6.1 or something) is that full auto-target option. Makes it so instead of having to tab or click your target every time, pressing any action that requires a target will automatically target the closest enemy. (Really helpful for raids when the boss becomes untargetable for a sec, you can be sure to start using actions again the EXACT MOMENT they're targetable again.)
My concern with standard controls, is the walking backwards. With Legacy I can move quickly in that direction, with standard I have to turn the camera to do the same
my hot bars are exclusively my numeric keypads, albeit using control or shift for other hotbars. i wanna try controller but im in it now lmao
7:45 erm, it wasnt a few years ago, Limiting Ground-targeting abilities was added in one of the 6.xx patches.
I don't believe they addressed it during shadowbringers, pretty sure it was during endwalker, which only came out last year.
aside from trying to stray me from the path of legacy movement i did actually take a few setting changes from this video that i didn't know about that while not really game changing are definitely good QoL
you called me out so hard by mock practicing piano and doing naruto hand signs with my keybinds … but it's ok apology accepted @ 1:56
sincerely, ninja main
ps fantastic work once again and i'm looking forward to the next video
very nice tips and your HUD UI almost the same as mine "like 90%" but for me I put party member list on the right because of buffs will not cover my middle screen
Personally, I do still use my "7 through =" keys and the 'shift' versions (not the CTRL versions outside of =), but I generally reserve them for the longer/lesser used cooldowns and hit them with my right hand.
Though I also don't really do content that requires me to keep my hand on my mouse 100% of the time (as I have no interest in Extreme or Savage content).
These people that think controller is less efiicient xD
Most of your advices are as good for keyboard as for controller. As someone that is healer main, can play both controller and keyboard, but preffer controller and can do all content in game with that, for me it's funny that someone suggest that controller is inferior way to play this game.
I essentially use your keybind tips regarding the "around the WASD" tip. One tip I would however advise people to at least try is to move the buttons for movement one row to the right to ESDF. This opens up even more buttons to be reached AND also has your fingers on the same row as they would be for blind typing. Like you advise I use skills with a similar function on the same button. For me this is A for a gapcloser for example, Q for a reactionary ability like a parry of counter, etc.
Actually, n reality I went even more bold for I don't even have backward movement bound. If I want to move backwards I turn my cam and strafe and it works perfect for me. Yes, you read that right, I actually only use forward moving, and strafing to the sides. I guess this came from when MMO's and games required you to keep looking at your target for skills (also involved jumping usually to not make your character turn, lol) . That's not all though. To make it even weirder, I do this movement using the WER buttons. This makes it a LOT more relaxed for my fingers to be placed. I know it sounds weird, but I can definitely recommend anyone to try this.
For those wanting a more visual explanation of this, I offer you a link to a keybinding guide by a player called Taugrim: https://taugrim.com/2011/04/07/guide-to-strafing-movement-and-keybindings/
Its not a option for hud but for the love of god TURN ON JOIN IN PROGRESS. click the gear at the top of the duty menu, make sure the top option "Join Party in Progress" is ON.
For actual hud related things, you can move an item pixel by pixel if you are really ocd about placement, Not that I know from personal experience or anything.. cough use the arrow keys on the num pad.
ctrl +Home will let you cycle through sizes for windows as well, if you want to adjust something like your dress up window
Good video!! 10/10. I'll also want to add the auto-target system. It makes it easy when u lost your target and sometimes even shift don't take it, with this u use a attack and automatically hits the nearest target without needed to select it yourself.
Yes yes, now tell me you Gshade presets.
If anyone figures out a vid like this for console they wouldn't know how much their channel would blow up alone just because a vid like this isn't out yet that's in depth on this topic for console
I don’t understand why people choose to put a skill on 4 instead of Q,E,R,C, or F. Oh and also, I never see people use the mouse wheel up and down for skills. They are so used to zooming in and out but like in this game you rarely do that in high end content so those might as well be skills. I usually have a buff on wheel up and shift wheel up. I rebound zoom to page up and page down, since I don’t zoom often. Having 6 buttons on your middle finger is such an underrated strategy.
Amazing Video…splitting up target elements is a game changer for me..Didn't know it was possible. THANKS A TON
Regarding keybinds — I used to be one of the people who had things spread out in the default "1 through =" format. Not to use my fingers to hit them, but with the idea that I'd mouse-click on the less-important skills that I'd place off past 6, or on the 2nd+ bar. This was because I have small hands, so even clicking CTRL, ALT, or Shift to get an alternate keybind could be rough. I also didn't want to switch to an MMO mouse, since I have one of those sideways ergonomic mice. Of course, that got rough once I got past level 30 and started having to press more than two keyboard buttons per dungeon.
A real game changer that I keep preaching to button-clickers is: most mice these days come with the little side buttons that are normally used for forward/back page navigation in browsers. At least for Logitech mice, they have various mice-control software that in addition to changing settings like DPI or scroll wheel speed, will also let you set an alternate bind to those two buttons. So with CTRL bound to the back button, and Shift bound to the forward button on my mice, I can now keep everything on 1-6 and Z-B on my keyboard and have learned to click the other mouse buttons in conjunction with skill use. I'm much quicker at responding to situations, popping appropriate buffs or mitigations, and overall it's a smoother experience. So I highly recommend looking up your mouse of choice and seeing if a similar option is available to any fence-sitting button-clickers.
Full of great tips! I've been using all of them for a long time now (well, except for centralized timers which came out recently) and it's improved my gameplay enormously. Greatly agree that having all necessary information at the center of the screen during combat is undervalued, especially making the enemy cast bar bigger.
The only thing I feel might be missing, is that one can use macros to toggle screen ability clutter by ticking all the setting boxes – some times I just want a spectacle of color, and other times I want to be able to see the boss's visual cues.
For seeing the bosses:
/micon "Sacred Soil"
/bfx self all
/bfx party simple
/bfx other simple
/petsize all small
And for MASSIVE cool factor:
/micon "Flare"
/bfx self all
/bfx party all
/bfx other all
/petsize all large
HUD-wise, for action bars I hide everything that doesn't have a cooldown or convey useful information via its icon. On my main jobs of Sage and Scholar, that means I tend to have ~18 buttons showing with everything else hidden, on something like White Mage, that number is lower. For player and target HP, everything gets crammed to the bottom as I don't really find that information relevant most of the time, hp in FF14 tends to be pretty binary where you either mess up a mechanic/mit plan and get 1 shot or you live and healing pops you back to safety before the next damage instance. Minimap I find pretty worthless in combat and would generally just hide entirely, I tend to orient off markers.
Agree with everything in this video except not using Legacy. Not using Legacy straight up makes you an inferior player.
Centralized UI is almost a necessity in endgame. One of the best decisions I've made is separating the enemy progress bar and throwing right in the center to work moreso as an alarm.
OH LOOK! A third-party program running. You are BEGGING for a mod/dev to see this and permaban you.
Not every controller is a wheel though. Less than 5 million buttons on screen.
I'm not a savage raider but I'm happy to say I was already using most of these recommended settings and HUD layout tips. But my need to streamline is due to playing on a laptop, so I have to maximize my screen real estate, and not burn out the poor thing by trying to render *all the graphics*. I also make liberal use of the transparency setting for many elements. 30% is my magic number.
Throwing that shade at controller players?! As a controller player I can say that it makes waaaay more intuitive sense for me (coming from a person that lost track of their hands playing LoL)
Joking aside another great video and I personally prefer legacy controls but I play Tanks, since you're a healer main it makes sense you prefer standard 😜
turning off this video exactly at the point that you recommend against Legacy movement. you cannot be more wrong. Legacy movement + auto face target is the best movement scheme for this game. having to turn your character with your mouse is bad.
lol idk your setup looks cluttered as FUKK
Please use CTRL+POS1 to scale your menus and inventory/profile/try on window
I thought mine was perfect but hey, these are pretty good! Guess I'll try some of them
The anti-legacy take is kinda oof. I've seen so many people kill themselves in p7s this tier and its always cause of standard controls.
I appreciate this. That being said, I am left handed. 🥴
Aw so happy to see you talk about your HUD because I really liked your's and it made me add the map on my hud, but I have a macro to toggle it when I don't use it (I only use it for raiding if I forget true north)
AND WHAT I never knew you could resize the info box nor how the cone targeting actually worked lmao, such a good video with lots of information 💚
I just play on default HUD with default keybind and use a mouse to press big cooldown or mitigation…. (I play DRK). I don't know how I can do it but I can, seriously, I'm also confuse in myself how I'm able to do it. Maybe because I grew up with playing MMO all the time since Rangnarok era, and back then, you can't keybind and customize your HUD this freely, some game you can't move the HUD at all. Playing Lineage 2 … a lot… during that time might help I think, that game has a TONS of skills.
excellent video. Been playing for 2000+ hours and still learned from it.
This video probably has the most actually useful tops I have ever seen. Even outside of UI and HUD tips like the video tile suggests.
My only take away from this video is that I should bind "useless" actions to 6-9 instead of having them empty
Hey whats your dps add on at 2:30? It looks so clean! Thank you so much for this video!!!! I also like my logitech G600 MMO mouse.
When I got into FFXIV I said “screw it” and got an MMO mouse since I already needed a new mouse. Best damn purchase I made. Even other games I use the side buttons constantly. It’s definitely not a requirement for FFXIV but damn if my life isn’t so much easier. Now I can fail my rotation twice as fast!
(I got the Logitech G600 since the third button feature is super useful in case anyone is wondering)
Genuinely don't know why you don't have more subs. Great guides
Really great tips!
Something I've done to make things easier for myself is creating 3 different HUD layouts depending on what role I'm playing. I have one each for melee DPS (and tank), magic DPS and healers. There isn't a huge difference between the magic/melee DPS HUDs (mainly where the health/mana bar is), but the healer one has the party window way more central (monk doesn't need to know that the OT is dying, but WHM certainly does!), and because they can be set to a macro, it's literally just one click to change between them.