Hey peeps, let me preempt this by saying IM DISABLED.
OK let me explain, I enjoy playing ff14 but unfortunately I have arthritis and carpal tunnel which makes it painful to stretch my hands too much to press all the buttons necessary. When I played wow I was able to get by with the use of their extensive macro communities and add-ons.
Unfortunately the same communities and add-ons don’t really exist and the community seems to be by in large unintentionally ableist, at least by my research. All I see is variations of ‘don’t use macros because you’ll lose .5 seconds and suck!’.
I don’t play hardcore endgame content not do I have any intention to play it with random. I mostly play with friends and they don’t care if I use macros or not, they understand my situation and just want me to have fun.
But here I am asking for help with macro creation and possibly class choice. I’m currently playing a summoner as they don’t seem to be very hard and I can macro a couple of things together to ease my pain.
What tank and healer class would be the easiest to play for someone like me and possibly what macros could they use to give me a hand?
For summoners, is there a way to macro the summons with gemshine? Plus add a modifier in there for aoe. That way I can trim down 5 buttons to 3. I know it was possible in wow but as I understand it ff14 has a limited macro system on purpose.
I hope some of you understand my situation and spare me the criticism. Most of the ff community has been lovely and understanding, I just get the rabid folk when I mention combat macros.
I’m not sure what you can manage given your condition, but if the problem is specifically stretching you hand around I have a bit of experience since I hate doing that too:
Modifiers: you’ve said you have set Control to give you another set of buttons. This is a good idea, you could do the same for Alt and Shift if they are confortable enough for you to use (I personally don’t like using shift in games)
Binding more convenient buttons: you don’t have to use only 1 to 3 or 4, Q and E are also close to the resting position of a traditional WASD setup and could give you a few more keys (don’t forget to bind them to modifiers as well!). Maybe there’s one also where your thumb rests on the keyboard?
Consider jobs with low APM and buttons. you are already playing summoner that has few buttons, even at max level. You could also consider playing healer (White Mage is a good choice here) since you only need to use 2 damage skills and can get away with using one or two healing spells in most casual content. I don’t think there are any tanks that would work since they need their defensive skills to reduce damage, so you’d have to bind them.
Consider different input devices. If you have one you could try, FFXIV is completely playable on a controller, and you would be able to access all skills there, assuming it’s confortable enough for you. Another option, if you end up really enjoying the game, would be to get an mmo mouse. 12 buttons plus modifiers is more than enough to play even some of the more complicated jobs.