I need help moving from Gamepad to Keyboard and Mouse...Follow

The best advice is to rip the band-aid off as quickly as you can.

Just do it.

And understand that you're going to suck for a little while as you re-learn things you're currently doing by muscle memory. The best way to do this is to sit at a training dummy and just run through your buttons for like half an hour until you relearn how to do things.

There are numerous guides on the Internet about moving from clicking and keyboard turning to mouse movement and keybinding. While that isn't exactly what you're doing, it's close, and they're a good place to start for learning how to use keyboard and mouse controls effectively.

To be honest, I doubt your transition will leave you feeling much better. The benefit of the mouse certainly enables for quicker/precise selection (assuming your target isn't surrounded by other things), but my consistent gripe with WASD is you don't really get comfortable access to more than 5 abilities unless you like contorting your thumb toward ctrl/alt to double/triple your potential. So if I'm remembering right, the cross-hotbar gives you access to 16 abilities at what's probably far greater comfort. It's at this point where I'd say I prefer XI's style of keyboard only over WASD, but the game's pacing probably wouldn't support that, nevermind likely similar targeting and interface issues.

Pragmatically, it might be good to consider what you really need on your bar. I am keyboard/mouse and I have a bar for potions, ethers, antidotes, and so on... but to be honest, I never or very rarely use them. Being BLM at the moment, there are also some abilities I very rarely use like Sure Cast, Convert, or Apothe-whatever. Given the number of ice/fire spells, I also feel this job might better played from the controller. But eh... I get by.

Look into the Razer Naga or the Logitech G600.

It took a while, but it was well worth it for me, and a lot of getting used to it has to do with how you set it up. Think of it like a numpad on your left hand with modifier keys.

Five 12-button actionbars and a pet bar all accessible without any ridiculous hand contortion..

Don't take half measures, Walter.

Go pro or go home. Switch to keyboard and Unbind A and D (or w/e is bound to turn left and turn right) and bind them to actions.

Turn the camera with MOUSE ONLY and remember that keyboard turning is for the scrubs.

I am left-handed and just learned to deal with living in a right handed world by mimicking all the right handed weirdos.

This is probably not the most efficient, but I tend to only use the 1-6 keys in battle, and click the rest with my mouse as needed (they're not spells I cast on a regular basis).
It'd probably be more annoying to do on a class with more burst potential, but it works on my SMN.

Just make sure to Keybind "Nearest enemy" where you can tap it easily next to your movement keys.

Keybinding left/right cycling through targets is a step up from that (when the next target you want is not the nearest.)

Personally I just zoom the camera way out and click directly on the target I want next. If you just cast a single AoE spell or ability on bunched up targets early in the encounter, then ALL of the enemies that get hit will appear on your Enemy List for easy click targeting. This includes THM/BLM AoE sleep.

Advanced Target Marking:
I also have keybind for tagging enemies. I dragged the icon for Signs #1,#2 and #3 out from the Signs menu out on to my hotbar. Then associated 3 keybinds in a row for these signs. Under those, I have the keybind for "Cycle through enemies - Nearest to Furthest".

To quickly tag the three nearest enemies in the room I tap: Cycle > #1 > Cycle > #2 > Cycle > #3. Now the 3 nearest enemies are tagged #1,#2, #3.

Sometime you have to take the time to number these in a specific way, like caster first. But not usually. It really helps the party to focus down single enemies this way. It tells everyone who the next target will be without waiting to see. It tells the Mage who can be put to Sleep.

Bonus: You can click on the Tag itself to target enemies. Which is great because they are floating up above the mess.

Edited, Sep 9th 2013 4:07pm by Gnu

Me too. I tap Enter with my thumb for "Target Nearest Enemy".

Because of this, I had to remap "chat bar" to the Spacebar.

I'm not sure if anyone plays with "Direct Chat" enabled. I know some controller users do. This can be turned off in Keybind menu, very top of the menu. Then you can keybind a ton of other thing to the alpha numeric keys.

FFXI used the ← → ↑ ↓ keys on the numpad(2, 4, 6, 8) for player movement if I remember correctly. If you're used to that before going gamepad, try key binding to them, if possible.

Edited, Sep 9th 2013 5:07pm by TwilightSkye

That looks interesting. So you use the thumbstick to move and your mouse to control you camera? If that's how it works that may work for me. I've only XI and XIV played using a controller so my brain is already wired to use stick with my left thumb to move.

So you don't use it for backward movement? Just curious, with a controller I can just pull back on the stick to get out of AoE range etc.

Ah I see. With a controller there is no backpedal unless you're locked on. Otherwise you do a complete 180 and are going forward, just backwards. Thanks.