As a disclosure, this is simply to put out my thinking behind a HUD setup in the hopes that this will inspire those who may be unsure (or completely unaware) of how to set up your HUD for something that works for you.
The original UI is functional, but wasteful. Decreasing the size, eliminating or relocating the irrelevant, and maximizing rendered space is the idea behind this set up.
The Hotbar: Set up to mimic the buttons on a g600 mouse. I suggest mapping your hotbar to mimic your inputs. I find it unrealistic to use 1 through = using only one hand. if you use your keyboard for movement, I suggest getting an MMO mouse. If you don't, then I suggest using your mouse exclusively for movement and target selection, and setting up your hot bar in this fashion: "12345 QWERT ASDFG ZXCVB" The number of lines can be truncated, as use of the modifiers (etc. shift, ctrl, alt) can allow you to simply use "12345" for a total of 20 inputs (though this is not ideal, as I can't imagine using only 20 hotkeys, but it does allow for ASDW movement). The idea is to minimize both hand movement and general fumbling around, while maximizing your ability to dodge shit and not die. It should be noted that you shouldn't really be looking at your hotbars for any reason other than there's a rarely used skill somewhere and you forgot where you put it. Thus, the bars have been compressed in a manner where they take up minimal space, but still show mana costs.
The Parameters, Status Bar, Limit Break and CD tracker: I've brought up the parameters bar from the bottom to closer to where your field of view is. I've also dragged down the status bar to couple it with the parameters bar. This makes pinging much easier, as your eyes do not have to travel the entire fucking height of the screen to see health and buffs/debuffs. The 5 commands to the right are my cooldowns that are not meant to be clicked, but are in a convenient location so that you aren't looking down at your hot bars all the time (note, with this set up, it's possible to minimize even further by eliminating your hotbars altogether, but I'm certainly not brave enough to try that. The limit break bar was also combined with the parameters bar, as I felt the top of the party list is a terrible place to put something that could mean life or death for the entire group if it's not managed closely.
The Party and Enemies List: This is a matter of preference. As a healer I found it's original location a bit too far away from the action. The Enemies list is more or less in it's default location, just on the border of the Party List. Not entirely useful as a healer, but it is nice to know just what exactly is eating me for breakfast before I die and it goes away altogether. As a tank, I would suggest swapping the places of the Party List and the Enemies List. That said, the hate meters generated in the Job Icon on the party list is an invaluable tool, so balancing between the two should be left to your comfort.
The chat and battle log; I'm not as anal about the battle log as maybe I should be (i've yet to dig through the filters to find that which is important), but it was worth splitting the two and having the straddle the hotbars.
The Map and Server Status: this was mostly an aesthetic choice than anything else. I felt it rounded out the bottom of the screen quite nicely. It also freed up some real estate on the top of the screen because I needed somewhere to hide the. . .
Quest Log: Face the fucking wall! The only reason I'm leaving your sorry ass out is because I don't know where I am half the time! Pushing up into the very corner and making it as small as possible goes a long way to free up the rendered space.
The weird grey bits on the left: Those are actually gear sets. This was purely a quality of life thing, as a.) I had 2 extra hotbars I didn't want to go to waste, and b.) single click to job change is nice.
The Main menu, Gil, and inventory indicator: I was tempted to leave the Gil indicator out, but then I spent a bit too much on the market boards and decided to put it back. These are where they are because, frankly, they dont really look good anywhere else.
The Target Bar: I left it around where the default is because of a few reasons. Your target is likely up-field of your view anyways, so it's naturally a good place for it. It's entire array of buffs and debuffs (ALL DA DEBUFFS) occupies the same box, so placing it anywhere else to consolidate space would be an absolute wreck if any more than 8 people were on the same target.
The exp bar: Not important enough to put it with my parameters bar, but not completely useless either. It goes way down there.
Now for something very near and dear to my heart. . .
The Pet bar . . . -sigh-
Some of you college educated chaps may have noticed that it's way up in the fucking ether. Well like the quest log, I like it as far away from what I'm doing as possible. And unlike the quest log, I CAN"T GET RID OF IT! So in the corner it goes, like the red headed child I never wanted.
For reference, here is what my HUD looks like in the setup page:
As you can see, there is quite a bit of overlapping going on, and it's all for the sake of space conservation. SE has made it easy to line up all your bars: simply click to drag the UI element, then hold Shift. This will snap your element to certain intervals for easy placement.
Jack replied
618 weeks ago