Yeah, spell effects are full for myself and minimal for everyone else. I’ll give it a try to just turn everyone else’s off.

Depending on the roles you play, you may want to stick to minimal for your party, since there are some party effects that are nice to be able to see. And I think no matter which role you play it's nice to be able to see stuff like healer circles.

I need to dig into macros more, just difficult with limited buttons. I have a bunch (mainly social) on my other bars.

Macros are generally not recommended for combat purposes, as you'll get timing issues and registration issues. The one exception is Holmgang, where it's useful to have a very stupid-looking macro to target oneself so it doesn't fall off early.

it’s all controller based.

Controller shouldn't be an issue here. Some statements and recommendations:

1. All the combat jobs I've tried so far need at most two full controller keysets, as in, only R1+triangle and R1+circle really need to be job-specific. R1+X just holds some low-lever healer keysets for me, since healers have kind of weird upgrade paths that turns your default keyset useless in low-level duties.
2. That means that you can pick which you prefer of the double-tap style and the R2>L2 style and
   • use the one-trigger and whatever option you prefer for your job actions, and
   • use the remaining third option for some common things across jobs, like sprint, LB, teleport, etc.
3. If you use the double-tap style, set it to show the full keyset. You'll need that by level 100.
4. If you use the R2>L2 style, you may want to add some hotbars with the otherwise invisible buttons, but you don't need to keep the R2>R2 stuff always visible.
5. Make some system that makes sense to you and arrange the buttons that way. E.g:
   • Keep the abilities you want to be able to use on the move on the opposite side of the controller as the stick you use to move. Having to take your thumb off the stick to cast and then get moving again, or reaching with the other hand, is clunky.
   • Role actions should be on the same spot for all roles, and some similar actions like forward dash, a "use once at start of duty" ability (tank stance, kardia, summon), zero-cast-time ranged attack, etc.
   • I generally also keep single-target actions on R2, and AOEs and defensives on L2
   • I prefer the R2>L2 style, and I have continuations for some jobs "under" the main buttons, so I can keep e.g. R2 down, press triangle, add L2, press triangle again, and release L2. That generally works for DPS and tanks where you want to keep the attack GCDs easily available for your Always Be Casting.
   • For healers I generally put the OGCD heals on the top level and the infallible GCD heals at the sub-level. This means that the OGCDs are almost always visible, and I have to go through them to get at the GCD heals, as in, it's less pressing to use the free heals. For the healers I also generally put the attacks on R2 and heals on L2, as in hopefully I can Always Be Casting from R2, and intermittently weave a free heal from L2.

Finally, a lot of it really comes down to just personal experience, both with the job, the fights, and with the game. You'll internalize the timing more, and you can train yourself towards just glancing at the timers. And if you pick up more jobs and organize abilities according to some pattern, your muscle memory will mostly keep working.