The combat system still needs a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

1) How many DARN skills do you really need? I mean do people find this fun? After doing combat or even a dungeon I am drained.
2) Slow I mean it got better since I hit max level, but I feel very slow.

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Agree with the second point, disagree with the first.

Dropping the GCD down to 2 seconds base from 2.5 would go a long way.
That said, I like the number of skills we have. I actually relish in it. It keeps me on my toes, and the thing that killed my interest in WoW was the ability pruning. Playing pretty much any class in WoW (Keep in mind I have 14 characters that are level 100 minimum, two of which are 110.) is just dull now because of it.

I main a mage over in WoW, and I barely have any buttons anymore. Sure it's faster, but when my main rotations consists of hitting one button for 75% of my casts in any given combat scenario, I get bored out of my skull from the monotony.

By the time you hit 60 I feel like you have enough ability weaving in order to make the combat awesome. I agree that hitting up Sastasha normal feels slow, but I don't think the combat of this game is slow or archaic in particular at 40+ range.

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Originally Posted by cammi

Isn't wow and FFXIV just tab target tho? The animations in wow don't matter cause the damage isn't from the animations, it's from numbers being counted or whatever. The animation is simply there for looks. It's a dice roll. As far as I know FFXIV is abit different but still uses tab targeting. So wouldn't you have to change THAT before anything else? There's a video on this kindof.... hold on I'mma get the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RGzzS1jGJc

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Watched the video... And the whole thing is slated towards melee DPS players.

How would such an frenetic action based system work for tanks, healers, mages, rangers, or supports?

I mean, that kind of gameplay has merit, for sure, but it just sounds like it would push out a gigantic chunk of players from FFXIV by breaking their roles.

The weight and commitment of FFXIV skill system is so much more enjoyable than spamming three keys every seconds.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Hit button do damage.

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This is garbage in terms of gameplay feedback, because it makes the game feels like this:
http://i.imgur.com/mfLQEPR.gif

Granted you absolutly don't use the same amount of keys in WoW as shown in this gif, but the actual feeling is about the same.
Hitting a key in WoW feels absolutly weightless. Besides, since you just spam a few keys, the actions themselves becomes almost like manually doing "fancy" auto-attacks.

I'm not saying that WoW's system is bad, it's just different with a very different feeling attached to it. OP speaks like FFXIV's system has to be "fixed", but no, it's not broken. It's player's preferences.
And I prefer FFXIV in that regard. But at least I know this is a subjective thing, not like what a lot of people in this thread seems to think.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

Question here please.

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That question can be answered easy by playing Tera as it has all those covered also. But I'm not asking for FFXIV to be Tera.. not at all. I only posted that cause it seems like people are mixing things up. The combat can't get any faster in FFXIV because of what it is, you would be making a different game if you changed it too much. About the only thing you can do is lower the GCD and that's it. And really I dunno, maybe cause I play monk, but the combat isn't slow to me at all. Yes it's not Devil May Cry or Tera Rising - tho both of those are action combat games and not what any FF is by a long shot-. But it's not as slow as I feel people are making it out to be honestly. I mean.. seriously.. is 2 seconds REALLY that slow? Really?

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Originally Posted by SagaSoluna

The combat of this game puts me to sleep.
And it´s a shame because every single other aspect of it is probably the best choice over any other MMO.

Graphics, story, music, events and amazing bosses can all be found in FFXIV
But god is the combat archaic and sluggish....

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This is pretty well my thoughts as well, love just about everything else.
It makes trash in dungeons nauseating for me, to the point that only after a couple of months into the game and i'm pretty well done with them.

The people who roll in and say things like "Trash" pulls and whatnot are indicative of what kind of combat system they want.

Personally? I'd prefer it to be slower and more tactical than button mashing.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

Benediction's animation lock, while a point of contention for every WHM ever, essentially negates it's ability to act as the "oh shit!" heal a good bit of the time. Any level of lag in the situation where you would legit need it could spell it's failure.

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That's more a glaring flaw of the ability than anything else.

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Not that it can't be used as such, it's just that it failing had become such a bane to me that I started using it in other scenarios verses saving it, particularly healing my tank to full so I can keep from dropping cleric.

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While I commend you for finding a use for Benediction, your ability to work around its deficiencies doesn't really change the fact that it's a poorly-implemented cooldown. I mean, if Lay On Hands (the closest thing to Benediction) had been given a 1.5-2 second delay like Benediction, holy paladins would be frothing at the mouth because their "Oh Shit!" button became near useless for the purpose it was created for. And they'd be in the right.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

The weight and commitment of FFXIV skill system is so much more enjoyable than spamming three keys every seconds.

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Well, the key difference is that one game has a combo system for skills and the other one doesn't.

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This is garbage in terms of gameplay feedback, because it makes the game feels like this

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Only if there's very little going on during a fight. Which often isn't the case in WoW, between fight mechanics and your own class' stuff.

I've been tanking in Legion on my warrior, and sure, you can say I'm spamming Devastate (single target skill that deals damage with no cooldown), but:

a) I'm using Shield Slam on cooldown and whenever the cooldown is reset by Devastate
b) I'm using Revenge to deal a little more damage (which means more aggro generation) and watching out for my blocks resetting the cooldown
c) Trying to juggle keeping up Shield Block to coincide with Shield Slam uses for the increased damage (which equals more aggro)
d) Spending rage to keep up Ignore Pain
e) If I specced into it, use Focused Rage whenever Shield Slam crits
f) Watch out for mobs with single-target spells that I can Spell Reflect
g) Interrupt mobs with skills and spells that can be interrupted

My base gameplay is really just me spamming Devastate, but there's a LOT of things that are part of gameplay that aren't very cut and dry.

I think it would be a little more fun if some skills didn't show the damage in one number. Like if I punch something a bunch of times, it should show a bunch of smaller ones :o

As I've said many times, the primary focus of combat revisions should be a reduction and streamlining of skills. There's a reason MMOs developed and released today do not overload players with skills like the old school tab target systems. Having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers for nearly three full bars of skills, and 20+ rotations, is cumbersome and not very enjoyable in my opinion. Cutting that in half would go a long way and leave a little room for new skills in the future. Currently the skill system is very bloated.

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Originally Posted by Zafrei

As I've said many times, the primary focus of combat revisions should be a reduction and streamlining of skills. There's a reason MMOs developed and released today do not overload players with skills like the old school tab target systems. Having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers for nearly three full bars of skills, and 20+ rotations, is cumbersome and not very enjoyable in my opinion. Cutting that in half would go a long way and leave a little room for new skills in the future. Currently the skill system is very bloated.

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Legion is very enjoyable with the ability pruning. The excessive amount of abilities in FFXIV is one of the reasons that I'm not active in the game anymore. I think the abilities atm is too overwhelming now for me.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Personally? I'd prefer it to be slower and more tactical than button mashing.

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^this
Jynx for President, you have my vote :)

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Originally Posted by Zafrei

As I've said many times, the primary focus of combat revisions should be a reduction and streamlining of skills. There's a reason MMOs developed and released today do not overload players with skills like the old school tab target systems. Having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers for nearly three full bars of skills, and 20+ rotations, is cumbersome and not very enjoyable in my opinion. Cutting that in half would go a long way and leave a little room for new skills in the future. Currently the skill system is very bloated.

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^this
In most if not all MMOGs you just need max one Hotbar 1 to 12 keys for your main rotation skills.
A second hotbar is mostly just for emotes or specials (not often used situations or just to show cooldowns)
In ffxiv currently as SMN i have to use 5 hotbars for main rotation!

Rather than go into a long rant about my opinions. I will just say this game needs a party synergy mechanic, it's final fantasy and one designed to be played cooperatively with others. More focus on party synergistic skills and less focus on personal rotations. More focus on resource cost and less focus on GCD. That type of gameplay lends itself to this game which has so many dodging and gimmick mechanics. Even those dodges are personal dodges, without adding ways a party can reduce, divert, or overcome with skilled cooperation.

I agree, it's become far too convaluted. You need to be able to keep everything compact, for a controller that would be 16 buttons. That does not necessarilly mean only 16 skills/CDs, they could vastly improve the macro system to make up for it. There are abilities that can be turned into traits without making much difference at all, and cleric stance is another thing they need to drop.

Good to see people's feedback, whether in agreement or disagreement. My main issue with combat is the unresponsiveness of the game to my keystrokes, delays, and overall clunky feel of cooldown usage. It seems others feel there are too many abilities and other problems as well. Keep posting in here. Maybe Yosh will give it a gander and take our ideas in to consideration.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

I agree, it's become far too convaluted. You need to be able to keep everything compact, for a controller that would be 16 buttons. That does not necessarilly mean only 16 skills/CDs, they could vastly improve the macro system to make up for it. There are abilities that can be turned into traits without making much difference at all, and cleric stance is another thing they need to drop.

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An ARPG approach to abilities might be something to consider too. Diablo 3 being ported to PS4 works well with the controller. Upgrading abilities in the way you like is very enjoyable and might get multiple approaches to end game for jobs. There would still be a meta, but at least there would be choice.

and I'd agree with the unresponsive problem as well - this is the main reason I can't stand cleric stance. You hit the button, it might or might not fire. If it doesn't (or looks like it's didn't), you hit it again. Then it turns itself on/off - it has a cool down time on top of that for each change. horrilbly clunky, and couldn't be more pointless if it tried. This is similar with other CDs, and the ninja mudras. I suspect this might be all fine and dandy when you have sub 50ms pings, but a great majority of players around the world have to deal with far more than that. Ironically, the ninja mudras are an example of better design - 4 buttons and 6 possible skills.

Having just finished NIN to 60, I can conclusively say that if you want super fast twitchy combat in this game, that's the class you need to play. Huton's skill speed increase is incredible once you're in iLvl 200+ gear and I feel that the global cool down is finally faster than I can realistically keep up with all the skills. They also seem to have fixed some of the big issues with the mudra speed, and keeping up Huton becomes easy once you unlock Armor Crush.

All the other classes I have leveled feel much more measured and even keeled in comparison. NIN is just a DPS weapon skill zerg rush, nonstop. It's not for me, but it definitely appeals to my friends who prefer fast twitch combat.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Ironically that is the very same point a lot of people made way back in beta when comparing this games battle system to the one that was in 1.23. Arr skills feel weak / carry no weight it's too much button spam etc.

Personally I still think the game would have been so much better with the 1.23 combat system but oh well.

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Was thinking the same when people started bringing up the weight of animations. 1.0-1.23 had the perfect feeling for controlling your character and it's animations IMO.

I prefer WoW's combat, but that's why I play WoW instead of XIV. I think with things like controller/PS3 users and server desync allowing stuff like slide-casting to be possible...I'm not really sure a faster global or removing animation locking could really be done in this game, not without drastically altering a lot of things that people are used to.

Not the point of the topic, but I disagree with you on the community remarks as well. WoW and XIV are about the same in terms of rage-quitting/"elitism", it's just that most content in XIV doesn't require a huge amount of output to clear it so people are more content to carry silently rather than make a big deal over it. As someone who witnessed various forms of trolling and d-baggery during my endless Weeping City of Mhach runs, it's pretty par for the course with MMOs these days.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

and I'd agree with the unresponsive problem as well - this is the main reason I can't stand cleric stance. You hit the button, it might or might not fire. If it doesn't (or looks like it's didn't), you hit it again. Then it turns itself on/off - it has a cool down time on top of that for each change. horrilbly clunky, and couldn't be more pointless if it tried. This is similar with other CDs, and the ninja mudras. I suspect this might be all fine and dandy when you have sub 50ms pings, but a great majority of players around the world have to deal with far more than that. Ironically, the ninja mudras are an example of better design - 4 buttons and 6 possible skills.

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thats mostly coz if u do a cast , then u click on cleric stance , u really need to wait until its on/off before using another skill , if u try to use another skill to early/quickly , it will cancel the cleric stance click.

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Originally Posted by Zied

I think it would be a little more fun if some skills didn't show the damage in one number. Like if I punch something a bunch of times, it should show a bunch of smaller ones :o

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Ideally I'd hope there'd be four settings for multi-strike hits, assuming they ever were actually dealt as multiple strikes.
- Strike-by-strike: only the individual strikes' damage are shown
- Both: strikes quickly fade, and a sum (thus far) fades in from the side, cumulative of all strikes in the ability. The sum doesn't scroll up, but is merely replaced at the same position, until the final strike.
- Cumulative: each strike adds its damage counter to the next, arriving at the total damage for the ability
- Total only: the damage is shown at the end of the strike as a single number (same as current).

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Besides, since you just spam a few keys, the actions themselves becomes almost like manually doing "fancy" auto-attacks.

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People said the same about this combat system in beta. Because the skills lacked weight and power in comparison to 1.23s battle system.

In a way it's still true. Very few abilities actually feel powerful. Especially when it takes so many of your skills to kill what is designated a trash mob.

If they're so powerful why does it take a dozen of them to kill a mob that can't even scratch you?

I would like to see this for Black Mage. I wish we had a bigger spell line than what we have now, but that probably won't happen.It is pretty decent now but I want more than a Fire Mage, and if you do stuff besides this you get beef now.

• Transpose: Cooldown Removed. Now swaps between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice and Lightning Stance. Whichever line of spells is cast directly after transpose gets one stack in addition to what the spell normally gives in stacks.
• Tier 1 Spells are now instant cast and able to be cast while moving.
• Casting a different spell type no longer switches between astral, umbral, or any other stance.
• Casting a 1 spell in respective line grants one astral fire or one umbral ice or one thunder stance.
• Casting a 2 spell in respective line grants two astral fire or one umbral ice or one thunder stance.
• Casting a 3 spell in respective line grants three astral fire or three umbral ice or 3 thunder stance.

• Blizzard 1= 180 potency and 40% Heavy.
• Fire 1= 180 potency and 20% slow.
• Thunder 1 = 180 potency and silences enemy for 2 sec
• Blizzard 2= Remains the same.
• Fire 2= Remains the same.
• Thunder 2= Is now AoE.
• Fire 3= Remains the same.
• Blizzard 3= Remains the same.
• Thunder 3= A single target spell with same potency as fire 3 and blizzard 3.
• Fire 4= Remains the same.
• Blizzard 4= Remains the same.
• Thunder 4= A single target spell with same potency as fire 4 and blizzard 4.

• Freeze= Same potency adds frostbite and bind in the designated area.
• Flare= Remains the same.
• Burst= Single target thunder spell with 390 potency. 510 when thunderstruck.

• Apocatastasis= Is applied to 1-8 members in your party rather than one member.
• Aetherial Manipulation= Rushes 30 yalms in the direction faced upon activation. Obstructions such as buildings or arena borders will lessen the distance.
• New trait: Frigid Mist= Grants a 40% chance that upon casting blizzard, your next blizzard III will require 10% more mp and gain +10% casting Speed for Blizzard 3.

Enochian gets axed and this new system below replaces it.

• Boiling Point= Casting multiple fire based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage fire spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to fire spells for 15 seconds and boiling point status is lost.
• Absolute Zero= Casting multiple ice based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage ice spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to ice spells for 15 seconds and Zero status is lost.
• Overcharged= Casting multiple thunder based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage thunder spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to thunder spells for 15 seconds and Overcharged status is lost.

I would like a change to leylines but it would probably make the job more complicated, at least in my opinion.

Instead of that small little circle surrounding you. You get a larger circle grid with 6 smaller circles inside of it. The outer circle would be pretty big and the inner circles would be moderate size. Anyways, the BLM would have to stand in one of the smaller circles to get additional effects in addition to the faster attack speed.

• NW Circle: Decreased MP Cost
• N Circle: Increased Spell critical damage
• NE Circle: Increased Spell Critical Rate
• SE Circle: Increased Movement speed
• S Circle: Increased Spell Accuracy
• SE Circle: Increased DOT durations

Sort of referencing geographical leylines and how position alters properties.

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

Cut back a good 60 percent of the skills. Combine some, make the skills have bigger impact, and It could be faster. I would not say double..but having this many skills is more tedious than fun.

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While I presume that percentage is mostly hyperbole, I still feel the exact opposite. Yes, some skills should be consolidated before any more are added. But I would hate seeing half the skills disappear because it'd result in a very generic rotation.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

This is garbage in terms of gameplay feedback, because it makes the game feels like this:
http://i.imgur.com/mfLQEPR.gif

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Disagree. Biggest offender is Cleric Stance. I can play at a very fast pace but I have to slow down to make sure Cleric is off so I don't look like a scrub putting on a 300 hp shield because cleric is clunky as hell. The oGCDs in FFXIV actually force you to mash the button to make sure it goes off which makes you spam even more keys ironically than in WoW which has a way better ability queue system. The oGCDs in WoW go off pretty much right away unless there is a targeting circle. There should be a feature that makes it so you can only flip a stance once every few seconds, so you don't get that awkward "I hit cleric, it turned off but it didn't show, so I hit it again but it turns off then back on" nonsense.

I'm really talking about clunkiness. That was just simplified reasoning. Not everything goes off right away in WoW but it sure feels a lot more responsive than mashing oGCDs and then noticing it didn't even go off anyways.

FFXIV's oGCD would be that picture except at 10x speed smashing 3 buttons trying to use an oGCD.

I could barely keep up with my rotation, please don't make it any more faster.

What I'd rather want from the combat is the fix for janky animation sliding and the lack of impact on contact.

I'd rather a deeper combat than a faster one. But to be honest FFXIV is both superficial and slow and that is the offender here.

Or at least, is slow during the first levels of the game, tbh, the biggest gripe always present on any review with lower than lvl cap players about the game is how slow it feels, and they are right, any MMORPG veteran coming to FFXIV would immediatly notice how sluggish the combat is. And, is also not that deep, enemies don't have elemental resistances, races/types or size modifiers, our skills barely work with each other and not to mention working with other classes, the combat is real simple, click somthing, keep clicking, done.

I would honestly just speed up the combat a little bit, going from 2.5 to 2.25 or 2.15 maybe. 2.0s GCD would be a bit extreme considering many players would be reaching arround 1.70s on their geared high end classes and idk if the servers would be able to handle such speeds. higher latency players (as myself) have issues going over 600 skill/spell speed (2.40s) with clipping and being server-cheated on skills.

And about depth, this game as exist right now can't have any beyond "mechanical" things. If bosses had elemental properties, imagine having 6 diferent sets of gear for each fight, with our inventory system... Not happening.

If combat speed was increased can you imagine the effect of haste. How fast combat would be.

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Originally Posted by Derio

If combat speed was increased can you imagine the effect of haste. How fast combat would be.

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When would they even consider putting Time Mage into the game?

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

When would they even consider putting Time Mage into the game?

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The effects of haste are already applied in Huton and Greased Lightning.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

The effects of haste are already applied in Huton and Greased Lightning.

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Those don't help the other classes :p. Time Mage has Haste in his kit.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

When would they even consider putting Time Mage into the game?

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Never, AST already covers all his signature skills BUT haste, which is kinda similar to lightspeed tbh.

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

Never, AST already covers all his signature skills BUT haste, which is kinda similar to lightspeed tbh.

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Lightspeed for AST only and it reduces your damage abilities to zero. So just for spamming heals. Not like Haste at all, you would want your Haste on DRG, MNK, BLM, WHM, etc. BLM with haste, what BLM wouldn't want haste on them?

Haste + Arrow card + Presence of Mind=WHM kills everything.

I don't think the system needs any major overhaul or anything like that, but I do feel it needs to evolve as time goes on, a few tweaks and touch ups to the general system every now and then, maybe fix a few problems players face (animation delay seems to be a big one)

If anything, the whole global tick for DoTs is something that should be looked at. Two part hits with an initial hard hit followed by a DoT (Sizzlebeam) that can tick almost instantly is really not fun to heal against.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

This is garbage in terms of gameplay feedback, because it makes the game feels like this:
http://i.imgur.com/mfLQEPR.gif

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That's a funny gif.

WoW does not play that way at all. No one does that and wins in competitive PvP or Flex + raiding. You would die/wipe almost immediately.

Again, I am not saying that the combat needs to be changed to a button mash style of gameplay (although, that's how I feel when I'm trying to force my action to go off). I am not referring to the GCD or complex rotations. The issue is within the coding for animations and terrible server response, so yes, it is "broken". It makes it difficult to execute everything properly and time everything, such as with cleric stance as people have said.

server ticks, animation lock and odd lag are a problem still i agree, i also think that lightspeed is more akin to quick/quick2 not so much haste, which we have enemies in sohr khai, and the buff in palace of the dead already in game. if anything selenes skill/spell speed up is more like haste than lightspeed.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

While I presume that percentage is mostly hyperbole, I still feel the exact opposite. Yes, some skills should be consolidated before any more are added. But I would hate seeing half the skills disappear because it'd result in a very generic rotation.

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We already have generic rotations, google and you'll find the "one" rotation that's recommended for your class. The only difference currently is that they're unnecessarily LONG generic rotations.