Does FF14 have a button bloat problem?

I only ever had issues with Scholar and Monk.

Button bloat? No, not at all
A remotely close issue would be sam, but perfect manageable.
People just need to separate their hotbar and keybinds in aoe trash and st damage with utility skills.
Move aoe trash to some "hard" reachable buttons or uncommon button combination and voilà, problem solved

You have to plan at what button what skill is best but i wouldnt say that there is a button bloat problem.

There is some bloat, but not a lot. And when there is, they find a way to improve it later.
Like, in my opinion, DRK is very bloated (many oGCD that do not really serve a purpose other than being oGCDs)
The change they are doing with SAM's 3rd eye also addresses button bloat a bit.

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Originally Posted by Derio

As a controller player the only jobs that have severe button bloat are PLD and AST.

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Ninja is pretty bad as well.

Suppose they do the PvP thing.

1-2-3 goes to 1-1-1
1-1-1 is just button mashing
You can make a keyboard macro that autofires 1-1-1, no hax or game modification required.
Your rotation is now automated.

That particular "bloat" isn't actually bloat. The combat is all about making your brain juggle a rotation, cooldowns and fight mechanics together.
Less balls to juggle is actually just flat out simplifying the game to be easier.

For the most part, no. They do, however, have a bad habit of implementing AoE equivalents to single target abilities that do nothing but add bloat. Guren and Senei come to mind on Samurai alongside the upcoming Shoha II.

I think there are indeed too many buttons per job. I do NOT want to have only like 6 buttons or so. But about 30 is too much; for me it's overwhelming.

I notice how on jobs with less buttons to press I'm much better. For example, MCH has a good amount. NIN has too many. I like 16-24 buttons you have to keep track of, including situational and role actions.

For tanks, WAR has a nice amount of actions. PLD has way too much, and it's not very fun to play because of this.

I'm all for combining some actions that proc through others or can only be used under specific buffs. There are still enough other buttons so the jobs definitely wouldn't get dumbed down just by reducing how many different buttons to press. But it would get easier for the fingers and for hotbar management. I don't want rotations to be less complicated. Just some actions combined into one button, or some actions removed that don't do much by themselves.

IMO as a controller play, no, I don't think there is.

And I think they've been throwing in smarter solutions to keep the number of buttons down whilst having more abilities to use.

But as somebody who uses the Expanded Crossbars on controller, I feels I still have room for more. Though how much room varies from job to job.

However, I feel like with anything that gets mixed views like this, the true beauty of having multiple jobs per role is that they can satisfy different types of people and what they like.

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Originally Posted by _Pigzig

What don't you guys like about DRG? Most of the skills seem to do different things to me. In comparison I'd look at Gunbreaker, it has like 7 defensive cooldowns, that could be pruned lol. I was told DRG is one of the easier DPS.

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For tank classes, and this is coming from the controller perspective, I put my defensive cooldowns on the double tap R2 hot bar extension, which gives 8 cooldown slots. Since they're something you plan out when you press them and when you need them is telegraphed, you can just use that extension as they're needed.

For dragoon, though, the single target rotation the skills just for the rotation, and your generic buffs you want to watch (Dragon Sight, Battle Litany, etc) made up more than 16 skills, so it's impossible to place them all on one hotbar. You are forced to set up more than one hotbar for just your basic single target rotation, which means a lot of hotbar swapping on that job which is something you don't have to do with any other DPS.

Yeah I tend to play controller, I use 3 crossbarsfor combat, 2 that I switch between, and then 1 half of the 3rd crossbar on the R+L/L+R (they both reach the same 1/2 so I dont need to worry about which trigger need to press 1st) and the other half of the 3rd crossbar on the double tap triggers (also leading to same 1/2 no matter which side I double tap.)

If you mean that there are too many buttons, then no.

If you mean that there are too many buttons that haven't any decision-making behind them, or even outright no reason to exist as separate buttons, then yes.

There's a lot of abilities hanging around that used to be more impactful or a big part of the job that are pretty much only hanging around because they don't want to remove them. Carve and spit for instance used to be the big dark knight move but that got its role replaced by bloodspiller. It's there, functions as extra damage and slight mana gain but it doesn't get used for a minute.

You could probably remove or merge it with blood weapon and it'd function the same. Unless they want to make it proc or something it's not that impactful. Pretty much every job has at least one of these older skills laying around

There is some bloat with buttons, mostly in the form of things that really don't need to be a separate button.

To go over some...

PLD, Confiteor, only usable while under Requiescat. It could easily replace Requiescat on the action bars while it's usable rather than needing it's own separate button.

SCH, Consolation, only usable while Seraph is out so it doesn't really need it's separate button and could just replace the Summon Seraph skill while she's out and about.

DRG, Mirage Dive, needs using (High) Jump first.

NIN, Dream within a Dream and Assassinate.

SAM, Third Eye and Merciful Eyes.

BRD, Wanderer's Minuet and Perfect Pitch.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

One Solution probably down the line would be doing the PVP rotation to only those that apply
This can’t be done with diverging rotations like essentially all the melee (RPR pending) and WAR.

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It literally can be done. You just need one button per branch.

Not a huge problem, but it does feel like they occasionally add uneccessary stuff to fill out a set button quota. Like Samurai getting Shoha II on a separate button or another AoE ability that requires another button for nothing but a 10 potency increase just to pad out the rotation and hotbar. Sometimes it makes you scratch your head.

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Originally Posted by Xirean

Have you considered playing MOBAs?

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I don't like PvP. I used to play and create custom WC III scenarios that acted pretty much like a single player MOBA. I really liked the first Guild Wars because I could build my own custom OP specs that could decimate stuff with a handful of buttons. I was even sharing some of my builds for a while until I won a Guild Wars PvP template contest on the IGN forums only to see my favorite skills nerfed into oblivion. Sadly, modern games don't provide that kind of flexibility because crowd-sourced OP builds became too prevalent. Now, everyone worked around that issue by providing fixed rotations, so of course players complain that there's no challenge to be had. They have to create challenge in some way, and now that building your own optimized rotation is no longer an option, button bloat seems to be the way to go. I'm lamenting the situation, but I'm not complaining about it. I understand why it is the way it is. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

There is some bloat with buttons, mostly in the form of things that really don't need to be a separate button.

To go over some...

PLD, Confiteor, only usable while under Requiescat. It could easily replace Requiescat on the action bars while it's usable rather than needing it's own separate button.

SCH, Consolation, only usable while Seraph is out so it doesn't really need it's separate button and could just replace the Summon Seraph skill while she's out and about.

DRG, Mirage Dive, needs using (High) Jump first.

NIN, Dream within a Dream and Assassinate.

SAM, Third Eye and Merciful Eyes.

BRD, Wanderer's Minuet and Perfect Pitch.

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For the longest time I was having a lot of trouble figuring out where to put Confiteor on my Hotbars so that I could easily use it while still maintaining some coherent layout that makes sense... I ended up getting a Redragon M908 12 side button MMO mouse with an Extra Button next to the Left Mouse Click just for Requiescat and later got a Logitech G600 and assigned that to the mouse wheel side click in the end because it was too annoying trying to assign the whole combo sequence to just keyboard buttons.

Requiescat, Holy Spirit, Holy Circle, Confiteor That's a 4 Button Segment I wanted to keep together only usable every 1 minute.

I could've assigned Confiteor to the Third Mouse Click button or Wheel Side Click but then order wouldn't make sense from my perspective.

Yeah... I take my button layouts and segments seriously. If Requiescat & Confiteor were just 1 Damn Button then the Combo Sequence would only require 3 buttons on Hotbar and easier to use with those 12 Side Button MMO Mouses because a lot of them are in rows of 3 buttons: 3/3/3/3

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Originally Posted by ArthurATDayne

Yeah... I take my button layouts and segments seriously. If Requiescat & Confiteor were just 1 Damn Button then the Combo Sequence would only require 3 buttons on Hotbar and easier to use with those 12 Side Button MMO Mouses because a lot of them are in rows of 3 buttons: 3/3/3/3

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The issue there becomes packet loss, which has seemed an oddly frequent issue in playing XIV. To wholly reliably have an oGCD go off, many of us need to hit that command more than once, and keys combined in that fashion, especially without an internal cooldown between them, can cause a second hit of the command (if after the skill has already actuated) to queue a Confiteor, which would in turn consume (early) your whole Requiescat phase...

I've argued for that combination and an internal cooldown before only to have one particular fight that may require an immediate use of Confiteor shut that idea down -- nevermind that with just a bare modicum of Skill Speed and either a trait added to Paladin and Dark Knight to duplicate their Skill Speed to Spell Speed or a consolidation of SpS and SkS outright would more than remedy that issue.

Only class I felt the button bloat is on GBN, so much so that I am avoiding leveling it until Endwalker due to how uncomfortable it is even with those MMO mouses, but that is getting fixed. Otherwise, I don't think so, it's more about adjusting keybinds comfortably if anything.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The issue there becomes packet loss, which has seemed an oddly frequent issue in playing XIV. To wholly reliably have an oGCD go off, many of us need to hit that command more than once, and keys combined in that fashion, especially without an internal cooldown between them, can cause a second hit of the command (if after the skill has already actuated) to queue a Confiteor, which would in turn consume (early) your whole Requiescat phase...

I've argued for that combination and an internal cooldown before only to have one particular fight that may require an immediate use of Confiteor shut that idea down -- nevermind that with just a bare modicum of Skill Speed and either a trait added to Paladin and Dark Knight to duplicate their Skill Speed to Spell Speed or a consolidation of SpS and SkS outright would more than remedy that issue.

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With Requiescat becoming 5 Stacks in Endwalker I wonder if something like Requiescat becomes Confiteor on last Stack and can only be used on that. But with Endwalker plan to make Confiteor transform into the 3 Blade Combo at 90 I suppose it's OK to leave it as is unless some internal cooldown or mechanic prevents unintended bugs- it's an OK compromise.

I did have the foresight to assign Confiteor to its own mouse side button because I end up button mashing that in the end anyway so it looks like it should work fine for Endwalker. Especially if a button is used for the 3 Hit Blades Combo... it'll still take at least 4 Buttons for the whole Combo Segment, back to square one.

There is for sure a lot of stuff they could do to reduce necessary buttons while not really changing the way the game plays.
A lot of it could even be a toggles type of thing like having a separate page in the skill book. Like an Dynamic skills buttons tab
The thing that is weird to me is they actually already do a lot of it seemingly randomly

Can just use warrior as an example even though it really is among the least problematic classes already just because I'm most familiar with it and use the 90 set just because

Right now we already have fell cleave/inner chaos and decimate/chaotic cyclone as dynamic buttons but oddly enough having a forced regular fell cleave on a sidebar would actually be preferable because their are times inner rage and inner release decide they want to line up and inner chaos during inner release is pretty wasteful. So can add a button there because who cares about the aoe efficiency...

raw intuition and nascent flash are being made into basically the same skill in targetable and self versions. Could easily just make it one skill with passives that upgrade it into targetable and bloodwhetting stages. Trim one button there

Could easily make a storm's path dynamic button and storm's eye still branches at the same point. 1-1-1 and 1-1-2 is not really any less skill than 1-2-3 and 1-2-4 The skill is in weaving and knowing when to use which finishing skill not ability to slowly roll a finger across buttons. Can easily trim 2 buttons there

The new 90 skill only is available after inner release is used and has a shorter active duration than inner release's cooldown. Could have a dynamic button for that to trim one button needed.

So you could pretty easily make a targeting macro to nascent flash tanking partner and add a straight fell cleave button to your bar and not still be at the same button count at 90 compared to 80

It's pre-existing ingame tech so wouldn't even be difficult in the least and warrior is already fairly well optimized so other jobs could Trim a lot more.

The second thing is every cooldown ability does not need a matching aoe variant. Just add a splash damage passive to them if it's such a big deal to have an aoe rotation that is a 1:1 match with single target.

The last is some classes have skills that seem to be absolutely nothing but filler. Like sonic break and bow shock on gunbreaker; you could remove those skills and put a little potency somewhere else and the class would basically be unchanged. They're not tied to any mechanic or resource or anything, was like "here's a complete functional class and 2 extra skills on the side". I'm sure that exists in other jobs too

Just to me personally feels like you could reduce button bloat quite a bit and make it a player choice and cut out a bunch of redundancies that don't really add anything to the classes and in the cases of stuff that is already automated give the players a choice to make it manual too

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Originally Posted by Nihility

raw intuition and nascent flash are being made into basically the same skill in targetable and self versions. Could easily just make it one skill with passives that upgrade it into targetable and bloodwhetting stages. Trim one button there

Could easily make a storm's path dynamic button and storm's eye still branches at the same point. 1-1-1 and 1-1-2 is not really any less skill than 1-2-3 and 1-2-4 The skill is in weaving and knowing when to use which finishing skill not ability to slowly roll a finger across buttons. Can easily trim 2 buttons there


Just to me personally feels like you could reduce button bloat quite a bit and make it a player choice and cut out a bunch of redundancies that don't really add anything to the classes and in the cases of stuff that is already automated give the players a choice to make it manual too

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I'm pretty happy that SquareEnix eventually settled on a Quality of Life solution to Storm's Eye 10% buff by having it both Applied & Refreshed via the 2 AOE Combo Skills instead of initially having to apply it with 1,2,4 single target rotation.

It felt really unnecessary and clunky to switch from AOE Aggro grabbing rotation to Single Target rotation on a pack of 3+ mobs just to get that initial application of the buff on.

The next step I would personally support would be to combine Storm's Path and Storm's Eye into 1 button to streamline this i.e. Get both that little heal, beast gauge buildup and application of the 10% buff or what you suggested with 1-1-1, 1-1-2 less buttons (I hope I'm understanding this correctly).

Regarding Endwalker's Raw Intuition-Bloodwhetting & Nascent Flash I did find it a bit odd that both abilities weren't just combined into 1 Skill because both of them provide 400 Potency Heal on Weaponskill effects, 400 Potency Heal Damage Shield, and 2 different 10% Reduced Damage Taken effects depending on who is primary target.

Why not just trim down to just 1 Skill that can be applied to Self or Target Party Member: Target Self get both 10% Reduced Damage Taken, Target Party Member they get the Damage Reduction effects.

Oh well, I also find the Warrior to be the least problematic too so a lot of what could be done is mostly further refinement to a Great Tank Job.

I don't think there is a button bloat problem or a button deficiency problem. The reason some people feel bored with their rotation or feel they are hitting buttons needlessly is because every job without exception has a rotation you do not deviate from for any reason. Once you fall into the rhythm of a job and learn its rotation and abilities you become bored of it because there is no more to learn, you just dance around the mechanics while trying to maintain this rotation.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I don't think there is a button bloat problem or a button deficiency problem. The reason some people feel bored with their rotation or feel they are hitting buttons needlessly is because every job without exception has a rotation you do not deviate from for any reason. Once you fall into the rhythm of a job and learn its rotation and abilities you become bored of it because there is no more to learn, you just dance around the mechanics while trying to maintain this rotation.

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While that's true to a degree, I'd say that some jobs have buttons that seem redundant or never get much use. I don't really use flamethrower all that much on machinist, for example. Black Mage has a bunch of skills that were passed down from ARR, like "Sleep", which you barely use at all outside pvp content and maybe heaven on high. WHM also has that kind of odd problem where you need cure 1 when going into early content and then you never use it later because it just doesn't make sense to use it.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

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Simple Answer NO.

Long Answer: Still no but with more words.

The game is designed to be played on a Playstation, as such they have a hard cap on Buttons per class. This means we also get more passives as we level and many high end abilities replace lower abilities or have switches that change them during play.
You comparing this game to WOW which has a very different design policy and gameplay shows a serious lack of understanding of how to play FFXIV. I would go back watch videos on how to play RDM and Summoner as you do not seem to get the gameplay or job.

As to WOW Warlock vs Summoner, not even close. You are doing the same dumb assumption people have been doing for years, Summoner is nothing like Warlock, never has been, never will be. It's a pet class with a Dot is the only thing close. Warlock is three different trees. Affliction Curse and Dots, Demonology you wanted pets here's an Army, Destruction you wanted to yell explosion so here is a bigger boom. The only Job similar to Warlock in FFXIV is Black Mage, and it is only at an aesthetics level if you played Destruction. Demo Warlock is not like any gameplay in FFXIV, and Affliction is also an unseen play type. And when you look at the history of these classes in WOW and the Jobs in Final Fantasy you see why they are nothing similar, Every Job in FFXIV so far is based on past Jobs from previous games, Reaper is going to be the first New Job in FFXIV. Final Fantasy Jobs are loosely based in stereotypes from Early Dungeon and Dragons filtered through a uniquely Japanese perspective. While Warcraft copied a Table Top game called Warhammer and tried to integrate their classes based on ideas from American Dark Fantasy.

Also if you found Sub Rogue to be too complex, I feel for you, as that class/spec wasn't that hard, My 3rd main (and 1st character in2005) in WOW was a Sub Rogue. Although I preferred Warlock until I came to FFXIV in 2015.

If you want a suggestion how to optimize and simplify your gameplay, grab a controller, and set the game up with the Cross Hotbar. You'll find it fairly simple even Ninja is easy on a Controller.

Also because I use a Keypad and Gaming Mouse, I have found that I have the opposite issue, not enough Buttons. ESP since I use macros to optimize my Hotbars in a way I like Best.

See: https://i.imgur.com/QoQzMbW.jpg for how I do my UI, it's not aimed for clean btw, it's aimed for uniquely me.

Basically I find your comparison of WOW to FFXIV wrong, and I feel you are complaining about the wrong issues when it comes to abilities. Personally I want to see White mage low level healing abilities integrated better for high end, It's a waste to of abilities to essentially have to ignore abilities after specific levels because they are inefficient gameplay after specific points.


Edit:
Additional UI:
Red Mage: https://i.imgur.com/z8SwjC1.jpg
Summoner: https://i.imgur.com/Z5ZUHZm.jpg
White Mage: https://i.imgur.com/4DHwoIF.jpg
Paladin: https://i.imgur.com/vwxHNFr.jpg
Ninja: https://i.imgur.com/93p5jkY.jpg

DPS UI explained: https://i.imgur.com/Cnr6Vnx.jpg I do Healer and Tank jobs differently, but uniformly different. Also Ninja has the Ninjutsu on the AOE part as it works better that way for me.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

While that's true to a degree, I'd say that some jobs have buttons that seem redundant or never get much use. I don't really use flamethrower all that much on machinist, for example. Black Mage has a bunch of skills that were passed down from ARR, like "Sleep", which you barely use at all outside pvp content and maybe heaven on high. WHM also has that kind of odd problem where you need cure 1 when going into early content and then you never use it later because it just doesn't make sense to use it.

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Not really bloat, but it is a problem esp with White Mage and Black mage which have a few inefficient abilities which stop being used or just get ignored outright. The issue with Flamethrower is it is only good if you don't move, ie look at the movement button and it cancels, so it's more efficient to use other AOEs. As a BLM I use Sleep all the time out in the world when doing solo content, it's not needed in group content but it's helpful when your only damage mitigation is a Chocobo who can only hold aggro for one attack.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I don't think there is a button bloat problem or a button deficiency problem. The reason some people feel bored with their rotation or feel they are hitting buttons needlessly is because every job without exception has a rotation you do not deviate from for any reason. Once you fall into the rhythm of a job and learn its rotation and abilities you become bored of it because there is no more to learn, you just dance around the mechanics while trying to maintain this rotation.

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This is true. It's hard to comment earnestly on any matter of button bloat without looking at its context, even if I'd have to argue that context alone does not sufficiently explain (away) our issues.

Take even just the otherwise identical AoE vs. ST spender options (Xeno vs. Flare, TFC vs. Enlightenment, etc.): if we actually had a reason to focus-fire, to the point of sometimes using ST tools in multitarget situations, no one would complain about being stuck with two buttons that have no thought beyond counting whether our enemies number in the singular or plural.

I would settle for being able to keybind any button on my keyboard. For example wow and elder scrolls you can keybind caps lock. In FFXIV you can not. That is a key that I don't use that I can't keybind. It is really close to were I rest my left hand on the keyboard.

Also right clicking on abilities instead of only being able to left click would be nice as well

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

Is it just me, or does this game actually have a skill bloat problem, mainly with dps classes. Having pushed a healer to 80 now and messing around with DPS and boy, everything feels like I’m playing a WoW 5.0 sub rogue….

Like with RDM for example, I need to have Verfire and Verstone on my bar, two skills which can’t be used without procs whatsoever, instead of them temporarily replacing veraero and verthunder when it’s actually time to use them.

And from what I’ve seen while glancing over most jobs’ skill book, RDM is even on the “easy” end of the spectrum. I’m bracketing easy because for me personally, bloating a spec with skills will only add pseudo-difficulty in form of it being tedious and tiring to play.

Especially since all these buttons don’t change the fact that in this game there is still only one intended and hardcoded way to play a class, so you’re just adding and adding to the robotic sequence while not adding any actual choices or gameplay enhancement.

Like take the ‘14 summoner for example, I think this might be the closest thing to a WoW warlock. In WoW I can either DoT, nuke, go heavy pet, shadow or fire based, or a weird combination of all. Well here I run around and DoT mobs and guess what? It doesn’t work, because they won’t die and there is no way to specialize a job into a direction. So here, I put my 2 dots up, send in my pet, draw ether, execute the 2-dot-up nuke, pet specials, various CD based skills and then spam my ST spell, repeat. This is what I mean.

This might just be me, or not, but I’d definitely like to see some pruning in the coming expac.

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It does! Too many useless skills.

No.
Imo it's about perfect now, I can't think of any dps that feels bloated.
Unless your definition of bloat is '' it doesn't 99999999% NEED to be separate buttons ''.

Personally I much more enjoy pressing more buttons than just spamming 1 and sometimes 2 and 3 like more or less in WoW ( I am exaggerating, but basically. Lots of spamming the same button. ).
I dunno why some people are always so obsessed with doing as little as possible and pushing as few buttons as possible.
I get it if we're talking about positional with BLM for example and doing as little movement as possible but that's different.
But I don't really get it when people want it to basically be a button masher.

Like turning our basic combo into the button mashing in PvP, I just don't get it.
It sounds so boring to me and not involved at all.

Turning the Gnashing Fang combo into one button for GNB I can kinda understand because it's essentially just one ability split into three, but I still kinda feel a bit meh about it because it makes the rotation feel less varied.
I want my fingers to feel active not like I am just hammering the same three buttons.
And on MNK I'd say it's the opposite problem where it feels too repetitive and like there's not enough buttons.

Yes. It's not that we have too many buttons exactly, but there's a lot of filler and low-impact abilities that add 1-2% dps and are just there for the sake of pressing buttons.

I wasn't really too impressed with class design for Endwalker tbh. There are a handful of good QoL changes and a few nice abilities, but overall the classes will play the same. Most of the new abilities are traits that are basically normal class balance or system tweaks disguised as a new ability, filler oGCD's that are bland potency, aoe or single target versions of existing oGCD's that don't really change much and blatant copies of abilities from other classes.

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

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It's comfortable. It means that there aren't going to be weeks or months spent trying to acclimate to changes in how the job you've been playing in the same way for almost 2 years now works on November 25th.

It's how most MMOs work, a tried and true formula. Class design is never radical.

It only worked in WoW (sometimes) because players could try new things in the PTR and write up the next Definitive Guide to Playing X months before the expansion comes out.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

FF14 has a kind of button bloat problem but the jobs have IMHO still too few abilities. The problem is, too many abilities are basically the same. As a tank you have a mitigation buff that reduces the incoming damage by 10% and you have another mitigation buff that reduces it by 30% but with a different CD and different duration etc. Those duplicated abilities bloat up the buttons in the UI.

Cheers

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This I feel like combo buttons should take over the PvP aspect where it continues all on one button. I dont need 7 buttons just to press 1 to 7 in a row which all do virtually the same aside from looks and it having a combo bonus.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Yes. It's not that we have too many buttons exactly, but there's a lot of filler and low-impact abilities that add 1-2% dps and are just there for the sake of pressing buttons.

I wasn't really too impressed with class design for Endwalker tbh. There are a handful of good QoL changes and a few nice abilities, but overall the classes will play the same. Most of the new abilities are traits that are basically normal class balance or system tweaks disguised as a new ability, filler oGCD's that are bland potency, aoe or single target versions of existing oGCD's that don't really change much and blatant copies of abilities from other classes.

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

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I really wish they would condense the 123 buttons that don't actually have any branching options, something like monk's combos you can't condense into a single button, but with GNB's continuation or MCH's 123 combos I don't see a point to keeping it 3 buttons when literally nothing about the class would change except a few hotbar slots are freed

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

I really wish they would condense the 123 buttons that don't actually have any branching options, something like monk's combos you can't condense into a single button, but with GNB's continuation or MCH's 123 combos I don't see a point to keeping it 3 buttons when literally nothing about the class would change except a few hotbar slots are freed

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I'd rather just have an equally-numbered (and multiple) choices across each GCD and use that as the basis for consolidation, rather than at best only 1 GCD per combo having actual choice (and only at most 3 choices), but if they actually put the buttons to use on something that isn't similarly bloated, I wouldn't hate further PvP-style combo consolidation.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Turning the Gnashing Fang combo into one button for GNB I can kinda understand because it's essentially just one ability split into three, but I still kinda feel a bit meh about it because it makes the rotation feel less varied.

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I mean, you're free to hit a different button each GCD to progress the exact same unfailable decision (or just roll your fingers across the three relevant keys so that the first applicable one is queued, since the non-options among the GF combo can't even be hit), but it doesn't make the rotation itself any more or less varied. It's just needlessly button-inefficient. Nothing less. Nothing more.

To a degree.

I think there's a lot of buttons that could be combined into a single button in order to free up room for other, more meaningful abilities. Much like how combo attacks work in PvP.

I play with an MMO mouse (around 15 buttons) plus a keyboard and on some jobs, even that is a tight fit.

For context: I play on PC. Mouse and keyboard, with a MMO mouse with 19 buttons. I main WAR, secondary MNK, but have played all the jobs through cap.

I think there are too many. My biggest culprit are actions like Sonic Break. When I have a CD that's a minute long, I welcome something that feels really awesome for the job, flashy, and alters the flow. GNB... already has a lot of stuff happening every minute that you have to use at the same time because of No Mercy; keep in mind the same job already has another DoT every minute in Bow Shock.

Self-buffs like Inner Release are fine for me because they offer a momentary change in gameplay. Stuff like Riddle of Fire, on the other hand, happen when several other self buffs are already happening. MNK has so many self-buff oGCDs that roll up at the same time. I think, especially with losing two positionals, all of the Riddle of Xs can go away and adding a third one is a mistake. Brotherhood is satisfactory, standing as a neat group buff with a self-buff mechanic.

Lastly, and the ones I can forgive the least, are jobs that get minute CDs that share a CD with an AOE version. Those buttons have a usage, from a design standpoint it's not really worth it. Just make a ST version that has AOE splash. Don't take up two buttons for something we only hit once a minute.