What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

My only beef with the combat is how a slight shift in my ping can cause me to bunny or the game to think I only pressed 1 button instead of 2 so my raiton became a shuriken.

It's pretty nice at level cap but really boring below. The jobs have been getting more and more same-y as more have been added, it's like there's a rule that everyone has to keep up damage buff or dot.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You keep saying this but it doesn't look like you actually do any of the harder content?

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The amount of harder content I do gets less and less each expansion. Numerous reasons as to why include the over-focus on simplicity and accessibility just making things boring enough that a good number of raiding friends just don't play anymore.
The removal of depth and engaging elements of the combat system.
The meaningfulness of the content itself, or lack there of.
The lack of a story to keep my interest. etc.

They will never recapture the magic that was Coil. Not only a solid story but a difficulty that made the story feel like it actually could have ended the world. Also, it was arguably the toughest raid series the game has ever had especially considering every raid tier since the devs keep lowering the bar and making them easier because of accessibility...

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

What made 1.23s combat so good? What, particularly, did you like? Building up TP to use big moves? Combat wasn't really all that engaging back then, it was really slow and rather boring.

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To borrow something I said in another thread. You could liken the 1.23 combat system to a bowl of stew.. It's not one thing its a combination of many things.

The way TP worked in an earn it then spend it fashion.
The way combos worked in that they took a hint of skill and choice to execute. If you missed the positional on a Dragon Kick you lost the whole combo. What this meant was that landing it successfully felt rewarding.. In XIV you wouldnt even notice if you missed one.
The incapacitation system showed a lot of room for promise and growth adding real choice to your actions.
The overall feel of skills. When you pressed a button in 1.23 they had weight they had impact, even in the animations. You kicked a boss the boss felt it.. Instead of you kicked the boss but the boss didn't even notice.
The diversity between jobs. every job had strengths and weaknesses and felt unique.
The diversity in bosses in 1.23 where bosses actually felt different.. boss A would be super tough and resilient, they would hit you hard but slow.. Boss B might not hit you quite so hard but they would hit you fast and while they may have been squishier they were also agile.. Boss C might hit you just as hard and fast as B but be more armoured and less agile.. they all felt different. and indeed in many cases required a different approach even in terms of gear choices.
Gear choices. stats that mattered or made a difference. do you go MND on your WHM and focus on stronger heals.. or do you go VIT and go for stronger buffs,, do your DPS go STR for super hurt or ATT to be able to penetrate that tough bosses armour.. or even accuracy just to be able to hit it.. as well as interesting sub stats. the way certain gear granted enhancements to certain skills.

While any one of these ingrediants alone may, or not be amazing. The way they were mixed together made for what I believe to be a much tastier and more delicious stew than anything ARR has done since.

By contrast, the ARR Stew has been taking all of its ingredients away,
TP / resource management,
buffs
debuffs,
emnity,
crowd control.
stances..
jobs identity has been stripped away. they all feel the same.
Gear is boring.. 95% of the time if not more.. highest item level wins regardless of stats.
Every boss feels the exact same to fight.. Your biggest badest hit on whatever job your on hits for about the same damage against a level 90 god as it does a level 1 bug. (another reason I find raiding less fun. Bosses are just super inflated hp pools nothing more.)

Again 1 of these ingrediants alone may not amount for much.
For example there's a thread do we miss aggro? On its own, not so much.. However aggro or emnity was just one ingrediant in what was ARRs stew.. And with so many ingrediants removed.. XIVS combat is now just a bowl of water. quite tasteless and very lacking.

TLDR. it's not just one thing, but the way many things meshed together that made 1.23 combat feel superior. at least imo.

I don't like it much, I'd rather play another mmo combat wise and I'm considering picking a secondary game because of that.
I play at 200 ping which doesn't help, but I just don't like how classes "feel" much.

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Originally Posted by angienessyo

My only beef with the combat is how a slight shift in my ping can cause me to bunny or the game to think I only pressed 1 button instead of 2 so my raiton became a shuriken.

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It would be nice if when you hit a jutsu it faded out so you cant hit it twice or change the job meter to show what has been pressed in sequence so far

I think FFXIV combat suffers from too much predictability and a lack of on-the-fly decision making.

Every run of a particular dungeon is the same trash packs with the same walls, so even the rare instance where you're rewarded for interrupting or DPSing down a particular mob first rather than blindly AoEing becomes rote. Every run of a particular boss is the same mechanics in the same order. There aren't enough "gimicks" and "gotchas" to keep dungeons and bosses from running together (maybe high-end content is the exception?).

Compared to earlier FF games, the single Attack/Fight command has become 1-2-3-x-y-z on repeat, which feels just as boring to me. We've picked up the need to move about the arena, but you can plant yourself in one place for long stretches of time, so again, it's not so different from an era where the party stood on one side of the screen and the enemy stood on the opposite side. We've lost quite a bit of unpredictability and variance in how damage goes out, which is ultimately the source of FFXIV healers' woes. We've lost blunt vs. piercing, elemental affinities, and the like, which I suppose makes it easier to balance jobs to all be "viable," but turns fire/ice/stone/aero/thunder/… into a flavor text instead of something to make a decision over or something that the party needs to compensate for.

In terms of job design, I sometimes wonder what jobs would look like if we reduced their kits to FFIV or FFVI style action menus: what would each job's one unique entry be? How strongly does the FFXIV kit lean into that one unique entry?

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I still prefer with 1.23 had.

ARR and current combat is just to spammy and lacks weight or real choice / decisions. It's just the same base rotation fight in fight out. And the strategy for every boss is essentially the same..

Outside if maybe a few ground telegraph's or something bosses are basically just giant striking dummies for you to flail away at..

Makes no difference is the boss is a big dragon or giant robot the strategy and rotation is always the same..

So etimes I wonder if that's why so many people are so bad. Because when it's so bland and lifeless there's no engagement in it so just mash keys rather than actually engage with and make choices.

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Yeah, for me it's this. All the non-healer jobs feel slightly tedious to play because there aren't any impactful decisions to make, you're just given a bunch of skills plates and your only task is to keep them all spinning so you do as much damage as possible.

"an add spawned"

"oh crap, what do I do? stun it? kite it? CC it? drag it away from the group and sacrifice myself?"

"wait for the OT to touch it once and then spin your plates at it until it dies"

repeat ad infinitum

Tanking is still fun for me in ARR content because not only do bosses hit proportionately harder relative to your max HP, you'll occasionally run into a boss that requires you to do positioning and think about how to get DPS the most uptime while keeping things under control. But as you level up you get so many plates to spin even as a tank that the bosses start to position themselves because if you ever had to move out of optimal plate-spinning range, 3 out of 4 tanks would have their plate-spinning rotation fall into shambles.

And healers are of course tedious for a different reason.

I very much enjoy the combat in FFXIV. There's enough oGCD abilities to keep things flowing, and there's still a rhythm to the GCD even if it's a bit slower than in other games. Only annoying part on that front is the lower levels when you don't actually have those oGCD abilities yet to fill the gaps.

But overall, I like combat here. The fight design is fun for me, too. I like that many of the raids in particular feature a set of moves that you can memorize, but where the specific ones used each time are randomly chosen, so it's not mindless. You still need to pay attention to some kind of cue, think on your feet, and react appropriately.

And for the obligatory healing comment - I like healing in FFXIV. Yes, the DPS part of it is usually one DoT and then spamming one ability. I don't mind that. Because I don't play a healer to DPS. I still do DPS, but it's not why I play the role, so I don't mind that part being simple. I like the different feel between some of the healers (e.g. WHM's big single-target heals vs. SCH's shields and AoE heals). I haven't yet had the desire to get into Savage or Ultimate fights, so virtually all of my healing is done either in DF or with my FC, which is a casual/social group. Meaning my group experiences usually involve me needing to do quite a bit of healing, and I enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

It's a symptom of a bigger problem. Healers are barely functional fundamentally. They are designed to deal damage a lot more often than they heal. But then don't get an actual damage rotation. No job should have to mash 1 button 90% of the time.

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Weird, cause I have a lot of fun on all my healers.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

Weird, cause I have a lot of fun on all my healers.

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Fun and design flaws are not independent, I still enjoy running expert on SCH more than any other class but I fully acknowledge it’s a highly flawed class because of the way healers do damage compared to healing, it would work better if you spent 90% of the time healing but you really don’t need anywhere near that level of healing in any content

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

Weird, cause I have a lot of fun on all my healers.

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211111111111111111111111

It's. So. Fun.

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Originally Posted by Curemefi

What makes a good combat? Do you think FFXIV has good combat?
Is a large number of skills to be pressed and memorized making the combat of a game good?
Is it the many procs to keep track of good?
Is it the many oGCDs with long cooldown to weave between skills and spells with GCD good?
Can UI help make the combat feel better?
...
And many other factors which require your value opinions.
Is FFXIV's combat satisfying to you? And how to improve it?
Please give me your thoughts and opinions (with valid explanations). It may be helpful to the devs too.

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Slow, boring, repetitive.

It's decent but they traded button bloat for gdc and priority rotations for fixed timers which imo two times the worse side of each coin
personally ff14 shines much more in it's boss rotations and design rather than the actual player rotation
be it ranges that are forced into melee range and every melee that is directional dot andy

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Originally Posted by vetch

And healers are of course tedious for a different reason.

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I use to main a healer back in the 1.0 era of the game under a different account and honestly?

Healing in ARR just isn't as fun nor engaging as it was during legacy. It feels like the developers never actually played a healing support in old school mmos and it really pisses me off to be frank. Like I truly believe the team making the game only knows that playing a 'support' means you need to keep your parties health pools up and that's it. XIV use to have this type of healer back in 1.0 and while yes, I got annoyed at dealing with the aggro issue I had a much more enjoyable gameplay playing that healer then I do playing any healer in ARR today. I honestly have almost fallen asleep on my keyboard playing support in ARR multiple times over my long extended years playing this product.

I know supporting others in mmorpgs isn't a role alot of people like to play but I use to love it because it was the most difficult role to play since while you had a large assortment of spells and skills. you needed to know what to use for what fight and for what job, it's honestly why I have memorized most of my 1.0 days as I had to memorize nearly every spell and skill in the game and remember what type of weapon type needed what type of buffs for best performance and I loved that. It made me feel like I was playing my own little minigame within fights while everyone else was focused on killing the mobs. it was glorious and I still miss it.

Give me back 1.23 build.
I want my version of Final Fantasy XIV again Square Enix.

Combat on most classes to me is boring.

Healers are obvious but in short: not enough to heal because outgoing damage is low so boring dps rotation.

MCH... we're named MACHINISTS where are the machines? Rook/Queen are the same button and imo not enough. Also Heatblast rotation is... so boring after 2 expansions.

WAR/DRK boring spam. Same as MCH

No interesting pet/DoT based job.

Lack of managing resources across jobs (Rip TP and MP usage).

RDM is fun. GNB I'd like if Double Down didn't exist.

Over all 3-4/10.

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

Weird, cause I have a lot of fun on all my healers.

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I take it you don't play them a lot.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

211111111111111111111111

It's. So. Fun.

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Miss me dots.

Miss me Shadow Flare.

Miss me Bane.

Miss me Fairies that weren't glorified reskins.

Simple as.

(Not gonna pretend I know much about StB WHM beyond it losing stoneskin andLilies being straight cheeks in it's original incarnation).

Post 3 said everything I wanted to say. I prefer priorities and procs more than strict rotations, but I enjoy the combat well enough as is on the jobs I play.

That said I miss HW MCH and anyone who prefers post-HW MCH is absolutely wrong, no questions asked, my opinion is the best one.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

Miss me dots.

Miss me Shadow Flare.

Miss me Bane.

Miss me Fairies that weren't glorified reskins.

Simple as.

(Not gonna pretend I know much about StB WHM beyond it losing stoneskin andLilies being straight cheeks in it's original incarnation).

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Miss my
-bane
-shadowflare
-miasma 1
-miasma 2
-virus
-fey covenenant
-fey wind
-silent dusk
-fey caress
-rouse
-leeches

But hey broil 4 am I right

Its honestly a bit on the shallow side and you can feel the devs hit the ceiling of whats possible in it a while ago.

Utility skills are not valued, Damage is all that matters and theres basically no room for customization or player expression. The Balance this game achieved is boring. Its the result of extreme homogenization and more or less forcing every job to do the same thing.

Systems have been changed/removed specifically to make this so, and to be honest I wouldn't mind seeing the game be made less balanced if it meant that jobs didn't ammount solely to pressing the same buttons in the exact same order forever.

I will still side eye scholars who don't have Selene out. They are cosmetic now, sure, but she is still the correct form of Lily.

Without mechanics yes most jobs outside of the melee dps are very boring. Even with mechanics healing can be extremely boring due to the 1 button spam.
Most jobs have been adjusted so much to where the early leveling feels really bad but endgame feels really good.

The combat is good outside of the healer jobs obviously.

If they could do anything to make the combat better it would be to front load skills in the level 1-50 range a bit more.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I will still side eye scholars who don't have Selene out. They are cosmetic now, sure, but she is still the correct form of Lily.

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You can pry fey covenant out of my cold dead hands, you can go deal with the NIN who wants to kill you because your fey wind caused him to drift his rotation

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You can pry fey covenant out of my cold dead hands, you can go deal with the NIN who wants to kill you because your fey wind caused him to drift his rotation

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heuehuehuehuehe

> burn balance
> pull arrow
> locate ninja

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Miss my
-bane
-shadowflare
-miasma 1
-miasma 2
-virus
-fey covenenant
-fey wind
-silent dusk
-fey caress
-rouse
-leeches

But hey broil 4 am I right

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God I regret not joining back in '15 during HW.

The account creation process confused the heck out of me and I ended up forgetting about this game for 2 years. I didn't even remember this game until I saw one of my friends playing as a Dark Knight.

I think the combat is designed to be extremely accessible for Controller Users almost to the point you can erase the UI if you know what ability is assigned to what button. The only thing that keeps it from doing it fully is because you have procs to worry about. If you know where the proc ability is though you can just have some abilities on the side to pop up when the proc is available to really minimize the UI and still be effective.

Frankly I'm for it. It's one of the better tab-targeting MMOs.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

you can erase the UI if you know what ability is assigned to what button. [...] If you know where the proc ability is though you can just have some abilities on the side to pop up when the proc is available to really minimize the UI and still be effective.

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This is actually my UI. Only cds and procs (if applicable) on my visible tray.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

(Not gonna pretend I know much about StB WHM beyond it losing stoneskin andLilies being straight cheeks in it's original incarnation).

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It was....okay after they shortened Assize's cooldown to 45 seconds. Juggling two shorter dots was something closer to engaging than the 30 second standard from Shadowbringers. But other than that, it spent end patch Heavensward being dumpster fire tier with horrible MP issues, doing half Scholar's personal damage and nobody could keep up with the three ring circus overbuff that was 20% Balance, then transitioned into Stormblood with a hideous job gauge as the test bed preview job for Shadowbringers simplistic passive healing design. Clearly Square believes they found a winner there.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I will still side eye scholars who don't have Selene out. They are cosmetic now, sure, but she is still the correct form of Lily.

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Plus she's that lovely yurple color.

It's fine if not a bit on the boring side. It's same-y and I dread every change that isn't a number increase, but it functions well enough. I feel savage and ultimate are fun enough to warrant more sub time even if SE is deathly afraid of giving a class anything requiring more than a single functioning braincell.

I like "tab targeting action bar wow style" combat, I feel like it fits this genre well enough. I know some people really detest that, but they're mostly GW2 players, who cares lol.

Some criticisms:
+ Overall feeling of sluggishness when compared to its peers (and I'm not talking about the ping dependent kind).
+ I was really intrigued by the whole "cross class skills" thing, but instead of working on it, they gutted it out.
+ Button bloat reaching critical levels.
+ Tanking and Healing complexity being reduced to single digit iq levels (I'm guessing this is a measure to encourage more people to play these roles, but it seems not to be working).
+ Homogenization in general (a lot of games fall into this, to be fair).

I'd like to see more strategy in the game. It's too much DDR and number-go-up and not enough strategising. No meaningful debuffs, no job synergy, no healers needed (mostly).

But for what it is it's high quality and enjoyable. :)

Everything feels a bit "Safety Dance"-y (Heigan the Unclean Mix) and Jobs start to feel homogenized after they've been out for an expansion or two.

Me and another tank took P1 from 30% by ourselves because so many of his attacks do nothing if you can read his telegraphs, and every tank having heals they can share with other party members gives them enough sustainability that thanks to no enrage timer on Normal you can tag team raid bosses. DRK used to follow its series tradition of draining MP for boosted ATK; then it got homogenized meter management in Stormblood and on. Et cetera.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

This is actually my UI. Only cds and procs (if applicable) on my visible tray.

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Same. It annoyed me greatly having the crossbar on my UI AND also a hotbar tray to monitor my cooldowns. So I merged them.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

Combat on most classes to me is boring.

Healers are obvious but in short: not enough to heal because outgoing damage is low so boring dps rotation.

MCH... we're named MACHINISTS where are the machines? Rook/Queen are the same button and imo not enough. Also Heatblast rotation is... so boring after 2 expansions.

WAR/DRK boring spam. Same as MCH

No interesting pet/DoT based job.

Lack of managing resources across jobs (Rip TP and MP usage).

RDM is fun. GNB I'd like if Double Down didn't exist.

Over all 3-4/10.

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Don't think you're thinking through machinist enough. Drill? Chain Saw? Bioblaster? Even Flamethrower(which has no use sadly, but still)? They're all different weapons. I always imagine machinist as swapping out different guns in fights.

FFXIV has been my favourite tab target combat of any mmo I have tried. However, I still much prefer action combat. I came here from BDO and still feel that game has the best combat of any mmo. It's fast paced, combo heavy and feels really fluid and satisfying. Shame they decided to ruin it with p2w and horrific rng.

WoW combat bores me to tears, GW2 feels a bit meh but I am still exploring that game further.

I'm a wee baby that started around when Shadowbringers got the free trial update and I don't have much experience with MMOs in general. I think that trials and raids are fun when they're something new to you and people are dying left and right because you're staying engaged so you don't die to a mechanic you've never seen. However after that first impression it slowly boils down to pressing the same buttons in the same sequence and standing in the same safe spots. There's little strategy, little team synergy, little to mitigate and even less to heal, so the only enjoyment really comes from trying to do as much damage as possible. Dungeons are boring but at least healers have a chance to use their entire arsenal of heals in W2W pulls.

When people talk about the old state of healers I can only wonder how it felt to have limited yet impactful healing and GCD heals actually being desirable to use. From my understanding, fairies had pet actions that you can use while casting your own spell. That sounds extremely cool and fun to use.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

Don't think you're thinking through machinist enough. Drill? Chain Saw? Bioblaster? Even Flamethrower(which has no use sadly, but still)? They're all different weapons. I always imagine machinist as swapping out different guns in fights.

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No. I meant what I said. Machines. Not weapons. Machines. As in turrets.

Drill means nothing to me because its barely different to Air Anchor in feel.

Bio we don't use in single target. And if we're bringing in aoe there's Scattergun since it looks more like a shot gun animation. Flamethrower I don't even have on my bars like Undraw.

If Flamethrower and Bio worked like Sonic Break for GNB a short DoT we use every so often outside of Heatblast, sure.

I think Machinist I think gadgets. Not just different guns.

Slow, I wish they would add more ocgd skills on shorter cooldowns.

FFXIV's combat is mediocre.

Due to the input delay and slidey nature of combat, you feel like you do not have immediate control over your character and his actions like in other MMOs (namely WoW and FFXIV). Your hits do not feel impactful like in GW2. The disconnect between an orange telegraph disappearing and the mob's attack animation occurring makes combat feel unimmersive. And your character's piano rotation based gameplay with three dozen different abilities to manage makes the player concentrate on their action bar, rather than looking at the action on screen. There is also a cacophony of effects going off onscreen that make it difficult to see what is happening when you have at least 4 different players fighting at least 1 mob. You are reliant on an unimmersive UI overlay to decipher what is happening, which boils what should be exciting fantasy battles down into a mundane math problem.