I believe it should be called "AoE spam makes playing mage classes completely mindless". Who cares about the button? AoE spells with no real MP or enmity consequences. So DEEP.
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After reading the letter from the producer and seeing a possible hint at reworking the AOE mechanism, I'm kind of worried about them keeping the toggle in and the problem snowballing. They mentioned adjusting recast and range for spells when aoe or single target. Could you imagine healing and having to aoe heal but all of a sudden you get a 20 sec cd on your only heal and the tank dies because you couldn't heal anymore?
I really hope when they make the adjustment to actions they just split the spells, I mean really, it's just silly. The toggle is an inconvenience, waste of a button (yes I know it's shared with BRs but let's be real, BRs are going to be changed to be more streamlined), and makes things like healing utterly mindless.
They also mentioned changing the way the action bar works and adjusting actions appropriately. Their changes could minimize the action points problem so many people seem to be concerned about if they removed the toggle.
This is the first game I've ever played where people are begging to be gimped.
There's nothing wrong with the Toggle. It's one of the few features that SE got right with this game. Adding -ga spells is more limiting than a toggle. The current mage classes don't focus on JUST curing, or JUST nuking, or JUST buffin/debuffing, and the toggle makes juggling all of these a lot easier, and a lot more feasible than it would be if we had two - 5 slots being taken up by unnecessary spells.
It sounds to me like people just want -ga spells to foster their XI nostalgia. Stop trying to turn this game into FFXI, kthxbai.
So let me get this straight, having an additional slot being taken up by a spell that does the same exact thing that the current spells do = making the class challenging? Removing the toggle won't make anything challenging, it will just mean that you will be able to equip less spells to your action bar.
Actually on the controller that button is context-specific. When your action bar isn't up it's the emote menu button. When the action bar is up it stacks commands for battle regimens. When selecting a target for spells that have AoE potential it toggles AoE. It's really not taking up any space that isn't use for others things.
However adding -ga spells to your bar WOULD take up precious space, unnecessarily so mind you.
Your post makes perfect sense, but you don't seem to understand that since -ga spells were in XI, they need to be implemented in XIV in the exact same way, and the current feature which serves the same purpose more efficiently should be done away with. That way I feel more like I'm playing Final Fantasy XI.
If -ga spells are implemented into XIV, I would hope that they would be more interesting than AoE versions of the spells that we all ready have. Example, they could be spells that two mages can cast together after gaining a buff from completing a battle regimen.
It's obvious that people want them, but getting rid of perfectly functioning battle mechanics to introduce them is just backwards.
The only -ra and -ga spells we need are the renaming of II and III spells. Fire II becomes Fira, Fire III becomes Firga, Shock II becomes Shockra. Unless they have plans on letting you use EVERY single spell you learned without adding it to your action bar (the mini-menu in FFXI), removing aoe toggle and adding a copy of every single spell would be so very bad.
You gotta remember this game has very different mechanics for skill and spell usage than in FFXI. you cant just do everything your class/job can do as a mage. you should find right now that you cant set all your skills, and it continues on until R50. you cant set everything now, you wont be able to set everything at all if they split the spells into separate single target and aoe spells.
And unless they say they are going to get rid of the ac system, it is only speculation and 'hope' that they might possibly do away with it. so until then, this desire to have an aoe copy of every spell is a bad idea.