Incoming Bloat

Getting new actions for your favorite jobs is great, it serves to keep people's interest in said jobs. The problem arises when more and more actions are introduced with no way to solve bloating.

I'm sure the FFXI crowd would argue that there's nothing wrong with too many skills, but you also didn't have to move during fights in fights.

I know a lot don't like to see the comparison, but I believe it's worth, as it's one thing WoW did right. In it's latter expansions, WoW sought to combat ability bloating, by combining abilities that had similar effects/actions or just straight up swapping out older abilities for new ones. If with each expansion that FFXIV gets, possible new abilities will arrive, something needs to be done to decrease action bar clutter.

As an example, simply because I play DRG, impulse drive and disembowel can be combined. Impulse Drive would have a higher attack potency to make up for the lost step in the combo, as well as apply the piercing debuff. That clears up one slot on the action bar, while still keeping the DRGs core mechanic.
Do this with each job and SE would have an abundance of room to work with in terms of new abilities.

Be glad you have bloat. You could have completely and utterly useless skills like the machinist does... Same said skills also are of premium value to the machinist.

1: Rend mind
2: a completely separate skill (thus more premium taken from the skill toolbox) dismantle
3: hotshot
4: wildfire (Heaven knows most people don't even realize what it does, still is severely underwhelming).
5: ricochet outside of any ale environment (our supposedly amazing level60 skill)
6: stun arrow and silence arrow on the same cool down timer. One or the other.

I think we're going to need more macro pages soon if nothing else. I'm at like 78/100 and I think next expansion that's gonna probably fill up or close to it. Macros can help ease the hotbar bloat a bit.

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Originally Posted by BHGlobbd

I'm sure the FFXI crowd would argue that there's nothing wrong with too many skills, but you also didn't have to move during fights in fights.

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FFXI had a lot of spells, but the majority got outdated by subsequent spells in the same line (for example, there's no reason to cast Protect I anymore when you get Protect II). For physical DPS jobs, not only did you have a lot less abilities, you also only had a select few weapon skills that you actually used. Couple all this with how many abilities were only situationally usefull (aka, no reason to have them on your macro bar all the time) and macro bloat wasn't a problem for me, at least until I left during WotG.

That and FFXI also allowed you to use abilities from a small menu.

As it is I had to relearn my keys cus I was running out of room so I had to program my mouse (got this with my new computer WAY after farming WoD to give an idea) to using a side button to act as CTRL so I have an easier time. Right now I have 1-5, Shift 1-5, Ctrl 1-5 and pretty much every key around WASD set up to be used for a skill and I still have a couple more skills to add sitting at level 56 now.

Agreed. Would be nice if more existing skills had extra elements added to them instead of just adding more new abilities. At least then we could replace them on our hotbars.

Ya using a controller with the new dragoon skills makes it nearly impossible to set all the skills on the cross hotbar in a convenient way to use them. 2 new skills that are exactly the same except random postional that add a 4th skill to current combos. Due to the positionals these skills need to be on face buttons so they can be used while on the move. There just isn't room for them. I'm considering not even using the new skills since it's so hard to use them correctly on a controller that it is a dps loss over just using the old 2.0 rotation.

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Originally Posted by Ulathskullsplitter

I'm considering not even using the new skills since it's so hard to use them correctly on a controller that it is a dps loss over just using the old 2.0 rotation.

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You know, you could use the expanded crossbar or learn how to swap through macro sets quickly. Takes some time to get used to, but it'll be better in the end.