Cascading hot bars, evolved mode.

Evolved mode would better fit the community if evolved mode was 10 new hot bars exclusive to evolved mode, where i can keep my existing hot bar set up, (reborn mode,.) The new hot bars rotate, or Cascade through the 10 new hot bars. Meaning I start on hot bar one. I make an input. The game automatically changes hot bar 1, to hotbar 2. I make an input. It changes again to hot bar 3. Meaning the combos shown at fan fest, could be accomplished by pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, as the game is cascaded through four hot bars. Or the players could move the combo to 1 2 3 4. The player picks how many buttons they want to use, based upon how many hot bars they toggle on for evolved mode. They could set it up so it all works on only 1 hot bars, (its important that it does,) or the 2 to 10 hot bars that rotate. The game, The Chronicles of spellborn, utilize such a system. It came out at just about the same time FFXIV was released. So there's lots of videos about their combat system.

Google the "one button summoner". There are commands such as "/hotbar copy THM 4 WHM 1" which will copy your 4th hotbar for your jobstone-less BLM to the first hotbar of your WHM. (Can also write "shared" for shared hotbars.) There is also "/hotbar action "Glare III" 2 1" that will overwrite the 1st skill on your second hotbar with Glare III. Keep in mind players can have 200 macros.

There are drawbacks. Not being able to buffer your input likely means not keeping your GCD rolling. But the gains may outweigh the losses.

Evolved Mode is about so much more than reducing 123 combos to 111.

Since WHM is the only thing we know I'll use that example. WHM has two weaves that both mean "single target save": Divine Benison and Aquaveil. One is a 10% mit and one is a 600 potency shield. They're combined under Evolved Mode because they're both about as effective on a tankbuster or raidwide. (And the cooldowns/stacks were adjusted to make this a 1 second gain.) This is actually something they could have done right now in patch 7.5 and it wouldn't change anything for WHM.

And then there's whatever Mr Prime was doing with Dragoon lol. Actually trying to make that class unique and interesting.

I understand the need to remove redundant skills or redundant button pushing. A tumbling hot bar not only allows the combo to move to where the player wants it. But it allows for a skill tree. Opening, primer, and closing combos. If one button initiates the combo hot bar. The 2nd tier could primes for different finishing skills. So the 2nd tier has 3 branches. The 3rd tier is the closing skill based upon the choice made on the 2nd tier. The finishing skill could be group heal, or a OP damage or it adds a counter skill for 10 seconds. It means they can add a ton more abilities.

Or even better yet. One skill tree opens up to sub job ability.