Why can't we have the choice of auto skills and manual impute skills?

I'll use red mage as an example for this.

In PvP you have Enchanted Riposte, Enchanted Zwerchhau and Enchanted Redoublement all in one skill that will auto execute all three back to back.

Yes I know, macros, but honestly frack macros for anything other than crafting.

I really don't understand why we can't have both options available so to give people the choice of which combos to auto execute. Just put two sides to the job abilities screen. One with auto skills and the other with manual skills. No need to screw with potency or anything else. Just give us those auto skills in the menu where even new people can find them.

I feel if implemented correctly everyone can benefit.

Combo flip buttons would help so much with button bloat for a lot of classes.
And before anyone whines, 123 is not any more difficult or engaging than 111.

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Originally Posted by Roda

And before anyone whines, 123 is not any more difficult or engaging than 111.

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In which case 136373258252143 is in no way any more difficult or engaging than 111111111111111 either. That's just logical - 123 is a 3 button sequence where the buttons alternate for every input. If the difficulty/engagement gain from that is 0, then a multitude of that, such as the 15 button sequence I named, is still 0 as 0 multiplied with anything is 0.

However, you can break every rotation down to such a sequence of buttons. Which then begs the question: Why not consolidate every entire kit into one button?

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Originally Posted by Zojha

However, you can break every rotation down to such a sequence of buttons. Which then begs the question: Why not consolidate every entire kit into one button?

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This isn't anywhere remotely close to the truth unless you're hitting a striking dummy.

I would love to see the combo flip options available outside of PvP.

What about the jobs that can't make use of it? How do you properly balance, say for example, a job like drg in comparison to smn?

You have to remember that you can't just translate what works on pvp to pve.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

What about the jobs that can't make use of it? How do you properly balance, say for example, a job like drg in comparison to smn?

You have to remember that you can't just translate what works on pvp to pve.

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Wait, what? What needs to be balanced when you're just asking "please make these actions turn into other actions instead of having to push different buttons?" Nothing about the job itself is changing.

I'll grant you that SMN doesn't have a whole lot of options for this, but that's no reason to not add it for every other class that can use it. Also, it's been a while since I've been on SMN, but I think they could condense Summon Bahamut and Enkindle Bahamut into a single button. You could also argue that they've already added this for SMN, since Ruin IV works as an auto-switching skill.

DRG is easy. You could squash the 1234 combos down to just 2 buttons, [Fang and Claw combo] and [Wheeling Thrust combo].

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Wait, what? What needs to be balanced when you're just asking "please make these actions turn into other actions instead of having to push different buttons?" Nothing about the job itself is changing.

I'll grant you that SMN doesn't have a whole lot of options for this, but that's no reason to not add it for every other class that can use it. Also, it's been a while since I've been on SMN, but I think they could condense Summon Bahamut and Enkindle Bahamut into a single button. You could also argue that they've already added this for SMN, since Ruin IV works as an auto-switching skill.

DRG is easy. You could squash the 1234 combos down to just 2 buttons, [Fang and Claw combo] and [Wheeling Thrust combo].

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I was saying balance in the context of button reduction. While I'm aware that pressing 1 2 3 4 isn't any harder than 1 1 1, keep in mind that it's not going to sit well, even with me, that a set of jobs have significantly less buttons to deal with on their screen than another. On top of that, if some jobs barely need button crunching because you can't really auto-combo much, then those jobs become the jobs you end up "working your hands" so to speak more than the others and that's how it becomes "unbalanced".

Why? Because someone might make the "wrong" choice and people just cant handle that (devs and players).

Such a change would be pointless for BLM, SMN, WHM, AST, SCH, MCH, BRD, SAM, and MNK. All of which either don't rely on combos, or have abilities allowing them to use their weaponskills out of combo order at full combo strength ((See MNK and SAM)). So such a change would only benefit 6 of the 15 classes, not even half of them. And even RDM would only barely benefit from this as I have no issues with button bloat on RDM and would only gain 2 slots from this. Needless to say this doesn't really seem to be an effective use of the Devs' time.

"They shouldn't do it because it wouldn't affect all jobs" - That's a very very short-sighted way of thinking.
"But this will make some jobs have less buttons" - Some jobs already do, and I don't see anyone complaining.
"This doesn't seem to be an effective use of the Dev's time" - It's already working in PvP. The hard part is clearly already done.
"I want to keep doing it the current way" - So long as they don't take away the current way of doing things, I see no reason for anyone to be against such a change. The fact that they DID take away the ability to set various combo actions as individual buttons in PvP is definitely a valid concern.

I can't come up with a reason for every job to need it (though the SB expansion showed that they're willing to radically change things sometimes), but I can certainly come up with ideas for a few of the ones listed.

BLM - Bliz1/Fire1, Bliz2/Fire2, Bliz4/Fire4 could be contextual based on which stance you're in. (What if you're in no stance? Default to blizzard? Add a new action to instantly puts you into Umbral Ice 1 stance? You could even combine such an action onto the same button as Enochian. This question is only relevant at low levels, so I'm not sure how much I care.)

SMN - Summon/Enkindle Bahamut should definitely just be one button. Is it one button? I don't remember. Ruin4 is already implemented in the "auto-swap" method.

BRD - I would like to see Straight Shot change into Refulgent Arrow (though perhaps they'd need to make Refulgent reapply the Straight Shot buff for people to be okay with that). You could also technically make Wanderer's Minuet turn into Pitch Perfect, but that's probably unnecessary.

SAM - I would like to see them put the buffs on the 3rd action of the combo so you'd only ever need a Jinpu combo, Shifu combo, and Gekko combo button that would automatically switch to the final combo action during Meikyo Shisui. ("But that will make me slightly weaker in pre-50 content!" Such a tragedy. I think we'll survive. The job starts at level 50.)

There's definitely some consolidation that could be done, even if you don't do the combos...
There's some skills that you won't, or in some cases can't use unless something else was used first.


Like, with red mage or bard, the proc skills that basically replace one of your skills with a better one while you have the proc.
Those could be made so that the skill becomes the proced one.

And summoner, deathflare can't be used unless you're in dreadwyrm trance, and it ends the trance.
Considering pressing the trance button a 2nd time just ends the trance, there's no reason the flare couldn't replace the trance button while in the trance.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

"This doesn't seem to be an effective use of the Dev's time" - It's already working in PvP. The hard part is clearly already done.
"I want to keep doing it the current way" - So long as they don't take away the current way of doing things, I see no reason for anyone to be against such a change. The fact that they DID take away the ability to set various combo actions as individual buttons in PvP is definitely a valid concern.

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Your third and fourth are contradictory. Let's use RDM as an example: in order for its gameplay to work in PVP with squished buttons, Verstone and Verfire are 100% procced. Jolt and Impact exist as a faster way to generate mana at cost of MP. These are inherently different to how PVE RDM works, where Jolt is used as the common shortspell to get a dualcast ready; veraero and verthunder, which have a chance to proce verstone and verfire which, themselves, are shortspells used to get a dualcast ready.

What does this mean? It means PVP RDM and PVE RDM have notable differences to not only how much damage they can achieve, but significant differences in gameplay style. There would need to be significant work to balance the game to allow both this squished button style and the regular "manual input" style to coexist and for one to not negate the existence of the other.

So no, the "hard work is not already done." Not if you want to allow players to retain the manual input methods.

Is there button bloat that could be fixed? Yes. They've already started working on some sensible things in Stormblood, like making spells naturally evolve through traits (Jolt becomes Jolt 2). From here, it would be nice if Jolt 2 became Impact because there is no situation in which Jolt 2 is advantageous when Impactful is up, save for "Impact is about to fall off," which I believe if a cast begins, the proc shouldn't be able to fall off. (personal bit there)

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

I was saying balance in the context of button reduction.

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Here's how you do it. First, you create traits that we should call "<spell> mastery", where a spell is replaced by its...oh, silly me, they already did it for SMN, SCH, WHM, AST and BLM.
And there's several other modification you can do. "Ley Lines" and "Between the Lines" don't need to be two buttons, likewise for Enochian, Fire IV and Blizzard IV, or Jolt II and Impact, VerThunder and VerFire, VerAero and VerStone...

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

What about the jobs that can't make use of it? How do you properly balance, say for example, a job like drg in comparison to smn?

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DRG just has two combos, 1-2-3, 4-5-6. Reduce them, keep everything else, really. You don't need to go crazy, its just if you have combos that are a single sequence of buttons, its ok. Only Monk really would be an issue.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

DRG just has two combos, 1-2-3, 4-5-6.

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Technically, it's 1-2-3-4-5 and 6-7-8-5-4. They also have their AoE combo 9-10. Going from 10 buttons to 3 would be great for button bloat :)

With the fact that we can use all the role actions now (sure you don't need to USE all of them), the button bloat just got worse and I would love to see something like it is done in PvP. Hell, if people want to throw that much of a hissy fit about it, maybe they can work on the macro timing so we can do it ourselves (I tried it a few times and it works but you can tell the HUGE difference due ot the extra half a second to second you need to wait). They said they would do something about button bloat but I am still waiting to see it.

If you guys want brain dead combat, I suggest playing WoW with its four button rotations. OI play a ret paladin and while I enjoy it enough, the combat is bland and skilless.