Consolidated Combos would solve the issue of button bloat going into Shadowbringers

Before anyone gets up in arms about how consolidated combos will make the game too easy or too brain dead: Yes, it will probably make things slightly more simple and a tiny bit more brain dead, but it won't be by any significant amount. Job's gameplay complexity comes from weaving your oGCDs between your weaponskills, not by pressing different buttons for the weaponskills themselves.

I'm sure most players keep their weaponskill combos mapped to the easiest hit buttons on their keyboards or controllers. For me, I have my combo buttons mapped to 1-2-3 and a Shift modifier (and a Ctrl modifier for Monk). Using Paladin as an example, I have my Rage of Halone combo mapped to 1-2-3, my Royal Authority combo mapped to 1-Shift+1-Shift+2 and my Goring Blade combo mapped to 1-Shift+1-Shift+3.

That is six buttons all within very short distance of each other. If these combos were consolidated to one button each, like in PvP, then it would compress them down to three buttons, allowing room for three new abilities being added in Shadowbringers. So, instead of using 1-2-3 and a Shift modifier for my combos, I would only need to use 1-2-3 and I could use Shift+1-2-3 for new or old oGCDs.

To express how many melee classes would save on space if consolidated combos were added to PVE:

• Paladin's six buttons would be reduced to three.
• Warrior's six buttons would be reduced to three.
• Dark Knight's five buttons would be reduced to two.
• Dragoon's eight buttons would be reduced to two.
• Monk's nine buttons would be reduced to three.
• Ninja's five buttons would be reduced to three.
• Samurai's six buttons would be reduced to three.

At minimum, this would free up three buttons on hotbars and controllers, allowing for three new abilities to be added in Shadowbringers, without the removal of any current abilities. For Dragoon and Monk, they'd get an extra six buttons each. Would you Dragoons like more Dragon-oriented offensive abilities and Jumps added? Would you Monks like to have more Chakra-related attacks added?

And for those that haven't played PvP and don't understand how the consolidated combos work, each button represents a full weaponskill combo. You only need to hit the same key three times to do the combo and all of the combo buttons change according to what step you're on for your combos. But they've taken extra steps to maintain your ability to use any combo you see fit.

Say, for example, you want to use the Royal Authority combo as a Paladin. This requires you to use Fast Blade, Riot Blade and then Royal Authority. As all of the Paladin's combos begin with Fast Blade, you can hit any of the three consolidated combo buttons to queue up the next action. This will result in your Rage of Halone button switching from Fast Blade to Savage Blade and your Royal Authority and Goring Blade combos to change from Fast Blade to Riot Blade. You can then hit either of the Riot Blade buttons to queue up Royal Authority and Goring Blade for their respective buttons, while Savage Blade in your Rage of Halone button will reset back to Fast Blade, should you need to go back to that.

I think consolidation works better for some jobs than others but I start to wonder what it would look like if we just didn't have combos in the first place. Did rdm really need a 123 melee combo for example. Drg ended up with those long 12345 combos after the extended combo trait.. I feel in cases like that the rotation design could be a bit more interesting if it wasn't so combo weaponskill focused. Well variety is good I guess.. some people prefer those more consistent jobs, some people prefer ones with more random procs that throw off the order you dial things up.

They already said they won't do it. Pressing 1-2-3 in the right order is a skill that SE want to reward.

The reason this works in pvp is because of how much theyve simplified the jobs.
For example DRK doesnt have Dark Arts in pvp.
This would greatly effect the way you use your combo, you'd have to pay real close attention to know which part of the combo you're on in order to know when to hit dark arts, you won't be able to rely on muscle memory, you'll have to watch your hotbars all the time.
Same goes for using Blood of the Dragon, or Duality, etc.
So in actual fact consolidating combos would make things more complicated, because outsude of pvp combos dont exist in a vacuum, they all have interactions with other skills.

And what exactly is going to happen to Perfect Balance on MNK? What about SAM and Kyouka Suigetsu (while you'd normally use them for Sen weaponskills, in some case you might use them for Jinpu during AoE rotation). Come back when you figured out answer to these problems without completely butchering their playstyle and turned it into PvP-lite.

Also just like Seraphor said, you think this'd simplify the system down for some people but it won't. Most people already have enough problem doing 1-2-3 correctly, asking them to remember 'How many times had I press 1 already?', 'Do I switch to 2 on the next button?', 'Do weave this oGCD with the next 1, or the next 1?" will bring in more problems than it solves.

Since this precise argument came up on reddit, I am going to quote myself:

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No, it wouldn't be. Those oGCDs will all come with cooldown timers, thus I will spend more time spamming 1111 than anything else. DRG has plenty of hotbar space anyway. It can easily fit a fourth jump. We already have three—four if you count Elusive. I really don't see a pressing need for a fourth, fifth or six just to have something new and shiny.

It's change for the sake of change, really.

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This reduces DRG to essentially spamming 1-1-1-2-2-2-2-1 endlessly. Which renders it boring. One of the primarily complaints healers have right now is how boring spamming Stone IV/Malefic III/Broil II is.

Yes, I know oGCDs attempt to mitigate this but they all have CDs. Looking up one of my O9S parses, 153 out of 250 casts were GCD abilities. Therefore, I'll spend far more time spamming two buttons than pressing anything else unless they add a slew of new oGCD which defeats the purpose of skill consolidation entirely. We simply don't need a bunch of new abilities. They can either upgrade our existing ones or maybe toss in one new thing. Hell, they could make the combos have different effects depending on the sequence. No new buttons but new "abilities".

Ultimately, I don't want combo consolidation just to add new abilities we don't even need.

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Seraphor also makes a good point. Muscle memory is a huge factor when it comes to optimization. With combos all consolidation into a single button, I have to pay more attention to which stage of the combo I'm in, especially on jobs like DRG. Whereas now, I scarcely even look at my hot bars. It's much easier to miss click when you're spamming the same two buttons. Putting this all aside, DRG in particular doesn't have button bloat. In fact, we have a useless skill in Piercing Talon. If anything, I would rather they bake new abilities into oGCDs. Battle Litany is on a three minute cooldown. Why not put a second oGCD behind it, which we can only use after Litany—similar to now Geirskogul becomes Nastrond? Not only does this take up no additional space, it lets us use buttons that are otherwise sitting on lengthily cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

They already said they won't do it. Pressing 1-2-3 in the right order is a skill that SE want to reward.

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I would like to see a source for this. With PvP already using a system like this, I don't see why they would make a different decision for PvE.

I was under the impression that PvP was their testing ground for this, and while the conversion to putting it in PvE has taken longer than I'd like, I suspect it may come with whatever various changes the expansion will bring.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

I would like to see a source for this. With PvP already using a system like this, I don't see why they would make a different decision for PvE.

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It was in the Korean Live Letter 2018, I'm sure there is thread about it somewhere on the forums, anyway this is pretty much what Yoshi said...

Skills automatically comboing (aka press 1 button to combo) is not going to be implemented in PvE. The reason we did this in PvP while reducing the amount of total skills is that we want players to focus more on team strategy and tactics. In PvE we feel that the effective use of branching combos is one sign of player skill. As part of our current concept regarding the battle system, we are purposefully leaving the PvP and PvE systems separate.

Dragoon does have slight button bloat. Why do we need two separate combo openers: True Thrust and Impulse Drive? DRK, WAR, PLD, NIN, SAM all have 1 combo opener GCD that branches. Further, why does Heavy Thrust exist? SAM get their damage buff from their 2nd hit, as does WAR. Vorpal Thrust is just pure damge with no buff or debuff, why not give it HT's buff and also make True Thrust open either combo. Bam now you have 2 free slots.

As an offtopic aside, I don't think DRG will get a 4th Jump unless it's a conditional oGCD or a straight upgrade. Moreover, SE addressed the issue of jump animation lock associated with jumps by giving us Mirage Dive. Mirage Dive, for all intents and purposes is a 4th Jump in that it's a ranged oGCD, but it doesn't cause personal animation lock because there's no movement (the dragon spirit does the jump). Giving us a traditional jump means more animation lock. If they made it like SSD/DFD to reduce animation lock, then DRG will have 4 gap closers, while other jumps only have 1. It would be a bit ridiculous.

"We're not going to do this" tends to be a poor argument because they're people, and people change their minds.

Imo that would just make the game boring, where's the fun in tapping the same button over and over? maybe because i'm on pc with a controller the game feels more action-y to me. Honestly not all the jobs need new attacks some are fine as is, they should start bringing new ones out that they can tweak into oblivion...full jobs, not blue mage fake jobs.

I'm not sure how pushing 1-2-3 is any more fun or engaging than 1-1-1. It's not like this suggestion eliminates oGCDs or other skills that aren't in a combo. Generally speaking, this idea might reduce your button count from ~30 to ~26. You still got lots to press, and the expansion is surely bringing more.

I can get on board with some of the arguments against this idea, but "this reduces the fun" I just don't buy.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Dragoon does have slight button bloat. Why do we need two separate combo openers: True Thrust and Impulse Drive? DRK, WAR, PLD, NIN, SAM all have 1 combo opener GCD that branches. Further, why does Heavy Thrust exist? SAM get their damage buff from their 2nd hit, as does WAR. Vorpal Thrust is just pure damge with no buff or debuff, why not give it HT's buff and also make True Thrust open either combo. Bam now you have 2 free slots.

As an offtopic aside, I don't think DRG will get a 4th Jump unless it's a conditional oGCD or a straight upgrade. Moreover, SE addressed the issue of jump animation lock associated with jumps by giving us Mirage Dive. Mirage Dive, for all intents and purposes is a 4th Jump in that it's a ranged oGCD, but it doesn't cause personal animation lock because there's no movement (the dragon spirit does the jump). Giving us a traditional jump means more animation lock. If they made it like SSD/DFD to reduce animation lock, then DRG will have 4 gap closers, while other jumps only have 1. It would be a bit ridiculous.

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Because DRG double weaves. Heavy Thrust lets you fit in all your buffs before Chaos Thrust, which is your strongest GCD. Doing what you suggests makes it impossible to fit Battle Litany, Blood for Blood, Dragon Sight and a potion before Chaos Thrust. Therefore, you'd have to delay something, which is ultimately a damage loss. Adding to this, putting it on Vorpal Thrust means we now have to start with our weaker combo first, which throws off raid buff timings. And before you suggestion Disembowel. That would make us either drop a combo or override Chaos' DoT. All these leads to more damage loss, especially in fights with multiple targets like M/F.

SAM doesn't have these problems because the bulk of their damage comes from Shinten and Midare. They can also afford to delay a double weave and lose nothing doing so. DRG can't.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Because DRG double weaves. Heavy Thrust lets you fit in all your buffs before Chaos Thrust, which is your strongest GCD. Doing what you suggests makes it impossible to fit Battle Litany, Blood for Blood, Dragon Sight and a potion before Chaos Thrust. Therefore, you'd have to delay something, which is ultimately a damage loss. Adding to this, putting it on Vorpal Thrust means we now have to start with our weaker combo first, which throws off raid buff timings. And before you suggestion Disembowel. That would make us either drop a combo or override Chaos' DoT. All these leads to more damage loss, especially in fights with multiple targets like M/F.

SAM doesn't have these problems because the bulk of their damage comes from Shinten and Midare. They can also afford to delay a double weave and lose nothing doing so. DRG can't.

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Pop the potion pre-pull at 2s then. It's not like that moment you're running up to the boss can't be put to use, and it loses absolutely nothing that way. If you're using Elusive to get in for some reason, you'll have to give that up, but it's worth it.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Pop the potion pre-pull at 2s then. It's not like that moment you're running up to the boss can't be put to use, and it loses absolutely nothing that way. If you're using Elusive to get in for some reason, you'll have to give that up, but it's worth it.

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Uh... no. DRG uses their potion three GCDs into their rotation. Using it at two seconds pre-pull means we lose four GCDs under a potion, one of which includes the second Chaos Thrust. None of this even accounts for Elusive, which can delay your GCD even further, thus losing more damage under your pot window. If anything, Dragon Sight would be moved around. Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull. In fact, I think only BRD and healers use pots pre-pull

No, it's not worth it just because you dislike pressing an extra button. You don't even play DRG. Stop insisting it needs changes, especially when they impact its optimization.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Uh... no. DRG uses their potion three GCDs into their rotation. Using it at two seconds pre-pull means we lose four GCDs under a potion, one of which includes the second Chaos Thrust. None of this even accounts for Elusive, which can delay your GCD even further, thus losing more damage under your pot window. If anything, Dragon Sight would be moved around. Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull. In fact, I think only BRD and healers use pots pre-pull

No, it's not worth it just because you dislike pressing an extra button. You don't even play DRG. Stop insisting it needs changes, especially when they impact its optimization.

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A potion won't give as much as any of the cooldowns you'd have to shuffle instead for it, including Dragon Sight, which is worth more in the opener. Regardless of where it moves it'll miss the second Chaos Thrust in that scenario, and buffing the first one under all raid buffs is better than the second 30s later when they're all gone. That's the better adaptation if that happened.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

A potion won't give as much as any of the cooldowns you'd have to shuffle instead for it, including Dragon Sight, which is worth more in the opener. Regardless of where it moves it'll miss the second Chaos Thrust in that scenario, and buffing the first one under all raid buffs is better than the second 30s later when they're all gone. That's the better adaptation if that happened.

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... it already misses the second Chaos Thrust. Seriously. Please stop talking about what DRG needs or how it's supposed change is"worth it" when you have zero idea how the job's buff alignments even work. Giving up 4-5 GCDs under a pot window is a significant damage loss. That simply will not happen, and is precisely why DRG has an extra button. Unless they add another GCD or fundamentally change how our current combo works. Heavy Thrust will stay to make double weaving easier.

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Because DRG double weaves. Heavy Thrust lets you fit in all your buffs before Chaos Thrust, which is your strongest GCD. Doing what you suggests makes it impossible to fit Battle Litany, Blood for Blood, Dragon Sight and a potion before Chaos Thrust.

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Players invented "double weaving" and "optimal rotations" and reliance on stat potions, it doesn't affect how the developers designed Dragoon. So the notion that you wouldn't be able to have all your buffs fit before Chaos Thrust is irrelevant.

What I hope with Shadowbringers, should happen, due to Technique Points gettign removing and all classes needing to be reworked and rebalanced due to this change is:

1: Outdated and useless Skills should get removed from the Game and replaced with new and better designed skills that are useful everywhere in the, regardless if you play some instanced content like a Raid or Primae Battle, or of you just explore normally the maps, regardless if you play PvE or PvP content in general

2. Job Skills should get completely reworked and individualized for all Classes, so that they are not shared anymore between jobs of the same role. This wil lstrenthen the uniqueness of each class

3. Traits need to get completely reworked to be more than just only a few lame Stat Boosts and a few mechanic unlocks of some skills for some additional effects. Traits need to be alot of different individual options with that players can change the way how you play your clas,s and what effects their skilsl have, like similar in GW2, where traits are chooseable OPTIONS, thus help in individualizing your character, instead of this power gaming that exists in FF14 that allows people to learn and use everythign always - no miracle then that people call it then a "button bloat", when you have like 32 skills or so to handle and more
reduce this better to just only maximum 16 skilsl in your skill bar of your class, with like a real big pool of options of skills to use and change those 16 skill slots out with to give this game more character individualization and build diversity.
Its better to have only 16 skills with you, able to choose out of a pool of like 160 skills for your class, those that you want to use.
Than to have only 32 skilsl out of a pool of 32 skills and everybody is the exact same like you, there being absolute zero individuality in this game aside of fashion like what we have here in FF14
Having to swap between several skill blocks, just distracts only,especially because every, just everythign shares the same slots, be it skills, items, commands, mount/mount orders ect. because you have to constantly swap your skill blocks out, just to be able to use the skill you want to use.

4. What FF14 needs is a ring menu to perform many things from it simply, without needing to put everything into the "skill bar"
A skill bar is what its named - a skill bar, this should mean that also only skills should be put into it, nothing else, everything else should be useable via a ring menu openable via a single button press, that needs to be quick and easy navigatable, half transparent, so that it doesnt block the players sight on whats important to see, while its up
Reducing the number of skilsl classes can actually have with them, reduces not just only skill clutter/bloating, but alos makes it for SE alot easier to balance classes for PvP.
This would massively reduce the slot bloat, if stuff like items, commands, mount and so on could be just used via ring meno, than to put it into the skill bar, where it takes away space for actually putting a skill into the slot


5. Implement FF12s gambit system, with that we can practically program our characters to perform automatically certain things, if specific preset conditions are met, like for example, using potions in certain moments, this would help cleaning up iterms to be removed from the skil lbar, to free the place for actually skills, as long we have what is needed to perform the action in our inventories. Same could be done with skills, so that not absolutely every skill would need to be put into the skill bar to make usage of it, if there would be ff12s gambit system in FF14 helpinmg us out with the skill management to reduce the skill slot bloat

6. The Stat System should get completely overworked, seriously have never seen a worser Stat System in an MMROPG, than in FF14 It should get a Stat System, which provides Stats, that are useful for all classes, which doesnt make a stupid differentiation between class roles, has no pointless class specific stats and makes also no dumb differences between combat classes and non combat classes. Stats need to be shared among absolutely all classes, regarddless if combat or not combat class.

What FF14 needs is

- Power > Increases Maximum Damage you deal with Skills/Spells and the Maximum Health of a Character (individually for each Class differently). For Non Combat Classes increases Power the Efficiency of the Progress for Crafting in regard of Collectors the chance to obtain an item more than just 1 per gain
- Vitality > Increases Defense of the Character against Auto Attacks & Condition Resistance and decreases chance to get critically hit
- Precision >Increases Critical Hit Chance and the Maximum Damage of Auto Attacks. Increases the Chance of Collector/and Crafters to get HQ results/the efficiency of raising the quality % of an item you craft, what currently Control does
- Intelligence Increases Maximum Mana Points to perform SKills/Spells and reduces Recharge Times of Skills/Spells
- Wisdom Increases Defense against Skills/Spells and Activation Speed of Skills/how fast you can switch Weapons in combat
- Courage Affects how strong you produce Aggressivity with your Actions and increases the resistance against CC effects, likes stuns, transforms, or how strong platform changes affect you, like at Leviathan or Sophia, so that you can keep better control of your character
- Agility Increases Movement Speed and Attack Speed of your Auto Attacks, fastening their intervalls of happening. For Crafters and Collectors it affects how fast they perform their actions, especially as Crafter, how fast they perform their automatic crafting to reduc the time it takes to fulfull it, increasing the amount of items you create per process at certain thresholds of Agility
- Luck Gives you a chance to dodge/block/parry Attacks or even counterattack them and affects Drop Rates for you and the amount of Gil you receive from drops.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Players invented "double weaving" and "optimal rotations" and reliance on stat potions, it doesn't affect how the developers designed Dragoon. So the notion that you wouldn't be able to have all your buffs fit before Chaos Thrust is irrelevant.

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The devs do consider how we play hence why jobs have changed from poor design philosophies; Warrior comes to mind. Be that as it may, you're insisting DRG has button bloat when my examples prove the contrary. Furthermore, this insistence this somehow makes DRG better is more than a little silly when the person arguing such doesn't actively play DRG.

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Originally Posted by mosaicex

Also just like Seraphor said, you think this'd simplify the system down for some people but it won't. Most people already have enough problem doing 1-2-3 correctly, asking them to remember 'How many times had I press 1 already?', 'Do I switch to 2 on the next button?', 'Do weave this oGCD with the next 1, or the next 1?" will bring in more problems than it solves.

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Players having trouble to pushing 6 buttons has nothing to do with memory and more with hand coordination or finger fatigue. No need to remember anything anyways since combos hotbar lights up when executable. Not only does it light up the icon changes if we still need more visual reference. The OP is not asking to remove the current option with multiple buttons but add an option for consolidated combos.

If you know your skill animations, you do not have to watch the UI either to know when to press something.

Monk Consolidated rear combo:
Bootshine- True Strike - Demolish(1-1-1)
Monk consolidated flank combo:
Dragon Kick- Twin Snakes- Snap Punch(2-2-2)
Monk consolidated AOE combo:
AOD- Rockbreaker- Howling Fist(3-3-3, forms and bonuses would have to be shuffled, HF added to combo removed from Ogcd)

That reduces 9 buttons down to three freeing up 6 spaces for other skills. Still requires movement but less back forth.

Just an option not a replacement. Potions are nice, but if they become a meta for rotations used so often they need to be removed and replaced with skills that accomplish the same goal.

While I don't think hitting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-6-5 on Dragoon is any more entertaining than hitting 1-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-3-3-3 or really even 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, I'd actually much rather see combos made more flexible than that they be consolidated, especially without the tiered structure useful to that consolidation.

The ideal structure for key-shift play is something with an equal number of choices at each stage in decision-making (thus creating a geometric series, over n steps until cycled, of its total number of choices -- e.g. 3, 6, 9 or 3n (n=3) in the case of Monk). At present, Monk is the only job that would lend itself well to key-shift play, and even then only without considering Perfect Balance, which would have to be completely reworked.

In Opo-opo, Monk has three choices. In Raptor, three choices (True replaces Boot, Twin replaces Dragon, and One-Ilm replaces Destroyer). In Coerul, three choices (Snap replaces True, Demo replaces Twin, and Rockbreaker replaces One-Ilm).
In its first GCD, Dragoon has three choices. If he uses Heavy Thrust, he then has two real choices. Once either of those two remaining choices are used (with or without Heavy Thrust), the 2nd GCD has no choices (well, 1 and only 1). 3rd GCD - no choice. 4th GCD - no choice. 5th GCD - no choice. 6th GCD - no choice. 7th GCD - 01 to 3 choice. 8th GCD - 1-2 choices. 9th GCD - no choice. 10th GCD - no choice. Etc. Though it certainly makes no sense in its present setup, it makes little sense in key-swap consolidation either. The table of skills is simply very poorly designed. 3x1x1x1x1x1x2x1x1x1x1x1 does not a cohesive system make.

And, again, though the worst offender, it's not the only job unfit for a key-shift system. The standard Spinning Edge, Fast Blade, Heavy Swing, Hakaze, Hard Slash, etc. opening melee skills kidney shot that system from the beginning. Unless one is willing to sacrifice access to AoE skills and ranged skills mid-combo, the disjointed expansion of skill-tables following the opening ST melee (e.g Hakaze into Yuki/Shifu/Jinpu for a 1x3x1 table) prevents any fewer than the maximum spread's keys from being used at all times.

Now, if we're willing to give up that access, locking ourselves into a choice set for the full 10 seconds of combo or whatnot, then we could have something like this:

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Hakaze ----- Jinpu -------- Gekko
Enpi -------- Shifu --------- Enpi
Fuga ------- Yukikaze ----- Fuga

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But, frankly, even that looks awful.

A much better option, imo, would be to give each ability actual weight. Still allow for rotations, but there should be inherent value to each skill.

Make use of TP. It's every bit as much a matter of bloat at present as Dragoon's skill count. It's a resource dedicated solely to ensuring that everyone takes and presses an additional button's worth of bloat every two minuets. (Apart from ensuring that physical classes are always inferior in sustained AoE compared to casters).

Use TP as the guiding parameter for combos. Every skill can be used on its own for additional power based on current TP. You regenerate TP over time. Before adding in additional factors, the simple idea is that the more potential damage there is in a skill, the more TP it would consume. If you want to open into combat with Heavy Thrust into an immediate Chaos Thrust spread across three targets, that'd just barely be possible, but it'd cost and maybe even diminish the last of those three Chaos Thrusts. If you attempt to use a skill without sufficient TP, it cuts down its duration and potency proportionately.

Let's say we regen 50 TP per GCD. Let's use the example of a Dragoon for this. And let's say we have a TP maximum of 500 by level 50 and beyond. Here are your TP costs:

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True Thrust - 0
Impulse Drive - 20
Vorpal Thrust - 100
Disembowel - 120
Full Thrust - 240
Chaos Thrust - 270

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Each action reduces the cost of skills deeper within its combo set 50%, stacking multiplicatively.
Thus in a True Thrust combo one would generate 50, 0, -10 TP, for a total of 90 TP regenerated over 3 GCDs. That means you could afford a free Full Thrust every 2.66 FT combos, and a free Chaos Thrust every 3.33 FT combos.
An Impulse Drive combo, likewise, would generate 30, -10, -20 TP, for a total of 0 TP regenerated over its GCDs. Thus, if rotating CT, FT, FT, FT, would regenerate 270 TP every 4 combos, enough for a free Chaos Thrust every normal use of Chaos Thrust.

Note that if Heavy Thrust weren't a thing, CT-FT-FT-FT;repeat would perfectly time to Chaos Thrust's DoT's replacement at a 2.5 GCD. 30 seconds / 2.5 seconds per GCD = 12 GCDs; 12 GCDs / 3 steps per combo = 4 combos (per 30 seconds).

So, every time you'd normally be able again to Chaos Thrust you could Chaos Thrust an extra time. And every 3 rotational strings at level 50 by which you'd refresh Chaos Thrust, you could (if maximum TP were high enough) replace the whole of an FT combo (TT-VT-FT) with 3 back-to-back Full Thrusts.

There, now you have variety available to rotation, a bit of added flexibility, a way to manage your own TP to bring melee ramp-up more in line with that of casters, and no need for a two-minute cooldown. And with all that you can give each skill importance of its own, e.g. Vorpal Thrust for pushing enemies to the side via paired WASD / AnalogStick movement, Full Thrust for knocking enemies into the air, Disembowel for its auto-parry component and its bonus counterattack damage, etc., etc. Now you finally have a functional and meaningful use for all of those weaponskills and for the TP system restricting them.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

snip.

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Seeing as TP is being removed in the new expac, we have no idea how much actions will cost or whether melee types will have other stuff that also costs the same resource (probably MP) so we'll have to wait and see on that.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Seeing as TP is being removed in the new expac, we have no idea how much actions will cost or whether melee types will have other stuff that also costs the same resource (probably MP) so we'll have to wait and see on that.

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It doesn't matter whether you call it MP or TP so long as physical attacks still consume it only to an extent that their sustained AoE is gutted and all else merely requires them to hit another bloat button every two minutes.

It's a resource. Right now one of the current is useless but at least doesn't require further bloat. We will loose it and keep just the one that does require further bloat. The question is why have them at all unless they're actually going to do something to make the other systems more satisfying. My suggestion was to that effect.

Personally, I found it odd when playing some of the classes, where combos would branch off a particular starter and then go into 2 distinct follow ups and culminating in a single finisher per path...

Or worse...

For example, DRG having True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust and Impulse Drive > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust as 2 separate attack chains.

Then you have NIN whom uses just a single starter and follow up to branch into all 3 of their finishers with Spinning Edge > Gust Slash > Aeolian Edge/Shadow Fang/Armor Crush

Like, especially when the 1 > 2 just do damage and offer little to no additional effects and really it's just that finisher that actually does something different.

Though, there are exceptions like, as a WAR I basically want to use Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path/Storm's Eye as much as possible and only ever touch the Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block chain if I'm having threat issues. But again, it's bloating my action bar with having this vestigial Skull Sunder and Butcher's Block skills when really, it would be simple enough to just merge Maim and Skull Sunder and have that lead into either Storm's Path/Storm's Eye/Butcher's Block (Though, it'd be nice also if Storm's Path wasn't the only finisher that generated 20 Beast Gauge... So I wasn't incentivised to use it at every availability due to it healing AND giving more BG than alternatives, but I digress...)

So yeah... Would make a lot of sense if things just used the same combo start up and then branched out into multiple skills as finishers, rather than having all these needless transitional skills that are barely any different from each other... At the very least, if you wanna keep things with a bunch of buttons to press, just extend the combo's into 4th skills instead of piling on the 2nd skills or the DRG thing of having 2 completely separate chains.

I mean True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust is just 160 Potency > 250 Potency while Impulse Drive > Disembowel is 200 Potency > 240 Potency + Piercing Resistance Down.

Are they really that dissimilar that they're both required?

That said, I could see an issue with trying to consolidate SAM down, given that Jinpu, Shifu and Yukikaze are all quite different... (But then again, having exceptions to a rule creates more diverse jobs...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull.

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Not sure what groups you run with but most if not almost all tanks when ask about potions in the balance discord are told to pop them at least two seconds pre-pull. Hell, I do it all the time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ruinfeild

Not sure what groups you run with but most if not almost all tanks when ask about potions in the balance discord are told to pop them at least two seconds pre-pull. Hell, I do it all the time.

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Why, unless the fight would end with n seconds remaining otherwise? Your opener isn't that packed on any tank to spend it on two weaker GCDs when you could otherwise not. You're still going to wait for TA, BL, HC, BV, CS to go ham anyways.

Maybe they will just upgrade and augment the current abilities in Shadowbringers.
Or maybe less new abilities/spells and more traits.
Too much on the toolbar was breaching on a problem before Stormblood, and its only going to get worse the further forward we go up until 99 or 100.

Menu's have an advantage here, as they are unlimited, and yes, we can opt out of some abilities, but then why have them.

But for healers and damage spells, it is pretty bad. We basically have 2 options, AOE or Single target. Stone 4 was cool when it was released, now i don't even watch the screen sometimes (solo crap, not party)

I keep going back to this argument, we needed functional elements that mean something. Give Whm another water based spell. Give an actual damage based Wind spell, maybe something that could be used with lilies or boosted with lilies (or whatever they are to be replaced with, since the consensus is they are horrible)
Boost holy and Stone with them, and make it last a few seconds, not just 1 spell cast.

Since the most important stat on abilities it their Potency, having 2 skills withe the same value, that have no other effects is pointless. (without elements) If there are conditions, like After a cure, Stone's potancy is boosted by 30, or after a regen or medica 2, Aero's potancy is boosted by 30 and dot by 5, or something of the like.

Its hard to break free from the idea of different circumstances need different abilities that i have from 11, its something that i've always missed from that game. It is something that they had in 1.0, but i do get why they dropped it. It won't work in this game.