Rebalancing Suggestions for 4.0

[Brannigan]

I find it funny people are using PLD, the job with the least buttons to press, as the example for trimming down buttons.

"Yeah, PLD only has to use 3 buttons to do Rage of Halone... but what if they only needed 1?????"

Yeah it's crazy how many buttons warriors have to use to do Butcher's Block. It's gotta be at least five times higher than paladins. Wait, no, it's also three. What was I thinking?

Are you trying to say that paladins, in 3.0, use a single combo? Because warrior has exactly 2 extra buttons on-gcd over paladin right now and dark knight has one extra on gcd. I am, of course, not counting AOE since those aren't rotation stuff.

Warrior would be 111 Butcher's Block, 121 Storm's Path, 122 Storm's Eye, 3 IB/FC, 4 Fracture.
Dark Knight would be 111 Power Slash, 121 Soul Eater, 122 Delirium, 3 Scourge
DRG 111 Chaos 222 Full 4 Heavy 5 Phleb 6 Fang/Wheeling depending on direction
NIN I honestly don't remember. Setup should be very similar to DRK.

[SpookyGhost]

Because warrior has exactly 2 extra buttons on-gcd over paladin right now and dark knight has one extra on gcd.

It's almost as though PLD has the least of the 3.

My point is that if youre going to demonstrate simplification, maybe using the most simple class and dumbing it down further isn't the best way to go. It makes you sound like you want the game to be literally press 1 -> 2 to win. If you think the dev team for XIV is competent enough to make general content with mechanically challenging difficulty that puts merit into an overly simple rotation (3 button combos are simple enough, I do not understand why we're going with 2 now), then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not saying it can't be done, right - Blade and Soul is a good example of a really small button layout with a ton of situational skills due to automatic skill switching. But that's not happening in XIV unless Bahamut returns from his grave and turns everything to ash again. I think we should think in the confines of our simplest jobs atm - PLD, MNK, and WAR. We realistically shouldn't need to get simpler than those 3.

In the interview you can see that Yoshi-P thinks that the difficulty of Midas lies in the fact that you have to juggle a lvl 60 rotation with all the mechanics in each floor. Now, personally, if the hardest content is going to be Midas-tier and we're forced to press 1 and 2 for max DPS then I no longer see the point in raids as you've essentially flushed out anyone with skill beyond smashing their face against the keyboard.

I know there's button bloat, but look at PLD right since we're using that example so often - literally 6 buttons for all their combos. I play on a standard keyboard with a 2 button mouse, anything and everything for PLD fits on there perfectly, from CDs to it's oGCDs. That is why it's the worst example, it's literally "Yeah, yeah, PLD, simple class, but what if we went even further? What if we made it so a small baby could play PLD?"

[Freyyy]

snip

I don't see the difference in difficulty/complexity between pressing 1 2 3 and 1 1 1 for using a combo, especially with a 2.5 sec pause between them. You just have to use unnecessary keybinds that could be used for more interesting new skills instead. It doesn't change the complexity of the job whatsoever since the combos in this game are incredibly dull and are basically just one skill spread into 3 GCDs. If the game was action-based and if you had to press buttons quickly, then yeah, 1 1 1 would be much easier than 1 2 3. But that's not FFXIV's case.

[SpookyGhost]

words

Right, so, here's the only realistic way I could accept 111 and 121 and blah blah blah blah: If 3, 4, 5, and 6 all become similar conjoined combos. If we're getting rid of the 123 system just for the sake of more "+5% damage", "deals 500 unaspected potency", "deals 50 potency over time for 30s", etc then I don't see the point. If anything at all is the problem, right, and I'm fairly certain I remember this from the interview, it's actually the oGCDs/buffs/etc that need to be toned down. I really severely doubt it has anything to do with GCDs being too overwhelming.

[Nihility]

It's almost as though PLD has the least of the 3.

My point is that if youre going to demonstrate simplification, maybe using the most simple class and dumbing it down further isn't the best way to go. It makes you sound like you want the game to be literally press 1 -> 2 to win. If you think the dev team for XIV is competent enough to make general content with mechanically challenging difficulty that puts merit into an overly simple rotation (3 button combos are simple enough, I do not understand why we're going with 2 now), then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not saying it can't be done, right - Blade and Soul is a good example of a really small button layout with a ton of situational skills due to automatic skill switching. But that's not happening in XIV unless Bahamut returns from his grave and turns everything to ash again. I think we should think in the confines of our simplest jobs atm - PLD, MNK, and WAR. We realistically shouldn't need to get simpler than those 3.

In the interview you can see that Yoshi-P thinks that the difficulty of Midas lies in the fact that you have to juggle a lvl 60 rotation with all the mechanics in each floor. Now, personally, if the hardest content is going to be Midas-tier and we're forced to press 1 and 2 for max DPS then I no longer see the point in raids as you've essentially flushed out anyone with skill beyond smashing their face against the keyboard.

I know there's button bloat, but look at PLD right since we're using that example so often - literally 6 buttons for all their combos. I play on a standard keyboard with a 2 button mouse, anything and everything for PLD fits on there perfectly, from CDs to it's oGCDs. That is why it's the worst example, it's literally "Yeah, yeah, PLD, simple class, but what if we went even further? What if we made it so a small baby could play PLD?"

Your missing the point entirely, the basic combo is only a small fraction of what each job does.
It's just a sample of how they could trim down necessary buttons because it's getting crowded. It's not a matter of making the game any easier

for monk it would just be a matter of putting the back skills and side skills on same button and auto toggle based on stance
that would cut 6 buttons down to 2(8 down to 3 if you include the aoe) but would not change the necessity of remembering where in the stances you are, how much duration your various buffs/debuffs have, what side of the mob you need to be on, etc etc. In fact monk is a rare case of almost being able to do it already with a macro since most of them are disabled out of stance
the only problem being that "all stances at once" buff but there is always a way to workaround

warrior could have it's combo skills trimmed to [heavy swing -> skullsunder -> butcher's block] [main -> storm's path] [storm's eye] to cut down buttons without really changing anything
and inner beast/fell cleave steel cyclone/decimate could be combined and toggle by stance like equilibrium already does

The combo thing works exactly the same for all jobs that use combos, you just need to add 1 key for each fork in the tree it's not rocket science

bard could have the bloodletter and rain of death just be toggles on heavy shot and wide volley, lots of people macro it that way already anyways, and why have quick knock and wide volley? they pretty much do exactly the same thing except wide volley eats up tp faster, when they changed the aoe skill procs for bard they also made having them as separate skills kind of silly
and wind bite/iron jaws could easily be extensions of venomous bite to the tune of "additional effect venom; additional effect: if target is affected by venom instead causes windbite; additional effect: if target is affected by venom and windbite refreshes both durations" the timing needs and usage remain exactly the same but all of a sudden 3 keys get trimmed to 1, could even have it alter potencies to match the current ones as additional effects tend to alter those anyways

literally every job has space to do that so it's not eating up so many keyboard resources without really changing how the job plays at all.
a few would need tweaks to work like black mage but black mage already uses far less buttons than most jobs so it wouldn't need as much love to condense it

do you really want the game to end up like WoW where every job had like 50 buttons of crap cluttering up everything and making the game feel more tedious than exciting?

[Freyyy]

do you really want the game to end up like WoW where every job had like 50 buttons of crap cluttering up everything and making the game feel more tedious than exciting?

yet now every class has between 10 and 15 buttons in WoW, after all the revamps they did

[Nihility]

yet now every class has between 10 and 15 buttons in WoW, after all the revamps they did

exactly, because it got way out of hand
Wouldn't it be better if ffxiv tried to keep it reeled in before it has to do a gigantic revamp of every single class?

[TaranTatsuuchi]

Instead of making Gauss Barrel not add cast times, add a seperate attachment called Quickdraw Grip:

-15% damage dealt
+30% skill speed
+5% crit chance
+20% chance to trigger Split Shot and Slug Shot's additional effect.

Gauss Round morphed into Rapid Fire Round
90 potency x stacks of ammunition (450 max.)
Additional effect: Removes damage reduction caused by Quickdraw Grip (5s)

Ricochet morphed into Bullet Hell
250 potency
AoE
Additional effect: Targets hit by this take 10% more incoming damage (10s)

I like this thematically.