Rebalancing Suggestions for 4.0

[Rawrz]

For SMN and SCH, just remove the need for all the different buttons to have your pet manually attack/cast and consolidate them into four abilities whose effect is determined by the current Carbuncle/Egi/Fairy. These names are clunky, but you get the gist, I hope:

Alpha Tactic: standard auto-attack/heal
Beta Tactic: the stun/knockback/regen/debuff heal
Gamma Tactic: the AoE attack/regen/buff
Delta Tactic: the AoE buff/Contagion/Silence/whatever Eos' 4th ability is (not a big SCH player since 3.0).

That just condensed the 12 SMN pet and 8 SCH pet abilities to a max of 4 shared among the Egis and Fairies, assuming you also have their auto-attack hotbared (which I don't know why you would, but I'm not a big SMN/SCH player, so feel free to correct me on that).

Scholars and Summoners don't suffer from these. They are compartmentalized within themselves and can be isolated onto different hotbars.

[Mysteltain]

Scholars and Summoners don't suffer from these. They are compartmentalized within themselves and can be isolated onto different hotbars.

True, but on controller it's been a nightmare to get everything for SCH and SMN to fit on three cross hotbars (two standard and an expanded hotbar). Admittedly, limiting myself to three per job is a personal preference, but those two jobs do have the largest amount of ability bloat if one wants to manually control their pets.

[Rawrz]

True, but on controller it's been a nightmare to get everything for SCH and SMN to fit on three cross hotbars (two standard and an expanded hotbar). Admittedly, limiting myself to three per job is a personal preference, but those two jobs do have the largest amount of ability bloat if one wants to manually control their pets.

I run my SCH with 5 hotbars + extended, but when each fairy is out I'll use only 2 + extended, until I need to switch out or resummon, then i will use my back 5th hotbar, so I may have 5 hotbars, but I only actively access 2 + extended on each fairy. :O

[Mysteltain]

I run my SCH with 5 hotbars + extended, but when each fairy is out I'll use only 2 + extended, until I need to switch out or resummon, then i will use my back 5th hotbar, so I may have 5 hotbars, but I only actively access 2 + extended on each fairy. :O

Well, color me impressed, haha! Back in 2.0 I had my SMN and SCH pet abilities compartmentalized, but in a way that clashed with my standard cross hotbar setup. Normally the abilities I have of L2+R2 and R2+L2 are the same for each individual job so that I don't have to worry about using the wrong combination in the heat of the moment. Obviously, that didn't work for SMN and SCH. That lead to me, more often than not, getting the wrong L2 and R2 combination that corresponded to my current pet. I tried other hotbar setups, but found that any more than two, plus a third for items, barring the expanded hotbar, was too much of a hassle for me to tab (quick or otherwise) through.

Admittedly, with a good amount of practice I could probably work something out, but as it stands these jobs just have too many abilities for me to comfortably play with, and at the level I want to, which I feel is most important to me when I run content with others. I want to play SCH and SMN well, but I never really feel like I'm playing them at my best just because of the hotbar management I find myself struggling with. Which sucks because I really like SCH, haha!