The combat system still needs a lot of work.

[Chiramu]

As I've said many times, the primary focus of combat revisions should be a reduction and streamlining of skills. There's a reason MMOs developed and released today do not overload players with skills like the old school tab target systems. Having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers for nearly three full bars of skills, and 20+ rotations, is cumbersome and not very enjoyable in my opinion. Cutting that in half would go a long way and leave a little room for new skills in the future. Currently the skill system is very bloated.

Legion is very enjoyable with the ability pruning. The excessive amount of abilities in FFXIV is one of the reasons that I'm not active in the game anymore. I think the abilities atm is too overwhelming now for me.

[Yukiko]

Personally? I'd prefer it to be slower and more tactical than button mashing.

^this
Jynx for President, you have my vote

Edit:

As I've said many times, the primary focus of combat revisions should be a reduction and streamlining of skills. There's a reason MMOs developed and released today do not overload players with skills like the old school tab target systems. Having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers for nearly three full bars of skills, and 20+ rotations, is cumbersome and not very enjoyable in my opinion. Cutting that in half would go a long way and leave a little room for new skills in the future. Currently the skill system is very bloated.

^this
In most if not all MMOGs you just need max one Hotbar 1 to 12 keys for your main rotation skills.
A second hotbar is mostly just for emotes or specials (not often used situations or just to show cooldowns)
In ffxiv currently as SMN i have to use 5 hotbars for main rotation!

[Sandpark]

Rather than go into a long rant about my opinions. I will just say this game needs a party synergy mechanic, it's final fantasy and one designed to be played cooperatively with others. More focus on party synergistic skills and less focus on personal rotations. More focus on resource cost and less focus on GCD. That type of gameplay lends itself to this game which has so many dodging and gimmick mechanics. Even those dodges are personal dodges, without adding ways a party can reduce, divert, or overcome with skilled cooperation.

[XiXiQ]

I agree, it's become far too convaluted. You need to be able to keep everything compact, for a controller that would be 16 buttons. That does not necessarilly mean only 16 skills/CDs, they could vastly improve the macro system to make up for it. There are abilities that can be turned into traits without making much difference at all, and cleric stance is another thing they need to drop.

[Transmigration]

Good to see people's feedback, whether in agreement or disagreement. My main issue with combat is the unresponsiveness of the game to my keystrokes, delays, and overall clunky feel of cooldown usage. It seems others feel there are too many abilities and other problems as well. Keep posting in here. Maybe Yosh will give it a gander and take our ideas in to consideration.

[Chiramu]

I agree, it's become far too convaluted. You need to be able to keep everything compact, for a controller that would be 16 buttons. That does not necessarilly mean only 16 skills/CDs, they could vastly improve the macro system to make up for it. There are abilities that can be turned into traits without making much difference at all, and cleric stance is another thing they need to drop.

An ARPG approach to abilities might be something to consider too. Diablo 3 being ported to PS4 works well with the controller. Upgrading abilities in the way you like is very enjoyable and might get multiple approaches to end game for jobs. There would still be a meta, but at least there would be choice.

[XiXiQ]

and I'd agree with the unresponsive problem as well - this is the main reason I can't stand cleric stance. You hit the button, it might or might not fire. If it doesn't (or looks like it's didn't), you hit it again. Then it turns itself on/off - it has a cool down time on top of that for each change. horrilbly clunky, and couldn't be more pointless if it tried. This is similar with other CDs, and the ninja mudras. I suspect this might be all fine and dandy when you have sub 50ms pings, but a great majority of players around the world have to deal with far more than that. Ironically, the ninja mudras are an example of better design - 4 buttons and 6 possible skills.

[Catwho]

Having just finished NIN to 60, I can conclusively say that if you want super fast twitchy combat in this game, that's the class you need to play. Huton's skill speed increase is incredible once you're in iLvl 200+ gear and I feel that the global cool down is finally faster than I can realistically keep up with all the skills. They also seem to have fixed some of the big issues with the mudra speed, and keeping up Huton becomes easy once you unlock Armor Crush.

All the other classes I have leveled feel much more measured and even keeled in comparison. NIN is just a DPS weapon skill zerg rush, nonstop. It's not for me, but it definitely appeals to my friends who prefer fast twitch combat.

[RethDaron]

Ironically that is the very same point a lot of people made way back in beta when comparing this games battle system to the one that was in 1.23. Arr skills feel weak / carry no weight it's too much button spam etc.

Personally I still think the game would have been so much better with the 1.23 combat system but oh well.

Was thinking the same when people started bringing up the weight of animations. 1.0-1.23 had the perfect feeling for controlling your character and it's animations IMO.

[loreleidiangelo]

I prefer WoW's combat, but that's why I play WoW instead of XIV. I think with things like controller/PS3 users and server desync allowing stuff like slide-casting to be possible...I'm not really sure a faster global or removing animation locking could really be done in this game, not without drastically altering a lot of things that people are used to.

Not the point of the topic, but I disagree with you on the community remarks as well. WoW and XIV are about the same in terms of rage-quitting/"elitism", it's just that most content in XIV doesn't require a huge amount of output to clear it so people are more content to carry silently rather than make a big deal over it. As someone who witnessed various forms of trolling and d-baggery during my endless Weeping City of Mhach runs, it's pretty par for the course with MMOs these days.