The combat system still needs a lot of work.

[Khemorex]

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.

thats mostly coz if u do a cast , then u click on cleric stance , u really need to wait until its on/off before using another skill , if u try to use another skill to early/quickly , it will cancel the cleric stance click.

[Shurrikhan]

I think it would be a little more fun if some skills didn't show the damage in one number. Like if I punch something a bunch of times, it should show a bunch of smaller ones

Ideally I'd hope there'd be four settings for multi-strike hits, assuming they ever were actually dealt as multiple strikes.
- Strike-by-strike: only the individual strikes' damage are shown
- Both: strikes quickly fade, and a sum (thus far) fades in from the side, cumulative of all strikes in the ability. The sum doesn't scroll up, but is merely replaced at the same position, until the final strike.
- Cumulative: each strike adds its damage counter to the next, arriving at the total damage for the ability
- Total only: the damage is shown at the end of the strike as a single number (same as current).

[Dzian]

Besides, since you just spam a few keys, the actions themselves becomes almost like manually doing "fancy" auto-attacks.

People said the same about this combat system in beta. Because the skills lacked weight and power in comparison to 1.23s battle system.

In a way it's still true. Very few abilities actually feel powerful. Especially when it takes so many of your skills to kill what is designated a trash mob.

If they're so powerful why does it take a dozen of them to kill a mob that can't even scratch you?

[Sandpark]

I would like to see this for Black Mage. I wish we had a bigger spell line than what we have now, but that probably won't happen.It is pretty decent now but I want more than a Fire Mage, and if you do stuff besides this you get beef now.

• Transpose: Cooldown Removed. Now swaps between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice and Lightning Stance. Whichever line of spells is cast directly after transpose gets one stack in addition to what the spell normally gives in stacks.
• Tier 1 Spells are now instant cast and able to be cast while moving.
• Casting a different spell type no longer switches between astral, umbral, or any other stance.
• Casting a 1 spell in respective line grants one astral fire or one umbral ice or one thunder stance.
• Casting a 2 spell in respective line grants two astral fire or one umbral ice or one thunder stance.
• Casting a 3 spell in respective line grants three astral fire or three umbral ice or 3 thunder stance.

• Blizzard 1= 180 potency and 40% Heavy.
• Fire 1= 180 potency and 20% slow.
• Thunder 1 = 180 potency and silences enemy for 2 sec
• Blizzard 2= Remains the same.
• Fire 2= Remains the same.
• Thunder 2= Is now AoE.
• Fire 3= Remains the same.
• Blizzard 3= Remains the same.
• Thunder 3= A single target spell with same potency as fire 3 and blizzard 3.
• Fire 4= Remains the same.
• Blizzard 4= Remains the same.
• Thunder 4= A single target spell with same potency as fire 4 and blizzard 4.

• Freeze= Same potency adds frostbite and bind in the designated area.
• Flare= Remains the same.
• Burst= Single target thunder spell with 390 potency. 510 when thunderstruck.

• Apocatastasis= Is applied to 1-8 members in your party rather than one member.
• Aetherial Manipulation= Rushes 30 yalms in the direction faced upon activation. Obstructions such as buildings or arena borders will lessen the distance.
• New trait: Frigid Mist= Grants a 40% chance that upon casting blizzard, your next blizzard III will require 10% more mp and gain +10% casting Speed for Blizzard 3.

Enochian gets axed and this new system below replaces it.

• Boiling Point= Casting multiple fire based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage fire spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to fire spells for 15 seconds and boiling point status is lost.
• Absolute Zero= Casting multiple ice based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage ice spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to ice spells for 15 seconds and Zero status is lost.
• Overcharged= Casting multiple thunder based spells on the target builds a pressure point within the enemy. When that threshold is reached the black mage thunder spell accuracy and damage is increased by 5% on that particular enemy/enemies for 30 seconds. After the 30 seconds, the enemy is highly resistant to thunder spells for 15 seconds and Overcharged status is lost.

I would like a change to leylines but it would probably make the job more complicated, at least in my opinion.

Instead of that small little circle surrounding you. You get a larger circle grid with 6 smaller circles inside of it. The outer circle would be pretty big and the inner circles would be moderate size. Anyways, the BLM would have to stand in one of the smaller circles to get additional effects in addition to the faster attack speed.

• NW Circle: Decreased MP Cost
• N Circle: Increased Spell critical damage
• NE Circle: Increased Spell Critical Rate
• SE Circle: Increased Movement speed
• S Circle: Increased Spell Accuracy
• SE Circle: Increased DOT durations

Sort of referencing geographical leylines and how position alters properties.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Cut back a good 60 percent of the skills. Combine some, make the skills have bigger impact, and It could be faster. I would not say double..but having this many skills is more tedious than fun.

While I presume that percentage is mostly hyperbole, I still feel the exact opposite. Yes, some skills should be consolidated before any more are added. But I would hate seeing half the skills disappear because it'd result in a very generic rotation.

[Vaer]

This is garbage in terms of gameplay feedback, because it makes the game feels like this:

Disagree. Biggest offender is Cleric Stance. I can play at a very fast pace but I have to slow down to make sure Cleric is off so I don't look like a scrub putting on a 300 hp shield because cleric is clunky as hell. The oGCDs in FFXIV actually force you to mash the button to make sure it goes off which makes you spam even more keys ironically than in WoW which has a way better ability queue system. The oGCDs in WoW go off pretty much right away unless there is a targeting circle. There should be a feature that makes it so you can only flip a stance once every few seconds, so you don't get that awkward "I hit cleric, it turned off but it didn't show, so I hit it again but it turns off then back on" nonsense.

I'm really talking about clunkiness. That was just simplified reasoning. Not everything goes off right away in WoW but it sure feels a lot more responsive than mashing oGCDs and then noticing it didn't even go off anyways.

FFXIV's oGCD would be that picture except at 10x speed smashing 3 buttons trying to use an oGCD.

[Silvarion]

I could barely keep up with my rotation, please don't make it any more faster.

What I'd rather want from the combat is the fix for janky animation sliding and the lack of impact on contact.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

I'd rather a deeper combat than a faster one. But to be honest FFXIV is both superficial and slow and that is the offender here.

Or at least, is slow during the first levels of the game, tbh, the biggest gripe always present on any review with lower than lvl cap players about the game is how slow it feels, and they are right, any MMORPG veteran coming to FFXIV would immediatly notice how sluggish the combat is. And, is also not that deep, enemies don't have elemental resistances, races/types or size modifiers, our skills barely work with each other and not to mention working with other classes, the combat is real simple, click somthing, keep clicking, done.

I would honestly just speed up the combat a little bit, going from 2.5 to 2.25 or 2.15 maybe. 2.0s GCD would be a bit extreme considering many players would be reaching arround 1.70s on their geared high end classes and idk if the servers would be able to handle such speeds. higher latency players (as myself) have issues going over 600 skill/spell speed (2.40s) with clipping and being server-cheated on skills.

And about depth, this game as exist right now can't have any beyond "mechanical" things. If bosses had elemental properties, imagine having 6 diferent sets of gear for each fight, with our inventory system... Not happening.

[Derio]

If combat speed was increased can you imagine the effect of haste. How fast combat would be.

[Chiramu]

If combat speed was increased can you imagine the effect of haste. How fast combat would be.

When would they even consider putting Time Mage into the game?