Let's say we'd get more skills - How would you handle them?

[Leigaon]

... The only reason to do empower the mitigation toolkit is to underpower non-tank survivability, and the only reason to passively ball them up into one when they've had distinct places before is to ensure that a tank experiences periods of weakness (no CD coverage — e.g. not even Foresight/Awareness) by forcing those capabilities to be stacked...

So thank you for pointing me in a better direction. My original intent was skill bloat, which there is some. Though it shouldn't be applied to everything. With what is there, does it really need to be? So with the 3 tank abilities (Yes I understand you can only equip 2 but I am looking at this from both a job and role perspective), what's the difference between Rampart and Shadow-skin? Nothing, if so very little. Combine them into one and make it a role based skill. Now we can adjust, maybe make Shadow-skin more of a DRK ability or add in something else? With those two there, is foresight really that useful? Or can it stay? If it goes what could we replace it with? If it stays what is a possibility to make it something that feels more within a Warrior role?

This would also apply to the Stone and Stella, I forgot Stella so thank you for reminding me of that. If we take a look at stone I / II / III, what's the major difference? Potency and the Heavy from Stone I. How useful is Stone I to keep it on its own spell? Combining them all into one would reduce the need for the bloat to be on our keyboard in a different way. We're freeing up 2 spaces now for white mage. This isn't my idea though, I have seen this suggestion requested numerous times on healer threads because they're just...button space. Now if Stone I / II / III did something different..and that's a possibility too. Make them do something different or in addition.

You are absolutely right, increasing the buff durations will do nothing but give us more time than to spam filler. Though, they're already dancing with the idea of doing that with DRG BoTD, and I am sure they mentioned others. So now we have more time, like you said, to spam things. What could the devs put in place to take up that time? New mechanics? Or maybe take the ease off of some of the things that are done in general.

So I guess my answer is how would I handle new skills would be re-arranging our olds to;

Make room for new ones
Condense the clutter of old ones
Re-arrange the older ones to be more meaningful.

For example, I'm doing jobs to 60 now to get the stories (I love my story!) and I'm starting with DRG now. I felt like most of my job was hitting Heavy Thurst 90% of the time. I looked on Reddit and the forums constantly and someone posted something about DRG and how it's mostly just doing heavy thrust. So with something like that, why not increase that duration? Or arrange it so it opens up more time to apply other skills or abilities that they could implement.

Or MCH, when we had only so much time after loading our bullets, it was annoying. I felt pressed for time or if a tank ran stopped..looked up at the sky in a dungeon and took the time to think "what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is...here?" only to have my buff go off..wasn't fun. They extended this duration when activating it, and in return..I plan to pick that gun up and shoot some jellyfish thingys! It was a QoL ability change that could lead to more time for other things.

Though, I'll admit that the general description of doing some of this in my previous post just comes out as being lazy. Still, all the suggestions I would hope would be taken as one window closes, another opens.

The tanky ones I maybe wrong, though the Stone / Stella..I have a feeling I'm not alone, just the ones who play the jobs don't see any use for it after so many levels, and with level sync it would be nice to have the traits change them automatically.

Oh god I didn't even think about classes that get skills replaced. Are those lower level skills completely useless in high level dungeons? If so then why the hell didn't SE just give you a passive at Level X that makes the skill more powerful? Makes no sense to me.

Mostly because stone 1 has a slow, while stone 2 and 3 are pure dmg. This could be something that is changed to either put slow on all 3, or to take it off completely. If they decide to do what you say, they should do the same thing for astro as well, and change malefic...

They are useless after so long and if Heavy needs to be in our lives in terms of raiding it might be better off as another ability that a white mage could get more out of? Or if it is tacked on then we just have a very high cost MP heavy ability.

Technically you can just use a button registry swapper to turn Caps into an Alt, so you have it right in line with the others...

Thank you for this post btw, +1 from me. Some real helpful tips that I plan to try out now that the PC is back up and running. Been on PS4 too long, forgot how gorgeous it looks on a good machine.

[Shurrikhan]

So thank you for pointing me in a better direction. My original intent was skill bloat, which there is some. Though it shouldn't be applied to everything. With what is there, does it really need to be? So with the 3 tank abilities (Yes I understand you can only equip 2 but I am looking at this from both a job and role perspective), what's the difference between Rampart and Shadow-skin? Nothing, if so very little. Combine them into one and make it a role based skill. Now we can adjust, maybe make Shadow-skin more of a DRK ability or add in something else? With those two there, is foresight really that useful? Or can it stay? If it goes what could we replace it with? If it stays what is a possibility to make it something that feels more within a Warrior role?

See, this is where I get very conflicted. While I entirely agree with you that Rampart and Shadowskin are too similar, the only course of action I would consider is to diversify them. There is absolutely no benefit in turning them into one. At least as is you have a Rampart with a Dark Knight name and animation. Why take away those assets just because the contents of the skills are redundant? The change would have zero effect on their gameplay except in that they'd each have one skill that looks or sounds out of whack for their job. Do. Not. Remove. Assets.

Rather, simply think about what the DRK toolkit has, or even lacks, and what it would have and lack if Shadowskin was removed. Now, consider how you could fill that niche with something that would fit the name "Shadowskin". Does it play into the general idea of a DRK. Does it imply any undermechanics that would appeal to you? Can you make those undermechanics a real thing? How would they allow for a greater or more varied range of play? Would they be balanced? Now, finally, how do they work with the active, CD-based control provided by the actual new Shadowskin ability? I recommend you work in that direction.

This would also apply to the Stone and Stella, I forgot Stella so thank you for reminding me of that. If we take a look at stone I / II / III, what's the major difference? Potency and the Heavy from Stone I. How useful is Stone I to keep it on its own spell? Combining them all into one would reduce the need for the bloat to be on our keyboard in a different way. We're freeing up 2 spaces now for white mage. This isn't my idea though, I have seen this suggestion requested numerous times on healer threads because they're just...button space. Now if Stone I / II / III did something different..and that's a possibility too. Make them do something different or in addition.

I fully agree that these things, especially when level-swapping, could use some QoL work. My personal favorite way I've seen to handle these would be "shell order" or "fill order". Essentially, you map all your keys for your hotbars beforehand, and then determine a fill order for those bindings, and seperately, those slots. You could also choose whether you wanted to skip to a higher pattern at certain modular values, e.g. "r, f, c" could replace "r, t" which was at the time more convenient for just two keys, and can be in turn replaced by "s1, s2, s3, s4" when you have a remainder of 4 past the previous concrete set. Below is the shell order I used before:

1,
1,2
1,2,3
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4,r
1,2,3,4,r,t,
1,2,3,4,r,f,c
1,2,3,4,s1,s2,s3,s4,
1,2,3,4,r; s1,s2,s3,s4
1,2,3,4,r; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR
1,2,3,4,r,t; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sT (2 at a time now; left side first)
1,2,3,4,r,f,c; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t,y; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT,sY
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t,v,b; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT,sV,sB
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,v,b,t,y; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sV,sB,sT,sY
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,v,b,t,y,g; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sV,sB,sT,sY,sG

For XIV I'd need a few more keys, but that should give you the basic idea. Once set, every one of my jobs filled out the new abilities in skill priority order, condensing and expanding as skills were gained or lost or were determined to be superfluous (e.g. Stone II if Stone III was available).

I believe that to be something like a final means of mitigating the issue, but certainly more than XIV needs.

At present, just tying together redundants by default would be more than enough (WT>F&C, FC>IB, Dec>SC, SIII>SII, MII>MI, etc.) You could even add a right click / context menu option in certain skills accessed via the spell book to "replace" [Stone II/Ruin/Malefic/etc].

You are absolutely right, increasing the buff durations will do nothing but give us more time than to spam filler. Though, they're already dancing with the idea of doing that with DRG BoTD, and I am sure they mentioned others. So now we have more time, like you said, to spam things. What could the devs put in place to take up that time? New mechanics? Or maybe take the ease off of some of the things that are done in general.

So I guess my answer is how would I handle new skills would be re-arranging our olds to;

Make room for new ones
Condense the clutter of old ones
Re-arrange the older ones to be more meaningful.

First, I think the general idea of the only two possible gameplay changes they've noted (BotD and Enochian) are to increase ease of use and create a greater visual sense of their importance. That's a whole lot of weight to be putting on a simple buff bar that's classically undersized compared to the rest of the UI (kidding in part, but I honestly do play with the buff bar at 110% and the rest of my UI at 60%, just to get the duration numbers about as big as my mana cost numbers on my hotbar). It doesn't *look* like it should be the most important thing in your late-game rotation, and moreover it feels jarring to many that their rotation is that dependent on whether or not that buff is maintained (which in itself may seem more tedious than exciting). I think SE's realizing that the level of play required to really showcase those skills is more than a lot of players are going to aim for, especially given how frustrated those same skills have made them on the way to that point. BotD can be thrilling in certain gambles, especially in the contexts of real fights without guaranteed uptimes. But on a dummy? Or in the hands of a player who doesn't realize those risks or rewards? I think it's primarily that SE is considering now that added difficulty is only going to be as exciting as the player's ability to find a path to master it, and therefore is lost on a fair part of the playerbase, and want to find a way to make it a bit less jarring, and a bit more initially attractive. They want to try to reduce the gap, both in output and enjoyment between less skilled and better skilled players. Or... so I'm guessing.

As for your three solution paths, I don't think there's that much to do in the first two paths apart from the obvious parts I mentioned above—putting redundant/pairs in the same slot. The third does potentially have a lot of work possible, and in doing so would likely do what the first two solution paths would, but it'd be something of a from-scratch revision, focusing on the themes and mechanics that comprise each job distinctly, plus or minus what part you actually want to allow to be cross-classed or role-acquired.

[Leigaon]

See, this is where I get very conflicted. While I entirely agree with you that Rampart and Shadowskin are too similar, the only course of action I would consider is to diversify them. There is absolutely no benefit in turning them into one...

You are right 100%, for this single scenario going through the reorganization process would most likely mean that Shadow-skin stays in terms of name and animation. Though when we combine Rampart and Shadowskin there's a few things that have to go back through reconsideration, even though they may seem obvious, they need to go back through these steps. Coming from a large organization, it's boring to go through the things you know 90% of the time will be the same but there's that 10% that can really screw things over. So I agree you're correct and I think we're going towards the same thing just with different wordings.

So we're going through the re-work of something like this. They both do the same thing, yes. So why not make what they do (damage reduction) into one? We remove Shadow-skin from the page. Now we have a new spot for a level 2 ability. I like Shadowskin, lets bring it back. I like the animation, lets keep it. You know what, someone comes in and says "I've been playing with the animation look at this" makes a few minor tweaks. Someone likes it, now we have Shadowskin with an upgraded or new..newer whichever you choose, animation. Now all that's left is what is it going to do? They give it something new. For the sake of it lets say it gives MP refresh while under darkside, while increasing the overall defense for the party.

They agree, that's good! Someone goes "That's a bit too powerful and not needed at level 2..lets move it" they move it to level 24, and make a new ability for level 2 that fits a DRK and is useful for what they do. Or they could easily switch it, keep Shadowskin and make that new ability something different.

So right there they've made room for a new ability (dark knight has its own level 2 that's brand new) they condensed the clutter of the old ones (Rampart and Shadow-skin did the same thing now Rampart does what they both do) and we re-arranged the older ones to be more useful or diversify as you said. Though I guess my mind process starts at square one with throwing the ability to the side and see if it makes the cut again.

I didn't mean to pigeon hole this into just Shadow-skin, we can take it to Cure III / Stella / Fluid Aura / Feint. So when we re-do these things, they all start at square one and have the potential to come back, or leave..or move to a new position..so many options... What if they do decide to take out parry? then remove Reprisal? Or they adjust parry, boost appraisal or adjust it to a role based? So we're removing in order to rebuild, and it might keep some of the same factors. In other words lets treat these abilities like comic book characters.

Though I think that pretty much sums it up looking back at it, saying the same thing as each other just with different wording and that's where confusion sets in, though you're wording is better than mine and I didn't need to explain all that but maybe that helps where I start from.

That and when I think about these being reworked I'm picture three people in a cube with a pot of coffee and a small lil guy named Ozmodiar that only the intern can see. Now its time to hit that old dusty trail.

[Sylvain]

Adding more skill isn't a problem as long as the ergonomy follows.
I'll go for some extrem example to make my point
Let say you had 5 different combo.
One who goes with 1,2,3,4,5
One who goes with 1,2,6,7,8
One who goes with 1,2,9,10,12
One who goes with 1,6,9,12,13
and finally one with 1,6,9,12,1



I effectively putted 12 skills here. However, you can squeeze that into a much smaller amount of keybind. Let's assume skill can change as they go through the chain of combo like in GW2.
First combo could be squeezed into one single key. You would advance through 5 different animation, every one of them doing something different (be it more dmg, dot, positionning requirement etc...) but it would effectively require you to only press 1 5 times. We'll call this combo A. The A combo is done by pressing A 5times, AAAAA
the second combo has a different path on the third hit but then stay linear. We'll squeesh all 6-7-8 key into one new B slot.
The B combo would effectively be done by pressing AABBB
The third combo follows the same rule as B, so we can have the C combo being done with AACCC
The fourth combo start with A, then follow with 6 which was the first number for B, and is followed by 9 being the first skill for C
The fourth combo then has two new skill that we'll squeeze into the D chain. Effectively making the fourth combo, ABCDD
Finally the last combo goes with ABCDA

In the end, we only used 4 keybind, A,B,C,D to to 5 different combo with a grand total of 12 different animation and effects.
By applying this system you could easily transform most melee combo into only 3skills.
For instance on the ninja, it could easily be squished into 3 skills.
AAA - main dmg
ABB - DoT
ABC - refresh duration
ACC - apply weakness

Doing so wouldn't make the rotation easier, it would just remove unnecassary skill bloat. doing 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3 isn't harder than doing 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1

[Ekimmak]

For the most part, any skill that I don't need often I'll just click manually. But for skills I use a lot, like a combo, I'll use some combination of 1, 3, ctrl-4, or 1, 3, ctrl-shift-4.

I also have a multi-button mouse, so I can tie some skills to that, as well.

[KaerisKlyne]

I'm still of the opinion that the dev team shouldn't be afraid of just flat out replacing older skills with newer skills beyond certain level increments. It wouldn't outright change rotations, we wouldn't need more buttons, but the new animations and increased potencies for higher level content would be a welcome change visually to how things play out on screen.

But, this ties into how I feel about job diversity, and that's a whole other matter. Black Mage will probably always be my best example of how things almost went in a great direction with skill replacement, but then took a step back by not having it's IV spells refresh Astral/Umbral just to make Enochian work.

[Ekimmak]

I will admit, it would be nice if skills were replaced literally, rather than just being "everything this does, but better."

I had to assign an entire quickbar to being "everything on scholar quickbar #1, except replaced Ruin with Broil". I might make a macro like I did for Dreadwyrm trance to switch between the two as needed.

[Reynhart]

In the end, we only used 4 keybind, A,B,C,D to to 5 different combo with a grand total of 12 different animation and effects.

For me, it could be a problem to see exactly where you are in a combo chain.

The easiest solution would to put each combo on a single key. So, for PLD :
1>2>3 would be 1>1>1
1>4>5 would be 2>2>2
1>2>6 would be 3>3>3.

[Sylvain]

For me, it could be a problem to see exactly where you are in a combo chain.

The easiest solution would to put each combo on a single key. So, for PLD :
1>2>3 would be 1>1>1
1>4>5 would be 2>2>2
1>2>6 would be 3>3>3.

Well at this point there is no real "combo" anymore. (Not that I would mind I don't like the combo mechanic)
But I believe that people who like the combo system enjoy the whole skill-chain.
If your 3 combo are either 111 222 and 333 you've no more chain...

[Mirch]

u push more buttons, simply