We may get changes to cleric stance and esuna

[Vhailor]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

That's not to say I'm automatically opposed to skill consolidation or a role-based system. I'm not. I think it could actually make the game easier to learn, while deepening the amount of required skill to master it. The devil is in the details, though. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

[Averax]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

That's not to say I'm automatically opposed to skill consolidation or a role-based system. I'm not. I think it could actually make the game easier to learn, while deepening the amount of required skill to master it. The devil is in the details, though. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

Cleric Stance and Esuna are so hard, i know.

Personally, i think they're shooting for more QoL changes, Cleric stance switching is more annoying than it needs to be (sometimes not responsive at all), and I wouldn't be mad if Esuna wasn't on the GCD. Though i will say that with heavensward, a lot of our more fun rotations became more of a juggle for maintaining some sort of buff, and they became unnecessarily complex because of that juggle, which was really punishing on people who simply are unable to multitask efficiently.

I have always preferred rotations that were based more on reacting to a given situations rather than following a cycle, and it's why i gravitated towards healers in this game, despite a long history of DPSing in other games.

[Ama_Hamada]

Cleric Stance and Esuna are so hard, i know.

Personally, i think they're shooting for more QoL changes, Cleric stance switching is more annoying than it needs to be (sometimes not responsive at all), and I wouldn't be mad if Esuna wasn't on the GCD. Though i will say that with heavensward, a lot of our more fun rotations became more of a juggle for maintaining some sort of buff, and they became unnecessarily complex because of that juggle, which was really punishing on people who simply are unable to multitask efficiently.

I have always preferred rotations that were based more on reacting to a given situations rather than following a cycle, and it's why i gravitated towards healers in this game, despite a long history of DPSing in other games.

ogcd esuna as a sch will be nice to stop the annoying war macros.

[Kosmos992k]

Cleric Stance and Esuna are so hard, i know.

Personally, i think they're shooting for more QoL changes, Cleric stance switching is more annoying than it needs to be (sometimes not responsive at all), and I wouldn't be mad if Esuna wasn't on the GCD.

Moving skills such as Esuna off the GCD, and essentially slimming down the GCD skills to primary damage dealing or damag healing skills would have the effect of masking the GCD because you would have a few more off GCD skills to weave in. Between the impact of skill/spell speed and an increase in off GCD skill use, the combat system might feel a bit faster without modifying the underlying GCD itself - which I believe they have indicated that they cannot and will not do. If they did change the GCD they'd have to rebalance the entire game, I don't see that happening. But QoL improvements and moving a few utility skills to off GCD would help make things feel faster during play - IMHO.

[Atlaworks]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

That's not to say I'm automatically opposed to skill consolidation or a role-based system. I'm not. I think it could actually make the game easier to learn, while deepening the amount of required skill to master it. The devil is in the details, though. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

It's less them "dumbing down" combat, and more them making cross-class skills more accessible(Let me tell you how much I hate getting Provoke!) and reducing bloat, as the game requires like 3-4 full hotbars for some jobs. It's not "Let's dumb down Esuna", it's "every healer needs Esuna, maybe we should just put that in the role skill pool".

[Gumbercules]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

You might be in for a bad time then XD One of the goals of the battle changes is to close the "skill gap" between players. >.> Personally i do not mind this since an incredibly sub optimal player can add considerable time to a dungeon run etc. I am curious how they intend to achieve this though, I mean how do you raise the bottom line without affecting the top? (more of a rhetoric question :P I am guessing they will "increase" the contribution from the baselines like GCD skills and auto attacks while reducing the contribution of oGCDs and long CD skills, though Ill admit idk how i feel about this possibility >.>)

[Vhailor]

You might be in for a bad time then XD One of the goals of the battle changes is to close the "skill gap" between players. >.> Personally i do not mind this since an incredibly sub optimal player can add considerable time to a dungeon run etc. I am curious how they intend to achieve this though, I mean how do you raise the bottom line without affecting the top? (more of a rhetoric question :P I am guessing they will "increase" the contribution from the baselines like GCD skills and auto attacks while reducing the contribution of oGCDs and long CD skills, though Ill admit idk how i feel about this possibility >.>)

I'm expecting to be in for a bad time, honestly. I'm hoping 4.0 won't take this step, but if it does, I've plenty of other games to play =)

[Gumbercules]

I'm expecting to be in for a bad time, honestly. I'm hoping 4.0 won't take this step, but if it does, I've plenty of other games to play =)

my example imo is what I consider the most "overreaching" example though, when they were talking about closing the gap they also brought up UI changes to make it easier to keep track of buffs. So it could just mean they want to make it easier to keep track of things like greased lighting houton etc. Things of that sort i wouldn't mind in the least. (namely cuz my eyesight isn't that great) They did also mention changes o enochian though, and I suspect that might be more along the lines of making enochian a "passive" to where it is always on with another mechanic taking its current spot for an upkeep CD. So in this case, fire 4 rotation becomes the new baseline for example, while still having a similar playstyle to "reward" those that maintain the new upkeep move.

Overall though, I personally do not mind them closing the gap a bit, since imo in the long run it benefits "all" at the cost of, at worst, some bruised egos.

[Neophyte]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

That's not to say I'm automatically opposed to skill consolidation or a role-based system. I'm not. I think it could actually make the game easier to learn, while deepening the amount of required skill to master it. The devil is in the details, though. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

It cannot be reduced? Sure, it could be dumped down to ARR roation complexity.

How did you survive those times? Rotations in 2.x were of like 50% complexity than the HW ones, just look at any dps Job.

They can make the game easier (rotationswise) than HW and still be harder than ARR (which was a joke imho).