How many skills is too many?

[CuteWhisper]

Two full bars on my controller is enough, I don't need more.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm thinking to make a test and try doing duties with only one hotbar to see how much things will change. If all good, skill bloating confirmed. xD

This is really what it ends up being.

How many keys do we actually need to have all the aesthetic and strategic variance that our current key count gives (e.g. carry the same skill arsenal)? I would honestly guess it's less than half the keys we use now.

[Berethos]

Depends on the job, but I'd say 1/2 of what we use now, with a couple classes edging toward 2/3 of what they use now still being around.

If I consider Bard - right now I have 35 different abilities on my hotbars(not all have keybinds), including keybinds for potions, sprint, and Limit Break. If I don't count those, then it's down to 32.

Consolidate some things - one dot instead of two, which really at this point just functions as a minor "skill" check for getting Sidewinder to it's full potential and giving Iron Jaws a reason to exist (though an argument could be made that they split it up so that one dot doesn't deliver too much damage, though I'm not sure if that argument would hold well under scrutiny), and you wouldn't need IJ either, so that's 2 more slots freed, down to 30.

Cut down on the just there to buff damage ogcd stuff...I currently have 4, let's imagine we can trim that down to 1. So reduce by three and now I'm down to 27.

Shadowbind I haven't used in a long time, even though it's on my bars. Maybe keep a version of it available in the PvP abilities tab, but otherwise gone - 26.

I personally don't see the need for both Wide Volley and Quick Knock going forward...they both do nearly the same thing, with one granting more mobility and the other being a bit cheaper to use. Was fine during ARR, now it's just contributing to skill bloat. Down to 25 at this point.

I'm not sure if consolidating Heavy Shot and Straight Shot is a solid idea or not - it does serve the dual purpose of providing a buff to maintain (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, and personally I think it's miles better than spamming to generate resources to spam other abilities to spend them like I had to in WoW the last time I played) and raison d'etre for Heavy Shot as filler, since that procs a guaranteed crit (crits are fun!)...but perhaps the two could be merged in some way, or the buff baked in to another ability, and same with the crit proc. If that's possible, we're now down to 24, or two hotbars.

Going lower for Bard does start to get tricky - the flavor of the class via songs is an important part, though rather than removing them adding a tech based solution where you click on a button and it pops up all of your song options would work (similar to how Shamans used totems at one point in WoW) - functionally you use just 1 hot bar slot, but you keep all the songs that make a Bard, well, a Bard. If that can be done that's at least 4 more abilities slots freed up (5 if they bake Battle Voice into the effects and balance MP cost accordingly). So...down to 19 used.

Oh, and I cross class Feint, so let's go ahead and not count that...18. I also cross class Second Wind, but it feels like some sort of on demand defensive heal is a good thing to keep around. Maybe, maaaybe bake it and Invigorate together, where it's an ability that both heals and restores TP, and so you have to be more judicious in when you use it. That'd make 17.

Is Quelling Strikes compelling gameplay? An argument could be made for both sides on this one, but if we pretend the side that says it isn't wins on the dev team and they balance threat gen around the idea that classes/jobs don't have a personal drop aggro button, that brings us to 16.

At this point, I'm having trouble dropping any more abilities without feeling like the Bard is losing the aesthetic and strategic variance we currently have.

So for Bard, depending on much they're willing to trim out and with some QoL tech solutions, you could make it to the one hot bar goal. Don't think you'd be able to do that now and perform the same (like, at all), but I definitely think the devs could trim things down to around 20 hotbar slots used or a bit less for each job and still maintain the current sense of each job we have now.

[LalaRu]

I think in an ideal situatin, one hotbar is what we need for 90% of time, and an half filled second hotbar all the remaining 10%.

[Makeda]

I think any action bar over 8-9 is bloated. At the most 16-18 with using the shift key to get to the other half.

But lets look at it from a what is needed point of view:

Tank:
1. Basic threat attack
2. Basic AOE threat attack
3. Ranged pull
4. Taunt
5. Interrupt
6. Damage mitigation
7. Avoidance mitigation
8. Minor Self heal
9. Gap closer

DPS:
1. Basic single target attack
2. DoT attack
3. AOE attack
4. CC attack
5. Interrupt skill
7. mitigation skill (avoidance or damage)
8. gap closer / widener (closer for melee, widener for ranged)
9. Minor self heal

Healer:
1. Single target spike heal
2. AoE heal
3. Heal over time - single
4. Heal over time - AoE
6. Gap widener
7. Enmity reduction
8. Basic attack
9. Resurrect skill

Everything else is bloat.

[SaiahLynn]

WHYYYYY do so many people want this to turn into WoW simplicity of pressing the 4-5 skills... and thats it.

If the game ever turned into that crap that is the WoW skill system (3-4 skills, 2 situationals, 2 buffs) I'd quit on the spot and be very sad.

This game is great because of the complexity of the combat system - I agree that some skills are not needed.. but making it simple and pressing 1-4 for your entire life is absolutely ridiculous and needs to be removed from all MMO's for the laziness of development.

[Shurrikhan]

WHYYYYY do so many people want this to turn into WoW simplicity of pressing the 4-5 skills... and thats it.

If the game ever turned into that crap that is the WoW skill system (3-4 skills, 2 situationals, 2 buffs) I'd quit on the spot and be very sad.

This game is great because of the complexity of the combat system - I agree that some skills are not needed.. but making it simple and pressing 1-4 for your entire life is absolutely ridiculous and needs to be removed from all MMO's for the laziness of development.

I do not know, especially considering you can have fewer keys still, yet have more abilities and consequent complexity.

I'd be hard pressed to call XIV combat complex, to be honest—my rotations are frequently longer, more nuanced, and more reactive in games that have 12 keys—but it is a step up from many Legion classes.

[Makeda]

WHYYYYY do so many people want this to turn into WoW simplicity of pressing the 4-5 skills... and thats it.

If the game ever turned into that crap that is the WoW skill system (3-4 skills, 2 situationals, 2 buffs) I'd quit on the spot and be very sad.

WoW has dozens of skills, most of which you never use. I just left WoW - so that is current as of April 2017. But yes, it has a very simplistic combat engine.

Wildstar gives you an action bar of about 8 skills, and about half of them end up being bloat, yet it has the most complex combat system of any MMO on the market. Guild Wars 2 as well - but it's combat engine is broken by players being able to do so much DPS they can kill bosses before mechanics become an issue... Otherwise it has all the complexity of Wildstar, but magically failed to deliver a good result.

The number of buttons on your screen is NOT relevant to the complexity. Fight design, the need to move, aim, time things, and so on - that is where the complexity lies. As the difference between Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 points out - just streamlining and getting these movement/aim/timing things right is still NOT enough... good combat engine design is hard.

[Ririta]

If the game ever turned into that crap that is the WoW skill system (3-4 skills, 2 situationals, 2 buffs) I'd quit on the spot and be very sad.

Now imagine all the people who left because they can't pull good DPS while paying attention to over 30 buttons + mechanics + cooldowns.

[Nixxe]

Now imagine all the people who left because they can't pull good DPS while paying attention to over 30 buttons + mechanics + cooldowns.

You don't need to pay attention to 30 buttons. WoW's rotations started out very simple for the most part, often literally one or two buttons, when the number of buttons were at their peak (I think I had 45-50 on a warrior in Wrath including some PVP macros). Blizzard began introducing greater complexity alongside skill pruning due to the playerbase becoming increasingly skilled overall as average tenure increased. On top of that, a lot of abilities in WoW are either extremely niche and can be ignored most of the time, are not ever used in combat ever, or are otherwise very limited in use such that it's not a big deal if lesser skilled players want to ignore them entirely, and the bulk of what Blizzard has pruned were those types of abilities. In terms of rotations, most of them use 10 abilities or so and that's about as many as they've ever used. The exact number depends on the class and there are defensive cooldowns on top of that, but it's not exactly hard to manage it, and the relative complexity of WoW's combat isn't terribly different from FFXIV's until you start getting into talents or perhaps encounter design (I'm not very experienced with raiding in this game, let alone savage, so I can't say for sure).