Battle system changes

[Shurrikhan]

we wont no until later this month SE is keeping it top secret, but the main goal is to reduce button bloat is all we know, and a cross role system instead of class

Main goal: to reduce button bloat
New actions: look a lot like button bloat.

The new DRG skill looks like a Deathflare equivalent, and the Monk skill some type of instant GL3 booster. The first, if anything like DWT-burner (just with BotD now), will be used once per burst phase at an exact (last possible) second unless its intended target would disappear earlier (in which case it'd be used at that last possible second). That would essentially increase skill gap in order to simply afford more obligatory burst dynamics, with zero added thought, only an extra key-stroke. The second simply devalues the primary function of PB while affording another rarely used skill a free, albeit likely still inferior, use. Here's hoping they're not what they look like, because that would be pure bloat. (Note: the others aren't much better in terms of functional overlap or what will most likely end up as additional unvaried usage.)

Here's hoping we'll see stacked actions or combo skills made individually usable, rather than that very obvious opportunity to reduce bloat going to the wayside while more nuanced skills get axed....

[Valenth]

Main goal: to reduce button bloat
New actions: look a lot like button bloat.

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

[Shurrikhan]

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

If they go and prune "non-essential" actions only to add new actions that are considered essential because they provide significant output value (only) in combination with other abilities, but do so in ways that would be more intuitive to simply roll into those paired abilities (e.g. where it would be inferior in all cases to use them separately from the other) or functionally replace the other, then we've simply swapped outlying skills (which one could forgo in most situations) for additional obligatory button presses; personally, I would consider that a slight increase to button bloat rather than any improvement.

Again, it's not like we have enough information to determine whether that will be the case at this time, but so far every ability added, in line with their philosophy for change, has appeared to be an obligatory rotational skill, rather than anything situational, and the examples I gave before would appear even to be either redundancies and/or actions with near zero nuance available (such as a BotD-consuming nuke that provides the same burst function as an early Geirskogul but has an exact optimal time for use since it appears to be single-target and would not adjust priorities—instead shifting later BFB-BotD syncs and forcing a new rotation rather than allowing for variance between the two unless the AoE damage of a bonus Geirskogul may outweigh the ST bonus potency of this new skill). Personally, I'd rather take a situational skill like Keen Flurry over a skill that it used only once per burst phase at an exact second, simply replacing one keystroke (Geirskogul) with another, or works only to bypass or otherwise devalue a core mechanic (such as by instantly granting 3 stacks of GL).

[loreleidiangelo]

They confirmed with the pruning of actions and the new ones we should have about as many at the new lv cap as we do now currently in the game. I adopted a keybinding that makes it possible to effectively use most actions, so no button bloat for me yet on my bars.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think we had too much button bloat in HW already. I'm not happy that they're "maintaining the status quo" in this regard; I'd rather them pare down the four hotbars I have by at least 1. I also feel like a ton of buttons are redundant or needlessly convolute rotations, but that might be a contentious viewpoint for this game.