Did Stormblood fix abilty bloat? What is your opinion?

[Ashur]

Yeeah as a Paladin, definitely not. Rest of the classes I'm looking at or have played a bit seem better, but Paladin only gained skills, 6 of em, and also almost all the tank role skills are useful to have. I don't think I'll use intervention much at all so I'm just forgetting about keeping that one close by

[Ryaz]

As a Samurai, I feel it's not bad. There's a set of three rotations I use, Iajutsu, a couple oGCDs I use regularly, and a couple I use on cooldown. The rest is all situational.

[Waliel]

Think my BLM ended up at +-0. Didn't pay too much attention after the initial release.

[KisaiTenshi]

I play using the Keyboard and mouse. I can only use keys 1-5 for whatever repeats, everything else is mouse.

So for Healers I use
Esuna, Cure 1/Benefic/Psysick,Cure 2/Benefic II/Aldoquium,Party heal as the first 4 keys. Everything else, including DPS is activated by mouse.

For Tank I put the main combo on 2/3/4, with the stun on 1, I also put the shield lob on the mouse button 5. Because PLD actually has two combos (see PvP) it makes you wonder why not just collapse those?

For DPS, for BLM I put Transpose on 1, then blizzard 1, blizzard 3, fire 1, fire 3

The problem I'm seeing is that nothing really got simplified except caster's magic, and only a little. Like for Healing, Benefic, Malefic, Aero and Stone all collapse into one skill each which is great because those were just taking up space, except Aero 3 which is a AOE.

How I think SE should have fixed this to remove the bloat is take a page from FF6, where hitting the shoulder button switched casts from single target to multi target. This would have allowed collapsing Fire 1-4, Blizzard 1-4 and Thunder 1-4 all into just one button each, and hitting Enochian should simply upgrade the attack from single target to AOE centered on the target, or a different buff changes it to a AOE centered on the caster. Likewise for Healing. Cure 1, 2, and 3, Stone/Malefic and Aero/Combust should have the same "AOE centered on self | AOE centered on target" switches. These could even just be toggles like Diurnal and Nocturnal Sect on AST.

I think the entire Fire/Blizzard/Thunder/Cure non-collapse confuses things in a way that should never have happened. You want a bigger boom, so the thing that does the bigger boom needs a longer cast time. Let's say you want to AOE fire 1, then you get the cast time of fire 1, and the damage divided by all the targets hit, or alternatively cast longer for full power AOE.

For the Melee, I haven't played anything but SAM briefly, and I had to reconfigure the bar for the combo and I just can't. This is something that seems like it was a good idea in theory but because you have 3 different combos, you're create more than one kind of thing the player can do, but because this requires 8 keys to pull off, you either need both hands on the keyboard, or you need to play it on a controller.

Some of this could be solved by replacing the icon with the next icon in combo sequence until it times out. So instead of doing 2-3-4 for a combo, you do 2-2-2, or if you want to do a different combo it's 2-3-3, or 2-4-4, that to me would have solved the command bloat.

Alternatively they could just adjust the macro system so that it has a "wait for ready" command. So the player could program their combos into a single key and it wouldn't miss steps if the next command isn't yet ready. Likewise a "skip if <command> not ready"

[RLofOBFL]

Not for PLD. Literally only lost stoneskin(& I guess protect) and gained 4 level skills 2 new useful role skills and a retroactive AOE.

[KeyboardFacerollname]

For me, it's less "Ability bloat" and more "Hotbar bloat".

Like Kisai, I use 1-5(with shift+ and alt+ combos) and Q,E,R,F,T. That's 20 buttons. Many jobs have more regularly used abilities than that.

I'd like to see them reduce hotbar bloat by doing to PvE what they did to PvP combos(single button for each combo). Turn a 3 button combo into 1 button pressed 3 times. Have proc abilities auto-switch(in PvP for RDM, you cast Verfire and it automatically switches to Verthunder. They could do similar in PvE. Cast Verthunder and if Verfire procs, the VT button changes to VF, cast VF it changes back to VT).

Basically, I don't mind having 30+ abilities that I use regularly as long as those 30+ abilities can take up less space on the keybinds that I'm comfortable using.

[lokinmodar]

SMN got really clunky to play in pre lv60 content. Too much is missing. It is now just OGCD locked Shadow Flare (so when the tank moves the targets you are screwed also only at almost lv50) Miasma -> Bio(2) -> Bane -> Ruin 2 spam (occasional Fester).

I miss my Miasma 2 and bio + bio 2

[Averax]

I'm gonna say yes. Jobs feel less convoluted than they were in HW, and there's more emphasis on fight mechanics rather than flawless rotations.

[Shurrikhan]

Touch and go. Some bloat was removed, along with noticeable but ultimately optional skills, and plenty more added in the form of roundabout abilities and low-frequency but more mandatory skills.

There's been no less emphasis on double-weaving or flawless rotations.

However, if one were to consider it for the price of gameplay at 1-60, I'd have to consider the price too steep. SMN, SCH, MNK, DRK, BRD, etc., all feel gutted to some degree or another.

[Lumidus]

I like it much better and I hope they take it a bit farther into making it into combo actions like PvP