Did Stormblood fix abilty bloat? What is your opinion?

[Priya]

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.

This is basically what everyone means when they say "ability bloat." They're taking about the need for tons of keybinds, which is usually because of the number of abilities. However SE accomplishes it, what people want is fewer key binds to manage. Personally, I have stupid baby hands and can only comfortably bind say 24 keys of frequently used abilities before I have to start putting things in awkward places or get weird with the alt modifier. As it stands, I'm running about 4-5 buttons over my preferred limit. They don't need to go as far as blizzard where maybe 10 buttons are frequently used, but I'd certainly want less than what SB and HW have.

[Daralii]

I agree; I really don't think we have fewer skills than in HW, if at all. As smn and rdm, I'm running about 2.5 hot bars as well, and I think that's about 3-4 more skills than there should be. Imo, the combo consolidation should kick in for pve when proc skills are involved. For instance, verholy/Verflare can't be used at all unless they're proc'd so the verstone/Verfire keys should really change to them when they're proc'd. It's the same for impact and jolt.

Some classes may have less bloat than others. I've noticed square isn't very consistent on the number of active abilities classes have. So far, I'm really disappointed that I'm not seeing the keybind reduction that was promised. We don't have to go back to ARR numbers, but we should still have had noticably fewer than HW.

Their stated goal from the start was for us to end up with about the same number of abilities at 70 in 4.0 that we had at 60 in 3.0. The point of the pruning was to create room for new things, not just reduce the number of binds overall.

[bswpayton]

Personally I would say no.

As a paladin, I still got about 2 1/2 bars of skills that I use and I don't even want to think about what the other classes are. I was hoping that they would do something along the lines of either combining a lot of skills or giving us the option to meld skills together (with a limit of course) to help with the bloat.

Palidans actually have the most skills out of all jobs pretty crazy

[KeyboardFacerollname]

This is basically what everyone means when they say "ability bloat." They're taking about the need for tons of keybinds, which is usually because of the number of abilities. However SE accomplishes it, what people want is fewer key binds to manage. Personally, I have stupid baby hands and can only comfortably bind say 24 keys of frequently used abilities before I have to start putting things in awkward places or get weird with the alt modifier. As it stands, I'm running about 4-5 buttons over my preferred limit. They don't need to go as far as blizzard where maybe 10 buttons are frequently used, but I'd certainly want less than what SB and HW have.

Agreed, though my difference between "ability" and "hotbar" bloat is that they could make combos take a single hotbar space. You'd still have three abilities and three button presses, it would just take up two less slots on your hotbar.

[Kaonis]

Overall I say no. The one case I can say is better though is WAR. The combining of mirrored abilities (IB/FC, Decimate/SC) on one button depending on stance was fantastic. I hope they do or allow more like this in the future. Though I think they should look at their own PVP and combine buttons more. Playing RDM is fun, but I take up so many buttons on my hot bar. Yet I get almost the same play in PVP with a handful of buttons because the melee combo is simply 1 button that transitions into the next step of the combo, and the same with Ver-Aero/Thunder procing to Stone/Fire. It helps with button bloat, and lets be honest, you're never using WS out of combo ever. It just a sensible way to trim up people's bars and allow room for more abilities to expand the job rather than bloating things up with "press this 1-2-3 combo so it appears you have more abilities, when 1 and 2 exist only so 3 can be used at the end".

In short, there's steps in the right direction, but they need to go a bit further to obliterate the bloat.

[Priya]

Agreed, though my difference between "ability" and "hotbar" bloat is that they could make combos take a single hotbar space. You'd still have three abilities and three button presses, it would just take up two less slots on your hotbar.

I'd be fine with that. I don't mind the pvp combos, though I'd rather only proc abilities combo in pve. Ultimately, though I don't really care how they do it, I just would like it done and would take just about any method that nets fewer keys. It's a huge turn off trying to hit tons of different key binds quite frequently.

[KisaiTenshi]

I agree; I really don't think we have fewer skills than in HW, if at all. As smn and rdm, I'm running about 2.5 hot bars as well, and I think that's about 3-4 more skills than there should be. Imo, the combo consolidation should kick in for pve when proc skills are involved. For instance, verholy/Verflare can't be used at all unless they're proc'd so the verstone/Verfire keys should really change to them when they're proc'd. It's the same for impact and jolt.

Some classes may have less bloat than others. I've noticed square isn't very consistent on the number of active abilities classes have. So far, I'm really disappointed that I'm not seeing the keybind reduction that was promised. We don't have to go back to ARR numbers, but we should still have had noticably fewer than HW.

Procs work for DPS only though. On heal skills, the procs would result in overhealing. This is why a different strategy is required for healing. For healing, a toggle should exist to switch between "cast next spell as targeted AOE"(Cure III/Aero III) and "cast next spell as caster-centered AOE" (Medica/Medica II/Holy/Assize) and single target. Alternatively this can also be compressed by targeting yourself for "caster centered AOE" or creating a floor AOE field for which to direct all AOE's at.

For ranged DPS, they should have reduced the main combat skills to 4 buttons, eg for BLM "Fire, Blizzard, Thunder" and a button to switch it to AOE, target self to caster-centered AOE. Because BLM needs to alternate between Fire and Ice, the respective fire and blizzard skills should be replaced when Transpose is used. On RDM a similar alternate between black and white magic mechanic exists I believe.

For Tanking, and DPS with combos, they should have reduced it so that the next proc replaces the previous. eg Fast Blade highlights savage blade and riot blade, and hitting savage blade of replaces savage blade with rage of halone, while hitting riot blade replaces riot blade with goring blade, and replaces savage blade with royal authority
So your combo ends up being 1-2-2, 1-3-3, or 1-3-4. In theory whatever you do immediately before the combo (eg shelltron, shield bash, shield swipe) should last the lenght of the combo.

If we keep adding more hotbars, we are moving backwards from the "controller friendly" environment and back into "menu hell" from V1.0

[The_NPC]

Agreed, though my difference between "ability" and "hotbar" bloat is that they could make combos take a single hotbar space. You'd still have three abilities and three button presses, it would just take up two less slots on your hotbar.

Go to PvP zones & scream as the "Auto-advancing" combo system is there but not in PvE (only went there as PLD cause I was glam shopping, PLD PvP is 1 controller cross-hotbar at max with RoH & RA combo's taking up 1 space each granted what each combo does is different from its PvE version but still 2 spaces vs 5 spaces yah WTF)

[Priya]

Procs work for DPS only though. On heal skills, the procs would result in overhealing. This is why a different strategy is required for healing.

That's fine. They could even go so far as to make the combo procs on a per class basis or even per ability basis if they want to. As far as I'm aware, dragoon already has a morphing keybind with that gerskogul/nostrond (sorry for killing spelling) thing. One key for both skills in pve (someone correct me if I'm wrong) So SE does have the ability to enable that on a case by case basis. They don't need to take a one size fits all approach for all classes.

[Nhisso]

Dear SE,
I beg you not to listen to low brows who cant handle clicking more than a few buttons in an mmo. Apparently thinking is hard so people want the dumbed down hotbars from ESO, neverwinter, guild wars 2 and wildstar. Where you hit the same 5 skills for 100s of hours like some sort of monkey using a keyboard.