Its ffxiv combat really so slow and boring?

[RiyahArp]

Yes there's a learning curve, but it's a curve worth exploring, practicing, and mastering rather than begging for button consolidation.

it will happen anyways. Do you really think we're going to be able to add 5-10 more abilities next expansion to our current setups, on top of the expanded role slots? We're back to HW in which you can talk about practice all you like, that didn't overcome the skill floor issue. If they add any more abilities, stuff is going to need to be taken away, and combos can be pruned to a 1-1-2/3/4 with no issue.

If anything, the combos in this game solely exist because SE tied buffs and debuffs to each hit, not because hitting 6 buttons is better than one. And a lot of those debuffs are bad design; people have been annoyed at the piercing one for years for example. I don't see anyone here complaining much about missing maintaining 2-3 dots as a melee class, even in HW where AST and MCH started at base 30 for theirs, not base 15ish for many jobs. You could easily just tie the buffs/debuffs to last hit buttons, and remove bridging hits without much issue. Stuff like needing an enmity and non enmity combo could probably be tied more into the last hit or given alternate styles of play.

Something will have to change for 5.0, because if we go back to HW ability levels, but with SB's mobile bosses, we will all be in big trouble.

[kikix12]

Well, if you actually played MNK and did your own research, you'd find that answer.

One Ilm Punch is part of the combo on the Raptor part of it. That's a fact and you denying it is absurd.

Monk with consolidated combo buttons would have:

Button 1: Bootshine, True Strike, Demolish. The three "rear bonus" skills.
Button 2: Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Snap Punch. The "flank" skills.
Button 3: Arm of the Destroyer, One Ilm Punch, Rockbreaker. The "special" skills that have no positionals.

In other words, the three buttons will be:
Opo-Opo and without form: Bootshine, Dragon Kick and Arm of the Destroyer.
Raptor: True Strike, Twin Snakes, One Ilm Punch.
Coeurl: Demolish, Snap Punch, Rockbreaker.

There is no way to do it than this, nor is there any reason as to why One Ilm Punch shouldn't be there. It's not used by monks?! And who cares?! It still won't be used by monks. There's no reason why it would need to be used by monks if it's crap. But it DOES exist and it IS optional part of a combo so it obviously would be consolidated.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

it will happen anyways. Do you really think we're going to be able to add 5-10 more abilities next expansion to our current setups, on top of the expanded role slots? We're back to HW in which you can talk about practice all you like, that didn't overcome the skill floor issue. If they add any more abilities, stuff is going to need to be taken away, and combos can be pruned to a 1-1-2/3/4 with no issue.

If anything, the combos in this game solely exist because SE tied buffs and debuffs to each hit, not because hitting 6 buttons is better than one. And a lot of those debuffs are bad design; people have been annoyed at the piercing one for years for example. I don't see anyone here complaining much about missing maintaining 2-3 dots as a melee class, even in HW where AST and MCH started at base 30 for theirs, not base 15ish for many jobs. You could easily just tie the buffs/debuffs to last hit buttons, and remove bridging hits without much issue. Stuff like needing an enmity and non enmity combo could probably be tied more into the last hit or given alternate styles of play.

Something will have to change for 5.0, because if we go back to HW ability levels, but with SB's mobile bosses, we will all be in big trouble.

Uh, most jobs got no more than three new skills; with four being the exception. We're not getting anywhere near ten. Some basically got the same skill back at a higher level, i.e. Ring of Thorns deleted for Sonic Thrust or Stoneskin for Divine Benison

snipThere is no way to do it than this, nor is there any reason as to why One Ilm Punch shouldn't be there. It's not used by monks?! And who cares?! It still won't be used by monks. There's no reason why it would need to be used by monks if it's crap. But it DOES exist and it IS optional part of a combo so it obviously would be consolidated.

One problem with that. Unless you can customize the consolidation, you'd be forced to use One Ilm Punch since using Arm of the Destroyer would have to advance all three buttons into the Raptor, thus locking out access to True Strike and Twin Snakes.

[Sigma-Astra]

snip

Bad MNK confirmed.

You already have an on-demand stun (Shoulder Tackle and Leg Sweep) and a good, respectable player who plays monk....would never want nor care about putting that skill on their hotbar ever, even during a consolidation theory. Most pretend it doesn't even exist.

You sticking up for One Ilm Punch as a needed ability is absurd, but I needed a good laugh I suppose...

The consolidation theorists have turned something that's generally muscle memory which isn't hard to do if you map out your hotbars in a smart way into and instead, a memory game of what button turns into what and when.

You made something already basic and easy to see and process into a convoluted maze for no reason. So, instead of seeing threads about button bloat, we'll see threads about why this ability turns into this and so on and so fourth. You're getting rid of what you perceive is a problem by making another problem on top of it.

This "Foul turns into Flare when under AF, Freeze when under UI, and stays as Foul when neither" is stupid. I should be able to use either of those skills (maybe not Freeze though) without things turning into one another at my will and leisure. I don't need button consolidation for my job and the theorists are fools if they think it would be an optional system put into place or that they won't do it for every job.

[HyoMinPark]

it will happen anyways. Do you really think we're going to be able to add 5-10 more abilities next expansion to our current setups, on top of the expanded role slots? We're back to HW in which you can talk about practice all you like, that didn't overcome the skill floor issue. If they add any more abilities, stuff is going to need to be taken away, and combos can be pruned to a 1-1-2/3/4 with no issue.

See, I’m of the mind that they don’t need to add more skills in 5.0. Or that they could simply do upgrades to existing skills to make them more powerful (a la how BRD’s DoTs got upgraded in SB). Or give traits to make jobs more interesting, or give them a different mechanic. We don’t need “5-10 more abilities”.

Or they could prune the actual useless abilities, which they should have done prior to 4.0 (Repelling Shot, Blank Shot, One-Ilm Punch, to name a few—how these are still in this game boggles my mind). Throw the CC skills in there too, if they aren’t going to make them relevant outside of niche scenarios (I’d rather see them be made relevant, but I don’t think that will happen).

With regards to the controller talk, building up muscle memory helps a lot with regards to swapping hotbars, toggling the extended cross (or W-cross), etc.. If you don’t practice the muscle memory, of course you will struggle. As it stands now, though, neither DRG nor BRD (two jobs you’ve mentioned in this thread) have trouble with button space on a controller.


As for your comments earlier about BRD....

Would people really miss the three main bard songs as they are now though? They make the class tremendously reliant on RNG, and having three different effects only matters due to troubador, all three are just dps increases otherwise. You can easily spend a third of the timer with no real dps increase from a song at all. I feel like they could just revert mages ballad to an always on effect, get make refulgent arrow similar to pitch perfect, make the songs their troubador effects, and little would be lost. IDK if bard is a good example because the class in my opinion is needlessly complex.

I would not want to see the removal of songs/consolidation into just “1 song”. I disagree about removing complexity and simplifying everything simply “because”—the different songs give you different things you have to do in order to optimize your rotation, and I think that’s a good thing. Rather than just mindlessly spamming a boring and empty rotation. Why is having something a bit complex such a bad thing?



I would also like for the developers to at least have an expansion where they don’t completely overhaul my job and force me to relearn how it actually plays. They would be foolish to do much more than small QoL changes to BRD, because it’s pretty much unanimously agreed that the job is perfect now.

[Darrcyphfeid]

See, I’m of the mind that they don’t need to add more skills in 5.0. Or that they could simply do upgrades to existing skills to make them more powerful (a la how BRD’s DoTs got upgraded in SB). Or give traits to make jobs more interesting, or give them a different mechanic. We don’t need “5-10 more abilities”.

More traits and mutations/evolutions of current skills is definitely what they should do, but it's also how they should have handled SB's release instead of chopping up what was already there.

Passives for out-of-combat things like movement would also be a decent idea for showing the progression of the character over time; NIN already does something like this, but they stopped at that for whatever reason.

I do expect things like Heavy Thrust to be on the chopping block since they've already nearly removed them, though. With the [Damage Type] resistance down skills/effects and things like Protect probably not far behind given community demands and interview topics.

[RiyahArp]

Why is having something a bit complex such a bad thing?

I don't know if it's good complexity though. The three main songs do the same thing in different ways, and they don't work all that well. The bloodletter proc idea isn't really designed to work in short 30 sec spans, especially when you need multiple procs to get full effect. Plus they added a second proc with refulgent, plus troubador, plus all the support abilities. I feel like they punished ranged physical in order to balance out the mobility gains by making them overcomplicated messes.

See, I’m of the mind that they don’t need to add more skills in 5.0. Or that they could simply do upgrades to existing skills to make them more powerful (a la how BRD’s DoTs got upgraded in SB). Or give traits to make jobs more interesting, or give them a different mechanic. We don’t need “5-10 more abilities”.

Yeah, I don't think getting 50 more potency or 15 seconds extra duration on a DOT will cut it. Part of why people raged about WHM is that it played the same, with durations modified or little bonus effects added. If the game was more robust a merit system might work, but all we can do is get more damage, more duration, etc. I don't want to grind five million exp for a trait that lets my demolish last 60 seconds now.


...to be honest though, this is all on Yoshi, and we need a public test server so we can actually give feedback on which way 5.0 is going. If we had a test server, people could then test and vote on it, maybe even talk directly to GMS. They can't keep throwing stuff at us and hoping it sticks now.

[HyoMinPark]

I don't know if it's good complexity though.

Considering BRD is the most popular job by far, it means that not a lot of people share your complaints. The complexity the job has is not nearly as complex as you seem to think.

The three main songs do the same thing in different ways, and they don't work all that well.

Sounds to me like you don’t know how to work the songs; I have no problems with getting any of the mechanics to work as they are intended.

The bloodletter proc idea isn't really designed to work in short 30 sec spans, especially when you need multiple procs to get full effect.

If you know how to manage your procs and EA timings when you force one, you don’t have issues utilitizing the River of Blood mechanic in Mage’s Ballad despite the shorter duration.

Plus they added a second proc with refulgent,

The only change they could make is turning a Straighter Shot proc into Refulgent; you will never use the former over the latter.

plus troubador, plus all the support abilities.

Troubadour can be difficult to optimize around, but you can manipulate your song rotation to an extent to have it land where you would direly need the appropriate mitigation. As for the support abilities, BRD is a support job. It’s supposed to have support abilites; that is its identity and always has been.

I feel like they punished ranged physical in order to balance out the mobility gains by making them overcomplicated messes.

The only thing we’re punished by is our reliance on Piercing. That has nothing to do with our rotation. Again, not everything needs to be braindead/mindlessly simple “just because”. Learn the job, and you don’t have problems—coming from someone who used to spam Straight Shot and never use DoTs when they started playing, and turned that behavior completely around within a couple months after being told it was wrong.

DoTs

Uhm... DoT potency adds up over time. The amount of damage BRDs get from DoTs alone is more than you would think. I’d suggest looking at some data to see just how much damage they do over time.

15 more seconds of the base potency adds 275 on Stormbite, and 225 on Caustic Bite. That brings the total potency to 825 for SB, and 675 for CB. That is ridiculously potent; as it stands now, IJ is already our strongest skill with 1100 total potency: 100 for base, and 1000 for DoTs. Adding 50 more potency to 30-second DoTs. would move SB to 105 potency for 10 ticks (1,050 total potency) and 95 potency for 10 ticks (950 potency total). That is substantially more damage overall.

Math is your friend.

Well, I'm definitely an outlier. Which is why I would like options. BRD feels absolutely awful to play for me. I don't like redundant abilities. BRD has too many things that all accomplish the same thing.

If by the last statement you mean damage, that applies to literally every job in this game. Elaboration would be appreciated.


EDIT: Nevermind, the forum lied to me and said I had no posts, but then posted my response to the elaboration anyways. Okay.

[MomomiMomi]

They would be foolish to do much more than small QoL changes to BRD, because it’s pretty much unanimously agreed that the job is perfect now.

Well, I'm definitely an outlier. Which is why I would like options. BRD feels absolutely awful to play for me. I don't like redundant abilities. BRD has too many things that all accomplish the same thing.

That said, a simple combo system would not make BRD fun to me. It would need more work than that.

If by the last statement you mean damage, that applies to literally every job in this game. Elaboration would be appreciated.

Stormbite, Caustic Bite, Iron Jaws.
Heavy Shot, Straight Shot (Straighter Shot).
All three songs. The mechanics changes the songs have could easily be removed from them, and they'd all be identical outside of Troubadour. I'd prefer actual complexity, making the songs themselves more interesting.


With conditionals (based on which buff you have, or which debuff is on the enemy), you could turn the first two sets into a single button each. Because of that, I consider them redundant. They do the same exact thing, only changing based on a condition. I see this as a false sense of complexity. It's complex only for the reason of being complex. It's not interesting complexity.

[RiyahArp]

Considering BRD is the most popular job by far, it means that not a lot of people share your complaints.

Are they? I don't think anyone has done a census for them in a while though. using sea on my server for level 70s has slightly more rdm and whm than bard. I don't see them as often as I used to, honestly.

Sounds to me like you don’t know how to work the songs; I have no problems with getting any of the mechanics to work as they are intended.

They are reliant on crits, "working as intended" is always going to have chance, the problem is bloodletter procs are ok if you don't get a lot of them for 20 seconds and a bunch after, but for the songs not so much.

If you know how to manage your procs and EA timings when you force one, you don’t have issues utilitizing the River of Blood mechanic in Mage’s Ballad despite the shorter duration.

Ah no, what I meant was they don't work so hot if you need 3 procs or 4 procs within a certain amount of time. You get the four procs early, great. You get them 20 sec in, not so good. Mages is ok ,the other two songs though lose a lot when you can't.

Uhm... DoT potency adds up over time. The amount of damage BRDs get from DoTs alone is more than you would think. I’d suggest looking at some data to see just how much damage they do over time.

You miss the point, just raw potency increases is not enough. Not everyone grinds just so they can get 50 more potency or what have you on an ability, they need more than that. The weapon is cool, or the ability looks great, or it changes how you play or gives more options.

An expansion with tiny changes and potency changes won't really help, any more than the tiny potency changes they do with Feast get people into the mode. Like FFXI when they did merits added abilities, not solely potency increases. They added those too, but weren't grinding millions of exp for them alone. Again, if the game were a bit more robust it'd be ok, but since everything boils down to damage, straight potency or minor buffs will have less impact save for the min max crowd.