5.0 Combat changes: What do you expect?

[Ogulbuk]

You know, if protect is something everyone always use at the start of a dungeon, and maybe refresh upon a Rez.... it may as well just be removed entirely from the game, and encounters balanced around it not existing.

[Ilan]

Someone questioned this in another thread, so I pretty much just copy and pasted my response with some changes.

Before Stormblood, Aetherflow originally was the only action that ACN/SMN/SCH had available (excluding Energy Drain) to restore their own MP. The original recovery cost was 20% instead of the 10% we get now, and there was no role action like Lucid as an alternative. Sure AF was used to deal damage/heal, but if no other player was in the party with Refresh capabilities (e.g. BRD/MCH) then it was something you needed to use it to manage your MP. After Lucid Dreaming was made cross-role it kinda made sense to reduce the effect of Aetherflow to 10%, otherwise that would of been a lot of MP being recovered. I mean neither kinda have MP issues now anyway, but it took several patches of fixes to get the jobs in to that place to begin with.

Also lucid is an emnity control skill which is useful to these two classes too.

I mentioned that. So can SAM. Would rather see that those TWO skills for TWO jobs get reworked so more jobs overall (PLD, WAR, DRK, DRG, NIN, MNK, SAM, and prob Gunbreaker) could get the benefits of additional hotbar space from combo buttons.

And for what in the world would we need more space in our skillbars? For more useless emotes or mounts? I don't understand why the hell people would want these combo buttons, set up propper keybinds and learn how to play with a controller instead of wanting to turn the game into a 1-3 button thing.

[Batmanswagins]

I would love that paladín had a change depending if he is in shield or sword oath.
In shield oath he can have the current one that is a sword and a shield, but in sword oath he could be able to dual wield swords, that will make sense in why the drop of defense and the boost in attack.

[SannaR]

I expect them to fail at balancing the healers and taking everything else whm has and giving it to the other two and leaving them left with just their staff/cane to whack things. Then telling whms to just go play dancer. I expect drk and mch to also get no love and go backwards then where they are now just because they don't seem to know what the heck to do with those jobs. Maybe a rework of some of the job gages in where more of them actually make sense and aren't there to just be there.

[milovan]

that’s the fun of it. well again, an optional handicap mode is a very welcome addition. one of the reasons why pvp control is that way is so the amount of “player skill” required is reduced. hey button pressing is actually a skill now.

[Vaer]

You know, if protect is something everyone always use at the start of a dungeon, and maybe refresh upon a Rez.... it may as well just be removed entirely from the game, and encounters balanced around it not existing.

It was actually on the chopping block last expansion, Yoshi said no because its an iconic FF spell or something. If it was removed the damage would probably just be lowered across the board to compensate for not having the extra def/mdef.

[HyoMinPark]

I never said I knew this specifically was being considered, I said consolidation or removal was being considered, and you seem to have posted evidence of it.

No, you specifically said consolidation AND removal—not consolidation OR removal. Recheck your wording; if you meant to write the latter, you wrote the former.

The evidence I posted said consolidation will not be an option—the premise you posted originally was that you wanted PvP-esque combo consolidation to occur in PvE.

Instead, they will remove lesser used abilities to free up hotbar space over consolidating full combos, which is something a lot of jobs can benefit from (compare this to combo consolidation, which I already said will not really help the jobs that suffer the most from button bloat, particularly SMN and SCH, and AST also has a lot of buttons on its hotbars, what with all the card buttons). I can think of several abilities off the top of my head that should have been deleted (or never debuted) with 4.0’s release (One-Ilm Punch, Piercing Talon, Throwing Dagger, Repose, Fluid Aura, Blank Shot, Tether... to name a few).


There are a few instances where buttons could toggle into other buttons—similar to how Steel Cyclose/Inner Beast toggle into Decimate/Fell Cleave when a WAR is in Deliverance. For example, BRD could stand to have the Wanderer’s Minuet turn into Pitch Perfect while active. Straight Shot could also change into Refulgent Arrow while under the effect of Straighter Shot. That would free up 2 buttons there... but BRD is also a job that does not suffer from hotbar space issues.

That being said, I still do not see the need to consolidate full combos—I do not find jobs that have combos, like MNK, DRG, NIN, and SAM, to have serious hotbar real estate issues. If you find them to have issues, that may be because you are not using all of the hotbar options available to you as a controller player. I addressed those options already, and I still suggest you try them. Using the extended cross does not require any sort of nimbleness of fingers; it simply requires the ability to hold down both L2 and R2 at the same time—L2>R2 for one half of the extended cross, and R2>L2 for the other half.

I consider it a shame If it’s true combo consolidation is out of the table (according to that quote) but you are being awfully defensive over a speculation/wish thread. You won’t change my mind and obviously I won’t change yours, I still kind of would like to understand opposition but not to convince anyone.

I’m having a hard time understanding how I’m being defensive. You’re mistaken if you think I’m getting defensive in my responses to you; I’m just contesting your statement of it being something that is being considered with a statement that it is not being considered.

I’m also not here to change your mind—I’m just here to tell you that it’s unlikely to happen, as well as explain why it is something NOT on my wishlist for 5.0.

My issues with the skill consolidation is that it is—
1.) highly unlikely to be optional for only the players that want it—the development team seems to like streamlining experiences, so they would likely force it on everyone
2.) it will not work for all jobs—how do you consolidate combos for jobs that don’t have combos?
3.) it will likely not benefit those that need help with hotbar space (SMN/SCH/AST), as they are not jobs that have combos to consolidate—the exception here is PLD, which has really bad hotbar real estate right now, but it could also stand to have some things removed
4.) if the developers want to introduce completely new skills over upgrading existing ones, after the addition of new skills, it’s likely that we’ll still have the same number of abilities on our bars, so where did we truly go after the consolidation?


Honestly, I’d rather see skills upgrade into something stronger rather than us get 5 new skills. Changes like BRD’s Windbite/Venomous Bite upgrading into Stormbite/Caustic Bite are the things I would rather see. We don’t need new buttons to get new and stronger abilities. Some useless abilities need to be removed—some abilities also should be shifted down in terms of the level you learn them.


It’s my wish that a system like this does not appear in PvE, as I did not like it being introduced to PvP (I subsequently stopped participating in PvP with the change), and I will not like it being introduced to PvE. I simply think there are other, better changes the dev team could make to the battle system instead of consolidation—like addressing the imbalances between tanks, healers, and the physical ranged.

WHY do you want to make healing more difficult? This would just add more things to remember and complicate a rotation, which is exactly what Yoshi P is trying to get away from. I believe he said something akin to classes suffering from skill bloat and is looking for ways to reduce them. Plus, if they're going to add more skills from 70-80, they are going to have to cut things down.

Healing isn’t difficult in this game—it’s quite simple because all damage in encounters is scripted and predictable.
Healer rotations are also very simple—DoT management + Malefic III/Stone IV/Broil II spam. Heal when needed, either with GCD or an oGCD.

I’m curious as to why you think healing is difficult, or that healer rotations are something particularly complex.

[Ogulbuk]

Damn testament of a post that I won’t bother reading, but I’ll give you that I did write “and” instead of what I was thinking “and/or.” You obviously are just trying to win some argument that is not actually talking place, though, so, have a good one.

[Ilan]

that’s the fun of it. well again, an optional handicap mode is a very welcome addition. one of the reasons why pvp control is that way is so the amount of “player skill” required is reduced. hey button pressing is actually a skill now.

The ability to outplay, usage of the right skill at the right time and to read your opponent and knowing what the opponents class is skill. Guess why there is something like E-Sports they are just pressing buttons too. PvP is all about player skill, well here it is not anymore except for the one person that makes the calls, the others just have to follow.

[Kusanagi7]

give samurai more utility slash debuff not enough.