Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Button bloat has nothing to do with available functions or capacities. It has. Only. To do with taking more buttons than is needed to allow for a given capacity or function. It's not that complicated.
EXCEPT THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED!!! They just flat out removed them entirely.
If they had actually consolidated the buttons this wouldn't even be a point of discussion but they didn't do that. SE called it button bloat and cut skills. Your argument is based on something that does not align with SE's actions. They don't care about consolidating skills. They gave Biolysis the combined potency of Miasma and Bio and called it a day but did nothing to replace Bane to spread that potency to all targets. Art of War was Miasma 2 and that's it. Shadowflare? Gone without a care.This wasn't done to consolidate actions, it was done to just remove things.

Don't argue Button Efficiency because SE and you have VERY different opinions on the matter. You think it's one thing and SE is literally doing the opposite and yet you still argue otherwise. It's ludicrous.

Astrodyne, moreover, is not some Lucid Dreaming-equivalent; it's a self-buff (like PoM, but weaker and more thematically tied-in) of up to three types and if it so offends you that after using up Speed and Damage that they next went for Mana, change the Mana to Crit and think no more on it.
The parallel I was trying to make was that they added Astrodyne to AST so that it could get back something from its own system which is the point I am arguing for Afflatus Medica 2 and Cure 3. I am trying to build up the system for WHM to have its own MP sustain tools but it's somehow being demonized because it's not efficient. Neither was adding Astrodyne but it still happened. Energy Drain lost it's MP restore and the pitiful potency damage it does could have easily be distributed between the rest of SCH's skills but it still exists, despite SGE having the exact same system and no Addersgal Dump skill. Fey Blessing and Indom? Holos and Ixochole? Why do these things exist if SE is concerned at all with Efficiency? Because they DON'T care. You can think of a million different ways to consolidate skills but the fact is SE does not care about it at all. Your justifying this to yourself at this point because it only takes a cursory glance at the majority of the jobs to see that button efficiency is hardly on SE's mind at all.

.....then turn it into a Swiftcast-type action that uses only one button for every possible healing function it may be applied to. One button, every sub-function covered.
Like Eukrasia? Yeah, people complain about that idea too.