LIVE Letter Regarding DRG & AST Postponed Reworks

[Zaniel]

SAM and MNK single target combo is composed of 6 actions. Why does an extra button bother you on a job that has a fixed rotation?

The complexity of DRG's rotation lies in oGCD management and keeping stuff on cooldown. If you make the GCDs more complex, they'll probably reduce oGCD complexity (whether that complexity is enough or not is another debate).

DRG is also the most positional-intensive job with 50% of the GCDs being positionals. This would change if the combo string was reduced, and the positional dance is fun to do, even if it could be a bit better (see below), as it keeps the flow and makes the job not be boring between bursts.



I'd rather keep them separate but allow you to choose which one to use first after Chaotic Spring and Heavens' Thrust to help with positionals (and to hopefully do the same if the 5th hit became upgraded in 7.0...).

Well done completely misreading my post I guess? I never said change the combo, just how many buttons are required to use the combo. It matters because it makes for less RSI with idiotic key bindings, you can keep all the skills and all the combos but with just less buttons. They want to keep button bloat down because it makes controller and keyboard usage difficult.

[Aco505]

Well done completely misreading my post I guess? I never said change the combo, just how many buttons are required to use the combo. It matters because it makes for less RSI with idiotic key bindings, you can keep all the skills and all the combos but with just less buttons. They want to keep button bloat down because it makes controller and keyboard usage difficult.

DRG does not suffer from button bloat because it's actually one the jobs with the least amount of actions needing to be bound in the hotbars. There's several controller users in this thread saying that they've never had an issue with it. As a keyboard player, I don't find myself out of buttons with DRG at all. Tanks and healers present more problems because of their targeted utility in addition to their damage actions and cooldowns.

[Shurrikhan]

DRG does not suffer from button bloat because it's actually one the jobs with the least amount of actions needing to be bound in the hotbars. There's several controller users in this thread saying that they've never had an issue with it. As a keyboard player, I don't find myself out of buttons with DRG at all. Tanks and healers present more problems because of their targeted utility in addition to their damage actions and cooldowns.

Every combo save for DRG's, even when including Continuation atop the old 3-button Gnashing Fang, could be done in a single palette (i.e., just the face keys or just the DPad keys of a given side of a single hotbar), so I don't think it's unreasonable for Zaniel to expect that, given that there is zero affordance given at present to having two separate buttons for Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw (which cannot even be used except during their procs and, on M&KB, can be performed without tracking the current step just by key-swiping over both each time), the combos might be consolidated to at most 4 buttons each, without any effect on the actual combo actions.

They went so far as to consolidate keys that could thereby cause issue (first by accidentally queuing Mirage Dive before Jump has even actuated, then by adding too long a lockout period before Mirage Dive could be used thereafter). While that likewise made it so could intuitively put all Jump/Dive keys on the same palette (HJ, SSD, DFD, SD), which already adds some warrant to that expectation, allowing for a consolidated WT and F&C arguably has greater benefits and does not have the same vulnerabilities, making it a decently strong contender.

Whether that consolidation would be a pure good or not is questionable, but I Zan's right to point out that there is no advantage in those separate keys, nor, in WT/F&C's case, any change whatsoever to difficulty, depth, or the like.

(MNK, thankfully, was spared the fixed XIV-style "combos", and thus actually needs its 6 ST buttons. DRG, on the other hand, needs only two buttons to retain exactly the same ST rotational depth it has now.)

[Aco505]

there is zero affordance given at present to having two separate buttons for Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw

But consolidating them would close the possibility to choose which one to use and to make the 5th hit more relevant in the rotation, both mechanically and aesthetically. It would be a lost opportunity. I'd see the point if we were talking about Vorpal Thrust, as it's right now the only GCD that has zero purpose besides being the twin of Disembowel.

(MNK, thankfully, was spared the fixed XIV-style "combos", and thus actually needs its 6 ST buttons. DRG, on the other hand, needs only two buttons to retain exactly the same ST rotational depth it has now.)

The change to Gnashing Fang was warranted because it was a combo that is used once every 30s and required three buttons on a job that already has plenty of them and happens to also be a tank, which means needing a lot of space for utility buttons (e.g. it's not so uncommon to have more than one HoC in the hotbars, one for the GNB and one to target an ally).

If we go through this route, NIN (and RPR) also needs two buttons, SAM three, the tanks and MCH one... MNK is only spared due to their buff/debuff having a different duration, their GCD speed and the way PB balance works. You tweak that and theirs becomes a 3-button combo as well.

By keeping the WT and FnC buttons separate, we open a window for interesting future expansion and adjustments to the job's GCDs. By consolidating them, we just free up a button, which in the grand order of things doesn't really fix anything.

And to link it with one of the things Zaniel mentioned, I'm saying this as someone who suffers from RSI problems IRL as well as having bilateral CTS. The jobs that can actually make me tired are ironically healers and those where you just press the exact same key over and over.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, NIN needs only two, SAM three, MCH one, but all tanks but DRK would still need two (Path+Eye, Goring+Royal/Atonement, Solid+Gnashing). No amount of tweaking would put Monk on such a system, because it has actual combos, not single decisions split across n button-presses as per XIV "combos".

But, I think you're missing the point here. The matter isn't simply that all fixed combos are button bloat (even if, yes, they are) but that due to how controllers work, some combos see much greater rewards from even a single point of consolidation. To fit ST rotation on a single palette, SAM would have to consolidate three skills. DRG, at present, can't use a single palette to fit even a single combo, and is only one point of consolidation away from that. That would make it a much more warranted system in which to potentially consolidate a single action, so long as (as per now) there are no affordances lost in doing so.

The only degree of slippery slope from consolidation depends on the combos themselves being changed, first, to not be button bloat. All retention of button bloat now would have to be in service of their somehow being changed to not be button bloat later. That's a fine idea, and preferable, imo, but it's dependent on something that goes against XIV design trends since HW, which have tended towards reduced nuance and increasing portions of job "depth" being mere pretense.



You've already heard my own suggestions, which move far nearer to the Monk side of things, away from fixed combos (whereby we spend 7 buttons on at most a single point of decision).

If button count were to be a key issue, I'd rather turn whatever is mostly fixed combo actions into consolidated keys while freeing up whatever we can separate from that, and make the remaining combo lines more flexible. Imagine, for instance, each true combo action being replaced instead by a Flurry or Momentum stack. You have three steps to do with what you wish, the third and later (Lance Mastery II) second of which proc a Dragon skill in kind. Mix and match from Flurry or Momentum skills as you like. Voila. Two combo keys, across 3 of up to 5 combo steps, could make up to 8 different choices in the context of the 2 Dragon skills, rather than 5 combo keys (7 if including the currently inseparable Dragon skills) making for at most a single point of decision (Do I buff+debuff or do I direct damage?).

(I can better explain this spitball system suggestion, if need be, after I return home.)