LIVE Letter Regarding DRG & AST Postponed Reworks

[Aco505]

Having 7 individual buttons on your melee rotation is pretty stupid let's be honest, I don't mind that it's 7 skills and 7 presses but spreading it across 7 buttons is asinine low QOL and bad UI design. They just need to compress the skills a bit into like 7 skills on 3-4 buttons while still keeping that 2-path cycle style of flow. The rest is fine (although I wouldn't cry if Life Surge went walkabout, it's not Kaiten, its not identity defining, its just a random extra button).

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.

Moreover, if you were to consolidate WT and F&C, you'd generally do that to/with each other, as they're not available anyways until that point and only in sequential use.

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...).

[Shurrikhan]

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...).

As long as we're keeping them all separate buttons, this seems by far the best course of action. Still positional-heavy, but with more agency. Heck yeah.



Food for thought, on the subject of GCD-to-GCD or oGCD-to-GCD interaction:

One of the earlier HW suggestions I'd see floating around was to have Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust procs no longer be cancelled by combos. One of the affordances of that was each could take on more dynamic effects, such as buffing a following skill or having some further effect based on the last, or even just, say, spreading the effect of Chaos Thrust to nearby enemies (such that you didn't have to hit CT just before the adds spawned to immediately spread it).

:: Imagine for instance, Disembowel->Fang & Claw increasing potency you deal to that target by a further flat potency per attack, Chaos Thrust->Fang and Claw duplicating the attack at 50% initial potency and 50% duration to another target, and Wheeling Thrust the remaining duration of your status effects on target to have them instead tick instantly and spread to nearby enemies at reduced potency, etc., etc.

Similarly, an idea I played around with from back when NIN was introduced was to change Jump itself into a skill that just launches you up into the air, becoming untargetable and becoming immune to non-raidwide attacks for up to the end of the next GCD, with Jump then enhancing your following weaponskill (be that in various ways or via simply a %damage buff --in which case you'd basically just use it on FT or CT, depending on whether it can only aid initial damage).

[RyuDragnier]

Why this suspicion, out of curiosity? Until Shadowbringers, DRG's combo was increasing by 1 step per expansion.

Why do you think they'd suddenly go back on that now, when they seem to have no interest in rotational nuance by which to make use of shorter combos, anyways?

I don't mean pressing the buttons twice for those moves. I mean flatout removing/upgrading one of the moves from the game and having the other serve in its place for Raiden Thrust, such as having the move upgraded from Fang and Claw to Heavens' Thrust. Meaning we'd go from True Thrust, which would be upgraded to Fang and Claw, which is then upgraded into Heavens' Thrust, via traits.

[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]

I don't mean pressing the buttons twice for those moves. I mean flatout removing/upgrading one of the moves from the game and having the other serve in its place for Raiden Thrust, such as having the move upgraded from Fang and Claw to Heavens' Thrust. Meaning we'd go from True Thrust, which would be upgraded to Fang and Claw, which is then upgraded into Heavens' Thrust, via traits.

Then I have to ask again... why?

Why would what has been a 5-step combo for 3 expansions suddenly be pruned to a 3-step combo?

[RyuDragnier]

Then I have to ask again... why?

Why would what has been a 5-step combo for 3 expansions suddenly be pruned to a 3-step combo?

Idk, these are the same people who removed all the DoTs from SCH, thought giving DRK no self healing, and putting Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit on the same cooldown was a good idea. There's no logical basis, but yet I have a feeling that might be what they do.

[SweetPete]

Idk, these are the same people who removed all the DoTs from SCH, thought giving DRK no self healing, and putting Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit on the same cooldown was a good idea. There's no logical basis, but yet I have a feeling that might be what they do.

Yeah they destroyed scholar and then during the Endwalker job actions trailer where they were making comments I believe Yoshi P joked they have no idea what to do with scholar anymore.

I can see scholar being the next job for an extensive rework in 8.0

[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.)

[RyuDragnier]

I can see scholar being the next job for an extensive rework in 8.0

It and DRK both need the reworks in 7.0, IMO. To hell with the rework for DRG and AST since neither really need it (AST just needs some buttons merged). But SCH and DRK? They need it, badly.