Button Bloat: Data for discussion

[Shurrikhan]

Personally for Clemency you could
A: (The simple route) Make it OGCD but cost more mana, so you can't spam it otherwise it will be a DPS loss to your magic burst; This would actually make it a fun system to spend/manage your MP On.
B: Have a Way of becoming OCGD through a proc, Maybe from using a successful defensive or something like you gain a stack every minute for clemency.

I was thinking more Route B (at least, generally speaking) than Route A, but while we're at it -- here's a crazy Route C for you:
Both Clemency and Shelltron/Intervention/Entrench/Steelguard/Aegis Boon/whatever start as a charged cast and channel respectively with a minimum GCD uptime costs, but their effect (mitigation, and mitigation duration extending beyond the channel for Shelltron; direct heal potency and HoT duration and potency per tick for Clemency) and uptime cost is reduced by gauge.

This means that Paladin can always technically turtle/ for at least a lesser effect (a bit of a flavor, more so than useful advantage), but can spend gauge to reduce/remove the uptime costs and empower its healing and mitigation.

Shield Bash I thought of something like your Gap closer doing no Damage now you can also rush to allies as well, but your shield bash would replace it in a sense that it would do 150 damage (or more), be OCGD, hold charges and Stun in a cone of enemies, that I'd genuinely love to see, gives Paladin a actual useful "shield attack".

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

[Deo14]

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

Make Shield Bash replace role of current Goring Blade. Give it conal stun and AoE damage, possibly adjust CD. Now it's great unique mitigation tool for trash packs, it's being used for AoE, and it's much better thematically than some Goring Blade. If I could get greedy, I would love cosmetic changes to PLD, make basic 1-2-3-atonement be less stabby, since stab attacks are really not what I imagine when I think about paladin/holy knight. Basic combo with mix of both sword and shield attacks wouldn't affect gameplay, but better animations will always be appreciated. And rework those spin attacks too, what's the point of having shield when you turn your back to the opponent every 10 seconds.

I literally brought this up... You can say "you can't just ignore them", but they aren't easily accessible. Press and hold commands don't work for everyone, and don't work as well as tapping a bumper or holding a shift button on keyboard. I already mentioned this. You liking it is fine, not everyone does. Quite a few people don't play with that system, because they don't find it "extra easily accessible". I don't.

It also doesn't counter the point that 30 buttons is already a lot of buttons. What argument can you give that an MMO class must have at least 40 buttons or it isn't challenging/interesting/fun?

Just a disclaimer, I haven't read this entire thread.

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask for better accessibility options, instead of doing major overhauls of most, if not all jobs? Sure you can remove plenty of healers' skills, a lot of them are bloat, but most jobs have just 1-2 buttons which are real bloat, devs would either butcher every job, or they would need to make major reworks for most jobs. And even though your preferred number of buttons seems to be 32, why this value?(rhetorical question, I know why you specifically want 32) Another person in this thread specified 23 for some reason, I remember someone in past asking for 16, so which one should devs aim for? How would it work when new expansion comes? People do want new skills, so every 2-3 years, they will need to cull 2 buttons from each job.

Problem with the game is that there really isn't neither a lot of depth nor action combat. In other games, you can make a class feel great with just <10 skills, but that's because all of them are very meaningful and have plenty of different effects, while there are other mechanics like dodging. Because FFXIV is so shallow, skills are very limited, and most jobs end up with 20 different flavours of "Deals X damage", with another 5 being "Deals X damage, but AoE". So yes, you shouldn't try to make as much skills as possible, but this is just how this game was built.

Think about FFXIV as a piano (a lot of players do refer to gameplay as playing a piano), and about GW2 (profession have usually <15 buttons) as a violin.

(Keep in mind I'm not musician) Both violin and piano are considered one of the hardest mainstream instruments to learn, but because of very different reasons. Violin is a lot about mechanical skill. You have just 4 strings, so it should be easy right? It's not, just burning in your head right angle of the bow for each string is hard. Playing fake note is easy. Piano on the other hand, you always play note correctly. All you need to do is to press correct buttons, in right order, with right intervals in between them. Which would be so much easier than violin, except that piano has 88 keys, so they're comparable when it comes to difficulty. In both of those cases, it's simply different approach.

If you wanted to merge these two things, you would end up with something like xylophone for kids.