Button Bloat

[rawker]

I would LOVE to have more 'conditional' buttons that hold 3 or 4 abilities on them actually, like how Red Mage and Summoner reuse buttons for several different phases of their rotation. It doesn't even have to be big stuff on the same scale as that. Stuff like making Hypercharge turn into Heat Blast once you use it. Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

Imagine you are a PLD. After using your 1-2 AoE combo, 2 targets are left and 1 is about to die before your next GCD is available. It is wiser to just use Holy Spirit instead of Holy Circle, correct? With your proposition, I have to toggle a stance so that I get to use my ST ability. Yes you cut off extra buttons but you have introduced, not complexity, but unecessary button presses.

As has been mentioned plenty of times I also wouldn't mind getting single button combos like in PvP, but I know that's more controversial.

I am a GNB and my healer is currently KO'ed. Brutal Shell combo is kinda good and will greatly improve my survivability.. but with this, I still have to do 2 extra GCDs so I can refresh my barrier.. Same with PLD and DRK when recovering MP.

Something I haven't seen mentioned before though is the potential of jobs getting traits that upgrade role skills into unique abilities that still maintain their original function, but still have some other use as well. Would be a good way to add a lot more depth to the actions without increasing button bloat.

SCH already has that. Emergency Tactics, Deployment Tactics, Recitation. These abilities do nothing on their own but they modify the properties of other abilities.. I mean, every caster/healer has it = Swiftcast. The only acceptable increase in button count is for abilities that does this.

We could easily add a dozen or more skills and still take up LESS buttons than we currently do, if they just applied them we'll. There is no reason to waste an entire button slot on something that can only be pressed directly after something else, and is useless in all other contexts.

See above.