Are MNK and VPR on autopilot? Is job design all about bursts?

[Valence]

Tell me that you don't play melee without telling me that you don't play melee.

If you're at the level where you need someone else to tell you what your next GCD is (as opposed to knowing what your next 10 GCDs are and how the boss turns and reorientates in that timeframe), you're in for a bad time.

Why the snark?

I play melee casually. If anything this has made me consider that when compared to old MNK, which I played quite a bit (in casual content), I was left with no choice to make because the game made them for me. It also made me put myself into the shoes of less hardcore players for the simple reason that I don't play the role/job at a hardcore/raiding level, and further drove the point to me that yes, I couldn't wrap my brain around the 3 freeflowing forms of MNK (could only handle 2 at once, job mechanic just didn't click with me, but so it didn't either with a lot of people that found it way too hard to keep track of), which makes me understand why the devs would have done that on MNK's base combo, because ultimately they're designing for those players first and foremost.

But on the other hand, you have all those neat skills that are designed and added to both jobs, and... it doesn't matter, because you're just pressing the next one that glows up. So you can see how I'm conflicted about it? Does it make it clearer than the OP?

As a MCH main, there is no way that OP is only just discovering dotted lines on combos for the first time. The job literally uses dotted lines to show you how to perform a single combo rotation.

Kindly asking you to re-read the actual OP and search for the mention of basic 3 steps combos. The basic ones that don't branch, and only have a glowy button on autopilot, yes, even more boring, but usually they're not the sole mechanic of the job and there is other things to weave in. Unless your reply was just a gigantic troll of course, then good job, I fell for it.

Let me tell you something, 90% of the people in final are even to dumb to press a glowy button, so i wouldnt even call it "autopilot"

and tbh its the same with every melee, samu press hakaze one of 3 buttons glows, reaper press slice the next button glows, ninja dragoon the same, so its all the same with all melees.

SAM still has to rotate properly between 3 different branches of combos. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
RPR has agency whenever it wants to use soul slice between the filler combo. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
BRD or DNC have glowy procs to follow, but they're procs that can have agency whenever you want to spend them according to the job's mechanics or context. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
Even SMN has agency on which lego to use and when, and which of the 2 skills the lego unlocks to use first (for red and green), and it pains me to use it as an example.
And so on.

This is pretty much every DPS in the game.
Everything is repetitive until you get to burst, because CBU3 decided every single job had to be a spender-burst job.

Yes, I do feel like that SE has indeed chipped away at the filler phases of every job in order to only focus on the 2min bursts (and the mild 60s ones for some jobs).