2.0 battle system will depend on rotations like in WOW?

[Antipika]

MMOs where you just spam skills suck and suck hard. There is nothing fun about clicking every skill you have as fast as possible. I don't know what the hell SE is thinking with the universal cooldowns.. Did they not play SWTOR? That battle system is total crap.

So friggin sick of this Dev team repeatedly trying to fix things that are not broken.

Did you ever play at a high level in those "so called MMO"? Maintaining a rotation != spamming skills. But if you only know XI and XIV, this concept may be a bit harder to understand.

On top of having an order to execute spells/abilities, like A > B > C > A > D... You also have a priority order list to follow. A/B/C/D may be the four "damage" abilities you will use the most, on top of that you will have other things to manage. Like refreshing DoTs, refreshing Buffs, etc.

This can become extremely complex because of procs that doesn't occur in a steady manner (i.e. : X% chance of your next cast to be instant). And also because of battle mechanics that will force you to skip certain spells and will disrupt you in your rotation.

Here is an example of a 32 seconds rotation in Rift, for a Mage DPS. You don't know the spell names/abbreviations, but it doesn't mater.

[FB, (IC), CD, ^SV, Def, ^DT] (/IC) <2s> VB
[FB, (IC), CD, ^SV] (/IC) <4s> VB
[FB, (SL:D), CD, SV, Def,^ DT] <3s>
[FB, CD, ^ SV] VB <4s>

(IC) (/IC) is an ability that consume charge over time (see it like if you were depleting your TP in XIV, gradually over time). When it's on, you do more damage. Since the supply of charge is limited, you have to keep activating/deactivating it only at specific part of your rotation to maximize DPS.

The rotation is so complex that DPS between two mages, having the exact same gear can vary by up to 30%, and that's on a battle dummy (so with no external factor disturbing them). This is a typical example where skill > gear. Someone with gear that's 1 tier lower could out-parse someone with better gear.

Maintaining a perfect rotation in a "real" situation (in raid) will be even more trickier. Only experienced players who know an encounter perfectly well can maintain a high DPS.

Last time I checked, current XIV "rotations" (hard to even use that word for XIV) are extremely easy to follow and the gap between two players, with the same gear, if we had battle dummy, would be non significant. We do rotate spells in XIV not because we want to, because we need to due to high CD.

[Shurrikhan]

Nope, because they're taking out some of the reasons for a rotation to even exist.

As long as there are even a few cooldowns of note, a rotation will continue to exist. A frost mage, for instance, still has a rotation even if it's mostly the exact same spell (Frostbolt).

That said, I don't think rotations will be a end-all strategy in the slightest. If we take another WoW example, many specs will use various different attack procedures under different conditions (Frost Mage, Beastmaster, etc). Just because certain things may be spammed, doesn't mean that they're not strategic, as long as there are times that make it a good decision.

Inversely, a rotation is, as in it's name, repeating. It carries complexity in that you're hitting multiple buttons sequentially to serve a part of your combat strategy. However, there's nothing in a "rotation" itself that's strategic. It's how one fills the gap between what's variable (efficiency, much like how our comboed higher-tier abilities are more effective than un-comboed--tp cost nullification aside), and unvariable (cooldowns). In other words, the selecting of rotations.

I think ARR's freedom from current combo chain mechanics will be almost entirely beneficial. That said, without knowing the way cooldowns, gliding mechanics affecting abilities, or how abilities might modify other abilities will work in ARR, I can't say if it'll turn into a spamfest or just a much freer ability for strategy.

I'll guess hope for the best for now, and expect something less...

*Just my opinion here, and not so much in response to your post, Elexia, as simply brought to mind because of it. I don't at all mean offense.

Edit: reading up further on cooldown mechanics now.

[Laughlyn]

People need to stop hating on WoW as if it didn't do anything right at all. I'm not a big fan of WoW, but there are reasons why it was successful.

Damn right. /99char

MMOs where you just spam skills suck and suck hard. There is nothing fun about clicking every skill you have as fast as possible. I don't know what the hell SE is thinking with the universal cooldowns.. Did they not play SWTOR? That battle system is total crap.

So friggin sick of this Dev team repeatedly trying to fix things that are not broken.

Antipika is right btw, there's much more than just spamming spells / skills in FFXIV.

Compared to WoW, SWTOR & a few other MMO's...FFXIV's Skills & Spells dont share
the same "Distance Range", so good luck trying just standing there
like a "Pro" 2miles away with your 1,1,1,2,5....repeat.

I miss the tactical aspects of fights from both WoW & FFXI.
Like sleep, stun, "Sheep" & freeze order in raids / dynamis etc.
Hopefully 2.0 will have more of these old tactics.

[Ryans]

PvP is going to be instanced only, right? No world PvP, no ganking... you go into an arena and fight other people. So why can't that zone have a tp regen buff? There is no reason to change the entire base of the current combat system and ruin PvE so that PvP can exist. Hell, it might even make PvP have more of an allure because it would be a different combat style than PvE.

I play FFXIV partly because it isn't a game that centers around PvP. Am I upset that it is being added? No, it can be fun kill other players every once in a while. But lowering the complexity of PvE so that PvP can exist is just silly. There is no reason I should have to hit 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 5, 1, 2 with an occasional 4 over and over so that people can go around kicking the shit out of each other.

I guess I'm saying don't compromise one feature to add another SE. You are smart enough to figure out how to do both.

[Ryans]

Last time I checked, current XIV "rotations" (hard to even use that word for XIV) are extremely easy to follow and the gap between two players, with the same gear, if we had battle dummy, would be non significant. We do rotate spells in XIV not because we want to, because we need to due to high CD.

The reason it isn't called a rotation in FFXIV, aside from blm because of how stupidly easy it is, is because the encounters are more about timing of abilities rather than rotating your combos. Take Garuda for example, as a dragoon you can do chaos thrust combo in the first 10%, time ring of talons combo for plumes, and then dread spike combo Garuda before she ports again. When she summons more plumes, you leg sweep and then chaos thrust combo Garuda and probably stop damage at that point and finish off plumes. If you weren't timing your weaponskills to land at the correct time, you wouldn't have that ability ready the next time you needed it.

My point is, I suppose you can call that a rotation, but the fact that you wait almost 30 seconds before hitting the same button makes it very atypical to the common definition of MMO rotations. It certainly isn't a spamfest, by any measure.

As for the part about the dummy, FFXIV has been more about your skill than your gear for the entirety of its endgame existence. It hasn't been about how many weaponskills you can use in a 30 second window, its been about timing those weaponskills to have the maximum effect for the specific boss because of the long CD.

The only thing SE needs to do to fix the current combat system is make a responsive server so that more complicated boss fights will be possible for the majority of active endgame players.

[Antipika]

Well other games have a rotation + timing as well. On XIV you have nothing to focus on but timing, which again makes it easy (bare the latency/responsiveness of the game).

Timing part should be something that is managed raid wide. That doesn't exist in XIV either.

Typical example of a raid DPS burst:

- Casting a debuff that does "Target take +10% damage for 12 seconds".
- Another member cast a spell "Increase Attack/Spell Power of all raid members by 15% for 20 seconds"
- One member use a raid-wide consumable that raises everyone Attack/Spell power.
- All raid members dealing damage then use raid consumable (potions that increase % crit rate for 15 seconds)
- All raid members use their charge/whatever CD they have

All of the above while : maintaining your rotation steady, continuously focusing on boss mechanics and so on.

So yes I may look like I "spam" my abilities/macros, yet it requires a high coordination from everyone to maximize the damage output. And you don't do that for the beauty of it, you do it to pass DPS checks or you wipe.

As for XIV being skill > gear, regarding the dummy example. I don't see how skill would produce a 30% efficiency gap in XIV, if we had a dummy. The only part where skill intervene is in a real situation (when you know a fight, you time your WS/Spells right, for a higher efficiency) but that's about it.

Bad players can keep doing A > B > C > A > B > C rotation without doing anything else, like some people are suggesting in this thread. That's why you have a gap between top tier raiding guilds and the rest. If it was as easy as "spam 1 to do DPS", all guilds would progress more or less at the same pace. It's far from being the case.

And no, playtime is not an excuse for being late on progression. Sure some guilds are always hardcore and raid 6 nights a week; 4 hours per raid. But even among average guilds that raid ~10 hours a week, you can see disparities in the progression pace. What makes the difference? What I just explained above.

Maintaining rotations (individual performance). Raid coordination.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

since it will be fast paced battle system and combos will consume tp

The new video up said combos will now consume TP. Also they added a 3 second global cool down on all abilities.

[Arcell]

Rotations? No probably not. Spamfests? Much more likely. Even if combos stay in a simplified form most will drop it as you can spam WS. Combos now let you negate TP cost as well as some boosted effects, that doesn't seem to be the case for ARR.

It's funny, some people are worried it'll be too much of a spam-fest and others are worried they'll have to sit around waiting between bursts of damage.

The new system doesn't seem to allow for spamming, especially since WS in combos will require TP. You gain it at a set rate with potentially having it capped at the start (if you regen fully between battles). You're going to have to be a lot smarter with your TP management from the sounds of it.

If they're keeping the combo system I would imagine they're going to give us a reason to use them. Even now there's a good reason to use some in combos outside of the 0 TP cost. Mostly increased effects, damage, accuracy, etc...

[Colino]

If they're keeping the combo system I would imagine they're going to give us a reason to use them. Even now there's a good reason to use some in combos outside of the 0 TP cost. Mostly increased effects, damage, accuracy, etc...

And people really seem to forget about that. Barrage outside of combo is almost useless and has a massive cooldown to boot, there's plenty of other good examples but of course haters will continue to hate as expected.

[Majidah]

this is what I'm hoping:

skillchains.

And that its only that chaining those successful skillschains that contribute to the party's limit break bar.

That way it won't be a spam fest, and it will all be about party communication.