Things Getting Too Obnoxious

[Odowla]

I mean, not really "reward" attentiveness, most fights once you know them come down to counting gcds anyways, so you can fully focus on mechanics and it'll pretty much be the same thing everytime. A3s especially heavy on this, you end up clipping lead at 12s or there's no time to refresh it later after the first sluice, then you need to clip hotshot at about 18 seconds or it'll fall off at a really bad spot

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

[Myon88]

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

I would consider Heavy Thrust as such, but I get the feeling we're just splitting hairs on semantics here. The point is they are all investment effects of some kind which give you something to keep track of, and yes, by virtue of being as such they are very commonly your highest potency or highest priority attack.

So I think they have a place, if only because they add a marginal and acceptable level of complexity. It might be second nature to you or me to keep it up as needed, or use them at opportune times - but there are no doubt people out there right now losing DPS because buffs like this fall off and they don't notice, so it's doing its job in being an additional check you have to pass to do optimal DPS.

Hot Shot and Lead Shot's 30s duration is a pretty comfortable window too, short enough you can count GCDs to get a feel for when to refresh it, but also long enough that you can use it to count your longer cooldowns ("2 more refreshes and Wildfire is back up" kind of thing).

[pandabearcat]

Examples of button bloat:

1. Basic enmity rotation for tanks. I understand there is -some- decision making there, but imo cycling through 9 skills is about as bad as pressing one button 9 times. Set rotations are just not exactly that fun for me.

2. Combo system in general. Aside from MCH which has some randomness and skill involved (such as holding onto cleaner shot, etc), all melee combos could stand to be one button. I know that wouldn't work for positionals...but 9 buttons for monks could easily become 3 buttons, one for each of the combos (you press it 3 times).

3. All of the Deliverance abilities for WAR. Seriously, why this isn't a toggle between IB/FC, SC/Deci, is beyond me.

4. Ruin III/Ruin I for SMN. Now, there are some cases where you would use Ruin III outside DWT, so I don't mind this. However, during DWT there is no reason for Ruin I to exist.

The biggest way they can solve button bloat however is to make macros actually work.

Allow macros to actually queue.

Use a system like WoW's

/cast [harm, @mouseover] [harm, @target] [harm, @targettarget] Bio II

would be much, much better than our current

/ac Bio II <mo>
/ac Bio II <t>
/ac Bio II <tt>

which can't be macroed, which also casts all 3 in sequence, instead of the smart thing which is actually check with conditions for valid target before casting.

Also, something like

/cast [stance:1] Inner Beast; [stance:2] Fell Cleave

OMG removes button bloat.

Similarly, would make healer macros actually usable for mo/t/tt, instead of unqueueable and always that slight chance of accidentally healing yourself instead of mouseover...the horror.

This is clunkiness.

[Saggo]

Honestly if they just made macros queue properly, that would fix a lot of issues. Not that the system couldn't/shouldn't use an overhaul in general, just that that one queueing change would make a world of difference.

[Phoebus]

Examples of button bloat:

3. All of the Deliverance abilities for WAR. Seriously, why this isn't a toggle between IB/FC, SC/Deci, is beyond me.

You can actually do this with a macro, but i agree there is way to much button bloat without tools to deal with it.

[pandabearcat]

You can actually do this with a macro, but i agree there is way to much button bloat without tools to deal with it.

A macro that cannot be queued, sadly.

Or a macro that can swap hotbars, but that comes with its own slew of possible problems.

[Snowaeth]

I don't see the issue of having certain classes that don't need to do as many obnoxious things to come close to their skill cap.
As long as the balance is there and the classes that have a higher skill cap can actually do higher damage compared to the ones that are more straightforward, we'd actually have more class variety and more happy people.
There would be people that could still play their super high skill cap classes but those that rather play a class with a lower skill cap would also have something to choose from, rather than having to play a class at 80% or whatever %.

[Ryaz]

80% of their current state wouldnt even be anything.

Every class would be put up dots, then 111111111111 111111111111 11111111111 except the melees which would be the same but with 123 123 123 123 123. That doesnt sound fun at all.

That sounds a lot like The Secret World. Loved the game and played it for years (still do at times due to lifetime sub), but the gameplay was literally hitting 1111123. There's a single counter you really have to worry about, but that's about it. I actually made it my goal to find something different and even that was pretty easy to keep up with.

I thought GW2 handled it pretty well. Limited buttons allowed meant it kept bloat down (though certain specs would always be superior, many were stil competitive), but the system allowed for a bit of complexity, especially with weapon swapping or engineer kits.

Right now the bloat isn't horrible (as a PC player anyway), but I can see where console players are having problems and SE is going to have to be very careful going forward to keep it from getting worse.

Even simple things make me scratch my head. Did we really need 5 new active abilities in HW? Did MCH really need two separate damage reduction abilities for magic and physical? It's things like that which lead to bloat. They could have had three new abilties and have two traits which improved two of those.

[justinjarjar]

GW did it better than GW2. Anyways skill bloat is at the verge of being a problem for the PS3/4 crowd (even pc it is at the edge of being too much ie drg is about 3-4 hotbars). Beyond the bloat, which should get looked at before or during next expansion, the jobs got a whole lot more fun to play at level 60 over 50. Might be just me, but I like the added systems most jobs got. I guess some people like mind numbing easy jobs, idk, matters the person.

[Ayuhra]

GW did it better than GW2. Anyways skill bloat is at the verge of being a problem for the PS3/4 crowd (even pc it is at the edge of being too much ie drg is about 3-4 hotbars). Beyond the bloat, which should get looked at before or during next expansion, the jobs got a whole lot more fun to play at level 60 over 50. Might be just me, but I like the added systems most jobs got. I guess some people like mind numbing easy jobs, idk, matters the person.

It's not that I prefer "mind numbing easy jobs" I just prefer rotations be fluid and simplistic and the ENCOUNTERS to be harder. I mentioned on Gen Discussion somewhere that this one thing WoW does very well and is the only thing it still does decently. When the actual combat plays easily you can make bosses do all sorts of insane things and not in a set pattern either. I would much rather watch bosses than timers.