I hope the next expansion reverses Heavensward's emphasis on rotations

[MasamuneBranford]

To me, it was a breath of fresh air when A Realm Reborn was released and the combat emphasized reactive gameplay over proactive gameplay (dodging, and keeping close eye on the enemy as opposed to spamming large rotations over and over again). Sure, there certainly still were rotations with A Realm Reborn, but they were nowhere near as cumbersome than what Heavensward brought to the table. You still need to dodge and closely watch the enemy in Heavensward, only rotations have a much greater emphasis and have gotten much more complex.

With so many good games being released; many want a game they put down and easily pick up later. I by no means feel that difficulty should be nerfed, but I don't think the investment time to get back into the game should be so high. Take a game such as Dark Souls. Difficult, (arguably) but the combat is simply light attack, heavy attack, roll, parry, etc. Highly addicting, fun and difficult gameplay that the player can simply pick up without having to research how to play again. With Heavensward, if I take a break, or if I want to switch jobs, I need to spend a good amount of time in front of a dummy just to memorize my rotation. To be honest, the thought of having to get familiar with the rotation again often prevents me from logging in. You can still have a difficult game without forcing the player to memorize attack patterns.

Those who have mastered the rotations and never take breaks from the game probably enjoy it. I'm sure many of you (likely most) will disagree with me. However, as someone who frequently likes to try out other great AAA titles; it can be frustrating to return and feel like I don't know how to play anymore. I don't think the amount of abilities should be reduced; however I feel like the game should be designed that you fire off an ability as a "reaction" as opposed to one huge "proactive" spam of abilities to buffer your attacks over and over again like a mindless drone. Memorization is not hard. It's a growing pain I feel many have to repeat over and over again. My two cents. I'll go hide now.

[odie]

I really want to see the game start to not lean on the Tank/Healer/DPS trinity so much. I love the battles where the tank CAN'T tank the boss. Like in Stone Vigil HM...there are two of them, they can't be tanked, and some of their attacks aren't telegraphed by the usual AoE markers that people usually look for. Everyone has to dodge and pay attention and it creates a totally different feel to the battle. No more zombie rotations. Unfortunately....there aren't very many battles like this one. I think it would also be good to have fights that would encourage players to mess around with the party makeup a bit.

Example: Titan HM during 2.0

The standard party makeup was 2 Tanks, 2 Healers, 4 DPS. Most everyone struggled with this fight trying to get their relics. It required memorizing the attack tables (especially if you were a healer) and some parties would replace a tank with a DPS. What few realized though was that other party makeups worked....unusual party makeups.

We used 6 Warriors, 1 Scholar, and 1 Monk. The average item level at the time was in the 70's-80's while everyone was still farming capped myth tomes for the i90 gear. We found that we could dependably down Titan with this party 3 times successfully in a half hour period. All of the nay-sayers would be like "It won't work, you don't have the DPS".

6 Warriors could handle much of the Tumults and sometimes eat a Weight of the Land and shrug it off, where a DPS would normally die or be close to death requiring the healer to direct their attention to them and heal them sometimes leaving the MT vulnerable to Mountain Buster unmitigated by stoneskin or heals. Because of the Warriors being able to withstand this damage with ease, it left the healer to focus more on the MT as long as the SCH and the MNK stayed out of AoEs. The monk existed in the party for the Limit Break to kill the heart. After the heart was down, the Monk was no longer vital to the party and continued to DPS. So while many thought we were walking in with a fail party because we didn't stick to the 2/2/4 makeup, we turned Titan into an easy farm even for beginners. Not that I recommend turning every fight into a faceroll...but it would be nice to see fights that allowed for many different party makeups so that we wouldn't exactly have to rely on the trinity for queues. Imagine queueing for a duty and having a faster spot because it wasn't so full of DPS trying to get int but only 4 slots were available per party. Like how can join Frontlines as any job.

[ToasterMan]

You pretty much just explained why I quit raiding, I'd rather have hard bosses and not so complex rotations rather than the other way around. Oh well, people like it I guess

Of course there was a lot of other reasons, but that was one of them. Me being a BLM main might have something to do with it

[Pence]

Dark Souls can afford to have 'simple' game play due to it being offline. Go play Darksouls with 250+, or 200+, or 150+. I'm sure you'd still -love- the simple game play.

If you don't want to invest time into learning your class in an MMO.....play XIV? It has a story mode you can 1-2-3 through. Harder content requires you to invest time into leaning your class? Shut up! How dare SE!

Rotations are still simple AF in HW. A lot of skills come down too Press 1 > Is OCD up? If Yes: Hit it. If No: Press 2 > Is OCD up? If Yes: Hit it. If No: Press 3.

Complex AF man.

[Zojha]

Dark Souls can afford to have 'simple' game play due to it being offline. Go play Darksouls with 250+, or 200+, or 150+. I'm sure you'd still -love- the simple game play.

It happens in XIV as well with telegraphs - Sure, you might "think" you dodged that landslide. You might be way out of it on your screen. But lol-lag will have you fly the other way anyway just because.

[odie]

Rotations are still simple AF in HW. Complex AF man.

And also boring AF. I love Monk rotations...but a lot of the content is nothing but that....hitting the same rotations over and over....the added skills do little to make it more interesting. Moving away from the constant rotation dependence could help create much more interesting battles. And lets face it....with Square-Enix happily pulling the nerf trigger on any content that comes out, many players won't learn their rotations because they simply don't have to. If they design fights that no longer consist of rotation, rotation, rotation, rotation...more players would be able to enjoy content, and many people that get tired of those who won't learn their job will have less to get upset about. This isn't so much about getting rid of complex rotations and more about making content that isn't so heavily reliant on them. At least that's what I got out of the OP.

[Pence]

It happens in XIV as well with telegraphs - Sure, you might "think" you dodged that landslide. You might be way out of it on your screen. But lol-lag will have you fly the other way anyway just because.

You didn't get it.

[Pence]

And also boring AF.......

The only content that requires rotations are content that is balanced around playing some-what optimally. Don't want that? Don't participate. Simple. Even if SE 'got rid of it' there will STILL be optimal skill usage and requirements. They can not get rid of it - if they do? Everyone learns mechanics and can just heal through the damage, slowly chipping away at the mobs HP - hello 18 hour fight, again.

[odie]

The only content that requires rotations are content that is balanced around playing some-what optimally. Don't want that? Don't participate. Simple. Even if SE 'got rid of it' there will STILL be optimal skill usage and requirements. They can not get rid of it - if they do? Everyone learns mechanics and can just heal through the damage, slowly chipping away at the mobs HP - hello 18 hour fight, again.

You probably misunderstand what I'm saying or don't understand fight concepts different than what we have that actually would work with the game we currently have. What we currently have...is the same thing....Every duty. Mechanics may SEEM different...but normally...its exactly the same. Once we realize this...it becomes natural again as it should be.

My observations are like this...I'm a healer so I see this all too often.

Floor AoE in various patterns - AoE is dangerous don't stand in it. We get a new duty, people act like its the first time they've seen this before.
Gathering mechanic. - New duty, everyone acts like its the first time they've seen it before.
Mob with the same moveset every time we encounter it - New duty, this same moveset seems to catch everyone by surprise.

This may seem totally unrelated, but it's not. Because you see, these mechanics, once recognized as familiar, become easy footwork, sometimes able to be ignored, and then it becomes nothing but a fight full of rotation, rotation, rotation. These rotations aren't all that hard to do. Keep your counters up, know your positionals, etc. But they are tiresome. Think of all the old content we have now. We simply just rotation until it's all dead. That's all we do. It's the only thing we do...ever. I'm not saying to get rid of all of it. But what I am saying is that it would be great if SE would start to design fights outside of the normal formula to keep it interesting instead of pretty much the same braindead fights we currently have.

While they don't move MUCH out of the regular fight designs we have...two of my most favorite fights in the entire game is Twintania, and Ultima.

Twintania
- Tank is occupied while party is off handling other mobs. A healer either heals the entire party or goes off to heal the other tank (if there is one).
- Switches to a mechanic that comes into play much later into the fight dropping links. Managing Conflag and Fireball (been a while i don't remember the names) which while is a simple preschool color sorting mechanic, requires players to pay attention.
- Switches to divebombs where players (even though the mechanic is played other than the way it was intended by dipping into the pit) are required to work in unison to dodge the attack. (like titan's double weight of the land)
-The snakes...more than just trash mobs. Their deaths had to be handled carefully.
-Taking out mobs with immobilized players while paying attention to a mechanic that killed you for standing in one place.

Ultima
-Tanks swap while healers are put to work, party is distracted by many different aoe and primal mechanics, party having to work together to destroy the bombs by walking into it as a group (although now we are too overgeared for it to be as important.)

These fights and other raid fights are designed in such a way that they change constantly instead of repeated mechanics over and over (Every garuda fight ever plus most boss fights). Are you afraid of having a fight where you'd have to do something other than your rotations? Afraid of losing your stacks and your comfort zone that allows you to keep doing your rotations over and over? Ever changing mechanics, especially ones that take players out of their regular comfort zones (such as tanks being unable to have enmity on a target or dps unable to always have their stacks/dots up) keep the fight more interesting, adds a level of fun, and if the fights can be designed so that the mechanics are no longer ignorable, overgearing would keep it from becoming too faceroll.

While it is fun managing rotations, i think it is extremely boring if you have a fight that you are able to keep your rotations up for long periods of time. It sounds like easy mode to me.

[SendohJin]

Rotations are still simple AF in HW. A lot of skills come down too Press 1 > Is OCD up? If Yes: Hit it. If No: Press 2 > Is OCD up? If Yes: Hit it. If No: Press 3.

Complex AF man.

have you tried doing that on DRG or BLM?