Controllers, hotbars, cycling... Worried for the future

[FinaSel]

I hope that instead of adding more skills / actions, the devs make the new skills "overwrite" some old ones.

This is just a totally hypothetical example to illustrate a point. Let's image the spell "Stone".
Instead of creating a Stone II, Stone III, Stone IV, Stone V, etc and having them ALL on the hotbar because they do different things and are needed at different level syncs, let's take "Stone" (or any upgrade of "Stone") and instead of adding the next tier spell as a separate spell, make us learn a Stone "upgrade", so "Stone" gains an extra ability, potency boost, or effect.

If we are level synced, it would remove that effect for that dungeon.
Once we get "Stone II" we never use "Stone" anymore unless we are in PvP or level synced. The same is true for Stone III.
Why not simply overwrite Stone with Stone II, and when we are level synced it automatically reverts back to Stone?

This could solve the cluttering problem.
We wouldn't have super cluttered hotbars. I wouldn't need to keep Stone, Stone II, Stone III (and in the future, Stone IV) on there because I never know what level synced dungeon I'm going into. One "Stone" which scaled depending on the level sync would suffice!

If they were to implement an "upgrade / overwrite" system, we would just use the downgraded version of that spell or ability when level synced and wouldn't need to remove / switch so many things.

Even now I have 3 hotbars just got all my WHM spells, plus another hotbar for potions and food.

[Xlantaa]

Snip

Weel, you can "cheat" a bit to have this. By using macros. For Example:

/micon "Sonte III"
/ac "Stone III"
/ac "Stone II"
/ac "Stone"

This way, if you have Stone III, use stone III, if you haven't III, then will use the next one, Stone II. Of course, this is annoying because you will read the error message “Stone III” is not a valid action name" all the time on screen...

[Alaltus]

Weel, you can "cheat" a bit to have this. By using macros. For Example:

/micon "Sonte III"
/ac "Stone III"
/ac "Stone II"
/ac "Stone"

This way, if you have Stone III, use stone III, if you haven't III, then will use the next one, Stone II. Of course, this is annoying because you will read the error message “Stone III” is not a valid action name" all the time on screen...

You can uncheck "display error messages when actions fail/display recast timer error messages" in the log window settings.

[LineageRazor]

Weel, you can "cheat" a bit to have this. By using macros. For Example:

/micon "Sonte III"
/ac "Stone III"
/ac "Stone II"
/ac "Stone"

This way, if you have Stone III, use stone III, if you haven't III, then will use the next one, Stone II. Of course, this is annoying because you will read the error message “Stone III” is not a valid action name" all the time on screen...

One problem with this solution is that Stone actually has some extra utility than damage. It's one of WHM/CNJ's crowd-control abilities, with its added weight effect. I used this sort of macro for a while, and was occasionally frustrated when weight could have come in handy but was not easily accessed.

That said, there ARE a lot of abilities that can be combined nicely into one macro. For example, this one I use on PLD:

/micon "Cover"
/action "Shield Bash" <t>
/action "Shield Lob" <t>
/action "Cover" <t>

In this case, the macro works reliably because each action in it is viable under different circumstances.
- Is the target an ally? Then Shield Bash and Shield Lob do not apply. Cover is used.
- Is the target an enemy? If the enemy is close enough, then Shield Bash is used. If not, Shield Lob is used.

There are lots of abilities that can be combined into one button, since they have different valid targets. Unfortunately, Cure spells do NOT work reliably in this way, as they have a default target of yourself. Here's what I mean. Take, for example, this macro I used for a while:

/micon "Cure"
/action "Stone" <t>
/action "Cure" <t>

In theory, if you're targeting an enemy, it should use Stone, and if you're targeting a player it should use Cure right? Normally, that's true - but if you're button-mashing, or even trying to just cast as soon as you can after a previous action, there's a chance you'll clip off the first command and move on to the second. Suddenly, you're casting a totally useless Cure on yourself when you meant to cast Stone. This might not seem like it would come up much, but it happens surprisingly often.

It makes me SERIOUSLY wish you could disable "Target self by default" for Cures and buffs. "Default: Self" is really only useful when soloing content - and even there, it's kind of a crutch that's simply not needed by practiced players. In harder stuff, even if you're NOT using macros, it's all-too easy to accidentally cast a cure spell while you have the enemy targeted, wind up curing yourself, and wondering why the tank is still dying...