Let's say we'd get more skills - How would you handle them?

[Blueyes]

In a recent interview about 4.0, Yoshi-P said we won't be having more skills to use.

This is actually inaccurate. What was being talked about was the amount of skill required to perform well with a job. This was in reference to how rotations became more complex with Heavensward. The statement was made to assure that the complexity of jobs wouldn't be further increased.

[Atoli]

This is actually inaccurate. What was being talked about was the amount of skill required to perform well with a job. This was in reference to how rotations became more complex with Heavensward. The statement was made to assure that the complexity of jobs wouldn't be further increased.

I am pretty sure the specific question actually WAS about button bloat. And he answered that rotations will need the same amount of skills as now, which I tried to convey by saying "[won't be having] more skills to use".
After all, unused skills can be taken off the hotbar/keybinds.

[Atoli]

Yeah I think the gameplay of a class changing can be very worrying as well, even if the skill bloat doesn't increase.
With HW, I personally found the changes all to be enjoyable and enganging, but we'll see where it goes in the future.

As for how to handle skills - your skillbinds would make me crazy xD
I just have my main rotation on 1-´ (the numbers row, German keyboard) as well as Ctrl + 1-´, where I actually use my thumb to press Crtl (so I guess using Alt would actually make it easier..?xD).
I play with both hands though, so hitting Crtl + 5 and upwards can be done with the right hand.
The third hotbar is just stances, rarely-used OGC abilities and skills I just need for leveling roulette because they get replaced on higher level (like on WHM, Stone I and II) as well as PvP abilities, and I just click them with the mouse in the rare occasion that I need them.
Even if we got more skills, that set-up wouldn't change, although if the active main rotation skills increased, I'd bind the third hotbar to Alt + 1-´, and add a fourth one for the rarely-used clickable skills^^

[Exidrial]

[...]and skills I just need for leveling roulette because they get replaced on higher level (like on WHM, Stone I and II) [...]

Oh god I didn't even think about classes that get skills replaced. Are those lower level skills completely useless in high level dungeons? If so then why the hell didn't SE just give you a passive at Level X that makes the skill more powerful? Makes no sense to me.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

Oh god I didn't even think about classes that get skills replaced. Are those lower level skills completely useless in high level dungeons? If so then why the hell didn't SE just give you a passive at Level X that makes the skill more powerful? Makes no sense to me.

Mostly because stone 1 has a slow, while stone 2 and 3 are pure dmg. This could be something that is changed to either put slow on all 3, or to take it off completely. If they decide to do what you say, they should do the same thing for astro as well, and change malefic...

[Leigaon]

Yeah button bloat is an issue but I think SE is working on it...

That's what I'm waiting to see how they do. Instead of Shadowskin, Foresight and Rampart. Condense them all down to one and adjust the traits to make it work out better. So for that example you push them all into one skill and add traits as you go along. One to reduce the cooldown time, another to lengthen the duration and another to increase the damage -%.

Mix that up with the spells that need to be written out, should make enough room for new abilities. Fracture, could be tacked onto a weaponskill instead of its own thing.

Or go into something that's more comfortable for me. White Mage. We don't need Stone I , II , III unless they do something drastic and majorly different. Make them one skill and then a trait will enhance it and change the icon / damage. Repose, never used that after so long. Fluid Aura..make Aero I / II / II like Stone but all aoe and give us Tornado as white mage.

What's so hard is that we don't really have much to do in combat besides deal as much damage as possible, so it's difficult to put other things in there. So a lot of things they could put in they can't, buffs don't last that long...maybe that's an issue that needs to be resolved. Instead of chaining in some abilities that do the same thing about, why not increase the duration..cut back on some of the needed buffs and boost that duration.

[Shurrikhan]

That's what I'm waiting to see how they do. Instead of Shadowskin, Foresight and Rampart. Condense them all down to one and adjust the traits to make it work out better. So for that example you push them all into one skill and add traits as you go along. One to reduce the cooldown time, another to lengthen the duration and another to increase the damage -%.

That would only save you one button, while reducing the level of control a given tank has over their incoming damage. I would certainly hope the skills aren't there just to make sure you can passively ("umm, tanky button?") get through whatever situation is designed for us. The numbers can be tuned at will, the only difference then being the amount of passive strength they wish to put into tanks vs. other roles. Your Foresight/Rampart/Shadowskin (of which you can only have two in the first place) doesn't need to be 30 seconds long while mitigating a quarter of all incoming damage. The only reason to do empower the mitigation toolkit is to underpower non-tank survivability, and the only reason to passively ball them up into one when they've had distinct places before is to ensure that a tank experiences periods of weakness (no CD coverage — e.g. not even Foresight/Awareness) by forcing those capabilities to be stacked. Particular boss timings aside, it's no different than taking your Sentinel away in exchange for an excessively empowered Rampart, or your Rampart taken away for a slightly shorter Sentinel CD which falls nonetheless short of meeting the timings you want.

Or go into something that's more comfortable for me. White Mage. We don't need Stone I , II , III unless they do something drastic and majorly different. Make them one skill and then a trait will enhance it and change the icon / damage. Repose, never used that after so long. Fluid Aura..make Aero I / II / II like Stone but all aoe and give us Tornado as white mage.

While I'll agree about Stone II and III, Stone I and II / III are as different as Stella and Malefic. It's your heavy, which merely happens to double as filler damage until Stone II.

What's so hard is that we don't really have much to do in combat besides deal as much damage as possible, so it's difficult to put other things in there. So a lot of things they could put in they can't, buffs don't last that long...maybe that's an issue that needs to be resolved. Instead of chaining in some abilities that do the same thing about, why not increase the duration..cut back on some of the needed buffs and boost that duration.

Increasing the duration of buffs would mean that you spend even more time doing nothing but spamming (filler) damage keys. At present, with very few exceptions (Fracture and ToD) every ability that is weak in the short term is proportionately stronger, if maximized, in the long term. Those buffs are already your strongest damage abilities, but the fact that they're not overwhelming long or powerful does at least allow you the occasional reason to forgo them.

__________________

You could probably redo those triads of each element to be stackable, Magicka-esque elemental modifiers that provide satisfying player control in each situation, variable to each situation, but as long as we're just talking basic SE abilities here, all but Stone II are still as distinct as any other attack arsenal. That may be leaving the bar low, but your alternative would leave it lower still (short a Heavy for WHMs, or spending extra mana to deplete heavy DRs needlessly, etc.).

[Leigaon]

... The only reason to do empower the mitigation toolkit is to underpower non-tank survivability, and the only reason to passively ball them up into one when they've had distinct places before is to ensure that a tank experiences periods of weakness (no CD coverage — e.g. not even Foresight/Awareness) by forcing those capabilities to be stacked...

So thank you for pointing me in a better direction. My original intent was skill bloat, which there is some. Though it shouldn't be applied to everything. With what is there, does it really need to be? So with the 3 tank abilities (Yes I understand you can only equip 2 but I am looking at this from both a job and role perspective), what's the difference between Rampart and Shadow-skin? Nothing, if so very little. Combine them into one and make it a role based skill. Now we can adjust, maybe make Shadow-skin more of a DRK ability or add in something else? With those two there, is foresight really that useful? Or can it stay? If it goes what could we replace it with? If it stays what is a possibility to make it something that feels more within a Warrior role?

This would also apply to the Stone and Stella, I forgot Stella so thank you for reminding me of that. If we take a look at stone I / II / III, what's the major difference? Potency and the Heavy from Stone I. How useful is Stone I to keep it on its own spell? Combining them all into one would reduce the need for the bloat to be on our keyboard in a different way. We're freeing up 2 spaces now for white mage. This isn't my idea though, I have seen this suggestion requested numerous times on healer threads because they're just...button space. Now if Stone I / II / III did something different..and that's a possibility too. Make them do something different or in addition.

You are absolutely right, increasing the buff durations will do nothing but give us more time than to spam filler. Though, they're already dancing with the idea of doing that with DRG BoTD, and I am sure they mentioned others. So now we have more time, like you said, to spam things. What could the devs put in place to take up that time? New mechanics? Or maybe take the ease off of some of the things that are done in general.

So I guess my answer is how would I handle new skills would be re-arranging our olds to;

Make room for new ones
Condense the clutter of old ones
Re-arrange the older ones to be more meaningful.

For example, I'm doing jobs to 60 now to get the stories (I love my story!) and I'm starting with DRG now. I felt like most of my job was hitting Heavy Thurst 90% of the time. I looked on Reddit and the forums constantly and someone posted something about DRG and how it's mostly just doing heavy thrust. So with something like that, why not increase that duration? Or arrange it so it opens up more time to apply other skills or abilities that they could implement.

Or MCH, when we had only so much time after loading our bullets, it was annoying. I felt pressed for time or if a tank ran stopped..looked up at the sky in a dungeon and took the time to think "what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is...here?" only to have my buff go off..wasn't fun. They extended this duration when activating it, and in return..I plan to pick that gun up and shoot some jellyfish thingys! It was a QoL ability change that could lead to more time for other things.

Though, I'll admit that the general description of doing some of this in my previous post just comes out as being lazy. Still, all the suggestions I would hope would be taken as one window closes, another opens.

The tanky ones I maybe wrong, though the Stone / Stella..I have a feeling I'm not alone, just the ones who play the jobs don't see any use for it after so many levels, and with level sync it would be nice to have the traits change them automatically.

Oh god I didn't even think about classes that get skills replaced. Are those lower level skills completely useless in high level dungeons? If so then why the hell didn't SE just give you a passive at Level X that makes the skill more powerful? Makes no sense to me.

Mostly because stone 1 has a slow, while stone 2 and 3 are pure dmg. This could be something that is changed to either put slow on all 3, or to take it off completely. If they decide to do what you say, they should do the same thing for astro as well, and change malefic...

They are useless after so long and if Heavy needs to be in our lives in terms of raiding it might be better off as another ability that a white mage could get more out of? Or if it is tacked on then we just have a very high cost MP heavy ability.

Technically you can just use a button registry swapper to turn Caps into an Alt, so you have it right in line with the others...

Thank you for this post btw, +1 from me. Some real helpful tips that I plan to try out now that the PC is back up and running. Been on PS4 too long, forgot how gorgeous it looks on a good machine.

[Shurrikhan]

So thank you for pointing me in a better direction. My original intent was skill bloat, which there is some. Though it shouldn't be applied to everything. With what is there, does it really need to be? So with the 3 tank abilities (Yes I understand you can only equip 2 but I am looking at this from both a job and role perspective), what's the difference between Rampart and Shadow-skin? Nothing, if so very little. Combine them into one and make it a role based skill. Now we can adjust, maybe make Shadow-skin more of a DRK ability or add in something else? With those two there, is foresight really that useful? Or can it stay? If it goes what could we replace it with? If it stays what is a possibility to make it something that feels more within a Warrior role?

See, this is where I get very conflicted. While I entirely agree with you that Rampart and Shadowskin are too similar, the only course of action I would consider is to diversify them. There is absolutely no benefit in turning them into one. At least as is you have a Rampart with a Dark Knight name and animation. Why take away those assets just because the contents of the skills are redundant? The change would have zero effect on their gameplay except in that they'd each have one skill that looks or sounds out of whack for their job. Do. Not. Remove. Assets.

Rather, simply think about what the DRK toolkit has, or even lacks, and what it would have and lack if Shadowskin was removed. Now, consider how you could fill that niche with something that would fit the name "Shadowskin". Does it play into the general idea of a DRK. Does it imply any undermechanics that would appeal to you? Can you make those undermechanics a real thing? How would they allow for a greater or more varied range of play? Would they be balanced? Now, finally, how do they work with the active, CD-based control provided by the actual new Shadowskin ability? I recommend you work in that direction.

This would also apply to the Stone and Stella, I forgot Stella so thank you for reminding me of that. If we take a look at stone I / II / III, what's the major difference? Potency and the Heavy from Stone I. How useful is Stone I to keep it on its own spell? Combining them all into one would reduce the need for the bloat to be on our keyboard in a different way. We're freeing up 2 spaces now for white mage. This isn't my idea though, I have seen this suggestion requested numerous times on healer threads because they're just...button space. Now if Stone I / II / III did something different..and that's a possibility too. Make them do something different or in addition.

I fully agree that these things, especially when level-swapping, could use some QoL work. My personal favorite way I've seen to handle these would be "shell order" or "fill order". Essentially, you map all your keys for your hotbars beforehand, and then determine a fill order for those bindings, and seperately, those slots. You could also choose whether you wanted to skip to a higher pattern at certain modular values, e.g. "r, f, c" could replace "r, t" which was at the time more convenient for just two keys, and can be in turn replaced by "s1, s2, s3, s4" when you have a remainder of 4 past the previous concrete set. Below is the shell order I used before:

1,
1,2
1,2,3
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4,r
1,2,3,4,r,t,
1,2,3,4,r,f,c
1,2,3,4,s1,s2,s3,s4,
1,2,3,4,r; s1,s2,s3,s4
1,2,3,4,r; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR
1,2,3,4,r,t; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sT (2 at a time now; left side first)
1,2,3,4,r,f,c; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t,y; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT,sY
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,t,v,b; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sT,sV,sB
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,v,b,t,y; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sV,sB,sT,sY
1,2,3,4,5,r,f,c,v,b,t,y,g; s1,s2,s3,s4,sR,sF,sC,sV,sB,sT,sY,sG

For XIV I'd need a few more keys, but that should give you the basic idea. Once set, every one of my jobs filled out the new abilities in skill priority order, condensing and expanding as skills were gained or lost or were determined to be superfluous (e.g. Stone II if Stone III was available).

I believe that to be something like a final means of mitigating the issue, but certainly more than XIV needs.

At present, just tying together redundants by default would be more than enough (WT>F&C, FC>IB, Dec>SC, SIII>SII, MII>MI, etc.) You could even add a right click / context menu option in certain skills accessed via the spell book to "replace" [Stone II/Ruin/Malefic/etc].

You are absolutely right, increasing the buff durations will do nothing but give us more time than to spam filler. Though, they're already dancing with the idea of doing that with DRG BoTD, and I am sure they mentioned others. So now we have more time, like you said, to spam things. What could the devs put in place to take up that time? New mechanics? Or maybe take the ease off of some of the things that are done in general.

So I guess my answer is how would I handle new skills would be re-arranging our olds to;

Make room for new ones
Condense the clutter of old ones
Re-arrange the older ones to be more meaningful.

First, I think the general idea of the only two possible gameplay changes they've noted (BotD and Enochian) are to increase ease of use and create a greater visual sense of their importance. That's a whole lot of weight to be putting on a simple buff bar that's classically undersized compared to the rest of the UI (kidding in part, but I honestly do play with the buff bar at 110% and the rest of my UI at 60%, just to get the duration numbers about as big as my mana cost numbers on my hotbar). It doesn't *look* like it should be the most important thing in your late-game rotation, and moreover it feels jarring to many that their rotation is that dependent on whether or not that buff is maintained (which in itself may seem more tedious than exciting). I think SE's realizing that the level of play required to really showcase those skills is more than a lot of players are going to aim for, especially given how frustrated those same skills have made them on the way to that point. BotD can be thrilling in certain gambles, especially in the contexts of real fights without guaranteed uptimes. But on a dummy? Or in the hands of a player who doesn't realize those risks or rewards? I think it's primarily that SE is considering now that added difficulty is only going to be as exciting as the player's ability to find a path to master it, and therefore is lost on a fair part of the playerbase, and want to find a way to make it a bit less jarring, and a bit more initially attractive. They want to try to reduce the gap, both in output and enjoyment between less skilled and better skilled players. Or... so I'm guessing.

As for your three solution paths, I don't think there's that much to do in the first two paths apart from the obvious parts I mentioned above—putting redundant/pairs in the same slot. The third does potentially have a lot of work possible, and in doing so would likely do what the first two solution paths would, but it'd be something of a from-scratch revision, focusing on the themes and mechanics that comprise each job distinctly, plus or minus what part you actually want to allow to be cross-classed or role-acquired.

[Mirch]

u push more buttons, simply