How many skills is too many?

[Kacho_Nacho]

Good topic!

Two hot bars are enough. Anything more than 1 through =, Shift + 1 through Shift + = is excessive. So, to answer the OP's question, twenty five abilities or more are too many skills.

Yes, by using Ctrl and Alt, you can double the amount of skills available but can an average player actually keep track of that many different skills? Humans aren't that good at multi-tasking or remembering more than seven digits in a row.

This is good instance where less is more. Too many skills results in many skills being forgotten in the heat of battle. It's much better to have a smaller set of skills which will be constantly used in combat which is why two hot bars full of abilities are a good amount of skills. Twenty four are enough slots to have your combos, utilities, and situational abilities without overwhelming the player with choice.

[OcieKo]

Well id say about the 20 range for active use skills is right (at least usable every minute or so think more debuff rotation skills that ogcd buffs). But going over that with long term maintenace or out of combat buffs/skills or highly conditionals isnt bad. Such things would include tank stances, protect, stoneskin 2, rez, LB, summons (SMN/MCH), rotation improved maintenance skills like nins huton (could use more like this). So total skill count could pretty manageably hit 40ish, by all means if you include all the mudra combos ninjas have the most job skills in the game, but due to being combo patterns the button count is lowered.

Rotating combo buttons would help a ton i used to make em with macros in my WOW days, tho i did like it being built in when i played GW2, tho for FFXIV theyd have to be based on the end of the combo to accomodate shared start ups. Like for example ninja has 4 combo finishers but just 1 starter and one middle, question is how to make the tooltip reflect this with out adding too many bloat skills, but even them for my nins 9 box of primary use skills itd still make 2 more spaces even with unique start ups.

Other options for less painful skill bloat is add more options to long term ignored buffs/debuffs like Foe's Requiem on bard, maybe let bards choose one of 2 or 3 songs (exclusive use, kind of like can't have both Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon running concurrently on 1 bard) with similarly potent effects but for different purposes, like increases healing recieved or boosts physical damage or improves defense, but to the point where you could say, this group needs this one or this fight prefers that one, so maybe youd use 2 in a raid size boss fight. Skills with more tactical decision making rather than hit everything, more like tank LB mechanics but less do or die.

[Zojha]

Judging by the DF story thread, it would seem any more than 5 is too much >.>

[Ama_Hamada]

9001, one too many.
Though realistically maybe 1-3 buffs, 1-5 ogcd, 6 ocd (enough for 2 different combos) 1 -3 aoe things

[Esp]

Your normal skills + PVP skills + those god awful chat icons. (If anyone uses the damn things)

^ That...that's too many.

[Zephyrin]

More than one skill is already too many according to many players in Dun Scaith. More salt please.

[Khalithar]

For our combat related stuff (i.e. the stuff we use most often), I don't think we should have anymore than 1 to = and Alt/Ctrl 1 to =.

That is to say, two rows of abilities, at most. I'm fine with less also.

[bardaboo]

5-6 active skills.
1-3 cooldowns.
2-4 situationals..

Still Sounds better than every drg in DF.

[Ayer2015]

No more than 2 full hot bars for in combat skills. Anything more than 24 skills feels like bloat imo.

[XiXiQ]

really there's 2 choices - reduce the amount of skills by half, or add a proper macro system that can combine sets without timing interference. I play with a controller, and every time you need to switch, that's more buttons/time involved that has zero to do with any of the skills. I've pretty much worn out the shoulder button on the controller. Stuff like casting 3x stones, 3x ruin, 3x thunder 4x ice/fire, they should simply scale automatically. one single target and one aoe (or one cast, one instant) is all that's required. Then there's the most pointless one, ninja viper/wasp. Two buttons that gives you your full dps? that you only have to press once in a blue moon? make it a trait, it's a waste of space.