How many skills is too many?

[Berethos]

Depends on the job, but I'd say 1/2 of what we use now, with a couple classes edging toward 2/3 of what they use now still being around.

If I consider Bard - right now I have 35 different abilities on my hotbars(not all have keybinds), including keybinds for potions, sprint, and Limit Break. If I don't count those, then it's down to 32.

Consolidate some things - one dot instead of two, which really at this point just functions as a minor "skill" check for getting Sidewinder to it's full potential and giving Iron Jaws a reason to exist (though an argument could be made that they split it up so that one dot doesn't deliver too much damage, though I'm not sure if that argument would hold well under scrutiny), and you wouldn't need IJ either, so that's 2 more slots freed, down to 30.

Cut down on the just there to buff damage ogcd stuff...I currently have 4, let's imagine we can trim that down to 1. So reduce by three and now I'm down to 27.

Shadowbind I haven't used in a long time, even though it's on my bars. Maybe keep a version of it available in the PvP abilities tab, but otherwise gone - 26.

I personally don't see the need for both Wide Volley and Quick Knock going forward...they both do nearly the same thing, with one granting more mobility and the other being a bit cheaper to use. Was fine during ARR, now it's just contributing to skill bloat. Down to 25 at this point.

I'm not sure if consolidating Heavy Shot and Straight Shot is a solid idea or not - it does serve the dual purpose of providing a buff to maintain (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, and personally I think it's miles better than spamming to generate resources to spam other abilities to spend them like I had to in WoW the last time I played) and raison d'etre for Heavy Shot as filler, since that procs a guaranteed crit (crits are fun!)...but perhaps the two could be merged in some way, or the buff baked in to another ability, and same with the crit proc. If that's possible, we're now down to 24, or two hotbars.

Going lower for Bard does start to get tricky - the flavor of the class via songs is an important part, though rather than removing them adding a tech based solution where you click on a button and it pops up all of your song options would work (similar to how Shamans used totems at one point in WoW) - functionally you use just 1 hot bar slot, but you keep all the songs that make a Bard, well, a Bard. If that can be done that's at least 4 more abilities slots freed up (5 if they bake Battle Voice into the effects and balance MP cost accordingly). So...down to 19 used.

Oh, and I cross class Feint, so let's go ahead and not count that...18. I also cross class Second Wind, but it feels like some sort of on demand defensive heal is a good thing to keep around. Maybe, maaaybe bake it and Invigorate together, where it's an ability that both heals and restores TP, and so you have to be more judicious in when you use it. That'd make 17.

Is Quelling Strikes compelling gameplay? An argument could be made for both sides on this one, but if we pretend the side that says it isn't wins on the dev team and they balance threat gen around the idea that classes/jobs don't have a personal drop aggro button, that brings us to 16.

At this point, I'm having trouble dropping any more abilities without feeling like the Bard is losing the aesthetic and strategic variance we currently have.

So for Bard, depending on much they're willing to trim out and with some QoL tech solutions, you could make it to the one hot bar goal. Don't think you'd be able to do that now and perform the same (like, at all), but I definitely think the devs could trim things down to around 20 hotbar slots used or a bit less for each job and still maintain the current sense of each job we have now.