Honest Review of Combos and a Suggestion

[Roaran]

First I would like to state that I have a love - hate relationship with combos right now, and I am going to be as unbiased as humanly possible in making this review. My main intention for writing this is to provide the developers with some feedback, and allow for a serious discussion on the implementation of the combo system.

Most of my experience with the combo system, so far, has been with my Marauder and Lancer, so most of the conclusions will draw heavily from these classes; however, I have had a chance to try my THM out, and as far as I know, there are no positioning requirements for the Fire > Fira > Firaga type combos.

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Now, I will start off by saying, I understand this is a very early implementation of the system, and, therefore, is in an incomplete state or essentially a beta version which will be modified several times in the future. This only enhances the purpose of this thread, as I want to help the developers make more player-driven adjustments.

What is Good?

• Positioning/Movement

The new system clearly has made positioning a factor, as before positioning only mattered either to avoid enemy actions or incapacitation. Positioning is incentivized for two reasons: to activate combos and to maximize weaponskill power. Taken separately, however, each mechanic alone would have accomplished the same result.

What is Bad?

• TP waiving

This is a bit complicated, but understanding why this seminal feature and how it has effected the balancing and implementation of the combo system is important. First, by waiving the TP cost of the proceeding weapon skills, the damage of the weapon skills and the rate in which TP is accumulated has been reduced. These, taken alone, are not a significant ordeal, as they are merely relative and have no real bearing for a new player. However, when coupled with the next point I wish to make, I think the problem facing combat will become clear.

• No Choice

No Choice amounts to No Strategy. In combat there are a few combos to choose from; however, these combos are defined for very specific situations and there is no real divergence from the set actions for each combo.

Take Marauder for example. There are arguably three roles to engage in battle: Tank, Single Target DD, and Multiple Target DD. And for each of these three roles there is a clearly designated combo. Tank being Heavy Strike > Skull Sunder; Single Target DD being Brutal Swing > Maim > Godsbane; Multiple Target DD being Storm's Path > Whirlwind.

In each of these situations, there can be no deviation from the specified combo, as it is always the optimal choice.

The Result
Taking TP Waiving and the limited choices together, there is one clear result. There is no situation where I would use nearly half of my weapon skills outside of a combo. And, depending on whatever role I assume, I will rarely use more than 1/3 of my weapon skills.

My Suggestion

• Remove TP Waiving
• Reduce TP Costs
• Keep enhancement of Weaponskills by Positioning
• Remove Positioning Requirements for Combos
• Increase Quantity of Combinations and Effects

This outline vaguely represents what my suggestion will entail, but I will try to elaborate further.

Removing the TP Waiving is significant, as it then forces choice. With the current combo system, the choice is simple; 3 weapon skills for the price of 1. By removing the TP Waiving, you must choose to either to deal damage now or save your TP for a more devastating combo. As a result, you cannot keep the new TP costs. 6,000 TP for a combo would be hard to accquire, given the max TP is 3,000 and the difficulty in accquiring 3,000 more TP through the duration of your combo sequence. My suggestion would be something around 500 > 1000 > 2000, and the finishing move could allow any extra TP to increase damage or the combo's effect.

The new positioning is a positive improvement, but I would like it decoupled from the combo system entirely. Placing enhanced damage, for example, on certain weaponskills (Brutal Swing for example) would accomplish this alone. By decoupling the positioning requirements from the combo system, combos can be made freely regardless of role albeit at the cost of some effectiveness.

Finally, combos should be made freely and the skills used should be at our discretion. For example, if I have 3000 TP, the combo should be something I form. Whether it is Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder (For extra enmity) > Whirlwind (For extra Enmity and AOE as an example). Every skill should be chainable, so long as we can get the TP to do it. Because a limitation is made by TP and not arbitrary action, we will only be able to chain a few skills still, yet the variance in effects and skills used are greatly increased.

I just realized, for FFXI players, you could think of this simply as the ability to do self skill chains. So, you could either just use skills randomly, or do them in a certain order to gain certain effects.

[Irana]

I honestly dont see whats so bad about situational...in fact I love that you get a specified combo for each situation (taking the mrd example I mean(

My HATE with the combo system is lag.

Im currently leveling Gladiator and my biggest issue is UI lag.

I use fast blade into savage blade combo because its all I have available to combo with at lvl 27..

The issue is...after the first combo I carefully wait for savage blade to cooldown to reuse it in a combo...the issue is THE COOLDOWN ON SKILLS IS A LIE. I wind up having to wait like 10 extra seconds after it cool downs because the damn game tells me "its not available to use right now" despite the cooldown already has gone away.

This has messed up my combos SO many times.

[Medura]

Have played as archer myself mostly, so im talking out from that:

Remove TP Waiving

- No, please dont, it gives us a reason to use the combos. One extra attack for free tp is great, and it is great that we have to earn it.

Reduce TP Costs

- This has already been done pretty much, tp waiving is a great way to get more tp while also being able to use other skills.

Keep enhancement of Weaponskills by Positioning

- Yeah, its a great thing, though with archer, solo 8 yards away ... not that easy really. We need to have one of them be less than 8 yards away or something, so we got something for both sitations.

Remove Positioning Requirements for Combos

- Nah, it is a part of the combo, if they remove it, it is like getting double damage without doing anything, then they could just remove tp and mana from the game instead

Increase Quantity of Combinations and Effects

- pretty sure this is being done as we speak, but remember, this game isnt ten year old, meaning it is still lots of stuff to be added.

[Roaran]

Remove TP Waiving

- No, please dont, it gives us a reason to use the combos. One extra attack for free tp is great, and it is great that we have to earn it.

I think you only enhance my point when you state that. If there was no TP Waiving... why do combos at all? The Combo Effect.

Reduce TP Costs

- This has already been done pretty much, tp waiving is a great way to get more tp while also being able to use other skills.

As I said, TP waiving does something much different than simply reduce the TP costs. It gives you 3 weaponskills at the cost of 1. There is NO reason to simply do 1 > 2, when you can do 1 > 2 > 3. There is not mitigating factor in deciding that, as it is simply free damage. If you have a pool of 3,000 TP and, let's say 3 weapon skills each costing 500; 1000; and 2000. You could do 500 > 1000 and save your extra TP for a separate combo OR you could do 500 > 1000, build 500 TP along the way, and do 2000 at the end. The point being, there is no choice in the current system. You just do 1 > 2 > 3, and anything else is pointless. You can't simply use 3, as you can do 1 > 2 > 3, and even if you could do 2 > 3, there would be no point, as you can do 1 > 2 > 3. With my suggestion, you could do 2 > 3, or 1 > 3 or even more interesting things like 1 > 2 > 2 > 3, or 1 > 1 > 2 > 3.

Remove Positioning Requirements for Combos

- Nah, it is a part of the combo, if they remove it, it is like getting double damage without doing anything, then they could just remove tp and mana from the game instead

The weaponskills would still require positioning, but, as I stated, it would allow all roles access to all combos. They still lose the benefit of the enhanced damage from the weaponskills by not positioning themselves correctly though.

As a MRD DD, I only have one effective combo against a single target. Brutal Swing > Maim > Godsbane. I can keen flurry to do it again, but when Godsbane is down, I do Brutal Swing > Maim. And I'm saying, yes this is MUCH better than last patch, as previously I would only do 3k TP Maim and brutal swings from behind. But, just taking the changes to brutal swing, I would be moving regardless if they had added combos. So, it is actually just redundant to place them in both areas, unless it was specifically designed to limit the skills we would want to use, which IMO is counter productive.

[Medura]

500 + 1000 + 2000 = 3500
how will you do a combo like that?

archer's combo abilithies starts with 1k, meaning second must be 1k and finishing must be 1k. We dont have more than 3k tp, and if we had, it would take 2 minutes to get enough to do ONE combo. I do believe they thought pretty much through this. Its simple math anyone can see ^^
Btw, the combo effect alone isnt enough to make the combo worthwhile, if it was like that, id rather just use the strongest skill i got over and over.

edit:

"all roles access to all combos" one thing: read patch notes, the point of combos is that theire exclusive.

[Roaran]

I think you're misunderstanding. As MRD, why should I not be able to do certain combos that are exclusive to Marauder?

Secondly,

500 + 1000 + 2000 = 3500
how will you do a combo like that?

500 TP is one hit, that will fall between the 1000 > 2000.

And they don't have to be 1,000 each. You could use invigorate and get some 4000 TP combos in.

I have a serious question to ask, what is the point of using a skill that costs 3000 TP alone, when you can chain it in a combo for 1,500 TP? Do you see how there is no situation when you would?

[Medura]

if you use any skill, any attack in the middle of the combo, the combo is cancelled.

you need 3k tp to be able to use that skill in the combo.

[Roaran]

I wanted to have a serious discussion, I'll address your last point:

if you use any skill, any attack in the middle of the combo, the combo is cancelled.

you need 3k tp to be able to use that skill in the combo.

Auto attack is the only ability that generates TP, Auto Attack does not interrupt combos, therefore, auto attack can generate tp in the middle of combo sequences and allow you to make combos that require more than your maximum TP.

[Medura]

ah sorry, it doesnt work like that on archer so didnt know. We throw a rock that does 20 damage as auto-attack, so i kinda do my best not to use it, also it build no tp either.

If one use the shot "auto" attack we got, we gain tp, but it breaks combo. So if waive would dissappear, then tp would have to dissappear from archer completely too.

[Roaran]

I had thought that light shot or whatever it is called now did not interfere with combos, if that is the case, then that should be changed.