Thread: The Culling: Moving into 5.0

Because the jobs in this game are already easy enough as it is. While I agree that 1-2-3 combos are not challenging in the least, they provide a punishment in the form of DPS loss if you hit incorrect buttons. There are already jobs to play in this game if you don't want to have so many buttons to hit. There are very few jobs; however, that provide much of a challenge to play well.

That's not a challenge, that's just dexterity/memory/fat finger problems.It's not an error in judgement, it's just being trigger happy or being so focused on mechanics you mistakenly hit the wrong button. The difficulty of a battle should be the mechanics and teamwork. That said, reducing button bloat by consolidating DRG's basic rotation into 2 individuals buttons

Button 1= DoT/Debuff combo: ID-DiS-CT-WT-FC
Button 2= DPS combo: TT-VT(gives HT's buff)-FT-FC-WT
Remove HT

Bam, you just saved 8 slots by condensing 10 individual hotkeys into 2.

Then, SE have more room to add interesting things to the jobs like more buffs/oGCDs and job-specific gimmicks to make gameplay more dynamic other than a basic rotation.

Exactly. If they eliminated the cumbersomeness of button bloat, we could have more interesting job gauge interactions and more abilities instead of it being focused heavily around combos. Then they could bring back single GCD DoTs like Phlebotomize and Scourge.

Originally Posted by Ekimmak

What would you replace them with? What "innovative and interesting" combat mechanics would you put in the 8 slots we just lost use for? I know I sound a bit bitter, but I literally don't see the point of culling all the attack animations for "ease of use".

I would start by allowing all jobs to set all of the "Role Actions". I can't count the number of times I've thought to myself "Golly it would be mildly helpful if I'd remembered to set tank-stun for this 4-man dungeon, but oops, I still have Shirk equipped", "Hah, I remember this old dungeon mechanic that can be skipped with a Silence! Too bad nobody sets that role action!", or "Reprisal is neat in theory, but it's never getting top-5 pick". I know some people who would be happier if they didn't have to have a macro to Set Protect, Cast Protect, Swap In Different Role Action.

Aside from that, I'm sure the dev team could come up with some other interesting actions or buttons. You know we're just going to get more and more actions with further level cap raises, and my standard 36-button hotbar situation is already bursting at the seams. They're probably going to be forced to address the button-bloat with the next expansion anyway. Heck, the default keyboard UI only gives you 24-buttons to work with before customization.

Originally Posted by Raldo

I would start by allowing all jobs to set all of the "Role Actions". .

That's specifically what they don't want you to do.
The point is that you have to make a choice. If you could have all of them then they could simply give back all the skills to jobs and that's it
(Fine, there aren't that many choice when half the skills are garbage that can't be used out of solo content)

A first good step would be
1- Make mandatory kills baseline (like, truly mandatory) skills such as "taunt, lucid dream for healers, esuna, refresh, etc etc". (basically the no brainers. I don't consider rampart, largesse, shirk and some other as mandatories. they're just the only "good choice", but you can definitely do most content easily without them. Whereas Esuna, Taunt and Lucid Dream are somewhat more than vitals)
2- Replace all the crap with actual good skills (or even traits) that would make player actually have a choice. Basically, makes things such as Largesse, Rampart and Virus less obvious choice.




Some skills are simply bad because they're under tunned.
For instance, Life Drain, if it were a 30-60sec cd with a very high healing potency (like a good 15-20k health, you can remove the dmg if you want), that would be good.
Not something pro would use, but heck I wouldn't mind having a strong self heal once a minute for PF runs. That would have saved my life more than once

Or a sprint cd reduction for melee, like a trait "sprint now has 30sec cd"
What if healer had access to "Enhance rez - 360s, rez someone instant free without the stat debuff" or even "reduce the cost of Res and it's cast time by 50%", out of the sudden Swiftcast doesn't feel that "mandatory" anymore. Or at least I could use it with something else without fearing some will die within 60sec
What if there was a trait : "Dying reset Lucid Dream cd" or "Triple the starting mp after being rezzed". Is it situational? heck yes, would it be an actual good choice for healers struggling on new encounter? For sure. there's nothing worse than dying after popping Lucid Dream to be rezzed with nearly no mp.



I mean, there are tons of things they could add to make the choice actually relevant.
Heck I wouldn't even mind if they'd reduced the choice to only 3 skills, as long as the core one are baseline. (namely, Lucid Dream taunt etc)