Consolidated Combos would solve the issue of button bloat going into Shadowbringers

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Dragoon does have slight button bloat. Why do we need two separate combo openers: True Thrust and Impulse Drive? DRK, WAR, PLD, NIN, SAM all have 1 combo opener GCD that branches. Further, why does Heavy Thrust exist? SAM get their damage buff from their 2nd hit, as does WAR. Vorpal Thrust is just pure damge with no buff or debuff, why not give it HT's buff and also make True Thrust open either combo. Bam now you have 2 free slots.

As an offtopic aside, I don't think DRG will get a 4th Jump unless it's a conditional oGCD or a straight upgrade. Moreover, SE addressed the issue of jump animation lock associated with jumps by giving us Mirage Dive. Mirage Dive, for all intents and purposes is a 4th Jump in that it's a ranged oGCD, but it doesn't cause personal animation lock because there's no movement (the dragon spirit does the jump). Giving us a traditional jump means more animation lock. If they made it like SSD/DFD to reduce animation lock, then DRG will have 4 gap closers, while other jumps only have 1. It would be a bit ridiculous.

Because DRG double weaves. Heavy Thrust lets you fit in all your buffs before Chaos Thrust, which is your strongest GCD. Doing what you suggests makes it impossible to fit Battle Litany, Blood for Blood, Dragon Sight and a potion before Chaos Thrust. Therefore, you'd have to delay something, which is ultimately a damage loss. Adding to this, putting it on Vorpal Thrust means we now have to start with our weaker combo first, which throws off raid buff timings. And before you suggestion Disembowel. That would make us either drop a combo or override Chaos' DoT. All these leads to more damage loss, especially in fights with multiple targets like M/F.

SAM doesn't have these problems because the bulk of their damage comes from Shinten and Midare. They can also afford to delay a double weave and lose nothing doing so. DRG can't.

[Grimoire-M]

Because DRG double weaves. Heavy Thrust lets you fit in all your buffs before Chaos Thrust, which is your strongest GCD. Doing what you suggests makes it impossible to fit Battle Litany, Blood for Blood, Dragon Sight and a potion before Chaos Thrust. Therefore, you'd have to delay something, which is ultimately a damage loss. Adding to this, putting it on Vorpal Thrust means we now have to start with our weaker combo first, which throws off raid buff timings. And before you suggestion Disembowel. That would make us either drop a combo or override Chaos' DoT. All these leads to more damage loss, especially in fights with multiple targets like M/F.

SAM doesn't have these problems because the bulk of their damage comes from Shinten and Midare. They can also afford to delay a double weave and lose nothing doing so. DRG can't.

Pop the potion pre-pull at 2s then. It's not like that moment you're running up to the boss can't be put to use, and it loses absolutely nothing that way. If you're using Elusive to get in for some reason, you'll have to give that up, but it's worth it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Pop the potion pre-pull at 2s then. It's not like that moment you're running up to the boss can't be put to use, and it loses absolutely nothing that way. If you're using Elusive to get in for some reason, you'll have to give that up, but it's worth it.

Uh... no. DRG uses their potion three GCDs into their rotation. Using it at two seconds pre-pull means we lose four GCDs under a potion, one of which includes the second Chaos Thrust. None of this even accounts for Elusive, which can delay your GCD even further, thus losing more damage under your pot window. If anything, Dragon Sight would be moved around. Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull. In fact, I think only BRD and healers use pots pre-pull

No, it's not worth it just because you dislike pressing an extra button. You don't even play DRG. Stop insisting it needs changes, especially when they impact its optimization.

[Grimoire-M]

Uh... no. DRG uses their potion three GCDs into their rotation. Using it at two seconds pre-pull means we lose four GCDs under a potion, one of which includes the second Chaos Thrust. None of this even accounts for Elusive, which can delay your GCD even further, thus losing more damage under your pot window. If anything, Dragon Sight would be moved around. Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull. In fact, I think only BRD and healers use pots pre-pull

No, it's not worth it just because you dislike pressing an extra button. You don't even play DRG. Stop insisting it needs changes, especially when they impact its optimization.

A potion won't give as much as any of the cooldowns you'd have to shuffle instead for it, including Dragon Sight, which is worth more in the opener. Regardless of where it moves it'll miss the second Chaos Thrust in that scenario, and buffing the first one under all raid buffs is better than the second 30s later when they're all gone. That's the better adaptation if that happened.

[Ruinfeild]

Regardless, there's a reason none of the melee DPS or tanks use their potions pre-pull.

Not sure what groups you run with but most if not almost all tanks when ask about potions in the balance discord are told to pop them at least two seconds pre-pull. Hell, I do it all the time.

[Kabooa]

"We're not going to do this" tends to be a poor argument because they're people, and people change their minds.

[Acelyn]

Imo that would just make the game boring, where's the fun in tapping the same button over and over? maybe because i'm on pc with a controller the game feels more action-y to me. Honestly not all the jobs need new attacks some are fine as is, they should start bringing new ones out that they can tweak into oblivion...full jobs, not blue mage fake jobs.

[Raldo]

I'm not sure how pushing 1-2-3 is any more fun or engaging than 1-1-1. It's not like this suggestion eliminates oGCDs or other skills that aren't in a combo. Generally speaking, this idea might reduce your button count from ~30 to ~26. You still got lots to press, and the expansion is surely bringing more.

I can get on board with some of the arguments against this idea, but "this reduces the fun" I just don't buy.

[Kaiserdrache]

What I hope with Shadowbringers, should happen, due to Technique Points gettign removing and all classes needing to be reworked and rebalanced due to this change is:

1: Outdated and useless Skills should get removed from the Game and replaced with new and better designed skills that are useful everywhere in the, regardless if you play some instanced content like a Raid or Primae Battle, or of you just explore normally the maps, regardless if you play PvE or PvP content in general

2. Job Skills should get completely reworked and individualized for all Classes, so that they are not shared anymore between jobs of the same role. This wil lstrenthen the uniqueness of each class

3. Traits need to get completely reworked to be more than just only a few lame Stat Boosts and a few mechanic unlocks of some skills for some additional effects. Traits need to be alot of different individual options with that players can change the way how you play your clas,s and what effects their skilsl have, like similar in GW2, where traits are chooseable OPTIONS, thus help in individualizing your character, instead of this power gaming that exists in FF14 that allows people to learn and use everythign always - no miracle then that people call it then a "button bloat", when you have like 32 skills or so to handle and more
reduce this better to just only maximum 16 skilsl in your skill bar of your class, with like a real big pool of options of skills to use and change those 16 skill slots out with to give this game more character individualization and build diversity.
Its better to have only 16 skills with you, able to choose out of a pool of like 160 skills for your class, those that you want to use.
Than to have only 32 skilsl out of a pool of 32 skills and everybody is the exact same like you, there being absolute zero individuality in this game aside of fashion like what we have here in FF14
Having to swap between several skill blocks, just distracts only,especially because every, just everythign shares the same slots, be it skills, items, commands, mount/mount orders ect. because you have to constantly swap your skill blocks out, just to be able to use the skill you want to use.

4. What FF14 needs is a ring menu to perform many things from it simply, without needing to put everything into the "skill bar"
A skill bar is what its named - a skill bar, this should mean that also only skills should be put into it, nothing else, everything else should be useable via a ring menu openable via a single button press, that needs to be quick and easy navigatable, half transparent, so that it doesnt block the players sight on whats important to see, while its up
Reducing the number of skilsl classes can actually have with them, reduces not just only skill clutter/bloating, but alos makes it for SE alot easier to balance classes for PvP.
This would massively reduce the slot bloat, if stuff like items, commands, mount and so on could be just used via ring meno, than to put it into the skill bar, where it takes away space for actually putting a skill into the slot


5. Implement FF12s gambit system, with that we can practically program our characters to perform automatically certain things, if specific preset conditions are met, like for example, using potions in certain moments, this would help cleaning up iterms to be removed from the skil lbar, to free the place for actually skills, as long we have what is needed to perform the action in our inventories. Same could be done with skills, so that not absolutely every skill would need to be put into the skill bar to make usage of it, if there would be ff12s gambit system in FF14 helpinmg us out with the skill management to reduce the skill slot bloat

6. The Stat System should get completely overworked, seriously have never seen a worser Stat System in an MMROPG, than in FF14 It should get a Stat System, which provides Stats, that are useful for all classes, which doesnt make a stupid differentiation between class roles, has no pointless class specific stats and makes also no dumb differences between combat classes and non combat classes. Stats need to be shared among absolutely all classes, regarddless if combat or not combat class.

What FF14 needs is

- Power > Increases Maximum Damage you deal with Skills/Spells and the Maximum Health of a Character (individually for each Class differently). For Non Combat Classes increases Power the Efficiency of the Progress for Crafting in regard of Collectors the chance to obtain an item more than just 1 per gain
- Vitality > Increases Defense of the Character against Auto Attacks & Condition Resistance and decreases chance to get critically hit
- Precision >Increases Critical Hit Chance and the Maximum Damage of Auto Attacks. Increases the Chance of Collector/and Crafters to get HQ results/the efficiency of raising the quality % of an item you craft, what currently Control does
- Intelligence Increases Maximum Mana Points to perform SKills/Spells and reduces Recharge Times of Skills/Spells
- Wisdom Increases Defense against Skills/Spells and Activation Speed of Skills/how fast you can switch Weapons in combat
- Courage Affects how strong you produce Aggressivity with your Actions and increases the resistance against CC effects, likes stuns, transforms, or how strong platform changes affect you, like at Leviathan or Sophia, so that you can keep better control of your character
- Agility Increases Movement Speed and Attack Speed of your Auto Attacks, fastening their intervalls of happening. For Crafters and Collectors it affects how fast they perform their actions, especially as Crafter, how fast they perform their automatic crafting to reduc the time it takes to fulfull it, increasing the amount of items you create per process at certain thresholds of Agility
- Luck Gives you a chance to dodge/block/parry Attacks or even counterattack them and affects Drop Rates for you and the amount of Gil you receive from drops.

[Shurrikhan]

While I don't think hitting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-6-5 on Dragoon is any more entertaining than hitting 1-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-3-3-3 or really even 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, I'd actually much rather see combos made more flexible than that they be consolidated, especially without the tiered structure useful to that consolidation.

The ideal structure for key-shift play is something with an equal number of choices at each stage in decision-making (thus creating a geometric series, over n steps until cycled, of its total number of choices -- e.g. 3, 6, 9 or 3n (n=3) in the case of Monk). At present, Monk is the only job that would lend itself well to key-shift play, and even then only without considering Perfect Balance, which would have to be completely reworked.

In Opo-opo, Monk has three choices. In Raptor, three choices (True replaces Boot, Twin replaces Dragon, and One-Ilm replaces Destroyer). In Coerul, three choices (Snap replaces True, Demo replaces Twin, and Rockbreaker replaces One-Ilm).
In its first GCD, Dragoon has three choices. If he uses Heavy Thrust, he then has two real choices. Once either of those two remaining choices are used (with or without Heavy Thrust), the 2nd GCD has no choices (well, 1 and only 1). 3rd GCD - no choice. 4th GCD - no choice. 5th GCD - no choice. 6th GCD - no choice. 7th GCD - 01 to 3 choice. 8th GCD - 1-2 choices. 9th GCD - no choice. 10th GCD - no choice. Etc. Though it certainly makes no sense in its present setup, it makes little sense in key-swap consolidation either. The table of skills is simply very poorly designed. 3x1x1x1x1x1x2x1x1x1x1x1 does not a cohesive system make.

And, again, though the worst offender, it's not the only job unfit for a key-shift system. The standard Spinning Edge, Fast Blade, Heavy Swing, Hakaze, Hard Slash, etc. opening melee skills kidney shot that system from the beginning. Unless one is willing to sacrifice access to AoE skills and ranged skills mid-combo, the disjointed expansion of skill-tables following the opening ST melee (e.g Hakaze into Yuki/Shifu/Jinpu for a 1x3x1 table) prevents any fewer than the maximum spread's keys from being used at all times.

Now, if we're willing to give up that access, locking ourselves into a choice set for the full 10 seconds of combo or whatnot, then we could have something like this:

Hakaze ----- Jinpu -------- Gekko
Enpi -------- Shifu --------- Enpi
Fuga ------- Yukikaze ----- Fuga

But, frankly, even that looks awful.

A much better option, imo, would be to give each ability actual weight. Still allow for rotations, but there should be inherent value to each skill.

Make use of TP. It's every bit as much a matter of bloat at present as Dragoon's skill count. It's a resource dedicated solely to ensuring that everyone takes and presses an additional button's worth of bloat every two minuets. (Apart from ensuring that physical classes are always inferior in sustained AoE compared to casters).

Use TP as the guiding parameter for combos. Every skill can be used on its own for additional power based on current TP. You regenerate TP over time. Before adding in additional factors, the simple idea is that the more potential damage there is in a skill, the more TP it would consume. If you want to open into combat with Heavy Thrust into an immediate Chaos Thrust spread across three targets, that'd just barely be possible, but it'd cost and maybe even diminish the last of those three Chaos Thrusts. If you attempt to use a skill without sufficient TP, it cuts down its duration and potency proportionately.

Let's say we regen 50 TP per GCD. Let's use the example of a Dragoon for this. And let's say we have a TP maximum of 500 by level 50 and beyond. Here are your TP costs:

True Thrust - 0
Impulse Drive - 20
Vorpal Thrust - 100
Disembowel - 120
Full Thrust - 240
Chaos Thrust - 270

Each action reduces the cost of skills deeper within its combo set 50%, stacking multiplicatively.
Thus in a True Thrust combo one would generate 50, 0, -10 TP, for a total of 90 TP regenerated over 3 GCDs. That means you could afford a free Full Thrust every 2.66 FT combos, and a free Chaos Thrust every 3.33 FT combos.
An Impulse Drive combo, likewise, would generate 30, -10, -20 TP, for a total of 0 TP regenerated over its GCDs. Thus, if rotating CT, FT, FT, FT, would regenerate 270 TP every 4 combos, enough for a free Chaos Thrust every normal use of Chaos Thrust.

Note that if Heavy Thrust weren't a thing, CT-FT-FT-FT;repeat would perfectly time to Chaos Thrust's DoT's replacement at a 2.5 GCD. 30 seconds / 2.5 seconds per GCD = 12 GCDs; 12 GCDs / 3 steps per combo = 4 combos (per 30 seconds).

So, every time you'd normally be able again to Chaos Thrust you could Chaos Thrust an extra time. And every 3 rotational strings at level 50 by which you'd refresh Chaos Thrust, you could (if maximum TP were high enough) replace the whole of an FT combo (TT-VT-FT) with 3 back-to-back Full Thrusts.

There, now you have variety available to rotation, a bit of added flexibility, a way to manage your own TP to bring melee ramp-up more in line with that of casters, and no need for a two-minute cooldown. And with all that you can give each skill importance of its own, e.g. Vorpal Thrust for pushing enemies to the side via paired WASD / AnalogStick movement, Full Thrust for knocking enemies into the air, Disembowel for its auto-parry component and its bonus counterattack damage, etc., etc. Now you finally have a functional and meaningful use for all of those weaponskills and for the TP system restricting them.