Combo Action Button

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Why did I not take that as agreement with my sentiment that they should makes fixes in such a way that doesn't sacrifice the amount of gameplay available to a job, both parts currently functioning and not? Because it doesn't. Piercing Talon as an oGCD would fill no purpose more than pre-SB Leg Sweep did in raids. You are still thinking of it as just a button, and not a component of gameplay. I can slap on another 6 oGCDs to weave through and it would change nothing about gameplay past the first sorting for ppm by opener order and desync breakpoints -- which occur entirely prior to combat.

Operative word being "if".

Did you actually read my argument. I literally said if they're going to fix it, they should. If they aren't—which they haven't done in six years—remove it because the current implementation renders it useless. It doesn't matter what purpose it could fulfill or how useful it could be. If they aren't going to change it, then abilities like Piercing Talon are button bloat because they serve no functionality. Comparing to Leg Sweep only epitomizes that. CC abilities are generally useless in this game outside Eureka—to the point I'd wager very few people bother with them. You keep arguing in a "could be" scenario.

Because you continue to apply slippery slopes fallacies to the very idea of it. We are not at a point yet where consolidation is wholly necessary, let alone combo consolidation, but we have both addressed the hypothetical. IF it came down to it, I would sooner protect the amount of gameplay a job has available to it, because to me that is the only purpose the buttons have. Individual skills do not need protection of their individual buttons when they cannot function except in sequence. At that point the only gameplay you have is sequence. So, yes, IF it came down to it, I would protect gameplay over button count, button-to-action correspondence over button-to-skill correspondence. That is all we've been disagreeing on.

It isn't a slippery slope fallacy to posit combo consolidation will result in less skill pruning. Or that they aren't add enough abilities to compensate for it. The entire purpose of such a change is so they wouldn't have to make any others. And it's the primary concern many people have with the feature even being optional. It removes any incentive. After all, if DRG went suddenly had six extra slots. What reason to the devs have to remove other abilities that aren't useful? Likewise, they aren't going to add a slew of new abilities or it defeats the point of removing any to begin with outside of a new flashy animation. You go on to mention abilities that are almost all oGCDs and/or you typically press sparingly. Defiance/Deliverance for example is two buttons you'll virtually never touch except during your opener. These aren't the same as a combo which you'll spend the vast majority of your time executing. Hence why there is much more pushback about combo consolidation than making Shield/Sword function like Grit.

As for PT and gameplay. I hardly call it compelling gameplay to use a garbage range attack on a melee DPS even if they did make it so your combo wouldn't break.

Nonetheless, we'll have to disagree on that because you seem to find it more interesting than I do.