Combo Action Button

[Gemina]

Combos cannot and should not be consolidated in PvE. What you're talking about would change the PvE combat system entirely. I don't play a lot of jobs, but every single one I do weaves (sometimes double weaves) ogcds/instant abilities between the weaponskills required for their combos. And if even one job is impacted negatively, then the whole concept crashes and burns.

There is already a limit to the maximum number of skills the devs can implement and give us access to during PvE, and I am sure they are well aware of it. This is reduced greatly due to the game having players that use a controller. This basically gives the devs a maximum of 48 skills (excluding passive traits) to give players access to during combat, or 3 cross bars. The pet classes are an exception and use a 4th, and actually have room for additional skills on this bar if the devs wanted to go there.

There are simpler ways to reduce/prevent button bloat if this is your chief concern. For starters, some jobs have innate gcd skills that go unused because there is always a better gcd to use. Think Repose for WHM. I also believe the role skill system is either being revamped, or (hopefully) being done away with entirely. There are a lot of skills here that can just go away and we won't miss them. Several other skills were wrongfully taken away from their respective jobs, and you can probably expect jobs like AST and WHM to lose access to skills like Eye4Eye come 5.0.

[Reynhart]

I don't play a lot of jobs, but every single one I do weaves (sometimes double weaves) ogcds/instant abilities between the weaponskills required for their combos.

Having several weapon skills on one button won't change anything about the number of GCD you will use, so weaving skills between them would still be the same.

Apologies.

No worries.

I assumed you also wanted to delete Heavy Thrust because virtually every combo consolidation requests comes with that caveat, which would impact DRG in the manner I outlined.

If I could, I wouldn't remove any skill. But, unless we use the consolidated combo system, it obviously won't reduce the button bloat. AFAIK, no first step has any bonus, so at least we could easily fuse all of them for every job.

[Beckett]

Combos cannot and should not be consolidated in PvE. What you're talking about would change the PvE combat system entirely. I don't play a lot of jobs, but every single one I do weaves (sometimes double weaves) ogcds/instant abilities between the weaponskills required for their combos.

What's the difference between
pressing 1, double weaving my ogcds, then pressing 2
or
pressing 1, double weaving my ogcds, then pressing 1 again?

[Gemina]

What's the difference between
pressing 1, double weaving my ogcds, then pressing 2
or
pressing 1, double weaving my ogcds, then pressing 1 again?

I misunderstood the intention behind this combo button. Weaving is not an issue this way, but I still don't know how it would work as not everyone combos the same. NIN has three finishers; DRK goes either 1-2-3, or 1-4-5, so since the second skill either rotation is different they couldn't take advantage of this button in any way. I am sure each combo using a job can provide at least one con about this combo button.

It just seems wonky, and as I said earlier; there are better and more efficient ways to reduce/prevent button bloat. Some of which are issues that need to be addressed now, and not send everyone with muscle memory into a craze as they relearn how to execute their weaponskills.

[Beckett]

I misunderstood the intention behind this combo button. Weaving is not an issue this way, but I still don't know how it would work as not everyone combos the same. NIN has three finishers; DRK goes either 1-2-3, or 1-4-5, so since the second skill either rotation is different they couldn't take advantage of this button in any way. I am sure each combo using a job can provide at least one con about this combo button.

It just seems wonky, and as I said earlier; there are better and more efficient ways to reduce/prevent button bloat. Some of which are issues that need to be addressed now, and not send everyone with muscle memory into a craze as they relearn how to execute their weaponskills.

Totally agreed. Auto-combos don't work for most jobs, because most jobs have off-shoot combos. In PVP they get around this by giving you multiple auto-combos. For example, Paladin has one auto-combo that does Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Royal Authority, and another that does Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone. These auto-combos can work off each other as well, so if you started out with Fast Blade on the first combo, you could still switch to the second combo to finish up with Savage Blade > Rage of Halone. Add a third auto-combo for Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Goring Blade and you've covered all of PLD's current combos in three buttons, and saved three buttons in the process.

Personally, I don't know if I would like this system. I think I would get used to it, but hitting a different button for each part of my combo is fun, and makes a fight feel more dynamic. I still think auto-combos should be considered as a means to reduce button bloat (especially for the rare job that doesn't have any combo off-shoots), but there are definitely other methods they could implement that are less divisive.