Combo Action Button

[Shurrikhan]

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. Keeping up maximum DPS despite mechanics is a factor EVERYONE deals with. Mechanics are designed to disrupt you so you can't go ham like you do on a dummy. Regardless of how the combo was broken, it all boils down to disruption from one command to the next.

That "how" matters. Performing less than optimally due to an error of judgment does not feel at all like your performance being mangled because a sweaty index finger slipped one key too far left or right. Sure, the latter can similarly add intensity, but only to the same degree that visuals and audio each add intensity to a film. They are not the same. They do not feel the same. The "how" is not interchangeable and some means of that disruption are going to cause players to feel different balances of, say, ingenuity available (and other things positively felt) and punishment to be inflicted (and other things negatively felt), even at the exact same leniency, all because of how it's done. Food is not all the same thing just by nature of all having (one or more) calories per mouthful.

More importantly, perhaps, "combos" are not what's adding the difficulty there. CD sync, preemptive movement, resource banking, mechanical tracking, breakpoint awareness -- these are very real forms of difficulty, even if varying with job. Remembering to press 3 after 2 after 1 is not. If anything, it's helpful to your sense of cadence and thereby mechanical tracking.

What are you on about? Combo bonuses are all over our tool tips. How on earth are just dismissing the 100 potency skill to start things off? And the sequential skills DO exist outside the combo. You're really confusing me here, because you're not really disagreeing with me, and everything you said in this block is exactly the reason why I say a combo button won't work.

Then I ask, again, which to you is the actual Disembowel?
Disembowel itself --

Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.

Or Disembowel as available only after Impulse Drive --

Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Impulse Drive
Combo Potency: 240
Combo Bonus: Reduces target's piercing resistance by 5%
Duration: 30s

You will never use Disembowel without Impulse Drive first. If you can honestly tell me with a straight face that this

Delivers an attack with a potency of 150.
190 when executed from a target's flank.
Additional Effect: Increases damage dealt by 10%
Duration: 30s
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Delivers an attack with a potency of 200.
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Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
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Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
_____________________________
<Unavailable>
________________________
<Unavailable>
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 160.
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
___________________________
<Unavailable>
__________________________
<Unavailable>

looks like an actual set of skills run in combination, then so be it -- I guess then we have combos. But I sure as hell can't see it as such. To me, our "combo" skills are not skills at all until they're proceeded by their prerequisite skill. That, definitely, can not be a logical combination of actions. It is purely a series, with in the majority of GCDs for combo classes, no options to combine. That is not a combo. It has nothing to do with being static, per se; it has everything to do with the fact that one does not form a "combination" from a single homogeneous item.

"Would you like the $10 combo, with the 1/4lb Angus burger, salad, drink, and side-order?" "What's the side order?" "Mac and cheese. Only Mac and cheese." "Can I just get a drink?" "No, you can only get that combined in the $8 combo." "The burger?" "Would you like the Angus burger and the double-decker BLT?" "The BLT." "Okay, that comes with a salad, drink, and side-order of mac and cheese for $9." "Umm, the Angus then?" "That's only available in the $10 combo." "Can I get... just the Mac and Cheese?" "Sure, but would it really be worth the GCD on its own?"

That's your Dragoon combos. And, though to a lesser extent, the way all our combo systems work. Their sole unique addition to the game is to reduce available choices. Multiple items per choice.

So does executing your combos in this game [-- "it includes significant memory, it includes prediction, and it includes strategy"]. You're making it sound like you can do difficult content in this game on auto pilot. Maybe you are that good, but I sure in hell's am not.

I'm not saying that I can do difficult content in this game on auto-pilot. But it's sure as hell not "combos" holding me back. If anything, they steady finger-rolling it enforces makes content easier (so long as progression is done in a way that allows for optimal practice rather than death-tripping through mechanics) by binding timing to muscle memory. When I feel my finger itching to reach for my third Higanbana, I know TA and CS are about to go off and I know how soon the next mechanic will go up. By the time you're doing any serious content, the combo system is more boon than risk except, again, to the most easily panicked of players or those with physical handicaps.

Ok, now I'm starting to make sense of your post. I think your issue is that the combos in this game are static, so you just execute the same ones over and over again with little variance.

Give me an actual XIV "combo" that you use with variance in continuous ST uptime outside of TCJ prep on NIN or pre-Meikyo/Haga on SkS Samurai. Bonus points if you can show me where "combo" string length is not mutually exclusive with that variance.

By definition it is still a combo.

No. It is a sequence or a set. Again, unless you honestly consider Kasha to be encapsulated by "Delivers an attack with a potency of 100", it is not a combination of existent elements to be arranged logically. Nothing exists outside of that arrangement. It is a sequence or a set.

Just one you use all the time. But cut it out with this 'dumbing' down game play. Get off of your high horse.

How do you not see the irony in this? The longer the "combo" extends the less often you are permitted choice. And a choice from a selection count of one is not a choice at all. It's very simple. The stricter the dependencies and more non-entity a choice is made outside of those dependencies, the less thought is required. I am not saying that XIV combat on the whole is dumb. But it entirely factual that our version of a "combo" system requires incredibly little thought compared to one that actually meets the definition of a combo system (i.e. has multiple real choices which combine in meaningful ways).

I screw up all the time, and I'd be hard pressed to believe you execute your combos with surgical precision for each and every fight, for each an every mechanic. Again, maybe you really are that good, but the average PUG player is not.

I screw up too. Sometimes I forget that my NIN lost uptime the TCJ TA will be late. Sometimes I forget to click off Riddle of Fire before my PB for my double TK into full GL. Sometimes I forget I can hold more Kenki for raid debuffs. Sometimes I waste 5 Kenki because I used Seigan too early and didn't deplete Kenki fast enough before Haga. Sometimes I overextend my Astral Fire during movement phases, thinking I can resolve my AM quickly enough to make it. Sometimes I even let my DoTs fall off just before Raging Strikes. But not one of those things has to do with moving my finger from button 4 to button 5 or E to R to T. I've scarcely if ever made a combo error outside of GCD-crippling lag spikes since I sprained my wrist, and it's not because I'm skilled at the game. It's because it's among the lowest forms of difficulty in XIV. Almost any other reason to misperform will strike you first even if not as obviously. Having everything else essentially grey out and the next viable button light up does not increase difficulty; it reduces it. Yes, replacing that with 1-1-1-1-1 would further reduce difficulty, but that entire concept is only applicable because our actual decisions available are already limited to 1-1-1-1-1.