Combo Action Button

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And? The amount of key presses available in any given GCD is identical. You have 1-3 keys you can actually press at any given time. 8 GCDs out of 10 in ST, you have 1 choice. 1 per 10 GCDs has at most 3 choices. Another GCD per 10 has at most 2 choices. Now you have as many keys for the you have the maximum number of choices ever simultaneously available. It feels like you're fighting to get 10 one-dollar bills over a single ten-dollar bills when they can only even be spent in increments of ten dollars.

The key presses themselves are the same, which keys are pressed aren't. You're conflating the two despite them not being the same thing.

And your preference... trumps all other preferences? Why does your preference exclude an option that generally neither adds nor reduces difficulty except insofar as fitting buttons into a comfortable keyboard space, which, by your own words, isn't a difficulty either?

If my preference is the majority, yes. Which seems to be the case hence why it isn't happening yet. Should that ever change in a future expansion, then my preference will no longer trump all. Nevertheless, it won't be introduced as an option because it wouldn't be optional. The moment SE moves to combo consolidation is the moment it becomes their solution going forward. People who prefer unique key presses will simply be inundated with new abilities because they have no reason to prune or upgrade anything. Hence why there is so much push back whenever this topic comes up. We all have our preference, whichever the devs feel works better is the one they'll side with. Currently, that is to keep combos separated.

I, too, am not looking forward to new abilities while bloat is still rampant, but I think we -- and many others besides us -- will have very different ideas of where and how that bloat exists. Piercing Talon, though underwhelming, does not seem bloat to me so long as mitigateable melee downtime will exist, and I suspect mitigateable melee downtime will exist so long as variable percentage of melee downtime will exist -- for without that mitigation balance would shift more steeply towards either the minimization or maximization of the number of melee in a given party, constraining either encounter design freedoms or player compositional freedoms. What is the point of Lucid Dreaming so long as non-tanks do not partake in mob-gathering? What is the point in Diversion, so long as it will only ever be used as a lowest-priority burst CD among many, used on-CD thereafter? Even the devs have realized that at best Invigorate guts sustained physical AoE and merely punishes death in a randomized manner and have thus removed it. So why do we still have LD or Diversion or Protect? Piercing Talon at least cuts the average ppgcd loss of downtime by ~30%, helping to tighten melee-ranged balance. It sure as hell deserves improvements, but it has a good reason to be there. But we'd sooner scrap that than 2-minute CDs that can be performed at near optimal performance by an auto-clicker? Or over continuing to lock out access to 13 out of 14 weaponskills in the majority of GCDs? ...Your solution path seems a bit paradoxical here.

You are once again conflating two different things into a singular argument; in this case, contradicting itself. Piercing Talon is button bloat because it's worthless in virtually every scenario imaginable. Alphascape has been especially cruel to melee DPS yet there is precisely one scenario where it can be used with any degree of consistency. And that is you're targeted second for the Fist mechanic in O11S. In any other scenario, you'll have enough time to maintain your combo. And therein lies the problem. If you break a combo with Piercing Talon you could have otherwise kept simply waiting around to re-engage the boss, it's a guaranteed damage loss. There are zero scenarios where breaking your combo will ever be a gain unless you were going to lose it anyway. This is why I consider Piercing Talon button bloat. The times in which you'll use it are so staggeringly low a good number of people don't even bother putting it on their hot bar. If they want to improve it, go right ahead—take it off the GCD. If they aren't, delete it because it serves no purpose otherwise.

None of this compares to Diversion or Lucid; the former being essential for tanks to maintain aggro outside tank stance, and the latter providing the same coverage whilst also restoring MP. Invigorate used to be more valuable when TP actually mattered. The changes to SB made it a non-issue outside of AoE scenarios. So like Piercing Talon, it's uses were minimal... though still less minimal. They've elected to remove it instead of reworking it. I want them to pick between the two for Piercing Talon.

And, just what are you expecting from upgraded abilities?

Honestly? Not much. If they go that route, it will likely be potency numbers and possible animation changes. I don't really want them to add a slew of new abilities or do anything significant. Better they focus on fixing the imbalances they couldn't seem to figure out throughout Stormblood. To be entirely honest, I want almost nothing changed to jobs like WAR, SCH, BRD and etc. so they can pay better attention to DRK, WHM and MCH all of whom have struggled for relevance.

Except we've already seen this before.

Except this isn't the same thing. You don't announce something like this seven months before your expansion launch only to say "jk, we changed our mind!" some three months later. The devs have already long begun working on whatever changes they plan to implement for 5.0 proper. And we know they never do huge overhauls mid-expansion. Therefore, expecting combo consolidation in 5.0 is wishful thinking at best for those who want such a change. Could it be re-visited come 6.0? Maybe. But it isn't happening for 5.x. Frankly, if I were to speculate, they had considered combo consolidation in PvE and used PvP as a testing ground. The heavily divisive response steered them away from it.