Combo Action Button

[SDaemon]

I disagree that ability bloat even exists.

And yet it does, though it has gotten a lot better since ARR/HW. Back when Stone, Malefic etc and their different levels took up their own keybind space.

Even now there are abilities that serve no purpose being their own separate actions. Impact, for example, shouldn't have to be a separate spell on the hotbar, just bundle it into Jolt II.

Just because it can fit on your bars doesn't mean it isn't bloat. Having an ability/skill for the sake of it, is bloat.

[Shurrikhan]

And yet it does, though it has gotten a lot better since ARR/HW. Back when Stone, Malefic etc and their different levels took up their own keybind space.

Even now there are abilities that serve no purpose being their own separate actions. Impact, for example, shouldn't have to be a separate spell on the hotbar, just bundle it into Jolt II.

Just because it can fit on your bars doesn't mean it isn't bloat. Having an ability/skill for the sake of it, is bloat.

Sorry to argue technicals, but... how is that an example of bloat? Stone I was literally the current Role Action Break but... 50% more potency, and thus had situational reason to exist. Malefic II was never used at the same time as Malefic I. The only change to occur with 'skill pruning' was that you didn't have to swap it manually when level synced. That's more a QoL change than anything anti-bloat. For comparison, changes like Fell Cleave <> Inner Beast did reduce button bloat, albeit without doing anything to skill bloat (which WAR never much had, fortunately).

To the rest, though, completely agreed.

[Vrankyl]

And yet it does, though it has gotten a lot better since ARR/HW. Back when Stone, Malefic etc and their different levels took up their own keybind space.

Even now there are abilities that serve no purpose being their own separate actions. Impact, for example, shouldn't have to be a separate spell on the hotbar, just bundle it into Jolt II.

Just because it can fit on your bars doesn't mean it isn't bloat. Having an ability/skill for the sake of it, is bloat.

Impact being bundled into Jolt II doesn't really work. There are times where you don't want to cast Impact over Jolt II, mostly whenever your proc timer is really close to ending since having your cast cut off hurts your DPS. Having the ability to avoid that removed would do nothing but irritate me greatly. Now if they were to fix that then yes I'd be on board with it being one button, but so long as the proc fading cuts the spell off mid cast Impact can stay off on its own button. Not that Red Mage really has an overwhelming demand of buttons. Though my other main being PLD I might be a bit biased... PLD could use help.

[Shurrikhan]

Impact being bundled into Jolt II doesn't really work. There are times where you don't want to cast Impact over Jolt II, mostly whenever your proc timer is really close to ending since having your cast cut off hurts your DPS. Having the ability to avoid that removed would do nothing but irritate me greatly. Now if they were to fix that then yes I'd be on board with it being one button, but so long as the proc fading cuts the spell off mid cast Impact can stay off on its own button. Not that Red Mage really has an overwhelming demand of buttons. Though my other main being PLD I might be a bit biased... PLD could use help.

Two easy solutions:
1. You bundle the effect, not the button.
2. You snapshot cast requirements in the same way you snapshot Attack Speed. If it's there when you start the cast, it's there throughout.