Gnashing Fang Combo, one button?

[Riko_Futatabi]

The moment I got Continuation at level 70 and saw how it worked. I questioned why the Gnashing Fang combo also wasn't one button. I feel Gunbreaker has a lot of skills and to reduce "button bloat" having this work as Continuation does on one button would help slightly with that. And you may say "Why not for other combos then?" and maybe you'd be right to question that also. But I only say this for the Gnashing Fang combo because it has a ~30 second cooldown. It's used 25% of the time compared with the regular combo + Burst Strike. They do this all the time with the PvP skills. However. I've noticed in PvP it feels a little more "clunky" to weave skills sometimes. Perhaps it's just because I'm not used to the one-button combos as much. Or maybe it's something specific to PvP. Who knows~

Anyway, curious on any others thoughts about this also!

[Quor]

I get where you're coming from, but given that a major complain about tanks nowadays is the lack of a meaningful skill ceiling, I don't think making it easier is the way to go.

[Riko_Futatabi]

I get where you're coming from, but given that a major complain about tanks nowadays is the lack of a meaningful skill ceiling, I don't think making it easier is the way to go.

If all jobs had these one-button combos, similar to PvP. Sure they would be easier to play. But I guess the real questions here are: Why make something more complicated then it needs to be? Why should more buttons be the challenging part of a job? I think it's smart what they did with RDMs Verfire/Verthunder becoming Verholy/Verflare and then Jolt becoming Scorch. You are using less space on your hotbars but can have bigger combos when they are layered on top of one another like this. RDM is a pretty simple job mind you. But this doesn't mean things like this cannot be done for other jobs.

So if you can see what I'm saying, it would make jobs easier now yes. But in future who knows what they could come up with if things got layered on top of buttons you already use. The challenge can still be there. More and more you see SE giving jobs these "[Skill] Ready" buffs so that they can re-use buttons, making combos longer without making the hotbar a mess. The hotbar set up shouldn't be the challenging part of a job.

[Warskull]

I get where you're coming from, but given that a major complain about tanks nowadays is the lack of a meaningful skill ceiling, I don't think making it easier is the way to go.

Making a class difficult through bad interface design is just bad design. We could make tanks harder by require them to push two buttons for every skill too. Everyone would agree it would stupid.

I can at least understand why the main combo for Paladin, Dark Knight, and Gunbreaker are separated. While rare you may wish to to into 1->2 mode if you really need the mana or health in some rare situations. No real reason to make gnashing fang eat up 3 buttons.

There should either be a macro options or a PvP style combo option available for players to put on their bars if they want.

If you want to make Gunbreaker harder, do it in meaningful ways.

[Quor]

Making a class difficult through bad interface design is just bad design. We could make tanks harder by require them to push two buttons for every skill too. Everyone would agree it would stupid.

I can at least understand why the main combo for Paladin, Dark Knight, and Gunbreaker are separated. While rare you may wish to to into 1->2 mode if you really need the mana or health in some rare situations. No real reason to make gnashing fang eat up 3 buttons.

There should either be a macro options or a PvP style combo option available for players to put on their bars if they want.

If you want to make Gunbreaker harder, do it in meaningful ways.

It's easy to assume it's artificial difficulty, but the fact is we don't know how all of these things are coded. Maybe the combo has to be on three separate buttons because if it isn't then interspersing literally anything else will break it just like it does with Continuation. You use ANY GCD skill during during your Renzokuken without first using Continuation and it cancels the Continuation combo for that step. This creates an opportunity for skill to be displayed because it locks you into certain patterns with this combo. The goal when doing damage as a GNB (or anything really) is to keep your damage cooldowns on cooldown as much as possible. There are plenty of times where even a single GCD of difference in Bloodfest means you're sitting there waiting, unable to target a boss, essentially wasting precious seconds that a cooldown could be ticking. It's not uncommmon for a Burst Strike to be thrown out in the middle of Renzokuken (which doesn't break THAT combo, but WILL break Continuation if Cont. isn't used first). This provides a brief moment of respite from the normal pattern of 1-2-3 combo's by now adding in a layer of priority-based complexity, and can be used to "cook" things in such a way that you can use Bloodfest earlier than you would have.

But let's be honest, this thread is simply the "Storm's Eye is a chore" thread with a GNB-flavored tint on it. Idiots won't be happy until they can push a single button and the boss instantly blows up. Then they'll come to the forums to complain how bored they are and how it's time to move on, ded gaem etc. Point being, the difficulty isn't simply a matter of "interface." It's created, on purpose, by the devs, so that we have a hurdle to overcome. If you want one-button wonders, try Cow Clicker, or any of the other mindless clicker-games out there. Yes, difficulty in this game is contrived. All of it. That's why it's a game. Goals have to be set for us, challenges created that we overcome, and difficult trials created that we can weather in order for us to have any feeling of accomplishment.

The inverse of this request is to ask SE to just have every boss stand still and occasionally use a raid-wide aoe (to proc certain counter-skills like Riddle of Earth you see) while we just wail on it for 10 minutes. It's "bad interface design" to have to use non-combat keys like WASD to waste time moving around when I could just be spamming my one god-button that plays the entire game for me.

Which would be stupid of course. Just like this request.

[Ultimatecalibur]

But let's be honest, this thread is simply the "Storm's Eye is a chore" thread with a GNB-flavored tint on it. Idiots won't be happy until they can push a single button and the boss instantly blows up. Then they'll come to the forums to complain how bored they are and how it's time to move on, ded gaem etc. Point being, the difficulty isn't simply a matter of "interface." It's created, on purpose, by the devs, so that we have a hurdle to overcome. If you want one-button wonders, try Cow Clicker, or any of the other mindless clicker-games out there. Yes, difficulty in this game is contrived. All of it. That's why it's a game. Goals have to be set for us, challenges created that we overcome, and difficult trials created that we can weather in order for us to have any feeling of accomplishment.

That is a bit hyperbolic. The problem with Storm's Eye is that it doesn't fit very well into the rotation. Compared to Paladin's Goring Blade (which has a natural flow of GB combo -> RA combo -> Atonement x3 -> GB combo) Storm's Eye doesn't have a natural place to smoothly reapply in the rotation.

The Gnashing Fang combo's problem on the other hand is that it feels unnecessarily bloated. You compress it down to 1 gcd button and 1 ogcd button and have room for 2 more gcd buttons (may I suggest using this new space to add a cartridge generating combo to follow Lightning Shot and a cartridge expending ranged attack?).

[Shurrikhan]

It's easy to assume it's artificial difficulty, but the fact is we don't know how all of these things are coded. Maybe the combo has to be on three separate buttons because if it isn't then interspersing literally anything else will break it just like it does with Continuation. You use ANY GCD skill during during your Renzokuken without first using Continuation and it cancels the Continuation combo for that step.

...Sonic Break?
...Burst Strike?

That's literally 40% of your single-target rotational weaponskills that are not themselves Renzokuken.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd like the option, if truly just an option, though I doubt I'd personally use it.

As it stands, combos in this game are a joke. None are actually "combos" so much as multi-press singular decisions.

For instance, in the vast majority of scenarios, a DRG effectively has only one single-target action, Rotate, just with 8 different keys necessary to continue using that action over its 10 steps. It generates its damage buff on the second use of the action (potentially enforcing some ability delay) and a DoT on the third (occasionally enforcing some target selection) and the rest is a constantly reaimable DoT of the given average ppgcd. Tactically speaking, 4/5ths of those steps are devoid of any decision-making in most situations, and 7/10s in the remaining situations. At any given GCD the most choices you can ever have is 2, which occur at most once every 5 GCDs thanks to Lance Mastery.

You could effectively replace it with auto-battle, merely requiring that the DRG swap to a target that will live long enough for the DoT to be maximized on step 3 and making sure to use Life Surge, when possible, before step 8, and you'd lose zero complexity.

But, you would lose the illusion of complexity, and with that will come mental engagement, for many. More importantly, though, you'd lose very literally (and merely) mechanical engagement (i.e. hand-movement), which aids many a player in keeping pace of the fight and ensuring they don't clip uptime with their oGCDs since they retain a feel for each animation lock.

So, which do we follow? Do we shatter the illusion by offering a means of play free from artificial convolution (i.e. hand-movement with zero link to actual decision-making), in hopes that we can get real complexity in the future? Do we admit the illusion, but still mostly embrace it by adding further bits and pieces of button-consolidation that we were previous unwilling to include (like the Gnashing Fang combo, given that would apply to it arguably should apply to any other combo, but we don't want to consolidate those)? I'm not sure.

Generally, I dislike having almost only illusory complexity, but I have little hope that, once revealed, that emptiness will actually be replaced in any way. I certainly don't want to be forced into consolidation, and I don't think I'd personally use it except in the most reasonable forms such as those already seen (and arguably several other opportunities, like Ley Lines <> Between the Lines, etc.). But, again, I'd appreciate the option. Good luck serving the white knight crusade if that can of worms does get fully open, though -- and combo skills, even a CD-limited one like Gnashing Fang, may well be a tipping point for that.

[Freyyy]

As it is currently designed, there is zero reason for the Gnashing Fang combo to not be one single button. It's not a "real" second combo since it has a CD and you can't mess the order up at all. Other combos in the game can be screwed up by pressing the wrong buttons or can be used twice in a row, leading to a wrong rotation (like doing Chaos Thrust twice in a row for example), but this one is basically just like an IR/Delirium/Requiescat spam window but instead of pressing the same button over and over you press 3 different buttons with an oGCD spam in between. It's artificial "complexity" to make you believe that you're playing a complex job when you're actually just pressing things on CD all day (same goes with Sonic Break being on its own CD instead of being a DoT to refresh and actually watch for).

I believe that all combos in the game are unnecessary button bloat. You're basically using 3 GCDs and 3 hotbar slots for just one complete action/effect. Other games have way better combo systems, like ArcheAge for example, where every skill is a stand alone skill with its own effect, but you can combo some with others leading into extra bonus effects. And you have plenty of them possible between skills from different skill trees. In FFXIV, Fast Blade and Riot Blade for example are completely useless on their own. Their only purpose is to lead into Goring Blade and Royal Authority. They could just make all of them single skills and add in a lot of other skills to create much more interesing mechanics and rotations for every job. But that would require an entire rework/overhaul of every single job in the game and the overall battle system. I think the best solution for them would be to condensate all combos into single buttons (or make combinations of two buttons, like 1-1-1 being one combo, then 2-2-2, then 1-2-1, then 2-1-1, etc... to create even more combos while still using only 2 buttons), that way they have the room to add these interesting extra mechanics to every job without having to completely rework them.

[ReiMakoto]

I find it more fun to have more buttons to press, makes it feel like im progressing an attack rather than just doing the same thing, superficial I know, but I just prefer it. It also goes a long way in making the tanks feel different. I also dislike how buttons work in pvp btw just for consistency.