Why can't we just have combo chains?

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather just see actual skill combinations, rather than rigid action strings that force a single decision to take 3-10 buttons (or, the same button spammed 3-10 times).

[ForteNightshade]

Which would free up more slots for other stuff, imagine actually having more ogc moves or even chained moves like GNB has, you could make a 3-4 step base combo flavoured with just as much moves inbetween and even branch it out to use different skills, like, adding a buff at the end, a stack to your jobgauge...

Rly lazy ppl could just spam the combo and maybe some ogc, but skilled ppl could weave like crazy.

Except they wouldn't add nearly enough to compensate. Dragoon only had two new buttons added yet with a combo chain consolidation, it'd lose six. There is no way they'll add six new skills; not to mention you press oGCD significantly less in most cases. Dragoon, in particularly, would devolve into 22221111 the vast majority of the time. Monk would need an entire rework since you constantly rotate combo chains. Ninja be arguably the worst; spamming 11111111 while hitting 2 once every 30-40 seconds to refresh Huton.

While no, pressing 1-2-3 isn't magically harder or more skillful, it does give a feel you're doing more. Spamming a single button repeatedly feels very boring to a lot of people, myself included. Personally, I would prefer if instead of new buttons come 6.0, they expanded the combo chain. So say, Disembowel could combo into Full Thrust which does something different.

[Brightamethyst]

Ninja be arguably the worst; spamming 11111111 while hitting 2 once every 30-40 seconds to refresh Huton.

Welcome to healing.

[Arohk]

Except they wouldn't add nearly enough to compensate. Dragoon only had two new buttons added yet with a combo chain consolidation, it'd lose six. There is no way they'll add six new skills; not to mention you press oGCD significantly less in most cases. Dragoon, in particularly, would devolve into 22221111 the vast majority of the time. Monk would need an entire rework since you constantly rotate combo chains. Ninja be arguably the worst; spamming 11111111 while hitting 2 once every 30-40 seconds to refresh Huton.

While no, pressing 1-2-3 isn't magically harder or more skillful, it does give a feel you're doing more. Spamming a single button repeatedly feels very boring to a lot of people, myself included. Personally, I would prefer if instead of new buttons come 6.0, they expanded the combo chain. So say, Disembowel could combo into Full Thrust which does something different.

I'd say, reduce global CD to 1.5 seconds, and reduce the cooldown of all skills as well. but thats another topic.

[ForteNightshade]

Welcome to healing.

Yep. It really sucks too, especially for Scholar.

[Canadane]

SE likes to lower the ceiling not raise the floor.
Unless it's a healer, I guess.

[Maeka]

what combo chains do healers have? my white mage does not have any combo chains,

As long as the ability is useless on it's own, there is no reason to waste an additional hotkey for something else, i'd really like to bind my defensive abilities but there is simply no space.

Weird, with both PLD and GNB, I have every single ability bound to my bars.

Every. Single. One.

But then, I have 3 hotbars.

1). 1 through =
2). Shift+1 through Shift+=
3). Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+=

And I've not seen a job yet that fills up all 36 slots and I have all jobs on Level 80.

Tell you what, I'll log on and screencap my hotbars on both jobs.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tknvtk5gfj...tbars.png?dl=0

I am missing a couple role actions on GNB but I have plenty of room as you can see.

[Jirah]

I say make it a option not force every job to utilize it. I personally would never use it and it wouldn’t work for some jobs but to spit in the face of versatility is a crime. And even if it’s anemic it would make some jobs very boring and the games doing a fine job at that with as is reduced difficulty

[Maeka]

I say make it a option not force every job to utilize it. I personally would never use it and it wouldn’t work for some jobs but to spit in the face of versatility is a crime. And even if it’s anemic it would make some jobs very boring and the games doing a fine job at that with as is reduced difficulty

I can't really think of any jobs it WOULD work for, really. I mean... even if you take, say, PLD, you'd be turning 4 buttons into 2. Wooo. You'd be going 1-1-1 or 2-2-2. Is it really THAT hard to do 1-2-3 or 1-2-4?

Let's see here... MCH only has one combo so you'd save a whopping 2 buttons, woo. DRG would be a nightmare to do properly, as would MNK, fact is MNK would be even worse because of how their stance system works with their combos, where you have 1 three-button combo, but each button has 2 different choices depending on what you need at any given time.

And Ninja, again, just like MCH, Ninja only has 2 3 button combos, and a whole load of oGCDs that wouldn't be helped whatsoever by the proposed system. BRD wouldn't even see any benefit, DNC... I don't think you'd want to do this, because of how their procs work. And I suppose there's a single combo for RDM.

I just........don't see the need in it.

The two jobs that do have lots of combos and combo abilities are the two jobs that this would be terrible for.

[Shurrikhan]

I can't really think of any jobs it WOULD work for, really. I mean... even if you take, say, PLD, you'd be turning 4 buttons into 2.

5, technically. At present, Atonement acts only as part of the RA combo.

fact is MNK would be even worse

That exact subject has its own variety of beaten-horse dust at this point. It'd require PB not to be a Leaden Fist bot, but apart from that Monk can handle all Form-based weaponskills within 3 keys without issue.

DNC... I don't think you'd want to do this, because of how their procs work.

It actually makes little difference for them save for when luck allows you to time procs to raid buffs for added damage. Without funneling damage into buffs, which is largely out of your control anyways by nature of RNG, it would cost no sustained DPS to use just 1 ST and 1 AoE button for all 8 of DNC's weaponskills -- or, if you still wanted the same rarely-influential freedom, 2 buttons for ST and 2 for AoE.

The two jobs that do have lots of combos and combo abilities are the two jobs that this would be terrible for.

That said, I agree with your overall conclusion. The most combo-based jobs would finally show how little complexity, in terms of action-flow, they actually have, while those with only a thumb's depth more complexity in that flow (e.g. RDM) would keep the same bloated button-count as before, leaving an awkward gulf between their apparent designs.

Above all, if the idea is to remove combo-based button-bloat, then we shouldn't just leave n-1 combo skills unusable at any given time as we have before, even if that means fundamentally changing how combos works. If DRG has two combos, it should have access to two weaponskill buttons... at all times. Pressing [1] once should not lock you into pressing [1] four more times before effectively locking you into [2] for your next five globals. You ought to be able to choose, from balanced or at least situationally-useful choices, between [1] and [2] in every given GCD.

:: Again, though, this hardly matters to me, as I'd rather see the same number of buttons we have now, but with each action able to be used, situationally or macrorotationally, on its own, such that they form synergetic combinations from individually powerful tools rather than rigid sequences that merely increasingly deepen button-bloat.