Combining some buttons into one

[Ultimatecalibur]

If you want to know what spamming the same button for your entire DPS combo feels like, go ask the healers.

This is hyperbolic. The healer's single target dps "rotations" are made up of 2 buttons a dot and a cast. even with combo compression no jobs rotation would actually compress to a single button. Every current non-healer rotation would still need a fair amount of buttons even if the basic combos were compressed into one or two buttons.

This is problematic for branching combo's, because you need to know what place in the combo you are currently at, in order to keep mental track of your buffs, debuffs and gauge accumulation.
By having it all on one button, you are forced to watch your hotbars continuously, and can no longer rely on muscle memory.

That is completely wrong. If you have every played a console action game with combos you would know how easily muscle memory and visual feedback work to let you know exactly where you are in combos without flashing lights.

Also, there are some jobs it simply wouldn't work for, such as Monk, whose Perfect Balance opens up all combo moves to be used in any order you like.

Perfect Balance is flawed in its current implementation (it is either used for fast GL generation or Dragon Kick+Bootshine spam no real use of the flexibility) and could easily be replace by another method of fast GL generation.

Samurai would still require at least 3 different buttons for it's combos, so it's not saving much space.

Still opens up 4 buttons which is significant considering that a total of 10 buttons are used for weaponskills currently.

Dragoon could theoretically go down from 8 to 4. But again, as you will want to weave Life Surge in before True Thrust, this will make it much more difficult to keep track of.

I think you mean Full Thrust and then you simply do Life Surge after the second press of the True/Raiden->Vorpal->Full combo. If you are using Life Surge on True/Raiden that is even simpler you push Life Surge after you do both WT/FC.

Machinist... might actually be a job this could work for. You don't ideally weave anything in before Clean Shot as you want to use those on Drill/Anchor instead, and the basic 1-2-3 combo doesn't give you anything besides continuous gauge, the only hurdle here is keeping track of that 10 battery gauge from Clean Shot. But this may still result in the job being 'too simple'.

3rd press = 10 battery isn't hard to learn.

This sort of 'simplified gameplay' will go hand in hand with 'simplified jobs' and people don't want their jobs being simplified anymore. It's not merely a QoL change.

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 1, 2, 3 is not more complex than 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 2. It looks more complex but that complexity is illusory.

There is a place for this however, GNB has it in Continuation, and I'd be all for another new job that features this mechanic, if it worked for that job.
But if you apply it to existing jobs, you'll get as much backlash as the healers are giving right now.

False Equivalence. The Healer dps rotation backlash is because the healer rotations lack anything substantial. The 5th casting of Glare/Broil/Malefic has the same lack of rotational importance as the 1st and the 9th where as every 2nd and 3rd button press of a combo does have substance. The healers would likely be complaining a lot less if their DoT needed to be reapplied every 15s rather than every 30s as they wouldn't be spamming the same damage spell up to 11 times between reapplications.

[SpiralMask]

honestly i wouldnt mind if healers had only two offensive buttons (attack and dot)

...so long as they had SOMETHING ELSE that was equally engaging to do, such as old-AST card mechanics, or more in-depth fairy gauge management for SCH, or... i dunno what for WHM since they abandoned the CNJ elementalist roots there's nothing thematic to ground it in now

[Jin-]

Think there is a mod for that, plugin in that custom launcher

[SomeRandomHuman]

Perfect Balance is flawed in its current implementation (it is either used for fast GL generation or Dragon Kick+Bootshine spam no real use of the flexibility) and could easily be replace by another method of fast GL generation.

Solution: Activating PB grants 1 stack of GL on any part of the chain or 2 if done from Coeurl Stance. I could see the middle ground for it being positional being met in order to trigger the stack. Something like this would also bring more use to tornado kick if used effectively.

[Cyreil]

For SMN, I'd like to see the Enkindle skills merged into one. I also think that Summon Bahamut and Dreadwyrm Trance needs to be merged together to function like Firebird Trance, meaning that the Trance and the demi summon happens at the same time. Of course, this would only happen at the appropriate level when Bahamut is accessed at level 70, so he needs to be a trait upgrade for Dreadwyrm Trance.

[sexythaumaturge]

Oh dear god please no. I want more ways to end a combo, not less. This would be like merging every step of GF combo into 1 button, Continuation and all; you take away any sort of fun from the job.

I'd love the Continuation combo on one button. Gunbreaker is completely unfriendly to the controller people.

[Xtrasweettea]

I'd love the Continuation combo on one button. Gunbreaker is completely unfriendly to the controller people.

You're speaking only for yourself. Now I am only going to speak for myself: I am a member of the "controller people" and find GNB very friendly. In my opinion, there's no need to make Continuation combo into one button.

[Seraphor]

I'd love the Continuation combo on one button. Gunbreaker is completely unfriendly to the controller people.

I play GNB on controller and I manage fine.
In fact it's far better than PLD.

[sexythaumaturge]

I play GNB on controller and I manage fine.
In fact it's far better than PLD.

I manage too, but it's far busier to play than, say, Dark Knight, which also has much simpler mitigation. You will be switching to different crossbars more often than most other classes, guaranteed, for identical DPS. And for what? A class doesn't need to be carpal tunnel-y to be engaging.

[Stepjam]

When you say "switching to different crossbars", I hope you don't mean like cycling through them with r1. Because there's a better way.
Otherwise, it's not that big of a deal to switch from R2 to L2 or R2 to R2>L2.

Also since it keeps popping up, pressing a single button repeatedly is just as likely to cause carpal tunnel as pressing different buttons. It's the repetitive action that causes it, not moving around.