PvP self-combo skills as a core/PvE mechanic

[SpiralMask]

With each expansion forced to prune skills and redistribute them to accommodate an additional ten levels of new abilities across the same number of buttons, it has negatively impacted the leveling experience across the board to create an incredibly slow and boring time (if not outright breaking some class quests or causing humorous issues like tweaked skills not functioning as-needed for those quests), with no real end in sight.

My suggestion to help alleviate this somewhat (which I'm sure others have raised as well) would be what PvP content already makes use of: have some skill combos work off the same button, perhaps with secondary/tertiary buttons for "branched" combo trees (such as WAR, SAM, MNK, DRG, etc). the second part of this suggestion would be to make this optional, as not everyone would need this given the number of hotbars and keybinds for non-controller players.

This would allow for additional skills to be added or replaced/upgraded regularly through a class' career without taking up more hotbar space, and (when toggled) help free up existing space for new skills added in later expansions without negatively impacting the levelling experience, as well as allowing more space to give each class a proper core pillar before level 70-80 (or 80-90 in the next expac, etc).

Obviously this isn't a perfect solution (particularly for healers, who have two entire damaging skills in their kit and nothing that particularly needs 'stacking'), but I think it's at least a decent place to start, rather than paring down classes every expansion and spreading their skills and passives thinner and thinner.

[Kalinas]

I mean...healers def feel it too. I would be happy if the fairy abilities self-combo'd / changed when used.

Example, [Summon Seraph] or [Fey Blessing] should change to [Consolation]. Since [Summon Seraph] becomes useless after it's pressed and [Consolation] becomes usable or auto-upgrade [Fey Blessing] since it gets locked out when Seraph is summoned and it's an AOE heal like [Consolation].

They did it for [Whispering Dawn] and [Angel's Whisper] / [Fey Illumination] and [Seraphic Illumination].

[Kuroka]

I want it for my rdm combo, the many times it broke cause the server said "nope" are beyond annoying and loosing my mana and the combo sucks. There is 0 reason to not use it, as long as we get a choice...

[SpiralMask]

I mean...healers def feel it too. I would be happy if the fairy abilities self-combo'd / changed when used.

Example, [Summon Seraph] or [Fey Blessing] should change to [Consolation]. Since [Summon Seraph] becomes useless after it's pressed and [Consolation] becomes usable or auto-upgrade [Fey Blessing] since it gets locked out when Seraph is summoned and it's an AOE heal like [Consolation].

They did it for [Whispering Dawn] and [Angel's Whisper] / [Fey Illumination] and [Seraphic Illumination].

could be good for SMN and bahamut/pheonix and akh morn too, but yeah, that's a solid angle for it since it's a flat duration and you cant cancel it

[SpiralMask]

Seen a few folks kicking around the neat idea of re-introducing cleric stance for healers, with it flipping all their GCD heal effects to equivalent damage effects (heals are flat potency damage, regens are DoT's, shields are small damage and reduced damage dealt, etc), which would pretty dramatically expand healer DPS/downtime options with a single added skill and introduce a balancing act between being in damage mode and healing off your OGCDs or being in healing mode and healing with the majority of your kit (basically as it is now).

course this (and the autocomobos in the OP) dont really help caster dps like BLM and RDM very much I think

[Kuroka]

On RDM, it would help for the melee combo, condensing it into one button and fixing the problem that a server lag might break it. Also for 6.0 they could went on and give us an aoe melee combo as well, or create something from the aoe lighting/wind spells...

[FionaSilberpfeil]

Oh, im all for it since the first time i saw it in PvP. Also saw people argue how it would "dumb down" classes....yeah, because pressing 1-2-3 says so mutch for the intelect of someone. I would love to use the free space to rearange my hotbars. Could use it for a few skills.
Also, beeing able to only use the first two....*shrug* If you have to spam the first two only for the effects....the group did something VERY, VERY wrong and it would not help either way.

[ItMe]

Seen a few folks kicking around the neat idea of re-introducing cleric stance for healers, with it flipping all their GCD heal effects to equivalent damage effects (heals are flat potency damage, regens are DoT's, shields are small damage and reduced damage dealt, etc), which would pretty dramatically expand healer DPS/downtime options with a single added skill and introduce a balancing act between being in damage mode and healing off your OGCDs or being in healing mode and healing with the majority of your kit (basically as it is now).

course this (and the autocomobos in the OP) dont really help caster dps like BLM and RDM very much I think

Holy crap...
That idea is wild. That's total bananas.
I cast Benefic haha~

But man is that an odd and compelling idea.
It'd be really interesting to see how they'd have to rework the kits to work with this idea.
Holy shit though, if all their AoE heals became AoE damage that would be frickin nuts. Dungeon runs would be over in no time flat. SCH calls Seraph and it just levels the pull haha.

(In case it's not clear this is a positive reaction)

[SpiralMask]

i'd assume that OGCDs would be unaffected, so seraph would still be healing/shielding but succor would be an aoe dmg+debuff (damage down like bad breath perhaps? since increased damage taken on-tap would be incredibly strong) and emergency tactics would make it a bigger aoe dmg with no side-effects?
AST would become a strange one, definitely, and their sect choice could also affect their damage types (between dots and debuffs for regen/shield sects)
WHM would basically become a proper geomancer in it's own right when dpsing, had they not swapped every single skill effect to "holy but smaller" from their old earth/wind/water magics.