Please allow melee Ranged Attacks to not interrupt/break combos!

[Jonnycbad]

Not much of a deal for NIN because they can now use Ninjutsu on GCDs for parts of fights where they need to be out of range, but for DRG and SAM, letting us use Piercing Talon/Enpi at a distance without interrupting our melee combo would be greatly appreciated. I feel like this affects DRG most of all because DRG combos are 5-GCD long and otherwise Piercing Talon is extremely useless in most fights. Actually, in many fights where PT might be viable, it's more efficient to just use Doom Spike combo because the range is slightly less but still allows for damage at a distance. If you boost Enpi/PT/Throwing Dagger up to say 280-300 potency and let it not break combo, it would be vastly appreciated. Especially for parts of fights that require melees to break off and unable to contribute damage for a time.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It'd be even nicer if they'd make the casts on SAM uninterruptible...


Also, this is a better fit for the dps subsection of the forum, since it fits within a specific category.

[Powercow]

To be fair to Monk, and trust me there's not much to be fair about with that mess of a job, Monk does actually handle off-boss short bursts generally better than the other melee due to Chakras. It doesn't interrupt the combo and it's only 1.5s which allows more flexibility in use. It's not perfect, but it's better than what the other melee have.

Also, this is a better fit for the dps subsection of the forum, since it fits within a specific category.

While it's not as much of a concern, this would also help out tanks as well.

[ForteNightshade]

I cannot echo this enough. Just to emphasise the current worthlessness of Piercing Talon. It takes four uses for it to beat Full Thrust. This isn't including the loss you'll suffer for dropping Fang and Claw. Put simply, Piercing Talon may as well be deleted if they aren't going to both buff it and use it without breaking your combo. 300 potency would be a perfect compromise so it's still not pulling ahead of your actual combo but makes disengagement not nearly as punishing.

[Ultimatecalibur]

A possibly better solution would to be give each melee dps a ranged combo with DoT/buff maintenance effects as part of the combo bonus.

[ForteNightshade]

A possibly better solution would to be give each melee dps a ranged combo with DoT/buff maintenance effects as part of the combo bonus.

That would only exacerbate the problem. Only a very select few fights warrant enough downtime a full three tier combo would ever be used. And since you'd still be breaking the single target variant, it'd essentially be the same problem but now with unnecessary button bloat. There is no need to add one or two more buttons to what is intended to be a very situational occurrence. Simply buffing the Melee range abilities and making them no longer break your combo solves the problem.

[Ultimatecalibur]

That would only exacerbate the problem. Only a very select few fights warrant enough downtime a full three tier combo would ever be used. And since you'd still be breaking the single target variant, it'd essentially be the same problem but now with unnecessary button bloat. There is no need to add one or two more buttons to what is intended to be a very situational occurrence. Simply buffing the Melee range abilities and making them no longer break your combo solves the problem.

I think there are far more situations than you give the game credit for. If you actually think about it, this is what is currently happening:

1. Mechanic that forces the melee jobs to disengage is telegraphed.
2. Melee starts combo.
3. Melee hits second step of combo (possible)
4. Melee uses gap opener
5. Mechanic goes off
6. Melee uses Ranged weaponskill (combo interrupted)
7. Melee uses gap closer

The interruptions are happening completely due to melee dps and tanks being greedy and trying to get in just one or two more gcds in before they move which causes the ranged weaponskill to interrupt the combo that they left incomplete. With a 3 step combo moving early would not be as much of a penalty as this becomes the "safe" strategy:

1. Mechanic that forces the melee jobs to disengage is telegraphed.
2. Melee uses gap opener
3. Melee starts ranged combo.
4. Melee hits second step of ranged combo
5. Mechanic goes off
6. Melee finishes ranged combo
7. Melee uses gap closer

As for how to counter button bloat, 4 words: one button ranged combos.

[ForteNightshade]

I think there are far more situations than you give the game credit for. If you actually think about it, this is what is currently happening:

1. Mechanic that forces the melee jobs to disengage is telegraphed.
2. Melee starts combo.
3. Melee hits second step of combo (possible)
4. Melee uses gap opener
5. Mechanic goes off
6. Melee uses Ranged weaponskill (combo interrupted)
7. Melee uses gap closer

The interruptions are happening completely due to melee dps and tanks being greedy and trying to get in just one or two more gcds in before they move which causes the ranged weaponskill to interrupt the combo that they left incomplete. With a 3 step combo moving early would not be as much of a penalty as this becomes the "safe" strategy:

1. Mechanic that forces the melee jobs to disengage is telegraphed.
2. Melee uses gap opener
3. Melee starts ranged combo.
4. Melee hits second step of ranged combo
5. Mechanic goes off
6. Melee finishes ranged combo
7. Melee uses gap closer

As for how to counter button bloat, 4 words: one button ranged combos.

Dragoon's rotation continuously loops, thus they will always suffer a break under the current system or your hypothetical "solution." Of course it's greed related. But no other job suffers this problem. All three Casters even deal higher damage than the Melee, Samurai notwithstanding, despite having no worries of disengagement or combo breaks. A Black Mage can mitigate their lost casts through Triple Cast, Swiftcast, Xenoglossy and stored Firestarter or Thunder procs; Red Mage has Dual and Swiftcast, and Summoner outright giggles at the mention of "downtime." Melee all lack this option.

If the whole combo is going to be consolidated into a single button. What's even the point of designing say, two new animations you'll almost never see? This is both entirely unnecessary and needlessly convoluted when simply buffing the range abilities ( while giving Monk one) and making them not break your combo fixes the problem without issue.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Dragoon's rotation continuously loops, thus they will always suffer a break under the current system or your hypothetical "solution."

No break if you have it setup like this:

1. Piercing Talon - 15y range, 150 potency
2. Ranged combo extender - 15y range, 210 potency extends Disembowel for 10s
3. Ranged combo finisher - 15y range, 270 potency extends Chaos Thrust for 10s, grants Enhanced Wheeling Thrust if under the effect of Blood of the Dragon or Life of the Dragon

With it set up like this the Dragoon can disengage at the start of either combo, perform the ranged combo 1 or more time and then jump back into melee to Wheeling Thrust-> Fang and Claw -> Raiden Thrust into either combo.

Samurai is slightly trickier as the combo would need to be semi-smart about which Sen it would grant.

Of course it's greed related. But no other job suffers this problem. All three Casters even deal higher damage than the Melee, Samurai notwithstanding, despite having no worries of disengagement or combo breaks. A Black Mage can mitigate their lost casts through Triple Cast, Swiftcast, Xenoglossy and stored Firestarter or Thunder procs; Red Mage has Dual and Swiftcast, and Summoner outright giggles at the mention of "downtime." Melee all lack this option.

All 4 Tanks suffer from it as well and it comes up more often for them as they may need to reposition bosses or move further from the boss to do mechanics (such as Flares). The two main options that the tanks have when repositioning are "stutter stepping" (moving slightly between melee gcds) and spamming their ranged action that does not generate any resources. The Paladin (just like the Ninja with TCJ) has the ability to somewhat mitigate that with their Holy Spirit burst, but it is only for ~5 gcds and sometimes you need to be 15y away for more gcds than that.

3-step range combos were an idea I came up with to deal with tank disengagement problems first because it actually sucks a lot more to spend 3+ gcds 15y away from the boss and not being able to generate MP/Blood/Beast Gauge/Cartridges.

If the whole combo is going to be consolidated into a single button. What's even the point of designing say, two new animations you'll almost never see? This is both entirely unnecessary and needlessly convoluted when simply buffing the range abilities ( while giving Monk one) and making them not break your combo fixes the problem without issue.

The main reason is so that the maintenance effects are not frontloaded and could not potential become better at generating gauge/extending buffs/DoTs than the melee combos. The problem isn't just that they interrupt combos it is that they tend to also desync every other part of the rotation from the party buffs as resources would still get delayed even without combo interruption.

[Esmoire]

This is how it works in PvP, and it's awesome. It doesn't break your combo and typically builds your resource or refreshes your buffs. The overall DPS is lacking still, so melee and tank still want to get onto the enemy to perform. Of course, it has to be competitive because FL and RW kind of has a lot of situations where everyone kind of assumes a ranged DPS role, though I think a lot of the general game feel principles can still apply.

IMO this should be done for PvE. It should at least add time to your buffs and not break your combos. It just makes the combat feel more engaging if you are encouraged to interact with the enemy more frequently with effective APM. In addition, in general I feel like if we are going to give the player a button, it should feel awesome and more useful. Some fights melee/tanks will basically have 100% uptime sans transitions so it won't matter, but for those where you need to disengage, that option will seem a lot more attractive than losing a GCD or two across the fight.