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

[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.