What would you guys think about getting more Dynamic, "Combo" abilities?

[Penthea]

If having 123 instead of 111 for your basic combo is the only thing making a DRGs rotation not feel like a Healer, then DRG already basically has a Healers rotation. The problem is something more fundamental with the class that should be addressed.

I did not say that having a 123 combo is the only thing that makes drg not feel like a healer so I really don't know why you're correcting me on a viewpoint that I did not express.

Anyway to have such a point of view would mean ignoring that playing a healer in a situation where a lot of healing is needed is nothing like playing a dps in the same environment.

I merely wanted to point out that there is such thing as oversimplification. I used the healer dps kit as an example because its state was something that needed to be addressed but SE went too far in one direction and a huge amount of healers now find their offensive kit excessively boring to use. Button bloat is indeed an issue for some classes and definitely more so for controller users, but the way to fix this is not to take away the brain power needed to execute your combo, but instead change or tweak mechanics so that they are interesting without needing to rely on a large amount of unique abilities that each need their own slot on the hotbars. This can be done with abilities changing what they do or even what they are when certain conditions are met such as a proc or something related to a class gauge, which is something we already have in the game. Perhaps more use of it would be good for certain classes.

[Terin]

There's been a lot of interesting responses either way, and I dig seeing everyone's thoughts, even those against the idea! It definitely brings up some interesting issues.

What if you just treated it sort of like creating your own macro, where you just gave players to build their own "combo-buttons", selecting up to X number of actionns to condense into a single button?

It would not only be completely optional, but it would also absolve the Devs of needing to "just create combos".

I think it's pretty clear that that even within "combos", for some jobs there is a bit more nuance where you might not ALWAYS want to follow the same combo string. So you'd be free to just not use a combo button at all, or even just deviate from the button when you wanted.

To me, it seems like a pretty happy medium.

[Aurelius2625]

Imagine thinking that melee dps are in anyway the SAME as healers in spamming 1 nuke. The level of ignorance that this requires is...staggering to say the least. On healer you stand still and hit one button over and over and over and over and over and over and over......

DRG has positionals, two combos with a dmg buff and dot, a straight damage combo, and three different positionals that are directly tied to unlocking a special attack, Raiden Thrust. DRG also has to do this on a tight loop to maintain alignment with it's Life Surge for Full Thrust while sticking to the boss at all times... maintaining three jump alignments, one of which unlocks a major feature of its kit, Life of the Dragon and has to balance eyes with adjusting Gierskogl for raid buff windows.

IMAGINE THINKING THIS IS THE SAME AS 123123123123

Like... I can't even with players like this. Maybe...it's best that the devs don't listen to us.

[Deceptus]

DRG has positionals, two combos with a dmg buff and dot, a straight damage combo, and three different positionals that are directly tied to unlocking a special attack, Raiden Thrust. DRG also has to do this on a tight loop to maintain alignment with it's Life Surge for Full Thrust while sticking to the boss at all times... maintaining three jump alignments, one of which unlocks a major feature of its kit, Life of the Dragon and has to balance eyes with adjusting Gierskogl for raid buff windows.

IMAGINE THINKING THIS IS THE SAME AS 123123123123

No one is saying all of that is as simple as 1-2-3. They're saying a lot of those keybinds (9+ of them) can easily be compressed into 3 or 4.

To save space for new and upcoming abilities.

You'll have the exact same actions per minute if that's your thing, but with much fewer buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

While I'd love to see any and all GCD skills have some reason for use in every given GCD, which would require the removal of combos as they currently stand... I don't want to see anything like the PvP combo buttons, which waste animation potential over their given keys (Kasha Combo, Gekko Combo, and Yukikaze combo each having an animation in common, for instance).

I'd much prefer, well, actual combos -- varied intelligent ways to deploy together skills which already individually have useful functions in any given GCD based on one's circumstance and intent. That'd be nothing like the bloat-driven design we have now, though, and would likely be too much table-flipping for 99% of players.

[GrizzlyTank]

The issue is that almost all the combos in this game is nothing but 1,2,3 combos. Some goes 1,2,3 other 1,2,3,4. 1,2,3,1,4,5... Even DNC with it's proc based combo ends up with 1,2,maybe 3, maybe 4,1,2...

There just isn't much variety in how the classes are designed.