Why doesn't pve have pvp combo structure?

[Dogempire]

Just a personal anecdote, but when I play Red Mage and Gunbreaker I have my melee/Gnashing Fang combo tied to shift 5-7 because those are the only only spots I have room to fit them without putting them at a super awkward keybind like ctrl 8-0. Having those combos tied to 1 button would make things a lot less annoying for me because I wouldn't miss the key combos on accident occasionally while dodging mechanics and it would free up more space for extra skills.

Having those combos be 3 buttons doesn't make the job any harder, it just makes it more annoying to play comfortably for people like me who prefer to keep my main skills easily hittable but can't because certain jobs have too many main skills to bind.

[Seraphor]

Just a personal anecdote, but when I play Red Mage and Gunbreaker I have my melee/Gnashing Fang combo tied to shift 5-7 because those are the only only spots I have room to fit them without putting them at a super awkward keybind like ctrl 8-0. Having those combos tied to 1 button would make things a lot less annoying for me because I wouldn't miss the key combos on accident occasionally while dodging mechanics and it would free up more space for extra skills.

Having those combos be 3 buttons doesn't make the job any harder, it just makes it more annoying to play comfortably for people like me who prefer to keep my main skills easily hittable but can't because certain jobs have too many main skills to bind.

GNB already has a consolidated combo on one button, Continuation.
Fact that people always overlook this just shows that consolidating a combo into one button does just reduce it to merely one button, and negates the fact that it's a combo.

I don't want every job to end up like a healers Glare/Broil/Malefic spam.

[Dogempire]

GNB already has a consolidated combo on one button, Continuation.
Fact that people always overlook this just shows that consolidating a combo into one button does just reduce it to merely one button, and negates the fact that it's a combo.

I don't want every job to end up like a healers Glare/Broil/Malefic spam.

And yet every expansion we end up losing skills and getting some back because people want new expansion skills, but we're simply at the limit of how many skills we should have.

Maybe if they could actually consolidate the amount of keybinds we have instead of outright deleting skills, we could finally have an expansion that actually builds on the job we played last expansion instead of one where half our skills magically disappear overnight.

Or they could just delete the entire Gnashing fang combo to make room for some new Endwalker gimmick for the Gunbreaker job, which is probably what's going to actually happen if they don't consolidate anything.

[Jirah]

I changed my stance on this several times as people debate 1-2-3 will be boring or just not practical to merge when only a few jobs dont have divergent rotations GNB DRK and MCH being the only DPS with a never ending 1-2-3.

For the people against it:
besides MCH, no job is just its rotation DRG need its disembowel and jumps NIN needs its ninjitsu, SAM never had a straight forward 1-2-3. MNK also need to focus on keeping up twin and demo, no caster needs this besides of few QOL stuff like RDM physical finisher and SMN Trances and some tweaks with BLM. The job wont be any easier , a case here and there can be made with a few tanks and MCH but otherwise the jobs will retain their joy and make room for other refinements and free up space

[MidhoiHidmoi]

Uhhh no. There are plenty of situations that happen in content where you might want to do something different than your usual 1-2-3 / 4-5-6. If youre finding the job complicated because it has more than one button, go read up on it or play healer.

[Achantion]

Why are people assuming that condensing combo's into a single button makes the game easier? That is a very, very short sighted way to look at things, and totally disregards the possibilities it could offer.

I'm not even going to address the fact that 1-2-3 isn't harder than 1-1-1, but I'll try make a case as to why it should be condensed.

The issue right now with most combo's is that they just aren't very exciting, and they are always repeated ad nauseum. Take DRK for example, you will ALWAYS do 1-2-3, why does it need to be 3 buttons? Just merge them into one, and give us back the old enmity combo as a secondary button (But make it inflict a dot or something). This would double the action a DRK could do, and even have some more design space for something fun like an additional oGCD, with the same amount of buttons.

Those who want the buttons merged aren't advocating for less abilities, they are advocating for more abilities. Merging the boring ones into a single button allows for more design space for other, more fun abilities.

Enough abilities get deleted as is, and this is an issue DIRECTLY linked to button bloat. Merging combo's would allow us to keep all of our toys, and receive new ones without suffering button bloat.

I'd rather have each button on my bar be a totally unique combo-chain or oGCD, than wasting 4 buttons for a sequence of attacks that practically never changes.

The issue regarding healers I've seen littered in this thread isn't that 1-1-1 is boring, it's that 1-1-1 is the only option they have. Give them a 1-1-1, a 2-2 and a 3-3-3-3 and not a single one will complain if each of those option has a specific use case.

[Seraphor]

And yet every expansion we end up losing skills and getting some back because people want new expansion skills, but we're simply at the limit of how many skills we should have.

Maybe if they could actually consolidate the amount of keybinds we have instead of outright deleting skills, we could finally have an expansion that actually builds on the job we played last expansion instead of one where half our skills magically disappear overnight.

Or they could just delete the entire Gnashing fang combo to make room for some new Endwalker gimmick for the Gunbreaker job, which is probably what's going to actually happen if they don't consolidate anything.

There's definitely room for button consolidation, but simply turning every combo into one button isn't the best way to do this. Many jobs have skills that are mutually exclusive, you can't use one while the other is available, or some skills simply become redundant in the presence of others.

BLM: Combine Ley Lines and Between the Lines. Have B2 upgrade into Freeze and F2 upgrade into Flare.
NIN: Combine Dream within a Dream and Assassinate.
SAM: Combine Meditation and Shoha. Upgrade Shinten into Seigan when under Merciful Eyes.
DRG: Combine Fang and Claw with Wheeling Thrust. Delete Piercing Talon.
PLD: Combine Requiescat with Confiteor. Combine the effects of Intervention and Cover, or simply buff one and remove the other.
GNB: Probably would make the Gnashing Fang combo here a 1 button combo, the same as Continuation. So that you simply alternate between the two just like MCH's burst phase.

There, that's all of the worst offenders in terms of button bloat out of the way. The only other jobs with 'too many' buttons are SMN which already does all of this sort of thing with it's Bahamut and Phoenix skills, and BRD, but that already only has 2 combo skills and I'm not familiar enough with it's endgame rotation to know what else to realistically be axed.

I definitely wouldn't combine the combos for the melee jobs into single buttons. Mainly because their combos is what their entire rotation is based around. You remove those and they're reduced to 3 button jobs.
SAM and MNK both have skills that simply wouldn't work with this sort of consolidation, because they unlock the ability to use combo skills out of order.
DRG has 2 very long combos, get rid of those and it has 2 spamming combo buttons and Jump.
Lastly, NIN, has a heavy burst rotation. It already spends half of its time simply hitting the 1-2-3 combo waiting for mudras and Trick Attack to come off cooldown, and it only has 4 of those combo skills to consolidate anyway. Combining them wouldn't achieve much and would make it more boring.

[Achantion]

There's definitely room for button consolidation, but simply turning every combo into one button isn't the best way to do this. Many jobs have skills that are mutually exclusive, you can't use one while the other is available, or some skills simply become redundant in the presence of others.

That is the real issue, not button merging.

BLM: Combine Ley Lines and Between the Lines. Have B2 upgrade into Freeze and F2 upgrade into Flare.
NIN: Combine Dream within a Dream and Assassinate.
SAM: Combine Meditation and Shoha. Upgrade Shinten into Seigan when under Merciful Eyes.
DRG: Combine Fang and Claw with Wheeling Thrust. Delete Piercing Talon.
PLD: Combine Requiescat with Confiteor. Combine the effects of Intervention and Cover, or simply buff one and remove the other.
GNB: Probably would make the Gnashing Fang combo here a 1 button combo, the same as Continuation. So that you simply alternate between the two just like MCH's burst phase.

Most of these are perfect examples of what I'm aiming at. Make a button have a mechanic.

Yet, these are generally all things you do in between your basic combo's. I would love to see the same mind set applied to more varied basic ability design. Make certain combo's reactive, require a pre-requisite, lower damage but faster GCD (and visa versa), etc.. Button consolidation wouldn't be an issue with more varied ability design.

I'm going to stress again that button removal isn't the goal. For each button removed a new one should come in it's place, but, 1-2-3 combo's are just an artificial way to pad the number of buttons a job has access too.

Sure some classes in their current design might need a tiny redesign, but as NIN's Shadow Fang has proven, there are easy cop-outs to achieve this.

[Seraphor]

The only jobs that really have a combo however are the melee, and MCH.
MCH has far too few buttons as it is so I see no reason to consolidate those.
I've just explained why I don't think any of the melee DPS should have their combo's consolidated.
That just leaves tanks, which already have simpler rotations than the DPS anyway.

Perhaps some of the tanks could see something done with their combo's to differentiate them a bit. I would suggest maybe mix up PLD's combos, and maybe consolidate some of GNB's. Especially as they're two jobs that quite blatantly do have too many buttons.
WAR and DRK if anything need something a little more than what they have, although DRK already has a decent number of skills, it's just it's burst phase that is too simple and similar to WARs.

I quite like the 'variety' of combo systems that the phys ranged have. MCH has 1-2-3, BRD has 1-(maybe)-2 that is dependant on an RNG you can influence, and DNC has a 1-2/A-B system kinda like RDM.
If they could rework the tanks a little something like this, I'd be down for that.

[Achantion]

MCH has far too few buttons as it is so I see no reason to consolidate those.

Because when consolidated, other combo's with different uses can be added? Why should a class only have 1 combo?

Additionally, a rotation is no reason to shy away from consolidation, as new rotation will be made with a new system too. A branching combo's can be solved in the vein of NIN's Shadow Fang (which was a combo finisher originally).

Consolidation is about maintaining what we have, instead of how it is now, where every class looses stuff. Example: Why did the DRK loose his secondary combo it had for years? Sure enmity has changed, but couldn't they just change the effect from increased enmity to a DoT and keep the entire combo? The answer is button bloat, removing the combo freed up 3 buttons for others stuff yet left the DRK with only 1 combo to do over and over. I see a lot of people complain about healer 1-1-1, but how is the DRK 1-2-3 different? Both deal damage and do nothing more, both also have no additional options. If they just consolidated the combo's they have 2 buttons with twice the combo's and an additional gameplay aspect (the DoT in my example) with an additional 4 they could use for other buffs/debuffs/oGCD's.

Pressing a button is pressing a button. Pressing 1 is the same as pressing 2 to me. It's the effect on the button that matters, if I press 1 and deal damage and press 2 and get a shield, THAT feels different to me. If I press 1 and do damage, and press 2 and do damage, how is that different from pressing 1 twice?

Edit: I can agree upon the DNC execution. That is the only job I fail to see consolidation working for.