Quote Originally Posted by LittleImp View Post
Don't worry, most high-end players take phase timings and kill times into account, and it's particularly important on paladin with how they're able to branch their combo and manipulate their GCD.

A lot of people in this thread are just kind of posturing and talking about things they don't actually have knowledge about.
For almost 9 pages almost everyone who was against this idea only wrote that pressing 1-2-3 instead of 1-1-1 is so much more difficult and that removing that will make every class horribly dumbed down. And people responded that no, pressing 1-2-3 instead of 1-1-1 is, in fact, not so much more difficult.
Leaving the option to assign them seperately is a nice idea but the chances are unlikely that SE will add more interesting skills.

Given that they would add more interesting skills, it would most likely be a choice between
1) keeping it as it is and some classes will have a few times thoughout a whole fight where they have to use their combo in an unusual order
2) having another interesting mechanic/ skill for the whole fight

I'd wager that if they consolidated combos and added another interesting skill/ mechanic, you'll have even more fun optimizing that for a whole fight. Skill pruning will happen but many would rather see skills pruned/ consolidated that add very little for 99% of the fight and make room for skills that do instead of keeping everything as it is and risk losing more interesting skills because the basic 1-2-3 can't be touched.
You brought up a good argument with phase transitions but it seems you have yet to understand the other side of the argument.