Each expansion I get hyped and also worried about more skills.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh, simply based on experience, not authority.

Can't you see DRK, WAR and MCH complaining about the spam? Or Healers bored to hell with 2 DPS abilities?
I follow you on that, 1 2 3 can be monotonous on tanks and MCH but that should be extended, not compressed in a single button.
Otherwise you'd get the same result but you'd manage to make it even more boring.

I literally don't see the difference. If there isn't an ounce of agency or optimization available beyond not losing feeling in your finger between having moved from 1 to 2 to 3, making the combos longer isn't going to fundamentally change anything.

On the other hand...

branching combos based on situation, proc, effects

...could do the trick.

[Swimcito]

Power will not change before and between squish. Example:
Pre Squish you will deal 100 to a monster with 1000 hp.
Post Squish you will deal 20 to a monster with 200hp.
In the end you still deal 10% of the monster hp.

Numbers will be easier to read, you probably won't steamroll as much on previous content from ARR or HW if the gap between expansion is reduced.



Feedback has strongly been going on the fact that some jobs are boring. Healers being a quite unpopular role due to that lack of buttons.
Jobs such as Dragoon and Black Mage feels perfect and they should be a standard for other jobs design. For those they may not add buttons.
But other jobs desperatly needs buttons, WAR is a joke and my hotbar looks like swiss cheese.

there is only so much squish you can do....

The squishes are only true to current content, but always get weaker against previous content .... its not like they will reduce a monster from 100 hp to 0.10 hp.

What i mean is there is only so much you can reduce in math... (if not using decimals)

[Nyarlha]

I'd actually welcome tank/melee dps jobs with a more priority/proc based gameplay as opposed to the rigid rotations we have now.

[Swimcito]

Healers have their own issues, obviously their DPS is basically tied to 3 buttons, one ST, one AOE, one DoT.

To me WAR is a good example of consolidation on which you can build and add more skills. Fell Cleave and Decimate actually changing to Inner Chaos and Chaotic Cyclone is good, you don't need it to be different keybinds. Some other jobs would really need this kind of thing. Like DRG, you could have Blood of the Dragon changes to Stardiver during LotD, because there is never a case where you'd hit BotD during LotD. There, that's one keybind less.

The devs are pretty clear that from expansion to expansion, they want to keep the same amount of keybinds for each job. So you have 3 possibilites :
- You get Traits that changes an existing skill
- You get abilities pruned to make room for new skills.
- You find a way to consolidate existing hotkeys in order to make room for new skills.

Of these three, I'd rather have number 3. Traits changing a skill are boring, and nobody wants to lose abilities to get new ones.

I Strongly agree on WARRIOR... i love warrior thematically... and the class is strong... but mechanic wise, it sucks and it is incomplete.. it needs more skills

I Switched to GNB, and loved it.

[Waliel]

SAM just has 3 different combos, there would be no issue consolidating that to 3 buttons, one for each sen combo.

I'm now imagining a poor sprout switching to SAM for the first time and seeing three Hakazes on their hotbar. 11, 122, 133 or whatever would work, of course.

[Naoki34]

For sam I really hated Shoha and the whole meditation system. When it first came out it was the worse, and yes they at last made it better. I still..don't really like it.

New expansion time comes more skill bloat, and changes. It makes me nervous.

I'd rather not worry about it, it's coming out in 4 months anyway and no matter how much it changes, there's nothing I can do about it.

ShB's PLD is really boring to play, so I put it in the closet, case closed. And if the gameplay changes for the better, well, I'll see. Anyway, I'm going to change all my jobs from 80 to 90, except BLU, because it's not a real job, (Well what ? You can raid and dungeon in random with BLU ?).

[Shurrikhan]

I'm now imagining a poor sprout switching to SAM for the first time and seeing three Hakazes on their hotbar. 11, 122, 133 or whatever would work, of course.

I think the idea would be more that we adjust the way the actions lead into each other so you have a more equal number of choices at any given GCD, rather than we necessarily clone PvP's more button-efficient but still pretty much **** imitations of a combo onto PvE as well.

At present, the first GCD effectively gives access only to Fuga, Enpi, and Hakaze (3 choices).
Enpi simply puts you back at the start, but otherwise your 2nd GCD then moves towards Yukikaze, Shifu, and Jinpu (3 choices) or Mangetsu and Oka (2 choices).
Yukikaze, Mangetsu, and Oka finish their mod cycle, but Shifu and Jinpu move you on to only Kasha (1 choice) or Gekko (1 choice), respectively.

So you have anywhere from 1 to 3 weaponskills buttons outside of Iajutsu you can actually use in any given GCD... while spending 10 such buttons for that opportunity. That's not great. It's not DRG level bad (spend 9 of 10 GCDs in ST or 2 of 3 in AoE with one choice, and therefore actually no 'choice', and still only 3 choices in the remaining GCD), but it's still pretty bad insofar as button efficiency.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I follow you on that, 1 2 3 can be monotonous on tanks and MCH but that should be extended, not compressed in a single button.
Otherwise you'd get the same result but you'd manage to make it even more boring.

The idea behind compression is that you end up extending things with the room freed up by the compression. You turn 1, 2 and 3 from being a single 3 button combo into 5+ actions including the previous 3 button combo.

For example with MCH you could: Turn the 3 button Split Shot->Slug shot->Clean Shot combo into Split/Slug/Clean shot combo, add a 1 button 2-step branch off Split Shot that extends Automaton deployment time when used with no Battery generation, and add a battery consuming 2 stage Chainsaw attack that works like BLU's Phantom Flurry. 3 buttons turn from 3 actions into 7 actions.

I'm now imagining a poor sprout switching to SAM for the first time and seeing three Hakazes on their hotbar. 11, 122, 133 or whatever would work, of course.

Which is why you set it up differently.

You would have a Hakaze(default)->Yukikaze button, a Jinpu(default)->Gekko button, a Shifu(default)->Kasha button, a Fuga(default)->Mangetsu button and an Oka button.

Pushing Hakaze would turn it into Yukikaze with the combo ring while also putting combo rings around Jinpu and Shifu. Pushing Jinpu or Shifu would turn them into their 3rd step while reverting Yukikaze back to Hakaze.

[Nyarlha]

The idea behind compression is that you end up extending things with the room freed up by the compression. You turn 1, 2 and 3 from being a single 3 button combo into 5+ actions including the previous 3 button combo.

For example with MCH you could: Turn the 3 button Split Shot->Slug shot->Clean Shot combo into Split/Slug/Clean shot combo, add a 1 button 2-step branch off Split Shot that extends Automaton deployment time when used with no Battery generation, and add a battery consuming 2 stage Chainsaw attack that works like BLU's Phantom Flurry. 3 buttons turn from 3 actions into 7 actions.

This is exactly the point I've been trying to make yes. We have had 3 expansions of the devs trying to keep the same amount of buttons for each job while adding to their kits, resulting to a lot of pruning and a lack of skills at lower levels. If you could consolidate things, it would actually leave a number of keybinds open to add new and exciting things, including at lower level.

[Deceptus]

Power will not change before and between squish. Example:
Pre Squish you will deal 100 to a monster with 1000 hp.
Post Squish you will deal 20 to a monster with 200hp.
In the end you still deal 10% of the monster hp.

This might be the stated goal but coding and the outcome might be drastically different than the goal.

WoW has attempted a squish twice and BOTH times guess what suffered the most unintended consequences?

Legacy Content.

Stuff you should have been able to still steamroll became a mess.