I have to agree with alot of what you said about the current combo system Shurrikhan it is kind of broken. It's not limited to just WSs though mages rarely use tier 2/3 spells outside of combo why waste the MP/Recast/DMG so a whole chunk of spells are put into the list of "Only use in combo".

There is another thread that was talking on lines of formations and strategy: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tle-Formations there's a fair bit of making certain skills work synergistically, and my own thoughts are similar to yours in that, I don't want to see a mind numbing use A B C repeat thing happen, I also don't want to see a system that doesn't offer enough benefit to make people see working toward using it as worthwhile. The current combo system is pretty much that, really what we've got here is an open world action MMORPG wrapped in the FF name, press X Y B, B X A B, except that we do it by pressing 123, 456, 789. I suppose that playstyle is what the mainstream wants though.

I'd much rather see true party based strategy where player position and skill and spell usage is for more than just bonus DMG. The old regimens system had a good idea it was just poorly executed, I look forward to seeing it return, hopefully it becomes the only way to incapacitate mobs, yeah I know this would "force" people to fight in a particular way, IF they want the incapacitation, but it'd be worth it. I also think that the synergy bonuses of using multiple skill types needs to be far better than using thm_spell > thm_spell > thm_spell, or solo combos. Really give a bonus to team strategy not something negligible that will only add what FFXI had, which was kind of if a WS happens and I accidentally chain off it great but I'm not going to try to make SCs, that made me sad, but other than a bit of extra damage, which now everyone can SC solo so who cares about the rest of the party, there are no benefits to get people to want to do it.