Auto-attack

[Bearious]

I am on the fence with Auto Attack. For melee jobs that are in a monster's face beating it to death, then I wouldn't mind seeing AA. On the other hand, I hate the idea of having AA on a mage job or even a ranger for that matter. Hate control is key for these roles and having your character continuously build hate when you don't want it to is NOT helpful. Here is a refresher on how we avoided it in FFXI and why it won't work as good here(or at all):

• Stay out of range: Mages now have long-range attack. You are no longer "spooning" them to death, so this won't work.
• Turn around: The main way to avoid AA from FFXI as to just turn away from the enemy. Unfortunately, in FFXIV monsters can do extra damage to you when you are turned around. Plus, many skills turn you around, like healing.
• Put away your weapon: Mages in FFXIV can use shields, so putting away your weapon means you just lost your blocking. It also increases the time it takes to cast, as now you have to waste animation time waiting on your character to go back to fighting stance.

Of course, all of this could be resolved by simply giving us the option of whether we want AA on. For my mages and ranger... you're royally screwing up my hate management. Everything else? I don't care either way. I mean, they can adjust hate management as well, but to what end? You have to keep adjusting more and more just to solve something that could be done with a flip of a switch. We'd just have to "educate" people on a constant basis to turn off their bloody AA when they are a mage though, hah!

So in the end, you want AA... fine... just let my mage turn the thing off.

Your missing the simple fact that there will be an attack button. You will click that button to begin auto-attacking and you can click that button again to stop auto-attacking...

[Bearious]

Dear Dreamer,

Every one of your "actual arguments" against AA is completely incorrect.

1. No auto-attack means you are in control of your character. You character attacks when you tell it to. Enemy charging a retaliation counter, mobs CC'd, or Reflect up on your target? Not a problem.

The implementation of AA will only give you far greater control of your character. Stun abilities will be implemented, to skillfully counter an enemies move (and this stun ability will be much easier to use since you will not be basic attack spamming). As for the argument for CC, there will be a button that is called "attack". This revolutionary feature will allow you to begin auto-attacking when you press it AND stop auto-attacking when you press it again...

2. No auto-attack means you set the pace of the battle. Should you keep yourself steady and fight a battle of finesse and attrition, or gut your stamina bar trying to take down that imp before it has a chance to cast and rock your world? It's up to you.

This is also completely incorrect. This "setting the pace of battle" you speak of, is actually only the pace at which you run out of stamina from basic attacking. In any difficult battle you are going to want to kill the monster as fast as possible. This means that your stamina will be at about 20% the entire fight as you spam your abilities as fast as possible. There is no skill in conserving your stamina when you get no benefit for doing so.

3. No auto-attack means you're involved. I'm not sure how Satohiko Matsui can claim AA doesn't make battles easier with a straight face. Plenty of posters have mentioned plainly on these same forums that they prefer to be able watch TV while battling. If not having to even pay attention to a battle isn't an indication of what AA does for a battle system, I'm not sure what is.

More involved is a misleading phrase. You will not be any more involved with the new system than you were with the old system. However, with the auto-attack you will be involved in a much more skillful way at high rank play. If you want a more thorough description of why this is true, I advise you to read my original post above.

I'd just like to make it clear that is wasn't a post of why the implementation of AA is beneficial. This was just a post to show Dreamer why his arguments against AA are incorrect. As I have already stated, if you would like to see my full post of why AA is actually beneficial please look above.

PS - I do hope you attempt to argue against me Dreamer