What is wrong with cone aoe?

[Shougun]

Wonder for interactivity of AoEs in general if they could add a new concept of sweet spots, conditional distances, with more of the smart casting of MOBA games.

For example the Art of War AoE might have a concentric circle (smaller than the normal aoe range) that does additional bonus damage, if you press and hold the skill you can see the aoe underneath your feet (and it actively updates visually as you move around so you could aim it if you wanted) but tapping does as usual and just casts the skill.

Maybe Samurai's dash skill (Hissatsu: Gyoten) has a linear aoe marker with a two small squares in the line, where the first is where the monster is meant to be and the second where you'd appear. If you do it at too short or too far you'll just dash to the monster, yet if you line it up you'll dash through the monster (that classic Samurai slides through attack) and deal some bonus damage. The skill as a courtesy will not throw you off the edge of platforms lol.

An interesting consequence is you could give the linear aoe sticky targeting, where just like art of war if you tap it just happens to your target, but if you held the skill down it will show the aoe marker (line aoe in case of Samurai's dash) where you could perfect the distance BUT ALSO you could use the attack in a different direction than the monster and with no monster as a target in general. By sticky I mean if you make slight mouse or joystick movements it wouldn't really budge the marker (like assisted aim in FPS), but if you gave it a stronger movement it would dislocate from the enemy (or in the case of no enemy target it would just not have a sticky lock, but would default to aiming directly in front of you).

Dancer dash for example would still behave the same as a tap skill but if you held the skill down you could aim the dash, and there might be some skill upgrade later that's like "allies in a radius of X near you gain 5% hp and x.. or whatever lol"). Reaper portal could be aimed as well (if skill is held, if you tap it'd act exactly as it already does).

Ninja with the improved QoL on a tap would just teleport in a given direction without confirmation (akin to a dancer dash), but holding it down would work as it currently does*. *Also would like to see Ninja teleport ignore terrain and work as an actual teleport once you unlock flying in the zone. I know it's relatively pointless but I feel it would feel pretty spiffy, so long as coding that isn't too hard I think it's worth it (just like I think Dragoons should be able to super jump by like holding spacebar and releasing, in areas they've already unlocked flying).

Esc canceling any held action ofc.

Going back to conals, might change many conals to circles but maintain the conal is an optimal place to take action. Or alternatively if you're far away it will be a conal but when you get near it will be a circle (so warrior might have this epic long range overpower, but it changes when near). Which would give Warrior neat flavor but not really be a huge balance concern.

The whole hold concept moving into almost anything and everything, like blue mage bad breath could be aimed or if you tap it'll just do what it already does. Skills that are normally target could be -auto cast-, skills that are normally auto cast could be aimed. If you wanted to aim your thunder aoe spell as a black mage you could hold the skill down, but otherwise it would sticky lock to your target (and functionally has no change over what you already know it as).

Few other examples of using distance or sweet spots, like blue mage gloom (teleport skill) is instant cast under X distance and is a short cast over y (I still think it should do something else too though like removes one debuff, and grants you a minor shield if it removes a debuff). Another example of conditional distance (and other conditions), might be for example with Summoner if you're X distance away the egi are summoned AT the target but if you're within like a couple yalms it summons at you. All the "first enemy hit deals more damage" concepts could be visually represented by a small concentric circle on the aoe marker. Ram's voice now having the ability to 'hold' the spell so you can see the donut (tapping doing exactly as it had done before). New spells might have alternate aoe markers, like if a skill first did a donut of damage and then a inner space- or if it was a conal that did damage in a wave (as MANY bosses do, all that could be represented via the multi-highlight system introduced by sweet spots).

[hagare]

they remind me of ice cream

[Simple_Barghest]

Most of the time, the cones were in combos with circular AOEs, leading to a constant need to bounce from outside the mob group to inside the mob group and then back out.
In addition, because Squeenix is allergic to mobs sharing the same physical space, they'll keep dancing around and adjusting themselves - meaning that nice tidy pack you got clumped up for your conal Overpower has now done the shimmy-shimmy and some of those mobs are now outside your Overpower's damage range. Sometimes even dancing behind you because that's just how SE decided they wanna do the do. As a Tank this leads to the added shitshow of trying to constantly adjust the pack in order to ensure you can keep doing damage, which sometimes ends up not even mattering just so you can keep the pack in the NIN's Doton. Until they, their atoms jittering violently, dance themselves out of *that* to make sure that every mob has its personal space to hit your face.
Thirdly, Overpower and Rockbreaker used to - and Fuga still needs - a target to function. Which with this game's tab-targeting system, was and is a mild annoyance but still an annoyance. I'm not against AOEs needing a target to function, on that particular note. But either make it so all AOE needs a target, or none of it. They're a bit too picky and choosy, and Machinist's AOEs not needing a target even FOR its conal AOEs leaves me feeling kinda "HMM."

[Shurrikhan]

Cone hater here, I hated war's cone because the combo from it was a circle. Swapping between them every gcd was what was so annoying to me.

"Swapping between," though, was just a matter of standing still and hitting button B after button A.

Anything the circle could reach, the 60% greater radius of the cone could reach without moving....

[Saraide]

"Swapping between," though, was just a matter of standing still and hitting button B after button A.

Anything the circle could reach, the 60% greater radius of the cone could reach without moving....

Yes, I found that positioning very not enjoyable. So I started playing another tank.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, I found that positioning very not enjoyable. So I started playing another tank.

It's... the exact same positioning... as on every tank with all circular AoEs.

You do not have to move to optimize a cone beyond the point at which you'd have gathered mobs anyways if you have one or more casters in your party.



Unless you were routinely screwing over your casters by standing in the middle of the mobs despite even the circular AoEs reaching all mobs from the pack's edge, nothing was changed.

[Kisshu]

Personally I have nothing against circles, cones or lines. The one thing that I do hate is when combos and abilities changes from one to the other like old SAM. If they could stick with one style for a job similarly to DRG I would like it more. But it seems that they just decided to remove cones and change them to circles.

Cones did have the big upside in that you often could stand at the edge of AoEs and still hit most of a pack.

[Deceptus]

In addition, because Squeenix is allergic to mobs sharing the same physical space, they'll keep dancing around and adjusting themselves - meaning that nice tidy pack you got clumped up for your conal Overpower has now done the shimmy-shimmy and some of those mobs are now outside your Overpower's damage range.

This is the right answer. It's a repercussion of SE's insistence on making dungeon mobs HUGE.

Unless you were routinely screwing over your casters by standing in the middle of the mobs despite even the circular AoEs reaching all mobs from the pack's edge, nothing was changed.

See above. Many times it wasn't the tank moving the mobs, but the mobs deciding they were going to move on their own to a tanks flank.

[Saraide]

It's... the exact same positioning... as on every tank with all circular AoEs.

You do not have to move to optimize a cone beyond the point at which you'd have gathered mobs anyways if you have one or more casters in your party.



Unless you were routinely screwing over your casters by standing in the middle of the mobs despite even the circular AoEs reaching all mobs from the pack's edge, nothing was changed.

Seeing how I enjoy every other tank a lot more I would say it feels different enough for me to care. Someone else put it well, needing a target for the cone is probably what made it so awkward to use for me.

[Syln]

They aren't circle !