What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Cach]

I like "tab targeting action bar wow style" combat, I feel like it fits this genre well enough. I know some people really detest that, but they're mostly GW2 players, who cares lol.

Some criticisms:
+ Overall feeling of sluggishness when compared to its peers (and I'm not talking about the ping dependent kind).
+ I was really intrigued by the whole "cross class skills" thing, but instead of working on it, they gutted it out.
+ Button bloat reaching critical levels.
+ Tanking and Healing complexity being reduced to single digit iq levels (I'm guessing this is a measure to encourage more people to play these roles, but it seems not to be working).
+ Homogenization in general (a lot of games fall into this, to be fair).

[Payadopa]

I'd like to see more strategy in the game. It's too much DDR and number-go-up and not enough strategising. No meaningful debuffs, no job synergy, no healers needed (mostly).

But for what it is it's high quality and enjoyable.

[Cilia]

Everything feels a bit "Safety Dance"-y (Heigan the Unclean Mix) and Jobs start to feel homogenized after they've been out for an expansion or two.

Me and another tank took P1 from 30% by ourselves because so many of his attacks do nothing if you can read his telegraphs, and every tank having heals they can share with other party members gives them enough sustainability that thanks to no enrage timer on Normal you can tag team raid bosses. DRK used to follow its series tradition of draining MP for boosted ATK; then it got homogenized meter management in Stormblood and on. Et cetera.

[Gemina]

This is actually my UI. Only cds and procs (if applicable) on my visible tray.

Same. It annoyed me greatly having the crossbar on my UI AND also a hotbar tray to monitor my cooldowns. So I merged them.

[NekoMataMata]

Combat on most classes to me is boring.

Healers are obvious but in short: not enough to heal because outgoing damage is low so boring dps rotation.

MCH... we're named MACHINISTS where are the machines? Rook/Queen are the same button and imo not enough. Also Heatblast rotation is... so boring after 2 expansions.

WAR/DRK boring spam. Same as MCH

No interesting pet/DoT based job.

Lack of managing resources across jobs (Rip TP and MP usage).

RDM is fun. GNB I'd like if Double Down didn't exist.

Over all 3-4/10.

Don't think you're thinking through machinist enough. Drill? Chain Saw? Bioblaster? Even Flamethrower(which has no use sadly, but still)? They're all different weapons. I always imagine machinist as swapping out different guns in fights.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

FFXIV has been my favourite tab target combat of any mmo I have tried. However, I still much prefer action combat. I came here from BDO and still feel that game has the best combat of any mmo. It's fast paced, combo heavy and feels really fluid and satisfying. Shame they decided to ruin it with p2w and horrific rng.

WoW combat bores me to tears, GW2 feels a bit meh but I am still exploring that game further.

[flowerfairy]

I'm a wee baby that started around when Shadowbringers got the free trial update and I don't have much experience with MMOs in general. I think that trials and raids are fun when they're something new to you and people are dying left and right because you're staying engaged so you don't die to a mechanic you've never seen. However after that first impression it slowly boils down to pressing the same buttons in the same sequence and standing in the same safe spots. There's little strategy, little team synergy, little to mitigate and even less to heal, so the only enjoyment really comes from trying to do as much damage as possible. Dungeons are boring but at least healers have a chance to use their entire arsenal of heals in W2W pulls.

When people talk about the old state of healers I can only wonder how it felt to have limited yet impactful healing and GCD heals actually being desirable to use. From my understanding, fairies had pet actions that you can use while casting your own spell. That sounds extremely cool and fun to use.

[ASkellington]

Don't think you're thinking through machinist enough. Drill? Chain Saw? Bioblaster? Even Flamethrower(which has no use sadly, but still)? They're all different weapons. I always imagine machinist as swapping out different guns in fights.

No. I meant what I said. Machines. Not weapons. Machines. As in turrets.

Drill means nothing to me because its barely different to Air Anchor in feel.

Bio we don't use in single target. And if we're bringing in aoe there's Scattergun since it looks more like a shot gun animation. Flamethrower I don't even have on my bars like Undraw.

If Flamethrower and Bio worked like Sonic Break for GNB a short DoT we use every so often outside of Heatblast, sure.

I think Machinist I think gadgets. Not just different guns.

[Bobby66]

Slow, I wish they would add more ocgd skills on shorter cooldowns.

[MoofiaBossVal]

FFXIV's combat is mediocre.

Due to the input delay and slidey nature of combat, you feel like you do not have immediate control over your character and his actions like in other MMOs (namely WoW and FFXIV). Your hits do not feel impactful like in GW2. The disconnect between an orange telegraph disappearing and the mob's attack animation occurring makes combat feel unimmersive. And your character's piano rotation based gameplay with three dozen different abilities to manage makes the player concentrate on their action bar, rather than looking at the action on screen. There is also a cacophony of effects going off onscreen that make it difficult to see what is happening when you have at least 4 different players fighting at least 1 mob. You are reliant on an unimmersive UI overlay to decipher what is happening, which boils what should be exciting fantasy battles down into a mundane math problem.