Thought Experiment on AoE Buttons

[ty_taurus]

So, this is a topic that ultimately spans all roles, but I want to talk a bit about my thoughts on AoE buttons and gather opinions from others here on why or why not these are good ideas.

Simply put, I do not like having dedicated buttons that exist exclusively for the purposes of AoE and have no function in single target situations. A number of jobs have several buttons that are effectively dead buttons in the vast majority of meaningful encounters--buttons that exclusively exist for mowing down trash waves and FATE enemies and little else. I want to be clear that this doesn't mean I want no AoE at all, but rather than having a button like Xenoglossy, for example, that Foul's potency should just be increase to match Xenoglossy, and the damage on secondary targets can be adjusted to maintain a balanced overall AoE potency. But I want to extend this idea further to even standard GCD actions, and to do that, I want to give an example of a thought experiment I have regarding Dancer.

Now, Dancer is not a job starved for hotbar space, but it's the job I'm the most familiar with, and thus I want to share a simple concept on ways to fold its AoE exclusivity into its single target gamplay and ask some questions after. This is merely to get a greater understanding on how others feels about something like this, and perhaps gain some insight that I'm currently blind to. With that all said, here's what's on my mind:

Existing DNC actions for reference:

Cascade - Single target potency: 220
Additional: 50% chance to proc Reverse Cascade

Fountain - Single target potency: 100 | Cascade single target combo potency: 280
Additional: 50% chance to proc Fountainfall

Reverse Cascade - Single target potency: 280
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather

Fountainfall - Single target potency: 340
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather

Windmill - Point-blank AoE potency: 100
Additional: 50% chance to proc Rising Windmill

Bladeshower - Point-blank AoE potency: 100 | Windmill point-blank AoE combo potency: 140
Additional: 50% chance to proc Bloodshower

Rising Windmill - Point-blank AoE potency: 140
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather

Bloodshower - Point-blank AoE potency: 180
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather

Fan Dance - Single target potency: 150
Additional: 50% chance to proc Fan Dance III

Fan Dance II - Point-blank AoE potency: 100
Additional: 50% chance to proc Fan Dance III[/LIST]

Proposed DNC changes

Cascade - Single target potency: 220
Additional: 50% chance to proc Reverse Cascade
NO CHANGE

Fountain - Ranged AoE potency: 120 | Cascade ranged AoE combo potency: 280; deals 50% less to secondary enemies.
Additional: 50% chance to proc Fountainfall per enemy struck.

Reverse Cascade - Single target potency: 280
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather
NO CHANGE

Fountainfall - Ranged AoE potency: 340; deals 50% less to secondary enemies.
Additional: 50% chance to proc fourfold feather per enemy struck; only 1 fourfold feather can be gained per cast of Fountainfall.

Fan Dance - Single target potency: 130
Upgrades into Fan Dance II at level 50

Fan Dance II - Ranged AoE potency: 150; deals 30% less to secondary enemies.
Additional: 50% chance to proc Fan Dance III

Windmill - Removed
Bladeshower - Removed
Rising Windmill - Removed
Bloodshower - Removed

Concept Summary
In this experiment, DNC's current AoE rotation buttons are removed, and in their place, Fountain and Fountainfall are made AoE. Your single target rotation is completely unchanged. Your AoE rotation is more streamlined, but is also more consistent. This experiment comes with some pros and cons.
Pros:

• DNC frees up 5 spots on their hotbar for new actions
• AoE damage is more consistent
• Space gained from the removal of these actions could go to creating something more interesting for both single target and AoE.

Cons:

• DNC's AoE rotation is simplified
• There's no way to know if what replaces the lost actions would be more worthwhile

While on the topic of utilizing the newly freed up hotbar space, it's also possible that rather than removing the AoE actions, they could be reworked in some way. For example, Rising Windmill and Bloodshower could perhaps be an alternate 1-2 combo with some restrictions, offering an alternative set of tools to use regularly between bursts. For example, Rising Windmill might have a cooldown and cost Esprit, creating an alternate Esprit spender that combos into Bloodshower.

My question
I want to leave a final thought here with anyone who wants to jump in: do you like this concept? How would you feel if this approach was taken with every job provided that these adjustments do not have a negative impact on the gameplay rotation of those respective jobs? (i.e. any loss of depth on the AoE side is accounted for with any new actions added with some of the newly allotted hotbar space). Furthermore, if you specifically do not like this approach, why? What do you believe is lost even if the changes are accounted for in the revamping of these tools?