Button Bloat: Data for discussion

[UkcsAlias]

SCH
Job: 27
Role: 6
Total: 33
Adjusted Total: 36

Technicaly there are 6 more due to the fairy you can control, but nobody uses that. On pc that is a seperate hotbar, but dont know how that is handled on console. But even here 2 abilities are potentialy usefull: place and follow (place at center during boss, follow during movement). Its niche just like some of the role buttons, but still worth to consider.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'll agree to disagree, Ren.

[Rithy255]

It baffles me how easy it would be to cutdown on Paladins button Bloat without even needing to change anything fundamental about the job

Abilities Such as FOF/Goring exist for no reason as they're just Burst buttons which Req/Confiteor combo. Circle of Scorn is just a random boring ability mainly meant for APM, Holy circle could also become a Cleave attack thats casted on the enemy meaning Spirit could be removed.

Abilities Such as Holy Shelton/Intervention, could be merged into one button, Just make holy Shelton targetable reduce it's CD, Have a special condition that you *cannot* reapply it's effect while under holy Shelton's effect.

Cover, Clemency and Shield Bash Could obviously be removed, but I rather rework them to be less Situational, as of now they do need more justifiable reason to stay though (Shield Bash mostly)

I feel like yeah the rework was a step in the *right* direction, but it's just led to the job to have more clearly redundant DPS abilities that I would much rather have something that im actually going to use more then one minute with my burst, aka goring/fof.

[Shurrikhan]

It baffles me how easy it would be to cutdown on Paladins button Bloat without even needing to change anything fundamental about the job

Abilities Such as FOF/Goring exist for no reason as they're just Burst buttons which Req/Confiteor combo. Circle of Scorn is just a random boring ability mainly meant for APM, Holy circle could also become a Cleave attack thats casted on the enemy meaning Spirit could be removed.

Abilities Such as Holy Shelton/Intervention, could be merged into one button, Just make holy Shelton targetable reduce it's CD, Have a special condition that you *cannot* reapply it's effect while under holy Shelton's effect.

Cover, Clemency and Shield Bash Could obviously be removed, but I rather rework them to be less Situational, as of now they do need more justifiable reason to stay though (Shield Bash mostly)

I feel like yeah the rework was a step in the *right* direction, but it's just led to the job to have more clearly redundant DPS abilities that I would much rather have something that im actually going to use more then one minute with my burst, aka goring/fof.

I do miss old Goring (though I'd revise its interaction with BoV DoT, if that's retained), and I'd prefer a Req that isn't just a second oGCD-weave cost of FoF so I wouldn't ideally want a prune job to be dependent on removing those buttons, but yeah... these seem reasonable. Getting under 32 total buttons (including Sprint and Tincture) is a stretch, but getting under 36 would be a good goal. If Req and Goring aren't going to be desynced from FoF, then it makes sense to consolidate at least one of those out of costing a button, and there is literally zero cost to consolidating Shelltron and Intervention and just applying IV's bonus to the self-targeted effect as well.

10/10.

For Clemency and Shield Bash, I'd love to see a proc that allows them to be used oGCD, and for Shield Bash to gain conal AoE fall-off and to suppress the target's damage [halved on others] to be dealt in the next 4 seconds (thereby being [decreasingly] wasted if the stun goes through, but offering some sort of vs. bosses usage (as a stop-gap until CC as a whole system can be revised to not be a waste of bar-space in most content).

[Rithy255]

For Clemency and Shield Bash, I'd love to see a proc that allows them to be used oGCD, and for Shield Bash to gain conal AoE fall-off and to suppress the target's damage [halved on others] to be dealt in the next 4 seconds (thereby being [decreasingly] wasted if the stun goes through, but offering some sort of vs. bosses usage (as a stop-gap until CC as a whole system can be revised to not be a waste of bar-space in most content).

Personally for Clemency you could
A: (The simple route) Make it OGCD but cost more mana, so you can't spam it otherwise it will be a DPS loss to your magic burst; This would actually make it a fun system to spend/manage your MP On.
B: Have a Way of becoming OCGD through a proc, Maybe from using a successful defensive or something like you gain a stack every minute for clemency.
Either way something that implements a OCGD clemency would really make the ability fun I think you'd have to Remove/nerf Paladins Holy spirit/burst attack healing but I'd be more then happy to trade that for something more flexiable.

Shield Bash I thought of something like your Gap closer doing no Damage now you can also rush to allies as well, but your shield bash would replace it in a sense that it would do 150 damage (or more), be OCGD, hold charges and Stun in a cone of enemies, that I'd genuinely love to see, gives Paladin a actual useful "shield attack"

See i think what annoys me the most about Paladin is just how much better I can see it become... granted that's a lot of Jobs :/


Also with goring blade i kinda really miss the alternative combo, as now it feels like we're just kinda spamming atonement with the changes made.

[Shurrikhan]

Personally for Clemency you could
A: (The simple route) Make it OGCD but cost more mana, so you can't spam it otherwise it will be a DPS loss to your magic burst; This would actually make it a fun system to spend/manage your MP On.
B: Have a Way of becoming OCGD through a proc, Maybe from using a successful defensive or something like you gain a stack every minute for clemency.

I was thinking more Route B (at least, generally speaking) than Route A, but while we're at it -- here's a crazy Route C for you:
Both Clemency and Shelltron/Intervention/Entrench/Steelguard/Aegis Boon/whatever start as a charged cast and channel respectively with a minimum GCD uptime costs, but their effect (mitigation, and mitigation duration extending beyond the channel for Shelltron; direct heal potency and HoT duration and potency per tick for Clemency) and uptime cost is reduced by gauge.

This means that Paladin can always technically turtle/ for at least a lesser effect (a bit of a flavor, more so than useful advantage), but can spend gauge to reduce/remove the uptime costs and empower its healing and mitigation.

Shield Bash I thought of something like your Gap closer doing no Damage now you can also rush to allies as well, but your shield bash would replace it in a sense that it would do 150 damage (or more), be OCGD, hold charges and Stun in a cone of enemies, that I'd genuinely love to see, gives Paladin a actual useful "shield attack".

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

[Deo14]

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

Make Shield Bash replace role of current Goring Blade. Give it conal stun and AoE damage, possibly adjust CD. Now it's great unique mitigation tool for trash packs, it's being used for AoE, and it's much better thematically than some Goring Blade. If I could get greedy, I would love cosmetic changes to PLD, make basic 1-2-3-atonement be less stabby, since stab attacks are really not what I imagine when I think about paladin/holy knight. Basic combo with mix of both sword and shield attacks wouldn't affect gameplay, but better animations will always be appreciated. And rework those spin attacks too, what's the point of having shield when you turn your back to the opponent every 10 seconds.

I literally brought this up... You can say "you can't just ignore them", but they aren't easily accessible. Press and hold commands don't work for everyone, and don't work as well as tapping a bumper or holding a shift button on keyboard. I already mentioned this. You liking it is fine, not everyone does. Quite a few people don't play with that system, because they don't find it "extra easily accessible". I don't.

It also doesn't counter the point that 30 buttons is already a lot of buttons. What argument can you give that an MMO class must have at least 40 buttons or it isn't challenging/interesting/fun?

Just a disclaimer, I haven't read this entire thread.

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask for better accessibility options, instead of doing major overhauls of most, if not all jobs? Sure you can remove plenty of healers' skills, a lot of them are bloat, but most jobs have just 1-2 buttons which are real bloat, devs would either butcher every job, or they would need to make major reworks for most jobs. And even though your preferred number of buttons seems to be 32, why this value?(rhetorical question, I know why you specifically want 32) Another person in this thread specified 23 for some reason, I remember someone in past asking for 16, so which one should devs aim for? How would it work when new expansion comes? People do want new skills, so every 2-3 years, they will need to cull 2 buttons from each job.

Problem with the game is that there really isn't neither a lot of depth nor action combat. In other games, you can make a class feel great with just <10 skills, but that's because all of them are very meaningful and have plenty of different effects, while there are other mechanics like dodging. Because FFXIV is so shallow, skills are very limited, and most jobs end up with 20 different flavours of "Deals X damage", with another 5 being "Deals X damage, but AoE". So yes, you shouldn't try to make as much skills as possible, but this is just how this game was built.

Think about FFXIV as a piano (a lot of players do refer to gameplay as playing a piano), and about GW2 (profession have usually <15 buttons) as a violin.

(Keep in mind I'm not musician) Both violin and piano are considered one of the hardest mainstream instruments to learn, but because of very different reasons. Violin is a lot about mechanical skill. You have just 4 strings, so it should be easy right? It's not, just burning in your head right angle of the bow for each string is hard. Playing fake note is easy. Piano on the other hand, you always play note correctly. All you need to do is to press correct buttons, in right order, with right intervals in between them. Which would be so much easier than violin, except that piano has 88 keys, so they're comparable when it comes to difficulty. In both of those cases, it's simply different approach.

If you wanted to merge these two things, you would end up with something like xylophone for kids.

[Supersnow845]

Ren once again you can’t just take your opinions as fact then argue with everyone who doesn’t share those opinions, it’s the same as in the other healer threads, you start with the assumption your opinion is the absolute right and we are all wrong

I have never met a console player who doesn’t use L+R in at least some capacity (even if it’s for mount and summon eos) and I never said needing 40 buttons is needed for class complexity, all I said is that having a “button bloat” discussion then saying “yeah it’s too hard for some people to press L+R so I’m gonna ignore them so yes console does struggle with buttons is just a complete false start of an argument

[Renathras]

Ren once again you can’t just take your opinions as fact then argue with everyone who doesn’t share those opinions,

Snow, you can't just state something that isn't happening is happening and then call someone out for it.

I've stated what my opinions are on a subjective topic. The same subjective topic other people are stating their opinions on. "Is press-and-hold 'easily accessible'?" is a subjective question, not an objective one, as some people will find it easy and others not. You can't state YOUR position as fact, start with the assumption that YOUR opinion is the absolute right and I am always wrong, and argue with everyone who doesn't share your opinions.

I know other people who use controller and none of them even knew about press and hold until I told them. None of them use it now. I tried using it with PLD back in SB but found it so unintuitive and annoying I actually just went to three hotbars and copied the first half of my first bar into my third and just manually RBumper scrolled through all three. It was EASIER than the press and hold thing. Every time someone insists to me that press and hold is easy, I'm genuinely shocked how anyone could think it is, since having tried it in live combat multiple times, it got me and others killed more often than manually scrolling. I've gotten to abilities faster and more reliably by pulling up my actions and traits menu and using them faster than by using the press and hold. It's that bad.

So no, it's not great.

I also didn't say "so I'm gonna ignore them". I said this is how _I_ am marking the line on where _I_ think is too much in a thread _I_ started.

It's not "a complete false start of an argument". There's you, AGAIN, stating your opinion as fact to discredit an entire discussion because you don't want to have it/don't want it to be true/don't want to acknowledge people that DO have issues with the press-and-hold system.

It baffles me how easy it would be...

Pretty much agree with you on everything but Clemency/Cover/Shield Bash (I actually like those a lot, though I agree they could use some adjustments).

I think FoF should just upgrade into Requiescat, and make Requiescat have range so it has the full functionality FoF does. I hadn't thought of Holy Circle being combined with Holy Spirit as a cleave target on an enemy, but that honestly makes a ton of sense. Goring should just be removed with its potency folded into Confetior or some of the sword attacks in the combo. Shelltron/Intervention could get the Heart of Corundum treatment. Just remove the CD, it's limited by Oath Gauge so you can't just sit there and machine gun it. You can only use up to two at a time, and it's not ridiculously overpowered in a game where Nascent can generate basically the same situation by effecting both a target and the WAR (the WAR doesn't get the mit but gets the healing, which is the lion's share of the functionality of the ability). This wouldn't really be OP, not to mention PLD already pays in lowest damage of the Tanks, so having higher defense/party utility is supposedly the exchange for that. Spirits Within/Expacion and Circle of Scorn are still kind of "why are these even here?" buttons. APM, I guess, but just give us more charges/faster recharge on Intervene (gap closer) so we can smack that more in burst.

That's six hotbar spots right there. I kind of agree with you that it's annoying to have so many buttons that are "just use once every 1/2 mins or so", but it's even worse when its abilities that you always use together anyway. Abilities that, if the macro system didn't suck, you could just all macro to a single button because they literally don't do anything else (the only reason this doesn't work is because macros not quing; otherwise the buttons bring that little to the table).

Shield Bash actually IS useful in solo content, Deep Dungeons, and Exploration Content. I think a better idea would be to give the button a context upgrade of some kind. For example, as I've pitched, if we DIDN'T remove Goring, have it be the Shield Bash button "context upgrades" to Goring Blade when you use Requiescat, like how RDM's Thunder/Aero/Jolt upgrade into Flare/Holy/Scorch/Resolution, or how Confetior changes to the three swords abilities one after another. Gets rid of Goring hogging a hotbar spot while keeping Shield Bash's general functionality (Goring can even have the Stun, doesn't hurt anything since bosses are immune to it anyways).

Cover is a really useful ability for saving runs or pushing prog, the issue is the gauge cost. There's no reason for it when it already has its CD. Just remove the gauge cost and Cover would be a useful ability again.

Clemency is honestly pretty good where it's at, and the one Tank healing button I think IS in a good place. Yes, it's powerful, but a total DPS loss to use and will make you go MP negative really fast. It's useful for pushing prog or trying to salvage fights, but isn't outright replacing Healers (PLD doing its damage rotation and letting the Healer heal is always going to be a party DPS gain in stuff like 4 mans over the PLD trying to be the healer and letting the WHM Glare more). That trade-off is what makes it good and makes things like Nascent or Shake bad.

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask for better accessibility options, instead of doing major overhauls of most, if not all jobs?

I didn't ask for overhauls of most or all Jobs.

I noted that about a third are currently below the 32 threshold as it is.

The OP was more countering the argument that Healers have the least buttons (WHM specifically), since that isn't at all true. You ask me why 32 but...then say you know the answer, so...? I don't need to answer it, then?

For my part - as I say all the time with "4 Healer Model" and "new SMN is fine but old SMN should exist as a separate Job" and so on - I like there being different levels of things across the Jobs so we have the highest odds of someone finding at least one they like. Ideally at least one in each role, but just at least one.

Right now, we have a decent spread. 27 for SMN on the low end and 37 for PLD on the high end. I do feel like some of the Jobs (PLD is a particular sore spot) have a lot of buttons that probably should be pruned because they don't bring anything to the Job. On the other hand, as I've also said before, we have Jobs like SCH where most of their buttons actually have a use justifying them existing as a distinct ability and hotbar slot.

I think it's good we have some with a lot, but also good we have some with a little. I do feel some of the ones with a lot should be looked at to see if all those buttons ARE bringing something to the table or not, though. But if they are, I'm not advocating they be changed "just because", or changed at all.

[Deo14]

I noted that about a third are currently below the 32 threshold as it is.

The OP was more countering the argument that Healers have the least buttons (WHM specifically), since that isn't at all true. You ask me why 32 but...then say you know the answer, so...? I don't need to answer it, then?

For my part - as I say all the time with "4 Healer Model" and "new SMN is fine but old SMN should exist as a separate Job" and so on - I like there being different levels of things across the Jobs so we have the highest odds of someone finding at least one they like. Ideally at least one in each role, but just at least one.

Right now, we have a decent spread. 27 for SMN on the low end and 37 for PLD on the high end. I do feel like some of the Jobs (PLD is a particular sore spot) have a lot of buttons that probably should be pruned because they don't bring anything to the Job. On the other hand, as I've also said before, we have Jobs like SCH where most of their buttons actually have a use justifying them existing as a distinct ability and hotbar slot.

I think it's good we have some with a lot, but also good we have some with a little. I do feel some of the ones with a lot should be looked at to see if all those buttons ARE bringing something to the table or not, though. But if they are, I'm not advocating they be changed "just because", or changed at all.

I thought the argument was that not everyone is comfortable with the way controllers handle that 48 button layout. Was it just a side/off-topic comment? It sounded like you wanted to remove bloat in order to fit into the 32 quota, but since you clarified that is not the case I don't understand the point of that argument, because some jobs will fit into this quota if you remove real bloat, but some won't, so this wouldn't solve it, people who don't want to use 48 button layout will be effectively locked out from the jobs that are over this limit. Or even worse, they'll still play these jobs, but not with all skills. Which is why you saying that only real bloat should be looked at, and that 48 button layout is too much for some seems conflicting.

I think it's good we have some with a lot, but also good we have some with a little. I do feel some of the ones with a lot should be looked at to see if all those buttons ARE bringing something to the table or not, though.

All jobs should be checked for button bloat, even SMN. Because even though SMN has least amount of buttons, he still somehow has button bloat. One of them is Physick, which is imo in current game the bloatiest of all the bloats. Maybe, just maybe, if SE sees how empty SMN's hotbars are, they might rethink it and add something more to the job, because it looks like they ran out of time when they were reworking it and had to release it unfinished. It really feels like Fester should be connected to something or do more than just be a 2 stacks of oGCD every minute.

You ask me why 32 but...then say you know the answer, so...? I don't need to answer it, then?

I specified it was rhetorical, I used your opinion alongside other 2 examples to point out different ideas of ideal buttons by different people, to showcase how disputable that number can be depending on who you ask.