Paladin Skill Count Question

[Renathras]

Hey all. I've been playing a bit of Paladin lately and I noticed that I have 3 full bars of skills, minus one slot because I moved Sprint off. It looks like we get two new skills per expansion. Do we know if there are any plans to rework or consolidate some of the skills because it feels a bit ridiculous if I'll need to add a 4th bar? I can only imagine what my bars will look like in 4 or 6 years.

There are a lot.

You can shoehorn macros in to consolidate some, but it can be rather hit or miss. Like just this evening, I've made a Shield Bash/Shield Lob macro that...is kinda neat.

/merror off
/ac "Shield Bash"
/ac "Shield Lob"
/micon "Shield Lob"

...if you're in melee, Shield Bash hits, GCD starts, Shield Lob does nothing since GCD is rolling and it can't go off. If you're NOT in melee range, Shield Bash gives you a "not in range" error and then it goes to the next line and throws Shield Lob. While there is the general issue with macros not quing, both Shield Bash AND Shield Lob are skills you don't typically use. Most times you'd use Shield Lob you'd use Holy Spirit instead, and you never use Shield Bash unless you're in a Deep Dungeon or something and in melee range of whatever you're attacking. Since both are rarely used and deliberate, you're already thinking about them in those rare times you do use them, but they're not staples such that quing should be an issue often or at all.

Also tinkering with one that combines Fight or Flight and Requiescat, which are oGCDs so quing isn't AS much an issue (as long as you don't press it during the animation lock of whatever you do just before it), and with the FoF icon since it's easy to visibly see if you've pressed it (activating FoF will make the icon go on CD, and activating Requiescat will make the Confetior icon light up, so that's good visual feedback), but it can still feel risky. Granted, you CAN just do your burst as X, FoF, Goring, Req, Conf, Circle, Swords1, Expac, Swords2, Intervene, Swords3, Intervene, Holy Spirit/Royal Authority/Atonement x3. So you can do little pauses to make that (and even a Circle/Expiacion macro work...but that one I had more issues with since it's not always apparent if they go off and I'm more prone to trying to "power weave" those where that animation lock prevents the macro going off...), and also tinkering with a Bulwark/Rampart one, which...works well enough, but despite them providing a similar GENERAL level of protection and being MOSTLY interchangeable... I dunno, feels off somehow, even if it does seem to work pretty well in my initial testing.

Overall, PLD's just got so many skills. It has the most of any single Job in the game. There are easily some that can be combined, but it still has a lot. Even with my combinations from macros I end up with something like 3-4 more hotbar skills I need to slot than any other Job and I have to decide what I can generally "live without" in various content and feel like I have to swap things around to keep it down to two crossbar sets. More than that (32 total slots) and things start getting messy to juggle to me.

But yeah, there are a few places like that that either we (through macros) or the Devs (through programming) can do. And, indeed, I suspect will HAVE to do at some point. I fully expect FoF and Requiescat to be combined at some point, be that 7.0 or 8.0, and some other abilities to either be reworked, combined, or pruned, for example, Royal Authority becoming Atonement if you have any stacks of Sword Oath available (there's no time you'd want to use Royal before consuming all stacks since they do the same amount of damage and Royal just refreshes the stack count)...which might be another macro idea, come to think of it...though those are such HIGH use buttons that macros removing quing starts to become significantly more noticeable than it does for Shield Bash/Lob...