Combat system is beyond saving.

[Jeeqbit]

Heavensward was the peak of this game as far as the combat system goes

Do you truly remember Heavensward? RNG mitigation (parry). Job mechanics built upon the concept of parrying when bosses weren't doing physical damage? Combos breaking due to lack of Accuracy? Janky and redundant abilities, such as attacks you can only use when the boss is at 20% HP, Fluid Aura, Featherfoot and Keen Flurry? No magic mitigation or AoE on PLD? Materia for elemental stats? Bowmage? Vitality vs Strength fight with the devs on tanks?

There were things that were good about it but I don't think Heavensward was what anyone wanted at the time. I remember people being just as critical of the combat system then because of things like Parry.

Maybe going back to Heavensward would be a "step in the right direction" to people who see things the way you do, but after that they would probably need to change things about the battle system still to make people truly happy because of the sorts of examples I gave.

I don’t understand what they claim the issue was with the combat back then.

They said when Stormblood was coming out that they wanted to move away from tracking status effects, because a lot of players didn't understand that concept. It's a concept that MMORPG players understand, but many people start playing this as their first MMORPG and have for a very long time, so they wanted you to "track" things via a big, visual job gauge. It doesn't help that the default location for status effects is the top-right of the screen (I literally didn't know I could see them except in the party list for over a year, they were hidden under the map in the corner).

The skill ceiling was high enough that if you really wanted to push your job to the limits it made doing dungeons at the time more engaging than today’s savage raids.

I agree that it was more fun to "do well" in dungeons then than it is now, because it shows more if there is a bigger gap between the skill floor and ceiling. But a big part of it was a knowledge gap - casual players not knowing the hundreds of different nuances and min-max stuff about this large game.

And we didn't have discords until shortly before Stormblood, where they started doing this, so it's not like SE could think "there are discords that teach stuff" back then. There were hardly any well-known FFXIV content creators then either so they couldn't cover every little thing.

The artificial gap such as some tanks using a 20% damage reduction stance 100% of the time, and others using their DPS stance 100% of the time, amongst other rotation and gear differences they probably have, was not healthy for the game in my opinion. I think there being a difference in skill is one thing, but Heavensward was overboard. That said, maybe the current situation is overboard in the opposite direction.

• Aggro management
• Cleric stance and Multiple tank stances (3.x WAR was the best job in the history of this game)
• TP (sprint not draining it was a good change)
• Dungeon packs actually being a threat

Aggro management wasn't really a thing honestly. You turned on your tank stance, grabbed aggro, then after enough hits you didn't even need stance anymore so you could DPS. And if you stayed in your stance the entire time, you had aggro for sure. Is that description of it much different now?

I know the penalty of using tank stance has been removed and enmity has been increased by many times, but the effect is kinda similar. The difference is really just that enmity combos existed and stance dancing was a thing (at the start of a fight ).

TP was pointless and redundant, mostly unnoticeable unless DPS was low.

I agree that Cleric Stance was fun and should really have stayed and that tanks relying on healers made the holy trinity work properly then, unlike now.

Aggro management ALONE made this game fundamentally different. It was a deceptively in-depth mechanic that, while being immensely satisfying to master as a tank, required interaction from ALL THREE ROLES and really added a sense of teamwork to every encounter and was the SOLE REASON TO PLAY TANKS!!!

In 3.x, I just did my enmity combo once in stance and then I was done, and we're talking about 3.x here. In Stormblood, I needed to do the enmity combo 3 times in stance, so I did start to see interaction from many DPS players to reduce their impact on my enmity generation. When they did this, I was able to switch out of stance sooner. But you used the word required, which it wasn't.

Now tanks are just 123 drones that act as a (somehow) even less engaging melee DPS.

I find melee DPS alright at the moment, actually. Arguably PLD was 1-2-3 in ARR and is still beyond that in 7.0 with Blade of Faith, Atonement combo, etc.

anything short of a complete overhaul in 8.0 there is no chance for another 10 years of this game existing.

It's just being aimed at a different audience than the people who want it to be like Heavensward, tbh. Many people (like myself) find Summoner and Machinist fine.