Do auto-attacks serve any meaningful purpose?

[LilimoLimomo]

Do auto-attacks serve any meaningful purpose?

The current design of FF14's combat means that players are constantly doing basic bread-and-butter manual attacks even when they aren't doing big cool attacks...so also doing basic attacks that are automated seems redundant.

But that's just me; curious if others may have insights that I'm missing.

[LyraShu]

IMO

I mean, yes, but I get the point you are making. When you are plowing through your rotation doing potency 1billion on things, a AA doesn't seem like it is doing much. The general feedback is that, while it doesn't do a lot, it will add up over the course of a 30min piece of content so that if you were parsing or caring about numbers, it would give you just that bit more to push them. Otherwise, ya I never notice or truly care if my AA's aren't going off at that time. I am casual so taking 10 more seconds a dungeon is w/e to me.

[HikariKurosawa]

Removing auto attack would enable them to make our active potency higher, and it would feel like we are in control of our entire output. I agree that they are meaningless and I would describe them as archaic.

[AmiableApkallu]

Do auto-attacks serve any meaningful purpose?

Do (lower level) PotD floors when Pacified count?

[Malthir]

Removing auto attack would enable them to make our active potency higher, and it would feel like we are in control of our entire output. I agree that they are meaningless and I would describe them as archaic.

Well you would be wrong, they didn't have AA's in 1.0, they added them in ARR, because turns out having your character just stand there like a plumb in front of the enemy for nearly 3s in-between weaponskills is really really jarring.

[PyurBlue]

Auto attacks are one of the elements of FF14 that are interesting on paper but in practice are easy to ignore. They do add to damage, but that's not very exciting and that damage could easily be shifted to skill damage. More unique is that they allow attacking two enemies at once without breaking combos, which you might want to do in a situation where one enemy is nearly dead and the other has most of their HP. While it's fun to look for small opportunities like that, how much they actually matter is debatable.

Oddly enough autos are deeper on casters than melee since they are stopped by casts and have a distance limitation. They provide an incentive to be up close and trade the potential safety of range for more damage, but this also needs to be balanced against having enough GCD time to use them. Or at least that would be the case if their damage wasn't non existent on magic classes.

RDM and SMN have the most potential when it comes to making auto attacks useful and fun. A cooldown that greatly increases auto attack damage for a time might be interesting and mesh with melee or instant cast bursts.

[HikariKurosawa]

Well you would be wrong, they didn't have AA's in 1.0, they added them in ARR, because turns out having your character just stand there like a plumb in front of the enemy for nearly 3s in-between weaponskills is really really jarring.

In your opinion

[Malthir]

In your opinion

No it's a fact, go look at combat in 1.0 on youtube, your character just stands there in idle animation inbetween weapon attacks, which makes the game feel slow and clunky, it's why they added AA's and OGCD moves

[Jeeqbit]

No auto-attacks was apparently a big issue in 1.0.

But we have an example of jobs that don't do them - casters, because they are, well, casting. SMN, not so much casting but still technically a caster so the autos don't happen.

Now sure, some people will argue they walk up to an enemy on casters/healers and manually turn on auto-attacks and slap them with their book/staff with their 353 Strength stat and the hidden physical damage stat on their weapon to get in a little damage between casts, especially now that many casts are instant or 1.5 seconds. But most players are not bothering with that.

I think the amount of OGCDs we have now on many classes changes things compared to 1.0, but we do have some jobs with a lot less OGCDs like PLD, WAR, MNK.

[HikariKurosawa]

No it's a fact, go look at combat in 1.0 on youtube, your character just stands there in idle animation inbetween weapon attacks, which makes the game feel slow and clunky, it's why they added AA's and OGCD moves

That's literally what ogcds are for now. 1.0 combat is irrelevant compared to modern ffxiv combat.