Paladin: Reworking Niche Skills

[Rithy255]

IMO, button merge should be a thing for all jobs and as a tool for all classes and for every skill, not only combos, and the player should be able what they want to merge and/or unmerge.

As for the other suggestions, I don't like them at all.
I don't agree with the "button bloat" argument, and I say this as a playstation and joystick player. I think we have enough (cross)hotbars to use.

The main reason why people bring up button bloat is because instead of having skills like Shield bash that you almost never use you could have skills that actually get used if you did some pruning or merging

Lets say, HS/Intervention become one ability, 2s recast so you can still double mit, Holy circle became a upgrade and AOE cleave for holy spirit, Low blow and interject were merged to Stun but if the Stun failed it was cause a interrupt, Shield bash was either removed or a actual part of the kit you use. (I personally think cover just needs to be off gauge and maybe have something tied to it, clemency should stay)

You save a lot of skill space without fundamentally ruining a job, where you can add interesting rotational or even utility skills, my issue isn't bloat it's more that this Bloat is used as a way to hold back jobs, if the devs only want to give us upgrades its likely because they think we already have too much skills, so the best ideal is that we make space without removing anything core.

[PyurBlue]

Lets say, HS/Intervention become one ability, 2s recast so you can still double mit, Holy circle became a upgrade and AOE cleave for holy spirit, Low blow and interject were merged to Stun but if the Stun failed it was cause a interrupt

I've heard the Low Blow/Interject idea before but I don't like it at all. Stun being something that can be resisted means you don't want to throw it out needlessly (though it's not like the game punishes you much for it) and that alone warrants keeping the two abilities separate. It gives more control to the player and a small opportunity to workout optimized usage for each.

Making everything AoE is also something I'd like to avoid. It kills 2 target rotations, the latest of which is M10 where depending on how the enemies are positioned, you have to think about whether you want to use a 1 target or 2 target rotation. There are also a handful of situations where you'd want to avoid hitting things, especially as tank. A few alliance raid adds and some dual raid bosses require separation. Those are interesting mechanics that need to be included more instead of thrown out.

[Carighan]

Stun being something that can be resisted means you don't want to throw it out needlessly (though it's not like the game punishes you much for it) and that alone warrants keeping the two abilities separate.

So quick, check the last month how often you had to interrupt one target and then with in 25 seconds stun another one that you could actually stun. I'll give you for ease of checking that only a single Dawntrail dungeon has a pack of enemies where one wants to use an ability you can stun them out of while another uses an interruptible cast. And speaking as a healer for most of those runs, not a single tank bothers to interrupt the interruptible cast since it only deals like 40% HP to DPS and is only used once, and you can also count the number of non-Paladin tanks that ever use a stun on a single hand for the entire data center.