A couple suggestions, and some feedback, for combos

Hey all!

Disclaimer: I am still very new, and I understand tomorrow there's going to be a wipe which is going to dramatically change a lot of things. Some of the things I talk about may already be getting addressed or have been suggested before (I did a quick search and read over the patch notes, but it wasn't exhaustive.)

That said, I just wanted to offer some feedback and then a quick suggestion based on my limited experience with combos.

Feedback:

First, there did not seem to be a lot of great combos for magic. It was mostly Juxtapose inverting effects (which is nice don't get me wrong. Fire elemental on a water mage? Cool!). Second, it feels very clunky. I love the idea of combining spells for unique effects but having my eyes glued to the skill bar looking for combos means I'm not looking at what I'm *doing* in the game. I'm basically playing the interface instead of interacting with the world around me. This is a huge challenge with many MMOs, so I totally understand.

Second, the skills are only there for a few seconds and noticing them, hitting the combo key, then the skills on the bar all before they get re-dealt is really frustrating as the combo is rarely available when I'd actually want it. And often the skills I would want to combo require a skill I don't want to use for anything else. So when it's dealt on its own it may as well be a slug. Because of all of this I very quickly discarded the idea of using combos at all and locked in almost my entire skill bar. I left a couple slots variable so that I could burn through a large number of damage spells if/when I needed to spike DPS. And that was that.

Suggestions:

1. Give players the option of either using a modifier key--i.e. 'Shift'+'1' instead of 'C' then '1'--or the system as is with a combo key. The "combo" key combination [sorry lol] could be a key binding like anything else, so players could bind the harder to reach skill slots to different key combinations. Example, selecting a skill for a combo on 1-5 might just be Shift+1 to 5, but 6 to 0 might be CTRL+1 to 5 or Q, E, R, F, V as discreet single-key bindings. But I think most players have enough locked-in skills they'd keep the variable slots in easy reach.

2. A skill selected for a combo is "stored" for later in a special combo skill slot. Example, there'd be two "combo skill slots," and when you select a skill for a combo it temporarily leaves your deck. This inserts a slug in its spot (temporarily!). Once both combo slots have a skill in them players could then activate the combo via whatever key they have set to initiate combo mode in the first place, default 'C '. A separate keybinding of Modifier+'C' key could be used to clear the combo if the player decides to discard it. This would re-insert those skills into the deck and get rid of the slugs. I realize this makes combos a lot easier, but I don't see why they shouldn't be. And this dramatically reduces the amount of time that players need to consciously and directly look at and scan their skill bar. To prevent abuse, the combo slots could decay out of combat over a set period of time. Thus out of combat players could not pre-load a powerful combo before engaging. Deck-swapping or modification would also clear the combo slots.