The sheer number of buttons is just not fun

What i'd like to see is some situational button changing. For instance a JK has Reposte. Which can only be used Every six seconds for 3 action points after Parry Dodge or shield.

Couldn't this be molded into a current attack and change from say your basic attack to Reposte when you dodge parry or shield, remove the cost and bump up the time between uses.

Or choose another skill that might cost even more Focus but is on demand, and when you parry shield or dodge, it changes to Reposte. If the On demand skill creates a proc, Have Repo do the same proc, or a random proc, or a guarenteed Crit, whatever. But theres 2 slots made into one because of course it would make sens to use a cheaper similar attack when it procs.

For the Jedi Shadow.

Tulmit and Spinning strike really need the same treatment. Ones for stunned, ones for under 30% health. So if its stunned, and above 30%, Have the attack Do the kick. If its Under 30% health Spinning lightsaber.

Now the fun part you can do. If its both. Since you've combined the Attack to do either, you could now Do the kick, and then hackem with the Lightsaber in a fun and interesting spinning, kicking lightsabre spinning attack, Instead of Spin kick, stop, spin saber, stop attack.

All i'm thinking is by combining a few very similar skills you could make them a little more dynamic and cut down a bit on keybind sprawl.

This is pretty much it.

A good example is probably Tumult. A very good ability on paper, but its requirements are ridiculous.

First, it has a 45 second cooldown. So you can't use it often to begin with.
Second, the target needs to be CC'd. Another limiting factor because of CC cooldowns, and some mobs can't be CC'd(bosses).
Third, it can't he used on elites, at all. Cooldown may be up, they may be CC'd, it does nothing.
Fourth, only really useful to assassins because of its 4 meter range, why would a Sorc want to be in melee range unless it's a boss with a ranged damage aura that doesn't affect melee(in which case, you can't use Tumult either, trolololo)

It's a neat ability, but why does it exist? To make normal fights easier? They're already easy enough as they are. But the high cooldown on it makes it so that it actually has no impact, ever.
I don't think it can be used on player characters either. Though I never tried. What's the purpose of this ability?

That sounds similair to pummel strike, and cyclone slash for guardians.. Pummel strike is only on CC'd attacks and is worthless to keybind. Cyclone slash looks good on paper, but it has no dmg modifiers and is only used if force sweep isn't up to knock people off setting bombs on doors in Voidstar.. not used in PvE at all.

Learn to play, srsly. If you think theres to many buttons you must just blow and need to take typing classes or something, they have key binds for a reason use them. I play a jugg tank and have zero issues using all my abilities, have ample space to bind them all, sure another bottom bar would be nice but who cares. It's easily doable and takes like a day of getting used to or getting used to while lvling.

Actually screw it, let's just have 1 button for all your spells, a drop down choose your loot for bosses, and losses count as wins. This generation of players is so f'ed in the head with instant gratification it's ruined all gaming.

/ rant

No it's not, it's a LOT of fun.

See, this is what MMOs have always been - like a mini skill that takes time to learn, then you get good at it.

Not like an fps that's really intuitive and they're all the same anyway.

But rather, in MMOs each class has it's own "thing" that you've got to learn - a bunch of neat tricks that go beyond merely facerolling the keyboard. Something you have to learn and get precise at.

Try it, it's fun!

i'm only level 29 on my shadow, and there are just a ton of buttons. i've already mapped 1-4, and all the keys near my WASD, including the shift alterations.

i'm not too worried though because as i specialize further, some of these skills will not be optimal to use, and will then be removed.

Well the problem is there's no macros, that's why the sheer number of buttons is crazy. It's not a matter of not knowing how to play. I play Commando and there's tons of stuff I would like to hot key, different grenades, different heals. I play Gunner so...all my tool bars are full. In a fight I can use at least 15 different abilities. If you don't find the amount of buttons annoying then chances are you're not playing your character up to it's true potential and just spamming a couple things.

Couldn't agree more.

Why the hell do you need macros? You've already got umpteen keys on your keyboard and numpad (useful for your mouse thumb to flick over to), plus SHIFT, CTRL and ALT variants of all of them, plus you've got all your mouse buttons for "bread and butter" attacks, and all the trays are totally assignable with up to 2 separate commands.

I play a Jedi Shadow and have both bottom bars and both side bars full of assigned keypresses that I've been practicing with in the course of the game, and have gotten quite used to. Why would I need a macro for god's sake? Unless it's to fire off a combination of keypresses - but then what about situationality? Rotations don't always get a chance to complete, you have to be flexible.

Think about your assignments. Have most used attacks on the letter keys around WASD, and the numbers 1-6 or 7, then use shift variants for buffs/debuffs, etc. It's easy, you just have to spend a bit of time thinking and practicing.

You're not supposed to just roll your face along the keyboard and win.

It could be worse.

If FFXI, the skill bloat was rather extreme, especially for mage classes... in fact, any magic using class was guaranteed to have more than 50% of it's abilities be completely useless by max level. Mages were closer to 80%.

That still left a huge number of abilities that you had to hotkey. But that wasn't all! Oh no... because FFXI allowed... nay, required on-the-fly gear swaps.

For instance, say you're a Ranger (Ranged DPS). You would eventually get yourself an arrow called Patriot Protector Arrow. This was ONE ARROW (Unique/Untradeable too, so you could only ever have one) that was stupid expensive, but had really high damage.

To use this, you would need to create a macro that would swap the arrow into your ammo, pop the ability that allowed you to fire a shot without consuming ammunition - allowing you to use the arrow's stats - Pop the actual attack you wished to use with it, then swap your regular arrows back in.

In endgame, you did this sort of thing for EVERY. SINGLE. ABILITY.

Want to heal? Gear swap to healing buff gear. Buff? Another swap.

Tanking? Gear swaps for your taunt, weaponskills, self-heals...

DPS? If you weren't blinking like a Christmas Tree light from all the gear swaps, you got the boot for Doing It Wrong.

So EACH SEPARATE ABILITY involved about 8 different actions. Sometimes you would need to chain macros to accomplish everything.

So... yeah, TOR has a lot of abilities. But it can ALWAYS be worse.