Too many "Must-Haves" in the Role Choices Menu.

[Ekimmak]

Probably the worst thing about the tank roles is that they've mixed defensive cooldowns with utilities, and some of those utilities are not optional. So to meet the baseline requirements for a fight, I have to give up on the abilities that my job is all about. That makes no sense to me.

Also, stop trying to add an aggro lock to provoke. One of the best things you can do in 8-man content is provoke+shirk to get a nice aggro boost, tankswaps are fine because I can simply save up the third step in the enmity combo.

[Draxis_Fallspear]

For God's sake, SE. Don't force healers to choose to slot Esuna. A healer without a cleanse isn't a healer. I should not be dying to Doom on D4 because the healer wants Cleric Stance or something dumb.

[Mirateski]

Actually as a healer I don't even slot esuna outside of exdeath (and on sch, not even then). If someone takes a debuff it was either a) avoidable (high level content) or b) pathetic (low level content, toto rak etc). In toto rak I'm spam healing anyway because the drk pulled five packs so the blm can go ham, even if I wanted to esuna them (which I don't) I wouldn't have time.

I also only slot protect when going into dungeons, then immediately unslot it. Need a macro for it.

Tanks... tanks need help. I got shouted at by a healer in 2s for not having awareness - I was taking voke/shirk/reprisal/rampart/conva. I don't want to give up conva for awareness. please.

[Zfz]

I was wishing for choices like this, taking tanks as an example:

• choice between (a) +20% movement speed for 15 seconds with 30s recast; or (b) passive +5m range to Overpower/Unleash/Flash
• choice between (a) passive +25% damage done while solo and +5% damage done while grouped; or (b) passive X damage reflected while solo and Y damage reflected while grouped
• choice between (a) counter-attack type skill upon parry/block/dodge; or (b) passive -1 second to all cooldowns upon each parry/block/dodge
• choice between (a) quickly dash towards a party member and reduce damage received by that party member in the next 3 seconds by 5%; or (b) quickly dash towards an enemy target and increase damage received by that enemy in the next 1 second by 5%; both with 30 seconds recast
• choice between (a) passive reduction of 5 seconds off cooldown of Provoke; or (b) Provoke forces the target to attack you regardless of enmity changes for the next 5 seconds

Just give all tanks the same essential kits. Rampart, Convalescence, Provoke, Awareness. These shuld be built in to all jobs with the Tank role.

[Connor]

I agree with what most have said. The role skill system was a cool idea but there\\'s next to no choice on which skills you can slot. Not to mention quite a few skills that are almost entirely redundant even in most solo content (Break, Drain and Erase are some of the biggest offenders).

I was excited for the role system, but was disappointed to see that it's almost the exact same as the cross-class system; you take 5 skills that you absolutely must have to be considered 'contributing effectively' and never touch the rest.

I'd like to see more variety and choice with the Role Skill system. Obviously there's always going to be an 'optimal' set, but I think it'd be much more interesting if there was some form of choice involved. Having an 'optimal set' is inevitable, but I'd rather have a decent variety of still-viable skills behind the optimal set than the current few redundant ones.

It could even open up the potential for different play styles between two of the same job/role.
For example, the White Mage chooses to take healing oriented role skills into a fight, so the Scholar chooses support oriented ones.
The Bard has taken defensive support skills, so the Machinist takes offensive support abilities. In another party, the Bard is using offensive support, so the Machinist can use their role slots to take crowd control / debuff skills.

These kinds of interactions with role skills, synergizing with the party, developing variation in play style, and giving careful consideration to the encounter could serve give ffxiv more depth in a simplistic way

(Note

[DPZ2]

While they may resemble Talent Trees in other MMOs, that is not their main purpose. Folks appear to forget that the major point for Roles is not "choice", it is an attempt to provide skills that previously required leveling multiple classes. For example, you are no longer required to level Thaumaturge as a White Mage in order to gain Swiftcast.

That is the advantage of Roles.

[Maeka]

While they may resemble Talent Trees in other MMOs, that is not their main purpose. Folks appear to forget that the major point for Roles is not "choice", it is an attempt to provide skills that previously required leveling multiple classes. For example, you are no longer required to level Thaumaturge as a White Mage in order to gain Swiftcast.

That is the advantage of Roles.

They could easily do this by just giving you the relevant abilities. They don't need a fancy role "choice" system for that. For example, is there some reason why all 3 tanks can't have Provoke? Or all 3 healers can't have Protect without having to "Choose" it? lol.



Don't kid yourself -- this is clearly a "Role CHOICE" system. That's what they call it in-game. Role Choices. Supposed Choices. It's meant to be there to "customize" your character, but to be quite honest, with only 10 choices and 5 slots, there's going to be very clear cut-and-dry choices for your job and the content you intend to do at any given time. Not much "customization", more like, "picking the ones that you need at the given time".

If this were merely a bypass to needing multiple jobs leveled, then they simply would have just given you these abilities for free for being an "X Level" job. For example, all healers would get Protect at Lv16. But no, it's in the Role "Choices" Menu.

[Shurrikhan]

While they may resemble Talent Trees in other MMOs, that is not their main purpose. Folks appear to forget that the major point for Roles is not "choice", it is an attempt to provide skills that previously required leveling multiple classes. For example, you are no longer required to level Thaumaturge as a White Mage in order to gain Swiftcast.

That is the advantage of Roles.

Their purpose is neither. Note:

• The role skills provide incredibly little choice, usually the difference between Anticipation and Awareness outside of fights with auto-crit abilities, a backup Protect or a Rescue/E4E. Primarily, they simply provide time spent in UI. The choices themselves are 90% obligatory. Apart from this changes amounted only to an initial SCH mana buff over which its MP costs were crippled and a Warrior defensive buff that only furthered its ability to avoid Defiance for entire fights.
• The role skills do not provide anything that native toolkits could not already provide. Square Enix had already shown itself quite comfortable with creating copied abilities, simply tailoring the name and animation to the receiving class. Removing the fitting names and aesthetics does not provide additional functionality (Shadowskin->Rampart).
• The role skills do not reduce bloat comparative to the cross-class skills before, save in that they have reduced the overall ability count of CERTAIN jobs by reducing the size of their native toolkit, and by extension the actual functionality and ability count available to them through both native and additional skills. This is also known as imbalance in means (not necessarily ends).
• The role skills did not free players of the need to level other classes for their full arsenal of skills; the removal of cross-class skill acquisition did, a supporting but separate change. This could be done more simply by:

1. Giving all classes/jobs in role the core skills freely.
2. Removing the need and access for/to previously cross-class skills altogether.
3. Providing job variants of the same core skills.
4. Continuing to provide job variants of the same overall capacity, albeit in different ways (i.e. the entire purpose of having different jobs for the same role).

This leaves its purpose as only either:

• an excuse to further homogenization and/or refusal to balance classes across the leveling process, between each other or previously released content, or
• a simple selling point of no further purpose, cashing in on the dislike of the cross-class system before it (though without solving any of its alleged problems of bloat, non-choice, homogeneity, or non-impactful differences—save for having to level multiple classes, which the removal of cross-class skill acquisition solved,not the introduction of Role Skills).

[NobleWinter]

This game is gonna be great right around the time SE raises the level cap to 100 and starts advertising for Final Fantasy 22 Online.

[Anova]

I see that SE has two choices. Either Role Actions are abilities every Tank/Healer/Melee/Ranged/Caster has access to starting from a certain level, or they are completely optional abilities that players can use to optimize or build a certain playstyle.

The current method, which seems a compromise of the two, is not enjoyable for players who like to tweak their characters and play with character builds.

If you choose the latter, the question isn't "how powerful is this ability", but rather, "when will players use this?" An ability you have to choose in case something happens is actually useless if the situation to use it never comes up (like esuna). You have to be sure players will always be able to use the ability in some way for it to be useful. The question for the player then becomes, "what kind of playstyle do i want to use with this build or my team comp".