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

[Ilyrian]

You do know that macros to switch them easily with 1 push of the button exists right?

Surely it's pretty borked by design if we need macros to actually make it fit for purpose?

[magnanimousCynic]

Also the fact that healers get to cheat the system and basically have 6 cross-class skills by swapping protect for something else like Cleric or E4E after casting it.

No one else but Healers can do this.

[Levian]

Snip...(Though the amount of dps who will stand in the poo and die is absolutely ridiculous, Rescue really helps with those guys)

Off topic but getting snatched around by healers with an ability like this can be very frustrating and disorienting. Used to happen to me in WoW, and more often than not I was standing in poo because I just popped a 3 minute CD that literally quadrupled my (otherwise lackluster) DPS for the next 30 seconds and I had 2 bubbles that made me impervious to the bad stuff on the ground and some rediculous self heals. Or they'd do it between trash pulls to alleviate their own boredom I guess. Good times.

Back on topic, I agree it's kind of surprsing some of the things found in the class role options. Most of the things the OP mentioned should be baked in, and I find it most perplexing that they were not.

[Gravton]

If they are required by the role then we should just have access to them, shouldn't need a macro to swap them in and out. That's redundant. I don't know about you all, but I hear "I don't have that skill equipped" a lot more now than prior to SB.

[Tzain]

I have to agree with those saying the Role skills shouldn't have slots to be filled. It's a terrible case of "illusion of choice". And the "Protect swap" is a perfect example of why it needs to done away with.
Thankfully it's a VERY easy thing to fix, short term you can just increase the number of slots to match the number of skills. Down the road you can move them from being "slot" based to being "level locked" so a level 30/50/60 healer role has access to the 30/50/60 healer role abilities.
If the ability isn't useful at that moment, people just wont use it. That's real choice, not illusory choice.

[Metsonm]

When they first announced the role skill system that's what I expected it to be. Marauders just learn provoke at level whatever alongside Gladiator. I was looking forward to that version because to me that makes sense: throw the important actions in the role pool.

I don't know about everyone else, but making us choose slots hasn't freed up any space on my bar. I play mostly on muscle memory and I'm going to assume most others do, too, so I'll put everything in their own spot anyway. All it means is that I have a bunch of greyed out slots because I want to know exactly what's going to happen when I do a specific input without thinking about what I have equipped.

[KDSilver]

It sounded like a great idea at first. "Pick the skills you need depending on what content you're doing".
But for tanks and healers in particular, you don't really have that fantasy of really choosing.

Dps in general have everything they need to do they jobs, their rotation, increasing their damages.
The cross class system give them "bonuses" (that they have to use) such as reducing aggro, ignore positionnal, mp/tp regen, reduce the boss damages...
You "need" them in a way, but if you hadn't, you could definitly still do your job correctly.

Reprisal in tank is a good option. Eye for an Eye for healers is a good option.
Not Provoke, Rampart/Lucid Dreaming, Protect...

So... with that in mind, they should definitly do something about tanks and healers to put these non-choice skills in the base toolkit.
I saw someone saying Lucid dream wasn't needeed for healers. Actually, they terribly do and for many reasons :

MP regen of course, especially because spells like Medica II, aspected helios, aspected benefic, succor, adloquium, Cure III are very expensive spells.

Astrologian has no MP Regen ! He can't go without Lucid Dreaming. Yes, he still has Ewer, but that's a mp regen bonus if you made a lot of raise or too much heal and are almost oom. And also because as astrologian, you'd first want to use these card to buff the party more than hoping for Ewer for your mana.

Scholar needs it a lot. Even though he has a lot of spells with not cost and the very, shields are insanely expensive since Stormblood and Aetherflow itself isn't enough now cause it has been cut by half (only 10%). You could still somehow do the job indeed, but it would be difficult in time when you have to do a lot of aoe heal. Always have Energy drain, but you can't energy drain all the time, you'd want to use your aetherflow stack for healing also.

Whm : Still needs it. Maybe less than the two other thanks to Assize every 1min and Thin Air every 2min. But you'd still have some mana problem when you aoe heal a lot.

But there's also an other reason for lucid dreaming => aggro reducer !
Especially for WHM. Heals are really strong and your aggro can increase really fast (medica ii, cure iii, asylum, the fact that now Assize heals and do damages at the same time).

You just can't go without lucid dreaming.

I also read something that triggered me.

"Using largess once in a while... eventually" => so, don't get offended but, if you do that, then you're not playing healers really good.
Healing shouldn't be seen as using random skills at random moments. When you begin to see healing as a "rotation" (and when i mean rotation, it's always casting X spell at X moment), you definitly need to include largess in it. Not only that but, it's just like for DPS or tanks who use damages or defense increasing skills at some moment. As a healer you need that "healing burst" and should you it as much as possible. So if you're only running dungeons maybe you won't see what I'm saying but, once you at least do trials, like extremes, you'll like it far more and you won't ever imagine largess is optionnal.

As for Esuna, it's an other problem. You don't always need it indeed, cause there are encounter where you cannot cleased some effects. But still... it makes part of the healing base toolkit itself and shouldn't be an "option".

For protect well... this is the top skill that can't be forgotten cause, pure damage reduction on one button. Also, if someone dies (which happens a lot), you need to be able to reapply protect.

Well well well... I know a lot of what I said already was listed but, yeah definitly...do something about that dev team. Somethings wrong with that system.

[Mikazuki_Aura]

Also the fact that healers get to cheat the system and basically have 6 cross-class skills by swapping protect for something else like Cleric or E4E after casting it.

No one else but Healers can do this.

Actually false. Ranged DPS also use 6 by swapping in Peloton after a battle, casting it, and swapping something else back. Since Peloton is banned in combat there is no reason to ever use this without swapping, and since the runspeed is better than anything else out of combat there is no reason to ever not use it.

Both are silly, and should ideally be passive buffs the party automatically gets when a ranged DPS or healer is in the group.

[magnanimousCynic]

Actually false. Ranged DPS also use 6 by swapping in Peloton after a battle, casting it, and swapping something else back.

But what would you swap it for? If you don't consider the Graze abilities worthwhile then your only non-mandatory candidates are Palisade, Second Wind, and Invigorate, all having a cooldown over 2 minutes. If you use your swapped abilities you can't swap to Peloton, Meanwhile Healers can safely swap Protect for something like Cleric Stance as it lasts until death or 30 minutes.

Depending on your tank's pull size in Expert Roulette, you'll be doing a Peloton swap almost a dozen times while Protect only needs one Swap, two if the group has very low DPS.

I do agree that Protect and Peloton should be passive buffs, though.