"Training quests" for monster abilities
Every monster in the game belongs to a "family" (like: Morbol type, etc).
Every family could have an additional special ability with very bad effects / big damage. In case of high level NMs (roaming, raids, etc), that same ability could result in bigger trouble (like 10000 dmg, 1000 hp/tick Poison, 500% AoE Slow, Doom, etc).
While it's good that enemies have special abilities that can (and will) kill you if you dont know how the fight works (Ifrit terrain abilities, for example), it would be nice to have additional abilities that can be avoided or alleviated by the player if he/she has done one "training quest" (which coulb be split in more than 1 quest) for that monster family (and, for special NMs, a specific quest for that NM in particular).
Like, for example... Morbols do Bad Breath (in XIV too? still have to fight those here!) which causes many bad effects (Poison, Paralyze, Slow, Blind, etc) and that should be kept that way. Now add another ability: for example one that works like Bad Breath but, plus, does a lot of dmg to everyone. Let's call it Very Bad Breath (lol): every Morbol monster should have it, even common ones. Plus, let's say there's a Morbol NM that still does Very Bad Breath, but with a 9000+ dmg AoE effect.
By doing the Morbol training quest, I get an equippable item (Morbolproof Mask? lol :P) or, in most cases, a key item that:
- For non-NM Morbols makes the dmg of Very Bad Breath very small (like 1000-1500+ hp -> 100~ hp lost) and, maybe, less proc rate for the negative status effects
- For NM Morbol, we get a reduction of the AoE Dmg (9000 -> 2000)
These quests should be fun and really look as a "training" (or almost, well), not just go to X spot and kill 5 Lonely Morbols, then return to NPC to complete.
Still using the same example (morbol), it could be something like this: go to a zone where there are many agroing morbols, kill some of them till a tougher one appears (short and quick lottery spawn). This can (and will!) do, like every Morbol, Very Bad Breath. To complete the Training quest (or, better, the first step of it!), when it starts readying Very Bad Breath (long "casting" time, 4-5 seconds~) interrupt it, every time it tries to, till it dies (for example with Sleep, special WSs, etc).
A second (or previous) step could be a small istanced morbol-themed dungeon, or an open area where you have to get a key item in a spot that it's hard to reach (many tough morbols -together with a small quantity of other mobs- on the road that need more than 1 person to kill), and so on...