Is Esuna Necessary As A Role Action?

I’m not sure if this has been posted before, but Esuna doesn’t feel right to me being a role action. Why leave Raise, Resurrection, and Ascend for each class; but take away Leeches and Exalted Detriment for Scholar and Astrologian, and make Esuna a non-exclusive for White Mages? Not only that, but Esuna feels like it casts a tad bit slower than I remember. But I haven’t played in a year and a half so I could be mistaken.

What does everyone have for their five role actions? I have Protect, Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, and of course Esuna.

I would like to have Cleric Stance instead of Esuna, but I’d rather DPS and still remove status effects, as oppossed to DPS and not remove any.

It depends on what content you're healing. Esuna is often something you can afford to leave out as not very many fights have cleansable debuffs that are unavoidable. There are notable exceptions like the Doom in O4N (I think?) and first boss of Dun Scaith, but for the most part Esuna is only useful if someone in your party fails a mechanic (and of course, it can be nice to have that safety net).

I find that I vary my cross-class skills a lot depending on the fight. The constants are Largesse, Lucid Dreaming, and Swiftcast. The other slots are useful for:

1. Protect: for obvious reasons, although for raid it's easier to cast this pre-pull then swap it to something else before combat so you can have another.
2. Surecast: really great for fights with knockbacks, like O5S
3. Rescue: situational, but really great for certain fights like Tsukuyomi EX; if the other healer gets the meteor, you can Rescue them after it drops for better uptime. It can also be used to save a DPS that isn't paying attention or whatever. You have to know the fight pretty well to use it effectively though.
4. Esuna: for fights that require it, or for content you're not familiar enough with to use Rescue

Eye for an Eye and Cleric Stance aren't really that good, and Break is legit trash.

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Originally Posted by Nandina

Why leave Raise, Resurrection, and Ascend for each class; but take away Leeches and Exalted Detriment for Scholar and Astrologian, and make Esuna a non-exclusive for White Mages?

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The answer to both of those is probably "because of arcanist." Making Raise a healer role action would take it away from SMN, meanwhile making Esuna a role action gives SCH access to it at a more reasonable level (Leeches was level forty.)


As for the others, Protect and Esuna don't really need to be set all the time. You can cast protect at the start and then immediately swap it out for something else. Barring deaths and wipes, you only have to cast it once in any standard dungeon or trial.

Esuna is similar. Many bosses, and probably half the dungeon in the game have no removable debuffs worth mentioning. If nothing in the dungeon requires Esuna there's no need to have it set in the first place.

I usually use the same base setup as the OP, but I swap out Largesse and/or Esuna depending on what I get put in. If nothing does significant damage, I swap out Largesse for Cleric or Rescue depending on the fight, and if there's no debuffs Esuna works on, I swap it for Cleric or Rescue instead. Very rarely I'll put Surecast in if we've already started wiping like crazy on a trial and I might have to stand in the bad to get someone back up.

I keep Esuna if there's even a single avoidable debuff I know of, because the one time I swapped it out I got a salty DPS who ate every AoE he could, then griped about paralysis not being removed. I always keep Protect set because too many bad players complain if its not re-casted instantly when they get back up.

As far as Esuna being a role action, right now it can't be helped. We've begged and pleaded for SE to give the healers their respective cleanse spell back to no avail. Just have to accept it and move on I guess. It isn't any slower. I've never been able to cast it on the run save when under lightspeed status on my AST, but I have always been able to start the cast and immediately run after and still have it go off.

My 'default' selection, which is really only used if I don't know or not comfortable with the content I am running is: Protect, Swiftcast, Esuna, Shroud of Saints, and Largesse. But I am actually more likely to use the Protect/Esuna macro to free up a slot and bring either Cleric if I want to pump out a little more DMG on my AoEs, or Rescue if I feel like it might be needed. For my SCH specifically though, I may abandon Largesse in favor of Eye4Eye because I really can't make full use of Deployment Tactics without it, and I already have multiple ways to increase my healing potencies innately.

Break is worthless, and if I bring up Surecast, it would make this post really long for a skill I hardly use. Cleric Stance would be the better option to take in nearly all cases I can think of.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

My 'default' selection, which is really only used if I don't know or not comfortable with the content I am running is: Protect, Swiftcast, Esuna, Shroud of Saints, and Largesse. But I am actually more likely to use the Protect/Esuna macro to free up a slot and bring either Cleric if I want to pump out a little more DMG on my AoEs, or Rescue if I feel like it might be needed. For my SCH specifically though, I may abandon Largesse in favor of Eye4Eye because I really can't make full use of Deployment Tactics without it, and I already have multiple ways to increase my healing potencies innately.

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I'm glad you mentioned that. I also took Eye for An Eye on my SCH for the exact same reason. I don't think it was a good idea for them to base the effective of a job skill around an optional ability. Granted Eye for An Eye was originally innate to the SCH but when making the change, they hadn't adjusted Deployment Tactics at all.

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Originally Posted by Nandina

I’m not sure if this has been posted before, but Esuna doesn’t feel right to me being a role action. Why leave Raise, Resurrection, and Ascend for each class; but take away Leeches and Exalted Detriment for Scholar and Astrologian, and make Esuna a non-exclusive for White Mages? Not only that, but Esuna feels like it casts a tad bit slower than I remember. But I haven’t played in a year and a half so I could be mistaken.

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I believe someone already mentioned this, but I think the reason Esuna was placed in the role skills was because SCH originally got their personal Esuna (Leeches) at level 40, where as WHM and AST both received theirs far earlier (pre-level 20, if I recall correctly). That being said, there were very few instances pre-level 40 where Esuna was a “required” skill to have, as most debuffs did miniscule damage—the only one that I can ever remember being significant were the multiple poison stacks during the final boss of Brayflox Longstop. However, even its potency has been reduced to insignificant levels due to content nerfs with the release of newer expansions and blatant overgearing.

As for cast time, I don’t think it was changed from the original Esuna WHMs had. EDIT: Confirmed with XIVDB, and (original) Esuna, Exalted Detriment, and Leeches all had 1-second cast times. Could just be that you haven’t played in a while, or they have adjusted the animation and it appears to take longer than it actually does now.

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What does everyone have for their five role actions? I have Protect, Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, and of course Esuna.

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Mine vary between content, but typically I have Protect, Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming, Esuna, and then I flex between Largesse, Cleric Stance, and Surecast (the last one is typically only for Extreme trials/Savage, though there are some other instances where it’s useful to have). Protect can be macro’d out, but I always seem to get in those groups where, when someone dies, they spam “Protect” over and over in the chat mid-combat (before subsequently dying again). When coordinating with my co-healer friends, I usually just keep Protect/Esuna and let them take something else.

I typically do not take E4E, Rescue, or Break.

While Esuna is just as situational as something like Surecast, it just feels odd to me to not have it readily available.

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I would like to have Cleric Stance instead of Esuna, but I’d rather DPS and still remove status effects, as oppossed to DPS and not remove any.

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I honestly think the best solution SE could have done was lower the level at which SCH acquired Leeches from level 40 to level 30 (after all, they did this with Shield Oath in Stormblood), and give another skill for the level 40 quest reward (Miasma II, since it’s SCH exclusive now), or just none at all. While there is no use for Esuna in content like Savage/Ultimate (most things in there cannot be cleansed), it still sees a fair bit of use in 24-mans and normal-mode 8-man raids. Having it as a role skill was a mistake, in my opinion, because healers already have so many other “mandatory” skills they have to take that their flex choices are limited.

Things may get better in Patch 4.4, because I believe they said that they are giving Protect to all healers as a base skill or possibly a trait (would have to find the source to see which one Yoshida said it would be), so that opens up a cross-role slot for something like Cleric Stance (which is going to be my go-to because I like pushing DPS as a healer), and it will still allow you to take Esuna if you are like me and prefer to have it on hand at all times in the event cleansable debuffs appear that need to be removed (like Doom in Dun Scaith or V4N). However, I think they should have just left Esuna as the base skill on each healer as it was in ARR/HW...just lower the level at which SCH learned it.


The irony of Protect is that Yoshida originally wanted to remove it for Stormblood, but was met with resistance to keep it in the game because of it being a “staple of the FF series”. I honestly think it should just be made a trait that healers innately have that grant its effects to the party automatically...sort of like an aura.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I honestly think the best solution SE could have done was lower the level at which SCH acquired Leeches from level 40 to level 30 (after all, they did this with Shield Oath in Stormblood), and give another skill for the level 40 quest reward (Miasma II, since it’s SCH exclusive now), or just none at all.

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My only concern with that is that should SCH have it available at level 30, it would be the only job in the game to have two skills learnt at that particular level, and it would still be higher than when WHM/AST get their equivalents anyway. Currently Adlo is the lvl 30 skill, so switching that with something higher up would take away one of SCHs trademark actions just for easier Leeches access and I'm not sure that would be the best way to go about it. Of course you could allow SCH to have two actions at lvl 30 as it is a special exception because of ACN branching, though still doesn't feel enough.

Perhaps ACN should have access to Leeches at a low level (same as former WHM Esuna), but if the ACN becomes a SMN, then the latter has a trait that turns Leeches in to a current SMN action (maybe Fester?). It would not only allow SCH to access Leeches at a lower level, but also prevents SMN from keeping it unnecessarily.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I believe someone already mentioned this, but I think the reason Esuna was placed in the role skills was because SCH originally got their personal Esuna (Leeches) at level 40, where as WHM and AST both received theirs far earlier (pre-level 20, if I recall correctly).

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but they already fixed that with the dispell Selene learns at lvl 20.

however, i still think the whole role action design is a miss concept. putting required skills into a pool so everyone has access to them is nice - but let us then choose from these required skills is just stupid. either give us all the required skills we need or let us choose from optional skills.

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Originally Posted by Tint

but they already fixed that with the dispell Selene learns at lvl 20.

however, i still think the whole role action design is a miss concept. putting required skills into a pool so everyone has access to them is nice - but let us then choose from these required skills is just stupid. either give us all the required skills we need or let us choose from optional skills.

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Issue with that is it has a 60-second cooldown. Not efficient for people getting debuffs within that cooldown window. But Esuna was barely needed for sub-40 content regardless, especially now with the blatant over-gearing. It’s more needed for things that have hard-ticking Poison DoTs, Paralysis, or Doom mechanics.