PLD cross class abilities suck

This is what I'd like to see available for PLD cross class:

CNJ:
Esuna


Marauder:
Thrill of Battle


Cure is useless. Raise is useless. Fracture is useless. Skull Sunder is useless. Protect is somewhat pointless/redundant.

Well. At least your title was correct.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Well. At least your title was correct.

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There's really not much to pull from CNJ without changing PLD to heal based off STR/VIT instead of MND.

IMO the entire cross class skill system is a fucking joke. Look at FF3/FF5/FF Tactics and even Bravely series and FF Explorers. That's how you do it.

In here they just limit your options.

I've reached the point where I'm ready for cross-class skills to be removed entirely.

If 4.0 will not have a level increase, then maybe that is an opportunity to remove cross-class skills entirely and replace them with 5 unique abilities for each job. Obviously, some of the new abilities will be reskins of essential formers, like WAR and DRK needing their own versions of Provoke. Every class that gets Blood For Blood or other performance-essential cross-class skills would need a suitable replacement as well.

(it's worth mentioning that other jobs also suffer from crap cross-class selections, so it'd be an opportunity not just for PLD, but many classes to get their fair share of **5** *useful* abilities)

But with skill bloat being a factor for many players, it's likely some skills are going to be made redundant in w/e solution SE is planning to address that.

And if that's the case, I hope it'd be the 5 cross class skills.

The whole point of cross class abilities being limited is that was the trade-off for equipping a Job crystal, the five extra cross class abilities you lost were replaced by your Job abilities. Granted the selection of cross class abilities is also limited (and I agree a couple might be somewhat redundant), but even some of the 'useless' ones do have their niches (myself I still find Protect very useful and even Cure and Raise have their niches in low level content such as FATEs or Hunts).

Esuna not being usable by PLD is probably to counterbalance the Job and also to keep a little uniqueness to CNJ/WHM - it would also make PLD too overpowered. Remember, balance is key, for good or for ill.

Yes but compared to swiftcast and blood for blood, every cross class is pretty bad.

WTF. Esuna? XDD. Holy .... I'm not sure if the OP is serious or not. I seriously cracked up, and it made my day. Thanks.

Eh I just hate that pretty much you really only have 1-2 useful skills out of the 2 trees of 5 you have to select. And for tanks all the tanks are pretty much forced with GLD just for Provoke and Convalescence.

Esuna would be nice for PLD instead of Cure. At least Esuna doesn't rely on MND to be effective.

I'd also think that switching Skull Sunder for Thrill of Battle or Berserk would be much better choices for PLD.

If you don't count TP, Fracture is a DPS gain for PLD until you get Goring Blade, and Protect is worth taking so you can throw it on someone recently rezzed to save healers a cast (assuming you have downtime).

They're bad for all classes. I think you level a class to get an "advanced" version of a skill, that should be what transfers over. That would make many of them much better and actually worth taking.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

And for tanks all the tanks are pretty much forced with GLD just for Provoke and Convalescence.

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DRK gets:
Provoke - Mandatory
Conva - Healing boost helps recover from CheatDeath, so mandatory. Also very good.
Awareness - Nullifies criticals, which is amazing vs auto-heavy bosses (high crit rate or not).
Foresight - 7% defense is 7% defense. 7% of 20k is 1400, which could be an auto-attack kill or not.
Bloodbath - DID SOMEONE SAY ALL THE HEALING? Because bloodbath is still GOOD against single target and multi target (thank you salty earth).
Mercy Stroke - DPS INCREASE! Don't knock it till you try it, that extra dps is always helpful and it's potency is pretty good.
Fracture - ONLY GOOD if you have an extra GCD between combos and Scourge reapplications and you're using blood weapon.


But that's 5(6?) options for 4 slots!
#choices

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Originally Posted by Violette

DRK gets:
Provoke - Mandatory
Conva - Healing boost helps recover from CheatDeath, so mandatory. Also very good.
Awareness - Nullifies criticals, which is amazing vs auto-heavy bosses (high crit rate or not).
Foresight - 7% defense is 7% defense. 7% of 20k is 1400, which could be an auto-attack kill or not.
Bloodbath - DID SOMEONE SAY ALL THE HEALING? Because bloodbath is still GOOD against single target and multi target (thank you salty earth).
Mercy Stroke - DPS INCREASE! Don't knock it till you try it, that extra dps is always helpful and it's potency is pretty good.
Fracture - ONLY GOOD if you have an extra GCD between combos and Scourge reapplications and you're using blood weapon.


But that's 5(6?) options for 4 slots!
#choices

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Fracture has always been a DPS loss on PLD, and now DRK. It's not the improved Fracture that WARs get; it's the base 18sec Fracture.

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Originally Posted by Destous

Fracture has always been a DPS loss on PLD, and now DRK. It's not the improved Fracture that WARs get; it's the base 18sec Fracture.

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Well given in OT DRK basically sustains DPS until someone else needs mana song, the use of fracture as a SOLE GCD filler isn't much of a dps loss, given that scourge is not a combo finisher.

It's the most niche pick and requires 2 very unlikely situations, but then it can be a dps filler (and it's funny watching the animation with a greatsword). Of course, if you don't take it it's not a loss big of dps on scourge, so it's not even needed. Just putting it out there for people who feel like trying it.

I think a lot of these cross class abilities are mostly useful for leveling, particularly solo leveling. That's how they feel - even though some of them come from some pretty high level sources...

In group content though... Paladin's flash ability is really handy for 'newbie warriors' that are not yet skilled in managing threat - of course the people who get the most use out of it are also the ones most likely to not know when and how to use it...

But the self healing spells... those are great for levelers who have to learn how to handle the pulls they can end up in.

At endgame... A lot of these skills lose their value when there is likely to be someone on the team who can do that same thing much better as a part of their current class.

Maybe the Job crystal should just replace all of them after a certain level... rather than getting rid of them, after level 60 (in the next expansion)... start losing one of them each time you get a new job skill.

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Originally Posted by Violette

DRK gets:
Foresight - 7% defense is 7% defense. 7% of 20k is 1400, which could be an auto-attack kill or not.

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As far as I know it barely does anything. That +7% +20% defense is not a plain -7% damage, you account for the defense rating with that 7% 20% (brainfart). Yeah, ain't that much. Still pretty much taken as the last few slots since the rest suck a lot more.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

As far as I know it barely does anything. That 7% defense is not a plain -7% damage, you account for the defense rating with that 7%. Yeah, ain't that much. Still pretty much taken as the last few slots since the rest suck a lot more.

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No.. you increase Defence rating with 20%, which means roughly 7% less incoming damage. That argument was already taken care of :P

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

No.. you increase Defence rating with 20%, which means roughly 7% less incoming damage. That argument was already taken care of :P

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I forgot where I see the data where someone let him getting hit by a mob for like 1k autos. Can't seem to find it anymore. If I remember it correctly, it was lower than 7%, that is if I did recall it correctly.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

I forgot where I see the data where someone let him getting hit by a mob for like 1k autos. Can't seem to find it anymore. If I remember it correctly, it was lower than 7%, that is if I did recall it correctly.

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I'll retest when I'm online, I think 7% was end of tier 2.55, so I'm still probably incorrect.

Sorry for the earlier confusion.

untraited bloodbath sucks especially when you did the drg questline and saw DRAINSTRIKES. holy mother of god, give all the tanks this skill, DO IT NAO

Untraited bloodbath is good, when you need to lower HP descension speed, and don't feel like turning tank stance on or wasting 40% mana on clemency.

Still better love story than DRK cross-class skills. WAR has literally 2 good skills for cross classing. Rest is so forced-pushed...

Foresight- Not the greatest, but stacks with other defensive buffs for higher output
Bloodbath- Not a bad skill. The lack of spammable aoe, make it less effective.
Mercy Stroke- A great skill, with a long untraited cool down.
Protect- Good in case of a death, including your own. Helps with party recovery.
Stoneskin- Amazing. Your best cross class. It's an oops, I messed up before a tank buster, utility towards party survival, prepull. This skill has many uses.


If anyone got screwed it was WHM. The only skills they'd ever need to cross class are Eye for an Eye, virus, and swiftcast. Both virus and eye for an Eye are much weaker than the original.

Guys just give PLD Benediction and call it a day, problem solved

cross class should just be removed. the system seems to imply that you can pick to CC 5 skills from a pool used by another class, but everyone has to use the exact same ones anyway. largely driven by the fact that some are absolutely mandatory (provoke, cleric, swiftcast), and, of the rest, the ones you can pick from are so limited, there's only a few that could ever be of any use.

Having said that, for the first time in over two years of playing, I used surecast recently in a7s (suck it engine oil)

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

untraited bloodbath sucks especially when you did the drg questline and saw DRAINSTRIKES. holy mother of god, give all the tanks this skill, DO IT NAO

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I would personally love a lancer tank, though I'm not sure how they'd distinguish it from either DRG or DRK (maybe if they made it the evasion tank of the game?).

Also, the value of Foresight depends entirely on (1) how much Def you have and (2) how much physical damage is coming in, so its value varies from encounter to encounter, and even from attack to attack.

We can dream of cross class Ensuna, we can dream.


on a semi unrealted but not quite note

im still waiting for PLD to gain a Holy Blade move
plunge your sword into the earth, a pillar of holy light bursts forth damaging enemies in a circle before you.
Uses all available MP
damage scales with MP used


but still
fully useful cross classes when

I really hope SAM (ar whatevr is going to be next tank) will have its own provoke, while having cross-class skills from DRG and MNK.
It is hardly believeable, but i am tired of WAR and PLD cross-class skills. Convalesnce? Foresight? ok, this is mitigation, this is good.
But Mercy Stroke? Sunder Skull? Savage Blade? Flash?

Give us Blood for Blood, give us Raging Strikes!

Removing cross-class skills is not an option. I am totally against it.
Raising cross-classes restrictions, so i can use swifcast on war, BECUASE I WANT - yes, please.

EDIT: Hell, I want SAM to have Ninja as cross-class. Fuck in-game balance.

@Yuni

i'm totally with you on this

I like cross class skills, theyre useful for various things and a fair few jobs would suffer if they got removed outright

but they do need to re-evaluate this old system to prevent it becoming more stale

if theyre so adamant on not having "Classes" anymore, then the cross skill need to be able to pull from the "Job only" choices as well

sadly i doubt even if they did this theyd rework existing stuff in fear of upsetting more people than appeasing them

but man

an in your face tank with B4B and Invig etc for maximum deeps train would be nice

but sadly for as long as they dont make new tanks with their own provoke
have fun with your GLD stuff :U

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

Untraited bloodbath is good, when you need to lower HP descension speed, and don't feel like turning tank stance on or wasting 40% mana on clemency.

Still better love story than DRK cross-class skills. WAR has literally 2 good skills for cross classing. Rest is so forced-pushed...

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I personally don't count Provoke as a good cross-class skill since it should be baseline for all tanks, so I'd say we only have one good cross-class skill.

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Originally Posted by zmandude24

I personally don't count Provoke as a good cross-class skill since it should be baseline for all tanks, so I'd say we only have one good cross-class skill.

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I think it was designed, so not all tanks were supposed to be end-game raiding tanks without having experience as other tanks.

But i am giving you like for this. We have full one cross-class as a gladiatior, jsut for this one skill. Uhhhh....

It's not just the bad cross-class options that I have issue with it: It's the *essential cross-class options where there is a huge missed opportunity for unique play-style and job differentiation.

Cleric Stance. All healers use the same mechanic to utilize their DPS kit, stance dancing with Cleric.

I'd love to see each healer have their own method for DPS application, and not have them all gated behind the same Cleric dance.

Cleric in it's current form could be left to SCH - since that kit is all about weaving oGCDs between instant cast. It makes sense there. But WHM and AST could have different ways of applying hteir dps kit. WHMs own version of Cleric could be a buff, not a stance, require a tight DPS combo to maintain, be best paired with PoM, and really sell the burst potential of their kit (which is undervalued in the current meta).

AST already has a unique stance dance system and card mechanic, they're Cleric Stance alternative could be tied to that.

Real missed opportunity there. Another reason I wouldn't mind a post-3.x gameplay change that lets cross-classes RIP.

I'm fine with most of PLD's cross class options, in 2.0 I wasn't because protect and stoneskin were gimped compared to whm so there was no point in setting them as there was usually someone who could do it better, now they are on par with the healer versions, which I like. The only one I take issue with is cure. It's an iconic PLD thing to be able to cure, the thing that sets PLD apart from warrior/knight/gladiator in old games was its ability to use healing magic, maybe not as effectively as a whm but still to an acceptable level. They need to make cure scale off STR and WD like clemency when used by a PLD cause right now it's a complete joke. Also raise needs to be made usable in combat for it to be a viable cross class skill but that's a change to the skill not a change to the cross classes.

As for MRD cross classes, they're fine in my eyes, foresight may not be good until you're well geared but it's nice to have as something to pop just to reduce incoming auto attack damage a little. Bloodbath is better than people give it credit for. Skull sunder.. I really don't know what SE had in mind when making this and savage blade cross classes, they're weird and pointless and probably the only ones I'd like to see changed but it doesn't bother me too much because I don't have enough cross class spots for it to matter anyway. As for fracture, like with raise it needs a buff to be viable but again, change to the skill not the cross classes.

At this point I believe the cross class abilities need to be scrapped and each class given an appropriate cooldown (giving all tanks their own version of provoke) and their damage buffed appropriately to compensate for loss of cooldowns like raging strikes. Either that or revamp it and give a greater selection of abilities.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

I'm fine with most of PLD's cross class options, in 2.0 I wasn't because protect and stoneskin were gimped compared to whm so there was no point in setting them as there was usually someone who could do it better, now they are on par with the healer versions, which I like. The only one I take issue with is cure. It's an iconic PLD thing to be able to cure, the thing that sets PLD apart from warrior/knight/gladiator in old games was its ability to use healing magic, maybe not as effectively as a whm but still to an acceptable level. They need to make cure scale off STR and WD like clemency when used by a PLD cause right now it's a complete joke. Also raise needs to be made usable in combat for it to be a viable cross class skill but that's a change to the skill not a change to the cross classes.

As for MRD cross classes, they're fine in my eyes, foresight may not be good until you're well geared but it's nice to have as something to pop just to reduce incoming auto attack damage a little. Bloodbath is better than people give it credit for. Skull sunder.. I really don't know what SE had in mind when making this and savage blade cross classes, they're weird and pointless and probably the only ones I'd like to see changed but it doesn't bother me too much because I don't have enough cross class spots for it to matter anyway. As for fracture, like with raise it needs a buff to be viable but again, change to the skill not the cross classes.

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I've tanked low level instances using CC'd Skull Sunder on my LNC/DRG. I'm talking Halatali/Toto-rak or lower. Soon as someone hits 30 and puts on a Job crystal then aggro goes flying.

It's also semi-reliant on having some form of CC (i.e. THM to Sleep). But hey, it's gotten me through a few tank-less runs before. Having said that, they're useless past this (incredibly specific) niche, so I'd like to see SE either do something with them (beyond 100 potency attack that generates 2x threat) or scrap them altogether in favor of something else more useful.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Yes but compared to swiftcast and blood for blood, every cross class is pretty bad.

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Now that's most certainly not true. Invigorate is a cross class skill and it is absolutely vital for PGL/MNK for their entire career. Actually, it's pretty potent for all DPS jobs...so to say they're all pretty bad is a bit unfounded, don'tcha think?

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Originally Posted by Jingai

Now that's most certainly not true. Invigorate is a cross class skill and it is absolutely vital for PGL/MNK for their entire career. Actually, it's pretty potent for all DPS jobs...so to say they're all pretty bad is a bit unfounded, don'tcha think?

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not only that but protect and, hilariously enough, cleric stance.

And aero as well...

edit: oh cleric was already mentioned above.

I can't live without invigorate as ninja...
Internal Release.
Invigorate.
Blood for Blood.
Blizzard II (SMN).
Raging Strikes.

And others. Cross-class skills are good. It is our cross-class restriction, that makes that bad.

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

Raising cross-classes restrictions, so i can use swifcast on war, BECUASE I WANT - yes, please.

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I'm sorry for my ignorance, but please enlighten me as to what benefit this would give you as WAR? (Unless this is simply trolling).

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Originally Posted by LilLemay

Guys just give PLD Benediction and call it a day, problem solved

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The trouble is, that ship sailed long ago with 1.0. PLD was fitted out as a pseudo healer in 1.0 because... CNJ/WHM was the only dedicated healer in the game, and they needed another healer out of necessity (remember ACN was dummied out in 1.0 and SCH and AST did not exist). Hence in ARR how ACN was given SCH as an experiment, it was an attempt to streamline Job roles and thus relieve PLD of healing duties, allowing it to concentrate on being a straight tank (in particular, the Duty Finder requires Jobs and classes to be specific roles, having PLD able to both tank and heal would cause... certain potential issues with players queuing as tank for the 'adventurer in need tank bonus', but then insist on healing in the party and then the party wipes because they're not actually doing their job role properly.

Having said that, having some healing capability for GLA/PLD is not a bad thing at all, but that was more or less solved with the addition of Clemency. So really, I don't think PLD really needs anything more, except maybe a slight healing boost for Cure. But it's not essential.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but please enlighten me as to what benefit this would give you as WAR? (Unless this is simply trolling).

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Looks like you missed the point of that in a corridor.

What i meant, was that making cross-class restrictions (like PLD - MRD, CNJ; DRK - GLA, MRD) are bad. I would like all classes i raised to be able to use as cross-class.
Joke with Swifcast on War was to give a hint, that anything, even if stupid, would give player some freedom in making a build, since we are very limited in here.

Answering your question:
You can use swifcast on flash, since it is a spell.
Your ignorance was forgiven.

Well, I agree restricting cross class abilities as a class (in other words, without the Soul Crystal equipped) was not a good idea, but like most of the issues with ARR's design, blame the 1.0 players whom SE polled as to what they wanted ARR to be like and what changes they wanted to be implemented in ARR's design - one of the main changes was they wanted designated party roles for each class, and each class to have an actual identity, especially when in a party, hence the restriction on abilities, a restriction which is even tighter when a Job is equipped. SE merely gave players what they wanted. So, gone horribly right I guess?

Also Flash may be a spell but it has an instant cast time anyway, making Swiftcast totally redundant. But I digress.