I miss protect.

It was a moment to feel like a team.

That good moment when people waited for the cast;
Or the silly moment when everyone waited but one person.

When I first played this game and came from SWTOR this moment when I loaded into group content became something that set it apart. As time has gone by, I haven't stopped missing it.

The simple act of waiting or failing to wait for this cast was enjoyable. The laughs when it doesn't happen right, and the peace that follows when it does.

It'd be nice to have this back again.
I loved this little act and how it gave a feeling as the protect bubbles went out that we were in this together.

Adlo says hello

You literally press a button and then you never think about it again. There was zero strategy there. That's not gameplay. I agree that we have more class synergy, though. I don't like the ShB direction at all.

Sorry, I meant 'need more'.

Funny you miss protect and not stone skin. Or you are going to make separate thread about that?

I joined FFXIV after SB.
Looking up stoneskin, that was a pre-SB ability.

It is mostly about a difference in player behavior at the start.
Protect was a mood setter so to speak.

Hi-jinks and chaos, respectful discipline, etc...
It gave a moment to laugh about, or a moment of peace.

It was not so much the ability but rather one of player behavior and the feelings that it in turn created.

You know, fk everyone else, make a macro which contains:

Code:

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/me casts ↕protect↕.

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And then use it at the start of everything.

'member..

..protect/SSII before the pull?
..gathering outside raid entrance in overworld?
..tank yeeting off without prot at start of dungeon?
..cooldowns didn't reset between pulls and 30 second WAR/MCH macro countdowns?
..weakness/brink meant less vit meant reapplying protect/ss during raid just to survive aoe? ('member food dropping off on death?)

Summerford farm 'members.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Magictrix

You know, fk everyone else, make a macro which contains:

Code:

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/me casts ↕protect↕.

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And then use it at the start of everything.

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I do:

/huh motion
/emote attempts to cast protect...nothing happens.

When I do it, other people will sometimes comment how they miss it.
For me, this was a big difference between my experience in SWTOR and when I joined FFXIV. It is very special to me.

You guys remember 1.0 stoneskin?

In v1 protect also only lasted 5 mins tops.

I miss buffs and debuffs in their entirety. I loved being able to protect shell haste aquaveil stoneskin enthunder utsu then slow dia poison blind paralyze and silence. Combat just feels more dynamic and interesting when it consists of more than just flat numbers with a little dodging.

I would miss Protect more if it actually mattered in terms of defense boost in content. Back in SB, the only time is actually helped was Week 1 Savage prog and in Ultimate. Otherwise, it never made a difference if you had it or not.

Just go play Eureka Pyros/Hydatos. It's still in there. And you even get to cast it on people individually.

I don't miss it.
Nobody waiting for it, especially the tank, and you had to run after them to try and Protect them.
Same thing over again when someone died and you had to protect back but they wouldn't wait.
And even back in 2.0 when most people actually waited for it, it was still annoying to cast.
Na, I don't miss it at all. I also don't particularly miss Stoneskin.

I don’t miss it in its previous form but I do wish they’d made it an actual combat spell and not the weird cast-before-you-pull thing it was. I liked the idea of healers having access to a defensive support spell that was on the GCD. I mean we do need something to break up the monotony of one-button nuke spamming lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

I don't miss it.
Nobody waiting for it, especially the tank, and you had to run after them to try and Protect them.
Same thing over again when someone died and you had to protect back but they wouldn't wait.
And even back in 2.0 when most people actually waited for it, it was still annoying to cast.
Na, I don't miss it at all. I also don't particularly miss Stoneskin.

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This was a major part of the fun.

Laughing as you watched the tank run from the healer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Covfefe

This was a major part of the fun.

Laughing as you watched the tank run from the healer.

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Being the healer, I never found it fun at all.

I would love to have Protect back, but in a new form.

If you target a single player it grants a +20% defense for 10 secs.
If you dont target anyone it grants +10% defense to everyone near the healer for 30 secs.
Maybe put it on a 1 min recast.

so glad its gone. Long term buffs are pointless, its just required clicks that the game assumes you did.

I'd say "I also miss it", but not the way it sounds.

If you take a look at the list of "what a healer should think of" during an encounter, that's one thing less.
Of course, it was only a thing if you had to raise someone. Reaplying protect to him.
It had more value to think of it instantly after a raise in HW when dead had the vitality debuff (+ a stoneskin or any individual mitigation so that they don't get OS by the next aoe).

We sure lost a lot.
It might make me a bit nostalgic regardless if it was a good or a bad thing.

But in SB, with the bad cross role system, it was an annoyance.

I think they just had it there for sentimental value for us FFXI vets. The boost was about as useless as spell speed for regen.

Stoneskin though, yeah I miss that.. it actually could save your butt. I loved how healers(even I did this) know someone wasn't gonna make it out of an AOE in time, and they would stoneskin them.

I miss protect and stoneskin, such iconic actions :(

I personally would love to have it back

I miss Protect and Stoneskin as well, particularly the access PLD had to them. Being able to use cooldowns a few seconds before the cast of a tank buster, and then cast Stoneskin during the cast was kind of neato. Of course, mistiming the cast would mean losing out on the chance to block of parry, but hey, you could do it.

What I never liked about Protect is that they lumped Shell into it as a trait, instead of having each of those spells separately. They were a way bigger deal in FFXI where Shell V gave something like -23% Magic Damage Taken. They've been sacrificed on the alter of job identity though, which is kind of weird to me, since they also seem to have been trying to homogenize classes so that meta matters less/doesn't exist in any meaningful way. I mean, way back in 2.0, only WHM's protect had the shell trait on it, making the other protects from SCH and PLD worthless. In previous FFs, spells crossed between classes to an extent always, and it was specific spells and equipment as well as appearance which really differentiated the jobs. In XIV they want the jobs to be flavorful but all the flavors to be equally effective. It's taken a turn for the boring, in a lot of ways, while also being very good on other fronts.

Of course, it hasn't been like other FFs in the first place, with there being no elemental absorption or weakness, at least in 2.0. I can't speak for 1.0.

Something that could be interesting if people didn't like the way protect worked, would be to make a similar cast for tanks that grants reduced enmity.
Then tank mastery as a passive would no longer exist, instead wait for the tank to cast this new ability.
For the player that didn't wait for it, they would own agro and possibly die.

What I miss most is that it felt like I'd joined a team when waiting for protect.
I primarily tank, and it felt better than just rushing off.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

You guys remember 1.0 stoneskin?

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It had the cooler animation imo.
TAKE THIS WALL

Idunno why they didn't just call Temperance Protect instead. It basically does exactly what I always thought Protect should do as an ability.

protect make people not go running around leaving healer begining of a fight, so i kinda miss it...

Honestly I miss support spells in general.

Protect, Stoneskin, Bard’s old songs.
One thing I loved about Eureka (the only thing lol) was how the logos crystal things let you cast support spells like that again. Protect and Stoneskin return, Shell and Reflect are there, there’s spells like Bravery for damage support, debuffs like Paralyze and Sleep or Spirit Dart.

How come we can’t have stuff like this in the actual game?* It’s not like eureka content has a separate battle system lol


* (rhetorical question lol, it’s because it’s impossible to balance in any way)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Connor

Honestly I miss support spells in general.

Protect, Stoneskin, Bard’s old songs.
One thing I loved about Eureka (the only thing lol) was how the logos crystal things let you cast support spells like that again. Protect and Stoneskin return, Shell and Reflect are there, there’s spells like Bravery for damage support, debuffs like Paralyze and Sleep or Spirit Dart.

How come we can’t have stuff like this in the actual game?* It’s not like eureka content has a separate battle system lol


* (rhetorical question lol, it’s because it’s impossible to balance in any way)

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It's absolutely not impossible to balance. BA was great. You could go without most support skills and be fine, but you could take them and tread a little safer.
Very little was hardline required. And even those you could make due without, using gear.

Eureka was so good, I'd take that as the main battle system any day than our cookie cutter dry and stale battle system we have now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Canadane

It's absolutely not impossible to balance. BA was great. You could go without most support skills and be fine, but you could take them and tread a little safer.
Very little was hardline required. And even those you could make due without, using gear.

Eureka was so good, I'd take that as the main battle system any day than our cookie cutter dry and stale battle system we have now.

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I’m inclined to agree about support abilities in normal content; I mainly wanted to preempt the inevitable ‘but support means no balance’ argument that usually arises when it’s mentioned on the forums.

I only got to the third Eureka so I never experienced BA personally. But from just running around doing party stuff like FATEs or whatever, I did feel like the support skills were very useful. But at the same time, it’s not like you’d ever become unable to complete any content if you were missing a specific support ability.

One thing I found really fun about the whole Logos system thing was adjusting the ways I could support the party relative to what other party members have. So like if someone has Protect and Stoneskin, I could take Bravery and Spirit Dart, or if they had debuffs like Paralyze equipped I could equip Cure and Raise.

One of my favourite things about 2.0-3.0 Bard was having to manage song usage relative to the party’s composition, how they’re playing, the present situation, etc. I felt like Logos abilities had that same feeling of having something to manage beyond just ‘attack enemy’.

Honestly I think it’d be a pretty great long-term addition if they ported the Logos System to work in normal content (granted it got certain balance adjustments of course)

I loved the Logos actions, as did most people in Eureka. They really got to shine BA. I liked to take in Spirit Dart and the uhh, DPS one. I also liked to have that one that gave a DPS like 3000 defense and 20k more HP... bad for dealing DPS, but good for staying alive when I screw up or a healer gets blackholed or what have you.

I never did it in BA, but I loved to use the mixed Logos actions of Double Edge + Bloodbath on the outside. I think it was called Double Edge anyway... But like you get insane damage+ but as it tics up, you take increasingly high damage tics... but with Bloodbath Logos + Bloodbath role skill you could get 125% of the damage you deal as a heal, so as long as you timed it against the monster's AOEs/didn't get top of the enmity list, then you got to see these completely whacko high damage numbers and heal numbers without dying. I know some people liked to do Double Edge in BA, and they liked to be like, "Healer, focus heal me please, I'm going bananas!" Seemed way too risky to me though, what with death possibly meaning the end of your, or a healer kind enough to Sacrifice on you's, run.

I miss stoneskin