Upkeep abilities

I've been leveling some classes on an alt and I got to thinking about the abilities Blood of the Dragon, Enochian, and Greased Lightning. Now that we can easily keep all of these moves indefinitely even out of combat, is there any reason for them to even exist? In most cases, you hit them at the start of a fight and then never again and I feel like they just don't add anything to gameplay anymore like they did in heavensward. Personally I would love to never have to spam form shift in between every encounter.

What are your thoughts on those abilities?

Having the ability to maintain buffs out of combat is a good thing. It's more for dungeons than anything else I feel. Dropping a buff during a trial or raid isn't annoying because it's usually your fault. You made a mistake, but this is something you can correct. In dungeons you have gaps in the combat between pulls so keeping your buff isn't something you have control over and you need to go through the process of reapplying it continuously. It feels bad (it's supposed to) because without your buffs running the class feels more clunky. I don't want to be forced to deal with that, so I prefer things as they are now. The ability to keep buffs up continuously is a better fit for the this game and makes upkeeping them feel more relevant.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

Personally I would love to never have to spam form shift in between every encounter.

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...but isnt that - in some way - something that makes the job more intresting or challenging to play?

I dont play any of those jobs enough to actually say, but right now I'm leveling Samurai and its very, very easy to keep up Jinpu and Shifu (and I imagine its something a career samurai doesnt even has to think about), but its still something I need to take into consideration. Same when I was leveling blackmage: Yes, its easy enough by now to keep it up (thankfully, having this one-second garce period or whatever it was was painful), but its still something you have to do if you want to optimise your gameplay.
Its not super difficult, but its something you have to do - and if you fail to do that, you get punished.

To me this sounds like it would make jobs even more streamlined and the jobs in questions easier - which I dont think is necessary or even good... if you dont like keeping an eye on keeping up your buffs, there are jobs that dont require that and personally I like that variety. Personally I've also never really been a fan of stances - feels super boring to just turn your stance on at the beginning of a fight and then never worry about it again. Why even have the stance then? (As a paladin main I can see why tanks have it - so that you can have an offtank without a stance, but damn its unengaging to just hit shield oath at the start of an instance and then... its done.)
And, as you said yourself: During normal gameplay its not that difficult (anymore) - but that doesnt mean we just need to toss it alltogether...

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

The ability to keep buffs up continuously is a better fit for the this game and makes upkeeping them feel more relevant.

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What do you lose if they got rid of those three abillities? There is no challenge in keeping greased lighting, you do it in the beginning of the fight and never worry about it again. Same with Blood of the Dragon. Imagine if those buttons didn't exist, you just started the fight with whatever buff they would give you. Now the buttons that activate and maintain them (few for dragoon, many for monk) could be replaced with abilities that are actually engaging to use.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

...but isnt that - in some way - something that makes the job more intresting or challenging to play?

I dont play any of those jobs enough to actually say, but right now I'm leveling Samurai and its very, very easy to keep up Jinpu and Shifu

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The abilities that I'm talking about are not like Jinpu/Shifu, they are abilities that lock you out of other abilities until you press the button and then forget about it, with a few exceptions. I have no problem with regular upkeep buff moves. Now imagine that as samurai, you had to press a button at the start of the fight that would allow you to use your iajutsu, and after you pressed the button the buff would pretty much never fall off. Does pressing that button at the start of a fight make samurai more interesting or difficult to play? No. It's just an unnecessary step.

These three abilities were all much more interesting and engaging in heavensward, where their upkeep was a bit more difficult or tied to other mechanics, but they are a shell of what they used to be. I just don't think anything would really change if they were removed.

I like having a buff that I get to upkeep because it encourages active aggressive play. I also like having a single button that just works as a means of upkeeping that buff during downtime after playing Monk for two expansions and experiencing the joys of Riddle of Earth getting blocked by a strong enough Adloquium because it crit. If I have to choose between Form Shift being one button that works in every situation except for long cutscenes where only Ninja is going to get to keep its buff, or 5.0 Monk where there's 6 buttons competing for "What do I hit in Downtime" I think I'll take there being one useful button. Formshift could certainly be improved by only making it require one button press like Umbral Soul instead of needing to cycle through every form though. The devs still need to fix the half dozen downtime mitigation skills among many other problems with Monk's kit, but at least the job doesn't get arbitrarily screwed when no other job does because the buff upkeep skills it had pre 5.05 Formshift were terrible.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

What are your thoughts on those abilities?

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You can't have my Storm's Eye!!!

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Originally Posted by Anienai

You can't have my Storm's Eye!!!

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I'm talking specifically about greasedlighting, blood of the dragon, and enochian. I realize the title was misleading, sorry.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

What do you lose if they got rid of those three abillities?

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In general I'd have less to focus on in combat. Having an abundance of refresh abilities doesn't make it impossible to fail at upkeeping. The refreshers just keep you from being punished by encounter design (gaps in combat). As a side effect they make poor buff management less punishing, but you're still going to be punished for using your out of combat refresher in combat by dealing no damage. I guess than leans the punishment away from casual play and more towards hardcore, but I guess that's OK.

For the ones you specifically mentioned, Enochian is fine and all of the above applies to it. I'm not as familiar with the other two because I don't raid with MNK or DRG but I know they tend to have more margin/refresh more often than Eno. That could be changed by reducing their time if it's a problem, or adding a risky alternative to refreshing them. They don't need to be removed or have their refreshes removed.

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There is no challenge in keeping greased lighting, you do it in the beginning of the fight and never worry about it again. Same with Blood of the Dragon. Imagine if those buttons didn't exist, you just started the fight with whatever buff they would give you. Now the buttons that activate and maintain them (few for dragoon, many for monk) could be replaced with abilities that are actually engaging to use.

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I see what you're getting at but in practical terms the buttons don't really cost us anything (and GL doesn't have a button if I remember). A one use button can be placed in the most remote spot on your hotbars without being a bother because you only need to press it once. Also while I tend to favor complexity over simplicity, adding more buttons is not the best way to make a job interesting. Having decisions to make and limitations to work with tends to create a better rotation in my opinion, and you can do that with a relatively small set of skills. I think BLM is a good example. In SB it was a little too Fire IV heavy, but Despair alone fixed that and made it a bit more interesting to play. I don't think the job needs any more skills at this point. If it did, there are some underused skills to revamp already (Scathe, Fire II, Blizzard I).

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

I'm talking specifically about greasedlighting, blood of the dragon, and enochian. I realize the title was misleading, sorry.

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Enochain isn't kept up automatically, in fact it's quite easy to drop if you're inexperienced and have to move toward the end of your Fire 4 phase. Maintaining it while handling mechanics is what makes a good BLM.

That said, it's interesting how these abilities exist purely to add a little complexity to a class, rather than actually buff damage, because all classes are balanced to be roughly equal in terms of rDps. What I mean by that is if the damage buff didn't exist, your class would simply have potency buffs to reach the same dps. The Enhanced Enochain trait at 78 could even be seen as a very slight nerf, because dropping Enochain now becomes slightly more punishing.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

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I can agree with a lot of your points. I'm just looking at things through the lens of the changes that have occurred over each expansion.
-In HW, greased lightning was more difficult to keep up due to the shorter duration and less abilities to retain it, which at least gave tornado kick some small value, but since then it feels less and less important. At least in SB you could gain it fast/use TK regularly but it serves no other purpose now than getting it in the beginning.
-Dragoons Blood of the dragon had the interesting play of lowering the time when using Geirskogul versus raising it using the 4th combo abilities, but since then it is just set it and forget it
-blm is the one I'm least familiar with, but didn't enochian used to shorten each time you refreshed and had a longer cooldown to reapply it? The poster above me makes a good case for it's use, but I think with how short the cooldown is to reuse it when you do lose it, there is not too much punishment outside of optimizing damage.

I just don't see a future where these abilities ever really feel like they have impact like they used to. I guess an example would be Dark knights darkside buff. In HW it constantly drained mana in exchange for damage and was balanced around multiple mp regaining/spending moves. In SB it was gutted into a set-it-and-forget-it button, then in ShB it was dropped completely for new spenders that give the buff. I'm just surprised these other abilities haven't gotten the same treatment since they seem to be heading in the same direction.

It's kind of one of those things they'll probably look at one day and decide to take the pruning shears to in the future. Like, i'm not sure if i'd like them removing those maintenance buffs, but i'm not sure i'd hate it either.

Form Shift was one of the biggest dealbreakers for me as a monk as someone who likes duty finder and just like... enjoying human interaction. Whenever I would try to type a message, I'd have to stop, Form Shift several times, then type more. Nevermind how bad it would make me feel whenever there was a loading screen or something. Yeah, no one is forcing you to do it, but it's the mathematically right thing to do, and make your run faster for you and everyone else, so you feel compelled to do it. Also please don't try to craft this narrative that somehow hitting this button outside of combat is somehow skillful or adding depth.

Maybe next expansion, when they hopefully get rid of the fist buffs (because they have almost no substantive meaning), they can make a Fists of Wind trait that grants movement speed and maintains GL outside of combat, under the guise the monk is assuming a meditative state when they are undistributed.

Yes they're kinda pointless and will probably be removed in 6.0 unless designers backtrack on what is effectively a bad design and go back to how things were. Many are hoping but chances are slim. This follows everything else they've done with class design, be it ressource uptime, stance dancing, crafting etc.. They've taken some of the core aspects of classes and have made them easier/braindead, all in an effort to not give too big an advantage to higher skilled players and reduce the skill gap. Makes their life easier when calibrating content, means people aren't as pressured to perform better, but makes the gameplay more boring with growing experience.
There's a limit to how much you can do this of course so they may add a bit of complexity for some roles (healers come to mind as being in a pretty bad place right now)

I'm on the fence. I hate spamming abilities to keep up my buffs while out of combat (especially if someone goes AFK for a minute before the boss in a dungeon), and I hate my buffs dropping. But, I'm afraid without the (however slight) risk for buffs to drop, the jobs might not have a level of stress/urgency that makes them engaging to play.

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Originally Posted by Esmoire

Form Shift was one of the biggest dealbreakers for me as a monk as someone who likes duty finder and just like... enjoying human interaction. Whenever I would try to type a message, I'd have to stop, Form Shift several times, then type more. Nevermind how bad it would make me feel whenever there was a loading screen or something. Yeah, no one is forcing you to do it, but it's the mathematically right thing to do, and make your run faster for you and everyone else, so you feel compelled to do it. Also please don't try to craft this narrative that somehow hitting this button outside of combat is somehow skillful or adding depth.

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Yeah. Instead of inventing workarounds why not just have the countdown timers on Enochian, GL, BotD, etc pause when you leave combat? Spamming abilities like Form Shift and Umbral Soul may work, but by the Twelve is it annoying. Job mechanics should work with me, not against me.

Really though, maintenance buffs are bad as a concept. They're decent at being skill checks but terrible at being fun. I want a buff that makes me feel like a god when it's active (Summon Bahamut), not one that makes be feel like crap when it isn't (Enochian.) Enochian, BotD, Huton, etc, are not fun buttons to press. On MCH I press my automaton button and think "sweet, robot time!" On BLM I press Enochian and feel nothing at best, and annoyance at having it drop off at worst.