A Skillbook for all Jobs (idea)

Greetings,

After playing arround with Blue Mage, i got a interesting idea to share with you guys and would like to hear some thoughts on the matter.

A Skillbook.
I think every Job should have one in a similar way how BLU has. Not only would it make adding more skills in the future alot easier, it would also allow customisation for both competitive and "just out of fun" gameplay.

-How should Skills be obtained?
> through Quests or specific Dungeon/Trial Objectives, it could be something trivial like for Scholars case for example, make sure that no Tonberry is killed during a Wanderers Palace hard mode run or kill X amount of Enemies where you need to make the kill.

-From which Point should a Skillbook be granted?
>as soon as you get your Job Crystal. With every 2 Levels you gain, you gain a additional Slot from the number of active Skills that can be chosen from said Book. that would leave us at lvl80 with a total of 25 additional Skills and +5 Skills for every expansion, so in other words, barely any changes, but certain Jobs, such as Warriors, who have quite few skills to go by, would profit with this.

How exactly should the Skill List of the Skillbook look like?
>It should be divided into 2 categories, Active and Passive Skills, which should be quite self explaining. Both Active and Passive Skills WON'T share the same amount of Skillslots, since passive abilities can give room for great impact on performance, they could be limited by maybe one Skillslot every 5 levels, instead of 2 (The moment you get the Book, you start off with 6 Slots for passives to choose from). Unlike active Skills which need to be unlocked throughout Eorzea, Passive Skills are already written down into the Book and should have a good amount of selection to choose from (of which of course, you wont be able to choose all at once, which goes for both active and passive).

I am aware that, knowing Squeenix design choices on things, it is unlikely to happen, but how would you guys think of such a idea if it were to happen?

EDIT 05.03.2021: Updates for more detailed explaination:

In order for the Book to work, it will be divided into Class- and "Job skills (Job skills will be the ones in the Skillbook, in which the book itself branches again into active and passive skills as mentioned above).

Class Skills would work in the same way they currently do, with the exception that every Rotation becomes inplimented way earlier so that every Job that has a proper Rotation will have the full thing avaiable no later than lvl30, along with Skills that are essential for the Job (those could also be in the Class Tab, and even unlocked at a later point beyond level 30), examples for this would be abilities like Blood of the Dragons from DRG, Iaijutsu from SAM, Edge/Flood of Shadow from Dark Knight and so on. Those Skills are always avaiable once unlocked.

Those Skills that are NOT as essential as the ones mentioned above, will be the ones "optional" for the choosing. Imagine it like this (using SCH as a reference here):

In Scholars case, i would say the following Skills should be scrapped into the Skillbook for the sake of customisation (it will not mean that you wont be able to play SCH as it used to be before, it will still be possible by simply recreating the kit, but you will also have customisation avaiable which should also include new Skills):

Bio, Ruin 2***, Art of War, Broil*, Deployment Tactics, Emergency Tactics, Dissipation, Excogitation, Lustrate***, Chain Stratagem, Sacred Soil**, Indomitability**, Biolysis*, Fey Blessing**, Summon Seraph**, Recitation and all of the Role Skills.

That would leave Scholar will the following Skills remaining as "essential": Ruin, Physick, Summon Fairy, Resurrection, Whispering Dawn+, Adloquium, Fey Illumination+, Aetherflow(grants faerie gauge instead)**, Succor**, Aetherpact and Fey Blessing+


* = should be its own Skill which either deals for example, a different type of damage or grants Effects, in SCH case, that would mean that Ruin will be the basic Form of Attacking which should upgrade overtime into Ruin 2 and 3. In SMN case, that Job should get reworked into a own JoB completely cut off from Arcanist in order for this to work)
**=needs to be reworked in a way that it works independ from Aetherflow (which should be removed in order for this to work, instead, they will have rechargeable stacks, in the way they work in PvP, maybe just not as fast as there)
***= should be removed.
+ = The Skills themselves should stay as they are, but independed from the Fairy. Instead, the Fairy should have her own Set of Skills that she uses passively, like attacking at the same time with the SCH, in the way how demi-bahamut/-phoenix attack alongside the SMN, and heals in the same way (in exchange, the Fairy CAN be killed but needs proper defense values and HP, and can still be controlled the way it works now).

I deeply enjoy 14's relative lack of a meta.
I can use what I enjoy instead of being pressured to change to whatever jobs or specs is king right now. I don't get harassed for what I enjoy playing.
I am not keen on your proposal if only because it would compromise that.

But like you mentioned at the end, it is unlikely to happen.
Considering this game originally has cross classing and Yoshi P phased that out so each job has 1 defined toolkit his team needs to look at when balancing content, I don't think we'll see that change at least until he leaves the director's seat.

Having that kind of system would just bring more problems than it's worth tbh. You run the risk of having non-meta builds and in XIV since everyone and everything is similar in jobs it just comes down to player skill. And we all have ways of knowing just how bad or good some people playing the game can be.

Pretty sure you just invented Role Actions.

Letting us glamour what abilities we want (such as old removed animations) would be about as far as I can see this going.

Maybe you like ball lightning. Maybe you like lightning bolt.

Do X to unlock the Bolt glamour for your thunder spells.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Having that kind of system would just bring more problems than it's worth tbh. You run the risk of having non-meta builds and in XIV since everyone and everything is similar in jobs it just comes down to player skill. And we all have ways of knowing just how bad or good some people playing the game can be.

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Skill? What is this Skill you speak of? In case you have forgotten, were playing a MMORPG, you only need to be able to memorize and execute, and nothing more.

Bad Jokes aside, every decent combat system needs a flowing, and everchanging metagame, to be destroyed and rebuild again in order to be good. Even the most optimized Build can fail if the Player has the Reaction Time of a Turtle that smoked the wrong kind of grass.

It is more or less a matter of "does this work, or not?" rather than "go with the flow" kind of enviroment when it comes to combat in MMORPGs.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Bad Jokes aside, every decent combat system needs a flowing, and everchanging metagame, to be destroyed and rebuild again in order to be good.

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Even if this were true...
It doesn't mean FF14 should move to a customizable layout BLU style system.

Horrible idea for FF14, but i played a few mmos with similar concepts with skills where theyd give u like 3-6 for a base then would make others drops from mobs or fetch questd. Which is generally a interesting idea but horrible in execution. it would make alot of jobs feel incomplete and add to elitism with parties saying "Must have so-so skills". Im sure a MMO can make it work but FF14 is not one of them

So, basically, The Community denies any suggestions for improvements on the gameplay-side because of the fear for elitism, from what i understand.

Elitism in itself is not a bad thing, it is the people who aren't capable of dealing with it, it is hardly any different on the magnitude of negative experiences such as FC drama or someone being a bad mood because of things, so how can such a simple and easy to solve issue be your main justification for any large-scale changes on the combat system? In case noone has noticed (can't blame you if FFXIV is your first MMORPG), FFXIV combat is very bland and basic, almost to the point that it has more similarities to a MOBA, rather than a MMORPG.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Horrible idea for FF14, but i played a few mmos with similar concepts with skills where theyd give u like 3-6 for a base then would make others drops from mobs or fetch questd. Which is generally a interesting idea but horrible in execution. it would make alot of jobs feel incomplete and add to elitism with parties saying "Must have so-so skills". Im sure a MMO can make it work but FF14 is not one of them

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How can a system be considered incomplete and horrible in execution when its main purpose is to customise arround weaknesses and build upon strenghs to ones desire? It definitely works for BLU who is capable of easily dealing any content on any role in any Instance it is allowed to enter, so tell me how this is horrible in execution? because of Elitism? Elitism has nothing to do with the Gameplay aspect, it has to do with People and that isn't something i'd like to talk about here since this would be getting offtopic.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

So, basically, The Community denies any suggestions for improvements on the gameplay-side because of the fear for elitism, from what i understand.

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It's not a fear of elitism. It's an understanding of people and game systems and numbers.

Look at WoW, for example. You have all sorts of of choices (talents, covenants, soulbinds, and conduits, currently) but despite having options there's always a mathematically correct pick for every situation. You always take this talent, you never take that talent, "lol, you picked THAT covenant?", and so on. The game doesn't stop you from making the wrong choices but there absolutely are wrong choices.

FFXIV just cuts out step.

This sort of design would not work in FFXIV, and it would lead to people locking players out of groups because they don’t have key skills for each job. Especially for some of the utility jobs like physical ranged or AST. Why would you want a DNC that doesn’t have Standard Step or Technical Step in their kit? What else are they bringing to the group? Very little, if we were to look at the job as it stands now. DNC’s value comes from it buffing the party—without those buffs, it’s a very gimped DPS. Its personal damage is certainly not high enough currently to warrant bringing a DNC that doesn’t have keystone abilities. Why would you bring an AST if it doesn’t have its cards? Just bring a WHM. Granted, AST’s healing toolkit is more versatile (assuming the AST in this system bothered to unlock all of its healing toolkit abilities), but the WHM would technically bring more as it has higher personal damage than an AST. This really goes for all jobs. Why bring a BLM that doesn’t have Fire IV? A SMN without Summon Bahamut (or even egi summons period)? Or a DRG that only has it’s most basic 1-2-3?

This game is also not designed with branching rotations or branching builds in mind. For the jobs in this game, it’s not an option to have X skill, but not have Y skill or Z skill when it comes to max-level play (leveling is, obviously, very different given how skills unlock—to a point; it is still expected of you to keep job quests up-to-date with your current level to ensure you have all the skills you’re supposed to have). The jobs’ kits are so intricately designed with each piece in mind, that it would feel incomplete to be missing skills—a good example of this is BRD pre-level 52 where they only have 2 songs in their rotation. There’s a 20-second gap where you don’t have a song active, and the rotation is incomplete. And feels incomplete. Imagine that at level 80. It would compound the feeling of incompleteness even more so. And it would lead back to my first point: why would groups take a BRD with only 2/3 songs unlocked versus one with all 3 unlocked?

You actually saw shadows of this in Heavensward when DRK was released. Back then, Provoke was a cross-class skill that you had to level GLA to level 22 to obtain. It was very common to run into DRKs that had not leveled their GLAs, so they didn’t have Provoke to take bosses or mobs off of party members. And they were, rightly, criticized for not having that skill. It’s too core to a tank to not have. To a lesser extent, you could see this with healers and Swiftcast, which required level 26 THM. You honestly saw this with crafters as well until the developers streamlined everything. Why was it recommended to level all your crafters in ARR and HW? Because you had to cross-class skills from other crafters to do high-end rotations.

BLU is a different example where it was designed to sort of have all these different options for skills and rotations and “builds”. Mathematically, I am sure there is still a “most optimal” rotation for each kind of BLU (tank BLU, healer BLU, DPS BLU, etc.), though. But since BLU is basically a gimmick job that cannot participate in battle content normally like all other jobs in FFXIV, it gets away with this design. If BLU could participate in content like the other jobs, you would absolutely see people saying “You don’t have X-Y-Z skills? Why don’t you have them? Go get them.”. Especially at high levels of play. I think it’s less elitism and more so the fact that, by playing a job with only half a rotation, you’re griefing the rest of your party and basically forcing them to carry you.

FFXIV as a whole was not designed for all jobs to have BLU-esque “skill books”, and I don’t think it would be healthy for the game to switch to this. Not when the current battle system is this deeply established—this game isn’t exactly young.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

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Yo your post is excellent and lovely and makes me realize something I'd been struggling to put into words: There's nothing wrong with the idea... in a game without rotations.
If the game were about using your buttons as you need them, this idea would be great.

I updated the original Post with a in-detail explaination how exactly i meant the entire Skillbook idea. Hope that helps to clarify some things.

If I'm understanding this correctly, then what your proposal is

A job has a number of core skills and some slots.
A job then gets optional ones to slot in as they do things in the game.


Guess what? Fun>balance always. I support this. I miss cross class, but I also miss the many skills gutted over the years just as much. Despite what other people in this thread have said, ff14 IS a game about pressing the right buttons as you need because that's literally the point. If savage balance is an issue then just stop it from working in savage as an additional challenge aspect.

Unlocking these additional skills would incentivise running otherwise dead content and give horizontal progression that the playerbase keeps grumbling about.

Its not a stretch to make core skills include essentials like provoke then allow the custom slots to be filled with what the player desires their jobs to play like.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Guess what? Fun>balance always.

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Ina single player game, yes. In a multi-player game, especially a massively multi-player game, no.

In a multi-player setting it can't just be fun. It has to be fun for everyone at the same time. Balance is king.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Ina single player game, yes. In a multi-player game, especially a massively multi-player game, no.

In a multi-player setting it can't just be fun. It has to be fun for everyone at the same time. Balance is king.

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We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

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Lost Actions in Bozja/Delubrum?

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Lost Actions in Bozja/Delubrum?

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Only avaiable in Bozja Content, same goes for Eureka Logos Spells which are exclusive to Eureka.

Some of those Skills could also be a good addition to the Skillbook system i mentioned, but knowing you, you probably just try to derail the thread once again, do keep in mind that this can be punished.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Guess what? Fun>balance always. I support this. I miss cross class, but I also miss the many skills gutted over the years just as much. Despite what other people in this thread have said, ff14 IS a game about pressing the right buttons as you need because that's literally the point. If savage balance is an issue then just stop it from working in savage as an additional challenge aspect.

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The issue with the cross-class system was that key skills were locked behind it. Like Provoke and leveling GLA to level 22. Or Swiftcast behind level 26 THM. SCH having to cross-class Protect and Stoneskin from CNJ/WHM, etc.. There is absolutely no reason to have skills that are essential to your role locked behind leveling up another class—perhaps one that you may not even be interested in. So while they may have been fun, it wasn’t fun for the players in content that got DRKs or WARs that hadn’t leveled their GLA to 22 for that skill. That’s why it was revamped into the role actions.

However, there were a lot of skills in said role actions that were never optional under any means: Provoke, Rampart, Reprisal, Shirk, Protect, Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, Esuna (to a lesser extent in high-end since you can’t cleanse debuffs in there usually, but in other content, it’s good to have), Largesse, Refresh, Tactician, Palisade, Diversion. None of these skills were optional for jobs to have—and this could very well be a problem in the proposed system. Even with your core skills, if there are “optional” ones that are deemed necessary to your job/role, then they are no longer “optional” to have when it comes to group content. Failure to have them would lead to people being removed from parties because the rest of the group doesn’t want to deal with a player who is only bringing the absolute bare minimum to the group. That wouldn’t bring any fun to the game.

As I said before, had FFXIV been designed this way from the ground up, perhaps it would have worked. But this has never been the way combat has worked in this game. Any attempts at “optional” skills have backfired. Revamping combat into this would not help the game in any way, in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

We have balance oozing out of every corner of Eorzea, we desperately need some fun mechanics outside of Blue Mage.

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There’s actually plenty of things in this game that could still stand to be balanced. Have you seen the physical ranged?

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Only avaiable in Bozja Content, same goes for Eureka Logos Spells which are exclusive to Eureka.

Some of those Skills could also be a good addition to the Skillbook system i mentioned, but knowing you, you probably just try to derail the thread once again, do keep in mind that this can be punished.

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Are you threatening me? I gave a valid alternative. If you aren't satisfied no need to personally attack me.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Its not a stretch to make core skills include essentials like provoke then allow the custom slots to be filled with what the player desires their jobs to play like.

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Except then you run into the scenario WoW has, where jobs are flat out refused to be taken even in the casual content. Why? Because they're straight up inferior in every way. Let's say they allowed DRK to play as a DPS but it could never obtain the damage levels of any Melee DPS. It's worthless. There's literally no reason to bring it, thus you'll see PF for EX Primals and such locking it out because, again, why bring a job that's significantly weaker? If you argue to simply balance it better with the melee... you've just created a whole new workload for the dev team. This sort of idea works in Bozja/Eureka because they can throw silly actions at you in a singular controlled environment. It wouldn't work in the base game.

With that said, I do agree they went a little too far in the balance department if only because they opted for homogenization. Which, frankly, is lazy balancing. But going the opposite extreme isn't any better.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Are you threatening me? I gave a valid alternative. If you aren't satisfied no need to personally attack me.

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No, simply reminding you, and what can i possibly do? Call the cyberpolice on you? And what valid alternative was that suppoest to be anyway?

Jokes aside, i still fail to see any valid arguments on why a Skillbook System shouldnt work in this Game.

As for HyoMinPark's Question about Ranged Jobs, from my perspective, theyre fine from the way their skillkit works, but BRD feels kind of sluggish, and MCH overwhelmingly overpowered atm.

I think a good way to fix this would be to rework the Job gauge from both Jobs into having only one Bar to be filled out and add for those two Jobs something i'd like to call a ammunition Bar (since a Gun/Arrow quiver can only hold so much ammo). Before anyone starts shrieking at me, hear me out first.

BRD's could have a ammunition capacity of lets say, 24 (can or can't change with different Weapons), while the Bard has ammo, the Job has a reduced GCD on all of its arrow-related abilities (1-1,5sec GCD).
MCH would work in a similar way, but having ammo far more limited (6-12 shots).

In order to make it fair for both, they are going to need a proper way to replenish ammo, maybe keeping it simple with a Skill or trough more conventional ways by having it recharge like some skills already do (MCH having a faster recharging compared to BRD, to even things out).

Imagine using the words “MCH” and “overpowered” in the same sentence....I’m kind of shocked right now. It is clear that you don’t really understand the current state of balance when it comes to the game.

As the physical ranged currently stand, all are alarmingly weak. None are overpowered. If they didn’t bring the 1% party buff to a group, BRD and MCH would for sure be benched, and DNC would only be invited to parties to Dance Partner the SAM or BLM. That is the current state of the role. Within said role, DNC reigns supreme because of its utility. MCH doesn’t do enough in terms of personal damage to really set it aside from DNC, and BRD’s lack of utility has hurt the job in more ways than just lore. It has fallen from the most popular DPS role to one of the least popular (at least in terms of Savage clears for it). But even non-raiders are complaining about the current design of it. And it has very little to do with BRD feeling “sluggish”, and everything to do with it being a BRD in name only.

And why would you give BRD ammunition? If any job were to get ammo, it should be MCH. That was actually part of the original design of the job. MCH’s base combo used to be RNG procs. You mitigated said RNG but losing ammunition into your weapon to guarantee that your next combo action proc’d. However, having your base combo be 50% RNG has its own design flaws, so they moved away from that system.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Imagine using the words “MCH” and “overpowered” in the same sentence....I’m kind of shocked right now. It is clear that you don’t really understand the current state of balance when it comes to the game.

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Anyone who solo's and solo'd HoH and PotD and is worthy of their Titles would diagree with you, therefore allow me to explain myself.

First of all, MCH, as any ranged physical dps, has not only a ranged advantage over things (including 2 abilities to hinder movement btw), it also has ALL of its attacks instantly used, including a 700 potency Drill which has only 30sec CD (19,5sec on my lv80 MCH with 1550 speed), a "burst mode" that allows spamming 3 skills at a significant lowered GCD, a bomb that deals almost as much dmg as said drill, if executed properly and is capable of interrupting specific abilities from enemies WHILE being mobile, compared to casters which are rooted to the ground for a short moment, especially BLM.

At lvl60, MCH is the strongest Dps Job in terms of solo capacity and that hardly changes at lvl80, alone for the fact that it is extremely mobile. A sprinting MCH can't even be caught by non-boss enemies while it dishes out damage.

>Why would you give BRD ammunition?
Because you kind of need arrows to shoot a bow. I agree that the old MCH was bad, to put it mildly, but limiting a Job with ammunition isn't a bad idea by itself, since it gives room to create playstyles arround that "weakness". It certainly works on Rougelike games from where i also drew the inspiration from (Tales of May'Eyal, in case youre curious).

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Anyone who solo's and solo'd HoH and PotD and is worthy of their Titles would diagree with you, therefore allow me to explain myself.

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This is an apples to oranges comparison. PotD and HoH aren't balanced properly whatsoever and since you're primarily fighting trash mobs, you'll have most of your abilities ready per engagement.

In every Savage fight this tier, Machinist is 1,500 rDPS below Ninja, the supposed support Melee DPS. To put this into perspective, were it not for the 1% party wide buff, all three physical range deal so little damage, they'd be rendered entirely obsolete. They are that weak. Their mobility has no value whatsoever in Savage because none of the mechanics take advantage of it. They have no greater utility than the Casters. In fact, they have less than the Tanks. Simply put, in a party setting, which is where balance is the primary focus, Machinist, Bard and Dancer cling to the aforementioned party buff for relevance. None of them are overpowered. They're laughably weak.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Anyone who solo's and solo'd HoH and PotD and is worthy of their Titles would diagree with you, therefore allow me to explain myself.

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MCH being good in PotD or HoH does not mean it’s overpowered. RDM could solo both back in SB, but that didn’t mean it was the strongest caster. It was much weaker than both SMN and RDM until Alphascape, where they finally buffed it. It still wasn’t nearly as good as SMN, though, which had the highest mobility of all casters, utility, and damage. Please look at actual encounters before basing what a job is like in terms of balance.

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At lvl60, MCH is the strongest Dps Job in terms of solo capacity and that hardly changes at lvl80, alone for the fact that it is extremely mobile. A sprinting MCH can't even be caught by non-boss enemies while it dishes out damage.

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This game isn’t balanced around what jobs are like at anything other than level cap. By your logic, I could say RDM and DNC are equally overpowered based on putting them in level 50 content, where they crap on all other DPS jobs. Or than SAM is the weakest melee because of where it stands in level 70 content. That’s not a fair comparison at all. At cap, MCH is weak. And it’s the least valuable in the physical ranged role because it offers no utility and doesn’t have the personal damage to compensate for it.

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>Why would you give BRD ammunition?
Because you kind of need arrows to shoot a bow. I agree that the old MCH was bad, to put it mildly, but limiting a Job with ammunition isn't a bad idea by itself, since it gives room to create playstyles arround that "weakness". It certainly works on Rougelike games from where i also drew the inspiration from (Tales of May'Eyal, in case youre curious).

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This game has never required BRDs to have arrows of any kind. BRD’s primary gimmick has been its songs, which have changed over the years. And there is no “creating a playstyle” in XIV. All jobs have an optimal way to play. Anything deviating from that is suboptimal. Such is the design of the game, and such it has always been.

In case People are forgetting, this Game isn't all about Raiding when it comes to Endgame content, and just because it is the largest slice of the endgame cake, it shouldnt mean that gameplay should be negleted just because all you guys care is about clearing content as fast as possible.

You guys of all People, should know how incredibly stale it is in it's current form, which brings me pointing to my original post about the Skillbook idea. Don't you think it would be a good addition to the game, if every Job had a fixed, but modest set abount of skill, plus room for additional Skills to choose from past level 30?

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Originally Posted by Anhra

In case People are forgetting, this Game isn't all about Raiding when it comes to Endgame content, and just because it is the largest slice of the endgame cake, it shouldnt mean that gameplay should be negleted just because all you guys care is about clearing content as fast as possible.

You guys of all People, should know how incredibly stale is in it's current form, which brings me pointing to my original post about the Skillbook idea. Don't you think it would be a good addition to the game, if every Job had a fixed, but modest set abount of skill, plus room for additional Skills to choose from past level 30?

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Solo content is not what the game is balanced around. It is balanced around group encounters. And it has very little to do with “clearing content as fast as possible”. If you want rotational variety and gimmicks, that’s what Bozja and Eureka with the logos actions is for. But regular content is not like that and has never been like that. There has always been a “right” way to play a job; and any other way is wrong. Freestyle play does not exist in this game.

I already stated my opinion about your skill book idea. It would not work in this game given the way it is designed and has been designed since 2.0. Mathematically, there will always be superior rotations, and any job lacking any one mandatory ability would be mathematically inferior to the same job that has all abilities. “Optional” or not.

I don’t think skillbooks would fix the issue with staleness as a lot of staleness for me comes from endgame being watered down in difficulty (outside of Ultimate). For job design, it’s mostly stupid decisions on the part of the development team—like adding these really nice, intricate healing capabilities to all healers but failing to give us stuff to actually use them in (healing requirements are very low in most content and healers are all overpowered in terms of healing so that makes it even more egregious). For a job like BRD that I mained since I started this game and then dropped with ShB, it would be that the job lost complexity in favor of “closing the skill gap” and that it’s a BRD in name only. It has no unique support to make it feel like a BRD. It’s basically a Ranger now because they didn’t want it to overshadow DNC. And DNC dominated the physical ranged role despite being weak.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

In case People are forgetting, this Game isn't all about Raiding when it comes to Endgame content, and just because it is the largest slice of the endgame cake, it shouldnt mean that gameplay should be negleted just because all you guys care is about clearing content as fast as possible.

You guys of all People, should know how incredibly stale it is in it's current form, which brings me pointing to my original post about the Skillbook idea. Don't you think it would be a good addition to the game, if every Job had a fixed, but modest set abount of skill, plus room for additional Skills to choose from past level 30?

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You're missing the point. They only balance content around group content, which needs to keep each job within a specific threshold otherwise they become mandatory or obsolete. It isn't about clearing content the fastest, but simple pragmatism. I'll reiterate my earlier example with DPS Dark Knight. If it can't compete with Melee, it's worthless. It doesn't matter how cool the animations or what skills it offers, there's simply no reason to bring it into a party. If they did manage to balance it, well... that's simply another job. Hence why Yoshida has said on multiple occasions he would prefer making a new job instead of branching builds like this. They're effectively the same thing.

As for your spell book idea. No, actually, I wouldn't having a modest amount of skills to choose from. Why? Because they'd only be allowed in content I'm already laughably overpowered for anyway. Once again, making Dark Knight a DPS in the open world may be neat for all of a day or two, but doesn't have any real value because open world content is comically easy. Nevertheless, HyoMin brought it up already. Eureka and Bozja exist literally for this reason.

The idea of said Skillbook is that those Skills are to be used in any type of Content except PvP.

Earlier it has been stated in the case of ranged Dps that utility is being prefered for "balance" reasons in raiding. Wouldn't it be great if suddenly any Job could bring one form or another in their own way, a utility or skill that positively affects the party? And if you dont need it, you just replace it with another, simple as that.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

The idea of said Skillbook is that those Skills are to be used in any type of Content except PvP.

Earlier it has been stated in the case of ranged Dps that utility is being prefered for "balance" reasons in raiding. Wouldn't it be great if suddenly any Job could bring one form or another in their own way, a utility or skill that positively affects the party? And if you dont need it, you just replace it with another, simple as that.

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You already have most jobs bringing some sort of utility. So much so that the physical ranged role’s utility is not nearly as valuable as it used to be. What value does Troubadour/Samba/Tactician have when all the healers and tanks now also have AOE mitigation? And the tanks’ mitigation are all on 90 second cooldowns versus the ranged’s 120 seconds. Then you have the casters and Addle. Giving every job support utility just waters down the aspect of it. Especially when content rarely calls for so many different forms of mitigation because it simply doesn’t hit hard enough.

No. It would not be great. Giving mitigation and utility to every job just waters down the ones that came with said mitigation/utility innately. My Samba is overkill in my static. Most fights I can just use it whenever I want and it not matter because all the big hits you want mitigated are covered by Addle, Reprisal, an AOE tank mitigation, Sacred Soil, or Temperance. Even with my group doing UCoB, they don’t ask for me to use Troubadour until Heavensfall—8 minutes into the fight. Because so much else is covered by other mitigation.

Ranged as a role don’t “prefer” utility, per se. It’s the existing utility of DNC and the failure of BRD and MCH to make up that discrepancy in either their own utility or just raw damage that causes the imbalance to shift in favor of DNC within the role. They have nothing to compete with what DNC does, and they don’t do enough personal damage to offset not bringing a DNC. Allowing BRD and MCH to just bring a Standard Step or Tech Step equivalent wouldn’t help. It would just reduce the flavor of DNC and make all of the jobs feel samey.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

The idea of said Skillbook is that those Skills are to be used in any type of Content except PvP.

Earlier it has been stated in the case of ranged Dps that utility is being prefered for "balance" reasons in raiding. Wouldn't it be great if suddenly any Job could bring one form or another in their own way, a utility or skill that positively affects the party? And if you dont need it, you just replace it with another, simple as that.

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This is effectively the role actions system from Stormblood, which was maligned because there wasn't a choice. Most skills like Diversion and Second Wind were mandatory. While True North boiled down to whether the boss had positionals. If it didn't, the skill become worthless. This meant constantly switching actions, which many found extremely annoying not enjoyable.

Ideas like this "Skillbook" are wonderful in that Bizzaro-MMO-Land where players will take horrendously inefficient actions for the sake of Community. In the Real World, systems like this would be mathed and parsed out within hours of release.

It's my opinion, but I love not having to worry about a gazillion specs, I will actively fight against this kind of chnage.

Well I think, that kind of stuff sounds fun. I support it! Anyone so serious that they need to worry about a meta should go play a moba.

Didn't this used to be how the game worked, with cross class skills?


How about we do this instead with Onion Knight, the next limited job?

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

Didn't this used to be how the game worked, with cross class skills?


How about we do this instead with Onion Knight, the next limited job?

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Onion Knight will never happen, because SE themselves evidentally evaulated and then discounted a similar class concept called 'Freelancer'/Adventurer back when FFIV 1.0 was still in early development, according to a certain 1.0 class design document that was floating around online years ago (it was meant to have the abbreviation 'SPC', presumedly 'Special', and was stated as being 'bare handed'). Like other such legendary no-show classes like the original version of Arcanist, Musketeer, Fencer, a Bard class that used musical instruments, and Shepherd, this Freelancer class was never implemented, and probably was discounted very early on as pretty redundant as the fundamentals of the Armoury System was developed and refined, including the cross-class system.

Between that and how Onion gear is already in the game for other classes (there is the old 'Onion Doublet' set from 1.0, LNC/DRG's specific Onion set from the Labyrinth of the Ancients, an Onion Shield for GLA/PLD, and no less than three different Onion helms, it's pretty clear an Onion Knight class will never be implemented I'm sorry to say.