Thoughts on removing role actions?

I didn't come up with this idea, but what are your thoughts on the removal of role actions?

I'm in agreement it would open up space for more unique actions across all of the jobs. Even if an action or two would wind up being functionally similar or the same.

For examples, in the sense of abilities being functionally similar or identical, yet unique in animation at the very least, we already see this across the tanks:

• Dark Missionary and Heart of Light
• TBN,Heart of Stone/Heart of Corundum, Raw intution/Bloodwhetting and Sheltron/Holy Sheltron
• Shadow Wall, Nebula, Vengeance and Sentinel
• Living Dead, Superbolide, Holmgang and Hallowed Ground
• Delirium and Inner Release (I really this one in particular changes to not be so similar. At least Requiescat on Paladin feels unique to the job)

All in all, I believe the removal may help job design overall, since balancing with the role actions in mind no longer need to be accounted for, they may focus on the jobs themselves. As stated, it could provide all jobs with unique abilities and effects that provide to their own identity.

This is how it was before.
Classes would learn similar but different actions. While I miss some of the flavour, I don't expect them to go back.

RIP leeches.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

what are your thoughts on the removal of role actions?

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Remove em all. Lucid Dreaming is bloat, the effect over time of which should be baseline, and Rampart, Swiftcast, and Provoke are the only other ones remotely necessary.


Provoke:

• GLD->PLD: Provoke -> Guardian's Vow (Provoke target or all enemies currently near to or at active threat against target ally.)
• MRD->WAR: Taunt -> Challenge (Provoke target and all enemies in a wide line to and extending a bit behind the target.)
• DRK: Call of the Void (Provoke target and enemies within 5 yalms of target to self or, second to any Shadow-Self between you and the target.)
• GNB: Shock and Awe (Provoke. For 4 seconds thereafter, your Enmity is massively increased and you degrade enemy Accuracy based on your % increase to Enmity relative to when you first casts S&A.)

Rampart:

• PLD: "Bulwark" or "Entrench"
• WAR: Clash
• DRK: Shadowskin
• GNB: Flash of Steel

I'll leave those to your imagination. Let's just not let them all be 20% miti for 15 seconds per 90s.

Swiftcast:

• WHM: Give it something to do with its (white) wind spells, and maybe something cumulatively charged up and granularly depleted by any healing GCDs, including Lily heals.
• SGE: Allow SGE to simply assign a nouliths to the Rez, completing the spell independently while you continue on at 75% ST-GCD output. Faster raise than most healers.
• SCH: Allow the Fairy to cast the Raise instead, and cause Emergency Tactics to consume an Aetherflow but make the next spell cast, say, 75% more quickly and heal for an extra 200 potency ST or 100 AoE (that bonus heal would go off after the rez is accepted and completed).
• AST: .<Idk. Something with sigularities, perhaps benefiting from the number of DoTs or HoTs you have active, as per the old "theoretical sun" flavor text on HW Combust.>
• SMN: Something, something, Garuda and, separately, Phoenix. (Garuda buff does doesn't need to be capable of a full instant rez. Phoenix could get a re-Raise for all I care, since it'd be so timing sensitive. And also fitting and awesome.)
• RDM: Acceleration tie-in. (Don't make Dual-cast able to completely negate a rez's time. Just have it trim 3.5 seconds such that Veraero, etc., are still made instant.)
• BLM: Change Triple Cast back into old THM Dark Seal, instead consuming a more granular resource (bankable up to 4) to make your next n casts instant, and make it a toggle (animation lock to activate, but none to turn off). Voila, you could use just one, or a whole four (as per old Swift+Triple). You generate one stack per 15s.

I can't comment on the ranged since I don't play them much, although I have been enjoying the hell out of black mage.. That said, if it helps them jobs feel better, I'm all for it.

As for tanks I am definitely for those for the tanks. Not only do I wish we still had ultimatum, but lord I'm tired of Rampart. It does it's job, but I would much rather get bulwark of convalescence back for Paladin. The rest sound good to me too.

perhaps Shadowskin could decrease enemy damage by 15% and heal for 200 potency everytime you get hit?

Flash of Steel could function as what Blind did for Paladin, just gives all mobs around you blind.

Clash...I'm actually not sure. I'll let others speculate for that

One good thing about role actions is they ignore level sync. Whether that outweighs the benefits of having unique actions I'm not sure, but neither are particularly detrimental as they are.
There's benefits to having some consistency in skills such as Reprisal, Feint and Addle, so that its easier to track debuffs, and it's nice to have some 'basics' that don't change between jobs that you can fall back on in low level content, like Second Wind and Peloton.

You could go the other way and add in high level role actions to take advantage of this further.
For example; Troubadour, Tactician and Shield Samba all do the same thing, and while it's nice that each job has it's own version and animation, nothing would be lost if they were all turned into a role action, which you learned at level 60 but could be used in lower level duties.

Perhaps instead they could make it so that all Class abilities ignored level sync. This would mean that once you reach level 30, that's the minimum kit you'll ever take back into level synced content, and then throw in a few odd class abilities above level 30. The issue here of course is jobs that don't have base classes. So I guess that's why we're still relying on job actions.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

One good thing about role actions is they ignore level sync. Whether that outweighs the benefits of having unique actions I'm not sure, but neither are particularly detrimental as they are.

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This feels like an oversight that shouldn't push our determination one way or the other. Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action.

It just becomes a question of whether we want (the option) to retain our kits (with commensurate decrease to output so that, yes, we have to work harder for barely increased effect, if we so choose) as we're synced down.



Likewise...

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For example; Troubadour, Tactician and Shield Samba all do the same thing, and while it's nice that each job has it's own version and animation, nothing would be lost if they were all turned into a role action, which you learned at level 60 but could be used in lower level duties.

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This just seems so random and gimmicky. Either it's worth having those skills under level 60, or it's not. They don't need a wonky oversight to excuse their presence at those levels.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This feels like an oversight that shouldn't push our determination one way or the other. Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action.

It just becomes a question of whether we want (the option) to retain our kits (with commensurate decrease to output so that, yes, we have to work harder for barely increased effect, if we so choose) as we're synced down.



Likewise...

This just seems so random and gimmicky. Either it's worth having those skills under level 60, or it's not. They don't need a wonky oversight to excuse their presence at those levels.

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While kinda a seperate issue, low level skill shortage is a big issue. As our level cap increases but we maintain the same number of skills, low level duties will get increasingly more boring, which we're already feeling.
Retaining all of our kit is a huge no, not only for the insurmountable balance issues this would create, but also because having to focus on your endgame rotation to match the dps output of a sprout spamming their level 1 skill would be a miserable experience for daily roulettes.

It is not an all-or-nothing scenario.
One way of partially mitigating this is having skills that 'level up', like Healers dps spells, and many of our melee combo skills now too.
Having some skills that ignore level sync, especially utility skills that don't drastically effect game balance, is another way of mitigating this to some degree.

So yes, there's certainly merit in having role skills ignore level sync.
As i said, if there were a way of selecting which skills ignore level sync as the class/job system allows, but for all jobs, that would be great, but instead, we have role skills. I think giving all jobs a base class at this late stage is a tad less likely than simply retaining role actions.

"Role Actions ought to be treated the same way as any other action."
Why? This seems like an incredibly arbitrary stance to take, when having role actions be treated differently to other actions can provide a form of depth to the skill system, as they in fact do already, just not in an incredibly noticeable way.

I don't think it is a "wonky oversight" to have skills that ignore level sync, it provides some sense of progression to the levelling experience, learning skills that you retain when synced make it feel like those levels you gained were worth something. When you're perpetually level synced for 90% of your content until you actually make it to endgame, you lose that sense of progression and it all feels completely arbitrary.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

While kinda a seperate issue, low level skill shortage is a big issue. As our level cap increases but we maintain the same number of skills, low level duties will get increasingly more boring, which we're already feeling.

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Then... why not let players choose to keep their kits?

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Retaining all of our kit is a huge no, not only for the insurmountable balance issues this would create, but also because having to focus on your endgame rotation to match the dps output of a sprout spamming their level 1 skill would be a miserable experience for daily roulettes.

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Why? Why is it a problem to offer that option? I would gladly toggle on an option to let me use my full kit, regardless of needing to put in more effort for (nearly) the same result, to make low level content less boring. That's a far less miserable experience, to me (and likely many others), than only being able to spam one button.

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Why? This seems like an incredibly arbitrary stance to take.

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And "these 5 skills should be randomly retained across level sync despite likewise having fixed acquisition levels" isn't a wholly arbitrary stance?

Every new action that is not merely an upgrade "provides a form of depth to the skill system," not just Role Actions. So why prevent even the option of using them in lower-level content?

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I don't think it is a "wonky oversight" to have skills that ignore level sync

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Ngl, advantages born of arbitrary or unintended exceptions to an otherwise universal rule seems a whole lot like an oversight.

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it provides some sense of progression to the levelling experience, learning skills that you retain when synced make it feel like those levels you gained were worth something.

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But they only feel that way specifically because "you retain [them] when synced." Why would that not apply, then, to any other skill if we just let players choose to retain them while synced (at more effort required for their throughput)?

"Then... why not let players choose to keep their kits?"

Already been debated to death on these forums so I'm not sure why it needs repeating, but the balancing issues for this would be immense.
You're balancing level 50 kit at levels 15-50, all of which need different adjustments. (a level 50 kit at level 15 might need a -25% damage modifier, while a level 50 kit at level 30 might need a -10% damage modifier, etc.)
A level 60 kit at levels 15-60.
A level 70 kit at levels 15-70.
A level 80 kit at levels 15-80.
A level 90 kit at levels 15-80.
Ensuring that at each level differential, you're outputting the same amount of dps.
None of that is easy when you have compounding effects of GCD potency increases, additional oGCD's increasing APM, and stacking 5%/10%/15% damage buffs, all at different level ranges for different jobs. So you're doing this on a per-job basis.
That's the manpower of several stat squishes at once, and they took an entire expansion cycle to pull that off, which cost us an Ultimate.

Without putting that work in, a level 90 kit would deal nearly 4 times the dps output of a level 18 in sastasha, or nearly 3 times a level 50 player, give or take depending on the job. Ensuring that all newbies are dead weight in any content they play, and ultimately fostering a culture of kicking newbies.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Already been debated to death on these forums so I'm not sure why it needs repeating,

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And it has yet to be debated convincingly. We've already seen this work well in other MMOs.

The "but our devs are especially incompetent" excuse only goes so far in debating the merits of an option (or, in continuing to refuse players that option).

Typical healer gameplay, for instance, is pretty damn dull. Should we just accept its boredom, too, just because the devs would "take too long" to fix it?

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You're balancing...

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We're balancing relative ppm as constrained in practice across varying fight lengths. That's not terribly difficult to sim to rough parity.
And it is totally fine for it to end up slightly under (it'd be an option, by which to avoid mind-numbing boredom) or over (it requires far more effort, and the nature of the dungeon selections and first-time completion rewards atop the ease of the content regardless more than offsets any such advantage).

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ultimately fostering a culture of kicking newbies.

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So let's see:

You can only get the given dungeon because of said newbie who queued it in the first place before you filled out their party via the roulette, you are doing the given roulette over the at least as exp efficient current dungeon largely because of tomes, and the newbie's first time bonus roughly doubles your tome rewards. Yet, people are going to suddenly kick their remove their double-meal tickets, reducing their reward efficiency, just because they had chosen an option by which to go out of their way to put in more effort as to be less bored?

I'm mixed on this. On the one hand, it can sound good on paper, but if every healer has its own Esuna (which we DID once have - SCH's was called "Leeches" from the Doctrine of Humors era medicine, and I'm not sure AST's but I know it had one) that does the exact same thing anyway, it's a pointless change that just adds more icons and spell IDs to the game without achieving anything.

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

Some should stay. Most can go. Some are basically worthless and shouldn't be there, others can be worked into the jobs. But if they are going to keep them, hopefully they put in content where they actually have use. Like has anyone used Leg or Foot graze in any content that matters and it would have made a difference? If so, when was this? Because as far as I know they seem to focus mainly on Interrupts and / or stuns that tanks should be doing.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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The point would be to remove them, and especially the one's with little to no overall purpose in general and to replace them with actions unique to that job. Not to just replace almost all of them with actions with the same effect.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

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Originally Posted by Seku

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I'll handle the controversial ones first.
Arm's Length/Surecast: Removed. Gap closers/mobility serve to fill this role, increase the range of those if needed.
Lucid Dreaming: Every caster should just have 200-400 more mp gen added passively, managing mana on casters is already a non-issue with this ability, and would make dying have more consequence with it removed.
Swiftcast: This would cause some uproar, but is back to a BLM ability in it's own kit. Give each resurrection on healers a lower cast time to around what a Verthunder/Veraero is.

I will not be listing those again, so remember what I say here will keep them being removed in mind.

• Tanks:

Rampart is removed or is placed back into PLD's kit. Same with Reprisal for DRK.
Shirk is removed, we don't need it for tank swaps, just using provoke and deactivating/activating enmity stance is enough.
Remove stuns in pve as they are almost only used in mob packs in dungeons, which could easily be fixed with a new defensive CD used for the tank(and would also be more effective), thus we pay more attention to interrupts. It would free open a second slot for PLD as well, as shield bash would be removed as it serves basically no other purpose and is basically never used anyway.

I would rather see all tanks have their own version of a taunt(aka provoke) and interrupt.

• Healers:

Repose is removed, where it would be useful you can outrange and heal yourself, and chances are if you're in a dungeon the tank is dead and theres 3-6 mobs on you, not just one.
Rescue is removed, make people have consequences for mistakes.
Give every healer their own version of esuna.

• Ranged physical:

Peloton is back to bard exclusive
Leg, Arm, and head graze are all removed. Let tanks take care of interrupts.

• Melee:

Leg sweep, second wind, and bloodbath are removed, and all melee have some sort of defensive unique to them for survivability (and all but dragoon do already anyway)
At this stage, remove true north and positionals altogether.
Feint gets removed but give each dps some sort of debuff to use anyway. i.e Samurai gets a physical debuff to use, Reaper magical..etc.

• Caster dps:

Sleep and addle removed, same deal with feint.

Hate to disappoint. SE has just added an ultimate where KB prevention is mandatory. It's here to stay forever now.

Same as an interrupt mechanic that requires three players.

But yeah, overall - awful take.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I'm mixed on this. On the one hand, it can sound good on paper, but if every healer has its own Esuna (which we DID once have - SCH's was called "Leeches" from the Doctrine of Humors era medicine, and I'm not sure AST's but I know it had one) that does the exact same thing anyway, it's a pointless change that just adds more icons and spell IDs to the game without achieving anything.

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

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Except, they do not have to be mere reskins/renames/retitles of the same ability.

Leeches: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally, restoring 800 MP if removing a magical effect. Your next Energy Drain upgrades to Energy Spike, also inflicting the debuff onto the enemy struck."

Exalted Detriment: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally. Casting a second time on the same target within 3 seconds will grant target a beneficial effect opposite to the earlier effect removed. Duration and effectiveness of this effect is limited." (Has a reduced, 60% of GCD recast time, but higher MP costs.)

Esuna: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally. On critical heal, removes a second status effect." (Builds and is affected by, but does not consume, stacks of Water's Wake. Water's Wake: Decreases the cast and recast time of your next healing spell and increases its critical hit chance by 20% per stack.)

Etc., etc.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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The thing is, how does that work in FFXIV? Are you going to inflict bosses with Slow or Petrify or Doom? What's the opposite effect of Doom? While they COULD think of individual effects...I'm not sure I want to bet money on that working well...

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Arm's Length/Surecast: Removed. Gap closers/mobility serve to fill this role, increase the range of those if needed.

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Wait, what? These are for being immune to knockback (AND draw-in) effects. They aren't for mobility or closing gaps. And the only healer/casters with a gap closer anyway are SGE and RDM, SGE during Ifrit only, and BLM only to an ally position.

Arm's Length also doubles as a MITIGATION cooldown for tanks (and melee who have agro): It puts a 20% slow on enemies which slows their recast, thus making them hit less and do less damage. This is actually one of your more powerful mitigation CDs as a tank for AOE dungeon packs...and it's amazing how many people think the debuff is Heavy and not SLOW, which is a different debuff.

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Lucid Dreaming:

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Honestly, I kind of agree with this one. Lucid right now is basically a button to push on CD. You can save it for some cases, but unless it just comes up after you've been KO'd (or you somehow predict your death to know when to save it), it's kind of just a button you keep on CD anyway, which doesn't do anything ther than passive MP regen, so...yeah.

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Swiftcast:

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That's what Triplecast is for (BLM only). Swiftcast is also a movement tool for healers and SMN when not used for Raise.

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Rampart is removed or is placed back into PLD's kit.

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So remove the ability for 3 of the tanks to mitigate boss damage/aoe pack damage? And removing Rampart would mean coming up with 3 other 1 min CDs for the other 3 tanks.

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Same with Reprisal for DRK.

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No. Reprisal, Feint, and Addle are used in hard content (Savages, Ultimates, somewhat in Extremes), especially when people are gearing up and boss attacks do enough damage to KO people without mitigation. You could argue they just nerf boss damage, but that's just removing a layer of skill and coordination from the game for no reason. AOE Reprisal is also highly useful to tanks in wall to wall pulls or to throw out on bosses before they use unavildable raidwide damage.

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Shirk is removed, we don't need it for tank swaps, just using provoke and deactivating/activating enmity stance is enough.

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OR...and bear with me here...we could just bake in tank stance and keep Shirk. Shirk can be useful and is much easier to use than toggling tank stance (not that either is hard)

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Remove stuns in pve as they are almost only used in mob packs in dungeons, which could easily be fixed with a new defensive CD used for the tank(and would also be more effective), thus we pay more attention to interrupts. It would free open a second slot for PLD as well, as shield bash would be removed as it serves basically no other purpose and is basically never used anyway.

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...so remove abilities just to add more abilities? That thing I mentioned above you said wasn't your objective? Not only that, but this community constantly complains about homogenization. This is how you get homogenization - removing unique things like Holy having a stun.

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I would rather see all tanks have their own version of a taunt(aka provoke) and interrupt.

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...so remove abilities just to add identical or near-identical abilities to replace them? That thing I mentio- well, you get the idea.

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Repose

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Only useful in RARE solo content, and not that useful since it isn't AOE. At least Sleep is AOE andhas some use. This one I more or less agree on.

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Rescue

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I disagree with your reasoning, but agree Rescue should be removed or at least do the old PvE Rescue thing by giving a damage mitigation on the target. It's too easy to mess it up and get people killed by accident most of the time. It's not AS worthless as Repose, but I wouldn't likely miss it much (other than hunt trains) if it was gone.

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Give every healer their own version of esuna.

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...so remove abilities just to add ident- uh...anyone else get a feeling of deja vu?

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Peloton is back to bard exclusive

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Why?

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Leg, Arm, and head graze are all removed. Let tanks take care of interrupts.

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Why? At the very least, I'd leave Head Graze, even if removing the others was okay.

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Leg sweep, second wind, and bloodbath are removed, and all melee have some sort of defensive unique to them for survivability (and all but dragoon do already anyway)

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So remove buttons to add buttons? Second Wind's thing is it's mostly too weak, but Bloodbath and Leg Sweep are useful and I use them frequently. Disagree on those. Though I would like if Second Wind did something a bit more interesting like maybe a slight damage reduction or a HoT.

Agree with True North, though.

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Feint gets removed but give each dps some sort of debuff to use anyway. i.e Samurai gets a physical debuff to use, Reaper magical..etc.

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...so remove abilities just to add ident- yeah, I'll stop there. I'll also point back to Reprisal above.

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Sleep

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Though niche, it's actually useful, unlike Repose.

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and addle removed, same deal with feint.

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Again, see Reprisal.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The thing is, how does [the Leeches' feature spitballed above] work in FFXIV? Are you going to inflict bosses with Slow or Petrify or Doom?

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Doom, no. That has no business ever being on offer to players outside of a cumulative Deathblow mechanic (will deal up to X additional damage, built up over Doom, if and only if the enemy would die from that additional damage) or the like.

Slow, Petrify, Heavy, etc.? Yes, absolutely. Simply have them apply proportionately reduced duration, potency, or the product of both, and with multiple debuffs of the same type able to overlap. (See stat-based debuff potency-duration in other MMOs.)

CC should have a place in this game, both from players and from enemies. Will that require more than a barebone, slapdash approach to DR undermechanics (simply halving duration, rounded up, per further application, removing the penalty after 90s)? Will that require a modern procedure for CC effects on varying enemies? Yes, to both. But that's fine. The game should not be satisfied with the barest of mechanics, and hitting the "Nuke All" button shouldn't be the devs first response to having to otherwise put a modicum of effort into something.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

So remove buttons to add buttons?

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I.e., "replace lackluster actions with more interesting ones." What's so ridiculous about that? And there are still 2-3 slots saved even after that added quality per button in the resulting job-specific buttons.

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[Arm's Length and Surecast] aren't for mobility or closing gaps.

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But, as Zairava was referring to, you can cancel any knockback with any gap-closer. Icarus, Aetherial Manipulation, En Avant, Thunderclap, Gyoten... you name it, it cancels knockbacks. If your insistence is that every job needs the ability to cancel/nullify knockbacks, consider ARR/HW.
At present, we have literally only one (easily adjusted) mechanic in the whole game that requires knockback-immunity (and, as it were, many more that kill you or your party for using a knockback immunity). It's far from necessary to have a discrete button for it.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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The entire point of this is to remove the abilities to make room for others specific to that job. Actually interesting abilities. Even then, they would still have open slots. They removed kaiten because when they could have made ogi namikiri just replace Ikishoten upon activating it.

And for arm's length, I didn't mention this because I really didn't think I'd have to after already mentioning that the removed actions could be replaced by more mitigation. Its removal makes room for other mitigation to that tank. Bring back convalescence for PLD, Shadowskin for DRK...etc.

I'm not saying to remove Reprisal, I'm saying to put it back on DRK specifically, give the other tanks another ability specific to them for party mit.

Again I'd still rather see have every tank have their own provoke and it be buffed further so swaps aren't an issue. What they do with said job specific provokes is up on the drawing board of ideas. Shirk doesn't really add much to the skill ceiling when we already barely need it, if ever, for swaps as is. What you suggested isn't a bad idea, it's just a different method.

We use Holy because it's the main aoe not because it has that stun. It's useful but hardly makes its use to full capacity because most tanks use CD's subconsciously before it anyway. Is the stun useful mitigation from Holy? yes. But it almost never gets used to it's full potential sadly. Unless they make stuns more prominent I don't see much a reason to keep them in place instead of interrupts. Interrupts could have something added (i.e forces the mob to skip their next auto). You could give Holy something where it blinds mobs for 6s and fall-off (which would make more sense anyway, imo), Gravity can slow mobs by 20%..etc.

In hindsight I'd like phys. ranged to keep their interrupts

Sleep is, under *very* specific circumstances used. It's taking up a place that could be used for something more universally useful on all healers.

I honestly would want to keep addle and feint if nothing else for the reason you stated..

Anyway, they don't have to give all melee a replacement for feint just like they don't need to give all caster dps a replacement for addle. One more ability slot for them to may or may not use. Nerfing damage where only absolutely needed, or making shields stronger, giving tanks more party mitigation, etc.. If anything it would benefit the healers more since they'd have more to do, since the devs are so adamant on not giving them more dps abilities it seems.

I'm firm on my stance with esuna. they can give it an added effect if a debuff is cleansed depending on the healer. say...it giving a regen on whm or shield if scholar, buffing the dps of the target cleansed on AST...etc.

again, all melee except for DRG, have some sort of self-mitigation. Just give one to DRG and make all of them give some sort of slight HoT or other useful effect, Reaper already does and it's party wide.

Can't really speak on other roles but I think Lucid and Repose should absolutely be removed. Give Lucid back to WHM as Shroud of Saints and then adjust where necessary for SGE/SCH. AST likely wouldn't need it due to Astrodyne and cards. Repose is for all intents and purposes useless. I also wouldn't mind Rescue being deleted, but I can understand why people would want it to stay.