highlight utility skills (cleanse, interrupt, ...) when effective

indicators at the time:
stunnable (low blow, shield bash, leg sweep) -> no indicator
knockback immunable (surecast, arm's length) -> no indicator
cast interruptable (head graze, interject) -> cast bar flashes red
debuff cleansable (esuna, the warden's paean) -> white bar below debuff

I guess new players do not even know those indicators.

I suggest for interruptable and cleansable:
if the enemy/player target could be interrupted or cleansed, the skill on the skill bar should highlight in some way to add another "push me, I am useful" use. (make it flashy? "combo-dashed-line-animation"?)

regarding stunnable and knockback immunity I have no ideas. probably not something to look in, cause in a fight either they would flash up all the time or none of the time, which is not helping the situation.
oh right there is heavy, sleep and bind too but neither ideas.

Stunnable/interruptable stuff share the same indicator if you look at the cast bar, if I'm correct.

KB is pretty obvious outside of savage(?), the markers on the ground fanning outward in a circular direction/out in one direction/colored vomit puddle in the middle of the arena/insert random pattern here. If people die to it and still don't learn then that's kinda a them problem.

Esuna is one that I'd agree should be larger or more apparent though. I rarely see healers esuna anything in dungeon content.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Stunnable/interruptable stuff share the same indicator if you look at the cast bar, if I'm correct.

KB is pretty obvious outside of savage(?), the markers on the ground fanning outward in a circular direction/out in one direction/colored vomit puddle in the middle of the arena/insert random pattern here. If people die to it and still don't learn then that's kinda a them problem.

Esuna is one that I'd agree should be larger or more apparent though. I rarely see healers esuna anything in dungeon content.

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so much this the amount of times i see tanks adn dps with posion or paraliezy witch is Esunaable adn they are like nope just fight threw it. so in my book thee to way the flashy button as suggest here. or the paralieze effect make you unable to move or act for oh say 3 mins adn the posions dot damages in send of like 100ish is no 15% of hp. yeah i know it'll lead to wipes adn people dyeing but then maybe such things won't get over look as trivial

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Stunnable/interruptable stuff share the same indicator if you look at the cast bar, if I'm correct.

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sadly no, not on bosses at least, maybe on trash mobs. that dungeon boss hermes has a cast which gives himself a dmgup buff. it is interruptable, but you cannot stun him/it.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

KB is pretty obvious outside of savage(?), the markers on the ground fanning outward in a circular direction/out in one direction/colored vomit puddle in the middle of the arena/insert random pattern here.

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yes and no :-) i know arrows and that blue "knockbackpuddle" are a nice indicator, but in the newest alliance raid 2nd boss one can not use knockback immunity...and there is no particular indicator, we just have to try it out. same in savage, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

As you said, stuns would highlight all the time against trash and knockback immunity would be up either a lot or all the time because it's useful in other situations such as preventing cast interruptions or applying slow. Stuns can make you a better tank by reducing damage in old content from ARR or HW (where tanks have less self-heals) or to stop large circle aoes cast by trash, but aren't necessary.

Knockback immunity isn't necessary, even in savage, where you can go to the very edge or the middle to resolve knockbacks the way they are intended (and usually indicated in the normal version). This is useful to remember, actually, in case you ever use it early by accident in savage. The only time that might be a problem in savage is if the mechanic immediately following it requires everyone to be in a certain position and everyone else decided not to get knocked back with you.

Except for Doom, debuff cleansing isn't necessary either but people will appreciate it, especially if it impacts their rotation. Most of the annoying versions of these debuffs happen in ARR or when you fail a mechanic. Esuna needs a target, so even if it's highlighted, will they understand who to use it on?

Interrupting casts is usually not necessary but appreciated. Too many casts in ARR are interruptable and the ones in Shadowbringers are mostly on dungeon trash that an average tank won't notice because they are surrounded by 20 other enemies.

They are all things that make you a better player if you use them but that a lot of players just won't use right even if you handhold them.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Stunnable/interruptable stuff share the same indicator if you look at the cast bar, if I'm correct.

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Not correct. An enemy that allows interrupts does not necessarily allow stuns, but sometimes they do and this can be used to interrupt multiple casts until interrupt is available again (unless a White Mage is spamming Holy :mad:).

So ultimately it just comes down to experiencing and learning. Just giving someone a flashing button and saying "push this" doesn't teach people why they're using it. I'm still for having people die to things to learn/educating people in a calm manner.

I think the white Esuna indicators are really clear - far more so than most of the game's indicators. If people aren't using the skill then it's most likely because they're used to paying more attention to the ever-increasing number of mechanics on the battlefield itself these days, or because they're conditioned to ignore debuffs after years where they were hardly relevant to anything, or because they have their UI set up to hide too many things in the party list (or some combination of all of these). Some healers probably don't even bother keeping Esuna on their bars. I would personally find it quite annoying if the spell lit up to tell me when to press it because actually paying attention to my party is one of the sole joys left for me in a game where most healing mechanics have been cut to keep things simple; however, if other people are struggling and unaccustomed to looking at the party list properly then it might be better to also use visual indicators on the characters themselves when somebody has a particularly critical debuff. People are well-used to looking out for indicators to run towards/away from party members or other random mechanics at this point, so indicators to clearly announce a cleansable Doom mechanic might help those who struggle with the regular interface. (Just please keep them in the party list too, because targeting allies on controller during mechanics is a nightmare.)

The only time I can recall the indicators not being clear enough for me was in a recent FC run into one of the alliance raids undersized where I was the only healer, because the alliance UI doesn't show debuffs and I had no idea who was afflicted. We managed, but it would have been a lot less stressful if I could actually see what the other alliance members were doing without frantically moving my cursor around. Having the button light up for that wouldn't have helped at all since I still had to figure out who needed the help, but indicators over the heads of those who still needed cleansing would have made my extreme whack-a-mole minigame smoother.

Another issue is that on new content when a DPS has a random debuff applied that can be cleansed, I have no quick way to tell what that debuff does in the heat of battle without a mouse. And the other players themselves rarely check their own debuffs to communicate that to the healer. In some cases it's obvious, where the icon is something that has been used often, but a lot of debuffs use completely unique graphics and I wonder whether they can be designed more clearly sometimes. There are a lot of situations like this where something is only conveyed on-screen (situational pet/mount/gun hotbars/duty commands are the worst) and I have to ask my friends to read the instructions for me. With debuffs I can check them afterwards in the combat log but making the actual icons more explanatory would be a kindness. Even if the descriptions still have extra detail, being able to gauge the severity of a debuff based on its design is helpful - I feel much more competent when I'm cleansing familiar statuses like Paralysis or Doom because I can intelligently prioritize which people need help with that fastest.

*looks at the hall of novice*
*notices the dust on the doors*
Eh, it's not like the newbies can learn anything in there. I would like to think most other games would teach you to say out of the "bad" already. lol

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Originally Posted by Latarma

so much this the amount of times i see tanks adn dps with posion or paraliezy witch is Esunaable adn they are like nope just fight threw it. so in my book thee to way the flashy button as suggest here. or the paralieze effect make you unable to move or act for oh say 3 mins adn the posions dot damages in send of like 100ish is no 15% of hp. yeah i know it'll lead to wipes adn people dyeing but then maybe such things won't get over look as trivial

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Thats because most of the time those effects are either super short duration or so weak they are barely noticable..

I cant tell you how many times ive clipped something landed myself with a 15-20 second paralysis and it's never procced or interupted my skills once.
and every posion I see is so weak even the passive hp regen is strong enough to counteract it. even in encounters where it can stack 3, 4, 6, poisons and it still barely dents a players hp.
it's an absolute waste of time casting esuna..

Anything that is potent enough to be dangerous doesnt need esuna anyway. You get caught in a poison splash that actually hurts. and the effect wears off the instant you step out of it.... imo it should stay on you until cleansed...

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Originally Posted by INymphI

sadly no, not on bosses at least, maybe on trash mobs. that dungeon boss hermes has a cast which gives himself a dmgup buff. it is interruptable, but you cannot stun him/it.

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Yeah but the damage up buff is so weak its barely even noticable. most tanks i see dont even bother interupting. either laziness or they just dont know.. but it makes no difference.

The problem lies with how forgiving and braindead simple the devs make everytrhing.. just makes everything pointless and promotes sheer laziness..

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Except for Doom, debuff cleansing isn't necessary either.

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Dooms a weird one anyway because there's no consistancy with it..
this doom is cleansable so needs an esuna.
this doom is also cleansable but esuna wont work. you need to do a full heal.
this doom the healers cant do F all you need to stand over there to cleanse it..

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Originally Posted by Latarma

so much this the amount of times i see tanks adn dps with posion or paraliezy witch is Esunaable adn they are like nope just fight threw it. so in my book thee to way the flashy button as suggest here. or the paralieze effect make you unable to move or act for oh say 3 mins adn the posions dot damages in send of like 100ish is no 15% of hp. yeah i know it'll lead to wipes adn people dyeing but then maybe such things won't get over look as trivial

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To be fair, it's usually because the poison effect is negligible and we can heal through it. It's usually almost gone by the time I would get someone targeted. If they made that longer or pack more punch, there would be a reason to worry about cleansing it. But I am on Paralyze because I know that pain when I'm on dps, unless it's incredibly short duration.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Stunnable/interruptable stuff share the same indicator if you look at the cast bar, if I'm correct.

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Alas, no. There is no indication of what can be stunned, just interrupted. As anyone who's done a lot of deep dungeon solo content will know, to our pain. ("Ack, the mimic's casting Deathtrap, I'll just stun and... CRAP. Guess that's back to floor 1.") Eventually, you commit to memory which mobs are vulnerable to stun and which are not...

The theory, as I understand it, is that anything with an interruptible cast bar is, functionally, something with the equivalent of a D&D spell's "Verbal" component -- e.g., something which requires you to speak an incantation aloud. Hence why interrupting them will end the cast, and why 'Silence' can prevent spellcasting entirely... and the justification for the cast bar blinking, as you can hear the enemy/creature/whatever performing the incantation.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Esuna is one that I'd agree should be larger or more apparent though. I rarely see healers esuna anything in dungeon content.

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To be fair, with very few exceptions -- the sludge from the worm in Cutter's Cry, the Doom-by-a-different-name debuff from the first boss in the Dead Ends, etc. -- the majority of debuffs inflicted in dungeons are so short in duration that they're almost not worth using Esuna on. If you get a 6 second poison debuff, chances are by the time I've finished the GCD I already had going, seen the debuff, selected you, and then cast Esuna, the debuff's already about to vanish anyway.

Generally speaking, if someone has a short poison debuff, it's more efficient to heal them through it than cleanse it. (A long poison debuff is obviously more worth cleansing.)

This is doubly true if it's, like, an 8s paralysis debuff inflicted on the party. Murphy's Law of "screw you" means that my first cast of Esuna (on myself) will be interrupted by said paralysis. My second cast will almost assuredly cleanse my paralysis, but by that point we're probably around 5s into the 8s debuff as it is; with only 3s left, it's almost not worth cleansing anyone else.

Now, to be fair, the exceptions to the "it's not usually worth using Esuna on dungeon debuffs" rule are generally speaking ones where you really want to use Esuna. (Such as the aforementioned Doom-by-a-different-name.)

And I absolutely 100% agree the game could do far better at teaching folks that the white bar atop a debuff icon means "you can cleanse this with Esuna", since I do not believe the game makes mention of that anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

This is doubly true if it's, like, an 8s paralysis debuff inflicted on the party. Murphy's Law of "screw you" means that my first cast of Esuna (on myself) will be interrupted by said paralysis. My second cast will almost assuredly cleanse my paralysis, but by that point we're probably around 5s into the 8s debuff as it is; with only 3s left, it's almost not worth cleansing anyone else.

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Or you know it's just going to come back anyway (looking at you, trash mob collection after the first boss of Puppet's Bunker) so there's no point in clearing it off