List of rarely used abilities for the benefit of SE

[peaches]

So I read in some thread here in the General Discussion (sadly I don't remember which thread, if someone can point me towards it I'll link the thread and paste the Dev comment as well) that they are looking at reworking the abilities that rarely get used on each class/job. I really hope they don't leave any out, so I thought it'd be good to compile a list of abilities the community generally never uses, or even just abilities that you use all the time that need a slight rework.

To make it easy format it like so, or in another similar way:

Class/Job: Black Mage/THM

Ability name: Freeze

Reason for disuse:

Low potency, long cast time, and nearly useless additional effect. I've used it a grand total of 3 times in low level dungeons when we needed more CC than two Sleeps could provide.

Suggested Change: Possibly make it the Ice version of Flare giving 3 stacks of Umbral Ice and a new additional effect, possibly Slow on all the enemies it hits. A potency increase would be nice.

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Ability name: Thunder (Thunder 1)

Reason for disuse: Becomes completely useless once Thunder 2 is unlocked. There is literally no point in making an ability useless by introducing a different ability to replace it at a higher level without making some use of the original.

Suggested Change: Either make all 3 Thunders stack, or make each of them have a different additional effect so we have a choice when Thundercloud procs. It would also be nice if using Thundercloud added the DoT duration to the current one applied rather than replacing it, what way if you get a Thundercloud after the first 2 ticks you aren't just resetting it. This could happen for either using any Thunder ability or just one specifically.

Thunder 3 will be our go to hard hitting nuke with no additional effect, Thunder 1 should have it's current lower potency and possibly give some additional benefit to the caster seeing how every other class already has most boss debuffs covered. A Haste effect would be nice, shortening our cast time or increasing our movement speed or something. Maybe Thunder 2 could be the ability that adds the DoT duration, and it would be the ability to use when Thundercloud procs right after we applied it.

It'd be cool (but probably unnecessary) if they buffed the chance for Thundercloud to say 10%. If I'm lucky I'll get like 4 within a minute or two but generally I get one, maybe two in a boss fight, and surprisingly often none at all. When I first got the Thundercloud trait i thought it was awesome, until I for Firestarter. If SE is looking at buffing BLM's ability to DPS while dealing with movement mechanics, the easiest solution could be increasing the chance for Thundercloud.

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Ability name: Scathe

Reason for disuse: I actually use this ability somewhat frequently, but it is such low potency that it almost feels useless, and I usually only have time to cast it like once or twice before the movement is done (That being said, I haven't done any difficult content on my BLM even the first Coil, I just hit 50 a few days ago so I'm sure my opinion of some of these abilities isn't quite valid in more difficult content).

Suggested Change:Either give Scathe a slightly higher potency of say 130-150, or just straight up buff the chance for double potency to 50% or so. I don't know what it was like before they nerfed it, so I can't comment on that, but I've heard a lot of people say they should just revert it to pre-nerf.

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Ability name: Lethargy

Reason for disuse: Honestly, I forget about it. It's on a secondary hotbar (I use a controller) and it's just not that useful to use on cooldown compared to something like Virus to even remember it. I mean sure, there's no reason to NOT use it on cooldown, the Slow helps I'm sure.

Suggested Change: Honestly not sure if it even needs a change. Based on the name there's not much they could change about it - the effects do what the name implies. The cooldown is really low so there's really nothing to complain about there. Any suggestions?

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Class/Job: ACN/SMN/SCH

Ability name: Bane

Reason for disuse: It's not that I don't use it, I use it all the time. But not being able to hit more than three (it is 3 and not 4 right) targets is terrible. There's no reason it can't hit all the targets in it's very short radius. Yes our DoTs are powerful, but first we have the limitation of needing to cast all three DoTs, which takes a long time. So long in fact that if you try doing it to the main target everyone else is hitting, they will die before you get all 3 casted, so you can't hit Bane in time. Second, we have the short radius, although I believe it was increased in an earlier patch. Third is the fact that is has a 10s cooldown, and can only be used 3 times every minute at max, assuming we don't use Aetherflow for something different.

I feel that the cast time alone of all 3 DoTs is reason enough that it should spread to all nearby targets.

Also, does this ability really have a chance to reset your DoT timers? Never noticed this before o.O Maybe it should be guaranteed to reset the timer to the enemies it spreads to.

Suggested Change: Make it spread to ALL nearby targets, for reasons listed above.

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Class/Job: SCH

Ability name: Sacred Soil

Reason for disuse: I do use this ability a lot, but honestly it is lowest on my priority for Aetherflow use. Well not true, Bane is as a healer obviously, but it is lowest on my priorities after Lustrate and then Energy Drain. First off 10% damage reduction isn't much at all, even when it affects your entire team.

As an easy example, think of Titan's Stomps. They deal what, ~700 damage? 10% of that is 70 damage per stomp reduced. Definitely not a lot, and even if you add up that 70 damage from all 8 players that's a whopping 560 damage prevented. While that number on a single target is a lot, in a group it isn't that great considering you aren't curing up every person with single target Physicks, and with AoE curing it's just as easy to heal through that 70 damage per stomp and save your stack of Aetherflow for Energy Drain to get your MP back, or a Lustrate for a just in case moment.

Also, the 20% chance for a free Succor is WAY too low for the amount we cast Sacred Soil. Even if you always use all 3 stacks of Aetherflow on it, it has a cooldown of 30s, so you can do it twice a minute. If you use Sacred Soil, you're going to want to AoE cure 90% of the time.

Suggested Change: 20% damage reduction and a 40% chance for a free Succor. It's surprising how common it is for people to not bother stacking in my Sacred Soil (probably because they have other player's animations off), and 20% isn't overpowered for consuming a stack of Aetherflow which could otherwise be spent recovering to full MP from half, or saving a tank who takes spike damage with Lustrate. And Succor is a fairly low heal and low bubble that you usually have to use it twice, so a higher chance at a free one would be great.

On an unrelated note, in general I'd like to see more procs or use for Crit on Scholar. As it is only Adlo has a special effect when you crit. I'd love to see Physick have a chance for something, whether it be a free Adlo or something. Succor would be nice if it had the same Crit effect as Adlo, and I actually don't see why it doesn't.

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Just a bit of a notice, these changes for WHM are coming from me as a SCH main. I rarely ever play WHM, but I feel these changes are necessary for my WHM friends.

Class/Job: WHM

Ability name: Presence of Mind

Reason for disuse: Too short of a duration, too long of a cooldown and too low of a potency. I can't remember how much it shortens cast times but I'd have to guess .1-.2 seconds.

Suggested Change: Either shorten the cooldown to 1m like Divine Seal make it shorten the cast time by 0.5s or so, or shorten it to 2-3m and make it reduce cast times by about 1s. I'd also suggest changing the duration to 15s to match Divine Seal regardless of other changes.


Also not quite important enough to make it's own thing for, but I'd like to see the enmity of Regen and the regen effect of Medica 2 lowered by half or so. I'd actually like for it to give no enmity at all so you don't have to worry about pulling groups of enemies without waiting for it to wear off or manually removing it (which is difficult and annoying to do with a controller), but this will never happen.


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Class/Job: Gladiator/Paladin

Ability name: Sword Oath/Shield Oath

Reason for disuse: N/A

Suggested Change: Honestly the only thing that needs to be changed, is the levels you get these. They need to be swapped. There is never a time (except for solo play, in which case you'd want to be a Gladiator anyways) you want to be in Sword Oath before level 50. There is no 8 man content pre-50 where you have two tanks and one of them will be DPSing.

Paladin is a TANKING class, and needs it's main TANKING ability as soon as you become that job. Sword Oath may help marginally with Enmity, but why would you try to hold enmity over the DPS classes by... increasing your own dps? They are not a great class/job for damaging anyways, so this will barely help you at low levels. I mean, Warriors get their Enmity ability at 30, why not Paladins as well?

I know this doesn't matter for anybody at 50, or even 40 now but I'm sure there are a lot of new players who are having a more difficult time than they need to be while tanking, deterring them from tanking in general.

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And that's all I can think of for now. I only really play SCH/BLM, WAR occasionally, and WHM occasionally, so I'm sure other people can think of some more changes for other classes.

[Hyrist]

Thumbs up for the explanations behind each one. But I'm going to go on faith here and say with the revamped server structure, they likely have hard data on how much each skill is being used by what classes.

[Luxx]

One Ilm Punch: Removes a buff from target, most bosses you can't even do that. Probably only good in PvP...Maybe.
Tri-Disaster: Only time I know it was useful was Garuda and stops the Plumes from spreadin'.
Haymaker: Great skill...Only good in Solo. I actually like using it because it's pretty lol. Just not good for group play.

No suggestions because I'm dumb and can't think of any. xD
I'd like to know if anyone found OIP and Tri-Disaster of any use elsewhere.

Edit: I also agree with your SS comment. Pretty weak, but I pop it up anyway.
Even if it sheds a little damage but I would like it to be buffed a bit.

[loldrg]

Gonna disagree with most of the examples you give.

Freeze - Gives Umbral Ice III, Binds all targets in the radius around where its cast. An AoE heavy might be better but it has utility purposes. And if you're gonna go after a pointless spell, Tri-disaster does almost everything Freeze does but is a lot more useless in PvE than Freeze is.

Thunder I - When combined with Scathe during the Umbral Ice part of BLM rotation gives a higher potency than Thunder II, which is a way to boost your DPS in fights with lots of movement like Titan Ex due to the shorter cast times of thunder I and insta-cast of scathe.

Lethargy - larger problem of most debuffs being useless in anything harder than Ifrit/Garuda HM.

Sacred Soil - lots of fights that 10% can make or break you and shouldn't be scoffed at (MegaFlare in T9, Allagan Field mitigation in T8, Mog Meteor before final phase of Mog Ex. etc.). Even in your own example, Titan Ex stomps cap @ 4 So that's 280 damage you're mitigating per player. In Titan HM, the stomps increase by 1 every rotation, there's tons of players who wiped @ a <10% Titan HM because its a fight of attrition and with first time players dying there isn't enough DPS. Sacred Soil's mitigation here is nothing to laugh at. Same reason it's better to save Virus post 2.1 for stomps than Mountain Busters in Titan IMO.

Presence of Mind - CD is probably still too long but it's far from useless and as ilvl goes up it's power will only increase. Right now in ~i90 levels of spell speed you can cast Esuna while moving at non sprint speeds with Presence of Mind up. While this is not game breaking, right now, in a few ilvl jumps you could likely cast Cures while moving which would be pretty powerful.

[Alberel]

No mention of SMN's Tri-Disaster?

[RazeLandale]

I don't even like that there's 3 thunders in the first place. It's the same spell. It should just be thunder and two passives to up the duration. Having thunder II as my hard cast and thunder III as my proc button is already bloat. I don't want a reason to use thunder I.

Bane restriction's definitely unfair. Either put a cap on all aoe or don't have one. Tri-disaster is awful, but tri disaster as awful filler would be fine if bane worked.

It's ok if freeze damage isn't spectacular. Umbral ice isn't supposed to be. But when you're in umbral ice after a flare the goal is to get back out. And blizzard II does that better. Make it faster, even if the potency goes down.

Better sacred soil would be nice, but too strong and they'd start balancing around it. 10% is fine. Succor proc IS horrid though and I wouldn't say no to a buff there.

[Pooky_Pasha]

Bane hitting everything would be pretty overpowered. As long as it makes BLM cry more, I'm all for it!

[LunarEmerald]

Needs swiftsong.

Make it so swiftsong doesn't disappear when changing zones. Absolutely no reason that it should.
Would also be preferable in dungeons if the speed bonus was removed during battle but immediately reactivated as soon as battle ends so you don't have to keep using it. Gets annoying between pulls and makes it not worth the hassle.

Making it so swiftsong increases player movement in battle but drains MP would also be neat. Give everybody the speed bonus Monk gets with fist of the wind in exchange for a bard sacrificing his MP.

[Kitru]

Ability name: Bane

I find it strange that you call this a list of "rarely used abilities", and then admit that you use Bane all the time. Bane is an incredibly strong AoE. For the cost of 3 GCDs and 1 Aetherflow stack, you're getting 91.67 potency per GCD of AoE damage with no animation time requirements. Removing the target limit would basically render the BLM AoE advantage nonexistent. SMN has amazing ST damage, amazing utility, and you want to turn them into undisputed AoE powerhouses on top of that (Shadow Flare adds an extra 20.83 pot/GCD so that a SMN and SCH both could be throwing out 112.5 pot/GCD of AoE damage for a pittance of cast time). Bane is basically an 800 potency AoE (8 ticks from Bio 2 and Miasma, 6 ticks from Bio) that you can only use once every 24 seconds (if you do it after a Contagion, potency becomes 1350 every 35 seconds); Shadow Flare is a 250 potency AoE that you can use once every 30 seconds. Garuda adds an extra 90 potency every 30 seconds and 250 potency every 600 seconds (discounting Rouse for 1.4x mod and Enkindle for ~1.35x mod for a total ~1.9x modifier).

Flare is a 455 potency attack that you can get 2 casts off in quick succession every 3-5 minutes (Convert's CD, Ether CD) but, other than that, once every 20 seconds or so (gotta naturally regen enough to get a Blizz or Blizz III cast off after the successive Flare followed by a Fire III to power up the Flare and then Flare). For any fight that lasts longer than 30 seconds, you'd basically be giving SMN identical (or damned near close) AoE capability as a BLM.

This isn't even getting into what a SCH could do with it. SCH gets the exact same potency out of its AoEs as a SMN does. A WHM gets 200 potency every 3 seconds by chaincasting; with Cleric Stance up, that's only 220 potency. A SCH would completely blow away WHM in the only damage scenario in which a WHM actually has an advantage.

The target limit on Bane exists for a damned good reason. ACN/SMN/SCH would be broken as hell without it.

Ability name: Sacred Soil

Another wonderful case of you not knowing what you're talking about. Lustrate is a 25% heal to a single target. Sacred Soil is a 10% reduction in damage taken for 15s every 30s. On a PLD, you'll get ~2k hp out of a Lustrate. This means that, in order to be equivalent, SS needs to see 20k damage go out in those 15s. An attack that deals 3k to everyone in the group (basically any EX primal signature attack) is going to be 24k damage. Sacred Soil wins. In a mythflox speed run, you have to spam heal the tank since they're taking so much damage; spamming Embrace + Adloq amounts to ~3k hp every GCD; at 6 GCDs, that's 18k damage, which is very close (and damage never taken is better than damage healed, so I'd honestly argue that SS is better).

Sacred Soil is amazing. At 10%, it's more valuable than Lustrate for AoE healing purposes and nearly equal in consistent high damage ST scenarios. If you powered it up, you'd basically be turning Lustrate into a largely worthless ability.

Also, I have no idea why you would be using Energy Drain unless you simply want the extra damage. Energy Drain provides a whopping 130-150 mp. Lustrate is an off-GCD heal for ~2k. Physick, on its own, will heal for roughly 1k per cast and costs as much as you're getting out of Energy Drain. Swapping to Cleric Stance will double the mp restored, but, even then, you're still just breaking even (but still consuming the GCD). If you are using Energy Drain for the mp, you're doing it wrong. Lustrate is more cost effective because it heals twice as much for the same cost (and doesn't consume the GCD to do so). The only thing that Energy Drain is good for is a tiny bit of damage (which you'd actually get more out of using the GCD that Lustrate isn't consuming by throwing out a Bio).

If you want to talk about an ability that needs to be buffed, you should be talking about Energy Drain.

Ability name: Presence of Mind

I'll agree that the duration is way too short and the CD way too long, but you're dramatically underestimating the amount it reduces cast times by. It's a roughly 20% reduction in cast time (2.5 sec cast down to 2 sec cast), which is *huge* (basically translates into 1 extra cast during its 10 sec duration). Bringing it down to 1 min CD would be way too strong (Divine Seal is already pretty insane), but bringing it down to 180 sec or increasing the duration to 15-20 seconds would probably be acceptable. 5 mins for 10 seconds is just nuts.

Ability name: Sword Oath/Shield Oath

The only reason people complain about Shield Oath being at 40 with Sword Oath at 30 is because WAR gets Defiance at 30. WAR gets Defiance at 30 for a damned good reason: everything else it gets is contingent upon having Defiance active. PLD has no such requirement, ergo you need to come up with a better reason than "just because".

For leveling purposes, Sword Oath is more useful because PLD has perfectly viable enmity generation from 30-40 and there isn't any practical survivability concern; increasing kill speed will do more to make you level faster than increasing enmity or reducing damage taken. If anything, PLD needs more help with damage at that point because WAR has a very explicit damage advantage.

Furthermore, the only things this would change would be PLD performance in 3-4 dungeons (Haukke, Bray, Qarn, and Cutter's, depending upon where you're measuring from). Unless the devs are reevaluating PLD completely, I don't really see a reason to go and do it.

As to other rarely used abilities, since I spend most of my time tanking, I'd like to bring up Fracture and Shield Swipe.

Fracture is actually a DPS loss for a WAR because it's a marginal theoretical increase to DPS (~2%) offset largely by an similar increase to TP consumption but, in practice, actually ends up losing you DPS by interfering with your buff/debuff uptimes (the contributions from Fracture are lower than what you get out of 1 GCD of Storm's Eye). It's basically an attack that serves no practical purpose for a WAR, except maybe as your high damage attack for levels 28 and 29, when it gets its duration extended to 30 secs (increasing potency per use to 300) but before you get Butcher's Block.

Shield Swipe is another that just feels weird because it is a damage increase the reduces your enmity generation but can only be used while you are already tanking something. So, it's an attack that can only be used when you actually *want* to be generating enmity that reduces your enmity generation and who's only real contribution is a reduction in TP consumption (it's an absolutely tiny DPS increase). On top of this, it's completely unusable in any fight with primarily magic damage since it's contingent upon you blocking (which you can't do to magic attacks), and the "bonus" Pacification is functionally worthless because you can only use within 5-6 seconds of blocking so that you can't even save it for an occasion where the Pacification is actually useful (an, oftentimes, when you'd want to use it for the Pacify, it's not usable because you didn't block within the last 2 GCDs). The only real reason to use Shield Swipe is to break up the monotony of RoH spam while you're tanking, and you can only do that when you're the only tank on the target *and* you're fighting a physical attacker.

[Mithent]

BLM: Apocatastasis

This ability increases one party member other than the caster's resistance to fire, ice and lightning by 30% for 12 seconds, has a 120 second cooldown, and places a debuff preventing reuse on any individual for 60 seconds. It's only of any use if you know a big fire, ice or lightning ability is going to hit a single target other than yourself pretty soon. The game doesn't always make it very clear which attacks are elemental, but I don't think that most big hits directed at tanks fall into this category (e.g. I don't believe that Twintania's Death Sentence is fire-based), and being able to reduce damage to just one person from certain AoEs is rather situational. The duration isn't very long so it's not very useful to use it speculatively. I've used it in WP when I know one individual might be targeted for Fire, but it doesn't see a lot of use.

I'm not sure in what direction I'd take it to make it more generally useful but not too overpowered. Expanding the protection to all elements would make it applicable to most battles, rather than just ones which happen to use those particular elements (although they are linked to the THM/BLM spells, I know). Perhaps the duration could be increased and the protection changed to be 30% resistance to the next elemental attack or two in a manner that's similar to Manawall? Or the effect could be weakened but apply to an area around the target?

BLM: Freeze

I agree with the OP that Freeze isn't useful enough. The damage is too low for it to be considered by any AoE rotations, and the bind is rarely useful when we have a superior AoE CC in Sleep. Freeze has the same cast time as the WHM Holy, but has a smaller radius, half the potency, and a weak CC (enemies can still cast and perform ranged attacks) with a longer duration versus a good CC (Stun) with a short one. Freeze does have a few advantages: the CC is longer, it's endlessly spammable due to Umbral Ice, and it's targeted. But the first two are near-irrelevant, since BLMs already have another CC that actually stops attacks, and you wouldn't want to spam it as the DPS would be very poor compared to other alternatives. I agree with the OP's suggestions: granting Umbral Ice III or a potency boost would help to get it into AoE rotations, and a better secondary effect could make it more situationally useful.