Concerns about " Getting rid of unused and ineffective actions"

[Pondera]

This is my first time posting to these boards, but I've been playing the game for a few months now. I came over to this after being just disgusted with the way Blizzard had handled WoW, a game I played since 2008. Chief among my grievances was the concept of class pruning. I could never ditch that feeling of "I sure miss being able to do that cool thing" or get over how much weaker my characters felt afterward. One of the things I love so dearly about FF14 is its complexity. Every class is able to do so much, and I love juggling rotations and staggering cooldowns while tanking 12 mobs at once. It's fun to do, and being awesome isn't supposed to be easy or simple. If it was, everyone would be Bruce Lee or a 5 star general or Dean Winchester. So, you can see how talk of " Getting rid of unused and ineffective actions" is absolutely terrifying to me, even with Stormblood being so far away.

Okay, sure, I can understand the idea of doing away with some of the things like Conjurer's tiers of stone, or having the spell itself increase in power once you pass a certain level threshold. Same thing with the Black Mage's thunder. They're unused actions that, once you have Thunder 3, you never use 2 again. So, if you feel you really must cram them together, have at it. But I've also heard talk of trimming the amount of cooldowns tanks have. First of all, this is not a good idea. The CDs don't all do the same thing. A CD with 20% mitigation and 90s cooldown is different from a 30% one with 120s cooldown, and is used for a different purpose. Similarly, a CD increasing block chance or preventing critical hits entirely is vastly different from the previous 2 I just mentioned, but they are all absolutely necessary. A tank SHOULD feel involved. They should feel like they're a rock standing against the tide, not just some fool pressing a button and getting smacked around while DPS enjoys themselves. What's next? Are we going to start trimming the amount of summons summoners can conjure? Maybe we should trim the amount of abilities bards have on principle because there's only so many ways you can use an arrow. It's a slippery slope, isn't it?

Another reason I would object to such a thing is that, for some classes, previous spells are very involved with the current style of play. Try taking away a Black Mage's fire 1 and see how much of a twist they get into. With no fire 1, no fire starter, and it's harder to keep Astral Fire 3 refreshed during Enochian for optimal DPS. And, if I recall correctly, White Mages casting cure 2 can see benefits in cure 3's cast time and speed. How about the combos that tanks possess? A gladiator starts with fast slash and is just mindlessly bashing critters, then they get savage blade, learning about aggro, and then Rage of Halone, learning about how important debuffs are to damage mitigation. Every step was necessary to master before understanding the next. The point of all this is, if you're operating on the criteria of unused and ineffective actions, you're going to swiftly find out that there are very few of them in this game. It's not nearly as broken as what some people may say. I understand that a significant chunk of FF14's player base plays on consoles, and, rather than limit this wonderful game for the sake of the limitations of a controller, maybe we should just implement macro tutorials and show them how to make the most of what button real estate they have available to them? Just like everything else I've touched on in my little essay here, it's just another skill to be mastered.

[Lambdafish]

I believe what they meant was getting rid of skills that are literally useless. Ones where players on the forums have asked "why does this exist?" Examples are: Featherfoot, fracture, haymaker, thunder 2, stone 2, feint etc.

Tank cooldowns will not be removed but I can see quite a few being shifted into role specific rather than job specific (awareness, forsight etc.), which I will be waiting to see in action, because the idea of foresight no longer being a WAR skill is an odd concept.

[Alistaire]

It could also mean combining certain things, like if they put the damage buff of monk's Twin Snakes onto True Strike there'd be no reason to have both.

When you have moves like Fracture which even for their main job are a dps loss unless you have several buffs active and not enough time remaining on the buffs for another fell cleave there's somethin wrong there.

[ZhaneX]

I'd say you're kind of going full-tilt conspiracy here.

At the Fan Fest, when discussing 4.0, they mentioned how they would be doing an overhaul of the battle system. The only facet of this which was elaborated at the time was "Reassessment of unused and ineffective actions". Nothing was said as to out-right "Getting rid" of anything. Perhaps they will, but that does not seem to be the intent they're going in with.

Your last paragraph especially is utter paranoid nonsense. Fire 1? Combo Sets? Nothing about any of these are in any way "Unused" or "Ineffective". Also gimping the system for the sake of controllers certainly seems the furthest thing from their minds. If you paid attention to recent updates, then you might notice that in fact the dev team has been putting a good deal of effort into increasing the versatility of controllers and the cross hotbars they use.

In actuality, they gave several example skills that they were looking at for reassessment. These included Marauder's Fracture and Lancer's Feint. Which, evident from your "little essay" are not even skills you find yourself concerned with. So please, do not so readily believe that the devs would plot to gut their own game, and perhaps take a moment to think and study what is known before partaking in pointless paranoia.

[Blood-Aki]

I'm pretty sure they mean the abilites that really are near useless, I doubt many BLMs will miss that all so useful and mandatory surecast.

You know repose? that spell whm has that works on NOTHING even remotely worth it? (sleep for blm as well) yea, that may be on the chopping block.

[ZhaneX]

You know repose? that spell whm has that works on NOTHING even remotely worth it? (sleep for blm as well) yea, that may be on the chopping block.

Have you ever tried Solo-Play as a BLM? Sleep is kind of essential. Really great for MSQ or FATEs.

[MomomiMomi]

I'm pretty sure they mean the abilites that really are near useless, I doubt many BLMs will miss that all so useful and mandatory surecast.

You know repose? that spell whm has that works on NOTHING even remotely worth it? (sleep for blm as well) yea, that may be on the chopping block.

Everything you mentioned won't be going anywhere. They're all great in pvp.

[Lambdafish]

Everything you mentioned won't be going anywhere. They're all great in pvp.

Reassessment of skills... so they will be made pvp skills?

[Blood-Aki]

Everything you mentioned won't be going anywhere. They're all great in pvp.

PVP is the least of my worries, as i don't care for PVP in an MMO, that does not make them any less useless, save for content a very small portion of players use. but we'll see in time. they certainly aren't anywhere near the most useful compared to 99% of everything else in these 2 job's arsenal

Have you ever tried Solo-Play as a BLM? Sleep is kind of essential. Really great for MSQ or FATEs.

That was the point, they are only good for leveling and fates, which are quickly forgotten about after you pass 50 and i doubt you'd use them all that much even in those, at 60 i can't even remember the last time i ever used it, since pretty much every single thing at 60 resist sleep. as another person said it's useful in pvp, but that's pvp.

[ZhaneX]

That was the point, they are only good for leveling and fates, which are quickly forgotten about after you pass 50 and i doubt you'd use them all that much even in those, at 60 i can't even remember the last time i ever used it, since pretty much every single thing at 60 resist sleep. as another person said it's useful in pvp, but that's pvp.

FATE grinding is very much a thing at 60 what with Animas.