Concerns about " Getting rid of unused and ineffective actions"

[No2631]

Only read the first post. Excellent exercise in building strawmen, but the intent of the devs seems clearly aimed at some skills which see extremely limited and niche use that it's hardly worth justifying having them on a hotbar. Especially because the amount of buttons you can reasonably and comfortably reach is finite.


Tempered Will, for example, is useful in an extremely limited number of fights, and where it is useful it's used as a crutch to prevent dealing with mechanics rather than feeling like an extension of your kit; a PLD can use Tempered Will to negate Sophia EX's tilt mechanic, but it's a lazy escape from doing mechanics and hasn't a lot of use outside that in contemporary content. I tried using it in Gooball Library and was pushed back by the book attack from the first boss, for example; maybe I used it too late but even there circumventing the pushback hardly seems worth having a (pretty long) cooldown skill for.

Monks have Haymaker, which virtually never comes up in any content with a tank (hint: 90% of content), and Dragoons have Feint─the use of which is a loss of DPS in most cases and, off the top of my head, only slightly useful against Garuda Extreme provided you hit a very narrow window of opportunity for a marginal benefit.

These three are skills that have little to no real effect on your raiding experience or even dungeon-conquering experience. Re-assessing these skills may result in them being combined with other skills, or adjusted through traits gained after level 60 to transform them into more useful skills. I think the idea of "re-assess" isn't to outright delete them and pretend they don't exist, but to provide additional support to make these skills useful in more content than they currently are.

EDIT:

Honestly, BLM sucks for combat space in general anyway, if they combined thunder 1 and 2, or thunder 2 and 3 together I could fit Transpose onto my front bar. So I'm all for them removing something from them.

Just to point out, but at level 50, a Dunesfolk Lalafell Black Mage could use Thunder 2 instead of Thunder 1 during their Umbral Ice moment. Thunder 2 definitely saw some more use back then, and even now I sometimes manage to squeeze in a Thunder 2 instead of Thunder 1 without losing any uptime.

[Pondera]

Only read the first post. Excellent exercise in building strawmen

In what regard? Most of what I said was emphasizing on how much earlier spells build into later ones, and attempts to remove or simplify such a system are probably going to blow up in the devs' face. Also, I'm not just pulling theories out of thin air. I've seen people writing in and suggesting things like "instead of tanks have a zillion cooldowns, why not just 1 with a short cooldown?". Things that really make me happy that they're not to ones in charge, and also things that exacerbate my already intense paranoia.

But, as I said before, this is mostly just made worse by a lack of specifics. Once Yoshi P and the rest of the FF team start stating more precisely what they have in mind, my worries will either be soothed, or I'll have more concrete stuff to go on.

[Nezerius]

But, as I said before, this is mostly just made worse by a lack of specifics. Once Yoshi P and the rest of the FF team start stating more precisely what they have in mind, my worries will either be soothed, or I'll have more concrete stuff to go on.

They specifically showed three abilities that are being considered for removal/adjustment, which were Fists of Wind, Feint and Fracture. With that in mind, jumping straight to the assumption that they're adjusting (or even removing) fundamental abilities is just silly.

[Felis]

They specifically showed three abilities that are being considered for removal/adjustment, which were Fists of Wind, Feint and Fracture.

Feather Feet, not Fist of Wind, if I remember it right

[Nezerius]

Feather Feet, not Fist of Wind, if I remember it right

Yea, you're right. Checking back at the stream, it does seem to be Featherfoot.

Featherfoot is something I'm really surprised to see on the chopping block, assuming reports are right and it's not Fists of Wind they're thinking of (though an increase in mobility before a boss blankets the room in AoEs could be extremely useful still). A 20% chance to safely ignore all damage, be it magic or physical, could save one's bacon. Again, I'd love to see this on my DRK. Stacking with DA-Dark Dance, 50% chance to dodge? Move over PLD, there's a new sheriff in town, and I'll be MTing everything from this point on.

Except that's not how tankbusters work in this game. You don't use a CD like Featherfoot, then cross your fingers that you'll dodge the tankbuster, you use a CD that reduces your damage taken to ensure that you'll survive the tankbuster.

But I guess you could use it to dodge an auto-attack or two, might even mean that your healer will have to cast one less cure!

[Pondera]

Except that's not how tankbusters work in this game. You don't use a CD like Featherfoot, then cross your fingers that you'll dodge the tankbuster, you use a CD that reduces your damage taken to ensure that you'll survive the tankbuster.

But I guess you could use it to dodge an auto-attack or two, might even mean that your healer will have to cast one less cure!

DA augmented dark dance would beg to differ.

[Nezerius]

DA augmented dark dance would beg to differ.

You're missing the point here. DA Dark Dance would increase your parry by 30% and your dodge/evasion by 20%, if you were to cross-class Feathefoot, that dodge/evasion would increase by 12% (since the MNK trait brings it up to 20%)
This means that unless the tankbuster is Physical damage, you'll only have 32% chance of dodging it. If it's Physical, you also have a 30% of reducing the tankbuster's damage by 20%.

Imagine a 50k tank buster is about to hit you, are you really gonna take a 1 in 3 chance to dodge it, or are you gonna use Shadow Wall to reliably survive it?
If your choice is the former, then I'm sure your healers will be happy about having to waste a swiftcast raise to get you back up.