Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Duelle]

Why should TANKS lose their TANK stance if you don't want them to DPS? I get that you want tanks to spend more time tanking, but removing BOTH stances for that to happen? You have some incredibly flawed logic there. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that WAR and DRK have skills that can only be used with that stance on or are changed by that stance.

This entirely depends on how abilities are tuned.

Hypothetically, if you removed tank and DPS stances you'd have to make the enmity combos for all tanks the centerpiece of holding aggro. Which means a PLD would have to focus on using Halone, and only when they have a threat lead would they be able to sneak in Goring Blade or Royal Authority. The design would lead to increasing the enmity bonuses on Savage Blade and Rage of Halone, with Riot Blade, Goring Blade and Royal Authority getting a damage buff to compensate for the loss of Sword Oath.

That is, of course, unless we're also aiming to reduce tank damage with this change rather than reducing the opportunities to use Goring Blade/Royal Authority during a boss fight.

Moving back to the OP's post, if there's any skills I want to see removed/changed for 4.0, It'd be Bloodbath and Foresight being merged into one skill. Fracture should also be buffed to be worth keeping up outside of specific scenarios.

This sort of depends on what we want to do with WAR. I still argue WAR should lose the drains (really, DRK should have those for the sake of theme) and focus on using skills to sort of ignore part of the damage aimed at them.

Fracture could be changed into a skill that reduces damage the mob deals to the WAR for its duration in addition to the DoT effect.

[SpookyGhost]

Um, would this be with more offensive actions than someone can realistically pay attention to, just like dark

wat

Tracking DRK's offensive CDs is really easy, just make a separate hotbar at max size and place the CDs there as well. The only complicated part of playing DRK is figuring out how to keybind all the abilities if you don't have a gaming mouse, same with DRG.

Also, RE: removing tank stance/DPS stance -> It's not gonna happen. I think people are misunderstanding the 4.0 changes - they want to make jobs easier, not change their direction completely. WAR would need an entire rework from the ground up if they got rid of Deliverance and Defiance since nearly all of it's kit plays into it. The only thing currently wrong with the stances is the clunkiness of DRK/PLDs, which I do hope they find a fix for in 4.0, but I don't think just removing all the stances is the solution.

[Starkbeaumont]

personally i wouldn't mind if they get rid of the third combo finisher. either merge them remove them.
move all the debuffs (str down, int down, path) to the hate combos and tread the others as damage/filler combo

[ADVSS]

This sort of depends on what we want to do with WAR. I still argue WAR should lose the drains (really, DRK should have those for the sake of theme) and focus on using skills to sort of ignore part of the damage aimed at them.

Fracture could be changed into a skill that reduces damage the m.

100% agree Duelle!

[Sweetgrass]

Remove Fast Blade/Hard Slash/Heavy Swing.

Combine Foresight, Bloodbath, and Convalescence into one skill.

Remove vestigial crossclasses like Internal Release, Awareness, and Stoneskin.

[Lambdafish]

Um, would this be with more offensive actions than someone can realistically pay attention to, just like dark, or by having a larger toolkit of useful skills and interesting traits?

The latter, PLD doesn't need to be more offensive, it needs to be more interesting and more viable to play (especially in the OT and AOE meta), PLDs niche is CC/buffs/support, and they need to expand on this and actually work out what they are doing with the class rather than throwing around the term "wall" (PLD has bigger buffs yes, but all tanks can MT no problem, why bring a PLD if that is all it is good for?)

[ckc22]

The latter, PLD doesn't need to be more offensive, it needs to be more interesting and more viable to play (especially in the OT and AOE meta), PLDs niche is CC/buffs/support, and they need to expand on this and actually work out what they are doing with the class rather than throwing around the term "wall" (PLD has bigger buffs yes, but all tanks can MT no problem, why bring a PLD if that is all it is good for?)

Their allegiance to the trinity has made the game this way - they can't make content where you need particular jobs ie: something only a pld can tank, which ends up making jobs basically a spin on a role. It is what it is... I don't think we're going to be heading towards specs or the diversity of XI so might as well enjoy it for what it is.

[Lambdafish]

Their allegiance to the trinity has made the game this way - they can't make content where you need particular jobs ie: something only a pld can tank, which ends up making jobs basically a spin on a role. It is what it is... I don't think we're going to be heading towards specs or the diversity of XI so might as well enjoy it for what it is.

That's my point, we can't make content that requires a PLD, so they need to go down a different route with the jobs core in order to make it able to compete with the other tanks (It is now raid viable but still falls short of the mark).

[Reynhart]

Their allegiance to the trinity has made the game this way - they can't make content where you need particular jobs ie: something only a pld can tank, which ends up making jobs basically a spin on a role.

Yes, they can't, but PLD should need significantly less support than WAR and DRK. It means much more usage of Cleric Stance in 4-an content, and maybe solo-heal and/or solo tank setups in 8-man.

If every job can do everything but is locked in exactly the same kind of setup, there's no point of having that much jobs in the end...

[Brannigan]

The hints at fanfest were super vague, but I think tank attack rotations will remain mostly intact. Fracture or Scourge might be cut or combined with a WS combo (path, power slash). I hope for Sword Oath to either be removed or put on the same button as Shield Oath and for something similar to happen with Defiance/Deliverance and their mirror actions. I also expect stuff like Awareness, Bulwark, Tempered Will, Foresight, Bloodbath, and even Convalescence to be either removed or combined with other skills. A lot of that stuff is useful, just not useful or class-defining enough to occupy a single button.

What's more interesting is I seem to remember them saying something about cross class getting some pretty significant overhauls with abilities being grouped by role instead of class. If all tanks are drawing from the same crossclass pool then that opens up some possibilities. If Flash were made into a targeted AOE (rather than point blank) so that you could pull with it, they could remove Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend. If Overpower was cross-classable, they could get rid of Unleash. Perhaps we'll get some new skills there that don't even belong to any one class but provide a tool that every tank has to have (like Provoke).