Are role actions a nerf?

[Reiryuu]

snip

You know, the more I think about it, the more this whole limitation thing makes absolutely no sense. Forced to make choices? Who are they kidding-- you can literally change it out at any time with no penalty-- they removed the cooldown a while ago. That's the complete opposite of enforcing a choice. In fact, because there is no penalty for switching, the case is even stronger for not having any limitations on how many you can put on your hotbar in the first place there IS no real choice to be made, so you might as well just let us use them all at will.

[Vhailor]

You know, the more I think about it, the more this whole limitation thing makes absolutely no sense. Forced to make choices? Who are they kidding-- you can literally change it out at any time with no penalty-- they removed the cooldown a while ago. That's the complete opposite of enforcing a choice. In fact, because there is no penalty for switching, the case is even stronger for not having any limitations on how many you can put on your hotbar in the first place there IS no real choice to be made, so you might as well just let us use them all at will.

The cooldown isn't complete removed. I know that when I went into a solo dungeon to test the swapping whilst double-checking the 'current state of things' before posting, it triggered a 30s penalty on all of my abilities upon making modifications. In safe areas like cities, you can change on the fly, but not elsewhere.

It's possible they'll remove this penalty for 4.0, but either way, there are unanswered questions and odd behaviour. If the penalty remains, they've diminished what appears to be a goal of the system. If the penalty is removed, their decision to limit how many abilities can be selected is really going to open it up for players micro-managing each other.

Either way, I maintain that the central problem with the cross-class system is that certain abilities came to be viewed as 'essential' because of how powerful / useful they were. Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Swiftcast, Provoke, etc. They appear to have worsened this situation with the role-based system. I don't care what sort of shiny bow they've tied around it; if that fundamental problem still exists, or is worsened, then the system will still be the source of much unnecessary frustration. They needed to re-cast these elective abilities as optional, roughly-equivalent bonuses that allowed people to customize how their character played and felt. That is the only path I can see that would allow for customization without a huge amount of grief.

[YitharV2]

Either way, I maintain that the central problem with the cross-class system is that certain abilities came to be viewed as 'essential' because of how powerful / useful they were. Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Swiftcast, Provoke, etc. They appear to have worsened this situation with the role-based system. I don't care what sort of shiny bow they've tied around it; if that fundamental problem still exists, or is worsened, then the system will still be the source of much unnecessary frustration. They needed to re-cast these elective abilities as optional, roughly-equivalent bonuses that allowed people to customize how their character played and felt. That is the only path I can see that would allow for customization without a huge amount of grief.

Yeah... this honestly feels A LOT like the problem with cross class skills. I think they think that they're fixing the system and giving us more choice, but I'm not quite so sure about that. The only thing I feel it really fixed was needing to level another class.

[Neophyte]

You know, the more I think about it, the more this whole limitation thing makes absolutely no sense. Forced to make choices? Who are .
they kidding-- you can literally change it out at any time with no penalty-- they removed the cooldown a while ago. That's the complete opposite of enforcing a choice. In fact, because there is no penalty for switching, the case is even stronger for not having any limitations on how many you can put on your hotbar in the first place there IS no real choice to be made, so you might as well just let us use them all at will.

There is still a CD now, if you swap CC abilities. If it's a oGCD I'm not sure, bit a GCD sets all GCDs on 30s CD in a dungeon.

Also you're only talking about dungeons, you can't switch in a fight nor in trials/raids ofc.

Who needs E4E in Sophia with only her tankbuster with a chance to proc, because everything other is magical (ok.. add phase...)? On the other hand I really would slot that rescue skill in a Sophia Ex kill group.

Maybe WHMs are even more strong in raw healing now than AST/SCH that this Divine Seal skill is more likely to be taken in AST/SCH comps.
Maybe WHM has still it's own emnity/mp management, like SCH with Aetherflow too, and the SoS role-based skill is more like an option for people struggling to use their job-inherent tools right or do things like solo-healing.
Maybe Protect isn't a 30 min buff with op damage reduction, but more like a skill you can use for additional temporary mitigation and fights are designed that a mandatory 100% uptime of x% damage reduction you apply just before the pull is a thing of the past.
Maybe...

You get the point, right?

[Fawkes]

Maybe WHMs are even more strong in raw healing now than AST/SCH that this Divine Seal skill is more likely to be taken in AST/SCH comps.
Maybe WHM has still it's own emnity/mp management, like SCH with Aetherflow too, and the SoS role-based skill is more like an option for people struggling to use their job-inherent tools right or do things like solo-healing.
Maybe...

you get the point right?

It's great to be optimistic. Maybe everything will be totally cool and I'll look dumb for ever making this thread. That would be rad, I hope it happens. I like this game and I want it to continue to be good.

[Neophyte]

It's great to be optimistic. Maybe everything will be totally cool and I'll look dumb for ever making this thread. That would be rad, I hope it happens. I like this game and I want it to continue to be good.

I thinks it's pretty reasonable to expect Healers to have a job-specific tool to manage mp/emnity (because SCH has still Aetherflow+Energy Drain... they can't be taken without taking them from SMN, too, and that did not happen) and a WHM without emnity reduction is pretty much a dead man in serious fights.

So it's way more reasonable to expect 'This rolebased mp regen might just be an optional bonus for those who need it.' than expecting 'Omg, without that skill I will always run dry on MP, what is this """"choices"""?!?!'

SCH might still be able to consume their fairy or still have the fairy skill with healing+ and Rouse. He didn't have Divine Seal before and maybe he don't necessarily need it on top of this three job-specific tools to buff his outgoing healing now.
I don't see that this would be mandatory except maybe in solo-heal fights or savage progression.
So it's also pretty reasonable to expect job-built in healing+ buffs or bigger healing right from the get-go on WHM and AST as well on top of the optional healing buff.

SCH will most likely not be the only healer with job-built in abilities as counterparts to those skills, lol. But that's how people sound here.

[Fawkes]

I thinks it's pretty reasonable to expect Healers to have a job-specific tool to manage mp/emnity (because SCH has still Aetherflow+Energy Drain... they can't be taken without taking them from SMN, too, and that did not happen) and a WHM without emnity reduction is pretty much a dead man in serious fights.

So it's way more reasonable to expect 'This rolebased mp regen might just be an optional bonus for those who need it.' than expecting 'Omg, without that skill I will always run dry on MP, what is this """"choices"""?!?!'

It sounds reasonable when talking about the MP skill, but when you apply the same logic to protect and esuna it doesn't sound as reasonable. Are they going to give every healer their own protect and then also have this second protect, or let healers keep their cleanse abilities and then give them a second one? That would be weird and redundant, and there wasn't really any indication of either of those scenarios.

They did say they were making changes to piety, so maybe MP won't be a huge problem. Or, maybe they expect healers who don't want to use lucid dream to ask BLMs to slot in their new MP ability that lets them give away 20% of their MP. Maybe they expect healers who don't want Esuna to ask BLMs to slot in Erase.

[Neophyte]

It sounds reasonable when talking about the MP skill, but when you apply the same logic to protect and esuna it doesn't sound as reasonable. Are they going to give every healer their own protect and then also have this second protect, or let healers keep their cleanse abilities and then give them a second one? That would be weird and redundant, and there wasn't really any indication of either of those scenarios.

As said, maybe protect isn't a per design mandatory 30 min x% reduction damage buff anymore, but more like a Spread Bole is now (x% damage reduction on group for x seconds).
The current protect is weird anyway.
And if not, still only 1 healer needs to slot it. Esuna (and if one or two healers need it), depends on content. I think in 75% of all fights you don't need that ability and in many of them were you can Esuna something one healer doing that would be enough.

They did say they were making changes to piety, so maybe MP won't be a huge problem. Or, maybe they expect healers who don't want to use lucid dream to ask BLMs to slot in their new MP ability that lets them give away 20% of their MP. Maybe they expect healers who don't want Esuna to ask BLMs to slot in Erase.

As said. I don't think that SCH (which still has the same abilities as before, regarding mana-reg and probably also the same abilites as before regarding healing+) will be the only job with built-in tools to manage MP or buff their healing.

Right now, all we know is:

Aetherflow and Energy Drain stays on SCH
There will propably be a role based skill to reg MP.

I don't know about others, but my first thought looking at this is not "Oh no, WHM/AST only have that optional tool or have to rely on others for MP, while SCH will be even more OP regarding ressources with Aetherflow+ED+SoS", but more like "Well, I'm curious what the main-mechanic to manage your ressources will be on AST/WHM and if my playstyle with those jobs affords that additional optional reg".

I wondered the same thing. Why wouldn't we keep our own personal Esunas as healers? What is the point of it taking up an action slot we can put something else in. I mostly play SCH and AST but honestly, it feels like WHM got the shaft. All the WHM CDs seem to be in that action menu.

Why should that be bad?

1) The more skills you lose to the role base system, the more new/reworked skills you get as job/class abilities to keep the same ammount of skills from HW->SB.
2) The less skills you lose to the role base system, the more old skills get consolidated/removed to keep the same ammount of skills from HW->SB.

[Youkulm]

Why should that be bad?

As it is, Esuna, Protect, Swiftcast, Eye for Eye are seen are required action for any healer ( when possible ). This leaves 1-2 slots for other actions, on any healer, when before it was 3-4.

It's bad IMO especially when it seems they removed Shroud and Divine Seal from WHM. I don't main WHM but I do play it on occasion and I can tell you I used those CDs all the time. Why remove them from WHM and force them to use a space in what is very limited.

Its silly.

Like I said. Trying not to worry about it too much until I see and play. But from what I can see? It could have been handled better. There was no reason in the world to remove Esuna from all the healers.

I'll leave you with this, this will be a small % of healers, but I promise you will see it Thanks to Nicodemus for typing this out a few posts back.

I wonder what the forums will look like if we start seeing healers in dungeons with these as their shared role actions:

Cleric Stance
Break
Rescue
Surecast
Eye for an Eye

"Healer please cast protect", "Sorry, I don't have Protect"
"Healer please remove this debuff", "Sorry, I don't have Esuna"
"Healer, why is it taking so long to res people?", "Sorry, I don't have Swiftcast"
"Healer why aren't you healing?", "My mp ran out and I don't have Lucid Dream"
"So what CAN you do healer?, "Oh I can give myself a 5% damage buff for 15 seconds, zap a mob and slow it, yank the BLM out of his leylines for the lawls, make myself immune to knockbacks and pulls, and give you a defensive buff with a short duration and long cooldown! "

I know this little fiction is ridiculous and hardly likely to ever happen unless someone is trying to troll groups, but the fact that it's even possible is frightening.