Are role actions a nerf?

[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.

[Neophyte]

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.

The only silly thing is you, not reading my entire post where i specifically state that:

"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"."


Wow, you are using SoS and DS when playing WHM now? Really? Unbelievable, someone uses his jobs abilities!!!

Still doesn't mean that rolebased mp-reg and heal+ is mandatory. It does not mean that the only way for WHM to compensate their "loss" of SoS and DS is to slot it in their role-based skills.
This can also be compensated by adding new skills or reworking skills, leaving the role based SoS as a 2nd optional mp reg.

[Youkulm]

The only silly thing is you

I did read your post.

I'm glad you can be optimistic which is what I'm trying to do. Most of all since I keep saying that i'd hold any real judgement until we actually get the play the game with the new changes. ( if you'd like to actually read my posts instead of jumping to conclusions that'd be excellent. )

I don't understand why you're being so confrontational. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to be concerned.

---

Also if you're refering to an earlier post, my post on the last page was my first reply to this thread. It was in direct response to OP. So if you are refering to something between the pages of 2-8, Sorry I didn't read ALL of the discussion from everyone else. I just wanted to reply to OP and apparently im attacked because of it.

Moving along ;p

[Neophyte]

I did read your post.

I'm glad you can be optimistic which is what I'm trying to do. Most of all since I keep saying that i'd hold any real judgement until we actually get the play the game with the new changes. ( ifyou'd like to actually read my posts instead of jumping to conclusions that'd be excellent. )

I don't understand why you're being so confrontational. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to be concerned.

It is, if you base your concerns on things like
"I used to use ability X very often and it was very vital and now it's a role based skill. That won't work."

As said 3 times now, just look at SCH.

Do you really think SCH will be the only healer with own mp reg (strong enough to likely not have to consider taking the optional) and both AST and WHM will not have anything and run dry within a minute without taking the optional?

Do you really think with the actual approach of devs to bring jobs of the same role 'in line', the WHM as the one with the crappiest MP regen by now will be shafted in MP regen and the devs won't notice that this is against the purpose?

As long as we don't know better there is no indication that abilities shifted over to role based skills are as mandatory as the same skills (by name or icon) once were.

I mean, ypu won't just lose lvl. 6 (CS), lvl. 8 (Protect), lvl. 16 (Esuna), lvl. 38 (SoS) and lvl. 40 (DS) as a WHM and take all 5 back from rolebased because you need them, while SCH only loses lvl 12 (Virus), lvl. 34 (E4E) and lvl. 40 (Leeches), takes those 3 back from rolebased and get OP by just adding a for-WHM-mandatory mp regen plus CS/protect.

They won't just give SCH acces to SoS and done, that's their healer rework, lol.

Also if you're refering to an earlier post, my post on the last page was my first reply to this thread. It was in direct response to OP. So if you are refering to something between the pages of 2-8, Sorry I didn't read ALL of the discussion from everyone else. I just wanted to reply to OP and apparently im attacked because of it.

Moving along ;p

Nope, I was only refering to the qupted post.

_____________________________________________

I mean, sure you can think tha the devs suck balls in regards to balancing.
But don't try to back it with "By now in Heavensward not being able to use skill x, y, z would be very bad, so it will most likely be bad in Stormblood to not be able to use the same-in-name optional skills."


Or just look at Cleric Stance.... by now: Most mandatory ability if you want to deal damage.
In Stormblood: A 5% 15s damage buff on 90s CD therefore buffing your outgoing dps by 0,8% (100% damage uptime, instead of lets say 1000 dps you do 1010ish) to 5% (only dpsing when CS is from CD, so maybe from 200->210 dps).
(I'm aware that those calculations are not exact and maybe set a bit low... but not by much)

That doesn't sound as mandatory as before for a dpsing healer, right?

[Vhailor]

It is, if you base your concerns on things like
"I used to use ability X very often and it was very vital and now it's a role based skill. That won't work."

As said 3 times now, just look at SCH.

Do you really think SCH will be the only healer with own mp reg (strong enough to likely not have to consider taking the optional) and both AST and WHM will not have anything and run dry within a minute without taking the optional?

Do you really think with the actual approach of devs to bring jobs of the same role 'in line', the WHM as the one with the crappiest MP regen by now will be shafted in MP regen and the devs won't notice that this is against the purpose?

As long as we don't know better there is no indication that abilities shifted over to role based skills are as mandatory as the same skills (by name or icon) once were.

I would argue you're giving SE far more of the benefit of the doubt than many people feel inclined to do. After all, while there's no indication that abilities shifted to role-based skills are as mandatory as they are now, there's ALSO no indication that they aren't - and SE is not exactly well-known for flawlessly-balanced changes right out of the box.

Lest we forget, this is the same development team that seemed oblivious to the flaws inherent in Diadem gear upon release, the same development team that cherry-picks Steps of Faith and Pharos Sirius and declares it to be definitive evidence that challenging (non-Savage) dungeons are bad, the same development team that just relocated servers across the continent and issued an utterly ridiculous statement about there being "no discernable difference" in gameplay if your ping remains below 200ms. They CONSTANTLY make decisions that run the gamut from poorly-implemented to dumb to counter-productive. That's why many of us are viewing these role-based skills with a degree of skepticism.

Another way to look at it is this: the best-case scenario is that SE modified all of these role-based skills, and that they now provide optional 'boosts' to existing abilities. At which point - again, best-case scenario - we basically have the exact same system as we have now, minus the need to level other jobs. I'd still say that's a missed opportunity.

In a worst-case scenario, SE hasn't modified the role-based skills, and we are now staring at a tidal wave of problems centering around the fact that multiple required abilities must now be manually selected by players who might not realize they're essential.

Given the possible gains and possible problems, I think basing our concerns around "I use X ability all the time in Stormblood" is quite reasonable for the moment, pending additional information.

[magnanimousCynic]

As it is, Esuna, Protect, Swiftcast, Eye for Eye are seen are required action for any healer ( when possible ).

Let's be honest, E4E is barely a required skill in most content. It's not something that could make or break your average Expert Roulette.

[SendohJin]

As it is, Esuna, Protect, Swiftcast, Eye for Eye are seen are required action for any healer ( when possible ).

Esuna and Eye for Eye are not required. how do AST do 4 man dungeons if E4E is required?

Lots of dungeons and trials have nothing to Esuna.