Are role actions a nerf?

[Aramina]

Esuna isn't mandatory if there are no debuffs to remove on a given fight.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Esuna isn't mandatory if there are no debuffs to remove on a given fight.

Can you recall every specific encounter that has a debuff you can remove and which doesn't? Can you guarantee you wont get one of the ones requiring cleansing in a roulette? Is your group expected to wait for your cooldown to swap into Esuna when you end up in content that does have debuffs to remove? Which skill are you going to replace with Esuna when you do swap? Will you swap at the beginning of a dungeon that has debuffs or just at specific fights within that dungeon?

[Aramina]

Can you recall every specific encounter that has a debuff you can remove and which doesn't? Can you guarantee you wont get one of the ones requiring cleansing in a roulette? Is your group expected to wait for your cooldown to swap into Esuna when you end up in content that does have debuffs to remove? Which skill are you going to replace with Esuna when you do swap? Will you swap at the beginning of a dungeon that has debuffs or just at specific fights within that dungeon?

Yes. I would expect my group to wait (assuming there is still a wait since there seems to be some discussion about whether that is still the case), just as I would wait for them if they needed to make a skill adjustement. We are talking the matter of a few seconds, it's not a big deal.... even in DF.

[SendohJin]

Can you recall every specific encounter that has a debuff you can remove and which doesn't? Can you guarantee you wont get one of the ones requiring cleansing in a roulette? Is your group expected to wait for your cooldown to swap into Esuna when you end up in content that does have debuffs to remove? Which skill are you going to replace with Esuna when you do swap? Will you swap at the beginning of a dungeon that has debuffs or just at specific fights within that dungeon?

Esuna is a high need skill but that doesn't make it mandatory. i would not hang myself if it wasn't slotted for Expert Roulette right now. you can cleanse the Archer DoTs in Baelsar's Wall and that's it (you can also just heal through them which is what i do most of the time anyway). In general roulette I would probably have it. lots of people also farm in this game, they do like 10 runs in a row of the same thing.

if you're farming a Primal with nothing to Esuna you would skip it. do you have to know off the top of your head? no, but after the first run you can probably take it off. so this makes it something that's absolutely not mandatory.

it doesn't matter what skill you want to replace Esuna with, the problem that you raised was that it's an illusion of choice in which all/most of the skills were pre-determined for you, and that's not the case. the fight might determine some of it but no player is locked into the same choices all the time.

You already covered Lucid Dream, E4E as not being mandatory. Protect as you also acknowledged is not mandatory for both healers to have in 8 man groups. it doesn't have to be static groups, it can be in PF, it can be in DF during the loading the circle.

only 1 of the 5 choices is always 100% of the time made for you. that's pretty good.