Protect is a waste of space and should have died with Stoneskin

[Rawrz]

I wish it was removed as well, but because it wasn't we have this macro to help you in leveling content (think of it like Stoneskin II, outside of battle.)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ealers-Protect

Since, for whatever reason, Yoshi and the development team kept protect, exactly as it was, aside from having it cost 0 mp. (Like the drastic Weakness change wasnt enough punishment.)



I used to use a macro to switch between Stoneskin and Blizzard II in one click. In the removal of skill swapping penalties outside of sanctuaries, this should be a handy macro.

/macrolock
/macroicon Protect
/echo You are now switching to Protect.
/aaction Swiftcast off
/aaction Protect on
/ac Protect <wait.3>
/aaction Protect off
/aaction Swiftcast on
/echo Protect has been disabled. The following skill has been restored:
/recast Swiftcast


This macro should be used at the start of a dungeon or before a boss pull. It quickly disables an action (swiftcast in my macro) then enable protect. It then Casts protect. It then confirms with you that it is disabling Protect and returns your swiftcast or whatever Role skill it was. The entire macro will take about 4 seconds (which includes the time to cast protect.

I chose Swiftcast, because it should be your first or second slot at this point. I made a similar macro that switches out surecast/erase for casters for my RDM.

Enjoy your fluff skill that adds nothing to the gameplay (at least in casual dungeon runs xD.)

Using a couple more lines with different cross roles wouldn't hurt either, in case swift is down.

[Metsonm]

I wish they removed protect instead of Stoneskin. Or if we really need to keep protect due to it being iconic just reskinned Stoneskin as protect and have it work as it does in pvp, or similar.

[augustreed]

Agreed. It took me right up until the level 65 dungeon to just drop protect and take Lucid Dreaming instead.

The no MP cost is nice, but I notice very little difference, especially playing SCH. It's became one of those issues where it's more a 'why not?' than a necessity.

I'll stick to shields and succor spamming.

[Serilda]

Completely agree. Protect is pointless now. There's no skill in remembering to do something once every 30 minutes (especially as most encounters end up taking less time than this) and there's no skill in wasting precious hotbar slots to having to compensate for the clunky role ability starvation issue by removing it immediately after using it. Delete it, give WHMs some kind of strategic buff in its place (or two, they can have Shell as well and still use fewer ability slots than the other healers!) and rebalance damage/defense as needed to make the lack of the current version of Protect unnoticeable.

(Then give SCHs Eye For An Eye back and buff their Aetherflow, give WHM/AST Lucid Dreaming natively and pad out the cross-role stuff with some more fun, situational skills we might actually enjoy learning to use without excessive homogenisation, like the stuff everyone else got.)

While they're at it, I think they should restore a form of Stoneskin at its original level for WHMs. Upgrade it to Divine Benison at 66, thus fixing the complete lack of shielding for low level WHMs without adding button bloat or ruining this imaginary endgame raid balance they're so obsessed with, and in the process of doing this tweak both so the upgrade at 66 doesn't feel like a downgrade (which it would at the moment). That would stop my griping - aside from lilies/confessions and SCH's lack of a proper AoE damage option.

But I digress. As much as I like Protect, it's been watered down so severely over the years that having it is just an extra layer of complication for no benefit. It makes no sense not to use the player-made macro to automatically remove it, which makes its continued existence silly. Heck, with the new WHM changes rewarding curebombing, having no Protect might even be a buff to lily generation.

[Wasselin]

I think stoneskin was more engaging then protect. In fact they should have turned stoneskin into protect or made protect have a shorter duration, like it does in pvp.

I agree that's it's very annoying to waste a role skill slot on protect. The macro above at least helps with that.

[Gemina]

My idea:

Keep protect in the role skills, change it so it only mitigates physical damage.

Give WHM shell. Make it a considerable magic defense barrier stronger than anything sch or ast has in comparison. About 12-20 second duration, and 90 second cool down. Also, make the animation really, really pretty, and encased type sound effect that let's everyone whm is here to stay!

[Serilda]

The thing is though, Rawrz's macro negates Protect's entire existence as a role skill. By using it - and I think people should use it - we're gaming the system to always have 6/5 role skills excluding edge cases where someone dies and we want to recast Protect on them during the fight, which realistically doesn't matter all that much. If we can have 6 skills by doing this, what's the point in there being a choice in the first place? If you're swapping between Swiftcast and Largesse with a macro that's different as both are useful situational tools and you might regret swapping the wrong one out, but Protect has such a long duration as-is that you can get away with swapping it in and out with absolutely no drawbacks. Whether you use a macro or not, it reeks of busywork.

[hikari_no_yume]

That the macro games the system makes me wonder how long it will work. I doubt it was the devs' intentions to allow instant switchout of role commands during duties.

But it's interesting. People considering using it at all highlights Protect's uselessness.

[winsock]

IMO, the benefit of protect is knowing when at least 1 healer is rdy, which is nice in pugs

[LegoTechnic]

Protect comes from the same vein of design as World of Warcraft's various half-hour class buffs, such as Arcane Intellect or, more specifically, Priest's Power Word: Fortitude. They're a fun little idea to give healers additional party synergy, though they lose class flavor when all healing jobs get the same spell.

Still, there's nothing wrong with Protect, and it is absolutely not difficult to use. Don't celebrate being bad by blaming the skill's timer, and to be clear it is rarely a necessity if you forget outside of savage raids, but a strong benefit to have regardless.