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

[Inuk9]

protect could be a oGCD 10% mitigation with 10 sec duration with like 160 sec cooldown. Just to give an example.

[MistakeNot]

4.0 decluttered the battle system by dropping Stoneskin, which makes sense when it's just cast at the start of a duty and quickly falls off the tank, with dubious benefit for the party.

But then why do we still have Protect? It's essentially a permanent stat boost. The party is expected to have it on them at all times, and it's essential to healers since combat difficulty assumes everyone has it.

But if you have it near-constantly, why make it a spell at all? It doesn't provide special protection, because you have it constantly. On the contrary, it only harms you: it can expire mid-battle, and the few seconds after revival where you lack it makes you more vulnerable on top of death sickness.

You know lots of the game is played solo, not in a party. There you won't always have Protect.

[gumas]

Do we ever know how much protect actually "protect" us? Like 5%? 10%?

The tooltip only say protect from both physical and magical attack but it never state how much, i always though the dev forgot to put the number

[Reiryuu]

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!

Uhh... Did you forget? This is exactly why ProShell was removed from WHM and worked into Protect for all healers without cross class in 3.0. It was deemed to make WHM too essential in raid groups.

[magnanimousCynic]

Do we ever know how much protect actually "protect" us? Like 5%? 10%?

The tooltip only say protect from both physical and magical attack but it never state how much, i always though the dev forgot to put the number

I have the same question too. I've tried hard to search for an exact number for quite a while and the closest I found was ~10-15% physical/magical defense up.

Mind you these numbers come from a reddit thread from 2013, right around 2.0 launch. For all we know that number could be different, and I'm currently not online ATM so I can't try to gather data.



But yeah, I'd rather Protect either being removed or reworked into something like the PVP version. The only reason we still use it is because it requires minimal effort, and like other said, you can just swap it out after applying to technically give yourselves 6/10 Role Actions instead of 5/10.

[Dandelion_Mariposa]

I don't understand how everyone can think protect is so useless. The second someone is revived, not only is their protect gone but they are in a weakened state. Sometimes I think Im the only healer who actually casts protect back on a fallen party member. They need it. Its not a permanent buff, its healer only, you have to be in the healers party, we can't go running around throwing protect on random DPS and tanks out in the world like we could stoneskin. Protect is far from useless, and this is effing final fantasy.

[Mnemosynia]

Uhh... Did you forget? This is exactly why ProShell was removed from WHM and worked into Protect for all healers without cross class in 3.0. It was deemed to make WHM too essential in raid groups.

I actually never knew this SE why do you guys get rid of anything that might make a class unique...

[Sylvain]

Unless I'm mistaken, the point of the cross role was to somewhat allow playes to specialize by choosing specific skills.
Healer currently has the worst skill set as 3 are mandatory. (Protect, Esuna, Lucid Dream)

Concerning Protect, unless SE doesn't care that 99.9% of the healers use protect out of premade group (where only one heal has it), then they should rework it as it somewhat goes against the whole "cross role skill, take it if you need it". The damage taken it reduces is too important to be overlooked.

A solution would obviously be a rework. A few solutions (as many people pointed) would be
-pvp like temporary damage reduction with high cooldown.
-stone shield. However IMO it would be more interesting to have it usable in fight with a 120sec CD for instance.

The point is, as long as this skill stay this way, it will be mandatory, and unlike other "mandatory skills" like Esuna or Lucid Dream, here the effect is not only very strong but requires no gameplay or attention from the player. You cast it before starting and that's it.

Personally, I wouldnt be surprised to see some change to the cross role system in a near future. If 95% of the player base end up with the same 4 skills, then it is very likely that SE will do some change to promote diversity. A good way to do that would be to make some skill less mandatory or to grant everyone some skills (like Esuna) and grant "empowered version", like "EsunaII" - Esuna is now OGCD and mana cost is halved. This would be far from mandatory but it would nonetheless make it more convenient.

I don't understand how everyone can think protect is so useless.
snip.

What people mean by useless is that it brings nothing to the game. it's just here, you apply before hand and that's it. You can argue that it has to be reapplied when someone die, but it's still a very boring, yet powerful, skill that we need to pick and fill up a slot from the cross-role system.

To make things in perspective, say protect and shell were two separate things, you would need to spend two slots from the cross role system to apply a buff that has no interaction or gameplay value. it's just there and that's what people complain.

[Metsonm]

I don't understand how everyone can think protect is so useless. The second someone is revived, not only is their protect gone but they are in a weakened state. Sometimes I think Im the only healer who actually casts protect back on a fallen party member. They need it. Its not a permanent buff, its healer only, you have to be in the healers party, we can't go running around throwing protect on random DPS and tanks out in the world like we could stoneskin. Protect is far from useless, and this is effing final fantasy.

It's more that it has 100% uptime so could just be incorporated as a native damage reduction or defense boost. As you say, people suffer weakness after death already, why not work protect around that rather than requiring another cast?

As for the iconic status in Final Fantasy, I doubt people are asking for Protect to be completely removed, just protect as we know it.

[LalafellDown]

One day this game will have a "press one button to win," button.