Too many "Must-Haves" in the Role Choices Menu.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

A few nit-picks:

• Very few bosses apply any cleansable debuffs. Esuna should only ever be taken for a few fights.
• Protect should be replaced as soon as you've finished casting it.
• Low Blow should be traded for Reprisal for bosses.

*The last two I see as the worst failures of the system, as you have two choices that are (almost) entirely worthless (a) once activated or (b) on either trash (Reprisal) or bosses (Low Blow), meaning that ideal play included not using the skill for its recast before a swap is necessary and that one has to spend time in the Role Actions menus routinely (in the case of LB/Rep) to get the most out of their toolkit. Sound familiar?

Overall the Role Actions are a complete failure in terms of "choice". But, they did ensure that those spare options, previously used for survivability, should (or in midcore and higher circles, must) be used rotationally. In effect, therefore, bloat has increased, while personal survivability has decreased. Yes, you can now contribute minuscule amounts more via the new Feint or Palisade, but neither makes the slightest bit of sense, and neither is necessarily fun enough to warrant taking up a slot to hit that ability every 120 or 150 seconds on a given TB. But then again, bloat has almost been a selling point of the game since 1.2, while the reduction of bloat has only ever been an excuse to reshape difficulty curves (adding more bloat, for most classes, for each bit removed).

In my opinion, the Role Actions should be abolished outright. Give MCH its own version of Swiftsong, leave those oGCD, let a healer have Rescue, and otherwise give back all the native skills lost. Provoke, the old Cleric Stance, and Protect were the only real reasons to have it, and the last has no reason to remain in the game except to increase the urgency of deaths—which they just adjusted the weakness mechanic, excusing the abomination that is tank AP scaling, in order to reduce. The middle one has since be removed. That leaves only Provoke, which could as easily have just gone the route of Shadowskin/Rampart to give Challenge/Command/Taunt forms of the same skill if necessary, or given three different flavors of the same mechanic and, once learned on their respective jobs, allowed the tank to have exchanged his native version for another's at will.