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

[Romulo]

As it's been said before, I agree: Role skills are a good idea, but shouldn't be limited in number, having access to all of them at once wouldn't be game breaking and would leave in the player's hand the choice to use them or not.

It's really bad when you are queuing for several instances at once, you don't have the required/optimal build for it and the tank pulls before you can change it, you end up with useless skills hanging around (Hello Esuna in Susano, I'm looking at you...).

While we are on topic: Making Repose a role skill could make some interesting boss fights where you could require the healer to put some adds to sleep.

[Jas710]

I feel like role actions should be optional utility that can make a fight easier, but is never absolutely mandatory for its completion.

Tell that to the devs, since apparently even they are unable to comprehend why they are doing it.

If they are expecting us to juggle multiple gear sets for one job in some sad attempt at trying to relive the FFXI days, they are delusional. Not unlike how Diadem was a failed attempt at extracting a FFXI idea.

We are now living in a "set it and forget it" era.

[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.

[Pyrii]

Agreed about the new role system, they've removed experimentation completely now. You used to be able to find ways to bring in interesting skills that might help with certain dungeons. Now it's generic and while base classes get to have all the abilities, but jobs basically are stuck with the essentials and nothing else.

They clearly want to have each class/job as a clearly defined set of skills, so why the illusion of choice?

[Maeka]

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.

1). So, when you queue for a random dungeon, you feel like standing there tweaking your role choices menu to take/get rid of Esuna depending on which dungeon you're doing? lol, no thanks. I'm going to leave it on because I do lots of Roulettes and I don't know ahead of time what I'm going to get and about the time I take it off to take something else, I'll forget it and I'll find myself at Exdeath or something with no Esuna... because I forgot about it.

2). And if a tank should die during a boss fight and you Swiftcast+Raise them... oh wait, you can't recast Protect so the tank takes 15% more damage ON TOP OF the Rez Sickness debuff. lel. And you'd have to swap again to recast after the fight, and then swap back....... no thanks.

3). While that could be true, the fact that you feel obligated to swap skills constantly only proves how silly and broken this system actually is. It is circumvent-able with a lot of tedious and annoying fiddling with menus for things that should be there always anyways, so why even have it there?

This is why the role choices system is flawed and it needs tweaks.

[MPNZ]

Yeah, this just really isn't working for some jobs and it might be if they tried making them into traits like auto-haste or move+3 like in tactics. But, definitely make it so that they're adjusted to suit each job, personally. Oh, and plz just give back abilities like low blow, provoke, swift song, and protect to their respective rolls/jobs.

It would be great to have to earn traits like "reduced GCD for songs", "increased song effect potency", or auto-poletan.

[Dzian]

Just seems really absurd that a healer is capable of going into a fight without Esuna and Lucid Dreaming, or a tank without Provoke or Rampart, even if they technically don't need it. These are still essential tools that need to be baseline.

I feel like role actions should be optional utility that can make a fight easier, but is never absolutely mandatory for its completion.

Like for example, even though Esuna isn't ACTUALLY mandatory for Exdeath normal because you can just res after they die, I would still consider Esuna mandatory because getting around mechanics using resurrection just doesn't sit right with me.

On the other hand, I love these "optional utility" skills like Goad, Mana Shift and Rescue. I use them all the time, it makes things slightly easier, but I never feel like I absolutely need them to do a deathless run.(Though the amount of dps who will stand in the poo and die is absolutely ridiculous, Rescue really helps with those guys)

Fey Caress... the only problem is it's bloody long cooldown.. if it was shorter esuna would become much less mandatory (would also make selene a bit more viable in comparison to eos)

I think allowing a 6th role skill at 70 would help a lot though and is probably the easiest thing they could do to improve the system without another massive overhaul.

protect for example could be scrapped entirely and just retune incoming damage to compensate. but that's almost certainly gonna be more work than just adding a 6th role skill..

[Maeka]

protect for example could be scrapped entirely and just retune incoming damage to compensate. but that's almost certainly gonna be more work than just adding a 6th role skill..

All they'd have to do is add a 15% defense/magic defense bonus as soon as you step into any instanced content that has a healer in your group. Kinda like how the stat bonuses work(ed?).

Boom. Auto-Protect Fulltime. Then they can get rid of the Protect ability entirely, and there you go. If they REALLY want you to be protectless after you are rezzed then bake in a 2nd debuff to Rez sickness that gives you, say, 10-20 seconds where that buff does not apply, call it "Broken Defenses" or something.

And then they could make Healers always have this bonus even outside of groups/instances, something their class/job gets (that will not stack with the one granted to the group) automatically.

[Shurrikhan]

1). So, when you queue for a random dungeon, you feel like standing there tweaking your role choices menu to take/get rid of Esuna depending on which dungeon you're doing? lol, no thanks. I'm going to leave it on because I do lots of Roulettes and I don't know ahead of time what I'm going to get and about the time I take it off to take something else, I'll forget it and I'll find myself at Exdeath or something with no Esuna... because I forgot about it.

2). And if a tank should die during a boss fight and you Swiftcast+Raise them... oh wait, you can't recast Protect so the tank takes 15% more damage ON TOP OF the Rez Sickness debuff. lel. And you'd have to swap again to recast after the fight, and then swap back....... no thanks.

3). While that could be true, the fact that you feel obligated to swap skills constantly only proves how silly and broken this system actually is. It is circumvent-able with a lot of tedious and annoying fiddling with menus for things that should be there always anyways, so why even have it there?

This is why the role choices system is flawed and it needs tweaks.

1) You can do this by macro.

2) Protect gives ~3% mitigation. It gives 15% increased Defense and Magic Defense. Unless the tank were already mitigating 100% of damage via its Defense stat, 15% of that stat could not possibly generate 15% mitigation.

3) Agreed. It's ass-backwards.

And to the general point, agreed. As was the point described in the every part of the post except the small section you've quoted here.

[Acidblood]

Not to mention all the highly situational and generally useless (depending on class) abilities:

Addle and Feint - Good for savage raids, but otherwise next to useless. Would it really hurt to make them AoE so they are at least useful for dungeons as well?
Break - Totally useless. The heavy effect is not powerful enough to justify casting it in place of a more potent damage ability. Should be replaced with pre-4.0 BLM ability 'Lethargy' (oGCD Heavy + Slow).
Drain - Half decent, but would be much better as an oGCD with ~30 second CD.
Lucid Dreaming - Should NOT be a cross role. AST and WHM MP requirements are different. BLM doesn't need it (and seems unless due to 0 MP regen in Astral Fire), SCH / SMN had their own mechanics, RDM could have been given something unique.
Mana Shift - Not bad, but mostly only good for BLM. Should just be a BLM 'utility'. (Replacing Freeze or Sleep for example).
Erase - Would be good if you could cast it on Self.
Crutch - Again, would be good if you could cast it on Self.
Reprisal - Again, only good in savage raids, and would it really be OP to make it AoE and last a bit longer so it's at least useful in dungeons as well?
Interject - Needed for some fights, but generally next to useless. Adding Pacification and a lower cooldown would make it slightly better.
Ultimatum - Either greatly increase the range or change it into a replacement for Flash / Unleash (i.e. spamable AoE enmity that costs MP and is gained at a low level).

So yeah, while the general idea of a 'cross-role' system is good, a lot of the abilities they put in there are either too 'must have' (and thus no real choice) or too situational (leading to swap-out macros / UI fiddling being a regular part of gameplay :facepalm: ) ... and the solution? It's easier said than done, but they really need to sit down and redesign a lot of the abilities (including some job abilities) so that all the cross-role abilities meet the criteria of 'Generally useful, but never required'; with 'Convalescence', 'Largesse', 'Bloodbath' and 'True North' being good examples.

Some ideas would be:
AoE Sleep - If CC is going to a 'thing', why does only BLM (and to a lesser extent WHM) get access to this? And if it's not, why are these abilities still in the game?
AoE Bind - Again, if CC is going to a 'thing', why is BLM the only one with ready access to such abilities? And if it's not, why are these abilities still in the game?
More defensive CDs for Tanks - At the moment even PLD feels lacking in this area, and while the basics (i.e. Rampart) should be built-in, there is scope for more defensive CDs to be added (get creative).
'Enhanced' versions of standard abilities - While Esuna should absolutely be part of a healers standard kit, an AoE Esuna would be very useful in some fights (or simply for saving a few GCDs).
More survival abilites for DPS - While Tanks and Healers generally have no issue surviving while solo, for DPS, being able to take some extra defensive / healing abilities is always welcome.
Edit: Extra MP and TP gain - While all classes should be mostly self sustaining, extra MP / TP is generally welcome (e.g. for long or AoE heavy fights). The best design for these would be a small +MP / TP % mixed with a small buff or some damage, so they are still slightly useful even if you don't regularly need the MP / TP.