Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[Driskus]

I usually take Esuna if I know its needed or if its my first time in something. If I know I don't need it for sure, I'll swap it for Rescue, Cleric Stance or Surecast depending on the fight. Can't count the number of healers I've seen go into Byakko normal expecting it to not need Esuna only to find out that its probably better to take it halfway through the fight, because people love standing in that lightning.

[Tridus]

I always have Esuna for exactly those reasons. Inevitably I'd either forget I need it until its too late, and I keep running into other healers who don't have it. Easier just to leave it there and be able to rely on it.

The role action system doesn't work that well for healers, TBH. Protect is the most glaring example, but at least you can macro that one away if you don't mind not being able to recast it in combat.

[Skivvy]

and that only leaves you one other choice for role skills unless you choose to macro-out Protect...but I have seen people get salty if they die and you don’t recast Protect on them immediately afterwards

lol, this reminds me of a V3.0 (NM) run I had earlier in the week. It was really bad, just all around. Lots of unnecessary damage being taken and deaths. I'm thinking a lot of people were newer to the fight, which is fine (really! We all start somewhere).

Anyhoo, about 2/3 of the way in, my co-healer decided they'd just go AFK and never return, the party is still going to hell, I'm trying to keep up heals as best I can, MP at this point was hurting, etc. I just finished raising one of the DPS and went back to doing my cures, and a short bit later they ask for Protect in /party chat. To be fair, all the comment literally said was "Protect", so he wasn't being salty or anything, but it made me laugh. In my head, I was just thinking "dude, look at the party, look at my AFK co-heal, look at my MP, ANYTHING - now is NOT the time for me to be worrying about Protect".

Situational awareness is lacking for some

And yessss! Please remove protect from our kits. It's practically useless in it's current form. Do other jobs have a "set it and forget it" role ability? (Genuine question).

[NephthysVasudan]

<snip>

I tend to recast protect when able due to things like this - as it mitigates some damage - but yeah....it gets a bit....iffy - good on you for holding the line. <comfort>

And I do set protect - but I hide it in a secondary hotbar.... Esuna however..is always front-and-center.

[VanilleFang]

Do other jobs have a "set it and forget it" role ability? (Genuine question).

No. Protect is the only role action in the game that can be used and then replaced. Not only that but like Tridus mentioned, the role actions aren't really working that well for healers. Other roles have bad Role Actions, sure, but the Healers' list is really bad with having some actions being required and others being utterly useless.

[Skivvy]

I tend to recast protect when able due to things like this - as it mitigates some damage - but yeah....it gets a bit....iffy - good on you for holding the line. <comfort>

And I do set protect - but I hide it in a secondary hotbar.... Esuna however..is always front-and-center.

I do try and recast when I can, but that run was just pure chaos. lol.

No. Protect is the only role action in the game that can be used and then replaced. Not only that but like Tridus mentioned, the role actions aren't really working that well for healers. Other roles have bad Role Actions, sure, but the Healers' list is really bad with having some actions being required and others being utterly useless.

Yeah, I was incredibly bitter over the healer Role Actions when they first came out. :X With protect, I think they need to either remove it entirely, add the buff automatically while in dungeons (as suggested above), or maybe change it to behave like its PvP counterpart where it's an active skill to be used throughout your run.

[HyoMinPark]

No. Protect is the only role action in the game that can be used and then replaced. Not only that but like Tridus mentioned, the role actions aren't really working that well for healers. Other roles have bad Role Actions, sure, but the Healers' list is really bad with having some actions being required and others being utterly useless.

I feel like you can apply this (the “others being utterly useless” part) to Physical Ranged role actions as well, with regards to the X Graze attacks. Outside of Head Graze (Silence)—which is only needed in V3S and V7S so far...and is completely useless if you have a PLD that opts to Silence, or a NIN that saves Jugulate for the silence—anything other than Refresh, Tactician, Invigorate, Palisade, and Second Wind are trash.
Yeah, I guess you can make an argument for Peloton SWIFTSONG in cities or whatnot, but I never take it.
Heavy? No. Bind? Immune. Stun? Well, also immune thanks to the melee skills that still have stuns attached to them (Shoulder Tackle; Spinshatter Dive).

Honestly, SE should make CC more useful...so many things are immune to status effects like Heavy or Sleep that they’re useless to have.

Though, I did do a Tam-Tara one day (Leveling roulette), and there was a baby CNJ that put ranged mobs to sleep so that they wouldn’t have to worry about pulling aggro through healing! I was like !!!!! I remember when sleeping targets at lower levels was a thing... It was adorable.

[MoroMurasaki]

I keep running into other healers who don't have it.

I see what you did there >.>

[Skivvy]

I feel like you can apply this (the “others being utterly useless” part) to Physical Ranged role actions as well, with regards to the X Graze attacks. Outside of Head Graze (Silence)—which is only needed in V3S and V7S so far...and is completely useless if you have a PLD that opts to Silence, or a NIN that saves Jugulate for the silence—anything other than Refresh, Tactician, Invigorate, Palisade, and Second Wind are trash.
Yeah, I guess you can make an argument for Peloton SWIFTSONG in cities or whatnot, but I never take it.
Heavy? No. Bind? Immune. Stun? Well, also immune thanks to the melee skills that still have stuns attached to them (Shoulder Tackle; Spinshatter Dive).

Honestly, SE should make CC more useful...so many things are immune to status effects like Heavy or Sleep that they’re useless to have.

Though, I did do a Tam-Tara one day (Leveling roulette), and there was a baby CNJ that put ranged mobs to sleep so that they wouldn’t have to worry about pulling aggro through healing! I was like !!!!! I remember when sleeping targets at lower levels was a thing... It was adorable.

I think there's a difference between role abilities that are just about useless (all jobs have some) vs. having an ability that is expected to be up 100% of the time, but is a waste of a space to keep slotted.

With that said, I'm sure all roles could use a second glance at an update.

[Tridus]

I think there's a difference between role abilities that are just about useless (all jobs have some) vs. having an ability that is expected to be up 100% of the time, but is a waste of a space to keep slotted.

And that's what makes Protect special and weird. It's the only one that in a typical dungeon run you use exactly once and then want to unslot for optimization. Peloton could also kinda fit into that but it's strictly out of combat and will be pressed more frequently (so it's also a decent macro candidate).

Esuna is also weird because it's either essential or completely worthless with no real in between. Shirk is only useful for trolling in dungeons but that applies to all dungeons rather than "this specific fight on this specific one..."