Sorry to use up more posts in your thread when I hoped the previous would be my last bit in that tangent, but I don't want to force you to jump between pages with yet another stream of edits, so...

Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
Where I'm torn is, I don't think each role necessarily needs every single action replaced, since that's just more work for the programmers, and half the point of role actions is to mitigate that.
It wasn't any part of the point, though. You don't take the time to remove art assets, names, and icons, each already with their full development time spent, and re-ID each to a newly created ID within a newly created system with newly created schema to save time. If everything about the result accomplished the opposite of a given intent, that probably wasn't the intent. If stated as such, the statement was almost certainly a lie.

One can debate the actual goal of Role Actions -- e.g. whether it was a sale point that attempted to mitigate the concerns over how the devs failed to diversify mostly-shared skills apart from by matching each to their respective job's aesthetics or how instanced environments have progressively trimmed our effective skill count since ARR by immunizing almost all enemies to almost all CC (and the few remaining, to all CC), leaving us with handfuls of "waste" skills, while still seeming "new and innovative" -- but we do at least have clear examples of what is what was not.

Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
(Granting we ended up with 3 different versions of Raise which I consider the greatest failing, but what can you do.)
Sure many of them could be more thematic, but there's ultimately little point trying to make a more "unique" version of, say, Cleric Stance or Protect (especially if the latter doesn't stack, as it shouldn't).
This is why I'd follow capacity, rather than a one-to-one correspondence. There's zero reason for the capacity involved in either Cleric Stance or Protect to exist as separate skills. One amounts to less than a percent's damage bonus over time. The other amounts to a few percent of mitigation that can be compensated for by just raising baseline Defense and Magic Defense values by the same. Those don't need buttons.

...Though, technically, neither does a single healer Role Action save for perhaps Esuna or, tangentially, Break, come to think of it. I can accomplish each capacity through the respective native kits and even the sparsest use of dynamic skills (e.g. Aero/Stone being castable on an ally)...

Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
Like I said, I could see some jobs being slightly better at specific things, so long as they all still have the base capabilities to fulfill their roles. In many cases I think just a trait for one to three role actions would be fine to give that extra flavor.
Honestly, I'd be fine with leaving, say, one's single choice of Rescue (buffed), Surecast, or Break (buffed), as they are all situational. ...Though, I'd prefer that one instead picked 1 of 3 or 2 of 4, etc, Masteries unique to their own job, if the players actually feel they need an additional system like that (despite its technically being a restriction, as it siphons would-be baseline skills into something that requires trips to town or menu-fighting between actual fights just to get access to them again).

I just don't think it makes any sense to actively go out of one's way to make effects fit the aesthetic of only one out of n jobs in a given role all to excuse a failure to diversify abilities when you could, with the same effort, have diversified them. I know it's too late not to have already wasted that development time, but the sheer extent of effort Role Actions spent on spinning a failure as an accomplishment sickens me, and -- more importantly -- I do still want to see healer and tank kits feel more distinct, just as I did before they actively made them less distinct.