Rdm in 5.0?

[Archwizard]

I really don't get why we need four whole skills which sole purpose for existing is AoE rotation... Most Jobs get one skill to spam, maybe a second, and the rest is oGCDs... Scatter spam and Moulinet was perfectly fine as is... The AoE Veraero and Verthunder are just wasteful skill bloat IMO, it would have made far more sense to simply make Scatter into an AoE stance... You turn it on, Jolt/Impact are AoE, Veraero/stone/thunder/fire are AoE... Makes far more sense than wasting two new actions on nothing...

I... disagree, actually. The main concern towards our AoE was that it was boring -- you just hit Scatter over and over, 7 casts to the Moulinet, unless you were at exactly 3 targets where you alternated Verthunder/Veraero. Under the new system, it's inverted from our single-target rotation, which is at least a change to be less repetitive if nothing else; arguably the two could also have niche purposes in single-target to adjust our mana totals, since they're shortcasts that don't rely on procs.
Meanwhile, your suggestion of "just give us an AoE stance" would make AoE gameplay as boring and uninspired as you claim the new 71-80 skills are. Sure, we don't AoE terribly often in full party content, but I find myself doing a lot of it in alliance raids and dungeons, which is a fairly large aspect of the casual experience.

Bear in mind, the two new actions are actually marked as low-level skills replacing Scatter, not as part of our five advancements. Also, while skill bloat is a concern, it's only insofar as every job is "bloated" -- we were actually on the lower-end as a new job, and with 6 Role Actions going away and Verholy/Verflare getting their buttons rolled into the original Veraero/Verthunder, we'll actually have more slots ending Shadowbringers than we had starting Stormblood.

My only point of contention with the new AoEs is that they went back to Veraero and Verthunder -- they didn't even name them "Veraero/thunder II", and while I'm sure these are WIP names, the fact they exist for completely different purposes than the versions we already have is just confusing. I'd much rather they change one of the pairings to Ice and Water spells.

Contre Sixte and Fleche still have the same lame animation... Look at all the awesome new animations other Jobs get, and we're busy just shooting a lame reskin of the Serpent Officer's Longsword from Palace of the Dead...

I rather like their animation -- way more exciting than the loads of "summon a crystal overhead" cooldowns and spells we see everywhere.
Hell, I'd want them to expand on their style. Imagine us being able to summon a wall of those crystal swords as a barrier skill, like Armiger Noctis (or Ultimate Form Sora) does to guard.
Who cares what sword model they use anyway? Outside of Gpose they're not on screen long enough for you to bask in their glory or anything.

Engagement... OK I get this skill, I use it when I can't use Displacement because Displacement will throw me off the arena... I get that... Why is Engagement 150 potency while Displacement is 200 potency, though? Why is there nothing remotely interesting about our Lv72 skill? It could easily have an additional effect, perhaps that new Charge Skill mechanic?

Because Yoshi wants us to do flips into and out of melee, rather than just having them be niche mobility and escape tools. I agree that putting such a drastic difference on Engagement versus Displacement is punishment towards the players for bad encounter design, and I would have much rather they had taken the damage off of our movement skills entirely... but I also disagree with making Engagement as powerful as or better than Displacement, since its core purpose is not to be a full replacement, but a niche alternative option. A better option than giving new effects to Engagement would be to shorten or remove the gap between it and Displacement, and then add more non-damage effects to Displacement (in addition to the backstep) as incentives to its use over Engagement.

Also, I... feel like you don't understand the new Charge system all too well if you're suggesting adding it to Engagement, when it shares a timer with Displacement, which presumably would not have charges.

I think I heard something about Surecast having a significantly increased recast timer too? That really sucks as well IMO, as it currently is it's timed perfectly for most fights. Something like Chaos it feels rather good to pop it before every knockback while the rest of your party positions to not be knocked into death.

I would assume they changed Surecast specifically because of those kinds of encounters actually -- it allowed us to completely ignore some mechanics and skip the intended risks of such fights. Sure that would have been a good thing for like, a Black Mage to root themselves in one spot and not have to worry about getting knocked off the platform just long enough for them to be able to throw out a couple more casts, but... we're not Black Mages, we actually have some mobility between casts.

Meanwhile, Lucid Dreaming's CD was halved, which is a victory lap for us (and to a lesser extent, SMNs) and our MP concerns.