Please Remove Role Skills and Give Them Back as Class/Job Abilities

[MartaDemireux]

It turns out there have been so many actions removed from the game that the majority can actually reuse old animations for reduced development time/cost and still graphically make sense (for the most part). To better illustrate, here are some examples I've thought up:


Rampart:
• PLD: Old Bulwark animation (Rampart and Sentinel are nearly identical).
• WAR: Old Unchained animation.
• GNB: Old Palisade animation.
• DRK: Old Shadowskin animation.

Low Blow:
• PLD: Old Savage Blade animation.
• WAR: Old Skull Sunder animation.
• GNB: A low-kick and spin with gunblade's vibration stirring up sand.
• DRK: Unchanged.

Provoke:
• PLD: Name it Challenge and give it a smacking sword on shield animation.
• WAR: Unchanged.
• GNB: Name it Taunt and give appropriately matched animation.
• DRK: Old Sole Survivor animation (name it Lure).

Interject:
• PLD: Old Shield Swipe animation.
• WAR: Old Butcher's Block Animation.
• GNB: A flash bang animation.
• DRK: Unchanged.

Reprisal:
• PLD: Give it old Flash animation and name.
• WAR: Give it old Ultimatum animation and name.
• GNB: Give it a reverse (downward moving) blue-ish hued Heart of Light animation.
• DRK: Unchanged.

Shirk:
• PLD: Old Eye for an Eye animation and maybe name.
• WAR: Old Deliverance animation and maybe name.
• GNB: Old Manashift animation.
• DRK: Unchanged.

Arm's Length:
• PLD: Old Tempered Will animation and maybe name.
• WAR: Old Convalescence animation.
• GNB: Slow effect gunshot animation.
• DRK: Old Dark Arts animation.
• NIN: Old Duality animation.
• SAM: Old Invigorate animation.
• MNK: Unchanged.
• DRG: Old Diversion animation.
• BRD: A song animation with slow effects (Peloton uses a flute for ARC so we can pull this off).
• MCH: Old Rapid Fire animation.
• DNC: Inspire it from FFXI's Fan Samba animation.

Leg Sweep:
• NIN: Old Jugulate animation.
• SAM: Old Ageha animation.
• MNK: Old Steel Peak animation.
• DRG: Old 3.0 Feint animation.

Bloodbath:
• NIN: Old Kiss of the Viper animation.
• SAM: Unchanged.
• MNK: Old Internal Release animation.
• DRG: Old Power Surge animation.

Feint:
• NIN: Old Shadewalker animation.
• SAM: Unchanged.
• MNK: Old One Ilm Punch animation.
• DRG: Old Phlebotomize animation.

True North:
• NIN: Old Kiss of the Wasp animation.
• SAM: Unchanged.
• MNK: Old Anticipation animation.
• DRG: Old Keen Flurry animation and maybe name.

Second Wind:
• NIN: The Healing Pill ability NPC NINs use.
• SAM: Unchanged.
• MNK: Old Purification animation and name.
• DRG: Old Feather Foot animation.
• BRD: Healing song animation.
• MCH: Old Hypercharge animation and name.
• DNC: Inspire it by Healing Waltz from FFXI.

Head Graze:
• BRD: Old Misery's End animation.
• MCH: Old Dismantle (wrench toss) or Heartbreak animation (I prefer Dismantle...).
• DNC: Unchanged.

Leg Graze:
• BRD: Shoot some sticky pitch under the target.
• MCH: Unchanged.
• DNC: Inspire it by FFXI Steps.

Foot Graze:
• BRD: Binding song animation.
• MCH: Unchanged.
• DNC: Inspire it by FFXI Steps.

Peloton:
• BRD: Greenish hued variant of old Foe's Requiem, maybe named Mazurka after FFXI.
• MCH: Unchanged (pairs well with Tactician).
• DNC: Old Fey Wind animation.

Addle:
• BLM: Old Lethargy animation.
• SMN: Old Virus animation.
• RDM: Old Disable Animation.

Swiftcast:
• BLM: Unchanged.
• SMN & SCH: Hold book up and pages flip fast.
• RDM: Similar to Acceleration but the focus spins around the character.
• WHM: similar to Presence of Mind.
• AST: Old Time Dilation animation.

Surecast:
• BLM: Old Manawall animation.
• SMN & SCH: Slam book on ground and create a binding glyph.
• RDM: Take a defensive fencing stance.
• WHM: Unchanged.
• AST: Old Spread animation without the giant card.

Lucid Dreaming:
• BLM: inspire from Manafont
• SMN: Old Rouse animation (but on self).
• RDM: Old Cleric Stance animation.
• WHM: Unchanged.
• SCH: Fairy dust sprinkles around them.
• AST: Old Royal Road animation.

Repose:
• WHM: Unchanged.
• SCH: Maybe a new sleeping powder animation.
• AST: Old Break animation.

Rescue:
• WHM: Old Crutch animation.
• SCH: Unchanged.
• AST: Old Goad animation.

Esuna:
• WHM: Old Esuna animation and name.
• SCH: Old Leeches animation and name.
• AST: Old Exalted Detriment animation and name.

And finally, BLU should have blue hued versions of their current role skills, hinting at their identity of copying abilities - in this case from the other casters.

[Burmecia]

Nah. Or would you want only one tank having provoke?

[MartaDemireux]

Nah. Or would you want only one tank having provoke?

Trolling or tl;dr? All four tanks would have the ability just with unique names and animations between them.

[Jandor]

I fully support this idea.

Role actions are pretty lame in their current form, and as Marta said, there are more than enough animations to cover most jobs getting their own versions.

[Seraphor]

I don't really understand the resistance to this tbh.

We already have three different 'Raises' and nobody has an issue referring to them all as 'Raise' or 'Rez'.
Same for Tactician/Shield Samba/Troubadour.

Some of them don't even need to be the same for each job. For example, True North doesn't need to be the same duration/cooldown for every melee, they can be tailored to their respective rotations and thereby improve job diversity.
Same for things like Swiftcast for Caster DPS, or Second Wind/Bloodbath.
Bloodbath has a little less less value on Ninja than it does on Samurai for example, so Ninja's version could have a longer duration, or a shorter cooldown, or heal a higher percentage.

[MartaDemireux]

I don't really understand the resistance to this tbh.

We already have three different 'Raises' and nobody has an issue referring to them all as 'Raise' or 'Rez'.
Same for Tactician/Shield Samba/Troubadour.

Some of them don't even need to be the same for each job. For example, True North doesn't need to be the same duration/cooldown for every melee, they can be tailored to their respective rotations and thereby improve job diversity.
Same for things like Swiftcast for Caster DPS, or Second Wind/Bloodbath.
Bloodbath has a little less less value on Ninja than it does on Samurai for example, so Ninja's version could have a longer duration, or a shorter cooldown, or heal a higher percentage.

Maybe down the road if there's time and resources to rebalance. MNK for example (even though it's about to get a rework and might not be the same soon) already essentially has True North built into its existing skillset with Riddle of Earth. Could be interesting to see what could be done on an individual basis. But definitely would require a substantial amount more work than the original proposition.

Either way, I agree having them as individual skills instead of role skills would open up plenty of interesting possibilities while still being able to give all jobs in a role access to the same core functionalities.

[Reksanden]

Lucid Dreaming:
• BLM: inspire from Manafont

Only problem here is that Lucid does nothing for BLM except maybe give you MP if you drop your stances when at 0 MP on accident - and even then it's two in-game ticks of normal MP Regen before you can cast any Blizzard to get right back into Umbral.

Otherwise it has no effect at all - but that's an issue for another thread.

[Lyth]

It's strange that we have some job specific actions which have been replaced with a single role specific version (Rampart) and others which are identical but job specific (Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Nebula). Likewise, they replaced most of the old raidwide mitigation abilities with Reprisal in Stormblood, and then slowly proceeded to add back tank specific alternatives over the past two expansions. I don't think that the four people who are on job design duty for SE have really thought any of this through.

I think the ideal is to find a unifying theme for each job, and find an alternate approach for achieving the same end result. Failing that, having alternate animations for the same actions at least gives the jobs a bit of unique flavour.

[ADVSS]

It's strange that we have some job specific actions which have been replaced with a single role specific version (Rampart) and others which are identical but job specific (Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Nebula). Likewise, they replaced most of the old raidwide mitigation abilities with Reprisal in Stormblood, and then slowly proceeded to add back tank specific alternatives over the past two expansions. I don't think that the four people who are on job design duty for SE have really thought any of this through.

I think the ideal is to find a unifying theme for each job, and find an alternate approach for achieving the same end result. Failing that, having alternate animations for the same actions at least gives the jobs a bit of unique flavour.

Things like replacing shadowskin made absolutely no sense for real, or getting rid of Brutal Swing, etc. I am guessing, they figured if the icons all look the same it would be easier for healers to tell what mitigation was on/off the tank in that instance, and sure...i guess? But I agree, some of it is absurd...they could have the buff icon look the same, but keep the animation personally. Seems like an overabundant waste of work load to give back the same skill because the iconography looks the same when used :/

[Lyth]

See, I'd buy the argument that unifying job actions makes it easier for players to understand what is happening, if that was a systematic change. But then they would have merged down Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Nebula as well.

The problem is that they keep adding jobs, but they clearly do not have the development team numbers to support the amount of jobs released. There's no thought or coherent decision making going into job changes. They're just putting out fires in response to an irritated playerbase.