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

[ArianeEwah]

I'd support this regardless, but it's worth noting that some of the Role Actions, especially in their current iterations, are pure bloat:

Shirk

Shirk's tank-swap QoL would be better done by changes to Provoke itself. As for a mere hit-on-refresh maintenance function... such adds to annoyance without adding fundamentally anything to agency. Buff Provoke's functionality and get rid of Shirk.

Lucid Dreaming

It's a mere hit-on-refresh maintenance function. Get rid of it.

(Perhaps even) Arm's Length

[...]

Except for Arm's Length, I 100% agree.
Arm's Length still gives you a choice what and when you want to immune yourself against a knockback. If it still would be on 60s CD as it was the case in SB, I would've agreed. We would be able to counter every knockback if it remained that short of a CD. But since it's 120s now, I don't mind it staying the way it is... or at least bake it into other actions (e.g. Warriors IR).

Lucid Dreaming really doesn't make any sense on any caster right now. SMN already has so many phases and actions that reduce your MP cost to practically 0 (Egi Assault, Pheonix Trance, Tri-Disaster instead of dot-casting), RDM didn't have any mana issues since the start of ShB either (after they reduced the MP cost with an early patch), and BLM... no problems for obivious reasons...
It's really just there as a button bloat for healers because their actions are gosh dang expensive. Healers are the only role with high costs on their spells, starting at 400 MP on single target, and 600 aoe, whereas casters average spell cost is 200 (Ruin, Jolt, Verfire/-stone), and 400 in aoe-spells (again BLM is a special case).
The CD reduction from 120s to 60s (from 4.x to 5.x) also makes this action just more annoying/spammable and useless, because it also lost its more important enmity reduction effect... which again is useless now since the enmity adjustments. 60s would've made sense in SB, but it really doesn't in ShB. Someone behind the design team just didn't think this through... or was just adjusting this action with DPS (death/rez) in mind.
I would really like to see spell costs for healers reduced by 100/200 MP, and see their unique mana refresh actions reviewed (Assize, Draw, Aetherflow... EnergyDrain will probably be removed anyway).

On Shirk: I have nothing to add. I have barely seen it being used efficiently since the start of ShB, and more like out of habit. You've made an excellent point!

make Samba, Troubadour, and Tactician not mere reskins of each other

This!
To this day I don't understand SE's way of thinking with the homogenization process. MCH never had an "aoe mitigation" action. Dismantle (and Rend Mind) were always single target. Scrap Tactitian, and reintroduce Dismantle as a similar to Reprisal on target action (-x% dmg dealt on target + nearby enemies in y radius).
Troubadour can stay the way it is, and Shield Samba... well, can make a shield instead of %-mitigation, or vice versa.
But I would like to see all of the ranged dps mitigation actions getting reduced CDs (to 60s/90s). 120s is way too long, especially for support jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

Except for Arm's Length, I 100% agree.
Arm's Length still gives you a choice what and when you want to immune yourself against a knockback. If it still would be on 60s CD as it was the case in SB, I would've agreed. We would be able to counter every knockback if it remained that short of a CD. But since it's 120s now, I don't mind it staying the way it is... or at least bake it into other actions (e.g. Warriors IR.

I get that, and admittedly I had a way bigger issue with it in SB. But I would much prefer the "bake in" option over keeping it, especially if we pruned the others. I'd probably break knockbacks and draw-ins into those that are potentially helpful (you need to be knocked back to purge a lethal debuff or to get away from another, otherwise lethal AoE, etc.) and those that are not, and vary their potency with mitigation / shielding / certain hidden baked-in effects. I'd probably, though begrudgingly, make movement skills a bit less demanding in their being counters to KBs/DIs, by giving them immunity to non-helpful KB/DIs during their animations (with player knockbacks used on knockback-immune enemies instead knocking oneself back, for similar effect). Riddle of Earth, Inner Release, and Passage of Arms seem good fits for baked-ins, but apart from casters pretty much everyone's got sufficient movement skills.

Random note: If Aero III were still a thing, I'd have loved to have it and Holy, alone, lift WHM significantly off the floor, thereby preventing KBs mid-animation -- but that's mostly because that's the kind of "steadfast healer" utility I feel WHM should uniquely have. (And there's no way I'd want a spammable like Glare to be capable of that, unless it and Dia were locked behind a WHM super-seiyen mode CD.) For any other casters, per their animations, their relevant skills would only affect the end of the cast, which leaves you only a .5s safety window that you'd really have to pro-gamer-move. RDM, per its hyperversatile form, might get it for each time it takes a gaudy backflip off its sword, but it's already got CaC and Displacement, so...

I would really like to see spell costs for healers reduced by 100/200 MP, and see their unique mana refresh actions reviewed (Assize, Draw, Aetherflow... EnergyDrain will probably be removed anyway).

Probably a hot take, but... I wouldn't mind MP becoming a real concern, or even having reason to use Cure, Physick, and Benefic. Anything that makes it more than just a wonky rez-limiter and Spell Speed tax, really, since it's more MP efficient to AoE than single-target heal anyways.

But yeah, for now just making up the difference would probably be best. Drop the bloat and indirect AST buff via its oGCD-weave tax, and keep the resultant playflow otherwise the same.

________________

Scrap Tactitian, and reintroduce Dismantle as a similar to Reprisal on target action (-x% dmg dealt on target + nearby enemies in y radius).

Honestly, I don't even feel like every job needs a(n effectively) raid-defensive tool. (To clarify, I mean this in the sense that even if one were to affect only a single target, such as via Addle, if it thereby affects raid damage, it's still effectively a raid defensive). But, I certainly wouldn't mind some sort of Pacify/Silence skill that degrades to a damage decrease for a brief time when used on immune enemies.

If we wanted to really draw more from the idea of "Dismantle", for instance, I almost wish MCH had more persistent-device summoning and that the game had a greater number of mechanical enemies, while Dismantle in turn could quickly salvage your devices OR pacify/silence/inflict vulnerability upon said mechanical enemies (assuming similar utility among other classes, ofc., which should hardly be a problem if the effects were reduced in 8-man content, as there is no 4-man content beyond the extra-casual level of difficulty.)

[Seraphor]

While I'm all for giving jobs more unique flavour, especially when it comes to tanks who have a ton of role abilities. Role skills themselves do serve a purpose. They provide early game players a sense of growth that can be felt when synced. Job/class skills don't sync down, but Role skills do.
By all means limit them to skills that, by mid-end game are niche and common, but like, Reprisal and Rampart could afford to be divvied up between the tanks again and nothing would be lost.

[ArianeEwah]

Job/class skills don't sync down, but Role skills do.
By all means limit them to skills that, by mid-end game are niche and common[...]

You are right. And at least, from what I've read in this thread, barely anyone mentioned actions of above level 12 (except maybe Lucid Dreaming). Even with those on level 12, there are only 2 instances of synced content outside of FATE, and both are guildhests, one of them done in less than 30s. Nothing of priority in my eyes.
Then again, I wonder if the way role actions are handled is right in the first place. Cross class actions made sense, as you could set them in your own order on which level they are available. E.g. SCH took cleric stance on 10, so they had that in every dungeon, and e.g. Swiftcast on 20, and so on. But role actions don't give you any choice to begin with, and they don't give you anything "meaningful" for those levels. I mean, yeah, they are nice to have, but just... niche. Like... running Sastasha with Reprisal barely affects the experience xD
I wonder if it even has any effect since most numbers are single-digit...

[Shurrikhan]

Role skills themselves do serve a purpose. They provide early game players a sense of growth that can be felt when synced. Job/class skills don't sync down, but Role skills do.

I'm not sure Role Actions being an awkward, even if favorable, exception to how sync works is reason enough to keep their bloat and reduction of potential job identity/flavor, especially given that due to the ease of those levels' dungeons the difference is hardly, if at all, perceptible (outside of perhaps Low Blow).

[DustyBlue]

All the healers still have their own different terms for Raise too... I think they should put those in the role actions section, but keep the unique term/icon/animations, and do the same for the other jobs. Weird to see arrows for machinist/dancer abilities, keep them role actions but give them the machinis/dancer flavor, as well as putting Tactician/Shield Samba in there and so on.

I also think pet actions on the list should merge with the command for said pet action, like Aetherpact/Fey Union, they need to sort those out better. Same for actions that have upgraded forms, they can sort those older versions out.

[Acidblood]

As someone in the process of (re)setting up their hot bars, I can say that having 'role actions' as a separate tab is simply annoying... and somewhat easy to overlook :/

[AceofRains]

Level 88 Bard, Dancer, and Machinist all get traited to 90 second CD on their mitigation. It’s honestly a travesty and a waste of a trait spot. Some decent new abilities died so we can eat total homogenization on RDPS. Tactician is already out of place of Machinist for literally nothing else in its kit being supportive. If they were going to get the same shit anyways the least they could have done is make them do the same thing differently. Give Bard Regen (Life’s Anthem) and give Dancer Shields. Either remove it from Machinist or keep it how it is only for Machinist. Good lord.

[Kalinas]

As someone in the process of (re)setting up their hot bars, I can say that having 'role actions' as a separate tab is simply annoying... and somewhat easy to overlook :/

The hidden Limit Break under General also gets missed by new players as you never really use most of those icons (sprint, teleport, and return are all on your bars when you start.