Tank IDENTITY

[Lyth]

...

Inner Beast is a really good example.

IB post-2.1 was one of my favorite actions in the game. It was an offensive tool, defensive tool, required resource management and good timing. Progging T9 as a WAR 'MT' was a lot of fun. IB was killed off by the addition of FC in HW. The end result was that players felt like IB didn't really 'count' as mitigation, yet it existed and was a very powerful prog tool. The end result is that its defensive properties were eventually moved over into its current form with RI/BW to make it standardized like everything else.

I think that Raises are fundamentally different because of how powerful they are. I haven't seen anyone complain about having access to Raise. And a lot of this comes down to player perceptions of usefulness. Situational and even purely fluff actions (like pacifying animals as a Warcraft Druid or being able to fly) can be really fun. The problem is that players in this game are very conscious of their 'hotbar budget', and any action that doesn't feel jam packed with usefulness becomes a source of frustration.

GNB has always been fun from an offensive standpoint. I think that most of the gameplay issues stem from longstanding problems around mob movement and responsiveness in this game compared to other MMOs. Camo is a really cool idea thematically (see: Thancred vs. Ran'jit), but its execution is pretty underwhelming. If I wanted to do an 'Evasion-themed' defensive ability, I'd go for something similar to FF6's Image status effect (complete with blinking image clones). Mitigate a set %DR (?physical damage), except that each hit mitigated this way has a chance to remove the buff. Doesn't even need a duration timer, really. Or if you want something more consistent, give a set number of stacks. Heart of Light feels fairly uninspired. Most of your abilities deploy portable %DR barriers on yourself and party members, and now you're suddenly magic resist only?

I've said this before, but more movement abilities are always welcome on any tank or melee job. Just set up an extraction point on the arena in advance and get airlifted back to safety in the last moment. Speaking of which, I never understood why they went with a generic bodycheck for WAR's gap closer. Holmgang essentially fires a grappling hook into your opponent. Few things would be more entertaining than swinging across an arena to your target.

[Shurrikhan]

I haven't seen anyone complain about having access to Raise.

I feel like RDM and SMN have provided examples of this any time they're not a top-5 job (blaming "Rez tax"). But yes, all that comes down to "perception" (seeing as having a rez hasn't prevented either from being a top-tier job at various points in the past, just as Clemency hadn't taken from PLD's sustain budget until potentially ShB if that wasn't just an oversight in overall parity).

Situational and even purely fluff actions (like pacifying animals as a Warcraft Druid or being able to fly) can be really fun. The problem is that players in this game are very conscious of their 'hotbar budget', and any action that doesn't feel jam packed with usefulness becomes a source of frustration.

That's the thing, though: We do spend many a button on really shallow abilities. Some cases of this are pure bloat (where one skill that can only be used after another and while that prior skill is, itself, unavailable, ought to replace its bar space), but others are more subtle, made "useful" only because of a useless constraint elsewhere.

Some of ours make sense only because of a combination of not-terribly-reasonable player expectations (such as wanting to be able to hit every possible ability within the first 3 GCDs of combat despite some of those skills being originally placed on gauges specifically to leave some apm and fun actions for outside of our openers) and not terribly reasonable design (a capstone skill locked behind what would normally be 6-8 GCDs of resource generation). Rather than even something as simple as a resting point for job gauges, we have whole skills (Barrel Stabilizer, etc.) dedicated primarily to hastening our openers as to undo past design decisions (such as Bunshin originally at an 80-Ninki cost).

And then there's shit like Arm's Length and Surecast, which exist only to allow certain mechanics (response to which would otherwise have more nuance, add use cases to other kit features, and add no further buttons) to be replaced by a button-press (of, arguably, bloat).

If we didn't so many buttons needlessly on (A) failure to consolidate things that have no possible advantage whatsoever in being separated, (B) undoing past decisions (and largely spending 2 buttons for the benefit of one) or breaking past systems, or (C) in trying to give direct counter buttons like Surecast/AL... we'd have a lot more to work with.

All "fluff" skills would need then to make their fun and flavor permissible is to have at least some "real content" use cases. Druid's beast-pacifying spell, for example, wouldn't be "purely fluff" if we just occasionally saw Enrage buffs on enemies that it could likewise purge. Here, Repose wouldn't have only half of a use case across the whole game if it also could (and had reason to be) used as a purge, soft-CC, etc.