Are These Skills Still in the Game Data?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Are skills they've removed from jobs still somewhere in the game data?

Examples:

Butcher's Block
Power Slash
Mercy Stroke
Ageha
Dancing Edge

That's just a few. I'm just curious, if they're gone from our bars and lists, but still in the data, do you think there will come a time when they reuse them as "new" skills?

A lot of folks do miss these skills or other skills, and they know that. It seems a shame for them to throw away the work of the animators and stuff by just deleting those skills.

Because of the fact NPCs use animations for plenty of those skills (For example, Dogoro(?) & Curious Gorge still use Butcher's block, so does Magnai) all the animations for those skills are just left in the game files to prevent unforseen issues where an NPC they overlooked might try to access one of them and cause a game crash. The level 65 DRK solo instance enemy for example, may not use the exact same directly named skills, but he uses a ton of the old DRK animations for his skills. Deleting any of the old DRK animations would cause him to crash the game anytime you fought him.

As for reusing them - They already re-used Delirium Blade from DRK for Interject's base animation, they brought back a bunch of MNK's old animations when they reworked old skills into new beast chakra abilities, its always possible they re-use old animations.

[Limecat]

I still have Protect and Stoneskin on my WHM bars, and I'm not taking them off.

[Sove92]

Old abilities remain in the data, just the references that point to them are changed to dummy them out (hence the 'greyed out/red slash' icons that replace them if they were still on your hotbar when they were 'removed')

Sort of, the skills are still fully intact in the data. What SE did is just change their icon and remove the job affinities. They retain all the other data, the combo actions, cooldown groups etc. Kinda why it's so easy for SE to undelete a skill when the playerbase complains enough, usually about something Scholar.

[DixieBellOCE]

Are skills they've removed from jobs still somewhere in the game data?

Examples:

Butcher's Block
Power Slash
Mercy Stroke
Ageha
Dancing Edge

That's just a few. I'm just curious, if they're gone from our bars and lists, but still in the data, do you think there will come a time when they reuse them as "new" skills?

A lot of folks do miss these skills or other skills, and they know that. It seems a shame for them to throw away the work of the animators and stuff by just deleting those skills.

My bard still has a few skills removed after heavensward, i havent touched it since then
I just put them on a seperate bar, they are greyed out with a red dash going through them to signify they are removed from the game

[SannaR]

They're still in the game ARR, HW n SB npcs still use those. Heck the duty support tank still uses the over the head axe spin. I'm sure Gosetsu and Hien will use SB era Sam skills. Heck I still cry and laugh at the ninja enemies in Kugane Castle popping on their kiss before engagement.

[VeyaAkemi]

Heck I still cry and laugh at the ninja enemies in Kugane Castle popping on their kiss before engagement.

I know what you mean but I am imagining every ninja enemy hitting the Tank with /dote before attacking...

[Jeeqbit]

Are skills they've removed from jobs still somewhere in the game data?

Yes, they still appear on your bar if you never removed them actually, but they are discolored and have a red line through them. They have brought back abilities before such as Bulwark, Energy Drain and Dismantle.

[SannaR]

I know what you mean but I am imagining every ninja enemy hitting the Tank with /dote before attacking...

Still would work. They'd just be poisonous dotes is all.

[Hyperia]

They are also there because some NPCs use those abilities and taking them out completely would force them to redo many events, cutscenes, etc.

[TheGrimace]

I miss you- Dancing Edge, Mutilate, and Shadow Fang. My friends...