Quote Originally Posted by Connor View Post
And most evil of all, they took my Foe Requiem. The last remaining song that existed purely for support and not as a glorified dps cool-down. Or, well, it was, but at least it was wearing a convincing moustache!
Foe's Requiem in the song rotation: How do you do fellow songs?

Stormblood was definitely the peak of the class in my opinion. We had a wider support range than what we currently have (I miss Palissade, even if Tanks don't need it at all right now), a high skill ceiling, and a more solid idea of what our class identity was. The current issue right now really is that the role scales baked in forced the class into a median between power and support, and average without distinction is just bad. They focused too much on the Archer aspect without understanding why Magical Archer worked back in HW and SB, and we got the monstrosity that is Apex/Burst Arrow as a result.

Like I said before, some cast times can work within the role and a mix of casting and instant could be cool, but it seems to me that a lot of people here are more in favor of adding a cast time to all weaponskills instead of keeping them instantaneous.

And I wonder if that's merely because of looking for novelty, because I have a feeling that implementing this will merely drown the role even more and make current mains leave. Not to mention how current fight design is already harsh if you don't know the dance, as boss casts are punishing and quick (and you cannot walk out of those quickly). It could be an opportunity to make Repel Shot more useful, but I doubt 90% of the players have that skill on their hotbar.

My question really is: How will this help rDPS? I've not yet been convinced by the thread since the argument really seems to be "it'll be cooler because PvP is fun, and I want PvE to be fun like that too". Which is a fair sentiment, but doesn't really take into account the role's design within a PvE environment and all the intricacies that can happen. Realistically, such a drastic change would need to be stress tested over months to check exactly that.

And if such changes do go through, well I don't know where I would go then. AST had its RNG removed. Melee doesn't appeal to me. RDM maybe? It would be pushing players out that do not have an alternative in jobs. Then, how many would come into the forums and say they hate the cast times once the novelty wears off?

This whole thing just doesn't seem that well thought-out.