Phantom Jobs are a step in the right direction but need iteration.

[Shurrikhan]

And even if it is the equivalent of skirmisher, its skirmisher with nothing else. Pair skirmisher with a banner of power and lost excellence and you'll see what i mean.

Are we honestly caring this much about raw output? We get tuned around it regardless...

Mightn't the main perk of a Monk, small though it is, be the self-heal, the counter-attack, and the gap-closer, with the damage bonus mostly just a minor means of further differentiation by flavoring itself after Monk's former ramp-up?

[Aco505]

pMNK's Occult Counter should proc on any damage taken. Counterstance can still work the way it does and even return some damage taken when parrying.

It's just boring that if you want damage, pSAM is almost always the best option due to both power and ease of use. With the above change, pSAM would probably still be better but they'd at least be closer in power.

[Yamadronis]

I don't know, if you actually compare Phantom Jobs to lost actions, they are worse in every way except for a few minor things.

Pros:

• Neat interactions in the forked tower
• Non-consumable

Cons:

• Not customizable or flexible. You pick one job and thats it, no mix and match, no synergizing abilities...
• Only minorly changes gameplay. They only have one or two actions per job you actually use and sometimes none.
• Weak compared to lost actions. The way you could combine these to make nutty builds was insane and so fun. Still to this day I can do more damage in Bozja AS A TANK than I can as in any DT content.
• Outside of forked tower, there are only a few ones that are actually useful. Why would anyone play monk?

Looks to me like this was a major step in the wrong direction.

I prefer to think of it as one step in the right direction and then several steps backward. It's important to be clear, to not discount the positives (the non consumable thing) along with the negatives (inflexibility, a clear fear to do anything wild with it). If the latter two are fixed, the system will be superior. I, personally, enjoy it more than the previous systems, but over the course of this thread I've come to see that those are serious issues for a lot of the people in here, and I want to acknowledge that.

[Altina_Orion]

Are we honestly caring this much about raw output? We get tuned around it regardless...

Mightn't the main perk of a Monk, small though it is, be the self-heal, the counter-attack, and the gap-closer, with the damage bonus mostly just a minor means of further differentiation by flavoring itself after Monk's former ramp-up?

Getting tuned around it isn't entirely true. Bozja/Zadnor regular CEs are designed for 0/0/0 + no lost actions in mind, but allow you to be OP if you choose to be. And you can REALLY pump in those duties and I find it quite fun. DRS did expect more from you but only because its a savage version.

[Shurrikhan]

Getting tuned around it isn't entirely true. Bozja/Zadnor regular CEs are designed for 0/0/0 + no lost actions in mind, but allow you to be OP if you choose to be. And you can REALLY pump in those duties and I find it quite fun. DRS did expect more from you but only because its a savage version.

Which the devs seemed to have found to be an unintended result, guessing from our closest equivalent to normal Forked Tower.

My point, though, was that allowing people to "be OP" in the sense of just hitting a bloated consumable and passively dealing 40% more damage... means that if the content pieces aren't tuned around that, they'll just, in effect, get steamrolled instead.

Tbh, I don't understand why anyone would want that. It's just a hoop to jump through for basic output and/or a backwards optional difficulty modifier (don't do X to be allowed a challenge; do bloat step X to largely remove the preexisting challenge).

I'm all for interesting lost actions making a return, and would even like to see some of the role-swap capacity of certain Essences make a return, but I have zero interest in getting back the purely positive "output" of the other (or the excesses in) Essences.

[Supersnow845]

At least lost actions provided relatively equal damage increases across the roles and relatively equal useful utility

Since phantom jobs are sequestered into neat little sets DPS often have to play sustain phantom jobs that don’t have a lot of utility or damage just to stay alive while tanks get the best of every world

It’s messy for anyone besides a tank to reliably play oracle, only the tanks can properly play berserker, monks sustain is on too long of a CD to help some jobs survive and geos sustain is both weather dependent and also its damage can only be reliably maintained by a tank

So DPS are forced onto jobs like knight, chemist or freelancer just to survive and they get no advantage out of those jobs

[Yamadronis]

At least lost actions provided relatively equal damage increases across the roles and relatively equal useful utility

Since phantom jobs are sequestered into neat little sets DPS often have to play sustain phantom jobs that don’t have a lot of utility or damage just to stay alive while tanks get the best of every world

It’s messy for anyone besides a tank to reliably play oracle, only the tanks can properly play berserker, monks sustain is on too long of a CD to help some jobs survive and geos sustain is both weather dependent and also its damage can only be reliably maintained by a tank

So DPS are forced onto jobs like knight, chemist or freelancer just to survive and they get no advantage out of those jobs

Yes, Tanks overwhelmingly getting more benefit out of phantom jobs due to long cooldowns or skills being based around taking damage is one of the big problems with occult crescent. Hopefully when the next set of phantom jobs come out, their will be more that favor dps and healers.

[Shurrikhan]

At least lost actions provided relatively equal damage increases across the roles and relatively equal useful utility

Since phantom jobs are sequestered into neat little sets DPS often have to play sustain phantom jobs that don’t have a lot of utility or damage just to stay alive while tanks get the best of every world

It’s messy for anyone besides a tank to reliably play oracle, only the tanks can properly play berserker, monks sustain is on too long of a CD to help some jobs survive and geos sustain is both weather dependent and also its damage can only be reliably maintained by a tank

So DPS are forced onto jobs like knight, chemist or freelancer just to survive and they get no advantage out of those jobs

Tbf, doesn't the lion's share of this just come down to tanks being OP in general?

A large part too is the scaling factors and how much potency-over-time (as in total-potency * frequency, not necessarily a HoT/DoT) is available via phantom jobs, of course. But, were tanks less OP baseline, you could have enough sustain available through PJs to be significant to DPS without it being stupidly redundant for tanks.

[SamSmoot]

IS there any point in running OC beyond getting the mount and weapon? I've got both, and haven't been back.

[Supersnow845]

Tbf, doesn't the lion's share of this just come down to tanks being OP in general?

A large part too is the scaling factors and how much potency-over-time (as in total-potency * frequency, not necessarily a HoT/DoT) is available via phantom jobs, of course. But, were tanks less OP baseline, you could have enough sustain available through PJs to be significant to DPS without it being stupidly redundant for tanks.

Well if they just balanced phantom jobs so that they didn’t do one or the other then it would be more fair even if in this situation the extra sustain on high DPS jobs would be stupidly excessive for the tanks but yes it’s also arguable that it could be fixed by making tanks not overpowered

Like using a super basic example (I’m not saying I support this change just using it to prove a point), if starfall worked more like moon flute where it caused massive damage and in exchange it cut your damage for the next 10 seconds by 20% then it doesn’t disadvantage any role besides tank using starfall. However you can also fix starfall in the other direction by simply making it as dangerous for tanks to use as the other 2 roles

Both are relevant, the tanks are too strong but the phantom jobs also punish other roles excessively for their high damage actions that could be solved outside of nerfing tanks (which they should do anyway)