Is 5 Job Abilities enough (Before level cap increase)?

[Yagrush]

Now, this might probably be just me, but I do sometimes feel that, for being your JOB, the thing that you can identify yourself to other FF franchises, unlike the unfamiliar classes, we do have very little to run on right now.

I do feel like the Job abilities are more like little flourishes on top of the main foundation of the classes, like you're playing the class with a little extra, which, I think, shouldn't be the case. Now, I'm sure they will eventually add more abilities as the game goes on and will differentiate themselves from the class itself even further, but I do feel that it would be too long until we get more job flavored abilities if we're gonna have to wait for the level cap increase for more skills.

There are many examples that exist in both ends of the spectrum of what, I think, constitute a success in adding something new with a Job.

For some examples. BLM players might get what I mean. Their job abilities hardly change your THM playstyle and it's mostly some nice stuff, like the Ancient Magic (Even if they could have been done a bit better, imo), but, other than that, in terms of gameplay and game mechanics, BLM plays pretty much exactly like THM and I do hope we can see SE work on differentiating the Job from the Class more in the future. Not only in flavor, but in mechanics and gameplay aswell.

There are some better executed examples, like Warrior, where they have their own unique Job Mechanic, Wrath, and we can definitely say we feel something new in the gameplay. There are some "meh" ones, like Dragoon, where they kinda give something new to the gameplay, with the Jumps, but definitely could be better. Maybe by reducing thier cooldowns, which I believe they are doing if we go on what they said on the liveletter, the gameplay change will be felt more significantly. I could go on.

In the end, it feels like most Jobs are kind of incomplete and have some gaps that could be filled, which could justify adding new abilities before raising the level cap (Which will happen possibly an Expansion, though that's just an hyphothesis but I wouldn't want to wait that long).

This is completely my opinion and I'm curious what you guys think. Is 5 job abilities enough for the game until we get a raise in the level cap? Maybe instead of adding Job abilities, add Job traits to add a bit more to the job without adding skills to the hotbar?

[Alhanelem]

yes, it is. quantity of abilities is irrelevant, it's what they do that matters.

[Holyhunter]

yes, it is. quantity of abilities is irrelevant, it's what they do that matters.

Did you even read his post? He talks about how some jobs are hardly even distinguishable from their class because the job skills don't do anything to discern them.

[Yagrush]

Did you even read his post? He talks about how some jobs are hardly even distinguishable from their class because the job skills don't do anything to discern them.

Thanks, it seems I need to make a habit of making TL;DRs =S

I also propose the idea of Job Traits to help with this without needing to add more abilities, I think both options could be equally valid, it all comes down to execution.

[Stanice]

I'm a little torn on this matter. At one side we have Thm>Blm and Lnc>Drg like your examples where your job adds very little to what you actually do anyways. Blm's usual rotation comes from Thm skills except Flare, jumps are mostly useless and have no place in your ideal DPS rotation at all. At this point I just can't see how Thm and Lnc can be made a whole new experience with new jobs (granted they ever get one).

On the other side we have Acn>Smn/Sch. Smn has a plethora of problems on its own but the point is, Smn and Sch have very different play styles despite coming from the same class, and the execution of Sch is done very well (with as little as 5 additional skills). I believe part of this success comes from Arcanist class successfully paving the way for both jobs, as Smn you drop the healing skills and as Sch you drop the damage dealing skills (for the most part) and focus on what your job enhances.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Alhanelem]

Did you even read his post? He talks about how some jobs are hardly even distinguishable from their class because the job skills don't do anything to discern them.

Yes, I read his post, but all that illustrates is that existing abilities could do with some adjustments / changes to heighten their impact.

Did YOU read the topic title?

Is 5 Job Abilities enough (Before level cap increase)?

I answered the question. It wasn't deserving of the tone of your response. Yes, the number of abilities is enough. The effects are what matter and in some cases, need to be changed.

The other problem here is the OP's vision of the job system vs. what the actual vision is. It was more or less designed to be what the OP apparently doesn't want it to be. The Jobs do not radically transform the classes and they're not supposed to. The Job abilities are supposed to focus the classes more strongly into the roles they were built for. For the most part, they do that, though there are certain abiltiies that don't facilitate that goal (a couple BLM abilities in particular come to mind).

No it is not, SCH can do the exact same things as SMN minus the pet and fester. It would have been better to have class abilities from 1-30 be the same, and then from 30-50 be all job abilities, that way you get a unique set of at least 10 or more abilities for each job, making each feel different from their counterpart.

Hmm.... lets see. All of SCH's job abilities are cures/supportive abiltiies. All of SMN's abilities are DPS focused. Totally the exact same thing.

Two different jobs based on the same class, and they play completely differently. SCH is not as stong as a DPS as SMN is, and SMN certianly isn't anywhere near the healing capability of SCH. Your point has no merit.

Your proposal would do little other than make the classes irrelevant.

[ReviiLagoon]

No it is not, SCH can do the exact same things as SMN minus the pet and fester. It would have been better to have class abilities from 1-30 be the same, and then from 30-50 be all job abilities, that way you get a unique set of at least 10 or more abilities for each job, making each feel different from their counterpart.

[Allyrion]

I'm not sure about it either, but SMN/SCH seem fine.
I think when adding new classes, it wouldn't be strange if SE just added abilities to the class to compensate for a new Job. They may do further iterations by moving some abilities to the job specifically as needs be.

It's hard to imagine two jobs of the same role occupying the same class as it is right now.
I'm also really surprised there aren't job traits.

[Yagrush]

The other problem here is the OP's vision of the job system vs. what the actual vision is. It was more or less designed to be what the OP apparently doesn't want it to be. The Jobs do not radically transform the classes and they're not supposed to. The Job abilities are supposed to focus the classes more strongly into the roles they were built for. For the most part, they do that, though there are certain abiltiies that don't facilitate that goal (a couple BLM abilities in particular come to mind).

Well, I can start off by saying that I'm pretty sure SE intended to add more abilities by launch but weren't able to meet the date, I can't give you a hard source, though Mr. Happy reiterated this in every beta guide of the Jobs.

Aside from apperantly reading my post and in the same breath judging the post solely by it's title, here's what I think about this particular point.

There's a lot of incosistency. If you say that their vision wasn't to "radically transform" a class, how do you explain that this same vision turned a dps Arcanist into a full fledged healer? Or the same dot-focused Arcanist into something much more focused on pet abilities? This are major transformations that steer the job to a particular path. However there are some that didn't do it well. If you're trying to say that the ones that didn't do it well on changing the class into something unique was the intended way, like BLM or DRG, then we have a strong disagreement. WAR barely tanks like MRD, it has a whole new system to work on. Yes, it has roots of the MRD, but how will you support your argument when they will want to further transform the classes when they have more than one job to branch to?

Your idea is that since it shouldn't have to change radically, it doesn't need to have something that sets it apart from the class, which I don't believe is SE's vision at all. They should want to enrich the job through all of the roots that the FF franchise has to offer and make it more and more unique compared to the standard class it came from.

I'm perfectly happy with how WAR is done, for example, though there are some Jobs that could have be done better to establish themselves as something new and are in need of more things to make them unique. Be it abilities or traits.

I'm not wasting more text on this since I think I made my point pretty clear already, and so have you.

[Gardes]

Gladiator to paladin dont see enough play style change, other than them becoming even tougher. Sure, that's the point but...yeah.

Black mages get freeze and flare but freeze is useless and I dont see why the 'it's probably great for pvp' argument is passable since pve should come first (I thought they said pvp will not interfere with pve skills) and the other 3 skills are not very blm-ish, even though manawall is good.

Monk..even though I'm not using this class, the additional action all feel like just skills that pugilists can have. Also what's up with fist of fire? Why is it on monk when the other two is on pugilist? What's gonna happen when pugilist get an alternate job? It just seems odd to me, to not have the full set of stance when it looks like it should be a set because it's on another job.