Heavensward ability/trait/skill wishlist!

[lyndwyrm]

With the level cap increasing to 60, we all are expecting new abilities. Following the 1-50 pattern, we'd get 2 class skills, 3 traits, and 2 job abilities, but they could certainly change that up.

So let me ask you, what abilities do you want to see? What abilities do you hope to see? What abilities do you think will actually be added? There are abilities from 1.0 that could reappear, do you think they will?

You don't have to respond for every job, you don't have to respond for every trait/skill on one job, but if you want to, that's fine too.

While we're also getting new jobs in Heavensward, we pretty much have no idea what abilities they'll get, so this is mainly focused on the classes/jobs we already have.

[lyndwyrm]

I'll start with my own wishlist.

Heals:

-White mage-
lv52 trait: Improved Stoneskin II - Allows stoneskin II to be cast in battle. The 6 second cast time could be hard to work around, but hey, at least we have presence of mind and swiftcast.

lv56 trait: Improved Shroud of Saints II - Increases refresh potency to 120. I would honestly prefer to see another ability to restore MP that isn't tied to enmity management, but this would at least scale up our current abilty.

lv60 trait: Maim and Mend III - Increases base action damage and healing restoration by XX%. The percentage would vary on how lv60 content is balanced, and whether this series replaces the lower level Maim and Mend.

Tanks:

-Paladin-
lv54 skill: Fury of Halone - 40TP, combo action: Riot blade, potency ~290, reduces target's dexterity by 10% , duration 20s. Paladin needs a non-threat combo. This skill would give them something that is/could be useful for tanking, combo's off of riot blade, and wouldn't break the TP bank with riot blade's 80TP cost.

DPS:

-Monk-
lv54 skill: Crescent Kick - 50TP, can only be used in Coeurl(III) stance, grants greased lighting, changes form to Apkallu(IV) stance, inflicts heavy 40% on the target 12s, potency 120/160-rear. A little weaker than snap punch, has an additional effect, and more on Apkallu on the lv58 skill. The additional effect is just there to make it different than snap punch, it could be slow instead.

lv55 Job ability: Fists of Lighting - Increases crit chance by 20%. The napkin math says this works out to be slightly better than fists of fire for damage, but it's also not just a flat damage bonus.

lv56 trait: Dragon's gift - restores 10TP per landed critical hit. You see what I did there?

lv58 skill: Backbreaker - 50TP, can only be used in Apkallu(IV) stance, changes form to Raptor(II) stance, potency 150/190-rear, increases damage dealt by 5%, duration 35s. I think it would be cool for monk to get more stances, and keep the basic setup of 3 skills, 3rd one grants GL. I really don't expect this kind of change until at least another expansion down the road. I also like monk's buildup and think for a 4th stance, this would fit in rather well.

lv60 trait: Greased Lighting IV - Allows stacking of a 4th greased lightning (additional 9% damage 5% attack speed). It follows the natural progression of monk, and I don't think I'm the only one that hopes for this

-Black Mage-
lv52 trait: Improved transpose - Transpose now converts the number of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice stacks into the opposing type. I think this would make transpose seem more useful at endgame, but wouldn't completely displace Fire3 and Blizzard3. It could also grant 2 stacks instead of one, but either way, I think transpose deserves it.

lv60 trait: Magick and Mend III - Increases base action damage and healing restoration by XX% and allows for the stacking of a fourth Astral Fire or Umbral Ice. Just like with White mage, seems like continuing natural progression, numbers depend on balance, and I'm not going to speculate that much on what effects AF4 could have in addition to damage.

[Slirith]

I'll start with my own wishlist.
Apkallu(IV) stance

no, just no. We have too many stances as it is.

[NoloeTazier]

Shroud of Saints needs to scale with MP and not be a flat MP recovery. Also it'd be nice if SE would rework Raise so it doesn't waste a valuable Trait slot and just allow Raise in battle, spend that Trait slot on something useful. It's just an unnecessary hindrance.

As I'm a Paladin main I'd love to get a more...Paladin-y feel about it. So I'd love to get Holy Succor back but without Magic Damage on our weapon we wouldn't heal for much unless the spell was based on Weapon Damage. Paladin also needs another AOE hate tool so I'd like to see War Drum return or another similar ability, for those who didn't play 1.0 War Drum was a small AOE with massive hate generation that did minimal damage and could only be used after a successful shield block and Paladin could really use another AOE threat tool. I'd also love to get back AoE Rampart, Paladin's job is to protect the party but the only party protection they offer is Cover which physical only.

[WellFooled]

As I'm a Paladin main I'd love to get a more...Paladin-y feel about it.

This sums up my feelings as well. Paladins could benefit from some more abilities that play up our description as Holy Knights. And while I appreciate that our plethora of self buffing abilities play up our defensive nature I would appreciate more variety. A huge percentage of our abilities are just "click to enhance your defense in some way", but I would prefer if they did this in more interesting fashions, like NoloeTazier suggested.

[Sighearth]

For SCH that i play most i would like to see:

A trait that makes energy drain never miss >.>
More Aetherflow stacks!
Heal overtime that can shield a little every tick
No big aoe heals please thats whm job!
Another aoe mitigation like soil but in target and around him ( like cure 3 but with a strong shield instead of heal)

[Brightshadow]

This sums up my feelings as well. Paladins could benefit from some more abilities that play up our description as Holy Knights. And while I appreciate that our plethora of self buffing abilities play up our defensive nature I would appreciate more variety. A huge percentage of our abilities are just "click to enhance your defense in some way", but I would prefer if they did this in more interesting fashions, like NoloeTazier suggested.

Paladins in this game aren't holy knights; however, there story could always evolve. I do agree they should have more light elemental tools especially since that is what many people think of when they hear paladin, or at the very least SE should change the name to knight, and release a true paladin in the future.

[WellFooled]

Paladins in this game aren't holy knights; however, there story could always evolve.

It's much more subtle than in other incarnations (which may be part of the problem), but I would argue that FFXIV's Paladins fit the classification of Holy Knights.

I say this because of our ability Hallowed Ground (hallowed being defined as "regarded as holy; venerated; sacred"), the focus on not just honor but virtue (Jenlyns says "but remember that fancy swordplay and well-polished armor do not make you a paladin. You must be just in your heart and strive always to be an exemplar of true virtue"), and the obvious design cues like having shining white armor.

Paladins aren't played up as holy in a religious sense, but I would say that they most defiantly are in sense of having a spiritually pure quality.

[lyndwyrm]

Shroud of Saints needs to scale with MP and not be a flat MP recovery.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but if Shroud scales with level, then it should be more or less ok. This is supposing fights don't get longer than ~10min., we don't become reliant on higher MP cost spells, the proportion of PIE from gear vs. level doesn't increase that much, and that it scales with level.

That is a lot of supposing and while the shroud trait is an idea, something that is a percentage recovery would be good despite any those suppositions and separate some of our MP recovery from threat management.

[Marcu18]

Scholar abilities:
Level 55: Gift of grace- transfer 500mp or 300tp to a party member. Cooldown 30 seconds. Depending on Disciple
Level 60: Friendship- Summon a level 50 retainer

Traits:
Level 52: improved sacred soil-from 10%-25% damage negate
Level 56: Extra help-Fairies now heal 20% more and when party member drop below 95%
Level 60:Healing clock- adloquim and succor have regeneration properties