Let's Get Rid of Cross Class Ability Restrictions

[bass9020]

I wish we could go back to the 1.0 days when people didn't care about who was using what abilities.

[NovaLevossida]

The problem is there's really no content as of yet that calls for flexibility in ability choices. There's no single choice you can make that is as impactful as a subjob in FFXI. For WAR for example, /MNK to begin with, /THF later if you wanted for big hits, /NIN or /SAM still later on, then situational subjobs for certain content, etc. Deep Dungeon might have provided that sort of open ended flexibility in secondary ability choices but we don't really have anything meaningful to choose from.

If there's no content that allows for freedom in choice and not enough abilities to actually have a choice to draw from, they might as well get rid of cross class altogether with 4.0 and just redesign everything from the ground up.

[Deathgiver]

I wish we could go back to the 1.0 days when people didn't care about who was using what abilities.

lol wut?

1.0 encounters (on release, not after they got nerfed into the ground through skill adjustments):
ifrit : sentinel mandatory for all party members.
darkhold : stack archers and lancers for the long range damage on ogre, dps had to have tank skills cross-classed for skeles at batraal.
moogles: stack bards because screw chasing moogles around on melee
aurum vale: stack blm for coincounter, melee for miser's mistress, preferably mnk.


The community very much cared what skills you had and used. The groups that did it successfully with so-called "balanced parties" were in the minority.

edit: The concerns about balancing are a real thing, very few people cold find a dedicated group that could successfully clear content on release without having at least 4 or 5 jobs leveled to cap, and certain jobs just weren't taken into some fights. Our mt had to theory craft the crap out of his opener to be able to take his pld into chimera in cutter's because of the damage scaling vs war, and even though it was doable it was certainly not optimal.

[RiceisNice]

Increasing the amount of cross skills really would not address anything, infact it'd just make the intial problem worse; there's no job identity, there's button bloating and skills feel homogenized. It'd be a much better alternative to get rid of cross skilling in general and bake in those "required" abilties into the moveset; WAR and DRK would have their own form of provoke that acts as their own skill rather than being derived from PLD. DPS classes would have their own way of managing TP (such as how much has purification) rather than everyone using invigorate, etc etc.

[Shurrikhan]

Increasing the amount of cross skills really would not address anything, infact it'd just make the intial problem worse; there's no job identity, there's button bloating and skills feel homogenized. It'd be a much better alternative to get rid of cross skilling in general and bake in those "required" abilties into the moveset; WAR and DRK would have their own form of provoke that acts as their own skill rather than being derived from PLD. DPS classes would have their own way of managing TP (such as how much has purification) rather than everyone using invigorate, etc etc.

Would love to see baseline TP last longer and Purification, at cost of uptime, be the Monks way to deal with TP needs thereafter, hopefully following a buff to Meditation to make it scale with skill speed or even current GCD. I wonder what the others would do though... Fun food for thought.

Then again, I'd also like SE to consider if TP as a mechanic is even as interesting as it could be. More class-centric or class-integral changes or replacements to certain stale cross-class abilities would help, of course, but in most fights there seems either to be no party concern or only a tertiary concern as to TP maintenance, making the mechanic itself often unnoticeable atop being a basically dull concept in the first place. And unless making Skill Speed even less viable than it otherwise would be is working as intended.

Always imagined that Warriors would have an enmity ability like "Challenge", or they'd get the Provoke ability while Gladiators get taunt, and Dark would, if not "Challenge" get their one edgy equivalent, all with subtle differences made effective by their class mechanics. (For instance, if a Provoke-like were to increase enemy movement and auto-attack speed upon targeting, but reduce the damage dealt with each AA, that would help out significantly with AA procs. If guards (blocks, parries, and dodges) were made more likely based on the enemy's (negative) accuracy, a Taunt that imparts lost accuracy for greater AA damage could similarly benefit a Gladiator—and that's just the simplest benefits one might attach.)

[RiceisNice]

Would love to see baseline TP last longer and Purification, at cost of uptime, be the Monks way to deal with TP needs thereafter, hopefully following a buff to Meditation to make it scale with skill speed or even current GCD. I wonder what the others would do though... Fun food for thought.

TP should be a persistant thing for physical dps as something they need to manage, just as much as how scholars need to check their MP before going nuts with ruin III. Another option is for the next job to utilize TP in a similar way BLM does. I mean when you look at it, they came up with purification on monks and MCH has reload (which is underutilized for resource management, ). NIN and BRD feels like wasted potential when expanding upon this, but instead get skills that add no depth to their jobs (Dream within a dream for example) or skills that homogenize gameplay even more (Wanderer's minuet).

Always imagined that Warriors would have an enmity ability like "Challenge", or they'd get the Provoke ability while Gladiators get taunt, and Dark would, if not "Challenge" get their one edgy equivalent, all with subtle differences made effective by their class mechanics. (For instance, if a Provoke-like were to increase enemy movement and auto-attack speed upon targeting, but reduce the damage dealt with each AA, that would help out significantly with AA procs. If guards (blocks, parries, and dodges) were made more likely based on the enemy's (negative) accuracy, a Taunt that imparts lost accuracy for greater AA damage could similarly benefit a Gladiator—and that's just the simplest benefits one might attach.)

Honestly for purposes like, i wouldn't mind skills sharing the same properties when it comes to mandatory purposes, like provoke being reskinned to be warrior/Dorkish in flavor. I mean it's not like they didn't shy away from making abilities functionally the same to each other (see WM/GB and quick notch/spread shot), provided said abilities do not define job mechanics (such as dork arts or wrath stacks)

[Evangela]

It's because of some people complained about it during 1.0.

I never liked these limitations.

[rjspencer4]

I really don't want to see dps using Protect over an offensive cooldown

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I really don't want to see dps using Protect over an offensive cooldown

That dps would be bad anyway if they had to use protect in the middle of a battle.

[Alaltus]

What i would like to see them do though prolly will never see is for them to remove cross classing and instead release classes from jobs. Each class could equip certain jobs and that class would serve as the base. Like how in XI if you switched your weapon you would get access to different weaponskills. Blm could use Thaumaturge for fire, ice, lightning spells and Conjurer For Earth, Wind and Water spells for example.