Role Breaking Abilities?

[Connor]

Am I the only one who'd love to see more abilities that allow jobs some chance to move outside their role slightly? By this, I mean things like healing abilities on tanks/dps (Clemency, The Warden's Paean), maybe more defensive cooldowns on dps or even healers (like Foresight) or maybe even stuff like short-duration Provokes for high-HP dps.

Obviously this would all have to be balanced very strictly and it's honestly it's likely that even if abilities like this were added they wouldn't be worth using. But personally I feel that the devs are far too rigid with the 'trinity' system idea. It is strange, though, that tanks and healers can put out dps almost equal to actual DPS classes, but dps have absolutely no way of helping the tanks/healers outside of MP/TP regen.

You could argue that Bard and Machinist can do this with Warden's Paean / Dismantle / Rend Mind, but this doesn't really contribute to making the healer / tank's lives easier as much as a max dps healer/tank contributes to those in the dps role, not to mention that abilities like these always have very long cooldown. Whilst Warden's Paean is only on a 45 second cooldown generally if there's going to status effects that can be removed with Esuna there's always going to be more than one going out within the cooldown time, not to mention the fact that it's generally expected of you to use it on the Warrior everytime they pop Berserk.

I really feel like more abilities this like this would encourage more teamwork and less focus on personal dps, and I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this kind of thing!

[ADVSS]

i dig it, it wont happen unless they loosen up the holy triple triad. But maybe some day.

[SessionZero]

One of my absolute favorite things about Death Knight in World of Warcraft is their ability to battle-rez. They're one of the only non-healing classes that can do it and it's a wonderful little addition for their class fantasy, given that most (if not all) Death Knights are also necromancers. I'd love to see more of this type of thing in FFXIV, and I've said since ARR that Paladins would make an ideal off-healer (or off-off-healer in 8 man content). The current DPS-focused meta of the game doesn't really allow for such, I don't think, but it's something that could be worked towards.

[basketofseals]

One of my absolute favorite things about Death Knight in World of Warcraft is their ability to battle-rez. They're one of the only non-healing classes that can do it

Last time I played, warlocks can also do it, and druids are the only healer that can. It's not only limited to resto druids either.

[SessionZero]

Last time I played, warlocks can also do it, and druids are the only healer that can. It's not only limited to resto druids either.

Right, my point was that a class that has absolutely nothing to do with healing is one of the only battle-rez classes in the game. I'd like to see more of that sort of cross-utility.

[loreleidiangelo]

Right, my point was that a class that has absolutely nothing to do with healing is one of the only battle-rez classes in the game. I'd like to see more of that sort of cross-utility.

SMN has Resurrection, but since raises in this game aren't particularly finite (being restricted only by healer MP), it doesn't have as much value as it could. In fact, pretty much any SMN utility is made fairly obsolete thanks to SCH, which is a big failure of the "base class" system, IMO. (Personally glad that they moved away from it with Heavensward.)

[SessionZero]

In fact, pretty much any SMN utility is made fairly obsolete thanks to SCH, which is a big failure of the "base class" system, IMO. (Personally glad that they moved away from it with Heavensward.)

Exactly. By contrast, DK battle-rez is restricted only by a (I think) 5 min CD, costs no resources, and is instant. But since the only other battle-rez classes in the game are Warlock and Druid (iirc), it makes that otherwise small utility a great boon.

I suppose my point was less to do with the battle-rez thing and more the principle of it: a DPS/tank spec class has access to an incredibly useful rez ability that fits within the class fantasy and most healing classes don't have access to (Paladin and Priest's Redemption, for example, can't be used in combat and has a long cast time). Let's see more of that in FFXIV.

[Lunavi]

BLM already have several defensive cooldowns. Not that I would mind more ignore mechanic moves

[Zafrei]

I'd be up for this if they reduced the skill bloat first. Spent so many years playing action mmos that having to use shift, ctrl and alt as modifiers along with full bars is already quite a stretch, especially for 2016.

[loreleidiangelo]

The catch-all term is called "utility", and yes, this game suffers drastically from a lack of it. When classes are designed around "doing almost everything their trinity counterpart can do", this is the result you get. Healers always need Protect, Swiftcast, a rez, AOE healing, single-target "oh crap" button, and healing throughput buff (Divine Seal, etc). Tanks always need Provoke, a single target threat combo, an AOE threat gen, a "get out of death free" button, and mitigative cooldowns of the flat-% variety (Rampart, Inner Beast, etc). DPS are a bit more varied, but always are stuck getting Invigorate if they're melee, or Swiftcast if they're a caster. They also usually get single-target combos, an AOE rotation of varying efficacy, a self-heal or some kind of defensive cooldown (MCH notably doesn't have much of either of these), and some measure of crowd control that sees virtually no use outside of soloing or PVP because lol meaningful raid mechanics.

I suppose ostensibly, you could break a lot of trinity classes down like this, but idk, it just feels much more noticeable in XIV for some reason.