Concerns about " Getting rid of unused and ineffective actions"

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Scathe is useless compared to F4. It's more a last ditch desperation move when there's other better options.

[RyuSaarva]

Scathe is useless compared to F4. It's more a last ditch desperation move when there's other better options.

I used it always as a finisher and started to move forward, it also allows you to sometimes solo kill bosses if everyone has died.

[Alistaire]

I used it always as a finisher and started to move forward, it also allows you to sometimes solo kill bosses if everyone has died.

You could design around removing it though. Just change enough of thunder 1's initial potency into damage on hit and make it instant cast, and then it'd be a replacement for scathe.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Fracture's a dps gain up until level 54 for pld's, since it's a total 220 potency in one hit compared to RoH's 210 in 3.

[TaleraRistain]

I would give my left arm if they made crowd control more viable. *Not* essential. Keep it so you can do the finesse route with CC or bully through it so you're not boned if you don't have that class. I played EverQuest as an enchanter and I absolutely loved locking an entire room of mobs down and feeding them into my party Cuisinart one after another. But my role was absolutely essential for leveling groups and it discouraged players from thinking outside the box sometimes. I want to see that creativity encouraged here. PotD has been a good example of this sort of thinking and I think they should learn from that.

[Terrini]

Streamlining things will be great, but I'd miss the specific animations for the skills. (I experiment with different moves and their animations and effects for doing screenshots.) So if they tier abilities, then you either only get one animation, or certain animations will be level-locked. I can see certain defensive abilities becoming passive (taking effect with a percent chance in certain situations) but once again, being able to activate that animation on command for a screenshot would be missed.

Frankly, I would love it if there was an option/command to be able to do a flashy, but no damage targetless attack animation for the specific reason of screenshots. Like the Magitek armor attacks (useful in Praetorium, but just cosmetic on the mount) You know that they to listen to screenshot enthusiasts, just look at /gpose picture controls.

[Ametrine]

I wish you could cast/use anything on anyone in general, as you can in other FF games. I was so disappointed that WHM couldn't DPS against undead using Cure (and Raise!) I also miss weird mechanics like hitting your party to wake them up, or Reflect status which wears off at the worst possible moment...

Considering the devs are against PVP outside of PVP areas, I doubt this would even become a thing. Too many griefing opportunities.

[Terrini]

Considering the devs are against PVP outside of PVP areas, I doubt this would even become a thing. Too many griefing opportunities.

True enough, and there is a lot more room for error "Oh no, I accidently slept my tank instead of healing him!" or "Oh no, I accidently healed the enemy instead of attacking him!"

I mean, AoE healing skills are useless in MSQ and Job level locked quests as well. "What do you mean, I can't medica II and heal my Scion friends with myself?"

I know that's because those things only work on party members, but what stops them putting them all in a party with you? You can't enter those events with a party anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

True enough, and there is a lot more room for error "Oh no, I accidently slept my tank instead of healing him!" or "Oh no, I accidently healed the enemy instead of attacking him!"

I mean, AoE healing skills are useless in MSQ and Job level locked quests as well. "What do you mean, I can't medica II and heal my Scion friends with myself?"

I know that's because those things only work on party members, but what stops them putting them all in a party with you? You can't enter those events with a party anyway.

It also restricts target-specific hotbar modding, which might be another way of pruning the total keybinds needed. When aiming at an enemy, your offensive skills show; aiming at an ally, your healing skills show. Alternatively, you could show all, but your heals when targeting an enemy can be toggled to focus-cast, target-of-target cast, etc.

Of course, I'm not saying that isn't worth the trade as long as this kind of thing is done fairly universally, albeit with minimal potential annoyances.

As for the griefing possibilities, I can't imagine that being without easy means of mitigation. You can make Sleep a buff when afflicted by an ally, and simply click it off, possibly with a new general aura-cancel key with the applicable buffs flashing, using it to ignore certain charm/fear mechanic (sometimes with the risk of putting them into an even worse nightmare, from which they can't be woken). If an ally is frozen or takes on a debuff that will freeze him, either an external hitbox with associated art is created for/around the frozen/freezing ally, or the ally him/herself becomes targetable. In the first case a seperate unit, the ice barrier, is created, but the ally to whom it is attached may or may not still be targetable. I personally don't mind the idea of letting that barrier feed up to x HP before Flaring my own ally with bonus fire damage on the barrier (likely reduced on any excess), trying to cut damage as close as possible, but neither would I mind that no damage can actually be inflicted to the ally himself, only the debuff (same entity) or barrier (separate). The same can be done for Charmed allies, hitting them only to the point (show on their health bar in a different color) that would release them from the charm, or with reduced excess damage. Healing enemies could similarly be limited to undead or similar case enemies, specifically, or maybe even those who you can generate buffs from your damage dealt, but don't actually want to kill. Just as we have target filters, you could do the same with such controls. These modes could even be on a fight-by-fight basis that may indicate presumable fight mechanics, even if that means beating each other to keep them from generating too much Shadow or whatever debuff (which, when kept under control, aids their dps, altough thereby needing more beating), or whatnot.

[Terrini]

-snip-

Having all of those conditional targeting in the code would be troubling. I mean, I main WHM and when I do solo content I just throw out heals while targeting enemies because it defaults to healing myself. With the change as well, i;d have to change my strategy to specifically target myself, or I'd die because I wouldn't be auto-targeting myself for heals if I was solo fighting an undead that gets damaged by heals. While it would be interesting to have all of these elements added into the game, I'm sure the sheer amount of recoding to add that element would be daunting...

It may be feasible to be brought into an expac, possibly, but they'd need to have a specific reason to do so. Their "pruning" of the skills is likely part of optimizing the new classes they will be adding and keeping functionality between Tank/Healer/DPS as they're streamlining the roles with the expac. Battle system changes are made specifically to accommodate new battle mechanics being added, and it's possible that with Red Mage coming out, they might have something like role selection and that's why they're streamlining things so that you have more sub-abilities available based on your role and not just because as a certain job you have access to certain classes sub-abilities. It seems they are removing that.