Healing going foward

[Vulcwen]

I think Stoneskin should be a WHM exclusive, it'd not hurt AST and SCH to lose access to it as much. Virus could also not end up being cross-classable anymore either, if they give WHM something like a physical apocastasis, all healers have something powerful to mitigate with, but different in nature.
About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all. Protect could also be removed if they want to cut buttons, considering protect has no real gameplay value aside from making recovery from death slightly more expensive for healers.

I'd not be surprised if healers get their own variant of swiftcast, so that SE can tweak the cooldowns of each version separately for casters and healers.


Anyway, I don't think merging of skills that do the same thing but couldn't be cross-classed anyway makes much sense, it'll be removing animations for no real gain. You're not freeing a button by doing this, and you're removing options to change those abilities in terms of potency or other effects later on as well.

[DarthVella]

About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all.

You take that back! Sssh, don't worry, Eye, she didn't mean it.

Okay but seriously now.

Anyway, I don't think merging of skills that do the same thing but couldn't be cross-classed anyway makes much sense, it'll be removing animations for no real gain. You're not freeing a button by doing this, and you're removing options to change those abilities in terms of potency or other effects later on as well.

This is what I think. It makes far more sense for existing cross-class options that are seen as mandatory to be moved into the shared abilities list. Things like Swiftcast, Cleric Stance for healers; Provoke for Tanks, etc.

I don't know what was meant by merging Shadowskin and Rampart but I'm a little worried that they missed the point.

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

[Reiryuu]

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

From what they have told us, the implication is this new role-shared abilities will be replacing the whole cross-class system. The skills that are considered necessary for your jobs will no longer be a part of the job/class they are associated with and will now become part of this system. Thus, any tank job has access to things like provoke without leveling the job associated with provoke (gladiator)

As for merging Rampart and Shadowskin, it's simple. They are essentially removing both abilities and creating a new skill with a new name with the same (or similar) effect and putting it into the role-shared system for all tanks to use, let's call it RampForeSkin (unattractive play on words intended), if you like and assume that foresight will be removed and put in this skill too just for the name effect =p

[Vulcwen]

Though come to think of it, if cross-class abilities are the source of the new role-shared abilities then we'll end up with some more button bloat as it would free up CC slots that we could then fill again... unless the shared abilities will require CC slots, or if it's replacing CC entirely?

It's going to replace the CC system entirely, they already stated so. It might however only affect jobs, and leave classes untouched so people can still mess with the old system for stuff like PotD, and they then dont need to change anything for crafting either.

The basic idea I perceived was:
- Remove the requirement to level other jobs.
- Remove the design restriction that you can only cross-class from 2 classes.
- Allow for new skills to be designed that can be shared among all jobs in a certain role.

Merging of rampart and shadowskin only makes sense if they're having trouble filling all the slots with skills, which means, they're too lazy to design new ones in there.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

About E4E, I'd think it could just be removed entirely, it doesn't even always do something at all.

E4E is pretty great actually and an underrated ability, it's just a lot of people don't understand how it works. When the target is hit by physical attacks (like autos) they have a 20% chance to basically use reprisal, which can also be refreshed. That's quite powerful but it needs to be used preemptively so it has time to proc before the damage you're trying to mitigate. It's far from useless and i'm hoping they don't take that away from whm, because after swift it's the next best cross class imo since virus on whm is purely physical.

[Fernosaur]

E4E is pretty great actually and an underrated ability, it's just a lot of people don't understand how it works. When the target is hit by physical attacks (like autos) they have a 20% chance to basically use reprisal, which can also be refreshed. That's quite powerful but it needs to be used preemptively so it has time to proc before the damage you're trying to mitigate. It's far from useless and i'm hoping they don't take that away from whm, because after swift it's the next best cross class imo since virus on whm is purely physical.

As far as I'm concerned, E4E works on any kind of damage. That's why it's useful to deploy it along with Adloquium when you know raidwide damage is coming, you get 20% chances of activation on 4/8 different people. It was p good on the starting phase of Sephirot EX, for one example.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

As far as I'm concerned, E4E works on any kind of damage. That's why it's useful to deploy it along with Adloquium when you know raidwide damage is coming, you get 20% chances of activation on 4/8 different people. It was p good on the starting phase of Sephirot EX, for one example.

Well spreading it there actually isn't doing anything extra for you, it's only being activated off the tank that's taking the physical cleave, tiferet, the raid damage is magical so its not going to activate off the other party members.

[Vulcwen]

E4E is indeed 20% chance on physical damage only. Physical AoEs are rare, so spreading it has limited uses, certain fights have magical auto-attacks which means it can only proc on tankbusters. I just feel that with all the RNG, you can't rely on it to help mitigate stuff. The same is there for reprisal, but reprisal has a damage component working for it, so it's always useful, and it also has a reactive component, so it impacts gameplay.

I do think that E4E is one of the first candidates of healer abilities to remove in order to prune skillsets.. it can be replaced by something that's more rewarding to use.
But then, the cross-role system needs skills to slot, so I think E4E is there to stay, then the devs don't need to design new stuff :P