Are role actions a nerf?

[KisaiTenshi]

This is going to be amazing in raid and other 8man content, just think only one healer needs to bring protect, the co healer now has a chance at another viable skill to bring to the group. I like to play pld and not having access to stone skin makes me sad, gonna miss sneaking in a SS during boss fights.

For static play this makes sense, for PUG play, nope.

Ideally they should strip all the DPS and Tank classes of all healing skills, and only allow the healer do healing, likewise strip the enmity reducing skills from the healer and let the tank actually tank. Perhaps even going so far as to only allow items with long cooldowns to be used as a way to do something without waiting for the tank or healer to do something. One thing I really hate in other games is the "pot spam, gets you through everything" **

For dungeon play these skills should be available during the dungeon. For overworld play, it would make more sense if all the skills should be available, but who knows what Yoshi-P is thinking. It's probably trivial to change them as needed regardless.

Or perhaps it would have simply made more sense to divide the skills in the same way they do for PvP and have something like

Field skills - (Includes DPS, Tanking and Healing skills)
Dungeon skills - (Includes only role-specific skills, perhaps one set per duty)
PvP skills - (Includes only PvP-only DPS skills on top of Field skills)
Craft skills - (Includes only crafting skills)
Gathering skills - (Includes only gathering skills)

I think the idea behind a lot of these changes is to avoid the kind of ugly mechanics seen in other MMORPG's where everyone picks the best-in-class class, gear and thus the only difference between any two players is the color of their gear. Whoever has the deepest pockets wins.

** unfortunately stat inflation tends to render hp/mp pots useless in other games since they tend to be based on fixed numbers, not %'s. FFXIV uses %'s because of the level sync mechanic.

[Orbiaus]

Maybe I just like things simple but they should remove cross class completely and just give each job the skills they need.

[Aramina]

As a counter to the no one waits/no one strategizes... a little thing from POTD this morning on my baby alt. This is a pretty standard occurence of random instanced content I do.

http://imgur.com/a/BzUaP

[Kaisinel]

Just wanted to point out something that may display a changed to protect.


(Just realized you can look at actions in the menu to see MP cost as well)

Makes me believe it no longer has a cast, is an ability, and may have a CD.

[OcieKo]

Snip

Nice catch there Kaisinel.

Some major issues Im seeing repeatedly come up that seem to be getting across wrong.

Constant Swapping: I'm often led to believe by the wording of people who claim this will be super bad and non-top that well be able to swap in combat. While I can't say this will be true or not after the updates. I can say with decent certainty, even with the CD/Location detriments to swapping being removed, I'm fairly certain your still going to be stuck once your on the enmity list. So really at best you may be able to swap skills every 3 min.

Baddies Won't Have the Right Skills XRd: Release day is gunna ge 3 days after the all purpose set-up for every job will have been figured out. Like someone mentioned for healers, Protect, Swiftcast, Eye for and Eye, Lucid Dream, Esuna is likely gunna be that thing you have equipped 90% of the time your just doing w/e random DF roulettes etc. It's a pile of mostly crutchs and spontaneously desirable abilities. And assuming what Kaisinel caught earlier causes big changes to how it works, Protect may not be there anymore, or maybe it will but the function will be so different its just a new awesome. But as a healer main myself, the only skill I really cant do without assuming the current interpretations of purposes are correct, Lucid Dream. The rest looks optional/situational to me. Esuna would probably be next, but thats more grade of need as opposed to frequency, while its freauency is quite low as many have stated before, but when you need it, you need it.

But It's Needed to Provide More DPS Uptime for Non-DPS Roles: Aside from my personal feelings that this prevalent mentality has be causing a decline in the quality of games over the past decade, more rational thought on this. A healer's primary job is to bring back what was unavoidably lost, UNAVOIDABLE, its seriously not a healer's primary role to allow everyone to do stupid stuff just cause they can fix it. Healer DPS is what comes about when this condition is fulfilled in excess, and is largely dependant on everyone except the healer in current content. A Tanks primary role is to reduce the total amount of damage outgoing to the group, the entire group, that means THE TANK THEMSLEVES TOO. This last facet seems to be lost in modern gaming metas, where the tank is more being used to focus where the damage is going rather than keep it to a minimum, and in exchange for increasing the amount of incoming damage, they get more outgoing damage, scrap defemse for offense. I for one can safely say, a tank maintaining their tanking stance gives me far more primary role downtime than having everyone with protect. A DPSs primary job is to minimize the amount of time an encounter takes, which also means not doing anything that will hinder their own or anothers output, or pulling aggro, enmity is NOT Just the tanks problem, seriously you have enmity management tools, use em. Picking up avoidable debuffs, or eating large damage skills and dying cost around 5-20s of healer downtime in the current CS environment. New one where CS is no longer stance dancing this will be more 3-17 or so. 17s seems long for dying, Rez = 8s, Heal = 3-6s depending on amount needed, Refresh Protect 3s, currently at 14-20 sec. Without accounting for time to accept and complete the rez itself, and also removing the possibility of a Stoneskin reduced helf buffer. Then to top it off, their DPS just goes down.

But These A Required Skills: Sorry but theres not much required on XCs as they are now. Swiftcast is a crutch tool, you don't need it but i makes life more convenient when you do, my WHM hit 60 before I got it for her, can amanage just fine without, I just prefer having it, cause I'm lazy and people suck. Provoke outside of fights with tank swap mechanics (which can be done without provoke mind you) is a crutch tool, basically people screwed up so I need aggro on something now, and as someone mentioned earlier, Provoke is a really bad aggro generation tool, its like WHM Benediction, if the person is at 1/40,000 its awesome, if their at 39,999/40,000 its wtf did you waste a 6m CD for that for. Difference is it functions on the max raising from the initial as opposed to the initial dropping to the current. When pulling with Provoke, you a healer could get aggro with protect, as it generates more enmity than provoke in an 8man its about 8X as much.

But My Job is Losing Everything: For the WHM/PLD doomsayers out there. Theyve already stated the amount of usable skills will stay roughly the same. Which includes the 5 expected XCSs being 5 expected XRSs. Which means if something in your core usable skills was moved out something is taking its place. If they didn't the previous statement they made would be horribly wrong. Simply put classes that contributed more to the new XRS system, get more new toys. Next, for certain skills that were on one class/job but others had similar skills, more than likely everyone lost the equivalents, point if reference Esuna is using a recolored Leeches icon, its probably safe to say SCH Leeches and AST Exalted Detriment are gone as well. This also most likely extends to the OGCD CC skills/spells added to the XRS, everyone is likely losing say their OGCD stun. Personal speculation here, if Affection does replace Divine Seal from WHM, I wouldn't be surprised if it functions more like ADTs Synastry and removes that skill as well, same with Lucid Dream and WHM Shroud of Saints/AST Luminiferous Aether (hard to say anything on the MP qualities of Aetherflow at this time given that its still a class mechanic therefor cannot be completely purged).

Some General Changes Spotted in New Tooltips:

No DMG #s on OGCD CC Skills: IMHO this is a good change, but we can also use it as some assurance that quite a bit of change may be happening to our skills in general.

OGCD Self Buffs Being Integrated Into Class Mechanics: BLM/MNK/BRD demonstrations should be taken into account as some precursor to the general change. Moderate chance a chunk of the notably missing blatant more X skills being missing, may have moved into such things. Enochian was shown to have changed pretty drastically in duration. Monks new group DPS support skill is tied into its Chakra mechanics. BRD songs have safely seen a fairly large change in use, if for no other reason than Wanderer's Minuet is still present, but not constant and sharing with Mage's Ballad/Army's Paeon, and we know for certain it's "turret" effect is gone. It's possible the Missing Blood for Blood has something to do with the DRGs job guage turning red at one point.

Now speculation both rampant and reasonable is prevalent atm due to lack of details of the new actions in its entirety, but there is enough seen that we can safely rule out some of the more extreme doomsday viewpoints. Also in the end, it's a game, if you no longer enjoy it, you can quit and find a new one. Just seems like a shame and slightly stupid to quit because something absolutely absurd might happen.

[The_Shang]

I don't think role actions are a nerf. Imo, I think it streamlines the combat/addtional actions system in such a way that it'll be less confusing for people as to what to do/level, while still keeping the original image of the jobs it applies to intact.

One of the things I hated the most about the cross-class system is being forced to level a different job, one you might not like, just for that one optimal skill for your main. e.g it took me until very recently to unlock Mantra, which incidentally was the last cross-class I needed to unlock, because I couldn't be bothered leveling Monk until, again, very recently (to get an armour set for SAM ready). The system has become needlessly convoluted.

It kinda makes me sad to see all that I worked for go away (the point of leveling all jobs), but I also welcome the cross-role system as well as the general streamlining of combat because I think that's what this game really needs.

[LalaRu]

Let's say goodbye to have to level THM to 26 to get that only skill an healer needs from it.

[EorzeaHero69]

I like the new changes in the role sharing. A bit sad that no more sharing raging strikes, but still looking forward to others, mostly Paladin, Samurai, and Summoner (BAHAMUT).