Too many "Must-Haves" in the Role Choices Menu.

[Sylvain]

I don't agree with you on the healer for largess.
I find Largess to be much more optional than Lucid Dream.
Running oom is NOT an option.
Doing 30% more heal once in a while just makes the burst easier to get through.
Most boss do aoe burst too often to make it a reliable option and these usually simply drop your group to 10% health, or do successive 30-40% of your health like susano. While +30 heal is extremely helpful. We have more than enough tools to cover these situations. Bubbles, Grounded Star, virus etc.

I don't say it's bad, far from that.
But I find really odd that you consider Lucid Dream to be optional over Largess.



Swiftcast is technically a no-brainer only because of rez stupidely long cast. If they made if instant once a min Swiftcast value would crash down greatly.

The main issue is that there are too many "no brainer".
We don't have enough options.

Here a few change that could make the choice harder

Heal
Esuna : Skill is now baseline, becomes a trait to add utility : "grant 5%mana upon succesful removal /or/ becomes a weavable skill 2sec CD"
Swiftcast : No change, but Res becomes instant// short cast, 30-60sec cd. baseline
Protect: Instant, affect whole part 5sec. reduce damage taken by 10%. 120sec cd. The initial protect benefit is a passive
E4E : Proc 100%, duration 10sec. This would make it less random. Not spreadable anymore with SCH
Surecast: Allow next spell to be cast while moving
Break: 120sec CD, Next offensive spell applies slow 80% for 20sec also "reduce target damage by 5% for 5sec -> cd becomes 120sc". If target dies while slow is active, cd is cancelled.
Lucid Dream: baseline becomes a trait to add utility : "CD refreshes 100% faster while under 15% mana and out of combat"
Rescue : cd reduced to 60sec and lag input removed (last is wishful thinking)

Caster DPS
Erase : heal removed, now increase your damage by 5% for 10sec. (Goal is to not make it a dps loss but hardly a dps gain)

Range DPS
Arm, Leg and Head graze: If cast on an immune target, instead reduce damage by 5% for 5sec. All share CD if that happens
Invigorate: Baseline, becomes a trait: "Upon using Invigorate, reduce TP cost on skill by 50% for 20sec"
Peloton : Out of combat - no change, In combat : 180sec CD. Cancel player Sprint CD. Peloton CD reset upon leaving combat

Melee DPS
Crutch : heal removed, now increase your damage by 5% for 10sec. (Goal is to not make it a dps loss but hardly a dps gain)
Arms Length : Your melee skill now have a range of 20yalms. 10sec(since most boss mechanic ignore the immunity) 120sec

Tank
Provoke : Baseline, improved provoke : "Stay on top of ennemity list for 10sec // Target ignore other player ennemity generation for 10sec"
Interject : If used when target is casting, reduce the damage taken from that ability by 20%


What could be added

Heal
Ripple : Your next heal will take effect again 10sec later. Does not work on skills. 60sec
Corrupted Ether: Your damaging skill don't cost mana but instead cost life equal to 200% of their mana cost. last 15sec. 120sec.

Tank
Swiftstance: For 15sec, stance skill recast time is reduced to 0 (GCD part)
Abundant tribute: Grant 100 oath, blood or rage. 3min cd
Self Sacrifice : Transfer up to 50% of your health to another player. You must have at least 50% health. 2min cd.

[Misutoraru]

yeah, conva is a powerfull skill... however, the problem is the long cooldown. rampart for 20 seconds, shadow wall for 10 seconds, convalescence for 20 seconds and then minutes of waiting without any mitigation for those trash pulls. either i only have for like 20 seconds per trash group a cooldown running, wich is too short, or i have nothing at all for every second group.
i rather use Anticipation wich is weaker, but with 20 seconds duration and only 60 seconds cooldown fills the gap between the other cooldowns much better.

i use Provoke, Rampart, Anticipation, Low Blow and Reprisal.

i am using Anticipation instead of convalescence too

i do not do crazy large group pull, usually just 2-3 trash groups, a shorter CD, more uptime would benefit me more

unfortunately I have to switch out Anticipation for my WAR for Ultimatum because of the lose of Flash and the combination of tricky positioning of Overpower + it high TP cost

[Stelaria]

I think people are missing how role actions are meant to work. I think, in practice, you're meant to switch them out on a per-fight basis. As an example, there are a lot of fights on which there isn't a single debuff which can be removed by Esuna - thus, even if it's necessary for the healer role as a whole, it can safely be removed in those situations in favour of something more situationally useful. Actually remembering to switch actions each fight is another matter, especially if players are so eager to pull quickly that they don't give you the opportunity. It's also quite possible to heal even in endgame content without Largesse.

As another example, Interject is extremely situationally useful - but the removal of damage-dealing stuns and silences gives the developers increased design space to design encounters that need stun or silence rotations. We could even see a situation similar to First Coil, Turn 2 - where a fight can play out differently and a boss can use different abilities depending on player choices (in this case, stunning or silencing an ability might cause it to use a different one instead) - though historically, situations like this have tended to default to only a single viable course of action.

Yet another example is 'True North' - some fights either allow a lot of mobility to ranged DPS, or have a 'complete circle' targetting ring which allows positionals to be landed successfully from any angle. The ability is useless in this situation, and can safely be removed in favour of something else. However, in the most recent Savage raid content, the second part of the raid requires the group to remain tightly stacked at the back (or even front!) of the boss for prolonged periods of time, making it difficult for melee DPS reliant on positionals to reach their full potential without 'True North'.

However, there are problems with this approach - if the game's developers are reading, I'd suggest you take this to heart. There are situations - such as the fourth part of the most recent (Deltascape) normal raid content - in which a role skill is 'forced', where the need for it doesn't add anything meaningful to the fight. The raid's boss will cast an ability that applies a detrimental effect which has to be removed by Esuna, or multiple raid members will die. However, it only does this once at the very beginning of the fight - and afterwards, there's no more need for Esuna. This doesn't meaningfully improve the fight, and functions as little more than a 'tax' on role abilities.

In general, I think the best way for players to approach role abilities is as an interchangeable toolkit - and I believe that both encounter designers and interface designers could benefit from encouraging this mindset. The ability to macro changing role abilities more easily would be very useful (perhaps a command that allows all five role abilities to be set simultaneously, that would fail with a clear message and without side effects if any role ability currently assigned is on cooldown, would help, if not an improvement to the UI that allows multiple role ability 'sets' to be defined and changed in a manner similar to gear sets, to a maximum of five per role.)

[Sylvain]

snip

It still doesn't fix the issue that too many skills are too good compared to the others making the choice tuned down to 1-2 skills.

In the healer arsenal, only Esuna is really switchable between each fight.

There is no fight where you don't want Protect, (although we can argue only 1 healer needs it)
There is no fight where you don't want Swiftcast, (unless you dont mind casting 10sec rez , you have a RDM and simply don't find an instant cast useful)
There is no fight where you don't want Lucid Dream (unless you do V2 normal)

Once these are picked, Largesse and E4E are the two best candidate for the remaining skills.
Although E4E randomness makes it a waste sometime. It's not uncommon for the debuff to proc only after the damage burst, if it even procs...
Rescue has very little use as most fight will require the group to move alltogether. Best fight for the skill is probably Susano right now. This skill could be more interesting if it wasn't from the insane input lag this game suffers. I can't recall the number of time I've pulled someone in to see the aoe animation actually hit everyone, yet, the player died alone. A cooldown reduction would also be welcomed.
Surecast can, potentially be useful on Susano if you get paralyzed. But that's about it. (Again, a popular request to change it to allowing cast while moving would make it a viable option)
Finally, only the trash filler Cleric Stance and Break remains. Cleric Stance bonus to damage is so laughable that unless you're reaching for week first clear, the damage gain from this skill can probably be compensated by 1ilv on your Samurai.
We are talking about 5%, on a 90sec CD for 20sec on heal dps. One healer spending of lot time dpsing, with an average dps of 2000-2200, that's barely more than 1% damage increase assuming your do 20sec of dps everytime. Your samurai just getting used to the fight and doing 0.5% more damage will bring more dps to the party.
I mean, missing 2-3 GCD over the course of a fight has probably more impact than cleric stance on your overall dps.
break is obviously useless in PvE.

So what choice do we have? Largesse and E4E or rescue assuming we don't need Esuna.

So again, the issue here is extremely simple.
We can only pick 5 skills, 2 are mandatory, 1 is required by 1 healer at the very least and 1 is boss situational. Which allow, at best, 2 skill for the protect-healer and 3 for the other one. Out of these 2-3 skills, only 3 options are actually relevant, Largesse, E4E and Rescue. One is random as f$$$ and the other one suffer from lag-input.
So in other words, we have no choice which is why almost everyone has, Lucid Dream, Swiftcast, Protect, Largesse, Esuna//E4E//Rescue//LameStance

So until they change and/or add some skill, nothing will change. If they consider the system a succcess great for them, but most player find it to be lackluster, especially healers.

[Kalocin]

Dark Knights are kind of in a similar boat:

In Raids:
Shirk. Just. Do it.
Rampart. We literally only have one long mitigation buff that works on anything.
Reprisal, you're going to use it on big AoEs and tank busters.
Provoke for shirk, tank swaps and emergencies.
Convalescence because it's too good for unavoidable damage.


In dungeons:
Provoke. Emergencies.
Rampart. Same as above.
Convalescence. Too useful.
Anticipation (or the latter two if you're lazy).
Low blow/Reprisal swapped for bosses.


Ultimatum is pretty useless to me due to the long CD (and to be honest dark knights get some leeway here). Awareness/Anticipation both can't be used in raids because the above options are literally locked (only one I can think of is maybe Awareness for Reprisal in O3S?). There's also that silence that just isn't happening.

I mean it's fine if they want to let us change it up for dungeons and raids like I mentioned above but:

Rampart, Provoke, and Conv are 100% worth it leaving us with only two options to swap it up for raids and dungeons. Role skills suddenly feel kind of silly.

P.S. You also gutted my mitigation going into Stormblood by doing this.

[QT_Melon]

I'm confused at why Level 70 we're still only allowed 5 actions, we should be allotted 6. I don't expect to take every skill offered to me, but I do have to say it's downright annoying to find out DURING a fight you needed to have taken a cross role ability. "Oh hey, we decided to drop Doom on people this run, you didn't allot Esuna...well...too bad. The Bards send their regards!"

[MistyMew]

-as a dd caster I think there are not enough good choices tbh. I don't like most of them for a dd.

-would like to grab a few from the other dps classes though

[Rawrz]

-as a dd caster I think there are not enough good choices tbh. I don't like most of them for a dd.

-would like to grab a few from the other dps classes though

I think there are too many ;_;.

Why does diversion have to be a thing? Dx

Erase is a cute little skill. You save a gcd for the healers once in a while and get to microlustrate!

God. I. Want. To. Try. Surecast. But nope. No room.

RDM:
Lucid Dreaming:- Only Mana Regen
Swiftcast- Dps increase with a chance to proc dualcast fodder. Excellent for creating weave time to corps or displace at an awkward gcd.
Diversion: Because tanks are babies :[ (jk. Popping lucid .5 seconds into the fight works sometimes but it's a waste)
Manashift: It's about 25% of our utility. Using it on a bard with foes and refresh extends foes by 9 seconds, by helping refreah to keep up. Able to keep the healers healthy.
Addle- Magic things always try to kill you. Addle muy good. I've saved sooo many pug bards that don't stack back up by just a couple hundred hp using it.

If i was going to make erase more enticing, i would change it to removing paralysis, silence, pacify and dots. Leave or buff the cure potency. Reduce cd to 45 seconds. Bards paean should revert to how it was and prevent/ remove. Erase wouldn't cleanse stun like paean or esuna.

Surecast. Just turn it into tempered will with casts cannot be interrupted by damage taken as well. No cast needed. Not removed after a single cast. Reduce duration to 6 seconds.

The thing is though, the only skill rdm can afford to lose is addle. All others are necessary. People would run surecast over addle and that's all that would change.

[Maeka]

I'm confused at why Level 70 we're still only allowed 5 actions, we should be allotted 6. I don't expect to take every skill offered to me, but I do have to say it's downright annoying to find out DURING a fight you needed to have taken a cross role ability. "Oh hey, we decided to drop Doom on people this run, you didn't allot Esuna...well...too bad. The Bards send their regards!"

That's kinda why you should always have Esuna, because you just never know, and it is insanely useful. So many little QoL debuffs that people end up with that a lot of people don't bother erasing, but I do because I know it helps a ton.

Especially if you're still doing Leveling Roulettes. I wish Healers would stop doing Roulettes without Esuna. They go in with no Esuna, and a lot of times, they forget to slot it even though it is needed, and we end up not having it and we end up with way more trouble than there should be.


IMO, I can't think of a single Healer Role "Choice" that I would rather have than Esuna (after, of course, Lucid, Swiftcast, etc). Cleric Stance? NOOOOPE. Rescue? Meh. Surecast? Meh. E4E? Never saw the need for it before (because I never leveled the class that had it lol) so ... meh. I'd rather have Esuna. At least I know it'll be sitting right there on my hotbar when I need it.

[Trespar]

Just seems really absurd that a healer is capable of going into a fight without Esuna and Lucid Dreaming, or a tank without Provoke or Rampart, even if they technically don't need it. These are still essential tools that need to be baseline.

I feel like role actions should be optional utility that can make a fight easier, but is never absolutely mandatory for its completion.

Like for example, even though Esuna isn't ACTUALLY mandatory for Exdeath normal because you can just res after they die, I would still consider Esuna mandatory because getting around mechanics using resurrection just doesn't sit right with me.

On the other hand, I love these "optional utility" skills like Goad, Mana Shift and Rescue. I use them all the time, it makes things slightly easier, but I never feel like I absolutely need them to do a deathless run.(Though the amount of dps who will stand in the poo and die is absolutely ridiculous, Rescue really helps with those guys)