Role Actions & range of use

[The_Last_Dragoon]

We've had role actions for a few months now and I felt like organizing all of them in terms of priority and spectrum of use. Thus, I'm gonna post a personal list of them all according to job type groups and color code them for convenience. When something has two colors that means it is a usual mainstay but it can be swapped out if either another player is already providing the bonus, such as the case with Protect, or if the current situation requires a very specific role action.

blue = wide range of constant use
green = may be used for specific situations or if you have slots to fill
red = little to no use in a group setting

Melee DPS role actions

1. True North
2. Invigorate
3. Second Wind
4. Goad
5. Leg Sweep
6. Diversion
7. Bloodbath
8. Feint
9. Crutch
10. Arm's Length

Physical ranged DPS role actions

1. Invigorate
2. Refresh
3. Tactician
4. Head Graze
5. Palisade
6. Second Wind
7. Arm Graze
8. Leg Graze
9. Foot Graze
10. Peloton

Caster DPS role actions

1. Swift Cast
2. Lucid Dreaming
3. Mana Shift
4. Diversion
5. Apocatastasis
6. Addle
7. Erase
8. Break
9. Drain
10. Surecast

Healer role actions

1. Esuna
2. Protect
3. Swiftcast
4. Lucid Dreaming
5. Eye for an eye
6. Largesse
7. Cleric Stance
8. Rescue
9. Surecast
10. Break

Tank role actions

1. Rampart
2. Provoke
3. Shirk
4. Low Blow
5. Convalescene
6. Anticipation
7. Awareness
8. Ultimatum
9. Reprisal
10. Interject

[Zfz]

I love Erase. There have been times when I cleansed something off a first-timer healer and in effect saved us from a wipe. Probably not so useful in full party content, but plenty useful in dungeons. The heal from Erase is just icing on the cake. I always take Erase over Addle, and Lucid Dream on RMD while BLM takes Apocatastasis.

As for healer actions, I don't take Cleric Stance outside of full party content. Protect is always swapped in and out at the start of the duty using a macro. So I often get to play with Rescue.

You also wouldn't ever want to take Shirk in dungeons, and Low Blow can be situational as well.

I think you shoud further separate dungeon content from raiding content. They are different enough that often a few Role Actions can be swapped out for more effectiveness and fun.

[mosaicex]

Reprisal in red?
I don't even.
Shirk is useless in 4-man, Low Blow is useless in raid setting.
Ultimatum is garbage all around, and Anticipation, while seems good, actually does crap all.

Also it's funny how you Feint in red while putting Palisade in Blue.
Feint is basically physical rampart for tank, which is very useful in group setting.

Eye for an Eye is also useless in most, if not all SB boss fights.

[Pence]

What is this? Feint and Arms Length are amazing in group settings and our DPS love them. And surecast for exdeath? On baby.

Are you sure your qualified to write this 'guide'?

[Okamimaru]

id say for melee the ones you really should have are goad, invigorate, diversion, feint and after that they are situational at best... ive never felt the need or desire to take true north, crutch or arms length at all... Second wind and bloodbath are more for solo play than group play... leg sweep as well as most of the time the tank will be stunning enemies... i suppose its also about which class your playing and your skill level... im at least a decent SAM and this has been my experience so far...

[LittleSparrow]

Largesse is extremely useful and isn't situational at all. It's useful in every situation.

Eye for an Eye and Cleric Stance are both very underwhelming and not a must at all.

I agree on Esuna, Swiftcast and Lucid Dreaming being essential.

Rescue is not only really fun to use, its also extremely useful no matter what dungeon you're in. Some fights I can think of that you can make use of it a lot are Titan and Leviathan. Its also useful for pulling let's say a heavy'd target out of an AoE that's about to be used which you don't have time to cast Esuna for.
On top of that, its also very useful to make tanks pay attention to adds you're aggroing. Especially in 4man content it's very useful to make the OT actually notice that you have aggro.

True North is only really useful if you have trouble with positionals. Whereas Ninja only have 2 positions and Dragoon as far as I know less or none, they don't have to have it at all. On top of that, Monks might use it more but again it isn't a must at all. You're much better off using Diversion or Leg Sweep.

I forgot what Shirk does but Awareness is pretty good.

[Jollyy5]

The damage mitigation from combined Feint + Reprisal ain't no joke, can make Susano wonder if he ever Stormsplitted or not.

Alternatively, Addle + Reprisal for AoE.

[silverlunarfox]

The issue is you can't make a general for role actions since each job classifies things differently than other jobs. even within the same grouping. like, i would never equip true north on a melee....maybe as a monk, but thats a stretch at best. There are better actions that can fill that spot.

[HyoMinPark]

We've had role actions for a few months now and I felt like organizing all of them in terms of priority and spectrum of use. Thus, I'm gonna post a personal list of them all according to job type groups and color code them for convenience. When something has two colors that means it is a usual mainstay but it can be swapped out if either another player is already providing the bonus, such as the case with Protect, or if the current situation requires a very specific role action.

blue = wide range of constant use
green = may be used for specific situations or if you have slots to fill
red = little to no use in a group setting

Physical ranged DPS role actions

1. Invigorate
2. Refresh
3. Tactician
4. Head Graze
5. Palisade
6. Second Wind
7. Arm Graze
8. Leg Graze
9. Foot Graze
10. Peloton

Adding in my two cents on this list, since I main bard, and raid with it. I disagree with the priority listed here, and it should honestly be something more like this:

Refresh
Tactician
Palisade
Second Wind
Invigorate
Peloton (**4-man dungeon content only**)
Head Graze
Arm Graze
Leg Graze
Foot Graze

Refresh and Tactician, from a support standpoint, are completely mandatory, and not at all optional. That much is certain. Refresh for your healers, and Tactician for DPS/tanks AND/OR as an aggro dump, since Ranged Physical DPS do not have access to Diversion (and since they removed Quelling Strikes). If you have a NIN, it helps to have them Smokescreen you when they can, but still, having Tactician as a back-up aggro dump is still useful. (Plus, can't always guarantee you'll have a NIN in your group outside of a fixed raid group setting where there will almost always be a NIN.)

Palisade is also a good choice, however, its use in the current raid-tier is pretty limited--since most of the tankbusters/major damage are magical (Palisade only protects against physical damage, not magical), it really only has use in V3S for Halicarnassus' Critical Hit (every 150 seconds). Useful in Susano Ex for Stormsplitter.

Second Wind is something I always keep on me, no matter what. You can't really go wrong with self-heals. Invigorate I keep for if I go down or for heavy AOE situations in 4-man content, since you can't expect Melee to Goad you 95% of the time.

Any of the other skills are more or less useless in the majority of content where they would matter. The silence only has real use in V3S for the Iron Giant if you need an LB bar to reach LB3 for caster LB (but you shouldn't need that if you do Animal Farm successfully). The other Graze skills would have only been useful in PvP settings, or in very select instances (off the top of my head, the mini-boss before the last boss in Sirensong--stunning the seductive scream he does). Other than that, they aren't so important to take up a permanent cross-role slot. If they're needed, I would sub out Invigorate, personally, since you have Tactician to fall back on for TP issues (like if you die). I would definitely not carry any of the Graze skills around with me permanently.

Those are just my two-cents.

[Zfz]

I forgot what Shirk does but Awareness is pretty good.

Shirk gives some of your enmity to a party member, so the only time when it's even reasonable to take it is in content with tank swaps. So in 4-man dungeons or alliance content, taking shirk is just about as good as leaving the slot empty.