Please fix protect

[Llus]

You could remove it entirely, increase all defenses by 15%, and functionally thered be no difference.

We could also make everyone's self-regen more powerful and remove all casted regens and functionally there'd be no difference. Prior to SB, WHM was the only class that gained access to protect w/o having to burn a role slot so if you had a WHM in your party you could get away with not having to bring it. All these great changes SB introduced like reducing the complexity of skill chains, removing the requirement of a 2nd class before you get your job stone and the really super confusing role actions that allowed you to select something like stoneskin for a PLD o.O??? So this is what you get when you beg for easier content, easier classes and less flexibility in your role builds. You get useless, limited or 1 use role actions some of which have a niche use (silence, anticipation, break, low blow, etc). All the improved "choice" you get with class based role actions is simply smoke in mirrors. The traited version of cross-class actions in HW and SB meant bringing certain classes gave a benefit and since SE has made all classes in SB 100% equal in terms of utility and synergy you no longer have to worry about taking a WHM for their bonus to stoneskin and can take the classes you really want to play with, not because ASTs and SCHs have more utility or anything it's all about player choice and who you chose to take protect over cleric stance. /s

I'm not saying protect is worthless, it's very useful and required in a lot of content. The extra defense down death penalty is a key part of the game play - I miss the older penalty that would affect all your stats and not just your primary stat; it made death an even more punishing mechanic since you had to babysit someone with weakness until it was gone and in many cases forced a change in strategy if a tank or healer died. The issue I see is that you're left cucking one person for certain mechanics. For healers, it's always "who's going to take protect". For certain mechanics, "who's going to take silence if we don't have a ninja?" or Can the monk silence pls? The fact that at level 50 we had 5 cross-class skills and at level 70 we still only get 5 role slots is the real issue. For the majority of content, there's a set 5 role actions that you MUST take and again in many cases there are 6 role actions that you MUST take so you're left depending/forcing someone to drop their 5th action for the required 6th putting them front and center when they fail to use it when they're supposed to. This was stated before the SB role changes, but the role actions are an illusion of choice designed to make it look as though all jobs in every role are equal, but all it does is force you to change your role actions for each fight just in case nobody else takes it.