New abilities in next xpac?

[SiriusSaltstice]

snip

The big issue with tank stance is that the extra mitigation/enmity generation is wholly unnecessary once you learn a fight. Nothing (except maybe for the ultimates) throw out damage at you to the point you can consider tank stance, since all 3 tanks have a powerful CD kit. You can shirk for added aggro which combined with swapping and dps/healer enmity CDs, it makes emnity a joke. Careful CD planning allows you to mitigate almost anything while planning ahead.

Tank stance isnt useless at all though. It's a powerful tool because it helps with progression; it's better to be safe and sorry and if you dont know a fight or if the party starts to struggle, it's okay to turn it on for safety. But after you learn the fight, it's useless, and trying to force it to be relevant 24/7 would just ruin tank gameplay in my opinion.

It's limiting to try and lock other abilities to tank stances. I remember reading a post on how sheltron/ blocking should be locked to shield oath and req to sword oath and it sounded horrid since it would make PLD boring as all hell. Even though Fell Cleave is locked to Deliverance, it still doesnt hurt a WAR to enter Defiance of needed because of unchained. And WAR's kit without inner beast is great, its not just because of holmgang( though it is a big reason why.)

[Kabooa]

I also want to see the introduction of mechanics that take more consideration to use, though we're going to have to see another culling to get some of these buttons off the bar.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see the very basic skills of a Job be locked in and then 4-5 abilities are chosen to supplement it. Sort of how people envisioned the role system.

[Zyneste]

Wrong thread.

[Marxam]

As a war I would prefer to get:

-One weapon skill for Deliverance, preferably that line fire orb aoe that we saw in the 3.0 job quests.
-One weapon skill for Defiance, preferably, Rampage which was a skill in 1.0 for MRD that increased crit and parry rate as long as you didn't move.
-A party wide buff.
-Rework to existing skills either via traits.

[PatronasCharm]

So as far as for what I wish for RDM:

-Unique ways to use the White / Black Manameter for "Abilities"

• *Enfire - 20 Black Meter >> Sword ignited in Fire, strikes enemy and reduces Attack by 10%
  
• *Enstone - 20 White Meter >> Sword consumed by Stone, strikes enemy and reduces Defense by 10%

• *Verfreeze >> AoE Ancient Finisher: 40/40 White and Black Meter or Sword Rotation

[KaldeaSahaline]

I could live without new abilities if it mean getting a drastic changes.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather see fewer abilities able to give greater total complexity than more abilities to give less.

Besides that...

I'd like to see Role Actions removed, for starters, if they're going to remain as shallow yet obligatory. And all maintenance abilities (not spells or weaponskills) such as Lucid Dreaming, Invigorate, etc., with more, job-specific ways to affect MP regeneration and more ways to conserve and regenerate TP, TP itself reworked, or intertwined AoE and ST as not to put resource limitations solely on physical AoE.

Anything which then leaves leveling feeling notably disjointed should in turn be adjusted. Delirium comes to mind, though less than before, as does Defiance-dropping.

[Tanks don't need Enmity Combos] Enmity itself reworked to be based on elements of mob visibility such as positioning (visible, when contributing, to the mob directly, peripherally, or not at all; where WHM's Mist Cloak or Ninja's Smokescreen, by reducing visibility, then make the affected player's enmity even more "slippery") and "aura" (i.e. you, as a tank, are just really noticeable), whereby one can split their enmity output with stacked allies, mitigate said enmity by blindsiding, and tank-swap through well-timed positional replacement. Tanks' "tank stances" made far deeper and more utilitarian in nature, offering considerably more to depth of gameplay. All come to use the gauge in some way, and have neither global cooldown costs nor ability cooldowns longer than a GCD.

[What happens to enmity combos] Physical attacks now "stagger" enemy physical attacks, sapping their damage potential based on direct damage dealt/taken. Tanks' former "enmity" skills tend to lead in this regard, replacing the previous purpose with on-demand mitigation. Each point of Stagger taken increases a mob's Stagger Resistance stat, however, which then drains as the Stagger itself does. Thus, this works as a smoother form of CC. Attacks with little Stagger are best for setting up bursts of Stagger, while those with high Stagger are best for capitalizing thereupon and shutting down attacks. Note: Stagger applies as the animation begins (to hit the enemy), but does not begin to drain until the animation has finished (hitting the enemy); this makes skills like Butcher's Block and Rage of Halone particularly useful.

[What surrounds that] Virtually all attacks can be intercepted. This means that sometimes a tank's job isn't merely to stack up an arbitrary metric and meat-shield for others while aiming cleaves away, but rather to rush between mobs and their focused targets.

Gameplay-enabling abilities such as BotD, Enochian, and Gauss Barrel changed to traits. Many gameplay-centric traits moved up in level, to be built upon near to their former level of acquisition by further gameplay traits.

Certain abilities' cooling speeds now scale with one's GCD. This includes solely rotational skills or ones that would be disproportionately negatively affected (i.e. bottlenecked) by certain breakpoints in attack speed. For instance, Life Surge would now read "20 Turns", rather than "50 seconds". At a 2.40 GCD throughout the time it was cooling, it would therefore cool within 48 seconds. All animation times now also scale with GCD speed, to the nearest twentieth of a second. Note that all animations are currently rendered in 60 frames per second. [Until such time as animation breakpoints can be blended, a normally .8-second (50-frame) animation would then be reduced to .7 seconds (40 frames, frames 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 31, 36, 41, 46 redacted) if playing at a 2-second GCD, for instance.] Atop higher client-side trust when queuing actions, this should make double-weaving consistently possible and of far more consistent uptime cost whether playing at 30 ms or 200.

[Chrono_Rising]

* Tank stance ground up rework. SE has not (yet) acknowledged that players dont play tanks like SE designed them to be played. Tank in tank stance. Offense stance when not. This has created a litany of issues trying to balance them and even more complaints from the players. Tanking skills locked behind tank stance makes sense in the dev room. It makes for a bad time when players dont actually use tank stance. The stances are to punishing for to little reward and the inconsistent locking and unlocking of defensive skills for different classes with stances makes them hard to balance properly. Are they balanced offensively in offense stance? Are they balanced defensively in tank stance? Are the ALSO balanced defensively AND offensively while tanking in DPS stance? That last bit is pretty friggin hard when pld has nothing locked, Drk has a mana gain and HP drain locked in tank stance and a powerful offensive tool locked in DPS stance, and war has arguably the best defensive tool in the game, but only in tank stance and has used holmgang as a crutch ever since. A rework to holmgang, tank stances, and stance locked abilities would go a LONG way in setting a more even baseline for all tanks instead of the ridiculous pendulum swings we have had from 2.0 to now.

Theres lots of room for new abilities to add to the character of each class and continue to give them unique play. While the AOE Stun+TA shout suggested above is far to OP, warcrys as a concept are a completely reasonable direction. It's a very 'warrior-ish' way to add basically anything. Party buffs/support (rallying warcrys), offensive/enfeebling (intimidating warcrys), self enhancing (zerker rage style battle cries). Think the warcry skills for barbarians in diablo 2/3. Perfectly good area to expand into.

Drks have no shortage of inspiration in past FF games. More enfeebling/buffing magic (dread spikes, stat absorption, etc). Look at any old Drk FF for a laundry list of options. Or lean more on the 'knight' side of Drk. Armor crush type skills. Weapon break, etc. Get your debuffs and new tools+damage there.

Pld, similar to drk has no shortage of options. More holy/enhancing skills are always an option. More 'knight' type focus like above. Holy sword style skills that have a wide range of enfeebling, damage, and ranged capabilities (like agrias in FFT for example).

There is TONS of room to grow these jobs into more unique styles in line with their themes while removing the baggage and clunky crap they are still saddled with now.

Damn straight i expect new abilities and pruning/consolidation on old crap.

Could not agree more. In particular I want to see skills which highlight tank identity while striking some balance between tanking and contributing damage.

Example: Making a skill like "shield oath" be a maintainable buff through a job mechanic which increases your block rate and enhances enmity achieves "tank stance" without having "tank stance". Need to tank swap? Stop maintaining the buff. Suddenly Paladin has a lore driven tanking ability matching its theme which is also thematically different from dark knight and warrior abilities.

I would also like to see our existing oGCD buttons take on more abilities/have more effects/absorb other abilities.

Example 1: Dark Knight Blood weapon bolsters damage by increasing attack speed and generating blood, why not add an effect that grants a shield for 20% of the damage inflicted to an opponent (like an auto tbn but for far less hp) that grants a 10% damage reduction when a shield is broken.

Again this becomes a tanking tool that thematically fits a dark knight as passive mitigation, while also addressing the duel need to tank and deal damage. Of course it is a big game and changes cannot just be made, and I'm not claiming the above ideas are practical, but I know I would enjoy having more thematically driven kits and abilities.

[shao32]

my hope for next expansion is a total rework of tank stances and agro management in general not just spread the responsability across the roles, have reasons to use our emity combos and tank stances in general and not being just a big gap betwen skillfull and average tanks.

im hoping too for a overhaul on tank balance specially having a eye on WAR performance, no more the best on everything, the middle and the worse on everything tank pattern again with WAR ahead, proper balance and fair distribution of utility skills according of they DPS-mitigation potential and the capacity of being flexible.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Could not agree more. In particular I want to see skills which highlight tank identity while striking some balance between tanking and contributing damage.

Example: Making a skill like "shield oath" be a maintainable buff through a job mechanic which increases your block rate and enhances enmity achieves "tank stance" without having "tank stance". Need to tank swap? Stop maintaining the buff. Suddenly Paladin has a lore driven tanking ability matching its theme which is also thematically different from dark knight and warrior abilities.

I would also like to see our existing oGCD buttons take on more abilities/have more effects/absorb other abilities.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ork-%28LONG%29

Feel free to read for fun - Fully redesigned PLD based on similar methodologies. Skip to the end to see the PLD rework, the beginning is mostly shower thoughts on encounter and systems design.