Culling and restructuring skills to make room for 5.0 abilities

[Grimoire-M]

Putting Heavy Thrust's damage bonus on Impulse Drive is fine. Impulse Drive already sounds like it ought to give that buff to begin with, as the name implies that it's giving you an adrenaline boost to improve your strength. It already fits DRG thematically.

I'd much rather see Piercing added to the Ranged DPS than removed entirely, too. Same for adding Slashing to all of the tanks. Those buffs are fine if they all exist on buttons you want to be pressing on your class anyways. Being able to debuff multiple targets at once relatively quickly is also another way to gain DPS in certain situations regarding add phases/multi-dotting and so on mid-fight.

I'd also like to see DRG get a dynamic combo finisher. Basically at any point you could use F&C and WT, you could use it instead to end the combo immediately. After both were used, you'd only have the finisher left. Its potency would increase the same way they do. The 1-2-3-4 buttons can 100% be consolidated down to 2, but adding one more that you can use to end a combo when you want to would help a ton with how DRG plays already, and reward different skill speed breakpoints with different filler options.

[PangTong]

Reposting my thoughts on this from another thread:
With the ability prune in Stormblood, low level play became even worse than it already was. For example with MNK, if you had already unlocked Blood for Blood then you could start using it as soon as you had a cross-class slot. Now MNK doesn't get their big damage cooldown until level 68.

Because of the need to add new abilities with each expansion but also keep the total amount of abilities about the same to constrain complexity, we end up with this situation where skill acquisition gets spread further and further out and low level play becomes more and more miserable.

However a big part of this problem is because so many of the existing skillsets are back-loaded, that is to say, almost half your entire job is learned after level 50. A typical job gets about 25-28 actions excluding cross-roles, but because the devs feel there's this weird need to have constant new ability unlocks every 2 levels after 50, around 8-10 of those will be unlocked once you're already significantly well into the game. Not only does this make jobs feel horribly incomplete before very high levels (even max level for some jobs), but it causes a problem where you suddenly have to relearn your entire job after unlocking some key skill at high level, even though you've already spent dozens of hours learning the initial rotation.

Considering we're rapidly approaching the next expansion which will most likely be looking to raise the level cap to 80, and Yoshida has already said that they will be pruning skills again to make room for new ones, this is an issue that needs to be considered as soon as possible to avoid falling into the same trap and making low-level gameplay even worse than it currently is.

Simply put, skill acquisition rates and orders need to be drastically changed such that jobs are practically complete by the time they reach level 50. A job's entire basic rotation and core skills should all be in place by level 50, and levels 50-80 should see a dramatic reduction in the total amount of new skills learned (10 at most for the entire 50-80 span, ideally more like 6-8), and those new skills should not greatly alter the existing rotation except to expand on it with new cooldowns or traits.

You don't need to have loads of new skills to motivate people to reach the level cap, they are going to do that no matter what. The sacrifice of not getting so many new skills at high level is DEFINITELY worth the advantage of making low level and synced gameplay much more fun. One of the biggest complaints I hear about XIV from new players and veterans alike is that the combat takes FOREVER to get interesting. Locking away half the job toolkits behind level 50 (which for a new player will take them possibly over 100 hours of MSQ) is a huge turn-off, both for new players and veterans trying to level new jobs or do synced content. If XIV wants to keep retaining players this is something that desperately needs to be addressed in 5.0.

In terms of what could be pruned, for some jobs it's obvious but for others it's tricky. Jobs like WAR, SAM and RDM are quite well designed and have very few superfluous actions. It's going to be hard to replace the skills of some jobs without also redesigning those jobs unnecessarily. If it were me, I'd probably look into not just doing a repeat of Stormblood with 4-5 brand new actions for each job while pruning an equal or greater amount. Instead I'd maybe do 1 or 2 brand new actions (maybe more on a per-job basis if the job could use significant reworking) and instead replace the role action system with some kind of "extra trait" spec system where players can select 3-4 traits out of a pool of say 8-10, unique to each job, and those traits would add bonuses or extra/altered functionality to existing abilities and therefore slightly change up the rotations. However I feel like SE would shy away from this idea just because of the amount of design and balancing work it would require.

[wereotter]

Tornado kick and purification need some adjustment
Same with sams third eye mechanic
especially seigan that just needs to go doesn't even look cool

My hopes for Sam is it gets a move like pre 4.2 inner release for kenki and a shinten trait that lowers guren cd by 5 secs l

True, Tornado Kick and Purification at least got some uses this expansion, but could use another look. Personally, I would like to see Tornado Kick unchanged, but Perfect Balance changed to just instantly give 3 stacks of GL. That way you can use Tornado Kick every time Perfect Balance comes off cooldown as an added DPS move instead of being just marginally viable at the end of a Riddle of Fire burst phase or before a boss jumps.

[Nerfworthy]

True, Tornado Kick and Purification at least got some uses this expansion, but could use another look. Personally, I would like to see Tornado Kick unchanged, but Perfect Balance changed to just instantly give 3 stacks of GL. That way you can use Tornado Kick every time Perfect Balance comes off cooldown as an added DPS move instead of being just marginally viable at the end of a Riddle of Fire burst phase or before a boss jumps.

I agree with this 1000x. I love MNK thematically, but abilities like Tornado Kick and Perfect Balance seem awkward. Then you have the redundancies of the tackle stances. This may be a nit pick but I also don't like not having at least 1 ranged ability.

[Grimoire-M]

I agree with this 1000x. I love MNK thematically, but abilities like Tornado Kick and Perfect Balance seem awkward. Then you have the redundancies of the tackle stances. This may be a nit pick but I also don't like not having at least 1 ranged ability.

To be honest I'd rather see Tornado Kick go than stay. Perfect Balance has utility beyond Tornado Kick and should remain as is, particularly because it serves as MNK's main form of AoE burst. I want to get rid of TK mostly because I'd like One Ilm Punch to be a GL generator instead of Riddle of Wind, but that would become too good pretty fast with TK's current cooldown.

Chakra and Form Shift can fill those needs without disrupting your DPS by much either, especially considering Fists of Wind will help in those situations as well. The main reason they seem to lack a ranged attack is because they'd technically require three, but I'd probably just make a ranged attack version of Form Shift (with a GL refresh if in Coeurl as normal) if it was absolutely necessary.

Same goes for Dragoon. Make Piercing Talon extend Blood of the Dragon.

[Duskane]

Idea of "Infinite" GL stacks ability for monk sounds better as a new skill then just perfect balance rework

[Bourne_Endeavor]

"- Add a Fourth Mudra"

Um... this alone would require adding SIX new abilities:

Even if they went the full six combo sequences, it's still consolidated on a single button. Suiton, Doton, Raiton and Fuma aren't buttons on your hot bar. They merely replace Ninjitsu. Therefore, a fourth mudra only adds a single button. Granted, I do like Grimoire's idea of something to buff mudra abilities. Would maybe give us a reason to use Raiton again despite it clipping.

Having RA pop right before you need to refresh SH and dots can cause you lost gcds if it prevents you from using SH before IJ.

There is never a scenario where you prioritize SA over RA. You're losing 160 potency, which throws away any benefit that 10% Crit buff would provide otherwise. Regardless, by simply having RA refresh said buff as SpecledBurd said fixes this issue.

SAM's Jinpu? MNK's Twin Snakes? ARR/HW WAR's Maim?

Monk's buffs help prioritize a combo order
Maim works similarly to Heavy Thrust as in you only use Storm's Eye to refresh slashing
Samurai is arguably the only redundant one of the three.

I'd much rather see Piercing added to the Ranged DPS than removed entirely, too. Same for adding Slashing to all of the tanks. Those buffs are fine if they all exist on buttons you want to be pressing on your class anyways. Being able to debuff multiple targets at once relatively quickly is also another way to gain DPS in certain situations regarding add phases/multi-dotting and so on mid-fight.

That makes them entirely redundant. Look at Blunt, for example. It does nothing because there is never a scenario you won't execute Dragon Kick to reapply it unless the boss will jump. And even in those scenarios, you often still want that extra 10%. As a Dragoon, I never even think about Piercing. It will always be on the boss because I will always do a Chaos Thrust combo. It has no impact compared to more active debuffs like Trick Attack, where the user has to think about their usage and potentially make mistakes.

[Grimoire-M]

That makes them entirely redundant. Look at Blunt, for example. It does nothing because there is never a scenario you won't execute Dragon Kick to reapply it unless the boss will jump. And even in those scenarios, you often still want that extra 10%. As a Dragoon, I never even think about Piercing. It will always be on the boss because I will always do a Chaos Thrust combo. It has no impact compared to more active debuffs like Trick Attack, where the user has to think about their usage and potentially make mistakes.

That's because DRG doesn't have Phlebotomize anymore. If other classes had Piercing and you coordinated priority targets (assuming 2-3 targets total with minimal melee loss for movement), you could easily replace a GCD or two in order to Multi-dot with that asap while netting a DPS gain. BRD could and would do this with its DoTs while maintaining piercing for themselves on one target while the DRG focused on the other. And as a DRG you'd naturally be spreading your piercing buff around on 2-3 targets if you knew they'd live long enough rather than AoEing unless they were going to die quickly. The only difference is the BRD would apply piercing before you could on the second and third enemies respectively, which would be a minor boost to your potency. A1S is a classic example of a fight where Multi-dotting multiple targets was incredibly good if you could do it. One that's more applicable to melee and relevant to this expansion would be O7S and its many mini-boss adds.

[Jandor]

Simply put, skill acquisition rates and orders need to be drastically changed such that jobs are practically complete by the time they reach level 50. A job's entire basic rotation and core skills should all be in place by level 50, and levels 50-80 should see a dramatic reduction in the total amount of new skills learned (10 at most for the entire 50-80 span, ideally more like 6-8), and those new skills should not greatly alter the existing rotation except to expand on it with new cooldowns or traits.

Agree with the general thrust of this post.

I reckon 30 skills per job is a good number. That's a new skill every other level till level 20, then every 3rd level after that up to the new cap at 80.

That's a good steady rate of progression IMHO, plus it would give us a bit more to play with at the lower end, and 30 isn't an overwhelming amount of abilities.

[Kitfox]

The absolute state of MCH: Reddit 5.0 Job Changes Wishlist

Delete all MCH abilities and start again.

Really makes you go hmmm.