Can we just delete Role Actions already?

[Nalien]

Frankly, I've never liked the Role Actions system. I always felt it took away from some of the class identity to have the exact same skills shared across Jobs. Rampart is a Paladin skill, Shadowskin was a Dark Knight skill, and Warrior had a different system entirely with Inner Beast... That was much nicer than all three (soon to be four) having Rampart...

Increasingly though, I find myself questioning what is even going on with this system, when there is seemingly no consistency in what actions this applies to... Every Tank has Rampart as a Role Action, for example, but then every tank also has a Sentinel/Shadow Wall/Vengeance/Nebula... Every Healer gets Esuna, but why do they have Raise/Resurrection/Ascend... Why are some skill put in the Role Actions while others aren't?

I'd really just prefer to see skills like Shadowskin and Leeches return, on top of new unique ones for the other Role skills... It adds to class identity, and I honestly always through there was room to differentiate some of the skills... Different cooldowns, slightly different effects, different ways of delivering the effects (this is particularly true for Pet Jobs), different integration with Job mechanics and gauges... I guess class homogenization is the order of the day now, though... Seriously though... In the same expansion that you added Job gauges to try and give Jobs more individual flavour, you took aside a bunch of actions and said "These will be the same for every Job and wont integrate with the new Job mechanics at all"... Why? Such a bizarre choice... And you're sticking to it with Shadowbringers...

At least at the start of Stormblood the concept made sense; You have 10 actions, you can set 5 of them. Obviously the system didn't work, because some were out right required, while others still sit unused, but the concept of picking a spec at least made sense to me, even if the implementation was absolutely terrible... Now though? You wont even need to set them as we do currently, they just sit in a separate category from the rest of your combat actions for... No reason? Esuna sits under Healers Role Actions, but Raise doesn't for... No reason? Just give us unique versions of them and help fix some of the class identity you seem to be trying to wash away lately...

EDIT:

Oh, and on the subject of Raise... That really should be a Role Action... Obviously all the Healers have it already, but so do 2/3 of the Casters... I wouldn't even object to Black Mage getting it, and Blue Mage has enough KO-self mechanics that a Raise spell seems fitting for them too... Obviously Black Mage getting Raise isn't particularly fitting though, but this just highlights again why its better to not have Role Actions, and instead have the same concept for actions across roles, with different implementations. I think a Necromancer type approach to Raise on Black Mage is pretty fitting, and Dark Knight already provides us with the Walking Dead status effect needed to make that work... While I'm here, Summoner shouldn't have just Resurrection, more so now that it's getting Phoenix... Why not give it a Raise that isn't a complete DPS loss? AoE Fire damage around the fallen party member you cast it on, animation incorporates Phoenix. And Blue Mage... That's almost certainly getting Reraise out of Amdapor Keep (Hard) already, so whatever... Red Mages Verraise already functions somewhat differently by virtue of Red Mages Dualcast mechanic IMO, but it being the most basic, and similar to White Mages Raise also makes perfect sense anyway. Scholar? Why not have a variation on Dissipation, sacrifice the Fairy to revive someone. Astrologian is the only one I'm having trouble with, mainly because the Time Mage aspects have been wiped away (although I doubt a Rewind mechanic could even be worked), but I'm also not paid to come up with these ideas so I'm not really putting much thought into any of them to begin with, and yet most of them still seem painfully obvious to me... Like really, how has nobody at SE thought of giving Summoner a Phoenix based Raise instead of lame old Resurrection?

[kamenkuro]

Its a mix of game design and necessity.
There are actions required by every role. Swift cast is important to every caster. Second wind is a lifeline for melee. Etc. Think of it like this. Every character needs to be able to move, jump, and run. So they give them all the ability to do so. Then when a character starts specializing they gain specific skills. When there are different branches of a role you want them all to be related in some way.
Take monster hunter for example. There are around 5 different weapons that can block attacks. They all function differently, but across the board block is the same button and use the same resource. A lot of games do this. Pokemon is an extreme example where there are core moves that are widespread and unique moves that few pokemon have.
There's the case for the 5 classes with revive as well. Which may tie more into limitations. While all of the healers have revive, there are 2 dps with it as well. Simultaneously a healer and a dps share a class. So when it comes to removing a revive from SCH and giving it a role action that will not be feasible since that removes SMN's revive since they cannot use healer role actions. Which I doubt people want. And your referral to the tanks and their other cooldowns on top of rampart misses the fact that most high end content has tankbusters that need 2 defensive cooldowns to survive them and having a wealth of defensive cooldowns is necessary in some fights.
With Shadowbringers they have reduced the number of role actions and made them all accessible. This is so that they can balance content around having jobs with similar abilities. When they made sprint a cooldown that no longer cost tp that allowed them to make fights where you needed sprint. Now that all tanks have a gap closer I wouldn't be surprised to see bosses teleporting around the arena more often. Being able to better predict what players can do is what leads to them developing content around what can be done. In other mmos with far more diverse class systems you have freedom and at the same time you don't. You're able to make the best class while at the same time making the worst class. FFXIV has been applauded for being one of the few mmos where job balance isn't too askew and it mostly comes down to how fun a class is to play.

[Ayer2015]

What role actions are now is what they should have been in 4.0.

[Canadane]

I'm fine with role actions but it'd be kinda nice if each class using them would have unique animations for them. A bit unreasonable I suppose, but that's more or less what gives the jobs their identity, visually.

[Fawkes]

I wonder if they will all still be available while level-synced.

[Bsrking5]

I wonder if they will all still be available while level-synced.

Don't see why not. They don't remove them right for it.

[guardin]

probably next xpac for better animations or less button bloat. the classes are near perfect now idk what else they can add

[Pomelo]

I think they roll the dice for some of the role actions. Repose...lol.
It's constantly changed every expansion, I remember when we healers had Blizzard 2 and Summoner had Thunder lol