I Miss Cross-Class Skills

[MsQi]

Most of them were useless. The ones that were useful were mandatory. It was a bad system

That's a non sequitur. You talk about bad ability choices, but conclude that the system was bad.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's a non sequitur. You talk about bad ability choices, but conclude that the system was bad.

A system can be bad when the sum of its parts are either mandatory or useless.

You could have the most varied and amazing cross class system available. It would still be a bad system when there were clear winners and losers in terms of skills available. Otherwise they'd just have to be ability glamour for appearance, which is equally lame.



Take tank choices for example. Provoke was a gladiator skill. You didn't get it on war unless you leveled gla to 22. This means, at endgame, there could be players who didn't have an essential skill for tanking. This is a bad system.

[seraseth]

The one thing I liked about it was it gave more options for starting the game with a partner. I can't remember now what I wanted to be, but I remember starting as pug because he wanted to be blm, and that way I could start in uldah with him and just lvl the cross class(or subjob) of pug first.

[Sloprano]

I found them to be a better alternative to Role Actions. Forcing me to play other classes, even other roles, let me see fights and Duties from other perspectives and taught me more about mob positioning and why DPS were eager to keep moving as not to lose buffs or stacks.

I got another incentive through Role Quests, but I would love to see secondary and tertiary classes return. For example, in order unlocked this healer job you need to have played a tank and/or DPS job to 30 first.

[Shurrikhan]

Most of them were useless. The ones that were useful were mandatory. It was a bad system

It was a bad iteration. There's a difference. A bad coin-toss doesn't make 50-50 chances fundamentally stacked against you.

Present system: Not a single job has anything to do with each other. You are not a hero who has mastered various professions; you merely are each profession, separately. You slay gods on one and compete with squirrels on the next. Everything restarts from the level floor with zero accumulation.

Old System: Hey, you know that thing you learned that seems like it should still be applicable when using this other, similarly heavy and bladed weapon? Well, it is.

The only necessary component of that system was that you were encouraged to level more than one job. That was it. The rest -- how poor or strong your particular job's cross-class skills were -- is iteration.

[Shurrikhan]

Fracture on mnk was a dps loss.

That's just wrong. It was a dps increase unless it delayed Demolish by a tick, Touch of Death by more than one tick, cost you a Bootshine within DK/Twin window, or drained your TP when you have no downtime in which to restore it. Even with Dragon Kick up, Fracture still had more relative potency than True Strike.

It was a TP-hog, no doubt, requiring a long jump period (optimally, per 3 minutes) to regenerate its excessive cost via a free Purification, but it was in fact a dps gain over any appropriate rotational string. Fracture was actually a far more often viable skill on Monk than on Warrior, its native job.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's just wrong. It was a dps increase unless it delayed Demolish by a tick, Touch of Death by more than one tick, cost you a Bootshine within DK/Twin window, or drained your TP when you have no downtime in which to restore it. Even with Dragon Kick up, Fracture still had more relative potency than True Strike.

It was a TP-hog, no doubt, requiring a long jump period (optimally, per 3 minutes) to regenerate its excessive cost via a free Purification, but it was in fact a dps gain over the given rotational string.

Apparently it was drg that was the loss. Still, not a great example as it was situational at best.

[YojimboM]

Apparently it was drg that was the loss. Still, not a great example as it was situational at best.

It was also a gain/required skill for Warrior in HW. Landing Fracture at the end of Berserk was pretty much the only min/max Warrior had.

[AduroT]

I definitely liked the idea of the sub job system in XI, though admittedly I didn’t get terribly far in that game due to how much harder it was to solo content so I cant speak for how well it held up at higher levels.

[Duskane]

i never had a issue with them since i started with Drg
theres most the good role skills and a i needed Mrd to 15 and mercy stroke wasnt too far off

I just needed GLD for Provoke pretty much when i started playing Drk

but i can understand why people hated them and why they left