Upkeep abilities

[Vidu]

Personally I would love to never have to spam form shift in between every encounter.

...but isnt that - in some way - something that makes the job more intresting or challenging to play?

I dont play any of those jobs enough to actually say, but right now I'm leveling Samurai and its very, very easy to keep up Jinpu and Shifu (and I imagine its something a career samurai doesnt even has to think about), but its still something I need to take into consideration. Same when I was leveling blackmage: Yes, its easy enough by now to keep it up (thankfully, having this one-second garce period or whatever it was was painful), but its still something you have to do if you want to optimise your gameplay.
Its not super difficult, but its something you have to do - and if you fail to do that, you get punished.

To me this sounds like it would make jobs even more streamlined and the jobs in questions easier - which I dont think is necessary or even good... if you dont like keeping an eye on keeping up your buffs, there are jobs that dont require that and personally I like that variety. Personally I've also never really been a fan of stances - feels super boring to just turn your stance on at the beginning of a fight and then never worry about it again. Why even have the stance then? (As a paladin main I can see why tanks have it - so that you can have an offtank without a stance, but damn its unengaging to just hit shield oath at the start of an instance and then... its done.)
And, as you said yourself: During normal gameplay its not that difficult (anymore) - but that doesnt mean we just need to toss it alltogether...

[GrumbleBeard]

The ability to keep buffs up continuously is a better fit for the this game and makes upkeeping them feel more relevant.

What do you lose if they got rid of those three abillities? There is no challenge in keeping greased lighting, you do it in the beginning of the fight and never worry about it again. Same with Blood of the Dragon. Imagine if those buttons didn't exist, you just started the fight with whatever buff they would give you. Now the buttons that activate and maintain them (few for dragoon, many for monk) could be replaced with abilities that are actually engaging to use.

...but isnt that - in some way - something that makes the job more intresting or challenging to play?

I dont play any of those jobs enough to actually say, but right now I'm leveling Samurai and its very, very easy to keep up Jinpu and Shifu

The abilities that I'm talking about are not like Jinpu/Shifu, they are abilities that lock you out of other abilities until you press the button and then forget about it, with a few exceptions. I have no problem with regular upkeep buff moves. Now imagine that as samurai, you had to press a button at the start of the fight that would allow you to use your iajutsu, and after you pressed the button the buff would pretty much never fall off. Does pressing that button at the start of a fight make samurai more interesting or difficult to play? No. It's just an unnecessary step.

These three abilities were all much more interesting and engaging in heavensward, where their upkeep was a bit more difficult or tied to other mechanics, but they are a shell of what they used to be. I just don't think anything would really change if they were removed.

[PyurBlue]

What do you lose if they got rid of those three abillities?

In general I'd have less to focus on in combat. Having an abundance of refresh abilities doesn't make it impossible to fail at upkeeping. The refreshers just keep you from being punished by encounter design (gaps in combat). As a side effect they make poor buff management less punishing, but you're still going to be punished for using your out of combat refresher in combat by dealing no damage. I guess than leans the punishment away from casual play and more towards hardcore, but I guess that's OK.

For the ones you specifically mentioned, Enochian is fine and all of the above applies to it. I'm not as familiar with the other two because I don't raid with MNK or DRG but I know they tend to have more margin/refresh more often than Eno. That could be changed by reducing their time if it's a problem, or adding a risky alternative to refreshing them. They don't need to be removed or have their refreshes removed.

There is no challenge in keeping greased lighting, you do it in the beginning of the fight and never worry about it again. Same with Blood of the Dragon. Imagine if those buttons didn't exist, you just started the fight with whatever buff they would give you. Now the buttons that activate and maintain them (few for dragoon, many for monk) could be replaced with abilities that are actually engaging to use.

I see what you're getting at but in practical terms the buttons don't really cost us anything (and GL doesn't have a button if I remember). A one use button can be placed in the most remote spot on your hotbars without being a bother because you only need to press it once. Also while I tend to favor complexity over simplicity, adding more buttons is not the best way to make a job interesting. Having decisions to make and limitations to work with tends to create a better rotation in my opinion, and you can do that with a relatively small set of skills. I think BLM is a good example. In SB it was a little too Fire IV heavy, but Despair alone fixed that and made it a bit more interesting to play. I don't think the job needs any more skills at this point. If it did, there are some underused skills to revamp already (Scathe, Fire II, Blizzard I).

[GrumbleBeard]

Reply

I can agree with a lot of your points. I'm just looking at things through the lens of the changes that have occurred over each expansion.
-In HW, greased lightning was more difficult to keep up due to the shorter duration and less abilities to retain it, which at least gave tornado kick some small value, but since then it feels less and less important. At least in SB you could gain it fast/use TK regularly but it serves no other purpose now than getting it in the beginning.
-Dragoons Blood of the dragon had the interesting play of lowering the time when using Geirskogul versus raising it using the 4th combo abilities, but since then it is just set it and forget it
-blm is the one I'm least familiar with, but didn't enochian used to shorten each time you refreshed and had a longer cooldown to reapply it? The poster above me makes a good case for it's use, but I think with how short the cooldown is to reuse it when you do lose it, there is not too much punishment outside of optimizing damage.

I just don't see a future where these abilities ever really feel like they have impact like they used to. I guess an example would be Dark knights darkside buff. In HW it constantly drained mana in exchange for damage and was balanced around multiple mp regaining/spending moves. In SB it was gutted into a set-it-and-forget-it button, then in ShB it was dropped completely for new spenders that give the buff. I'm just surprised these other abilities haven't gotten the same treatment since they seem to be heading in the same direction.