Role Skills in the future?

[Anhra]

Greetings Citizens of Eorzea,
I wanted to share some thoughts i had on role skills and how i'd like to see them in the future if possible. In my opinion, there is way too few of them.While the old role system we had where you could only select a few ones from a rather modest selection was a great idea in itself, wasn't optimized well enough before it was dropped entirely with a simple "why not just give the player's all of them at once" solution. With the coming of further Expansions we will get (most likely) more and more skills, to the point where it might become overwhelming, instead of that, why not just add a bit more customisation into it and let players decide which skills they would like to take (Skills should have of course, a level restriction to keep the balance in check)?

Healer's for example, while keeping their Job specific Skills should have access to spells that:
-inflict more status ailments such as Poison, Paralyze,Slow or Blind.
-can be used offensivly such as Bane or Holy or even low level Black Magic spells for Scholar/Astrologian
-grand utility such as Reflect (not complete reflect, but a portion of the damage), Berserk/Haste, Protect

Casters: while Casters are fine as they are, they would probably have to undergo a complete rework for such a change if every job had to benefit from this:
-maybe having the low chance to be granted a dual cast buff passively
-a more limited access to Status Ailments compared to Healers
-Drain(with more potency but a longer CD, similar on how second wind works)
-low level Healing skills with long CD's (like physick which SMN has, but with a cooldown of 2+ Minutes with a decent Potency)

-as for the Ailment issue, it should come naturally that certain enemies are of course, immune to certain types of them.

If i am being honest here, i wouldnt know on how to adress this on tanks or melee DPS so i cant say much about it, maybe you guys have a few ideas to share about it?

[DrWho2010]

they got rid of protect because it was a useless spell.
status debuffs are useless because trash mobs in dungeons already die quickly and most if not all bosses are immune to them except for specific scripted telegraphed attacks - which usually the tank/melee/physical ranged can already deal with.
Haste is mostly useless because you can adjust your gcd with skill/spell speed materia and too much of it can be a bad thing.
Drain is a dps loss. that's what your healers are for. if you're a caster out soloing, your chocobo can heal you quite nicely.

these "ideas" come and go and are mostly useless because the system already tried these and evolved out of it.

[Anhra]

Those were mere suggestions on skills for magic focused jobs which id like to see, especially on healers which have now only 1 basic attack spell, 1 DoT that only looks pretty and a AOE for their dps rotation.
while WHM can enjoy his discount-price foul and SCH his Monster Energydrain, AST doesnt even have anything decent at all (imo the old king/queen of crowns were a good idea which used to deal damage/grant a shield) but i am getting off topic here.

the topic is about building up on the idea of role skills for more customisation in the future, while Jobs do feel fleshed out to the point where they simply work by just bursting every enemy down with direct hit/damage skills, i think it would be more fun if they had more room for customisation, where for example, a healer could rely only on DoT skills for doing damage or applying support skills more often rather than spamming broil/malefic/glare all day while dishing out heals which is the same game all healers do. Tanks have a similar feel to it since all they do is taunt everything in range and make sure they time their CD's for tankbusters or similar stuff, but unlike healers, tanks do have at least a handful of rotations and oGCD skills to use on the side.

As for the materia part you mentioned, i do think that trading off materia completely for the sake of more gameplay elements for combat would be a good tradeoff if that would keep the balance in check, but that again, is a matter for another topic.

[DrWho2010]

people say they want "customization" more like they want to have some kind of weird character build so they can feel "unique". really they just want anything to make them feel overpowered in some way. this game is more dependent on player skill than anything else. if you are bad, no amount of "customization" will make you get better. this is just an illusion.

[Anhra]

people say they want "customization" more like they want to have some kind of weird character build so they can feel "unique". really they just want anything to make them feel overpowered in some way.

You make it almost sound as if it is a bad thing to like things.
The main purpose for Customisation is merely adding flexibility to something, or in this case, for jobs in general, it has nothing to do with someone playing bad or not. If anything, customisable skills could even make things more challenging or easier for you depending on how you would want it. Im not asking to turn every Job into a Red Mage, but having Jobs more fleshed out. Would'nt it be fun if Paladin had more access to white magic,or Melee Jobs access to different sets of Rotations? Maybe even allow people to roll classes like gladiator/conjurer/archer and still be viable in endgame content?

[DrWho2010]

you have to consider dev philosophy here tho. they desire balance. have they ever made any indication that they would want to go in such a direction as yours? no. jobs are made to be cookie cutter so that anyone playing can do the same job as someone else. all it comes down to then is how good/bad the person playing is. end of story. therefore there is no point in "wishing" something like your idea to be made possible.

[ADVSS]

you have to consider dev philosophy here tho. they desire balance. have they ever made any indication that they would want to go in such a direction as yours? no. jobs are made to be cookie cutter so that anyone playing can do the same job as someone else. all it comes down to then is how good/bad the person playing is. end of story. therefore there is no point in "wishing" something like your idea to be made possible.

Its totally fine to wish on something, the cross class system did get overhauled completely by 4.0 into cross role skills, but the idea was still very much once a part of FF14 a long long time ago. I actually feel the same way as other posters in the thread, but i'd be ignorant to say you're wrong(about the obvious direction the game has been headed for a very long time) In short to OP, something something something - and thats why we cant have nice things. Palace of the Dead is about as good as we will ever see this game having content that rigid roles do not matter so much. As was stated above me, they've gone the cookie cutter route for balance. All tanks can tank, just as good so theyre balanced. All DPS can dps, and all healers now are 3.0's vision of Astrologian, heals and shields and more heals and heals.

[Anhra]

you have to consider dev philosophy here tho. they desire balance. have they ever made any indication that they would want to go in such a direction as yours? no.

Balance can also exist within specialisation, and if i am being honest here, balance isn't fun in the long run. And i am not saying that they should go towards the direction i like, but i would really appreciate it if it would at least be considered or maybe even give something to discuss for. so i would really appreciate if you could contribute towards the topic in a productive way instead of trying to shoot things because it doesn't suit your palate. All i want is to discuss this topic with other players so that ideas can be shared which maybe, ultimatively, might inspire the dev team for something that could be included in future expansions. I won't expect that every idea listed here will be implimented into the game, but if one or two things mentioned here would be taken into consideration or even just be "important" enough to start a spark for a similar discussion among them, its already a win for everyone.

Maybe i should also make myself a bit more clear with what i am trying to tell here. i am merely suggesting that Skills from every Job should best be divided into 2 larger categories, Job exclusive skills and role exclusive skills. since most jobs within their asigned roles feel, as stated already, more or less the same.

(using healers as reference for this)
Job exclusive is self explaining, its about the Skills which are UNIQUE for their job. This is where the scholar keeps only his shields/fairy abilities, the AST maybe his HoT effects/time magic (?) and the WHM his high level white magic. The Skills in this Tab should have enough potential to keep the player alive in most situations and make every Job feel of what it is suppoest to be, instead of just having the same "cookie cutter" over and over again.

in Role exclusive skills, every healer job in this case, should have access to skills which CAN be taken if it suits the playstyle, like low- to mid-tier White magic skills and some quality of life utility or even attack spells like mentioned earlier. You should'nt be able to pick them all for obvious reasons but a fair amount of them according to your level (maybe one slot every few levels?)