Thoughts on removing role actions?

[Renathras]

I'm mixed on this. On the one hand, it can sound good on paper, but if every healer has its own Esuna (which we DID once have - SCH's was called "Leeches" from the Doctrine of Humors era medicine, and I'm not sure AST's but I know it had one) that does the exact same thing anyway, it's a pointless change that just adds more icons and spell IDs to the game without achieving anything.

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm mixed on this. On the one hand, it can sound good on paper, but if every healer has its own Esuna (which we DID once have - SCH's was called "Leeches" from the Doctrine of Humors era medicine, and I'm not sure AST's but I know it had one) that does the exact same thing anyway, it's a pointless change that just adds more icons and spell IDs to the game without achieving anything.

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

Except, they do not have to be mere reskins/renames/retitles of the same ability.

Leeches: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally, restoring 800 MP if removing a magical effect. Your next Energy Drain upgrades to Energy Spike, also inflicting the debuff onto the enemy struck."

Exalted Detriment: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally. Casting a second time on the same target within 3 seconds will grant target a beneficial effect opposite to the earlier effect removed. Duration and effectiveness of this effect is limited." (Has a reduced, 60% of GCD recast time, but higher MP costs.)

Esuna: "Removes a detrimental status effect from self or target ally. On critical heal, removes a second status effect." (Builds and is affected by, but does not consume, stacks of Water's Wake. Water's Wake: Decreases the cast and recast time of your next healing spell and increases its critical hit chance by 20% per stack.)

Etc., etc.

[Seku]

Some should stay. Most can go. Some are basically worthless and shouldn't be there, others can be worked into the jobs. But if they are going to keep them, hopefully they put in content where they actually have use. Like has anyone used Leg or Foot graze in any content that matters and it would have made a difference? If so, when was this? Because as far as I know they seem to focus mainly on Interrupts and / or stuns that tanks should be doing.

[Zairava]

Snip.

The point would be to remove them, and especially the one's with little to no overall purpose in general and to replace them with actions unique to that job. Not to just replace almost all of them with actions with the same effect.

Moreover, some Jobs (a lot of Jobs, honestly) already have some issues with button bloat. If we remove things just to add things...not sure how much it will really save us.

Snip.

I'll handle the controversial ones first.
Arm's Length/Surecast: Removed. Gap closers/mobility serve to fill this role, increase the range of those if needed.
Lucid Dreaming: Every caster should just have 200-400 more mp gen added passively, managing mana on casters is already a non-issue with this ability, and would make dying have more consequence with it removed.
Swiftcast: This would cause some uproar, but is back to a BLM ability in it's own kit. Give each resurrection on healers a lower cast time to around what a Verthunder/Veraero is.

I will not be listing those again, so remember what I say here will keep them being removed in mind.

• Tanks:

Rampart is removed or is placed back into PLD's kit. Same with Reprisal for DRK.
Shirk is removed, we don't need it for tank swaps, just using provoke and deactivating/activating enmity stance is enough.
Remove stuns in pve as they are almost only used in mob packs in dungeons, which could easily be fixed with a new defensive CD used for the tank(and would also be more effective), thus we pay more attention to interrupts. It would free open a second slot for PLD as well, as shield bash would be removed as it serves basically no other purpose and is basically never used anyway.

I would rather see all tanks have their own version of a taunt(aka provoke) and interrupt.

• Healers:

Repose is removed, where it would be useful you can outrange and heal yourself, and chances are if you're in a dungeon the tank is dead and theres 3-6 mobs on you, not just one.
Rescue is removed, make people have consequences for mistakes.
Give every healer their own version of esuna.

• Ranged physical:

Peloton is back to bard exclusive
Leg, Arm, and head graze are all removed. Let tanks take care of interrupts.

• Melee:

Leg sweep, second wind, and bloodbath are removed, and all melee have some sort of defensive unique to them for survivability (and all but dragoon do already anyway)
At this stage, remove true north and positionals altogether.
Feint gets removed but give each dps some sort of debuff to use anyway. i.e Samurai gets a physical debuff to use, Reaper magical..etc.

• Caster dps:

Sleep and addle removed, same deal with feint.

[Renathras]

...

The thing is, how does that work in FFXIV? Are you going to inflict bosses with Slow or Petrify or Doom? What's the opposite effect of Doom? While they COULD think of individual effects...I'm not sure I want to bet money on that working well...

EDIT:

Arm's Length/Surecast: Removed. Gap closers/mobility serve to fill this role, increase the range of those if needed.

Wait, what? These are for being immune to knockback (AND draw-in) effects. They aren't for mobility or closing gaps. And the only healer/casters with a gap closer anyway are SGE and RDM, SGE during Ifrit only, and BLM only to an ally position.

Arm's Length also doubles as a MITIGATION cooldown for tanks (and melee who have agro): It puts a 20% slow on enemies which slows their recast, thus making them hit less and do less damage. This is actually one of your more powerful mitigation CDs as a tank for AOE dungeon packs...and it's amazing how many people think the debuff is Heavy and not SLOW, which is a different debuff.

Lucid Dreaming:

Honestly, I kind of agree with this one. Lucid right now is basically a button to push on CD. You can save it for some cases, but unless it just comes up after you've been KO'd (or you somehow predict your death to know when to save it), it's kind of just a button you keep on CD anyway, which doesn't do anything ther than passive MP regen, so...yeah.

Swiftcast:

That's what Triplecast is for (BLM only). Swiftcast is also a movement tool for healers and SMN when not used for Raise.

Rampart is removed or is placed back into PLD's kit.

So remove the ability for 3 of the tanks to mitigate boss damage/aoe pack damage? And removing Rampart would mean coming up with 3 other 1 min CDs for the other 3 tanks.

Same with Reprisal for DRK.

No. Reprisal, Feint, and Addle are used in hard content (Savages, Ultimates, somewhat in Extremes), especially when people are gearing up and boss attacks do enough damage to KO people without mitigation. You could argue they just nerf boss damage, but that's just removing a layer of skill and coordination from the game for no reason. AOE Reprisal is also highly useful to tanks in wall to wall pulls or to throw out on bosses before they use unavildable raidwide damage.

Shirk is removed, we don't need it for tank swaps, just using provoke and deactivating/activating enmity stance is enough.

OR...and bear with me here...we could just bake in tank stance and keep Shirk. Shirk can be useful and is much easier to use than toggling tank stance (not that either is hard)

Remove stuns in pve as they are almost only used in mob packs in dungeons, which could easily be fixed with a new defensive CD used for the tank(and would also be more effective), thus we pay more attention to interrupts. It would free open a second slot for PLD as well, as shield bash would be removed as it serves basically no other purpose and is basically never used anyway.

...so remove abilities just to add more abilities? That thing I mentioned above you said wasn't your objective? Not only that, but this community constantly complains about homogenization. This is how you get homogenization - removing unique things like Holy having a stun.

I would rather see all tanks have their own version of a taunt(aka provoke) and interrupt.

...so remove abilities just to add identical or near-identical abilities to replace them? That thing I mentio- well, you get the idea.

Repose

Only useful in RARE solo content, and not that useful since it isn't AOE. At least Sleep is AOE andhas some use. This one I more or less agree on.

Rescue

I disagree with your reasoning, but agree Rescue should be removed or at least do the old PvE Rescue thing by giving a damage mitigation on the target. It's too easy to mess it up and get people killed by accident most of the time. It's not AS worthless as Repose, but I wouldn't likely miss it much (other than hunt trains) if it was gone.

Give every healer their own version of esuna.

...so remove abilities just to add ident- uh...anyone else get a feeling of deja vu?

Peloton is back to bard exclusive

Why?

Leg, Arm, and head graze are all removed. Let tanks take care of interrupts.

Why? At the very least, I'd leave Head Graze, even if removing the others was okay.

Leg sweep, second wind, and bloodbath are removed, and all melee have some sort of defensive unique to them for survivability (and all but dragoon do already anyway)

So remove buttons to add buttons? Second Wind's thing is it's mostly too weak, but Bloodbath and Leg Sweep are useful and I use them frequently. Disagree on those. Though I would like if Second Wind did something a bit more interesting like maybe a slight damage reduction or a HoT.

Agree with True North, though.

Feint gets removed but give each dps some sort of debuff to use anyway. i.e Samurai gets a physical debuff to use, Reaper magical..etc.

...so remove abilities just to add ident- yeah, I'll stop there. I'll also point back to Reprisal above.

Sleep

Though niche, it's actually useful, unlike Repose.

and addle removed, same deal with feint.

Again, see Reprisal.

[Shurrikhan]

The thing is, how does [the Leeches' feature spitballed above] work in FFXIV? Are you going to inflict bosses with Slow or Petrify or Doom?

Doom, no. That has no business ever being on offer to players outside of a cumulative Deathblow mechanic (will deal up to X additional damage, built up over Doom, if and only if the enemy would die from that additional damage) or the like.

Slow, Petrify, Heavy, etc.? Yes, absolutely. Simply have them apply proportionately reduced duration, potency, or the product of both, and with multiple debuffs of the same type able to overlap. (See stat-based debuff potency-duration in other MMOs.)

CC should have a place in this game, both from players and from enemies. Will that require more than a barebone, slapdash approach to DR undermechanics (simply halving duration, rounded up, per further application, removing the penalty after 90s)? Will that require a modern procedure for CC effects on varying enemies? Yes, to both. But that's fine. The game should not be satisfied with the barest of mechanics, and hitting the "Nuke All" button shouldn't be the devs first response to having to otherwise put a modicum of effort into something.

So remove buttons to add buttons?

I.e., "replace lackluster actions with more interesting ones." What's so ridiculous about that? And there are still 2-3 slots saved even after that added quality per button in the resulting job-specific buttons.

[Arm's Length and Surecast] aren't for mobility or closing gaps.

But, as Zairava was referring to, you can cancel any knockback with any gap-closer. Icarus, Aetherial Manipulation, En Avant, Thunderclap, Gyoten... you name it, it cancels knockbacks. If your insistence is that every job needs the ability to cancel/nullify knockbacks, consider ARR/HW.
At present, we have literally only one (easily adjusted) mechanic in the whole game that requires knockback-immunity (and, as it were, many more that kill you or your party for using a knockback immunity). It's far from necessary to have a discrete button for it.

[Azuri]

Hate to disappoint. SE has just added an ultimate where KB prevention is mandatory. It's here to stay forever now.

Same as an interrupt mechanic that requires three players.

But yeah, overall - awful take.

[Zairava]

Snip.

The entire point of this is to remove the abilities to make room for others specific to that job. Actually interesting abilities. Even then, they would still have open slots. They removed kaiten because when they could have made ogi namikiri just replace Ikishoten upon activating it.

And for arm's length, I didn't mention this because I really didn't think I'd have to after already mentioning that the removed actions could be replaced by more mitigation. Its removal makes room for other mitigation to that tank. Bring back convalescence for PLD, Shadowskin for DRK...etc.

I'm not saying to remove Reprisal, I'm saying to put it back on DRK specifically, give the other tanks another ability specific to them for party mit.

Again I'd still rather see have every tank have their own provoke and it be buffed further so swaps aren't an issue. What they do with said job specific provokes is up on the drawing board of ideas. Shirk doesn't really add much to the skill ceiling when we already barely need it, if ever, for swaps as is. What you suggested isn't a bad idea, it's just a different method.

We use Holy because it's the main aoe not because it has that stun. It's useful but hardly makes its use to full capacity because most tanks use CD's subconsciously before it anyway. Is the stun useful mitigation from Holy? yes. But it almost never gets used to it's full potential sadly. Unless they make stuns more prominent I don't see much a reason to keep them in place instead of interrupts. Interrupts could have something added (i.e forces the mob to skip their next auto). You could give Holy something where it blinds mobs for 6s and fall-off (which would make more sense anyway, imo), Gravity can slow mobs by 20%..etc.

In hindsight I'd like phys. ranged to keep their interrupts

Sleep is, under *very* specific circumstances used. It's taking up a place that could be used for something more universally useful on all healers.

I honestly would want to keep addle and feint if nothing else for the reason you stated..

Anyway, they don't have to give all melee a replacement for feint just like they don't need to give all caster dps a replacement for addle. One more ability slot for them to may or may not use. Nerfing damage where only absolutely needed, or making shields stronger, giving tanks more party mitigation, etc.. If anything it would benefit the healers more since they'd have more to do, since the devs are so adamant on not giving them more dps abilities it seems.

I'm firm on my stance with esuna. they can give it an added effect if a debuff is cleansed depending on the healer. say...it giving a regen on whm or shield if scholar, buffing the dps of the target cleansed on AST...etc.

again, all melee except for DRG, have some sort of self-mitigation. Just give one to DRG and make all of them give some sort of slight HoT or other useful effect, Reaper already does and it's party wide.

[Nizzi]

Can't really speak on other roles but I think Lucid and Repose should absolutely be removed. Give Lucid back to WHM as Shroud of Saints and then adjust where necessary for SGE/SCH. AST likely wouldn't need it due to Astrodyne and cards. Repose is for all intents and purposes useless. I also wouldn't mind Rescue being deleted, but I can understand why people would want it to stay.