Are you happy with role actions? If not, how would you rework them?

[Fourbestintoner]

Foresight was never 20% mit but they could have just made it that instead of making it SOULLESS.
Bring back shadow shadowskin, leeches, etc.

[ReynTime]

Not in the least. I would revert us to Cross Class skills.

This a 100%.

I don't care what turbo-casuals think. This is a game that promotes being every job in 1 character... It really was never the end of the world to level a job to sub 50 to learn actions you could equip on another job. And that was back when leveling from 1 to 60 took much longer than it does now.
If anything it gave more gratification for leveling other classes. Only reason most people level other jobs now is to flex they leveled other jobs.

[Valence]

It’s so strange that we have role actions that are specifically just actions ripped off one class and made universal even if they don’t fit (esuna being a water skill for example when SCH is a wind aspected class or rampart straight up using a “putting a shield up” like animation) but then there is two specific examples of skills that do the same thing but have unique animations; namely the 5 rezzes and the 3 phys ranged 90 second mitigations (I would count the tanks 30% but WAR’s is actually slightly unique)

I’m much more a fan of functionally deleting role actions outside of very core actions that the role absolutely cannot function without (which basically amounts to provoke and shirk) and returning all other actions to the classes to fill gaps in levelling caused by old skills being deleted and to give more variety

For example all 4 healers don’t need exactly the same lucid dreaming, AST doesn’t need it at all considering how astrodyne works, SCH could get mana off of eos and embrace casts and SGE could get something else, all 4 having the same button you press at the same time to achieve the same effect with the same animation is boring

Essentially this

[Jade_Tyrant]

I'd take all such "role actions", make them exclusive to their original class and job[...], and if necessary, add appropriately themed versions back to the rest of the classes and jobs in the role.

I like this idea.

I can see how it might be confusing to very new players if role actions were instead a unique 'themed' version for each class/job that had it, but as has been said, that already exists to an extent with stuff like Raise spells, Tank stances, the phys ranged AOE mitigations...

Skills feeling like they fit the job they're on is nice.



In terms of gameplay functionality, I don't have any particularly strong feelings. I started in Shadowbringers, so I have no personal experience to pull from in regards to how the past versions worked and felt in comparison (Stormblood's choices, ARR/HW's cross-class skills). The current version really just feels like certain skills that aren't unique by job, unlike other skills available to every member of a role that are unique per job.

[dspguy]

Not in the least. I would revert us to Cross Class skills.

I thought these were very reasonable. Sure, people complained about getting to level 34 or whatever for swiftcast - but we are talking about a game designed for one character to play every job. The bar to get to 34 was very low back then and it is even lower now. Cross class also made you branch out to other jobs without a huge commitment. Getting to level 22 LNC for Invigorate was no big deal. Bloodbath was level 8. Second Wind was 8. Internal Release (crit up) was 12.

Sure, many of them were junk like Physik since it used MND so you'd never use it. Or Skull Sunder. Plenty were trash. However, they could have reworked the current system. The one we have now is fairly lazy.

[Lyth]

The main issues with the old Cross-Class system were that the 'scavenger hunt checklist' for essential actions were distributed entirely across older jobs, and several of the choices were downright bizarre, like being able to bring across GLD/MRD's Savage Blade and Skull Sunder over to classes that could not utilize them as combo actions in the first place. The former is the reason why some jobs, like DRK, were hit significantly harder by the transition to the Role Action system in Stormblood.

That's not to say that the Role Action system isn't without issues either. I don't really understand the design philosophy around why Rampart was specifically designed as an Role Action when you have Sentinel/Shadow Wall/Nebula with identical wording to each other. Likewise, I don't see why Reprisal was a Role Action when you also have Dark Missionary/Heart of Light with identical wording to each other in the same category. It feels like the dev team themselves are unsure of what the point of this system is, outside of occasionally saving on having to create new animations for the same action across several jobs.

Perhaps the solution is to just introduce slight variations on a theme, and allowing players to unlock new animations and modifiers on a Role Action when they start up a new job. For example, perhaps Rampart is the base action, but unlocking it on DRK lets you use the Shadowskin animation and alter the properties to trade off recast vs. duration or flat DR vs. % DR. I think if it's not specifically designed to allow for player choice and fight-specific optimization, then you're better off just scrapping the system and just duplicating the actions across every job so that we can at least have unique animations for these actions.

[Supersnow845]

The biggest annoyance I have with role actions is definitely flavour wise if they aren’t actually going to make the actions unique

Why am I; a SCH; the only explicitly wind based class in the game using a water skill to cleanse people of debuffs, especially since leeches already exists and is functionally just wind coloured esuna anyway (same as exalted detriment)

While it’s not a massive problem one way or the other if they are going to have identical function skills that overwrite each other (like the ranged mitigation) I’d rather they have their unique animations back to at least maintain the class fantasy a little bit better

[ForsakenRoe]

I am not very happy with 'role actions' for several reasons:

1: They do what need to be done for that role, eg Rampart, but we have the same thing on other jobs where they have unique names and animations (Vengeance/Shadow Wall/Sentinel/Nebula). We could have had Shadowskin and Foresight for WAR/DRK instead of Rampart, and a new 20% for GNB, to preserve job flavour. We also have Raise/Resurrection/Ascend/Eggnog, all four work completely identically, but aren't a standardized role action, yet Esuna is (and cost us Leeches/Exalted Detriment)

2: Half of them for each role do not actually 'need' to be used anymore, for 95%+ of content. Little-nothing in the game requires Interject, Low Blow stun, Repose, Foot/Head/Leg Graze, or Sleep. It's effectively 'Deep Dungeon tools'.

3: Half of them are created from something a specific job had before, but made available to all in the role without a replacement. In fact, when SB originally launched, out of the 10 available Role Action choices, at least 5 (Esuna, Protect, Lucid, Largesse, Cleric) were already in the WHM kit and 'given back' via this 'choice', Eye for an Eye taken from SCH, Swiftcast from BLM. Effectively only 3 of the 10 options were actual new skills, Break (filling in for the Heavy removed from healers because of Stone1/Stella/Miasma's bonus effect being removed), Rescue (so unresponsive it's barely worth using), and Surecast (actually wasn't this one a BLM skill too?)

I once made a thread about how I'd make a raid fight which made a lot of use of these actions, a very long time ago. Never went anywhere, but it shows that I've thought Role Actions are a wasted opportunity for several months already

[mallleable]

They could probably just rename Esuna to like Purify or something if it's that much of a problem. It would also better communicate to players that it's the button to use to remove bad from other players.

[Supersnow845]

It’s job flavour, esuna was specifically designed as a water action because it was designed for WHM, the other three healers aren’t water based healers (though to be fair I have no idea what element SGE is supposed to be aspected to) so using a water VFX feels rather out of place, it’s not the name esuna it’s the actual action itself

Leeches already exists so I don’t know why they thought to remove it, it would just be the same as saying “use your 30%” you would just say “use your purify equivalent”