Quote Originally Posted by Karen_Cerfrumos View Post
it was also giga jank on every level and no there weren't "multiple viable builds", there was one way to play correctly
It wasn't giga jank. But there certainly weren't, "Builds." Just Cross-class skills, which did have a few iterations per job that were better for certain situations.

Like you didn't always want your raid important cross class skills if you were soloing for instance, like in Palace of The Dead.

Certain cross class skills were better in dungeons.

But you could only set 5 at a time as a counter to button bloat, so most people looked up what they needed for raid, and then didn't bother with anything else. And a lot of people also just didn't bother. Every so often you'd run into a healer that didn't have Swiftcast unlocked from level 26 Thaumaturge.

Interpreting OP charitably, if they weren't referring to cross-class skills, perhaps they were referring to party comps. Heavensward wasn't the first time there was a meta party comp, because all meta comp means is what's best at the time mathematically (and actually changes on a fight by fight basis depending on what phases do).

It was however responsible for introducing one that was malms better than other ones, due to that comp stacking damage increasing debuffs on the monster. And that party comp was WAR DRK NIN DRG BRD MCH AST SCH.

Any road...

TP was a great mechanic. Resource management takes extra thought, and the better you were at it, the less you had to demand that a BRD or MCH use Army's Paeon or Muscle Relaxant to restore the party's TP. It also incentivized folks to deal in optimal skill speed builds, so that they didn't overvalue the weakest DPS substat. It also made death more punishing, to incentivize better play. More than that, TP MAKES SENSE. No physical fighter, however godly conditioned, can swing a sword forever. TP costs were relative to the difficulty of the action performed. Big AOE swings costed big TP because it's harder to swing your sword through multiple foes than it is to swing it through one. It's the same rationale as MP and AOE spell cost, which if my glance over incoming 14 changes, they're making it not cost more than single target... Begs the question of why keep MP at all? Literally it's about to be a resource that is only for limiting our number of raises with the cost to spells to just be to keep it consistent across casters.