Occult crescent feels safe and mid

[AbyssKupo]

Disagree, more of this please. Make people work for relics. They're meant to be a status symbol or can at least be revered as such by the playerbase.
The HW grind was one of the best for relics that we have ever had.

No one is doing relics as a status symbol.

[VeyaAkemi]

Sounds to me like you have not really engaged with the possibilities that Lost Actions and Essences allowed you to do. You could transform any class into any role, some lost actions dramatically changed how you played your jobs rotation too. All of those things are not possible with what Phantom Jobs provide. In terms of depth, if Lost Actions were a swimming pool, Phantom Jobs are puddle.

So I am on the camp of preferring Phantom Jobs, and here's my take:

First, "transforming any class into any role" is pointless to me, I sincerely do not care about that, at all, I have every Job at max level, if I want to play another role, I go into my gearset list, and click the one I want, Bozja WHM isn't one of my favorite playstyles in the game because it is White Mage, it's because of what it does, it could be literally any Job, and I'd love it as much.

Second, Phantom Jobs are overwhelmingly more flavorful than anything Bozja has to offer, Oracle's Predict is single-handedly a more interesting skill to me than the entire Lost Action catalogue combined, and Berserker enables a completely unique playstyle in the game which, done correctly, can allow you to literally hit for millions, those being just two examples.

Third, the depth of Lost is incredibly pointless to me, yes, in theory there is a huge depth of options... in practice there is like, maybe 15 options total worth considering, anything else is a meme.

Fourth, the potential for insanity is still very much there, abusing Pent-Up Rage, Starfalling at every opportunity survivability be damned, even more boring things like just turning every attack into a crit dire hit for the next 20 seconds, and it encourages not only finding the right Phantom Job for you, but the right Job for your Phantom Job, some combinations are just so much cooler than others, the synergy between the zone actions and the actual Jobs feels much greater as a result, I found myself swapping Jobs in OC a lot just to try out different combinations, even if a lot didn't work, some of it really did.

Fifth, the fact that power progression is tied to Phantom Job leveling is actually really cool to me, I am trying so much that I would've turned my nose to, this may be sound like a broken record, but to bring up Zerker again because it is so damn unique, I hated Rage at first, I do not like losing control of my character so I was determined to ignore it, but then when I had to spend several hours with that button on my screen, I was tempted to click it a few times, and as it turns out, Rage has a few fun applications, and allows you to bypass a few mechanics, like the fire/ice imps in the Mindflayer CE, just be in rage while the Mindflayer uses Mind Blast, and you avoid the debuff entirely, and that unique interaction made me curious to what others there could be, even just Rage, and it's something I am going to try out when I have the chance.

To make the point short, the fact that Phantom Jobs don't necessarily aim to be broadly generic makes them far more individually interesting to me, not all are winners, but enough are that I value that individual uniqueness far more than what came before.

[Valence]

Yeah it's pretty funny in a way because the fun combinations or broken combinations found in phantom job actions work on tanks. It's like the whole phantom job catalogue was designed for tanks.

[Iyrnthota]

No one is doing relics as a status symbol.

In fairness, I think that's his point. Relics are so easy to obtain as to be expected, not respected.

[FuturePastNow]

I'm a little impressed whenever I see someone with ARR relics. They're not a difficult achievement but they require some endurance

[Latorn]

The comparison to a hunt train is unfortunate, but true. With 72 players in them, I haven't been in a single CE that has failed- which is a far cry from the Bozja/Zadnor days where CE wipes were not uncommon. The fact that there is no fail state just makes it feel like a hunt train grind, coupled with the fact that there is no incentive to get better at the CEs.

In Bozja/Zadnor if you did flawless in a CE you would get the chance to be invited to a duel, that incentive was something for players to work toward. In Occult Crescent they even have a battle high buff, but it is randomly assigned instead of awarded to players that don't get hit in CEs? Very strange design decision IMO.