Phantom Jobs are a step in the right direction but need iteration.

[Supersnow845]

The problem with phantom jobs is that they aren’t actually a “system” per se. They are a few collections of vaguely related lost actions with the interaction carefully stripped out of them and called a system

None of the jobs really even synergise with themselves let alone synergise with your actual job or other phantom jobs. A few have semi interesting “core loops”; namely monks kick buff upkeep, oracles prediction and excog heal, beserkers big hit being linked to damage taken during rage or time mage using haste to remove the cast time on meteor. But even those jobs have other pointless skills thrown in there that really don’t do anything. Monks counter stance like oGCD has nothing to do with its buff, the doom or invuln on oracle have nothing to do with the prediction loop, the dispel, slow and addle have nothing to do with meteor on time mage etc

And that’s the jobs that I’d consider good. There are others that are just dumping grounds for pointless utility like bard or knight, jobs that are functionally fodder for forked tower like chemist ranger or thief and the remaining few like canoneer is just a few damage spells on CD, geo is basically a class only the MT can use and samurai may as well not even exist

So with this system you basically have only the most useful jobs actually doing anything and the rest being a collection of vaguely related utility you mostly don’t use and almost none of the jobs; again with the slight exception of the well designed ones; actually change how you play your actual job and most of the ones that do basically amount to “put yourself in damages to do a lot of damage” which really only benefits the tanks

[Yamadronis]

Do people really have trouble with lost actions? I play bozja casually and along the way I got enough (relevant) lost actions for 3/4 of total relic weapons. I only needed to buy from MB about 3 or 4 times, and their prices were pretty cheap as well. Unless you're attempting to do delubrum savage, you don't really need to grind for those lost actions.

Believe it or not, yes. There was a time when a ton of people were having trouble with it. Certainly they weren't as nasty to get as some logograms, but they can be tough to farm alone, and for a while you had gil farmers monopolizing spawns in instances rendering people unable to acquire them except via gil. Some players don't do Adventurer in Need and have significantly less gil. Some spend their gil on cosmetics. Some help their FC mates by buying or making them gear. There are plenty of reasons a player might not have enough gil to feel comfortable spending it on a needlessly huge stack of lost actions.

More to the point, the way those items were set up triggered the very common Item Goblin Syndrome, where players felt they had to reserve their most ideal or most fun or rarest combinations of lost actions for content where it really mattered. The reality of how replenishable the supply is doesn't really factor into a person's hoarding instinct, and it diminishes the experience. This is why you don't see too many people playing Chemist or Samurai on Occult Crescent but see a TON of Cannoneers and Berserkers. The first two require an investment of consumables and there are other options with similar utility or damage for less constant investment.

[Supersnow845]

Believe it or not, yes. There was a time when a ton of people were having trouble with it. Certainly they weren't as nasty to get as some logograms, but they can be tough to farm alone, and for a while you had gil farmers monopolizing spawns in instances rendering people unable to acquire them except via gil. Some players don't do Adventurer in Need and have significantly less gil. Some spend their gil on cosmetics. Some help their FC mates by buying or making them gear. There are plenty of reasons a player might not have enough gil to feel comfortable spending it on a needlessly huge stack of lost actions.

More to the point, the way those items were set up triggered the very common Item Goblin Syndrome, where players felt they had to reserve their most ideal or most fun or rarest combinations of lost actions for content where it really mattered. The reality of how replenishable the supply is doesn't really factor into a person's hoarding instinct, and it diminishes the experience. This is why you don't see too many people playing Chemist or Samurai on Occult Crescent but see a TON of Cannoneers and Berserkers. The first two require an investment of consumables and there are other options with similar utility or damage for less constant investment.

The reason you don’t see anyone playing chemist or samurai is because those jobs don’t do anything

If I wanted a class that couldn’t do anything but raise id play a healer and samurai decided “Gil toss” was enough to build a phantom job around

Like at least oracle kinda makes you think

[Yamadronis]

None of the jobs really even synergise with themselves let alone synergise with your actual job or other phantom jobs. A few have semi interesting “core loops”; namely monks kick buff upkeep, oracles prediction and excog heal, beserkers big hit being linked to damage taken during rage or time mage using haste to remove the cast time on meteor. But even those jobs have other pointless skills thrown in there that really don’t do anything. Monks counter stance like oGCD has nothing to do with its buff, the doom or invuln on oracle have nothing to do with the prediction loop, the dispel, slow and addle have nothing to do with meteor on time mage etc

And that’s the jobs that I’d consider good. There are others that are just dumping grounds for pointless utility like bard or knight, jobs that are functionally fodder for forked tower like chemist ranger or thief and the remaining few like canoneer is just a few damage spells on CD, geo is basically a class only the MT can use and samurai may as well not even exist

So with this system you basically have only the most useful jobs actually doing anything and the rest being a collection of vaguely related utility you mostly don’t use and almost none of the jobs; again with the slight exception of the well designed ones; actually change how you play your actual job and most of the ones that do basically amount to “put yourself in damages to do a lot of damage” which really only benefits the tanks

This is, very much a critical problem with them. One of the big reasons for this seems to be that they are afraid to give these jobs that synergy or uniqueness for balance reasons. Some of the jobs could be made pretty amazing just by tweaking some durations, values or targets. The jobs really feel like they wanted to put in a bunch of quirky ideas that they didn't feel would fit in the main game, balance wise, but then decided it all had to be balanced anyway, so there aren't any ridiculous in job synergies outside of Geomancer, and, as you mentioned, that job certainly has skills that primarily benefit tanks because two of them require you to be hit regularly to do anything. They legitimately added an invulnerability skill to a class with a self-damage nuke and made it not self targeting. It's blatantly obvious that they're avoiding it on purpose. If you are adding a system to standalone content, if should first and foremost be "fun" and "interesting" before it is "balanced".

[Yamadronis]

The reason you don’t see anyone playing chemist or samurai is because those jobs don’t do anything

If I wanted a class that couldn’t do anything but raise id play a healer and samurai decided “Gil toss” was enough to build a phantom job around

Like at least oracle kinda makes you think

I strongly disagree in some respects. I think playing around with the Chemist rez on With Extreme Prejudice is some of the most fun I've had in occult crescent, and if it didn't cost a tremendous amount of resources and grind to do so, I'd openly spend encounters looking for people to spam potions and ethers at. Samurai is is a bit of a less clear case. Its cleave can be nice in a few critical engagements and its parry has some occasional fun use cases that can change how you engage with an encounter, like parrying the tentacles in scourge of the mind or the half room cleave in The Unbridled. Its stun, of course, does absolutely nothing to CE and fate bosses and might as well not exist.

[Valence]

I think those phantom jobs are the very image of their current pve job design.

[Jeeqbit]

Do people really have trouble with lost actions? I play bozja casually and along the way I got enough (relevant) lost actions for 3/4 of total relic weapons. I only needed to buy from MB about 3 or 4 times, and their prices were pretty cheap as well. Unless you're attempting to do delubrum savage, you don't really need to grind for those lost actions.

There was no issue with Lost Actions.

However, casual players were not smart enough to use them or understand them. So they went into DR without them and DR took 40-60 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The bosses took so long that it was miserable and made me not want to do it again. The fights themselves were really good, yet the lack of action usage was that bad.

A benefit of Phantom Jobs is it's something casual players are far more likely to grasp.

[FuturePastNow]

I like the system. It's nice that I can just drop out of the zone and then go back in and I haven't lost anything. I dislike consumables, though they are a reason to play when they're earned in the zone. But I don't like all the phantom jobs, some of them are clearly just dumping grounds for utility needed in Forked Tower, and completely useless otherwise.

Like Thief. Thief is a completely useless job. It adds nothing to the zone outside the Tower. You can steal gold! But it's the least efficient gold farming method. No one would use Bard or Time Mage over any alternative. Ranger's damage buff is the only button anyone would press outside of the Tower, and that's sad.

[Yamadronis]

No one would use Bard or Time Mage over any alternative. Ranger's damage buff is the only button anyone would press outside of the Tower, and that's sad.

I happen to really like time mage on PCT for the sole reason that Occult Quick lets me cast my motifs while moving in a CE. Swiftcast comet isn't the best available damage option overall, but it is the quickest way to generate credit if you're late for a fate out of all the options other than throwing money at it. Slowga is... less good since gold farming can be done easily with a cannons party, but if for some reason you can't get one of those together, it can make less efficient farms much less stressful.

Thief really got shafted by Occult Sprint not being 100% uptime. Pilfer Weapon is not terrible from a debuff standpoint as it stacks with the already existing reductions, but it's also unnecessary mitigation in current content. Not sure why you say that about ranger. Occult Featherfoot is great utility for any content and Occult Unicorn is basically Shake It Off on any class you want. Falcon is objectively pointless outside of Forked, though. It'd be nice if it could be used on static elements in CEs. I'd hoped it could be used on the rocks in On the Hunt or maybe the idols in from Times bygone, but nope.

[Andevom]

I wish deep dungeons would do something similar aswell, just experiment, let us become for atleast short time in a restricted place be ridiculously powerful or make really fun combos!

I wholeheartedly agree that Deep Dungeons would really benefit from this.

I love all of them, but Orthos is a slog to get through the starting floors compared to its predecessors, and they're starting to test the limits of how they can innovate around the same gameplay style.