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

[Supersnow845]

I don't know, if you actually compare Phantom Jobs to lost actions, they are worse in every way except for a few minor things.

Pros:

• Neat interactions in the forked tower
• Non-consumable

Cons:

• Not customizable or flexible. You pick one job and thats it, no mix and match, no synergizing abilities...
• Only minorly changes gameplay. They only have one or two actions per job you actually use and sometimes none.
• Weak compared to lost actions. The way you could combine these to make nutty builds was insane and so fun. Still to this day I can do more damage in Bozja AS A TANK than I can as in any DT content.
• Outside of forked tower, there are only a few ones that are actually useful. Why would anyone play monk?

Looks to me like this was a major step in the wrong direction.

Funnily enough monk is actually one of the most broadly useful jobs. That’s flat 27% buff that’s not conditional (like say needing to get hit on geo to make bell stacks) combined with the fact that each hit of phantom kick is like 150 potency in phantom actions means overall it increases your damage more than just about any other phantom job (more if you luck into parrying a raidwide)

It’s funny that it’s basically equivalent to just equipping skirmisher but hey phantom actions are bad so what the hell

[Altina_Orion]

Funnily enough monk is actually one of the most broadly useful jobs. That’s flat 27% buff that’s not conditional (like say needing to get hit on geo to make bell stacks) combined with the fact that each hit of phantom kick is like 150 potency in phantom actions means overall it increases your damage more than just about any other phantom job (more if you luck into parrying a raidwide)

It’s funny that it’s basically equivalent to just equipping skirmisher but hey phantom actions are bad so what the hell

No

Not true because oracle and cannoneer just do more. a 27% buff is nothing compared to cannons, starfall, or sam. It's just straight up less damage. A 27% buff seems nice but when you find out oracle's one ability does as much as a two minute burst in one GCD, it doesnt sound so great anymore. And even if it is the equivalent of skirmisher, its skirmisher with nothing else. Pair skirmisher with a banner of power and lost excellence and you'll see what i mean.

[Supersnow845]

No

Not true because oracle and cannoneer just do more. a 27% buff is nothing compared to cannons, starfall, or sam. It's just straight up less damage. A 27% buff seems nice but when you find out oracle's one ability does as much as a two minute burst in one GCD, it doesnt sound so great anymore. And even if it is the equivalent of skirmisher, its skirmisher with nothing else. Pair skirmisher with a banner of power and lost excellence and you'll see what i mean.

That’s why I specifically said also including phantom kick and counter stance giving it enough damage to make it “one of the most broadly useful jobs” and “more than just about any other job”

Oracle is dangerous (using cleanse is a loss compared to monk) and canonneer doing more damage is based on your chance of hitting counterstance and how much 27% helps you (like DPS vs healer)

It doesn’t do the most damage but like I said it’s one of the most broadly useful jobs because it can do some of the most damage, has sustain and is equally useful on any class. Which way it falls with canonneer is based on a variety of factors

[Shurrikhan]

And even if it is the equivalent of skirmisher, its skirmisher with nothing else. Pair skirmisher with a banner of power and lost excellence and you'll see what i mean.

Are we honestly caring this much about raw output? We get tuned around it regardless...

Mightn't the main perk of a Monk, small though it is, be the self-heal, the counter-attack, and the gap-closer, with the damage bonus mostly just a minor means of further differentiation by flavoring itself after Monk's former ramp-up?

[Altina_Orion]

Are we honestly caring this much about raw output? We get tuned around it regardless...

Mightn't the main perk of a Monk, small though it is, be the self-heal, the counter-attack, and the gap-closer, with the damage bonus mostly just a minor means of further differentiation by flavoring itself after Monk's former ramp-up?

Getting tuned around it isn't entirely true. Bozja/Zadnor regular CEs are designed for 0/0/0 + no lost actions in mind, but allow you to be OP if you choose to be. And you can REALLY pump in those duties and I find it quite fun. DRS did expect more from you but only because its a savage version.

[Shurrikhan]

Getting tuned around it isn't entirely true. Bozja/Zadnor regular CEs are designed for 0/0/0 + no lost actions in mind, but allow you to be OP if you choose to be. And you can REALLY pump in those duties and I find it quite fun. DRS did expect more from you but only because its a savage version.

Which the devs seemed to have found to be an unintended result, guessing from our closest equivalent to normal Forked Tower.

My point, though, was that allowing people to "be OP" in the sense of just hitting a bloated consumable and passively dealing 40% more damage... means that if the content pieces aren't tuned around that, they'll just, in effect, get steamrolled instead.

Tbh, I don't understand why anyone would want that. It's just a hoop to jump through for basic output and/or a backwards optional difficulty modifier (don't do X to be allowed a challenge; do bloat step X to largely remove the preexisting challenge).

I'm all for interesting lost actions making a return, and would even like to see some of the role-swap capacity of certain Essences make a return, but I have zero interest in getting back the purely positive "output" of the other (or the excesses in) Essences.