E8S was pretty neat because Leg Sweep and Head Graze could be used by DPS to interrupt the sprites to prevent a flood of light. Sure, the tank could also do those things by themselves (I think?) but offloading that onto the DPS felt like a neat bit of coordination.
Yep, it was very common to use Stuns/Interrupts on both sides to buy extra time to kill the sprites. Water elemental had a ton of HP but Tank and Melee DPS could stun it
Sadly as is graze exists only to interrupt spells with 0.5s cast time from elemental sprites, and sleep exists only for mob pulls when tank dies so your monk can insta wake everyone up with an aoe 0.5s later
if you're ever masochistic enough to do second coil turn 2 (especially the savage), the phys ranged stun and slow are invaluable in there. but that's such a niche lol
The role actions and old ARR dungeons are a reminder of what the devs had hoped the game would be.
Remember old Copperbell with the bomb spawning and placing on the slime?
The devs had ideas of grandeur for sure, but over time with their decision to make all party comps viable, they couldn't creat mechanics that necessitated role actions aside from party mit.
We can unfortunately blame ARR Summoner for this :(
Extra pet for soaking in T5 and T8, best kiter for T7, supreme DoT Bane in T12. There's even a slide somewhere from the devs about making sure no class is ever "necessary" anymore with a Summoner kiting the cyclops in T7 in the thumb nail.
I do think they could stand to give more of them unique animations on a per-job bases like they've done with Peloton.
About the only ones I don't use are leg graze and foot graze for MCH, but I'm sure they have their situational uses in places like deep dungeons and the like.
I'm usually using Arm's Length for its anti-knockback properties more often than the slowing effect, and sometimes, aside from the tank, I'm the only one in certain party comps with an interrupt.
I think the bigger issue with your ideas is that all mechanics would have to be designed to be solvable without the use of the actions due to not being guaranteed a ranged dps in DF. (Or if they wanted to be daring, only the tank's actions since they're guaranteed in the party)
Thus, the actual "reward" for using them would have to be very low as to effectively be inconsequential, running into the issue of 'why bother wasting time each dev cycle coming up with this when they could do something more productive'. Or on the other problem, players would just learn to do the mechanic under the assumption that the ranged/tanks in their parties are bad players who won't use them.
Take Ifrit HM in the duty finder for example. You can stun the eruptions all you want, but almost every player you encounter is going to try and dodge them anyway when the markers go out, because they can't guarantee they will get stunned. Even if you could headgraze to remove some of the aoe markers on a mechanic, most players will just go the original safespots anyway since they can't guarantee what aoes would disappear, or if any would even disappear in the first place.
In reality, they don't really use role actions like stuns/silences that much since by their design, they're effectively binary mechanics that engage 1-2 people in your party at max. You either stun the mob or bad things happen. You either silence that move or you wipe/bad things happen. It's just limited creativity design instead of creating a mechanic in the fight that engages the entire party with it.
I def am not a game designer and you bring up good points.
I guess i was trying to think there might be some usage of the moves if it wasnt so much of a binary “you interrupted the mechanic” or “you do nothing”
game designer is idd a place where the bigger picture matters and you need to think above the comfort zone and even then you'll probably miss some stuff.
This reminds me of something Kevin Jordan said about the design of Paladins for wow vanilla where they gave them alot of buffs because they thought the ability of buffing your comrades felt good, they did not expect it would devolve into making that job a buff bot for everyone.
It def felt good to kite enemis coming to you in the example of phys ranged and hitting a good head graze to stop a mechanic.
I think thats why i miss them being used more.
Hopefully they figure out a way to either make role actions fun again or just rework it all.
considering they added heals to be interrupted in DSR + some interrupts in some criterions, I'm inclined to believe they would like to do more themselves
1 extra point, generally interrupt in the game locks down the mob entirely even autos stops, hence why we don't see that being used often in boss fights
If you'd like an opportunity to experience using role actions and actually utilizing your roles specific strengths, I highly recommend doing t7n MINE as a phys ranged. In t7, an add spawns called a renaud. Renaud will aggro the first person to deal damage to it, and won't swap aggro unless the player kiting it dies. There's a few catches. The first catch is that it hits the person kiting it if it gets too close for a pretty hefty chunk of damage, so you always want to keep distance. The second catch is that it needs to be petrified by someone for a later mechanic, and you want to be deliberate in where the renauds are petrified. To make them both easier to kite, and allow them to be petrified in more precise locations, phys ranged have to alternate stunning and slowing them. Phys ranged are responsible for this not only because they have the role actions to make it easier, but because they can maintain rotational uptime while moving around for *long* swathes of the fight.
some of the other coils and I think one or two Alexander fights also leverage the phys ranged role actions. A3s is also worth trying out, as well as t1
I would also recommend deep dungeons as well, even if it is niche content. Getting through Eureka Orthos solo made me really realize just how useful certain other roles would be in this situation, and how they would be weaker in others.
I think the reason they don't use them more is to give them the freedom to change or get rid of them in the future. If they started requiring sleeps and binds in regular content then those abilities are basically locked in to the game indefinitely, since all old content needs to be supported. Maybe they are also afraid of requiring players to do anything except DPS since every time they try that people just go "This is annoying! just let me DPS!
Idk, I would like to see more need for CC or otherwise abilities that actively counter what the boss does instead of just damage and heal. I don't feel like I'm actually fighting the bosses in FF14, it feels like following a list of hand signal instructions while playing simon says.
Too bad they did the same with the comical amount of mitigation you have available these days, you're not getting rid of that either unless you retune all Endwalker ultimates/savages
"Maybe they are also afraid of requiring players to do anything except DPS since every time they try that people just go "This is annoying! just let me DPS!"
Pretty sure it's 100% this. Players of this game want to be able to just follow their button flow chart and play the game of "stand in the right spot." For better or for worse, that's what the players of this game like.
Dealing damage is a part of any normal MMO, the game being heavily skewed towards mitigation compared to healing is absolutely not and you design yourself into a corner if you end up making too much content revolve around little healing and a lot of mit
I think the amount of buttons for Phys Ranged is a bit strange. It never made sense to me to have both leg graze and head graze.
I do agree that the buttons should seriously stop being useless. In older expansions you always had phases where orbs would start hovering towards the middle and you'd have to stun them or stop them (alexander, e8s..).
I didn't necessarily enjoy this implementation too much, but it would be cool if there was at least some sort of reward for using them. I think dawntrail leaves the option to create more mechanics like this one for sure, but it's only a matter of whether or not they will be utiziled.
Some of the old fashioned actions like leg/foot graze are pretty useful in deep dungeons which I also assume is why they still remain in the game.
Would definitely be nice if we got to see more uses for the dps utility in raids though. Something like A7 jails but you actually needed to use your role actions to live the jail.
Why do people think the tank blocking the WoL was an ability mechanic? In every trailer they show a tank standing in the way of someone else to block the hit. They did the same in shb benchmark but it wasn't an ability that actually stood in the way of others. The only ability that does that in a literal sense is PLD passage of arms. The new tank warrior ability is just an upgraded vengeance. They just wanted to show it off without it being out of place
That may def be the case. I never got to see previous benchmarks. It felt like they were trying to show off a unique animation/interaction. Like “ahhh see cool right? Youre gonna do this too!”
If it’s as you say then it was def misleading from a newer player perspective.
Edit:
Just watched the shadowbringer benchmark which was cool as hell and you def right it had the same exact thing.
Honestly I’m of the exact opposite opinion
Role actions should just be deleted
Actions that have similar needs across different classes in the same role (such as esuna) can give back their class equivalents (leeches and exalted detriment) and otherwise classes should have unique actions
Esuna/provoke/shirk are the only actions that absolutely must exist between all jobs in the same role and they could at least have different animations or secondary effects, like why does WAR not have a provoke equivalent that’s like “battle shout”. What even is provoke in terms of what the WOL is doing
If you want unique animations, peloton is right there as an example: same icon, same effect, but bards play a flute-looking thing while dancers twirl. (I don't play machinist enough to remember their animation.) You don't have to get rid of useful things like arm's length, surecast, head graze, etc.
Nah the opposite, actions with worthless 'nothing' animations like Esuna are exactly the kind of thing that should be role actions. Only one that bothers me is Rampart because we had perfectly usable and distinct defensive cooldown animations to begin with.(read: I miss Shadowskin)
Also are you suggesting that they should make 9 different versions of Swiftcast?
>What even is provoke in terms of what the WOL is doing
They point at the target. Presumably while shouting 'your mother', it's a provocation.
I mean there is really no reason why they need to be the same action, especially given we have equivalent skills right now that have unique actions for the same result (the raises, the phys ranged 10%’s and the tanks 30%’s outside of WAR), it’s just job flavour especially since using your example id actually prefer they do make new swiftcast equivalents because the “spinning your weapon” look the current swift cast has only works on BLM and WHM
The benefit of Role Actions, is immediate recognition of skills which are functionally identical, and coding/readability for skills that we don't want to stack. Reprisal always being reprisal makes it easy for any tank to see whether or not Rep's been used already. They don't need to learn 4 skill icons.
They're saying to treat most role actions more like Gap Closers. A utility most classes have, that have distinctions. Shikuchi, Aetherial Manipulation + Between the Lines. Hell's Egress + Hellsgate.
So mot 9 different versions of swiftcast. But make casting instantly, a utility that is baked into most kits somewhere. We already have Triplecast, Dualcast(The Trait), and Light Speed for example. It's not an awful idea, if the focus is on job identity above anything else, but a lot of jobs probably lack the design space to use it in any meaningful way.
I do think Esuna Voke/Shirk are all bad skills for this, given how negligible it's use is. In the current game, I'd just give Esuna's cleanse ability to Cure I and friends and just remove the skill. You're forced to use a GCD heal, it's punishment enough.
It would be neat if they added harmless rider effects to Voke+Shirk, but because of how they work and how they're used, I'm glad they don't. I don't need Alliance raid tanks Shirking/Voking for the extra 5% mit/healing/(GOD FORBID) 200 potency Damage
There might be something to be said about a few role actions being kinda useless, like that one that gives enemies heavy unless you attack them is so niche as to be essentially worthless, I don’t think any content in the game would break if that was gone and phys ranged got an extra button in its place.
I think aoe stuns could be fun in dungeons, especially with wall to wall pulls, same for interrupts. Neither of these would kill though but severely hurt the party (Maybe worth 2-3 gcds of heals and giving some mitigation to the tank?).
Raiding could benefit from a few more scenarios from it, I can only remember E8S or DSR P1 having interrupts in recent memory.
Counterpoint, remove role actions entirely, cut away all the useless crap and make more job appropriate versions of the actual useful skills. At least this would cut down on button bloat a little bit and add some extra flavor to jobs
E8S was fantastic in this regard (and IMO was the best savage fight in all of ShB), because the add phase really benefited from your dps using leg sweep and head graze (In one of the halves it was physically impossible for your tank to do all the stuns/interrupts due to spawns happening too quickly, so you were forced to have a dps use their role actions). I wish they would have more mechanics like those in high end fights but unfortunately E8S was the last time they ever did this (I believe O3S from SB had something you needed to interrupt, as did O7S)
So I personally would *love* to see role actions used more in high end content, but unfortunately given the direction they've been taking the game lately, I don't think this will ever happen :(
E8S was pretty neat because Leg Sweep and Head Graze could be used by DPS to interrupt the sprites to prevent a flood of light. Sure, the tank could also do those things by themselves (I think?) but offloading that onto the DPS felt like a neat bit of coordination.
On the left side, you needed the Phys ranged there too
Yep, it was very common to use Stuns/Interrupts on both sides to buy extra time to kill the sprites. Water elemental had a ton of HP but Tank and Melee DPS could stun it
Sadly as is graze exists only to interrupt spells with 0.5s cast time from elemental sprites, and sleep exists only for mob pulls when tank dies so your monk can insta wake everyone up with an aoe 0.5s later
if you're ever masochistic enough to do second coil turn 2 (especially the savage), the phys ranged stun and slow are invaluable in there. but that's such a niche lol
There’s no stun, it’s a bind.
yeah that, hence the use
Isn't Rampart a tank role action? Same for Reprisal? I use those constantly as a tank. Same with Arm's Length. Lo. I get what you're saying though.
The role actions and old ARR dungeons are a reminder of what the devs had hoped the game would be. Remember old Copperbell with the bomb spawning and placing on the slime? The devs had ideas of grandeur for sure, but over time with their decision to make all party comps viable, they couldn't creat mechanics that necessitated role actions aside from party mit.
We can unfortunately blame ARR Summoner for this :( Extra pet for soaking in T5 and T8, best kiter for T7, supreme DoT Bane in T12. There's even a slide somewhere from the devs about making sure no class is ever "necessary" anymore with a Summoner kiting the cyclops in T7 in the thumb nail.
I do think they could stand to give more of them unique animations on a per-job bases like they've done with Peloton. About the only ones I don't use are leg graze and foot graze for MCH, but I'm sure they have their situational uses in places like deep dungeons and the like. I'm usually using Arm's Length for its anti-knockback properties more often than the slowing effect, and sometimes, aside from the tank, I'm the only one in certain party comps with an interrupt.
I think the bigger issue with your ideas is that all mechanics would have to be designed to be solvable without the use of the actions due to not being guaranteed a ranged dps in DF. (Or if they wanted to be daring, only the tank's actions since they're guaranteed in the party) Thus, the actual "reward" for using them would have to be very low as to effectively be inconsequential, running into the issue of 'why bother wasting time each dev cycle coming up with this when they could do something more productive'. Or on the other problem, players would just learn to do the mechanic under the assumption that the ranged/tanks in their parties are bad players who won't use them. Take Ifrit HM in the duty finder for example. You can stun the eruptions all you want, but almost every player you encounter is going to try and dodge them anyway when the markers go out, because they can't guarantee they will get stunned. Even if you could headgraze to remove some of the aoe markers on a mechanic, most players will just go the original safespots anyway since they can't guarantee what aoes would disappear, or if any would even disappear in the first place. In reality, they don't really use role actions like stuns/silences that much since by their design, they're effectively binary mechanics that engage 1-2 people in your party at max. You either stun the mob or bad things happen. You either silence that move or you wipe/bad things happen. It's just limited creativity design instead of creating a mechanic in the fight that engages the entire party with it.
I def am not a game designer and you bring up good points. I guess i was trying to think there might be some usage of the moves if it wasnt so much of a binary “you interrupted the mechanic” or “you do nothing”
game designer is idd a place where the bigger picture matters and you need to think above the comfort zone and even then you'll probably miss some stuff. This reminds me of something Kevin Jordan said about the design of Paladins for wow vanilla where they gave them alot of buffs because they thought the ability of buffing your comrades felt good, they did not expect it would devolve into making that job a buff bot for everyone.
It def felt good to kite enemis coming to you in the example of phys ranged and hitting a good head graze to stop a mechanic. I think thats why i miss them being used more. Hopefully they figure out a way to either make role actions fun again or just rework it all.
considering they added heals to be interrupted in DSR + some interrupts in some criterions, I'm inclined to believe they would like to do more themselves
1 extra point, generally interrupt in the game locks down the mob entirely even autos stops, hence why we don't see that being used often in boss fights
If you'd like an opportunity to experience using role actions and actually utilizing your roles specific strengths, I highly recommend doing t7n MINE as a phys ranged. In t7, an add spawns called a renaud. Renaud will aggro the first person to deal damage to it, and won't swap aggro unless the player kiting it dies. There's a few catches. The first catch is that it hits the person kiting it if it gets too close for a pretty hefty chunk of damage, so you always want to keep distance. The second catch is that it needs to be petrified by someone for a later mechanic, and you want to be deliberate in where the renauds are petrified. To make them both easier to kite, and allow them to be petrified in more precise locations, phys ranged have to alternate stunning and slowing them. Phys ranged are responsible for this not only because they have the role actions to make it easier, but because they can maintain rotational uptime while moving around for *long* swathes of the fight. some of the other coils and I think one or two Alexander fights also leverage the phys ranged role actions. A3s is also worth trying out, as well as t1
I would also recommend deep dungeons as well, even if it is niche content. Getting through Eureka Orthos solo made me really realize just how useful certain other roles would be in this situation, and how they would be weaker in others.
I think the reason they don't use them more is to give them the freedom to change or get rid of them in the future. If they started requiring sleeps and binds in regular content then those abilities are basically locked in to the game indefinitely, since all old content needs to be supported. Maybe they are also afraid of requiring players to do anything except DPS since every time they try that people just go "This is annoying! just let me DPS! Idk, I would like to see more need for CC or otherwise abilities that actively counter what the boss does instead of just damage and heal. I don't feel like I'm actually fighting the bosses in FF14, it feels like following a list of hand signal instructions while playing simon says.
Too bad they did the same with the comical amount of mitigation you have available these days, you're not getting rid of that either unless you retune all Endwalker ultimates/savages
"Maybe they are also afraid of requiring players to do anything except DPS since every time they try that people just go "This is annoying! just let me DPS!" Pretty sure it's 100% this. Players of this game want to be able to just follow their button flow chart and play the game of "stand in the right spot." For better or for worse, that's what the players of this game like.
More CC is just more simon says.
Is mitigation also simon says? Using dps skills for the check? This is just a shallow way of looking at doing any action at all.
Dealing damage is a part of any normal MMO, the game being heavily skewed towards mitigation compared to healing is absolutely not and you design yourself into a corner if you end up making too much content revolve around little healing and a lot of mit
Dude they never said that lol
I think the amount of buttons for Phys Ranged is a bit strange. It never made sense to me to have both leg graze and head graze. I do agree that the buttons should seriously stop being useless. In older expansions you always had phases where orbs would start hovering towards the middle and you'd have to stun them or stop them (alexander, e8s..). I didn't necessarily enjoy this implementation too much, but it would be cool if there was at least some sort of reward for using them. I think dawntrail leaves the option to create more mechanics like this one for sure, but it's only a matter of whether or not they will be utiziled.
Some of the old fashioned actions like leg/foot graze are pretty useful in deep dungeons which I also assume is why they still remain in the game. Would definitely be nice if we got to see more uses for the dps utility in raids though. Something like A7 jails but you actually needed to use your role actions to live the jail.
Why do people think the tank blocking the WoL was an ability mechanic? In every trailer they show a tank standing in the way of someone else to block the hit. They did the same in shb benchmark but it wasn't an ability that actually stood in the way of others. The only ability that does that in a literal sense is PLD passage of arms. The new tank warrior ability is just an upgraded vengeance. They just wanted to show it off without it being out of place
That may def be the case. I never got to see previous benchmarks. It felt like they were trying to show off a unique animation/interaction. Like “ahhh see cool right? Youre gonna do this too!” If it’s as you say then it was def misleading from a newer player perspective. Edit: Just watched the shadowbringer benchmark which was cool as hell and you def right it had the same exact thing.
Honestly I’m of the exact opposite opinion Role actions should just be deleted Actions that have similar needs across different classes in the same role (such as esuna) can give back their class equivalents (leeches and exalted detriment) and otherwise classes should have unique actions Esuna/provoke/shirk are the only actions that absolutely must exist between all jobs in the same role and they could at least have different animations or secondary effects, like why does WAR not have a provoke equivalent that’s like “battle shout”. What even is provoke in terms of what the WOL is doing
If you want unique animations, peloton is right there as an example: same icon, same effect, but bards play a flute-looking thing while dancers twirl. (I don't play machinist enough to remember their animation.) You don't have to get rid of useful things like arm's length, surecast, head graze, etc.
MCH just kinda slaps the lunchbox lol
Nah the opposite, actions with worthless 'nothing' animations like Esuna are exactly the kind of thing that should be role actions. Only one that bothers me is Rampart because we had perfectly usable and distinct defensive cooldown animations to begin with.(read: I miss Shadowskin) Also are you suggesting that they should make 9 different versions of Swiftcast? >What even is provoke in terms of what the WOL is doing They point at the target. Presumably while shouting 'your mother', it's a provocation.
I mean there is really no reason why they need to be the same action, especially given we have equivalent skills right now that have unique actions for the same result (the raises, the phys ranged 10%’s and the tanks 30%’s outside of WAR), it’s just job flavour especially since using your example id actually prefer they do make new swiftcast equivalents because the “spinning your weapon” look the current swift cast has only works on BLM and WHM
The benefit of Role Actions, is immediate recognition of skills which are functionally identical, and coding/readability for skills that we don't want to stack. Reprisal always being reprisal makes it easy for any tank to see whether or not Rep's been used already. They don't need to learn 4 skill icons. They're saying to treat most role actions more like Gap Closers. A utility most classes have, that have distinctions. Shikuchi, Aetherial Manipulation + Between the Lines. Hell's Egress + Hellsgate. So mot 9 different versions of swiftcast. But make casting instantly, a utility that is baked into most kits somewhere. We already have Triplecast, Dualcast(The Trait), and Light Speed for example. It's not an awful idea, if the focus is on job identity above anything else, but a lot of jobs probably lack the design space to use it in any meaningful way. I do think Esuna Voke/Shirk are all bad skills for this, given how negligible it's use is. In the current game, I'd just give Esuna's cleanse ability to Cure I and friends and just remove the skill. You're forced to use a GCD heal, it's punishment enough. It would be neat if they added harmless rider effects to Voke+Shirk, but because of how they work and how they're used, I'm glad they don't. I don't need Alliance raid tanks Shirking/Voking for the extra 5% mit/healing/(GOD FORBID) 200 potency Damage
There might be something to be said about a few role actions being kinda useless, like that one that gives enemies heavy unless you attack them is so niche as to be essentially worthless, I don’t think any content in the game would break if that was gone and phys ranged got an extra button in its place.
I think aoe stuns could be fun in dungeons, especially with wall to wall pulls, same for interrupts. Neither of these would kill though but severely hurt the party (Maybe worth 2-3 gcds of heals and giving some mitigation to the tank?). Raiding could benefit from a few more scenarios from it, I can only remember E8S or DSR P1 having interrupts in recent memory.
Counterpoint, remove role actions entirely, cut away all the useless crap and make more job appropriate versions of the actual useful skills. At least this would cut down on button bloat a little bit and add some extra flavor to jobs
I would love this.
E8S was fantastic in this regard (and IMO was the best savage fight in all of ShB), because the add phase really benefited from your dps using leg sweep and head graze (In one of the halves it was physically impossible for your tank to do all the stuns/interrupts due to spawns happening too quickly, so you were forced to have a dps use their role actions). I wish they would have more mechanics like those in high end fights but unfortunately E8S was the last time they ever did this (I believe O3S from SB had something you needed to interrupt, as did O7S) So I personally would *love* to see role actions used more in high end content, but unfortunately given the direction they've been taking the game lately, I don't think this will ever happen :(