A new thread has been started in the Updates section of the official forums. The title of the thread is as follows:

[dev1206] Class Reforms

Proceed to the thread.

Summary:

- Actions learned by each class are being changed/moved around so that they make more sense and to make classes more unique. Limits are also being placed upon how many total actions you can equip from other classes.

- Action points removed.

- Ability/Spell tiers (Fire II, Fire III, Defender II, etc) are being abholished.

- Instead, actions will scale in damage/potency/effectiveness/MP-cost to match your current level.

- Actions learned by your current class will be forced onto your action bar and cannot be removed. They can however be moved around.

- All classes will learn 15 actions and 11 traits between levels 1-50. Traits are now class exclusive and learned from levels, not guildmarks (guildmarks will either be reimbursed or removed from the game and converted to gil/items).

- You will have an "actions set from other classes" limit that is determined by your current level. This limit is 10 at level 50.

- Info about the "combo" system. Sounds like some kind of skillchain mechanism. TP costs are waived for weaponskills that successfully form part of a chain. Extra bonuses such as extra damage and extra enmity etc are also given.

- Actions UI will be overhauled to match the new system.

- Actual list of new actions for each class will be released later.

I wonder how they're going to manage elemental spells.

Right now, even if you eliminate tiers, Conjurer has 40+ unique actions/spells. They say that every class will only learn 15 actions. The only way I can possibly imagine this working is that there's an exception for CON and they actually learn Fire/Blizzard/Water/etc all at the same time at one level.

Making the shield actions part of the Gladiator arsenal also severely limits what actions are going to be avaiable. Not to mention that i'm pretty sure that even if you eliminate tiers, every class has way more than 15 actions. Gladiator for example:

Gladiator Actions [3]

Light Slash
Heavy Slash
Heavy Stab

Abilities [9]

Rampart
Provoke
Still Precision
Obsess
Cover
Cadence
Ambidexterity
Sentinel
Tempered Will

Weapon Skills [9]

Red Lotus
Circle Slash
Phalanx
Spinstroke
Howling Vortex
Onion Cut
Luminous Spire
Rage of Halone
Riot Blade

Shield [4]

Aegis Boon
Shield Bash
War Drum
Deflection

Even assuming they take out the basic "attack" moves, thats still 22 unique actions. And I bet this is the same for every job. Everyone is just going to lose a third/quarter of their abilities? Where are all these excess abilities going to go? Which ones are we going to lose? I'd assumed they would simply be moved around between various classes so we could just go and re-learn them if need be, but I'm worried that's not going to be the case now.

If all of these abilities are simply stolen to be given back later as the "Job-system exclusive abilities" later I'll be kind of annoyed because that's lazy as hell.

Con has 56-58 (marks) actions currently, even when removing all of the T2's it still has around 46 (I never counted the likes of Cure, Cure II and Cure III, Raise, Raise II, Rebirth, Curaga or Curaga II, because i'm assuming those will stick around when they make these changes.)

I'm not sure how this is gonna turn out either.

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Does this mean you can't cast lower tier cures as a rank 50? Or possibly lower tier nukes? That will make MP and hate more of an issue. I understand taking tiers of abilities away (like bloodbath II, speed surge II, blindside II, etc) but tiers of spells is a HORRIBLE idea.

On a positive note, I don't have to level PUG for blindside 2 and MRD for bloodbath 2.

Losing fleet of foot, fastcast, the pug cure +10% trait, etc on all jobs is gonna suck.

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I'm hoping that now that every class now gets 10+ traits instead of just two, a lot of those "must have" traits will be incorporated into each class in a way that makes sense. Theres a lot they can probably do with so many traits.

Maybe tanks will get the +10% cure trait or maybe mages will get some kind of healing potency trait when cast on someone with low health.

They've said that they intend to design traits as a way to combat abilities used on other classes. Although the abilities will be available to other classes, the traits will not. The traits will be designed so that they vastly improve certain abilities so that the ability will always be better on it's origin class.