if starting in shadowbringers is being in the womb. then brother, i'm a concept. FLOATING IN THE AETHER

I'm shocked that Cleric Stance wasn't mentioned. Healer DPS was radically different back then due how you had to fully switch between whether you can heal or dps, and SCH was considered the better healer because Lustrate healed a flat 20% of the target's HP, getting around the healing penalty of Cleric Stance.

they should at least get the animations back. i would love to see a system in the game where you can openly change some animations

One thing i really don't miss is having everyone sit at the beginning of dungeons to wait for protect...

Speaking of Animations, Dark Knight had some of the *rawest* Animations in the game. The Power Slash animation, where you do a massive overhead swing then shoot out Darkness from your hand like it was a fucking shotgun blast, the big arc from Scourge, the way Dark Arts looked like it was about to rip you apart, the way Low Blow let you just kick a motherfucker, all gone like tears in rain and it makes me SO MAD

My favorite meme with old AST was Celestial Opposition extended all your *personal* buffs including food so by the end of the raid night I had used it enough times my raid food would still be up when everyone else's fell off.

I love when he talks about “Heavensward babies” cause I am still progressing through the main story lol. I began playing in earnest a few months ago

"Hey Wesk, don't use Blood for Blood in your opener, if Alexander picks you, you die." "Okay." *changes nothing, doesn't die, mic drop* Phlebotomize has no place in the current rotation I feel, but god if I don't miss it anyway.

I know the astro sects weren’t great but i just love the flexibility of both shields and regens they gave

Speaking of Dragoon, I remember the good times where I'd just barely be killed by an AoE thanks to Blood for Blood, my selfish DPS buff increasing the amount of damage I took. Honestly, I liked the risk reward, especially since at the time, Dragoon was the only Maiming DPS and thus had a baseline higher physical defense. It felt fitting that that design aspect of the class. Also RIP Ring of Thorns, pole dancing Dragoon was funny.

Never forget Kaiten. Still on my hotbar. -sniff-

Funnily enough though endwalker brought BACK some of the things we never knew would be brought back, like PLD’s Bulwark and MCH’s Dismantle. Who would have seen THAT coming? Anyway if yalls want to see some sweet Heavensward actions, theres someone called Xanedia that has a video with level 60 HW actions (PvE only) up. It’s a great time capsule!

As someone who started in 2.1 as a DRG this was very nostalgic lol. That job had some weird things going on for it. Blood For Blood increased your damage dealt and taken which meant if you had weakness (or god forbid brink of death) using it made you even more likely to die again on top of the 25/50% reduced HP. Keen Flurry, as mentioned, was the only damage reduction we had. Jump would animation lock you for 5 years leading to an inevitable Titan EX death if used at the wrong time. Heavy Thrust was a thing you had to maintain on top of your Chaos Thrust DoT and Phlebotomize DoT. Power Surge was a 60s cooldown that buffed a single Jump or Spineshatter. I loved ARR but it gave a lot of things to juggle lol.

I found it really interesting to do the Squadron missions and just see all these alien animations the NPCs use as someone who started the game when Endwalker came out.

I'm an ARR boomer too. Remember Fluid Aura? Remember Cleric Stance? Remember running into other healers in EX Trials who hadn't known they should level thaumaturge/black mage to pick up Swiftcast?

Don’t worry kaiten is coming back my uncle works at square enix he said so

Part of me kind of wishes they would have a separate server where you get the play the expansions as they released back in the day. Something akin to wow classic. As someone who started the game with Endwalker. Hearing about all these old things fascinates me and makes me wish I could experience what people played back in the day.

I'm still mourning the loss of Shadowflare and Miasma II (all DoTs, really) on Summoner 😭💔

I started back in heavensward as bard and i still remember miserys end. It felt really good and lookef amazing. I still miss it. Rest in peace my good friend. 😢

wouldn't be a rinon video without miasma 2 at this point

I was surprised to see you talk about tank stance but not aggro combos. Before we got shirk, aggro combos were the only way to reliably tank swap. Even when we got shirk in StB, sometimes it was on CD and you needed the aggro combo still. Like In Ucob without a ninja. Also it’s worth mentioning that holmgang wasn’t actually an invuln until patch 2.1. All it did was do the bind. And vengeance didn’t actually have mitigation attached to it until 2.1. It just had the reflect damage thing. Inner Beast was such a useful mitigation ability starting in 2.1. Deliverance had such an amazing animation. Inner Release was such an interesting ability at launch when it just halved gauge costs instead of making it free. WAR was the most difficult tank to optimize until the 4.2 rework sadly left it unrecognizable.

Flame Arrow and Shadowflare were still on my hotbar when I turned hotbar sharing off. Darkside too actually.

I would love to see you cover Dancing Edge, Kiss of the Wasp, Kiss of the Viper (All 3 Ninja Skills), MANA SHIFT and Apocatastasis BLM.

i just realised that the blur is on the no no meter. For like dozen videos I thought it was chat

A skill I miss is Mana Shift. The first implementation of role actions was pretty different from what we have now. You still had a limited number of skills you could equip, and more skills than you could equip, so you had to pick and choose. Casters had spells like Drain and Break. But one skill I miss is Mana Shift. Which would sacrifice a portion of your MP bar to give to another party member. I remember loving this idea for jobs like Black Mage, who could conceivably sacrifice some MP to help a struggling healer, then go back to quick-recovering MP in ice mode. Mana Shift felt like a nice party support option.

Very interesting overall, many do seem to have pros and cons to them being within the game. It’s probably better overall that they don’t overly incentives playing specific jobs and let players play what they want, but then again enabling something unique for playing a specific job does sound. Ultimately the former may be better system overall to not force certain jobs being brought to a fight.

I remember that I used to buy commendations with Protect/Stoneskin. I would say that if they give me the commendations I would renew their skill effect at the end of the dungeon, and since the effect lasted after the dungeon was over, they would have increased defense for 30 minutes or until queueing for duty again

There's a ton of skills I want back purely for the cool factor but the ones that would genuinely be good for the game are buttons that were just pure fun. Mainly low HP executes (and kaiten). Sure, you only hit the button 2-3 times per fight and it made your rotation a little more hectic but they also really helped drum up hype. When you saw that button light up in the corner of your eye, you knew that the fight was coming to an end and after a long prog, there was literally no better feeling in the world.

I started in Heavensward, and /oh god why did you have to point out that we're boomers/ Also, I could not agree more about the AST/Time Mage thing. I heard that Time Mage was originally planned as the caster for Stormblood, and that's why things like Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition were changed. Whether that's true or not (I personally think it ought to be taken with a grain of salt or three), I do think leaning further into AST's Time Mage vibes would be so so so good. Horoscope, Macrocosmos, Exaltation, and even Earthly Star already feel like Time Magic, and it's a big reason AST is my favorite healer. Hell, Gravity is even a staple of Time Magic spell lists throughout the series! Gimme Warp as an Icarus-style movement ability, spice up my DPS rotation with an extra DoT or two (Bleed/Sap from XII, perhaps?). If they're feeling absolutely insane, let me cast Reflect on one of my party members to spread single-target spells to the entire team!

I haven't even finished the video, but seeing the Deliverance button made me sigh wistfully. Also, seeing Holmgang's changelog made me feel super old. Not only do I still feel weird being able to move around while Holmgang is up, but also having those four extra seconds makes planning around when to invuln that much less consequential to me.

I started in 4.0, but there was a skill I looked up that WHM had in the past. Divine Seal. It boosted the healing potency of all the Job’s GCD skills. Think of it as a weaker Temperance. Wouldn’t mind if they brought this back as a weaker Temperance that just upgrades at level 80.

Thanks for bringing back these memories! as someone that started in 2.3 i absolutely love this type of historical content. Please keep it up and add more things that got removed from the base game / previous expansions. You doing gods work of not making the same boring videos like 90% of the ff14 youtubers. Subbed!

what's that hotbar at 3:15, above the XHB? is that just the XWHB for controllers? how do i get it neat and tidy like that lol

Well ship, I guess I'm not even conceived yet, 1 month old player here

I would very much like to see more of this stuff, it’s really fascinating, plz and ty

I miss Flaming Arrow and Wide Volley. Bard used to be great AOE and DoT job. The weird thing is, Wide Volley is one of those abilities that is still in the game. You can see NPCs and enemies use it.

If you do another video on this you could have an entire 20 minute section on SMN alone lol

AMAZING VIDEO! As a new player (Started at Endwalker) hearing all the old and removed skills is FACINATING

You touched upon cross class skills but a ton of cross class skills had animations made to fit the job they were executed in. For example, Archer’s Venomous Bite DoT, while it is a series of two shots from a bow when done by Bard/Archer, was a series of quick slashes when done by a Rogue/Ninja (the sound effects however, were the same).

Give me back my Kaiten. It was something to spend gauge on that wasn't a 1 minute attack or a super spammable snoozefest (shinten). I actually enjoyed using it, Samurai's just not as fun without it. Heck, bring it back as an automatic direct crit skill if they wanna lower crit variance.

I think for a follow-up video it'd be worthwhile to explain the cumbersome TP system and the various abilities and party comps that were required to prevent TP starvation in long raid fights. e.g. Invigorate cross-class from Lancer lvl 22, needing bards for Army's Paeon and/or ninjas for Goad in your static, or if you were cruel enough to give a Monk enhanced Arrow instead of a BLM then they would probably run out of TP even with TP buffs. Also, surprised Shadow Flare wasn't mentioned alongside Miasma II. The combination of so many offensive spells made SCH a DPS king in HW and SB.

Never forget the fact Tank Mastery doesn't just give us the beneficial portion of the old Tank Stance (extra passive mitigation). It also gives us the negative. That's our hidden damage tax right there.

I'd personally like to see more situational abilities be brought back, I feel that having the same rotations without thinking as much has made us a little lazy in some aspects

Okay, it would be so nice if you could mention the music you used in the video… Especially from 3:21 … I could easily mistake it for a usual “Under the Weight” remix, but it has Hugo Kupka theme (who is also Titan in FFXVI) at 4:55 and I haven’t heard this exact mix before

bring back kaiten

When talking about PLD, you forgot to mention that they could cross class Raise from CNJ. But, they could only do it out of combat. But there's still tons more abilities and that would be a whole ass movie of a video to fit them.

Cant forget when tanks also had an aggro gen combo and a dps combo

Along with the tank stances, there was also Cleric stance to cross class from whitemage. The cleric dance was a key part of playing a healer in 2.0 and HW

please do another!! This was a fun video to watch :)

I remember bard having 2 gcd aoe abilities, ones a cone the other was a circle but out of the two they kept the cone but the animation for the circle was much better you just doing backflips ^^

i played all the way since right before heavenward came out but back then i didnt play regularly so i forgot a lot of the stuff we had back then, thanks for helping me remember some of them.

I would love for them to reintroduce Scholar's Aetherflow Stack CD reduction every time a OGCD healing skill is used. It was a 15 second reduction on the counter. Does anyone else remember that? It was introduced in Stormblood and made healing as a Scholar feel so much more fluid... Aetherfluid.

Not the ability itself, but the animation for the end aggro combo for Dark Knight was always so cool, plus their old Dark Arts

A fun interaction (Im unsure if a further down comment mentioned it but Im not scrolling through them to see lmao) with Paladins Tempered Will and Cover. The effects of Tempered Will would be transferred to the Cover target. This had some really neat uses in some fights. Like the Phantom Train Savage. You could Cover and Tempered Will your co tank and both of you could dodge the knockback mechanic in a part of the fight. It was really cool

i just wanted to see a video like this ty!!!

Dark Knight shooting darkness out of his hand was THE coolest animation

A big one was the removal of enmity rotations for tanks. There used to be a separate 123 with increased aggro generation that dealt less damage than the main 123 combo. They were removed when tanks were streamlined and Tank Mastery was added.

It's realtively minor in the grand scale of things, But Flash for PLD was great. A spammable AoE Taunt with built in blind? Yes please. And It was one of the skills you used to be able to pass around to other jobs, Which meant DRK and WAR had access to it aswell! (Along with every other job, IIRC.)

The explanation of old Astro w/ Kurugane music in the background really brought me back! I still miss Heavensward/Stormblood Astro to this day.

This is soo oddly nostalgic~ I had completely forgotten that No Mercy was a thing. Which, fair, you only got to use it maybe twice at the end of an encounter, but still lol Another bard ability i miss is Wide Volley- just for the backflip animation. And our songs, Foe's req, refresh and tactician ~

i played when 2.0 released and there was some wierd stuff about warrior, it had very little defence and was supposed to have lifesteal, but the bloodbath skill had a very long cooldown which just made it not work. Also, Overpower was not only a cone back then, but it had a 3 second long wind up before the attack gets out. You can see enemies still do this long version in Sastasha.

I miss most of SCH gameplay from Stormblood ( exept the fact pets had HP and the summon was a 6s cast ). Its relation between damage and mitigation was so interesting. The fact that your mana regen abilities wasn't tied to Aetherflow but to Energy Drain, and the fact you could propagate your DoTs in AoE situtations. And I miss Shadow Flare so much. It was so cool to be able to drop a DoT AoE like Doton but who made you unable to use Sacred Soil for 15s. I could go on a rant about how dull the job feel since Shadowbringers ahah.

I severely miss butcher’s block and would love to see it come back as a storm’s path upgrade

I often gaze longingly into the distance; remembering what Yoshi P took swat from my SCH kit. RIP DoTs, Cleric Stance, and Selene. . .

Caster bard was such cancer, I used to main the job in ARR and it felt miserable to play in HW. They removed it in SB but by then RDM was introduced and I fell in love with the resbot.

Worth mentioning too, Misery's End (WAR Execute) and Haymaker were both crossclassable. Kind of fun popping featherfoot+haymaker/misery's end as a bard.

I never played it myself but there are also a lot of skills from 1.0 that were removed. Thaumaturge was focused around Banish and Scourge which were "Astral" and "Umbral" Element skills. Astral and Umbral were two elements that were removed from gameplay mechanics for 2.0 but kept for the lore, not like it mattered since the other 6 elements were made obsolete by the game design paradigm of having every job be able to clear every class.

The weird fringe usecases like Keen Flurry or Featherfoot giving you tank-buffs on a DPS class are hold-overs from FF 11 and thus 1.0. Got to remember, the 1.0 director was the same guy that made FF 11 and FF 11 has not as rigid a role system as FF 14, leading to ninja tanks and the like. Its also why DRG has medium armor.

Wide Volley on BRD used to be my favorite looking attack. We'd back flip, and rain down purple arrows. I think there is an enemy in the game that still has the animation...

I'm having melancholia about a time I wasn't even part of the game... I've started really playing in 2020, a bit after 5.3 released, and only started getting to know all the jobs in Endwalker Being the curious player that I am, I'm alway watching videos and threads about how the game was prior to when I started. And I'm getting to a point where I miss how the game was years ago, before I even knew about it

There was a good few patch cycles of stormblood where I mourned the loss of Ring of Fire More recently, I found myself missing palisade of all things because I had a macro to put it on a tank in my old static.

BRD's Repelling Shot and WHM's Fluid Aura (RIP) both doing damage. I played ARR as bard, still remember running into to drop off a Repelling Shot. Also Scholar's having to do the poison dungeon without a cleanse (Leeches) because it was a level 40 skill and the dungeon (Toto-Rak) was level sync'd to 27. At least fairy heals were OP back then.

I miss Dark Arts. Just the effect and sound made it awesome. Edit. For those who don't know, Dark Arts was a skill for Dark Knight's that buffed their next skill. Usually just more damage. Or more effects (one did a blind).

I really miss the AoE dots on healers, Aero III (was it III?) for White Mage was comfy and I don't get why it's gone, it made dotting enemies in dungeons quick and easy.

I played Arcanist/Summoner when I first started playing FFXIV in late spring of 2019. It was still Stormblood at the time. I didn't get anywhere near level cap before Shadowbringers dropped but I did get to see some abilities that were later removed. Like Shadowflare.

As an ARR veteran, one I was looking forward to hearing was Cleric Stance. Back before it was changed and then removed, it swapped your INT with your MND so your damage spells could actually do damage, but healing was vastly reduced. There was even a term used for it, and that was 'Stance Dance'. You'd mostly stay in damage stance, but dance back when you needed to heal someone/the party. It was especially useful with SCH, as they had the ACN class background. Their DoT's could actually do quite a bit of damage, and in full parties it was like you had 1 1/2 healers with 4 1/2 DPS. If used correctly, it was a fun and powerful ability. After it was changed in StB, it just did a base 5% damage buff for a few seconds and then it was removed upon ShB release.

remember when having a drg was almost mandatory bc they had the piercing buff that buffed bards and mch dmg output

I started playing at the very tail end of 3.57, basically 4.0. I miss Aero 3 on WHM. It made me feel more useful on the dps side of things in dungeons and the animation was cool. I liked the whole staff twirling in front of you thing. I also really miss Bane from SMN as a means of spreading your dots. I think I just miss aoe dots in general 😂

I'm a boomer too (joined a bit into ARR) I miss a lot about old sch, its still the main class I play. But it was a lot more fun before and I worked so hard to learn it, since I struggled with it at first. But I did used to like Eye for an eye a lot, purely because it could also be spread by Deployment Tactics

Speaking of the Holmgang change, since those skills aren't changed in the enemies, there's a Warrior in Halatali (Hard) who uses Holmgang and it pulls you in and binds you just like the old version of the skill A lot of the White Mage adjacent enemies also use Stoneskin, which is a removed ability

I started a patch before Ninja was added. I remember a lot of the removed abilities, the manual stat allocations, TP, Piety, Cleric Stance... While I didn't get to experience everything back then since I was a dummy stupid dumb dumb idiot head (I had a Marauder where I dumped all my stats into Strength and ran through all my TP all the time lmao), I definitely got to experience a number of old style jobs. I deeply miss old SMN crowd dots and the toxic vibe of their spells, AoE Aero, cards all having different abilities that you could extend and apply to a group, and... Well, honestly, that's all I recall lol

Shadow Flare. It was so interesting to decide if the mini slow on enemies in trash was enough mitigation vs sacred soil

Not a skill that was completely removed, but something I miss about my class that got reworked a while ago. Warrior's opening AOE attack used to be a cone instead of the AOE circle centered on your player like everyone else's. I miss it because it had a range and size unlike the other classes, and overall just because it was unique. It made playing Warrior feel different from just Standard Tank™

As someone who started a few months before endwalker I love seeing the origin of some of the PvP skill, like the holmgang which attracts. I think it's a very interesting topic, as the biggest change I've been through was kaiten and the PvP rework

I miss the PLD shild counter. Whenever you blocked something with a PLD the skill proged and you could deal a bit more dmg. It was fun to optimize the AOEs you can stand in without angering the healer.

Royal Road was my favorite ability for astralogian. Being able to concoct buffs for varying degrees. I remember building up a strong balance card to give to our top dps when I did Alex savage, a longer mana regen for our white mage or even passing a bole onto the tank just cuz i drew it and a tb was about to hit

As a late ARR boomer/Heavensward baby, I miss WHM's Aero III almost as much as Protect. Let me AoE all the things!

I started during the last six months of Stormblood as a healer, I was there for casting Protect at the start of every duty and I was delighted to watch it be removed.

I honestly miss the old tank stances. Started playing in SB (early WoW refugee) as a PLD and I loved having to actually think about what stance you were going to use.

Ultimatum was great for the O12S tank LB cheese and the ability that tanks could take that increased their defense by 20% for 20 seconds on a 60 second CD was nice also. Wasn't as good as other role actions but when they let us take 10 of them we had no reason to ignore it

Didnt think this was gonna be on the list since it was a 1.0 skill--Punishing Barbs. The spell redirected damage back to the enemy. Not sure what the exact % was but it nearly redirected 100% of the damage back.

Monks out here holding old Fire, Wind and Earth moves and crying out, seeing their shoulder tackles now being shoulder tickles

I started playing around Stormblood's postgame (Eureka Pagos had just released, I think?) And I "fondly" remember Foe Requiem. The idea of AoE Vulnerability Up was cool but it was also a "die on cast without tank first having aggro" button in dungeons fof Bard. Yes, its Finale being a buff is better, but it's a small thing to remember (along with Misery's End, which was mentioned.)

Hey, that Dragoon parry was very useful in tanking that floor!! ...ok, i can hear all the boo'ing, I'll see myself out. Before I go, however, surprised there wasn't a single mention of any DRK stuff, they had great animations!

Yes Rinon, more of these removed skills! I started my journey on 6.2 or 6.3 and I have always been wondering about the old abilities/skills or mechanics jobs used to have. I would want to experience old summoner, even if it was clunky, according to my late game friends. I still have Summon Selene button on my scholar, and I didn't even realise when I started to do the jobquests for scholar, since I preferred summoner and realised if I want max exp I need to do the both :D

I played through this game solo queuing, and I am sure having so many niche and easy to misuse abilities would’ve made that experience a lot more frustrating, but I would’ve loved to have been able to play with some of these.

Let's not forget that WAR tank stance was a bit different. Defiance originally just increased the WAR's HP by 30% along with your personal damage reduction instead of taking less damage overall. Then add that in certain fights bosses did % damage *Looks at some Alex fights, Thordan, Kefka etc.* where wrong stance dancing could result in the snapshot taking your defiance health into consideration, not your new delieverance max HP. Lead to alot of WAR deaths until they learned the proper timings on the swaps.

I was hardcore in pvp in the very first season of feast and honestly i think thats a reason why alot of old niche abilities got removed machinist used to be a menace

the one of BRD aoe skill where u jump backwards and shots arrows down or the AOE spell from DRG where u do a Circle arround u it was so nice to use it all the time xD

What was that cool flip that BRD used to have? Wide Volley? Loved that shit.