Most Worthless Moves In FFXI?

As the title suggests, I'm looking to concoct a list of FFXI moves that are so ineffective they might as well not exist. However, I'm only adding moves that can be adequately explained as to why they are worthless at least 95% of the time. There are always going to be niche uses for some moves. Let's take Steal on Thief for example. It may not see as much use in 2024 as it did back in the day, but it remains useful for stealing buffs and Impish Boxes.

I'd like to begin with Modus Veritas on Scholar. Heavily abused back when introduced, SE nerfed it so hard that nobody has used it for anything meaningful ever since.

Description: Increases damage done by helix spells while lowering spell duration by 50%.

If the ability lands, the DoT effect of the Helix will be doubled, and the remaining duration will be halved. Resist rate is high even on regular enemies, and extremely high on NMs. Modus Veritas will always fail if the current potency of the Helix effect is 5,000 or higher.

There are two reasons why Veritas became useless.

1) The resist rate is so high on everything, and even more so for NM (the prime target for putting a Helix on), that it doesn't work most of the time.

2) It only makes sense to use on a low damage Helix. Scholars aim for a Helix effect of 10k, which is the cap. Therefore, if a player hit a 4k Helix and then used Modus Veritas, they would get a 8k Helix for with a lower duration. But that's only if it lands. Most Scholars would prefer to Magic Burst another Helix to cap, or at least get close to capping.

Does it have any use? Perhaps. When a player is in a situation where setting up a skillchain to Magic Burst isn't viable, then they could nuke a Helix and boost it further with Modus, but that only makes sense if the target won't last for a long time, and if they know it won't resist, which it probably will, so why bother? I'm not clued up on the most advanced endgame strategies in Odyssey, so maybe it has found some use somewhere? Feel free to confirm it has. Please be encouraged to add your own moves here with an explanation. Thank you.

Edit: This is the list I made from the comments. Please know that it is subjective, and some of the moves may still be viable in exceptionally rare scenarios.

1. Charm / Gauge
2. Modus Veritas
3. Unlimited / Flashy / Stealth Shot
4. Assassin's Charge / Warrior's Charge
5. Concentric Pulse
6. Tranquility / Equanimity
7. Smiting Breath
8. Scholar's / Avenger's / Courser's Roll
9. Any CHR boosting spells and songs
10. Aspir Samba
11. Odin
12. Astral Flow Blood Pacts
(minus Clarsach Call, Altana's Favor & Perfect Defense)
13. Level ? Holy
14. Brave Hero Glenn
15. Deodorize
16. Many BLU spells (look at Maletaru's list to agree/dispute)
17. Enspell II

/jump

Probably majority of WS from old era are basically useless for most jobs that dont resort to massive multisteping.

But i would point out that RNG ability Unlimited Shot

Why Unlimited Shot?

THF:
Probably assassin's charge, used to read a lot it's supposed to be a DPS loss due to the ability delay despite the guaranteed triple attack.


BLU:
I'd say Convergence, 10 minute cooldown and competes vs Diffusion timer merits. TBH the entire limit to merit point abilities is bollox, simply let us max all of them.

Efflux, considering how weak physical BLU spells are it's probably in the same boat as assassin's charge in terms of DPS loss.

One could also argue Chain Affinity but outside of Azure Lore (1hour) and Fast Blade II (Onion Sword bonanza weapon) it's BLUs only access to Fusion property.

I'm not sure if spells also belong her but BLU defenitely has the longest list of spells that can be considered useless today.


BST:
Charm, I mean you can charm some mobs in odyssey sheol but not sure if that's a thing outside of shits 'n giggles? The bind effect seems to short to make a real difference while swapping pets.
If you agree on charm fitting the list then Gauge belongs there too I'd say.

Charm was the best and most unique JA in the whole of the game and one of the most unique in all MMOs. But someone decided they don't want bst to master beasts anymore.

No, not bitter, why do you ask.

Sch’s Modus Veritas

JA D3... I mean Mijin Gakure. I've always been upset with how powerful mobs Mijin Gakure is compared to players.

I don't believe the intention of that JA was to just be used to warp to town.

As in the drg ja jump? Tp gain. Not useless at all.

/jump emote. You jump, but you don't.

About Mijin Gakure, if you can still think in few use cases to make use it when its available (removing weakened, preventing EP loss when about to die), so I dont think it fits this list.

What I do feel bad though, is having a Mythic that focus on enhancing an ability marginally useful.

Defender isn't worthless, but meriting it is. Duration already matches recast out of the box, so why did they waste a category on this?

When used as prebuff (eliminates dps drop from JA delay), it can be quite ok. Especially against mobs like Naakul bee, which is weak to piecing, but takes like 50%(?) damage from slashing.

Ah! Lol didn't even know there was a jump emote XD

Concentric Pulse for GEO always seemed pretty useless to me. Iirc the dmg is laughable, you lose MP for using it over Full Circle and Seidr Cotehardie makes the -ra spells pretty much free to cast for more damage as long as enough mobs are nearby.

Then again I find the whole -ra (AoE damage spells) concept for GEO completely misplaced.
They should have either given GEO more support/cure/-na/erase options or make them another melee mage with clubs since they have to close range most of the time anyway. Personly I pretty much only use -ra for ambu KI farming.

Mug for THF, the gil stolen wasn't that impressive even at the early stages of FFXI, now after inflation caused by blinkers, sparks/accs and exploits it's laughable.
For anyone who argues "but the HP steal from merits!!", that part is usefull, but you could add that effect to which ever ability you replace mug with.

If you're trying to get job adjustments, then do it on the official forums and get someone who can write Japanese. Bug reports in English work if you suspect that something isn't working.

I don't know if it was said specifically or just implied but the Master Levels system was the adjustments they were going to do post-TVR. I support the idea that they should continue to maintenance the jobs and do QoL, but I don't think they are coming down the pipeline.

---

Hide on THF. I've never seen anyone actually pull off hide > sneak attack or hide > trick attack.

Diabolic Eye on DRK is at best 40 acc for 15% hp and costs 5 merits out of a merit category with much better choices.

Charm already got listed, but even worse is that both Tame and Gauge both exist to support Charm.

BRD Maiden's Virelai is good for summoning Teles so that's obviously getting good use.

RNG Flash shot and Stealth shot.

DRG Smiting Breath. It's hard to believe you'd gain damage for the global cooldown you'd spend in order to activate this and it's only for damage.

Physical Blue Magic pays attention to Atk:Def ratio but doesn't factor PDL so it is not in the current era as far as damage goes. You can still use Chain Affinity to SC properties or to activate additional effects. I put in a bug report on the PDL recently and I expect it to be marked working as intended but I'm still curious because it would add value to the Prime Sword, SU5 Sword, and Aria for BLU.

PUP Heady Artifice for a Harle head giving Mighty Strikes is just wrong.

SCH Tranquility and Equanimity the obsession with giving SCH -enmity on a job that can give itself Pax is beyond me. How's that Mythic aging, with MORE -enmity depending on weather as the cool JS enhancement? I can't imagine I'd ever spend a merit here, much less a stratagem.

GEO concentric pulse has any use? Please advise.
--
Job Traits
--
Shield Mastery on RDM when it has Aquaveil for spell interruption and without a native enmity generating move to get blocks. If you want the tp return for blocking, you can get the same trait level by RDM/PLD for your RDM tanking adventures.

To further compound the previous trait, Tranquil Heart not being able to be toggled off is unattractive. Even worse when you consider that you can get it via subjob from the jobs that you'd sub to get cures on jobs that can't do and would want the enmity.

Stealth on NIN. Maybe not the level 5 trait for flavor, but the level 86 version.

BRD Con Amina or Brio are a joke considering they share a merit category with NiTro...

NIN and DNC both have enough Dual Wield in traits that when they are in proper buff scenarios it's almost a penalty. At least Ambu katana makes some use of this problem.

/check on COR:

I wonder when was the last time so eone used Scholar’s Roll and Avenger’s Roll in game

update: my bug report got accepted for PDL not working with physical blue magic.

I've done it plenty, though not recently. It's also good for deaggroing a bunch of trash, provided their detection is right for it.


Charm mobs in reiseniima to bring them to #9 for AM3 TP. You can also fish up frogs, but this is faster, more reliable, and doesn't require fishing gear

I assume if they detect sneak that it immediately fails. Does it work on any NMs?

I think all FFXI Moves are rather worthless, things like /jump, /cheer and /dance don't really do anything.

Ninja got shafted hard.

Mijin Gakure virtually useless.

Mikage virtually useless.

Sange virtually useless.

I enjoy playing NIN, but man oh man its SP's and Sange need an overhaul.

Hide fails automatically if mob detects by sound or tracks by scent. It works on any mob that doesn't track by scent or detect by sound, regardless of if they are ITG. So, there are places where you can aggro clusters of monsters then pop hide to lose them all (Oztroja/Oztroja[S] are primarily yagudo, for example). You can use it as a hate dump (hit accomplice to become top of hate list, then immediately hide and all that hate disappears). It isn't particularly useful in the current endgame/meta, but I wouldn't put it on the same level as things like Modus Veritas.

this 100%, they got mad people used it to cheese AV so rather than just removing the ability to stack it they make it so inaccurate that it is not worth clicking.
I am still salty over that, it is a cool ability give it back to me!

Tame is worthless.

I also happen to absolutely hate the way Tenuto functions; it's basically impossible to use with Clarion Call and you WILL lose that extra song. I'd argue it's such a terrible ability in the way it behaves that is practically worthless. You should be able to constantly refresh any Tenuto song, so long as you're singing the same one over it.

Consume Mana is close to worthless, but still a bonus so not quite there either.

It got a lot of use back when Charm was a thing in order to successfully charm mobs higher level than your character.

Useless because Charm is useless.

You may already be aware of this but you can (mostly) do this, you just have to use Tenuto on it each time you cast it. Seeing as how it has basically no cooldown this is possible, if annoying.

During lower tiers of prime horn I was messing with using Tenuto to increase the duration of Aria. I similarly got frustrated with it and stopped bothering, but I think if you routinely use Tenuto each time you cast THAT song, it will overwrite no problem. Downside is you can't use Piannismo with it so you need to run away from your team to do this if it's not something you want the rest of them to get.

Warrior's Charge.

Sidebar: SA and TA have WAY too long of recast timers to be effective.

Since no one answered
Unlimited shot shares timer with Double Shot, so theres no reason rng should ever be using unlimited shot.

The only other job that can really make use of it is /cor, and maybe outside of Xevioso, I dont think theres really any situation where /rng is the best option.

Consume Mana gets used frequently on Aminon by RDM/DRK and GEO/DRK.