Most Worthless Moves In FFXI?

I wasn't aware of Aminon use. Thanks for clarifying.

I'd have to go back and play around with it too see if it can be done the way you described. I distinctly remember the bard in our v25 Ongo group who was struggling to do all of his songs for tank, mages, and himself, so we suggested using Tenuto on his songs so he'd not lose them. It got so frustrating trying to figure out how to resing and resing songs that he gave up. I tried figuring out how the ability worked and it was very annoying. Could have swore you can't overwrite any songs that have Tenuto applied, but maybe I was mistaken. I'll check again

No subjobs in Xevi so...-1 for that.

That and restraint... intentionally not using a weaponskill for a couple minutes to enhance the damage of a single weaponskill? lolz

I pop it for an extra buff(most useful with naegling really) but its virtually useless as well.

Pretty much, but with the caveat of *except by using Tenuto again*. So that slot is STUCK on just Tenuto'd that song. If you try that song again, it will fail to take effect, even if the duration would be longer. If you Tenuto and do that song again, it will overwrite like normal.

I'm still waking up lol
I was hyperfocused on the events where cor would only be shooting instead of meleeing that I missed the forest for the trees.

Unlimited Shot is useless.

I'm surprised Boost in its current form hasn't been mentioned.

Aren't the Barstatus spells and BRD equivalents pretty useless as well?

Hide is used for losing hate when you accidentaly pulled agro while box opening in odyssey.
forgot about Tame, good call.
I guess it could be pretty usefull vs amnesia spam happy mobs but like most of these niche merit abilities there is usually a alternative that's hard to pass on.

merit restriction realy needs to drop.

Because it's useful?
It's basically an out of combat only Meditate for MNK.
As limited as that may be, I think it's way more useful than a lot of stuff mentioned in this thread.

Barstatus can be REALLY helpful. BRD ones basically never see any use because song slots are limited. Barspell costs you nothing and can help reduce chance of being hit and/or reduce duration of debuffs. They're awesome.


Hilarious that they added single, unstackable ammo (Bayeaux) that would be a good use case for it but...recast on Unlimited is way too long to be relevant. Theoretically, use Unlimited + Bayeaux for a (slightly) stronger WS every 3 minutes? Extremely unlikely to find scenarios where COR is only shoot though. Some Ambu, perhaps? Iron giant? Even then, the bonuses from dual wielding probably outweigh the bonuses /RNG...

You also get Scavenge, another contender for terrible JA, so you can Scavenge another bullet every minute as well!

It's defintely a stinker.

It's not useless. Besides the Meditate-effect that Sechs mentioned, it's also something you can pop while you're turned away from the mob not feeding tp. When you turn back, you'll hit them with a massive blow for huge damage. Actually, this next Ambuscade iteration with Dullahan is a perfect place to try it. It just has limited uses.

Good point, I forgot that Ask Sash was a thing.


Perhaps I'm misremembering, but isn't there something with the calculation values on the Barstatus spells that makes them functionally useless?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Barspell#Bar-status_Spells

Theres minimal information, unless someone has it somewhere else and decided to not add it to the wiki.

Restraint is not useless, it's still a bonus to damage and no negatives effect, so just active it and play like normal. Helheim has a 431 delay which gives us a 1.11% WS damage boost per swing (I think it only counts the first swing of an attack round). Should be about 3 or 4 so rounds to get ~1700, 3~4% boost in WS damage for free. 5 min duration so just turn on whenever it's up.

Also it's based on your combined weapon delay after -delay reduction but before haste.

Boost per Round = Floor( (Round Delay )/385 )

I came here to say defender. Sure it's not "useless" as in it has zero use ever, but it's practically useless

Amazing feedback already. Let me go through this and figure out which abilities and spells (they are included) are virtually worthless imo. Grouping some together when it makes sense.

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 / Choral Roll
9. Absorb-CHR
10. Aspir Samba

I'm not agreeing with some of the other things mentioned for these reasons:

Hide = As explained, it can lose aggro, which isn't useful in endgame, but great for players travelling through beastmen strongholds. I wish it could be used to pop sneak & invisible, but then it would lose its original purpose. I wish it could help to hide from enemies that detect by sound. That would make it better.

Sneak/Trick Attack = Hardly used in endgame content unless you are building Treasure Hunter. But at least they still have a use. Also, you can dump enmity on a tank with TA when that helps.

Diabolic Eye = I suggest meriting this to returning players who are new to DRK, because accuracy is a bigger concern compared to other melees. It will get replaced by Dark Seal when they have the gear to enhance it, on top of having decent accuracy.

Mug = It's a free emergency heal. Thief doesn't get any form of heal outside of waltzes on /dancer, and while we usually have trusts or someone backing us up, it isn't always the case.

I'd argue there is less reason to use Despoil, because the enfeeble effect is tiny, the TP steal is pitiful, and the treasures you steal are poor. And it shares a timer with Steal, which can actually be useful to steal something annoying like Ice Spikes.

Mikage = The additional multi-attack on this is terrible, but the significant rise in Subtle blow is interesting. Ninjas are primarily used in SB situations, but sadly it only lasts for 45 seconds. If it lasted for 2-3 minutes it would be great. Still, I don't see it being as bad as Mijin or EES.

I don't know enough about BLU to talk about that. If someone can back up what Iocus is saying about that, I'd consider adding everything stated.

Note: I'm going to make a list on the first post later, after figuring out which moves are eligible. Although, I am aware that this could be subjective and some will adamantly disagree with what is decided.


I'm guessing those are saying Defender is useless is because of Cocoon? Sure, Defender isn't viable on tanks anymore, but what if a main job Warrior needs to play defensively? It's still good for that, right?

Have you seen many warriors play defensively?

I have seen situations where a tank dies and the Warrior steps up to tank in a defensive manner until the tank recovers. Rarely happens these days, though. I can agree it is a contender to be considered worthless, although I can see it being good to help a solo Warrior in a tricky situation. I do not see an ability as worthless solely on the premise of it not being used in endgame. A Warrior usually has Berserk on full-time for -25% defense, so popping defender swings up to +50% more than they normally would.

Sorry, was joking.

No I wouldn't call defender worthless. Even /war you can use it when the hits are rough but you have way more attack than you need. Omen, for example.

I'm interested by this Barstatus thing. How are they useless? I have always asked White Mages for appropriate barstatus spells, and no one has ever said they are pointless.

I'd like to add Absorb-CHR to this. If I used it for anything, it was to stack useless debuffs on Glassy Thinker (Omen) when we had no one doing Impact. Otherwise it is pointless. Absorb-MND is also debatable.

Last Resort merits are some bull ***.

IIRC it's the only merit that makes a penalty worse

Each merit gains an attack bonus AND a defense penalty.

WTF is that crap?

"Last Resort Effect Increase attacks by 2 percent, but lower defense by 2 percent"

Diabolic Eye is also kind of ***to me. Max HP Down sucks.

Merits are something else entirely. We could debate merit groups and all that, but I'm just looking at the individual moves. Last Resort is one of the best, so any kind of boost to it is welcome. Also, you don't lose much HP with Diabolic Eye, and it would mostly get used by newbie DRKs with trusts, or in party content where they are firmly last on the hate list of melee. Also, Drain 2/3 exists.

On a side note to everyone, I'd like to point out that job traits are not classed as moves. So, feel free to debate, but I'm not adding them to anything.

we drks like to play on the edge

Sange isn't entirely useless. It can be used to hit Flying monsters (like Ouryu or the Escha Gargoyle) or mobs that use perfect dodge, allowing you to get TP when they otherwise would evade you. You can then use like a magic ws to deal damage during PD (I actually did that this month during ambu while qutrub used PD). I don't have it unlocked because I don't like carrying shurikens besides the one for Daken, but its still a slight dps increase to use it vs not. Still a bad move, but not totally worthless.

Hear me out here, Consumable throwing ammo, theres not even a damn WS for it

Not the most in the know guy about WHM, but always felt like why choose Affaltus Misery over Afflatus Solace?

I guess maybe the extra debuff removal on Misery could be nice from Esuna, but I feel like WHM/sch in Solace would still be almost as effective anyway with JSE neck.

Seems pretty niche to me and not exactly finding that niche very often.

Re: Last Resort merits - It just turns Last Resort into better Berserk, since they started packing in JA Haste to Last Resort as well. Those are like mandatory merits for any DRK afaik.

Re: Defender - Defender is pretty dang nice, actually. Especially when solo or when helping newbies. Last year I took some newbs to their very first Sortie run, and took them around to kill the mini NMs (D.D. Leech Bhoot Porky Pig). I had to tank D.D. with a scrub BRD (nowadays I think he's ML50 on several jobs and waaaay ahead of me), scrub WHM, and decent THF w/ Naegling. It was Gaxe D.D. and if I didn't use Defender I woulda bought the farm several times from his WS alone. I haven't been playing much since June, but when I solo my Sortie runs, Defender is like my oh ***button for the times when my tank trust dies/inevitably can't hold hate.

Gonna also go out on a limb and say that Aspir Samba is meh. Little reason to use it over Haste Samba, right? And the amount of MP returned has never WOWed anyone. I don't think I've ever read a strategy that incorporates it, but then again I'm just some scrub myself, so... probably wrong again.

I complained about a few Ninja things some years ago.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/53746-Dispensable-Shurikens-from-Relic-Mythic-Empyrean-and-Aeonic-Katanas?p=605037#post605037

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/53712-Preserve-Rare-one-of-a-kind-Ammo

That ship has sailed, it aint happening

I already commented on that. Chain Affinity can't be considered bad or useless by any means. It's part of the bumba V25 strategy for example. I wouldn't consider efflux to be useless too. It's good to do damage on piercing weak mobs, especially the ones with slashing resist. There is also at least one good use case for Efflux and that's using it for Tourbillion to increase def down duration.

Im sorry but who is puttin CA/Efflux on the same useless tier as Modus Veritas and Unlimited Shot??

Nothing wrong with getting the Domain ring for some extra regain in quiet times with Boost.

The bar status spells generally are ok. Petrify or Amnesia are worth something because they can reduce low duration debuffs to even small durations. Paralyze ymmv like everything about paralyze. Everything else is not nearly as impactful because you can just eat a remedy.