Rune Fencer Merit Ability List

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Originally Posted by Camate

[*]Rune fencer stats
We understand that there are aspects that make it difficult for rune fencer to act as a tank and players often see them as being in a support role instead.

With the addition of the rune fencer merit point category as well as artifact equipment, we plan on making adjustments to make it more possible for rune fencers to tank and shine even more on the support front. [/list]

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If I understand this correctly, you understand that RUN fails as a tank (if you fail to parry physical attack, you tear like toilet paper) and DD (Attack penalty to Resolution against strong enemies) and the best it could be used for is support role, namely, one job ability (Valiance: 3min duration, 5min recast), so you will give it buffs akin to SubtleBlow+25 to make up for it?

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,
Physical damage mitigation
Moving forward we plan on adding more equipment that reduces physical damage taken for all jobs, not only rune fencer.

The fact that paladin is the job that is most apt to deal with physical damage will not change; however, our goal is to bring other jobs closer to where paladin is currently.

Rune fencers are not supposed to be strong defenders against physical damage, and as such we have no plans to add stats that will make them like a paladin.

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Yai more inventory wasters! I'm so happy!

After the trend with Puppetmaster and after that SMNs, BSTs and what not it seems that SE wants to balance everything's that broken through gear.
Awesome, right?

Thank you for addressing our concerns, Camate, but I get the feeling there a few things that the dev team and the EN playerbase don't see eye-to-eye on as far as runefencer goes.

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Originally Posted by Camate

When comparing magic defense between the current rune fencer and equipment to a paladin that is completely decked out, a paladin with Aegis will be better at reducing the magic damage of all elements. However, since rune fencer excels at elemental defense, they are also extremely strong towards status ailments in addition to elemental damage.

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They should be strong to status effects, yes. If an enemy only does ice damage and the only status effects he inflicts are bind and paralyze, then awesome, RUN will do above average defensively against that enemy. Most enemies can inflict several kinds of status effects though, and RUN can't even reach 100% resist rate for 1 status effect from "even match" enemies.

The best cure for a status effect is a healer who spams -na spells regardless of whether or not the effect was resisted. The best cure for a large swathe of status effects is fealty.

And until RUN gets barlight and bardark, they're not going to be very good at blocking the status effects which really matter anyways.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Also, the effects of Aegis only apply toward the paladin, while rune fencers are able to spread the elemental damage reduction effect to party members making them extremely beneficial in party situations.

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RUN has two abilities which affect party members: one for all and valliance. One for All does almost exactly the same thing that PLD's rampart does, minus the fact that rampart also gives defense to the party members. So valliance is the unique thing that RUN does which sets them apart from PLD. 3/5 minutes, we can reduce the damage taken from one element by 45%, provided valliance doesn't get dispelled.

There are 8 elements of damage, and most enemies make use of more than one. Because of this, it's hardly ever worth bringing a RUN along. The thing which makes RUN unique does not make RUN useful.

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Originally Posted by Camate

These are not the only adjustments that will be made, so rest assured that we will continue to adjust this job.

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Now this is something we do agree on, and I'm ok with waiting. I'm just worried that things which prevent RUN from proving themselves useful to a group may not be seen as such by the developers.

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Originally Posted by Camate

[list=1][*]Physical damage mitigation
Moving forward we plan on adding more equipment that reduces physical damage taken for all jobs, not only rune fencer.

The fact that paladin is the job that is most apt to deal with physical damage will not change; however, our goal is to bring other jobs closer to where paladin is currently.

Rune fencers are not supposed to be strong defenders against physical damage, and as such we have no plans to add stats that will make them like a paladin.

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If the focus is on keeping Paladin as the most apt to deal with physical damage, then why is Rune Fencer (the job that is advertised as a magical tank) not the most apt to deal with magical damage?

Bringing other jobs closer to physical damage taken -50% cap (which I'm not sure what job can't other than RUN) will not improve RUN's standing as a tank. It just makes it worse.

Currently Paladin is the most apt to deal with both forms of damage as they go beyond the damage caps and they still have almost complete status ailment resistance through Fealty, gear that stacks to reduce overall status ailments and access to support jobs with their native Enhancing magic skill to boost it further.

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Originally Posted by Camate

[list=1][*]Comparisons to paladins with Aegis/Ochain
When comparing magic defense between the current rune fencer and equipment to a paladin that is completely decked out, a paladin with Aegis will be better at reducing the magic damage of all elements. However, since rune fencer excels at elemental defense, they are also extremely strong towards status ailments in addition to elemental damage.

Also, the effects of Aegis only apply toward the paladin, while rune fencers are able to spread the elemental damage reduction effect to party members making them extremely beneficial in party situations. When adding job-specific equipment to rune fencer moving forward, we will be paying careful attention to the balance between them and Aegis/Ochain and be making necessary adjustments.

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The comparisons to Paladin with Aegis/Ochain is valid.

1. Of course the community is comparing a "completely decked out Paladin" with the current Rune Fencer because they are providing feedback on what Rune Fencer needs in gear going forward to excel at elemental defense more than any other job.

2. You (the development team) concur that a Paladin with Aegis is better at reducing magic damage of all elements. Therefore they excel at elemental defense from an overall point more than Rune Fencer.

3. Rune Fencer is not "extremely strong" toward status ailments. Even with the correct element runes, bar-element, bar-status, and Pflug, I still get hit with status ailments, especially on harder targets (Very Tough and higher) which Rune Fencer is supposed to be able to tank.

4. Distributing elemental damage reduction most of the time, is not enough especially when a large part of that is limited to 1 element. Rune Fencer can't deal as much damage as current 2-handed damage jobs. They also can't tank anything in Adoulin as everything has high accuracy and attack, and will bypass their evasion and shadows to tear them apart. So their party slot is supposed to be justified on simply reducing magic damage of a single element? And the brief One for All? There are other jobs who do the exact same thing and have other roles they can fill.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,

1. Physical damage mitigation
   Moving forward we plan on adding more equipment that reduces physical damage taken for all jobs, not only rune fencer.
   
   The fact that paladin is the job that is most apt to deal with physical damage will not change; however, our goal is to bring other jobs closer to where paladin is currently.
   
   Rune fencers are not supposed to be strong defenders against physical damage, and as such we have no plans to add stats that will make them like a paladin.
   
   
2. Comparisons to paladins with Aegis/Ochain
   When comparing magic defense between the current rune fencer and equipment to a paladin that is completely decked out, a paladin with Aegis will be better at reducing the magic damage of all elements. However, since rune fencer excels at elemental defense, they are also extremely strong towards status ailments in addition to elemental damage.
   
   Also, the effects of Aegis only apply toward the paladin, while rune fencers are able to spread the elemental damage reduction effect to party members making them extremely beneficial in party situations. When adding job-specific equipment to rune fencer moving forward, we will be paying careful attention to the balance between them and Aegis/Ochain and be making necessary adjustments.
   
   
3. Rune fencer stats
   We understand that there are aspects that make it difficult for rune fencer to act as a tank and players often see them as being in a support role instead.
   
   With the addition of the rune fencer merit point category as well as artifact equipment, we plan on making adjustments to make it more possible for rune fencers to tank and shine even more on the support front.
   
   These are not the only adjustments that will be made, so rest assured that we will continue to adjust this job.

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1. Physical damage mitigation-ok, so Rune isn't meant to be good in this arena. I can accept that, you have said we were a magic tank, fine. I still have concerns about this but they'll be addressed below where the concerns overlap.

2. Comparasins to paladin... VALID! Paladin is-at least many think-the only designed traditional tank, nin was an exploit of shadows that the players ran with and SE decided to embrace-seeming to be designed as a hybrid puller/medium DD but the shadows made it more since players didn't mind burning Shehei, the eva tanks are even less designed to work as such (although dnc clearly has some tank in the design) but with the way abilities scaled into end-game post lvl 75 they became valid-especially with a dedicated curebomber. But Rune is meant to be a designed tank, and therefore should be comparable-even if in a reciprocal nature-to a pld. Now, I understand the pld that strong is wielding a full 99 relic or equivalent, so a rune with the same might be just as tough. BUT SE has already stated we will get no Relic or Full Empy weap equivalent and with all due respect to those saying "mythic" I haven't seen a peep about that since that early job announcement so I'm assuming that went the way of Bst's +Pet TH gear until I see differently. I'm fine with a non-relic Run not matching a full relic pld, but if that is the case then we need an option for a full relic rune to match a full relic pld in terms of survival.

3 Stats

ok, this is also partially in response to #1 since there is an overlap. You might want to remind the devs that almost every mob added in the new content excells at physical damage! In other words, WHAT THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE TANKING? Seriously, this is a core issue with this job if you mean us to be a tank. It's like making us superresistant to biological attacks and then not having any biological attackers. I'm not saying to adjust the prey you guys have added, I have many paladin friends and they are thrilled to have their jobs back. But as you add more you might want to look at giving us a party role with the prey you add. And keep in mind, making it magic heavy doesn't do jack if it can still 1-2 shot us with physical attacks-especially if a pld tanking the same mob will be fine regardless of which damage type it uses.

Now, assuming you give us something to tank we still need a means of holding hate-without our own personal pet thf. These days hate is held primarily on the basis of melee damage dealt since the making of ZERG UBER ALLES the only acceptable strategy for all content; translation-Rune BOHICA ("Bend Over, Here It Comes Again"), as we are only moderate DD for melee-and no magic damage dealt. You want to keep us on GS primarily, fine with me, but then we need a grip from hell to match a Greatsword from hell to allow us to stay at the top of the hate list. Maybe some more magic tools, too.

So, we're going to have to hold you to that last sentence because you (SE, not you Camate) still have a LONG way to go to make this job realize your vision of it.

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

Now, assuming you give us something to tank we still need a means of holding hate-without our own personal pet thf. These days hate is held primarily on the basis of You want to keep us on GS primarily, fine with me, but then we need a grip from hell to match a Greatsword from hell to allow us to stay at the top of the hate list. Maybe some more magic tools, too.

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This Hate issue might be solve with the Rune Enchantment merits, by reducing our rune application to zero, spamming runes multiple times will be our primary hate tool. Spamming a rune 6 times is equivalent to a provoke, I like this change I just hope plds don't start to complain about it.

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Originally Posted by Camate

[*]Physical damage mitigation
Moving forward we plan on adding more equipment that reduces physical damage taken for all jobs, not only rune fencer.

The fact that paladin is the job that is most apt to deal with physical damage will not change; however, our goal is to bring other jobs closer to where paladin is currently.

Rune fencers are not supposed to be strong defenders against physical damage, and as such we have no plans to add stats that will make them like a paladin.

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There seem to be few, if any, situations which call for a tank more capable of handling magic damage than physical.

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Originally Posted by Camate

[*]Comparisons to paladins with Aegis/Ochain
When comparing magic defense between the current rune fencer and equipment to a paladin that is completely decked out, a paladin with Aegis will be better at reducing the magic damage of all elements. However, since rune fencer excels at elemental defense, they are also extremely strong towards status ailments in addition to elemental damage.

Also, the effects of Aegis only apply toward the paladin, while rune fencers are able to spread the elemental damage reduction effect to party members making them extremely beneficial in party situations. When adding job-specific equipment to rune fencer moving forward, we will be paying careful attention to the balance between them and Aegis/Ochain and be making necessary adjustments.

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Two things here:

First off, regarding the second section and the remark about status ailments: That's true on status ailments, however if it's more than one element, i.e. requiring different runes of the switching of runes, than the ability to mitigate status is nearly irrelevant anyway. The same problem in dealing with more than one element is present in dealing with more than one status ailment - it takes 20-some seconds to swap runes, and much longer for any Valiance/Vallation/Pflug to swap, as they do not appear to update dynamically, but only based on what runes are active *when used.* The status ailment protection is also self only. The group elemental damage reduction from val- is nice, but.. the enmity generated is absolutely ridiculous. For tanking it's great, but for providing support it screws up tanking for anyone else.

As for the comparing of Aeg/Ochain vs RUN - it may be an Apples to Oranges comparison, but realistically it *is* the comparison players will be making. There are more PLDs out there with one and/or the other of the two shields now, and with the creep of levels and gear, more and more are obtaining them all the easier. You'd have been lucky to get into ANY delve run at first without ochain or aegis, the items are simply THAT good. Until RUN gets a class-specific item on the same astounding level of Ochain/Aegis then your quote essentially says they will not measure up. You put a new tanking job into a game with one class already in which is designed to tank anything with two end-all-beat-all ultimate shields at their disposal.

So yeah:

* RUN can resist ailments, but few at a time and far between, recast and rune switch time does not support this.
* RUN can protect group, but again recast does not support full time, minutes of no protection, and it screws up aggro.
* Aegis/Ochain may be an 'unfair' comparision to RUN, but it's a realistic one. An ideal scenario would to have had RME weapons ready for RUN so that there would be an item that could be added to help make up the gap created due to the poor itemizations that Aegis/Ochain represent (let's be honest, they are astoundingly good shields and seem to have been made by devs who didn't expect to ever need to make an item players would want more).

Any, to emphasize it more - Even IF some mob was ailment heavy and AE heavy, it would still deal physical damage and smack a RUN around way more than PLD, so the benefits above end up being pretty moot.

As a follow up regarding Camate's statement that RUN is extremely strong to status ailments, I've thought even further about the topic. In my opinion, the status effects in order of worst to very annoying are:

Death (darkness?)
Weakness (unknown element)
Charm (light?)
Edit: Encumberance (unkown element)
Terror (darkness?)
Stun (thunder)
Amnesia (fire)
Doom (darkness?)

this is mostly ignoring status effects which are easily removed because any good tank will have a good healer, and a good healer will easily remove any other status effect as soon as it happens. What RUN needs to set it apart as far as resisting status effects goes is the ability to reliably resist these more annoying status effects, but the most annoying status effects (besides amnesia) have no barspell specifically for them, and (besides amnesia and stun) have no elemental barspell which can touch them.

So RUN is like a gimpy WAR who takes less damage from one element of magic and often resists one of the lesser status effects which can easily be removed anyways. Give RUN some bardeath, bardoom, barcharm, barterror, barweakness, barstun, barlight, and bardark, and then we can talk about their ability to resist status effects as though it's something which makes them useful or unique. Until then, it's a cute little gimmick, about as useful as the fact that anytime a puppet gets a status effect, the master can deactivate, then deus ex automata.

I don't think the dev team understands that people don't have very much confidence in their ability to add a JSE that makes RUN even as useful as PLD (Read: not very) when Ninjas are running around with 3 JSE super katanas which are actually all garbage. (Yes I know they're the best katanas, that doesn't mean they're good)

And while it's unfair to compare a job without all the potential unlocked to jobs that have been around for a while, maybe that's a clue to the devs that maybe for once they should finish development on something before releasing it and then acting surprised that people think it sucks.

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Rune fencers are not supposed to be strong defenders against physical damage

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A job that is weak against physical attacks is not a tank. A job that cannot deal with just basic auto-attacks is not a tank.

There are no monsters that use only Magical attacks and only of one element. This means RUN is not valuable in a support role either.

FFXI is a pretty cool game. You should try playing it sometimes. You might get a feel for the updates that it actually needs.

There is no strategic reason to bring the RUN job to anything right now.

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Originally Posted by Camate

[*]Comparisons to paladins with Aegis/Ochain
When comparing magic defense between the current rune fencer and equipment to a paladin that is completely decked out, a paladin with Aegis will be better at reducing the magic damage of all elements. However, since rune fencer excels at elemental defense, they are also extremely strong towards status ailments in addition to elemental damage.

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Except if the mob in question using more then one element, said runefencer will be SOL. On the otehr hand, the pld will be just fine.

Camate if one of runs specialties is parrying than we need gear that break the cap, just like aegis and burtgang's protection is separate from the 50% damage reduction caps. Furthermore Run needs to have an relic type grip, with maybe a stats that increase the parry rate by 20%, grips should be one of runs specialties in my opinion

Lastly can we get some examples on how the stats of run's af armor will look? I'm really interested on what those stats could look like or an example of how it would look.

Since you apparently have no intention on making this job a tank, could you help it's DD capabilities so it has *some* use(exact same thing applies to NIN as well)?

Less than 24 hours....

Cant wait!

You have to love that it too SE all of 24 hours to nerf the Rune Enhancement merits from really useful to 'eh thats nice. No CD on the runes was surprisingly handy.

I'm a bit underwhelmed with the rune enhancement merit. I read it to be +damage, if it is, I ain't seeing it. Battuata, that should just be a job trait, full time if parry is supposed to be one of our core defensive traits (like monk counter).

Battuta is stunningly useful even with only 90 seconds of duration. The rune enhancements also increase resistance granted by the runes so it is still the way to go, but it had been reducing the reuse CD to 0. No rune CD is something that in my opinion should be a job trait for the class anyway since all the CD does is hurt it.

oh, I know, I love battuata-granted, I haven't tried it yet against a mob where all their attack are considerred TP moves, ala Iron Giants, I would assume it will be useless there-but our physical defense is still the pits which is why I think it should be a full-time trait. Battuata is the only time our parry is making an appreciable difference in how often we are getting hit-outside the eva on Swordplay that is.

I agree about the fragility thing. To be honest the easiest way I see to fix it is an enmity boost trait so we can actually fulltime PDT without losing agro to the normal DDs easily. However, I don't see things that do only tp moves (IGs) being relevant in content that RUN seems intended for. As far as I'm aware its intended use is almost exclusive to the new continents as most old content material is random elements and ... Abyssea.

You can parry a TP move, so it should have just as much use vs mobs where all moves are TP moves (unless they're all magical TP moves). Just like you can also guard against them when using H2H.

I actually have a pic somewhere that proved this (a parrying skillup from a rabbit using whirl claws), but then SE later allowed parrying skillups even if you didn't actually parry, and I have no way of proving (I don't think) that I took the SS before the update.

Edit: Also I love how we knew about this months ago on the test server, but due to being ignored, the devs didn't know about it >.>

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Originally Posted by NOC_EU

Current Known Issues (Jul. 9)
We have confirmed the following issue as of Jul. 9, 2013. Investigation and recovery work is currently underway. We ask for your patience in this matter until the issue is addressed.

[Issue Details]
- An issue wherein if a player puts points into the following merit point categories, the cool down of the corresponding job abilities is decreased.

* Geomancer: Full Circle

* Rune Fencer: Rune Enchantment / Vallation / Lunge / Pflug

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

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Originally Posted by Kanryu

I agree about the fragility thing. To be honest the easiest way I see to fix it is an enmity boost trait so we can actually fulltime PDT without losing agro to the normal DDs easily. However, I don't see things that do only tp moves (IGs) being relevant in content that RUN seems intended for. As far as I'm aware its intended use is almost exclusive to the new continents as most old content material is random elements and ... Abyssea.

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agree about the iron giants-and I would never rune against them anyway. However, I fully expect SE to put more of them in-or other mobs with the same trait down the road. I mean let's face it, precisely what are we supposed to be tanking? Even the magic-heavy mobs in the new areas can still pound us into dogmeat in a hurry with physical attacks-assuming we got lucky and picked the right runes for resists to get by the magic-type damage (Tsukino is absolutely right about the multi-element thing which is why pld still gets the tanking love since they can eat both damage types).

wait, so the 0 reuse time for maxing rune enhancement is a bug? that's massively disappointing

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Originally Posted by Reaper

wait, so the 0 reuse time for maxing rune enhancement is a bug? that's massively disappointing

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no its not each merit reduce the rune recast time by 2 seconds its been like that on the test server and it like that on the live server its not a bug

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

no its not each merit reduce the rune recast time by 2 seconds its been like that on the test server and it like that on the live server its not a bug

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i was refering to babekeke's quote above where it says
" [Issue Details]
- An issue wherein if a player puts points into the following merit point categories, the cool down of the corresponding job abilities is decreased.

* Geomancer: Full Circle

* Rune Fencer: Rune Enchantment / Vallation / Lunge / Pflug"

SE. This rune CD nonsense needs to be changed back. Let the merits decrease the cooldown as well. It was fantastic this way. At least it wasn't a hindrance to put them back up after Lunge/Gambit/Rayke like that.

Considering most high end enemies use or inflict moves of various elements even opposing ones, I would like to see the Cooldown enhancement via merits put back into place. For a few hours RUNs were given a chance to react to a changing battle and it was actually rather engaging.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

no its not each merit reduce the rune recast time by 2 seconds its been like that on the test server and it like that on the live server its not a bug

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It was a bug. Apparently noone from the dev team bothered to use the test server.

Which begs a whole different set of questions >.>; like if any BS encountered by the player base is as it should be. Heck maybe Macro Books are a fluke.....

Sorry just a tad bitter the cooldown buff was awesome.

They better give us our rune cooldown buff, it makes NO sense to have a 10 second recast time

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

They better give us our rune cooldown buff, it makes NO sense to have a 10 second recast time

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Because RUN is so OP...

Anyone managed to achieve anything noteworthy since the merits came out?

So far I've merited Rune Enchantment 5/5 and Battuta 5/5 but I haven't actually played RUN, so can't say how well they work.

Also has anyone confirmed whether the Rune Enchantment potency is solely the elemental resistance, or is it a straight addition to en-damage, or a % bonus to en-damage as well?

Ive been playing RUN and as far as en damage, there is no increase with 5/5 merits. At least nothing noticeable by looking at it.

With the new abilities I was tanking Magamaw Mikey during a worm party.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

With the new abilities I was tanking Magamaw Mikey during a worm party.

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..........

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

With the new abilities I was tanking Magamaw Mikey during a worm party.

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No offense but that is not a hard thing to do. I would like to see if someone was able to tank or solo an NM outside of Abby. With the merits it is easier to face some mobs that I couldnt prior but we need to figure out what is it that RUN brings to an alliance fight. Some things I have thought about but needs others to test, is Rayke an ability that can help the alliance land more enfeebles on an NM? Has anyone tested Parry lately and does it seem to proc more with more skill added from gear? Is all this eva making evasion tanking feasible?

Only use i can see is using Rayke to further counteract Kurma's Dispel resistance but that's just a use, you'd have to justify it repping one of the 18 jobs already there and that's a much harder sell.

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Originally Posted by Alpheus

Only use i can see is using Rayke to further counteract Kurma's Dispel resistance but that's just a use, you'd have to justify it repping one of the 18 jobs already there and that's a much harder sell.

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All caps for resistance rates have been increased, for players and mobs. This means Rayke might be the only way to get into a party now, and also mean that RUN can resist more stuff than it used to. It could be interesting to see RUN vs the Jagil NM in Adoulin, and see just how much those ridiculous en-spells do to a RUN fully buffed vs the element of the fish (probably get 1-shotted as soon as it changes element though), and also see if Rayke makes enough difference to actually make Silence possible during ice/wind phases.

Then this brings up the question of which tier 2 merit are you giving up to get Rayke? Is 1 merit good enough or will more be needed? I dont know about other RUN but this job has become a button masher. I find myself using alot of macros with this job and with the new GS's holding hate is not a problem. Also I dont know if Sword Play has been tested but I seems to allow me to evade enough hits along with parry for me to use Regen 4 and an occasional Cure Waltz 3 and survive the mobs in Ceizak Battlegrounds now. Before the update this was harder to do on this job.

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Originally Posted by Darthmaull

Then this brings up the question of which tier 2 merit are you giving up to get Rayke? Is 1 merit good enough or will more be needed? I dont know about other RUN but this job has become a button masher. I find myself using alot of macros with this job and with the new GS's holding hate is not a problem. Also I dont know if Sword Play has been tested but I seems to allow me to evade enough hits along with parry for me to use Regen 4 and an occasional Cure Waltz 3 and survive the mobs in Ceizak Battlegrounds now. Before the update this was harder to do on this job.

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/nin is the much better option run with inspire merits is the best job to utilize shadows