First!

[Ryce]

High hopes for this job, despite it's pretty awful name. What are your hopes from the new melee class?

A new breed of tank?

[Tanama]

Rune Fencer is a new breed of tank that utilizes elemental and enchanting runes for greater attack and defense. Not only that but Square-Enix has said they have the highest amount of magical defense and elemental resistance than all jobs. Did the count the Aegis when they made the claim? We'll find out soon how well this job will perform.

I wonder if they will have high enmity abilities. Also Enmity should be fixed by then. (I hope)

[Horadrim]

High hopes for this job, despite it's pretty awful name. What are your hopes from the new melee class?

A new breed of tank?

I'm excited. I spent years hoping for Geomancer but Rune Fencer seems more interesting to me.

[Tibor]

I wonder if Rune Fencer as a subjob might be a good fit for Paladin? it could help a Paladin without Aegis be able to stand a chance vs heavy Magic casting mobs.

Probably won't be as effective as Aegis...but...

Thoughts?

[Aeonk]

I wonder if Rune Fencer as a subjob might be a good fit for Paladin? it could help a Paladin without Aegis be able to stand a chance vs heavy Magic casting mobs.

Probably won't be as effective as Aegis...but...

Thoughts?

Supposedly RNF is supposed to be better than PLD at magic tanking. I'd love to see them beat Aegis, but a new job has a lot of potential.

that said, I seriously doubt they'd put all of these useful abilities below 49. It might work marginally better than /RDM for magic dmg tanking, but they're not going to put Aegis-trumping abilities being accessable by a sub. Would kill the job long before it came out (and further screw up the balance of tanking as it is now)

[Horadrim]

Supposedly RNF is supposed to be better than PLD at magic tanking. I'd love to see them beat Aegis, but a new job has a lot of potential.

that said, I seriously doubt they'd put all of these useful abilities below 49. It might work marginally better than /RDM for magic dmg tanking, but they're not going to put Aegis-trumping abilities being accessable by a sub. Would kill the job long before it came out (and further screw up the balance of tanking as it is now)

I think RNF is supposed to be great at magic defense and augment Paladin as a sub. I don't realy see how else they are going to put Defense tanking back on the mark without doing something with RNF that makes them both viable. I expect RNF will do something like have a trait that converts half damage to Magic damage and allows for additional mitigation through Magic Resistance, which as a sub would instantly make both it and Paladin capable of withstanding great amounts of damage.

A trait that converts damage taken from an enemy into enmity from that enemy would be useful and logical as well -- but I've come up with "that makes too much sense for it to be something SE thought of" stuff before.

If the problem with defense right now is that it works similarly to other stats (after a point it stops having an effect) then the only real practical answer is to either fix the upper limit of Defense (which they have yet to do after years and years of knowing its a problem) or give abilities that allow you to lower the incoming numbers below those limits to increase the effectiveness -- and making RNF Paladin's equal, but in terms of magic defense vs. physical defense and then giving them an ability they can share to split the damage between the two types of defense (maybe based on whichever is higher?) would be a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be useful to DNC or NIN tanks because they don't have enough magic defense to make it worth converting their physical damage to magical damage -- basically making RNF a PLD only sub.

Though, then that might open a weird door for White Mages, depending on how much you could convert.

[rufuslupus]

i wanted blue mage and people complained we already had beast.
i wanted dancer and joked about scholar and look what happened.
i wanted mystic knight and everyone said that was red mage's job
i'll love rune fencer! trusting it will be as great as how they added other past jobs.

i'll have to beg square to expand the magic merits catagory so i can 8/8 it's skill. come on square we got 22 jobs time to expand some catagories again. =D

[Delvish]

i wanted blue mage and people complained we already had beast.
i wanted dancer and joked about scholar and look what happened.
i wanted mystic knight and everyone said that was red mage's job
i'll love rune fencer! trusting it will be as great as how they added other past jobs.

i'll have to beg square to expand the magic merits catagory so i can 8/8 it's skill. come on square we got 22 jobs time to expand some catagories again. =D

FTFY
Could definitely do with some skill expansions depending on how these two jobs work. Magic is maybe, since you can 8/8 3 magic skills already, but melee could definitely use a boost since I find myself splitting my weapon merits as is.

[Kjara]

i'll have to beg square to expand the magic merits catagory so i can 8/8 it's skill. come on square we got 22 jobs time to expand some catagories again. =D

I'm not too sure Rune Fencer will get its own magic skill. There is a ??? slot in magic skills but seeing the past FF versions of geomancer, I'm expecting that slot to be occupied by Geomancy Skill.

[Yrusama]

Looking forward to this job. I don't have any heavy tank jobs in this game, and I'm interested to see what they do with Rune Fencer. I was intrigued by GEO, but it could also turn out very disappointing. At least with RNF I have few preconceptions about its abilities.