Predictions on RUN Merits!

[Zagen]

We should give Bardark/light as actual spells. I'm not wasting merits on that and people should be ashamed of suggesting they waste two of our Tier 2 merits on it.

You logic can be used for every T2 merit spell currently in game. With that said I'm not ashamed to have given a go at what SE might actually think is a good idea despite my personal feelings on the matter.

Barlight/dark and ra versions should have been in the game from the get go considering a BRD could give resistances to light and dark elements. However that hasn't happened thus it's more than likely if we ever get them they're going to be something stupid like in T2 merits just like every other mage job that should have gotten spells without needing to dump merits into them. I guess you could argue that "maybe SE will change" and to that I'd say with the way things have gone I won't be holding my breath for change.

[Horadrim]

You logic can be used for every T2 merit spell currently in game. With that said I'm not ashamed to have given a go at what SE might actually think is a good idea despite my personal feelings on the matter.

Barlight/dark and ra versions should have been in the game from the get go considering a BRD could give resistances to light and dark elements. However that hasn't happened thus it's more than likely if we ever get them they're going to be something stupid like in T2 merits just like every other mage job that should have gotten spells without needing to dump merits into them. I guess you could argue that "maybe SE will change" and to that I'd say with the way things have gone I won't be holding my breath for change.

Yeah, it can be applied to most spells in the game -- but at least Protectra/Shellra V are useful, and meriting them makes them even better. AM2's all, for the most part, suck, and only certain Summoner abilities are worth meriting.

That doesn't mean RUN should be forced to suffer the same fate of wasted merit abilities/spells. If we're going to get merit spells, they need to be something actually useful. Just because it fits with the current trend of wasted energy doesn't mean you should endorse it by suggesting they stick to the habit. :/

You, especially, could come up with a better idea than that. It's not like we'll get anything we want specifically anyway, so why not put some real thought into it.

You're right about Effusion. I'm currently lvl 66 RUN, and it's all old-school xp gaining (no Abyssea xp leech crap), so Lunge is all I got in Effusion atm. It's nowhere near the effort it took in the real old days, but at least you get your skills close to cap and learn a job thoroughly. (Unlike some people who go 30>99 on an afternoon of aby xp leeching, then congratulate themselves on a job well done.)

Lunge is pretty much all you get. Gambit is fun, but still. Only two abilities in Effusion never made sense to me -- I'm sure they've ALWAYS had plans for more, seems weird that the base set is so limited.

In other news, I find all of the anti-Abyssea stuff really funny. It is like people who are anti-text messaging... It's fine to have your own preferences and interests, but the whole anti-movement rage never stops being hilarious.

[Zagen]

Yeah, it can be applied to most spells in the game -- but at least Protectra/Shellra V are useful, and meriting them makes them even better. AM2's all, for the most part, suck, and only certain Summoner abilities are worth meriting.

That doesn't mean RUN should be forced to suffer the same fate of wasted merit abilities/spells. If we're going to get merit spells, they need to be something actually useful. Just because it fits with the current trend of wasted energy doesn't mean you should endorse it by suggesting they stick to the habit. :/

You, especially, could come up with a better idea than that. It's not like we'll get anything we want specifically anyway, so why not put some real thought into it.

Have you seen how SE has "changed" their habits? Hint: they haven't. The excuse of they want to see how the players use GEO and RUN before final tweaking is done is BS. I mean outside of friends who support you wasting a slot on RUN over a better option or soloing who's going to use the jobs right now?

I had a vision for RUN when I first thought of the concept of a "Magical Tank" in a world ruled by physical attacks, SE didn't go anywhere near it because of the asinine idea of it being "over powered". Heck even the new content that was supposed to favor a "Magical Tank" isn't any different than the content before SoA.

[Horadrim]

/sigh

My point was that if you. YOU. Zagen, who I've seen posting better ideas than Merit 2 Barlight/Bardark, are going to post ideas for merits YOU can do better than that.

Yeah, we all know that SE sucks for this kind of thing and we'll likely end up with something useless/wasteful. I already know that we likely won't get anything better. The WHOLE point of my last post was to say that if we're going to brain storm stuff for the job, you could at least come up with something interesting.

I don't know how you extracted any kind of pro-SE, they'll-do-us-right sentiment out of that...

Frankly I don't care to know... I'm just going to stop paying people the compliment of expecting interesting things from them.

[Zagen]

I don't know how you extracted any kind of pro-SE, they'll-do-us-right sentiment out of that...

Honestly it wasn't that I got a "they'll do us right" sentiment it's that Barlight/dark was my new "hopeful" take on a realistic "dream" of what our merits will be.

But maybe going back to what I envisioned for RUN and thus what I would have thought merits would have looked like will give you an idea. When RUN was pitched as a "magical tank" and then a party friendly magical tank here's what I expected.

A JA around level 5 that converted physical damage into non-elemental magic damage (excluding WS/TP Moves mainly because those in many cases have elements attached to them) with a 1 minute recast and 5 minute duration (hurts our DPS to reapply but allows RUN and /RUN to keep it up nearly full time). So this only gets boosted by MDT/MDB gear and shell keeping it from getting over powered. At level 5 this doesn't really do anything, at level 17 (never speculated RUN would get shell for some reason) with a WHM though it allowed you to take 9% less damage again not doing anything major. Obviously once you got higher level it became more beneficial.

Runes themselves surprised me a bit because I didn't expect the en-spell effect but the element resist was obvious to me so I went off that and expected a JA or trait in the 50+ levels to allow a RUN to convert the damage dealt from the JA above into elemental damage of the monster's strong element (i.e. Ladybugs would deal wind damage). This would allow a RUN and only a RUN to further reduce the damage taken from melee attacks to the point where it wouldn't matter that they didn't have a shield to mitigate damage because let's be real here on anything "hard" evasion and parry are crap, though Inquartata forcing parry above crap to not so crap helps a little it isn't enough.

I also expected RUN to be able to transfer all of the above to people within the party to enable them to share the tanking roll because I honestly don't see how SE can truly fix Enmity to need dedicated tanks.

On top of being able to share those effects I also expected to get a version of Sacrosanctity tied to the rune elements used. Also it would differ in that instead of further reducing damage it would be 3 minute duration 10 min recast buff that wore off as soon as the player absorbed magical damage. Sounds overpowered at first but if the RUN converted the monsters melee to magical damage that means absorbing 1 hit from melee eats the buff so the person who's tanking now looks at eating the damage of an AoE nuke instead of absorbing it.

Oh and I expected Barlight and Bardark to be spells we could learn or a version of them which would push us above the magical resistance competition already in game.

We got none of that or anything close to it which is why I didn't bother with merits that would relate to these type of abilities because they would equate to "dream" ideas instead of something plausible. Like I said already SE's idea that they would see how the players used the job and then buff it accordingly in order to build it like the players wanted just doesn't work when you release the job at such a weak state. At this point RUN is competing with BST, PUP, BLU, SMN, and DNC for the "go to solo job" which I guess technically counts as a tank role...

[Horadrim]

Well, yeah

Pretty much.

I guess it is fair for it to be a realistic expectation. D: I guess I expected more of a "let's enjoy the fantasy before our lives are ruined" set of predictions.