Suggestions For Rune Fencer Adjustments

[Oyama]

Hello,

I wish to bring up an odd situation in which Rune Fencer finds itself. Rune Fencer was marketed as a "magical tank." However, Rune Fencer's reliance on choosing a small number of elements to focus on (usually only one in order to be effective) makes it ineffective as a magical tank on the vast majority of content in FFXI. Even the Naakuals, elementally aligned monsters that were introduced in the same expansion as the job itself, can cast spells from more than one element and inflict debuffs from multiple elements as well. In fact, even one of the Celestial Avatars, supposedly the epitome of their element, gives an off-element debuff (Ramuh's Thunderspark inflicts a potent paralyze, an ice-based debuff). In a game with 8 elements and a plethora of enemies that utilize multiple of these elements in the form of damaging abilities, magical spells, and elementally aligned debuffs, a tank job that can only be reliably effective against one element at a time simply does not function well as a tank outside of very niche situations. One very common way that enemies can make use of multiple elements is simply by having an elemental casting job, such as Black Mage, Red Mage, Geomancer, or Scholar. How strange it is that the supposed "magical tank" of the game is weak against enemies with magic-wielding jobs!

I propose two very simple adjustments that together would help rectify this counter-intuitive situation.

#1: Give Rune Fencer the "Magic Evasion Bonus" Job Trait, reaching tier 6 at or before level 99. With the introduction of Blinding Fulgor as a Blue Magic spell, the trait exists in the game, and there is no good reason that Rune Fencer should not have it. The trait actually makes the most sense for Rune Fencer compared to any other job. This would provide Rune Fencer a permanent and undispellable advantage in reliably withstanding all magical damage and effects. Magic Defense Bonus and Tenacity are nice, but their values are simply not high enough, and a significant boost to magic evasion would help augment the Rune Fencer's general magical durability without tampering with those existing abilities nor adding a new ability/trait or mechanic.

#2: Add a magical resistance aspect to the enhancing spell "Foil." The simplest implementation would be to add a large generic magic evasion boost effect (ideally comparable to bar-spells) to Foil against all attacks, or at the very least to monster special abilities and magical spells, as these are the primary sources of powerful magical attacks and debuffs. The spell "Foil" is unique to main job Rune Fencers, and as a magical tank, a "bar-everything" spell unique to them would make a lot of sense. Rune Fencers have access to the existing barspells, but so do other jobs, and they can also be accessed by ANY job if they set the right sub-job. More importantly, there are so many of these barspells (pure elemental ones as well as bar-status ones) that casting any particular one of them in time for an enemy's off-element attack is nearly impossible. To make a macro for every single one of them would take up almost an entire macro pallette. Alternatively, in lieu of a general magic evasion boost, it could bestow a very large magic defense boost against all elemental damage while providing a large magic evasion boost or pure percentage resist rate boost against all enfeebling effects. I think a pure, large magic evasion boost is a simpler solution, but there are options.

Given the existence and relative ease of obtaining the Aegis shield for Paladin in the current state of the game, I don't think any of these adjustments would be unbalancing. Aegis gives a Paladin the equivalent effect of an undispellable full-time Vallation/Valiance with 24 Runes active at once! This while still allowing the Paladin to block physical attacks. This makes it a more effective magical tank than Rune Fencer by far. The adjustments I have proposed would allow Rune Fencer to continue to focus on certain elements while still maintaining excellent defenses against other elemental attacks and debuffs. It would allow Rune Fencer to be more of an accessible, competitive, viable alternative to Paladins for tanking a wide variety of situations in the game without supplanting Paladin as a tank.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Alhanelem]

Ramuh's Thunderspark inflicts a potent paralyze, an ice-based debuff

There are cases where a debuff comes from a different elemental source and I've always been underthe impression you only need to resist that element and not also the element the debuff is typically associated with.

[dasva]

There are cases where a debuff comes from a different elemental source and I've always been underthe impression you only need to resist that element and not also the element the debuff is typically associated with.

It's complicated... for debuffs there can be resist elements as well as magian elements (like what the debuff counts as for trials) and for moves in general additional effects don't have to have any relation to the dmg. I mean physical moves can have magical elemental debuffs.... I this case I believe the dmg is thunder but the resist as well as magian element paralyze is ice. So to resist the dmg you'd want like barthunder but to resist the paralyze you'd want barblizzard.

But really this has been an issue since forever even without additional effect moves. I remember doing Sarameya a bunch back in the day and the debates on whether to barblizzard to resist the paralyze move or to barfire to help with all the fire dmg moves. Sometimes we'd have measure and do barparlyze and barfire. Anyways very few monsters that have elementally aligned debuffs and or dmg are a single element so you have to pick and chose or do half measure. Part of how Run gets around it is not only doing barelement but also having runes allowing them to cover 2 elements for general resistance (theoretically you could do more with doing combonations of runs but lesser effects and such). Another thing run can do is put up separate buffs in vallation/vallaince and pflug to lower magical dmg and increase resist rates to certain elements when activated. So while it's a lot of effort and I don't think every even close to necessary you could in theory barelement 1 element, barspell a debuff from another element, put up runes to resist a 3rd element, put up vallaince to lower the dmg of a 4th element and put up pflug to resist the debuffs of a 5th. But again very rarely necessary or wanted and a lot of work generally you are only going to setup against 1-2 things that really matter. Like in the case of Ramuh you'd want to vallation against thunder and then I'd probably do everything else against para (at least the runes and barparalyze and pflug) since really with vallation up in capped mdt unresisted the thunder moves shouldn't do much. I use Run a bit and it's fun but kind of exhausting to do all that... especially something with switching elements like sinister reign lol.

Aegis gives a Paladin the equivalent effect of an undispellable full-time Vallation/Valiance with 24 Runes active at once! This while still allowing the Paladin to block physical attacks. This makes it a more effective magical tank than Rune Fencer by far. .

While aegis does provide better protection than vallation/vallaince it's not quite as one sided as that. Dealing with multiple high dmg elements sure take the aegis. But single dangerous elements and the bar/runs etc help balance it out as the ability to resist and cure debuffs though I can't stress enough how much more work and attention intensive it is during the fight. And sure while you "can" block with aegis the block rate on even like lvl 120 stuff is like 10%. While Run keeps it's full physical capabilities with vallation up. So in heavily mixed physical/magic fights I will usually bring my Run over my pld. Or those ever so annoying Avoidance down aura mobs. Or anything with debuffs that I really have to resist that aren't timeable with fealty (ie like predicting AAMR charm can be done but like mobs that repeatedly do it not so much). While overall I will use pld more it's still situational and there are plenty of times gets the nod... a lot of it ends up being how much work I feel like doing tanking and how much fun I want to have and how much I want to help mages lol. Run being more of all of those lol

[Dale]

Hello,

I wish to bring up an odd situation in which Rune Fencer finds itself. Rune Fencer was marketed as a "magical tank." However, Rune Fencer's reliance on choosing a small number of elements to focus on (usually only one in order to be effective) makes it ineffective as a magical tank on the vast majority of content in FFXI. Even the Naakuals, elementally aligned monsters that were introduced in the same expansion as the job itself, can cast spells from more than one element and inflict debuffs from multiple elements as well. In fact, even one of the Celestial Avatars, supposedly the epitome of their element, gives an off-element debuff (Ramuh's Thunderspark inflicts a potent paralyze, an ice-based debuff). In a game with 8 elements and a plethora of enemies that utilize multiple of these elements in the form of damaging abilities, magical spells, and elementally aligned debuffs, a tank job that can only be reliably effective against one element at a time simply does not function well as a tank outside of very niche situations. One very common way that enemies can make use of multiple elements is simply by having an elemental casting job, such as Black Mage, Red Mage, Geomancer, or Scholar. How strange it is that the supposed "magical tank" of the game is weak against enemies with magic-wielding jobs!

I propose two very simple adjustments that together would help rectify this counter-intuitive situation.

#1: Give Rune Fencer the "Magic Evasion Bonus" Job Trait, reaching tier 6 at or before level 99. With the introduction of Blinding Fulgor as a Blue Magic spell, the trait exists in the game, and there is no good reason that Rune Fencer should not have it. The trait actually makes the most sense for Rune Fencer compared to any other job. This would provide Rune Fencer a permanent and undispellable advantage in reliably withstanding all magical damage and effects. Magic Defense Bonus and Tenacity are nice, but their values are simply not high enough, and a significant boost to magic evasion would help augment the Rune Fencer's general magical durability without tampering with those existing abilities nor adding a new ability/trait or mechanic.

#2: Add a magical resistance aspect to the enhancing spell "Foil." The simplest implementation would be to add a large generic magic evasion boost effect (ideally comparable to bar-spells) to Foil against all attacks, or at the very least to monster special abilities and magical spells, as these are the primary sources of powerful magical attacks and debuffs. The spell "Foil" is unique to main job Rune Fencers, and as a magical tank, a "bar-everything" spell unique to them would make a lot of sense. Rune Fencers have access to the existing barspells, but so do other jobs, and they can also be accessed by ANY job if they set the right sub-job. More importantly, there are so many of these barspells (pure elemental ones as well as bar-status ones) that casting any particular one of them in time for an enemy's off-element attack is nearly impossible. To make a macro for every single one of them would take up almost an entire macro pallette. Alternatively, in lieu of a general magic evasion boost, it could bestow a very large magic defense boost against all elemental damage while providing a large magic evasion boost or pure percentage resist rate boost against all enfeebling effects. I think a pure, large magic evasion boost is a simpler solution, but there are options.

Given the existence and relative ease of obtaining the Aegis shield for Paladin in the current state of the game, I don't think any of these adjustments would be unbalancing. Aegis gives a Paladin the equivalent effect of an undispellable full-time Vallation/Valiance with 24 Runes active at once! This while still allowing the Paladin to block physical attacks. This makes it a more effective magical tank than Rune Fencer by far. The adjustments I have proposed would allow Rune Fencer to continue to focus on certain elements while still maintaining excellent defenses against other elemental attacks and debuffs. It would allow Rune Fencer to be more of an accessible, competitive, viable alternative to Paladins for tanking a wide variety of situations in the game without supplanting Paladin as a tank.

Thank you for your consideration.

I agree with most of your post.

Rune Fencers should be able to effectively resist enfeebling magic.

They should also change the functionality of runes to where you can interchange them on demand to resist alternating elements. These two changes would put them on par with Paladins - instead of limiting their superiority to niche fights as you say - where only a single element is used.

[Oyama]

Dealing with multiple high dmg elements sure take the aegis.

And sure while you "can" block with aegis the block rate on even like lvl 120 stuff is like 10%.

This is what I mean though. It's the magic aspect, the blocking is just icing. The fact that a single item makes RUN redundant/inferior as a magical tank is the problem, and it's not even like it's a mythic. Lots of mobs use multiple elements whether it's damage or enfeebles, and anything that is blm/rdm/geo/sch or even other jobs is going to potentially be a problem for RUN, and you're going to want to take a pld instead. It's strange that the magic tank is weak against mages, there's a conceptual dissonance here. I don't mind paladin tanking magic heavy mobs, I don't want pld or Aegis nerfed, I want RUN buffed, so that a job that is built primarily as a tank can actually be more viable as a tank in more situations, and can actually be effective in situations where it really ought to shine but doesn't. I play BLU primarily, so I don't mind a steeper than average learning curve, but RUN's is very steep in situations that it ought to be right at home. The hoops you have to jump through just to be half as effective as an Aegis against diverse magic is kind of crazy. Plus paralyze can eat JAs, so you might have to hold back on your bread and butter abilities until it's taken off (or you might lose them if badly timed), and amnesia can't be removed with healing magic, rendering most of your important abilities inaccessible with no recourse other than to wait it out. The number of mobs that can remove a shield compared to the number of mobs that can paralyze or amnesia is miniscule, putting RUN at a disadvantage in a lot of content.

There are a few situations where RUN does well, but I'd prefer if the job was more effective in a greater variety of content, and not relegated to niche scenarios or to a single Job Ability as a role by itself (Gambit). I don't need it to be better than PLD as a tank in general, just would rather have more tanking options in more situations for when the PLD(s) aren't on or would rather be on a different job.

[machini]

The problem is that SE backed themselves into a corner with how they upgraded Aegis, and with how powerful Ochain is. PLD is indeed, completely superior in pretty much every way as a tank to any other job that can tank.

Short of nerfing Aegis into the ground, there isn't really a whole lot they can do with RUN, it seems, to actually make it do what it was sold to us as being capable of doing. RUN gets doubly screwed in this, as the lack of a shield severely hurts. It's kind of telling that the RUN Ergon Weapon has PDTII-25% on it. That's called a bandaid for the fact that RUN can't use a shield.

Here's one suggestion that no one would like but would probably be thematically sound, in keeping with what I see of RUN: Double the number of runes that can be active at once to six, and halve their potency (so that a RUN with six of a single type up is effectively the same). Then add a bonus for keeping a certain progression going. You put up, say, Ignis, then Unda, then Sulpor, then Tellus, then Flabra, then Gelus, and continue the rotation in that fashion, you gain increasing -MDTII and resists to all those six elements. There could be other combinations, like Ignis/Sulpor/Flabra/Ignis/Sulpor/Flabra, wherein with nothing that is weak to the others, you get enhanced bonuses to simply those elements, but higher than otherwise. Put up all six elements in rotation, get a small, but constantly increasing while you keep the chain going boost in MDTII and resists. Do the same thing with any two/three elements that are not strong/weak against one another, and get a similar, but better, bonus to those elements.

The way the elemental wheel works out, this would mean that you could, starting small and building up over time, boost everything, or boost the light- or dark-aligned halves of the elemental wheel at once, or you could do Light or Darkness.

SOMETHING that has to do with how you combine those runes, like with how PUPs have to pick and choose and cycle their maneuvers to activate attachments, would make it slightly more engaging, and would serve as a way to push the job closer to what it should be, in terms of mitigation.

Another option is to just bump RUN's MDB up higher. Or maybe just give them innate -MDTII, since that, stacking additively with MDT, and those two being multiplicative with valiance/vallation, would be a huge damage reduction to elements weak to the harbored runes.

However, that would piss off all the people who have Aegis.

Or wouldn't matter, knowing the community.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

However, that would piss off all the people who have Aegis.

No offence but tough, RUN was supposed to be for Magic what PLD was for Physical and the Aegis has completely messed that up, personally if it was upto me I wouldn't have added RUN knowing the Aegis existed or made it a different type of job.

In RUN's case the only way they can fix it realistically is to gimp the Aegis or give them the ability to match it, and I don't see that happening.

[Dale]

No offence but tough, RUN was supposed to be for Magic what PLD was for Physical and the Aegis has completely messed that up, personally if it was upto me I wouldn't have added RUN knowing the Aegis existed or made it a different type of job.

In RUN's case the only way they can fix it realistically is to gimp the Aegis or give them the ability to match it, and I don't see that happening.

Agreed. RUN should be the more powerful tank against magic.

Though in a Paladin's defense - they are pretty much obligated to get an Aegis if they want to be able to effectively tank many of the higher-tier magic-based mobs. RUN isn't - and can get by without having to spend months and months farming in boring Dynamis or 100's of millions of gil buying one. So there is a point to be made there.

[Oyama]

Though in a Paladin's defense - they are pretty much obligated to get an Aegis if they want to be able to effectively tank many of the higher-tier magic-based mobs. RUN isn't - and can get by without having to spend months and months farming in boring Dynamis or 100's of millions of gil buying one. So there is a point to be made there.

I might be more sympathetic to this if magical tanking wasn't supposed to be RUN's primary role, and if a RUN could compare to a PLD's physical mitigation without its Ergon weapon, which is much harder/longer/more expensive to make compared to an Aegis. Ochain is PLD's best physical defensive shield, but if you're not worrying about magic then you can probably get away with a Priwen with reprisal or something. Aettir gives PDTII-5, which is not much, and should have been 10. Dunna is 1/2 the potency of Idris, but Aettir is only 1/5 the potency of Epeolatry. Should be PDTII-10, but I digress.

All the suggestions about altering the functionality of runes are, I think, unrealistic for SE to implement at this stage. Personally, if we were to go down that road, I would have liked the Runes to provide resistance against the element of the rune itself and the element that the rune is ascendant to. This makes Lux and Tenebrae kind of redundant though except for enspell and lunge/swipe damage, which I suppose would be a legitimate reason to choose between the two, other than Vivacious Pulse with Tenebrae. This would double the number of your resistances without changing how runes work too much. However, like I said, I think changing the way runes work in even moderate ways is probably more work intensive than the devs want to bother with, especially with the last patch coming up very soon and the last chapter of RoV needing to be finished on schedule.

So, I hope the devs/representatives are reading this. Magic Evasion Bonus VI trait and a large, flat magic evasion or magic defense bonus or both (somewhere in the ballpark of +50 to +150) added to Foil are simple changes that would immensely improve Rune Fencer's ability to do the job for which it was designed without adversely affecting game balance. Let the magic tank be a magic tank.

P.S.- Oh and change Aettir to PDTII-10% and add Inquartata +2 to it. But I know you probably won't do this.

[Kensagaku]

One thing they could possibly due is go back to the Rune Knight roots from FFVI, and create something closer to the old Runic ability. Perhaps make it so that you absorb spells of an element that you have a rune up for, and the potency would vary based on the number of runes. Something like negating the damage of that element and absorbing 10/25/50% of the damage that would have been done. This would essentially give them three elements they are "immune" to if you kept up three different runes, which would allow them to prep runes for status resistance where needed too. Using Ramuh's Thunderspark above, we could do Thunder/Ice/Ice Runes; the one Thunder Rune wouldn't absorb much HP but it would negate the damage from the attack, and then the two Ice runes could build resistance to Paralyze. And then of course it'd be easy to buff Elemental Sforzo, having it absorb all elements at a base (say, 25%) and having runes just stacks with that. JP will still add the 1% per, so at max you'd absorb 25 + 50 + 15 = 90% of one element if you stacked three runes of the same type.

This would help RUN's niche as a magic tank, because they can simply rotate in a rune to absorb an element as it pops up. This doesn't give them complete immunity, as physical attacks will still beat them up quite a bit, and even with runes some statuses still get through. Amnesia would still be a crippling factor, so it wouldn't make them competent against -everything- but it would give them a big leg up.