Rune Fencer Impression

[cengeal]

After starting to play Rune Fencer and sucking at it, and after gradually improving and becoming a decent Rune Fencer, I was left wondering about several things. This job will always be compared to PLD, as PLD is the tank to be in this game. Each one of these jobs has its strengths and weaknesses.

One glaring issue is the availability of "ultimate" weapons. PLD has access to three relic weapons, 3 empyrean weapons, and one mythic weapon. In comparison, RUN has access to one Ergon weapon (which are still more difficult to make than all 3 R/M/E's). Now granted you won't see a PLD put on a Ragnarok or Caladbolg for tanking, but that's not the point. PLD has access to more "ultimate" Great Swords than RUN does, despite RUN having a higher rating in it. RUN also has a higher sword skill than PLD has a Great Sword skill. Because RUN is (along with GEO) the youngest job in the game, it gets seriously shafted about weapon availability. I fail to see how adding RUN to Ragnarok and Caladbolg would "break" the job.

Another issue is damage output. RUN is not intended to be a damage dealer, this is a fact. However, the concern is sword vs Great Sword. Logically speaking, equipping a two handed sword would allow you to deal more damage, but this is not true from my experiences. This has mostly to do with the GS weaponskills. This could be adjusted if RUN was given Torcleaver, which is a strong WS in its own right, or if Dimidiation was adjusted to have similar mods to Torcleaver. I would also like to point out there are other GS WS's, which could be better (notably Spinning Slash and Ground Strike).

Another way to make GS's stand out a bit more is to maybe give the WS's more utility. Sword has 4 utility WS's: Flat (stun), Circle (AoE), Sanguine (hp drain), Requiescat (non-elemental damage). GS has 2: Shockwave (a pathetic AoE sleep range), and Herculean slash (paralyze). Maybe if Dimidiation temporarily lowered a monster's accuracy (5% maybe?) would help. Or maybe repurpose another WS so it heals status aliments even. That would certainly give more incentive to use GS as a tanking weapon.

[cebera001]

yeah i just got into run as i enjoy playing pld myself, until i realised you need to do 6 months of legend on all coalitions which tbh has put me straight off, with ergon i believe be better than pld with 75% pdt and we have good magic defense, just hoping this next update would lower imprets to like assualt tags as in every 10 mins so can actually start the quests, as in 6 months never know job may be obsolete and a waste of time

[Kyte]

Keep in mind that although it is unfortunate that they didn't let RUN use Torcleaver, Ragnarok and Caladbolg aren't particularly exceptional great swords. Aettir (for pure tanking), Macbain (DD-focused), and Humility (hybrid) are all good non-Ergon weapons.

Given the current disparity between sword and great sword weapon skill potency and /NIN's status as the typical go-to sub, you can instead work with the current situation and just dual wield swords.

[cengeal]

Keep in mind that although it is unfortunate that they didn't let RUN use Torcleaver, Ragnarok and Caladbolg aren't particularly exceptional great swords. Aettir (for pure tanking), Macbain (DD-focused), and Humility (hybrid) are all good non-Ergon weapons.

Given the current disparity between sword and great sword weapon skill potency and /NIN's status as the typical go-to sub, you can instead work with the current situation and just dual wield swords.

I don't really find myself subbing ninja all that much tbh. And I agree that Ragnarok and Caladbolg are not particularly impressive, it still feels cheap that RUN can use less "ultimate" GS's than PLD. I am working with the current situation - the problem is the current situation is completely nonsensible and borderline stupid.

Something I forgot to touch on before was the SC properties of GS WS's. Spinning Slash, Ground Strike, Resolution, and Dimidiation all have Fragmentation properties. This means aside from Dimi, none of these WS's can SC together. Now I'm not sure if GS is the only weapon type to suffer from this, I'm thinking it isn't, so if there's more, feel free to add. People who never attempt more than a 1 step SC may not even understand what the issue here is. The problem is the overall lack of SC versatility when using their supposed best weapon.

Another thing that would just make sense is to give the job Rune "Fencer" the Fencer job trait. Possibly add the job to more shields even. Whenever I look at the facts surrounding this job it seems like there was a lot of oversight when SE created it.

[Kyte]

EDIT: As pointed out below, I made a mistakingly remembered Resolution as Fusion- so yeah, you are stuck with just doing a two WS Light. That said, great sword does sometimes still have better properties for group play.


As for not subbing NIN- other subs do have a place, but in any situation where shadows are a viable source of damage mitigation, it's going to be the best subjob for tanking. On that same note, it also tends to be the best subjob for damage dealing unless you require great sword's skillchain options and/or have Epeolatry.

[Martel]

Resolution is Fusion and Ground Strike has Distortion as a secondary property. Dimidiation--->Resolution-->Dimidiation is a pretty good double light SC, which is the one thing that great sword has going for it over a sword setup.

Resolution is Fragmentation / Scission, and Dimidiation is Frag/Light. So, no. I wish, but no.

[Kyte]

My bad, I could have sworn it was Fusion for some reason. Shows how long it's been since I've bothered with great swords.

[hakrev]

I have to agree, Great Swords for RUN's are not working like they should. Great Axe does more damage than great swords on RUN, even with the much lower skill rating because great axes are simply better balanced and time was put into them to be awesome during the warrior glory days. I think the main problem is that you have this massive hunk of metal, that is great sword, and yet you can't even block with it. I suggest a multi-block ability that stacks up and causes rune-based enfeebling to the enemy upon them hitting you. For instance, if you have 1 ice rune, you can cause a 'weak' paralysis; if you have 2 ice rune, you can cause a longer lasting paralysis; if you have 3 ice rune, than you can cause a highly effective long lasting paralysis. If you had 1 ice rune, 1 dark rune, and 1 light rune (for some reason lol), you would activate 3x different tier one enfeebles on the enemy. This would make rune more of a front-line tactician based tank, which they basically are now, but with little utility to stop physical damage other than relying on subs such as SAM (Most Common, balance between DD and Survivability) or DNC (For longer survivability against lots of enemies) or ninja (for evasion of abilities when sword play + foil is down; extremely situational sub).

It's highly silly that we have to solely rely on our subjob to actually do our main job. Can we voke or do anything like that to generate enmity after a strong DD enmity strike? No (Flash and vallation are NOT enough to keep hate after a single DD strike). Can we block any sort of physical damage naturally with job abilities or spells? Yes...but only 30ish damage from phalanx. Stoneskin + blink I wouldn't count here because in any meaningful fight the main target is hitting you too fast with abilities for you to even get either of these off after they initially wear off. Can we DD enough to keep hate with a great sword? No, you should change your weapon from your best skill weapon to something a little more sub-par to DD at all and even then you will suck.

So of the 3 important things a tank needs to survive and be effective we get a weak possibly from phalanx for physical damage, which could be cast by a proper rdm for a much better effect. Leaving us with nothing, we fall short on all 3 fronts. We do awesome against elemental magic, but there are maybe a handful of monsters that focus solely on magic, and even when they do we can't swap between runes fast enough to block the elements (usually more than one on all magic monsters these days). So even in our greatest strength we're only doing awesome 50% or less of the time. Isn't that...pathetic?

We all know that SE knows this, otherwise they wouldn't have given aegis to pld's to make up for their shortcoming which was magic if they didn't realize that we needed both physical and magic defences to work at all. At least they have sentinel to stack on the enmity after a crazy sam unleashes his 2hr double light sc's. A rune fencer is forced to sit there and just kinda throw pebbles at the monster after such an attack with little to no hope (even with ergon) of getting back hate.

So I come to my second suggestion. I think rune fencer should get some really powerful REM type grips. Usually grip gives something benign and silly like +5 acc or something, what I'm talking here is giving something like
-10% physical damage taken II, + 100 enmity, +20% bar spell resistance, and some kind of grip ability you unlock for Damage Dealing like +30% to physical attacks for x amount of seconds or + 50 stat (corresponding to Great Sword WS executed). You know that kind of crazy good stuff that helps flesh out our massive weaknesses.

My third suggestion would be to actually give us a line of spells for blunt/piercing/slashing to lower the amount of incoming damage by that type of incoming damage for 20% or something. This could even be an ability.

As it stands unless they do something drastic, rune fencer will remain as it is, untouched and unloved by the masses. I enjoy it personally, but that's just because I like the aesthetic of the job (orange gear is awesome!), but I could just as easily put that gear look on my pld and do 50x better at tanking and damage dealing and staying alive. Oh and aegis actually will beat out any rune fencer at magic damage tanking due to it being straight up full spectrum -magic damage taken instead of juggling 3 runes in anticipation of an elemental attack that may or may not come. I feel that rune fencer is to pld what dark knight is to warrior. Just how drk has pretty much always been the secret lol job simply because there are always better faster jobs out there, so is rune fencer trying to party tank...just lol all the way.

[Vashkoda]

One glaring issue is the availability of "ultimate" weapons. PLD has access to three relic weapons, 3 empyrean weapons, and one mythic weapon. In comparison, RUN has access to one Ergon weapon (which are still more difficult to make than all 3 R/M/E's). Now granted you won't see a PLD put on a Ragnarok or Caladbolg for tanking, but that's not the point. PLD has access to more "ultimate" Great Swords than RUN does, despite RUN having a higher rating in it. RUN also has a higher sword skill than PLD has a Great Sword skill. Because RUN is (along with GEO) the youngest job in the game, it gets seriously shafted about weapon availability. I fail to see how adding RUN to Ragnarok and Caladbolg would "break" the job.

It has to do with game lore. RUN and GEO did not exist back in the crystal war era [(possible spoilers?)i.e., the allied forces Hydra Corps, wielding the brand spanking new relic gear that was supposed to turn the tide against the Shadowlord, didn't have representatives for RUN or GEO. Similarly, there were no RUN or GEO back in ancient Aht Urgan so they had no mythic weapons stored in the royal treasury. Similarly, there were no RUN or GEO in the lands we get to visit in the abyssea dimension, so they have no empyrean gear]. The game devs are not about to suddenly make these weapons available to other jobs when they can't find a logical excuse (per game lore) for why they would have them. Yes it sucks for those jobs, but at least we got ergons, and at least we are on the new Aeonic weapons, which also have new weaponskills with new skillchain properties. And yes, it sucks to have to obtain difficult-to-get weapons as the only way to play your job the way it was meant to, but we accepted that when they released Epeolatry.

I have to agree, Great Swords for RUN's are not working like they should. Great Axe does more damage than great swords on RUN, even with the much lower skill rating because great axes are simply better balanced and time was put into them to be awesome during the warrior glory days. I think the main problem is that you have this massive hunk of metal, that is great sword, and yet you can't even block with it. I suggest a multi-block ability that stacks up and causes rune-based enfeebling to the enemy upon them hitting you.

You aren't meant to 'block' with that "massive hunk of metal", you are meant to 'parry' with it, which means escaping the hit completely. So yes, to make this clear, the devs really should have given us foil-type rapiers instead of massive great swords, but I guess they needed a job to make GS experts, since they already had several that could use regular swords well. But since we are now saddled with using GS, we cannot 'lore-wise' be expected to be shield experts (which is redundant anyway since plds already serve that purpose). The problem is that the cap on 'chance to successfully block with a shield' is much higher than the 'chance to successfully parry', so we are never going to be able to "mass tank" a horde of mobs while afk, like pld can. We still expect to get hit, and we have to compensate for that with as much turtle gear as we can, which gets in the way of being able to do effective melee damage.

It's highly silly that we have to solely rely on our subjob to actually do our main job. Can we voke or do anything like that to generate enmity after a strong DD enmity strike? No (Flash and vallation are NOT enough to keep hate after a single DD strike). Can we block any sort of physical damage naturally with job abilities or spells? Yes...but only 30ish damage from phalanx. Stoneskin + blink I wouldn't count here because in any meaningful fight the main target is hitting you too fast with abilities for you to even get either of these off after they initially wear off. Can we DD enough to keep hate with a great sword? No, you should change your weapon from your best skill weapon to something a little more sub-par to DD at all and even then you will suck.

You seem to acknowledge the RUN aren't meant to be dd, but seem to hope that we can still be a good dd-tank hybrid. I would just give up on that idea. You aren't going to be keeping hate with dd damage, and even if you could, at some point all the dds will be at the top of the mob's hate list, and then what? Your JA's are actually pretty good at generating enmity (and you have more options here than pld does), but you do have to constantly be using them, as well as flash, foil and crusade. You can't be like a pld who just sits back and hits a cure or flash macro now and then. RUN takes work, and you have to pay attention, but keeping hate should not be an issue (or maybe you need to macro in more enmity gear?).

As for you other suggestions, since we already have Epeolatry available to cap us at 75% PDT, I don't see them letting us go much higher over that (perhaps as our final job point gift, but probably not over 5%. They weren't even willing to let the prototype vocane ring augment of pdtII -3% go through, and changed it because they thought it would be too OP. On the plus side, RUN is still getting some love on other fronts, with the way magic bursting strats are being favored. Rayke and Gambit alone seem to be reasons to invite us to endgame events, now.

[cengeal]

It has to do with game lore. RUN and GEO did not exist back in the crystal war era [(possible spoilers?)i.e., the allied forces Hydra Corps, wielding the brand spanking new relic gear that was supposed to turn the tide against the Shadowlord, didn't have representatives for RUN or GEO. Similarly, there were no RUN or GEO back in ancient Aht Urgan so they had no mythic weapons stored in the royal treasury. Similarly, there were no RUN or GEO in the lands we get to visit in the abyssea dimension, so they have no empyrean gear]. The game devs are not about to suddenly make these weapons available to other jobs when they can't find a logical excuse (per game lore) for why they would have them. Yes it sucks for those jobs, but at least we got ergons, and at least we are on the new Aeonic weapons, which also have new weaponskills with new skillchain properties. And yes, it sucks to have to obtain difficult-to-get weapons as the only way to play your job the way it was meant to, but we accepted that when they released Epeolatry.

Ergons are mythic equivalents, so I am not bothered by there being no mythics in ToAU for RUN and GEO. As far as SE not wanting to do this for the sake of game lore, I think that's just a great excuse for them to do nothing. Game Lore wise, it makes absolutely no sense for Rune Fencer, the master of the great sword, to be able to use less "ultimate" great swords than Paladin, a job that can merely use Great Swords.

Secondly, I would not say that Ergons are "difficult" to get. They are highly time consuming, obnoxiously expensive (moreso than Mythics and Relics, not sure about Empyreans), and have a lot of requirements. And I do not accept that I should need it to play the job the way it was meant to be played. If you say that about AF/Relic/Emp armor, then I can accept that it. But when these weapons become the expected norm and you can't reach that norm without it, it's bad game design.

Finally, I have one more issue, that maybe I am wrong about. Were Blue Mages, Corsairs, and Puppetmasters represented by the Hydra Corps? Granted they are not on relic weapons, but they do have relic equipment that drops there. I also don't think there were any Dancer or Scholar weapons stored in the Aht Urgan treasure vault, but again, I may be mistaken. If I'm wrong, then no harm done. But if I'm right, then there is an enormous break from precedent to have done that for those jobs but not for RUN and GEO.