Originally Posted by
Grimoire-M
I'll echo this sentiment. Personally I'd prefer it if the name was Rune Fencer, but that's more because I'm okay with Runes being part of the aesthetic and want to tie the spells its using to some unique system. I'm also okay with it using Maces/Hammers as long as they're light weapons, as it pretty much has to slot into the Scouting role. Which also kind of fits for an 'energy blade' mechanic, assuming they were used for the hilt. For thematic inspiration I'd gesture at Golden Sun's Adepts, WoW's Enhancement Shaman, FFTA2's Gladiator, Elementalist, and Spellblade, Tactic Ogre's Rune Fencer/Valkyrie and Vartan, and of course, Mystic Knight in FFV and Rune Knight in FFXI.
To me, their mechanic could go a few ways, but I'll spitball them:
1) It could revolve around season flavored phases, which involve pairing two Alchemical Elements (Fire or Water with Wind or Earth) together to achieve a proc/gcd focused rotation, with Ice and Thunder acting as transition elements or would fit in with the occasional burst cooldown. Wind and Earth would dictate the GCD timer or swap between a GCD or oGCD focused phase while Fire/Water would probably work similarly to AF/UI, either manipulating MP or a gauge. Cause of this the job wouldn't have traditional combo branches in order to make room for this system to work.
2) If SE wanted to stick with positionals and combos (blegh), the focus could be akin to an expanded Sen system where your combo branches imbue your Rune Slots with specific Runes and can enhance them, before you later spend them on specific abilities at certain breakpoints, and otherwise try to dump them on filler actions. Using Slots will lock them out for a period so you have to pace your combos, but your filler actions will not lock them out. Positionals would work better under this system but Combo Branches would have to get more complicated (1 ->2A/2B -> 3A/3B) to accommodate filling in rune slots and empowering them. I'd expect certain elements to be directly tied to specific positionals in this system. This would also have to accommodate dropping combos and locked out runes, probably by making enhancement hits accelerate the timer of random locked out slots, and having most of the powerful spenders be oGCD.