Idea for a Magic Knight DPS job

The magic knight (Mystic Knight, Spellblade, etc) is one of the few notable FF jobs that haven't been implemented, so I though I'd take a stab at theorycrafting it (maybe again, It's been awhile since I used these forums so Idon't know if I done something like this before)

• Role: Melee DPS
• Armor Class: Maiming
• Weapon: Spellblade
• Abbreviation: MYK
• Starting Level: 70 (assumes it debuts in 6.0)
• General idea: the MGK is a Job that specializes inusing elemental aether to augment their sword play, to do this, they use use a weapon with a material hilt and handle and an aetheral blade (to give a basic idea, look at the Padjali swords and daggers and imagine their handles aren't glowy). However influence from several religious groups and ensure they also have the ability to call on the power of the Twelve as well, granting them various boons to help their teammates with. Basically they are a support melee class.
• Lore: A traveler is looking to revive a lost art is is looking for 13 students. The art of the Mystic Knight is believed to been granted power from the Twelve themselves. They travel to find the runestones Louisoux scattered across Eorzea and the worshipers of the members of this pantheon.
• The basics: the MSK toolkit has three aspects. The Weaponskills, the En- spells and the Runes.
  • The weaponskills are of course the basic skills and consist of a 3 skill combo and an AoE skill. With a oGCD for going into and out of melee range.
  • The En- Spells serve to augment these weaponskills, aspecting them to a certain element and granting access to the runes. There's one for each element. The effects they grant include a DoT of the aspected element (which like the En spells themselves you've already seen before) for the first skill and a chance to make the next En spell have no MP cost. They all have instant cast times but take up 2000 MP each.
  • The Runes are where the utility abilities goes. They are divided into Astral and Umbral Runes. The Astral Runes provivade debuffs to the target and nearby mobs, while the Umbral Runes provide buffs to the player and nearby allies. The runes are unlocked by casting an En spell of the same element (for example, Enblizzard would unlock the Halone and Menphina runes)
• Other notes:
  • The Aetheral blades have a yellow color unless they're dyed, an en spell is in play or are Primal weapons. In which case they take on the color of the element in the latter two cases and the dye in the former
  • While the Runes are AoE, entities can have more than one rune at once, Same applies to the DoTs. the general idea is to cycle though the elements and get 6 DoTs on the mobs or full a supportive role
  • The general aesthetic would draw on the battle mage, hence the Maiming gear would be used for this Job.
  • The first AF weapon will be called Durendal, if they aren't using that for PLD relics.
  • Also the Job will use the existing En- (obv) and elemental DoT statuses (Electrocution, Burns, Dropsy, etc)

What do you think?

The En-Spell and Rune systems needs some work. The game doesn't have Elemental weaknesses (it does have resistances as buffs/debuffs but those are fight-mechanic based), so En-Spells would only revolve around your Runes. With 6 elements and 2 versions of Runes (Umbral debuffs and Astral buffs) you're going to have to make 12 different effects and because you can control what debuff and buff you're getting, you're best/better Runes (a.k.a. Runes that increase Damage the Party does) are going to see over use, while the rest won't see little-to-any use. It would essential be like if HW and SB AST could choose what card it got, 99% of the time Balance would be your best choice, with the rare occasion you'd need Bole or Ewer (TP management was too easy in SB for Spire to be noteworthy).

An Idea I had for your En-Spell/Rune System:
-You only have 1 En-Spell that grants you 1 of 6 Elemental stacks.
-As you level, you get traits that let you hold up to 3 stacks.
-Your Rune abilities us your Elemental stacks for various effects. You could make a normal-Rune, that only uses 1 Elemental stack and a strong-Rune that uses all 3 stacks and stacks their effects.
For example, lets say you're holding 3 different Elements, Element A, B, and C. With Astral Rune abilities (your buff abilities): A grants a 2% Crit rate increase, B decreases damage done to the affected by 2%, and C grants a low potency MP Refresh. Using your normal-Astral Rune ability, everyone in your party will get A's buff. Using your strong-Astral Rune ability, everyone would get A, B, and C's effects. If you were holding all Element As and use your strong-Astral buff, the party would get a 6% Crit Rate increase.
-You could then make a few abilities that use up Elemental stacks you don't want (like generic oGCD burst attacks or your DoT).
-You could have a Rune that only affects a single target but maybe doubles the potency of buff/debuff.
-You could have an ability that lets you cycle through your current held Elemental stacks, moving the 1st stack to the back, while moving the 2nd and 3rd up.
-For Astral Rune buffs I'm thinking: 2% Crit Rate Increase (could be replaced with a D-Hit Rate or Det increase instead), 2% decrease in damage taken, a low potency MP-Refresh, a low potency regen, 2% increase in Physical Damage done (or a Skill Speed increase), and 2% increase in Magical Damage done (or a Spell Speed increase).
-You could also have an burst ability that increase in Potency based on how many stacks you currently have (with or without using them up)

TL;DR version for my idea: You hold up to 3 Elemental Stacks (there are 6), which you gain randomly from your EnSpell. Rune abilities use these Elemental stacks. One Rune ability uses only 1 Elemental stack and grants its effect to the whole party/target and enemies near by, another uses all 3 Elemental Stacks, stacking the effects.

I always felt if they made a sort of Mystic Knight type of melee DPS, it should have an ability similar to SAMs. But being based on FF6s "Runic". Apply an AoE buff to the group, lowers magic dmg taken by 5% (could be as low as 1%, whatever is balanced) followed by a small charge of MP from it, and a proc in one of their abilities. (Like how SAM uses it right before a raid wide, to then counter attack)


I feel you focused more on the jobs aesthetic and "feel" rather than suggesting an actual playstyle. (Not that you didnt attempt to some degree)
But I'll address as much as I can.
(1) You mention a 123 combo and AoE. Of course every job has an AoE, so that part wasnt needed to be mentioned, but since its tied together with the combo, makes me feel you stated it to get it out of the way, rather than thinking about the core concept of playstyle.
Usually melee tend to have combos, and ranged are more proc/dot/buff management (having moments of spaming the same ability) by default, being a melee defaults to having combos, unless specified otherwise. (Would be interesting to have a non combo melee job, as we currently dont have one.)
(2) Having a DoT for each element is actually a great idea for an en-spell user! but only in concept, as the devs are pushing for less DoTs, due to problsm with there being a hard cap on how many dots/debuffs a mob can have at one time. (But still a nice idea) A workable alternative is a short term buff based on element. Which you can easily stack 6 of, in the job gauge.
(3) You start to explain how it removes mp cost, and instant cast, etc, but you didnt actually explain what kind of "flow" you're going for.
example, is this a sort of Dark Arts style for melee, where you focus on popping an en-spell prior to each attack? or do en-spells just equate an elemental stance, which your basic combo has differing effects, depending on which elemental stance ur in? (I like the later more personally, but melee always have to weave more oGCDs than casters for some reason, so i wouldnt see SE going away from tradition here, and would most likely do the former. But with "Runes" as ur basic oGCD, then the former is possible.
As an additional side note, DRG is the only melee with no GCD reduction, so its original design was to focus more on oGCD weaving. So idealy, if this has no GCD reduction, then it would have more focus on weaving. Though SE hasnt been as focused on that design philosophy lately, so maybe not.)
(4) Im also getting the impression they have long range nukes they can use, but you dont directly say it, and based on your reply below, im still inclined to think there's something like that. (I might be confused though, so sorry if im wrong) if so, how do they work/factor in?

While we know SE will never listen to job ideas, but if we're pretending they would, since they've talked about struggling to find ways to make jobs unique from eachother, lets entertain the idea of them listening to job ideas. As for lore, and naming methods, that would absolutely be the last thing they would listen to. (Which i feel is odd ppl suggest jobs with lore listed in the description, when its not going against current lore.)
(I also find it odd when people make up a list of every ability, and potency, when SE wouldnt even use that either, nor does it help with whats important)
Mostly playstyle/mechanics, and only a tiny bit of aesthetic, is what SE seems to be mostly debating when deciding new jobs. Only after they have started working on the job, do they seem to make changes to the plan. (such as making a job into a different role than originally planned, or something of that nature)

But none the less, repeating what ive said multiple times, i do like the idea of rotating elements, solely to get the 1st hit of a combo off as a new elemental DoT.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

The game doesn't have Elemental weaknesses

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Personally the "Debuff" you put on the enemy should be what makes them "weak" to only YOUR elemental attack, of ONE element.
Enemies will resist this debuff naturally (always, 100% of the time), so a different BUFF to yourself needs to be popped, before you try to debuff the enemy with it.
But why make it so convoluted? Because this forces you to alternate elemental weaknesses. How?
This "buff" is on a semi long CD. So once you have the debuff on an enemy, the only way to apply a different element, is to apply the next debuff based on the current new weakness. Aka one elemental debuff per element. An Ice Debuff, that makes the enemy weak to fire attacks. Next you use the Fire Debuff, which makes the enemy weak to water attacks.
Since the mob is "weak" to the element, it will take the debuff w/o fail, and not needing the oGCD buff to make it work.
If for some reason you want to change the order of your elemental wheel, you can pop the buff again, to change elements.
(For the sake of avoiding bloat, the buff is also an MP restore, since they dont have lucid dreaming)

TLDR debuff mobs to make a personal elemental weakness on enemies, and a buff to help force u to rotate the elemental weakness wheel.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

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Yeah I didn't quite iron out the kinks with that (not have I mention what the buffs and debuffs were), but your suggestion are appreciated :)

Though I must mention the ones I did have an idea on what they do. Althyk's rune would extend Duration of buffs (Time Dialtion by another name basically), Menphina's increases MP regen and healing potency and Oschon's increases Skill and Spell speed.

I must also mention for the sake of this thread is that as the Runes used are those of the Twelve, their effect is based on what month they reside over. So the Astral runes are Halone, Thailak, Llymaelin, Byregot, Azeyma and Nophica. The Umbral ones are therefore, Menphina, Oschon, Althyk, Rhalgr, Nald'thal and Nymeia. The elements they are for are Ice (Halone, Menphina), Water (Thailak, Nymeia), Wind (Llmaelyn, Oschon), Lightning (Byregot, Rhalgr), Fire (Azeyma, Nald'thal) and Earth (Nophica, Althyk) So the Umbral Earth rune is Althyk's, the Astral Ice rune is Halone, etc.

EDIT @post above that I missed. I admit that the job is kinda half baked ATM. The idea here was to cast an enspell, use the 123 combo to got a DoT in and maybe proc the next one, and then cycle though to the next element, weaving in the utility abilities mid combo if needed, so yeah they are closer to elemental stances than Dark arts for melee. I admit that I was a little focused on aesthetics(especially considering that the elemental aspects are reduced to such with the current system BLU aside) and that that part of it was motives by a desire to use enemy only statuses. That said your criticism are valid ones.

Regarding 1, that might also be another way to go about it, but it might fall into either a Ranged DPS (which granted the support angle kinda fits) like rotation or a more simplistic Healer DPS rotation if done poorly.

I like the idea of En- spells and Runes but that implementation doesn't seem very fun to play. Just brainstorming some ideas:

-With 3 skills there are exactly 6 different possible sequences, the same as the number of elements. Each element could be a different sequence.

-More than 3 base skills and which ones are used depends on the active element; some might be very situational, longer/shorter combos or no combo at all, or if you want to get really complex you could have abilities that are only active if certain abilities from other elements were used

-6 abilities that basically do the same thing (En- spells) is a lot; could be 1 or 2 that give you a random element, it could change on a timer (which could be sped up or slowed down), it could change based on your combo skills either Mudra style or in an order or having a few options depending on your finisher

-You mentioned the horoscope-type things; using that you could have a timer constantly moving between astral/umbral while you cycle through elements which if you have some control over the next element could make for some interesting decision making based on where the timer is about to be but that's a lot of different possibilities to remember and might be better with fewer elements

-Cooldowns (both short and long) that change based on your element, making you decide which element to use it under (more interesting if they're random and if the ability has a more far-reaching effect depending on the element that affects future actions/decisions)

-Could eliminate En- buffs almost entirely and simply have skills that automatically act under certain elements and interact with each other in different ways. This could go the way of Red Mage where every time you use a skill of an element you get some kind of resource that can be used a number of different ways (like Runes, buffing other elements, unlocking abilities, etc.) or it could be a more simple yet varied combo system where you could for example have 2 choices for each combo ability and at the end you get a Rune (or something) depending on your choices

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(4) Im also getting the impression they have long range nukes they can use, but you dont directly say it, and based on your reply below, im still inclined to think there's something like that. (I might be confused though, so sorry if im wrong) if so, how do they work/factor in?

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Must had missed that part of your post. I haven't really though that far, but that does seem like an interesting idea. Maybe having 3 specific buffs proced by elemental finishers and used to trigger a devastating AoE or single target attack based on what elements were used (I'm thinking Fire, Ice and Wind for the AoE and Lightning, Earth and Water for single target, 300 and 700 pot respectively). Would also ensure a structure to the rotation besides getting a specific element for specific runes as it would make specific elements suited for either trash pulls or bosses or used in conjunction for a small DPS boost if you got all 6 elements (which would also eliminate the need for a Rune to buff DPS directly as it'd be like how Divination works)