Been a while since I've typed up a job suggestion, and now that I know the approach used for the Heavensward jobs, I felt it was time to post a suggestion. I'll admit, I'm not much of a healer; I simply don't have the mindset for it. That said, I've repeatedly suggested Oracle/Mystic as a healer, and below is my take on it.
Mystic (version 2, as of 09/08/2015)
Standing opposite to Thaumaturgy and its manipulation of destructive energies, the priests of Nald employ powers that draw on the dual aspects known as life and death. With the ability to control the pain and succor of living, these mystics perform rites that help preserve balance between life and death and can tip the scales one way or the other when needed.
Mechanics
Mystic is built around the concepts of duality. Seeing that they are basically a healer version of Thaumaturge, they have Astral and Umbral alignments. Certain skills grant Astral/Umbral Alignment (their version of Ast Fire and Umb Ice). Unlike THM, MYS's mechanic is that to fully utilize it's skills, they need to get three alignment stacks and then hit Ascension. This isn't a temporary mode, but a stance that has a cost to activate.
Ascensions are active indefinitely once invoked. While ascended to a particular alignment, the MYS cannot get stacks of the aspect they're aligned with (so a MYS that is in Astral Ascendence cannot gain stacks of Astral Alignment, even if they are using only Mend and Mend II).
Cross-class Skills: ACN (Eye for an eye, Virus, Physic). CNJ (Protect, Stoneskin, Raise, Cleric Stance).
Abilities
Astral Alignment - Decreases the casting time of healing spells by 1.66% per stack (5% at 3 stacks).
Umbral Alignment - Increases the potency of damage spells by 1.66% per stack (5% at 3 stacks).
01 Pain - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 (120 potency on targets affected by Wither). Instant cast. Grants Umbral Alignment. Umbral Ascension: Places a DoT effect that deals 30% of damage dealt. DoT duration: 12s.
02 Mend - Restores target's HP. Cure potency: 300. Grants Astral Alignment. Astral Alignment: Increased healing potency on targets under the effect of Mend II and Absolve.
04 Wither - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 30. Additional Effect: Unaspected damage over time with a potency of 40 for 30s. Increases the potency of Pain to 120. Grants Umbral Alignment.
06 Transfuse: Swiftness - Reduce target's movement speed by 20% and increase own movement speed by 20%. Duration: 15s. Cooldown: 45s.
08 Body to Mind - Consume 20% of max HP over 15 seconds to restore 30% of max MP. Cooldown: 150s.
10 Reverberation - Restores HP of target and allies nearby. Cure potency: 200. Additional effect: Regen for 15s. Cure potency: 40. Grants Astral Alignment.
12 Repercussion - Reflects 10% of direct incoming damage. Duration: 9s. Cooldown: 120s.
15 Dispel - Removes a single detrimental effect from target.
18 Renascence - Revives target in a weakened state.
22 Temporal Exchange - Next spell is cast immediately, but its recast is increased by 50%. Buff duration: 10s. Cooldown: 60s.
26 Mend II - Restores target's HP. Cure potency: 450. Grants Astral Alignment. Astral Ascension: Places a HoT effect that restores 30% of HP healed. HoT Duration: 12s.
30 Ascension - Consumes three stacks of Astral or Umbral Alignment to grant Astral or Umbral Ascension. Cooldown: 15s.
--Astral Ascension - Decreases the casting time of healing spells by 10% and enhances certain actions. Decreases the potency of damage spells by 30%. Overwrites Cleric Stance.
--Umbral Ascension - Increases the potency of damage spells by 10% and enhances certain actions. Decreases the potency of healing spells by 30%. Swaps INT and MND values while active. Overwrites Cleric Stance.
34 Transfuse: Speed - Inflicts target with 10% Slow and increases the skill speed and spell speed of nearby allies by 10%. Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120 if the target is immune to Slow. Duration: 15s. Cooldown: 60s. Shares a 30 second cooldown with Transfuse: Might.
38 Conversion - Places a barrier around target ally, increasing the effect of direct healing spells and causing direct attacks to heal them. Disappears once target has taken damage 3 times. Cure potency: 200. Duration: 30s. Cooldown: 90s.
42 Blood to Mana - Converts damage dealt by next spell to MP. Buff duration: 10s. Cooldown: 30s.
46 Life Exchange - Places a damage over time effect on target enemy and a healing over time effect on the target they are currently attacking. Both effects expire together. DoT Potency: 60. HoT Potency: 60. Duration: 12s. Cooldown: 45s.
50 Transfuse: Might - Reduces damage dealt by target by 5% and increases damage output of all allies in range by 5%. Duration: 15s. Cooldown: 60s. Shares a 30 second cooldown with Transfuse: Speed.
Traits
08 Enhanced Mind
14 Enhanced Mind II
16 Enhanced Swiftness - Increases the duration of Transfuse: Swiftness to 20 seconds.
20 Withering Pain - Increases the potency of Pain on targets under the effect of Wither to 150.
24 Enhanced Mind III
28 Magick and Mend
32 Purge - While under the effect of Umbral Ascension, allows the use of Dispel on enemy targets to remove one beneficial effect from them.
36 Enhanced Body to Mind - Increases the amount of MP restored to 40%.
40 Magick and Mend II
44 Enhanced Temporal Exchange - Temporal Exchange no longer increases the recast of the next spell.
48 Enhanced Conversion - Target can now take damage 6 times before Conversion disappears.
Quested Abilities
30 Dichotomy - Converts Astral Ascension into Umbral Ascension or Umbral Ascension into Astral Ascension. Cooldown: 30s.
35 Absolve - Restores HP over time. Cure potency: 80. Duration: 30s. Astral Ascension: Regen effect grows stronger over time (final tick: 280 potency).
35 Condemn - Deals unaspected damage over time. DoT potency: 40. Duration: 30s. Umbral Ascension: DoT effect grows stronger over time (final tick: 90 potency).
40 Stave - Places a shield on target ally, negating damage up to 25% of target's max HP. Upon reaching this amount, target receives the accumulated damage over 15 seconds. Shield Duration: 10s. Cooldown: 30s.
45 Boon - Restores target's HP. Cure potency: 500. Cooldown: 30s. Astral Ascension: Causes attacks performed by target to heal them. Cure Potency: 50. Duration: 15s.
45 Chastise - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200. Cooldown: 30s. Umbral Ascension: Attacks performed on target deal additional damage with a potency of 50 per attack. Duration: 10s.
50 Duality - Allows the use of one ability of the opposite alignment. Cooldown: 60s.
52 Vile Spike - Marks target, causing direct magical damage taken by them to affect enemies nearby for 20% of the original attack's damage. Duration: 10s. Cooldown: 30s.
54 Overflowing Cup - Marks target ally, causing 60% of any healing effects received by them to heal two allies with the lowest HP nearby. Duration: 18s. Cooldown: 90s.
56 Transfuse: Status - Steal a beneficial effect from target. Cooldown: 15s.
58 Consecration - Creates a designated area at the target's feet, healing any party members who enter. Cure Potency: 100. Duration: 21s. Astral Ascension: Removes one negative status from allies per tick
58 Desecration - Creates a designated area at the target's feet, dealing damage with a potency of 30 to any who enter for 30s. Umbral Ascension: Afflicts enemies standing within with 40% weight.
60 Tipped Scales - Can only be used while ascended. Astral Ascension: Deals unaspected damage to all nearby enemies with a potency of 100. Restores own HP and the HP of nearby allies (Cure Potency: 500). Umbral Ascension: Deals unaspected damage to all nearby enemies with a potency of 250. Restores own HP and the HP of nearby allies (Cure Potency: 100). Cooldown: 120s.
Lv3 Limit Break - Equipoise
Notes
- As always, potencies and durations are negotiable.
- As mentioned in the description, this is essentially a healer version of Thaumaturge. Seeing that THMs are based out of the temple of Thal, Mystics being based out of the temple of Nald would make sense.
- Astral and Umbral alignments are stacking buffs, much like Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. Each have their own effects to their respective alignments.
- A MYS that wants to do easy switches will want to try to keep stacks of the opposite alignment while ascended.
- Dichotomy exists in the event you need to do a quick swap for emergencies, but otherwise the MYS would have to build three stacks of the opposite alignment and then hit Ascension again.
- This being said, in the event you hit Ascension while having no stacks of the opposite alignment, you lose your ascended status.
- The "doubled" abilities (Absolve/Condemn, etc) would have their own icons depending on what is your current ascension. Should you have no ascension, the default would be the Astral Ascension version of the spell.
- The Transfuse line of abilities is this job's version of raid utility. Might and Speed share a cooldown. I guess in a way you can treat Might as a mini-mitigation cooldown for the tank.
- Conversion and Stave are sort of defensive utility, mostly meant to be used on tanks. Conversion in particular would be useful to mitigate attacks like the multi-hit stuff from Turn 9.
- Yes, Overflowing Cup turns heals into smart heals. Vile Spike does the opposite with enemies by spreading damage the target receives to other enemies.
- Life Exchange is meant to simulate health being drained form an enemy on to its target. There might be a better way to do this, or this skill could be axed for an additional way of recovering MP.
- The reason the Withering Pain trait exists is because I decided to forego giving the job too many non-ascended offensive spells. In theory MYS should be able to keep up with a same-level WHM in pre-30 content. Also keep in mind that Pain is instant cast.
- Tipped Scales is this job's answer to WHM's Assize, with a tweak of sorts.
- I know I'm sort of grasping at straws with Transfuse: Status. I honestly didn't have anything else to put in there, so I'm open to suggestions. >.>;
- I also want to emphasize that potencies are negotiable. I'm not good at the numbers game and I'm sure some of these abilities are either overpowered or underpowered.
- Access to Cleric Stance is really meant to help out in the pre-30 content. Once you hit 30 you'll ignore Cleric Stance and use Umbral Ascension if you want to DPS.
- While Mystics in FF Tactics were yin yang-themed, this version of the job is more like a Life & Death mage.
Comments, suggestions and so on are welcome.
Pipe Dreams: Mystic
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07-06-2015, 05:04 PMDuellePipe Dreams: Mystic
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08-25-2015, 05:34 PMShurrikhan
I'm surprised there haven't been any comments on this in the months since you've posted it, and now just have to hope I'm not tainting anything by posting comments after it.
I'm not sold on the Duality concept, largely because it seems to be doing the opposite.
It takes 3 heal casts to have the same toolkit access to healing abilities that all other healers have at any point, or 3 dps casts to reach their cleric stance (again, for them, basically instant).
These do nothing on their own. One must first ascend, and cannot then ascend oppositely for 90 seconds without consuming a 1-minute cooldown.
**[Though Teetering Scales helps, it seems too little (at best roughly triple cooling speed) and for a problem that need not exist.]
**I do like that we can at least gain stacks in the opposite alignment while Ascended, but with a 90-second CD on Ascend this really don't feel as beneficial as it ought to. I may just be unable to see what I'm supposed to do with it.
Slightly off-subject: There seems to be no reason not to stay ascended for a particular role. Which means an extra button being pressed with zero thought upon reaching 3 stacks. If the stacks at least had real value and especially if they could be consumed in a different way, and then enhanced (preferably each in creative manner, not just a basic buff) instead of unlocking the additional special abilities, then the stances might make sense. As they are, they might as well be a passive conversion of the 3-stack effect upon reaching those 3 stacks.
I cannot imagine a playstyle forming from this that would be any more fun than Cleric Stance unless accentuated by more than just otherwise-locked abilities and the Ascension passive benefits. If it is to be a dps-healer (or, THM healer) that works in a sort of swing between roles, there needs to be more to cause its players to actually swap sides or "swing" it, even if the mechanics encouraging that are as simple as greatly increased passive mana generation during the swing and quickly diminishing to below-standard MP regen when finishing said swing (diving further into full healer or full dps).
**Affecting MP Costs alone will not work. There are many times where even a 90% mana-cost-reduced dps or heal cast is simply not worth casting without additional benefits. A blend might be effective. I don't know, I'd have to really think about it.
**Admittedly the dependence on this "swing" would still have to be fine tuned or outright rethought again. With the above ideas MST would have a balance of higher mana regeneration but less consecutive/intensive healing time available to it than most healers. As traditional healers are not especially running into mana issues as is, that may effectively crush the job.
Tldr: when I think 'duality' I think the ability to quickly access two opposite mentality/toolsets and for them to synergize together. This has neither immediacy nor synergy as far as I can see, yet.
On the topic of ability spread:
I like that your saving hotbar space by pairing the Ascension-unlocked abilities, swapping Icons and effects according to current Ascension, but unless MST has already reached the same ability count as other jobs, this should not be necessary. Rather, each should probably have some tactical viability anywhere along the swing, even if typically inferior to either of the pure sides / Ascensions, and the Ascension effects affecting more than just their basic damage or healing so that we really feel like we have a large toolkit manipulable by the very things that make the job unique.
I like the effects of abilities like Stave and the Purge trait a lot. The transfusions could, imo, use some work, but this should come with whatever you think of for the stances, etc. The Sphere abilities seem aesthetically interesting but nothing all that special, and likely annoying to some users (consider Salted Earth).
Just my officious two cents.
Edit: Okay, extra cent. Did you mean for it to feel more or less like a Priest / Archon? Somehow a lot of the extra aesthetics of Mystic I expected don't really seem to be here. (Even if they were mostly just shikigami animations before debuffs.) -
08-26-2015, 02:49 AMLeidiriv
I really love this Job. It's an awesome concept, but I'm with Shurrikan. Perhaps when you're not in an Ascension, give access to a weaker version of the Astral abilities, and give the Astral/Umbral stacks some utility aside from letting you click your stances.
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08-27-2015, 10:50 AMBlueMageQuina
I love the duality you were looking for - a DPS stance and a healing stance. To be fair, Shurrikhan is right in saying that duality brings the thought of opposites to mind, working together. I feel that the three Transfusion spells do that perfectly here as well as Aetherial Exchange, Conversion, and Body to Mind. (I did find Body to Mind and Stave to be oddly placed in a healer; why would a healer hurt itself to heal MP? Why would a healer's cooldown delay damage as opposed to prevent it? Although admittedly, these go along with the duality feel.)
What I think is needed is a little more mitigation of damage through Regens or barriers to be able to remain in the DPS stance longer due to the lore of your MYS; two sides healing and hurting. What you have are Conversion (heals on being damaged for 3 hits), Stave (delays damage taken for 15s) and Transfusion: Might (reduces enemies' damage output by 5%). I don't think these have the shorterm mitigation of WHM's Regen + Medica II + Assize or SCH's Adlo/Succor + Sacred Soil + E4E + Pet especially since one of these spells, Stave, can make a healer forget/be unable to heal a target by the target's delay in damage and have them KO if not used appropriately.
Something else I found odd that is potentially job-breaking is the lack of a trait that increases base action damage (and healing) by x%. All healers have one of these if not two.
I only hope that the healing loss from being in a stance that doesn't facor healing isn't significant.
On a good note, I love that you have put some FF staple spells. Pain, Might, Dispel (which I thought you had wrong until saw the Purge trait) and Overflowing Cup (favorite CLT spell from FFT and a spell I've used in my CLT concept.)
I only wish you had put potencies here to give a better feel of how the MYS should play. -
08-27-2015, 03:05 PMShurrikhanThe Stave mechanic is similar to many tank skillsets in other games. An attack that would kill the tank instead becomes manageable, not by outright removing the excessive damage, but my making that damage healable (a common recommendation for the DRK skillset before it was completed, actually). Mind to Body is your standard Lifetap, essentially free MP when easily able to compensate for the lost health, but with less use in healer-pressured situations (e.g. PVP). That said, it's health cost is so low and over such duration that it's unlikely to be a concern even then. You can basically consider it as a BLM Convert, but over time.Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueMageQuina
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08-27-2015, 03:10 PMwicked-one
the one and only PIPE DREAM
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08-27-2015, 03:34 PMFevelle
I really liked this character. Like, really. I'm all for this type of class in the game, something that personally speaks to me and to what I want to my character. What would be the weapon for this class?
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08-27-2015, 08:56 PMLeidirivMy guess is a pair of scales, fitting with the whole duality/judgment theme this MYS has going on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fevelle
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08-31-2015, 08:28 AMBlueMageQuinaI think I had misread the spell. Somehow I was under the impression that at the end of the duration, all damage was received, therefore delayed, and not taken in smaller increments over time. In the case of what I had perceived, it would be odd that a healer would delay damage, and in the likelyhood of not being able to see amount of delayed damage (since we can't see the amount of barrier effects either,) would potentially aid in KOing a party member by not having knowledge of how much to actually heal someone. Your explanation makes more sense. I approve.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
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08-31-2015, 10:08 AMDuelle
I wanted to start by thanking everyone who posted. I figured this was going to get ignored. XD
The intent here was to stick to the developers' desired application of DPS on healers (read: you're not supposed to DPS while healing in a group). I know that the player meta is the opposite of this, and I'm willing to make changes to accommodate it if the developers can't come up with a way to make their desired gameplay become prevalent. I guess you can call it a push-come-to-shove approach to what the developers want.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
Taking this into consideration, an idea I had was to change how ascensions work.Quote:
There seems to be no reason not to stay ascended for a particular role. Which means an extra button being pressed with zero thought upon reaching 3 stacks. If the stacks at least had real value and especially if they could be consumed in a different way, and then enhanced (preferably each in creative manner, not just a basic buff) instead of unlocking the additional special abilities, then the stances might make sense. As they are, they might as well be a passive conversion of the 3-stack effect upon reaching those 3 stacks.
- Your stacks would do nothing but you can only have three stacks of one alignment at any time. For example, if you have two Astral stacks and two Umbral stacks and decide to use Pain, you gain three Umbral stacks. If you hit Mend after that, your Umbral stacks go back down to two and your Astral stacks go up to three.
- Astral and Umbral Ascensions become just one ability, called Ascension (10-15 second cooldown?), that gives you the appropriate ascension determined by your alignment stacks. So using the above example, if you hit Ascension you gain Astral Ascension, consuming your three Astral stacks and leaving you with your two Umbral stacks.
- Ascensions would unlock additional effects to their corresponding skills rather than gate them. This would be so that if you're in Umbral Ascension and something goes horribly wrong, you can still do something to try to keep the group from wiping.
- Dichotomy would become more like Transpose (not sure on the cooldown, but I'd make it something like 30, since it's supposed to be used for quick emergency swaps).
- Duality would be redesigned to allow use of an opposite aligned ability while keeping you in your current ascension (ex: you are healing in Astral Ascension and see an opening to drop some DPS, so you hit Duality, swapping your Astral skills to Umbral skills, thus allowing you to use something like Desecration or Dead Pool at full potency with all corresponding effects)
The net result is that you'd be able to switch every 10-15 seconds while having the ability to switch again for emergencies. Another alternative would be having MYS start out aspected to Astral and making swaps to Umbral sort of like WoW priest's Shadowform.
Well, the abilities switching icons depending on ascension is more for the sake of concept. Not to mention that ability bloat is a real problem even now with HW. Conceptually, Astral is for healing, Umbral is strictly for damage. I wouldn't want to jumble things up by placing something like defensive utility (ex: damage shields) under Umbral.Quote:
I like that your saving hotbar space by pairing the Ascension-unlocked abilities, swapping Icons and effects according to current Ascension, but unless MST has already reached the same ability count as other jobs, this should not be necessary. Rather, each should probably have some tactical viability anywhere along the swing, even if typically inferior to either of the pure sides / Ascensions, and the Ascension effects affecting more than just their basic damage or healing so that we really feel like we have a large toolkit manipulable by the very things that make the job unique.
The transfusions are actually stand-alone from the rest of the mechanics. These were inspired by Kinetic Defenders from the game City of Heroes (imagine a healer designed entirely around the transfusions; that's what the Kinetic was). I've never seen any other game try to accomplish what Kinetics were capable of and we're sorely lacking for healers with unique mechanics as is, so I figured it was worth a shot.Quote:
The transfusions could, imo, use some work, but this should come with whatever you think of for the stances
This I think would depend on how big the particle effects for the spheres are. I figured they'd be about the size of the orbs seen in the Nabriales fight or A4.Quote:
The Sphere abilities seem aesthetically interesting but nothing all that special, and likely annoying to some users (consider Salted Earth).
Actually, I was aiming for the Dark & Holy Magician (yes, that's what it's called) from the game Revelation Online. It's a healer that starts off as a dark caster and then gains a stance that changes all of its spells from dark-aspected attacks to light-aspected heals or support spells.Quote:
Did you mean for it to feel more or less like a Priest / Archon? Somehow a lot of the extra aesthetics of Mystic I expected don't really seem to be here. (Even if they were mostly just shikigami animations before debuffs.)
I'll keep the suggestions posted here in mind as I start reworking the suggestion. I don't have much to show for it now since I was honestly surprised people actually commented on this idea. Again, you have my thanks! -
09-01-2015, 04:47 AMLeidiriv
I made a rudimentary class icon for MYS :D
http://imgur.com/9TYMcsk
The idea behind this icon was to show the duality of Astral/Umbral via a combined sun/moon, while still fitting the simplistic art-style of the other Job icons in-game. -
09-01-2015, 01:33 PMMarxamQuote:
Originally Posted by Fevelle
I actually see runes as a being more suited to the mystic's weapon. Stones attached to your gloves that create intricate glyphs similar to ley lines.Quote:
Originally Posted by Leidiriv
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09-06-2015, 05:05 PMShurrikhan
First, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I was checking the thread daily for a while after posting, but had forgotten after.
Ahh, I see. I had forgotten your positions on the dps-obsessed meta reaching into tank/healer roles. Have the devs actually released any plans to try to change the ease/viability of healer dps? As a healer who usually dealt more damage than one or both dps throughout leveling in my dungeon grinds unless my tank didn't know what CDs were, I never really expected that their position on healer dps was anything other than, well, exactly what the tools given would imply. That I tend to be about as everything-is-for-clear-speed dps-headed as everyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Duelle
So, you can basically swap back and forth instantly (or, within a GCD) until you Ascend, at which point you could potentially change to the opposite side instantly (/within a GCD) but would need three casts to regain the full version of the stance you just had? Was this your primary aim in the stacking system, or was it just to require some build up time at the start of combat? [Kind of like how a WHM might pop a few Cure I's atop Regen while the PLD is using Sentinel, preparing a free Cure II, before mitigating for the PLD via Holy spam, or a SCH will tend to open with DoTs and Bane before really going into healing, especially if Rouse is up, Adlo/Skin done pre-pull, and/or tank has CDs?)Quote:
Taking this into consideration, an idea I had was to change how ascensions work.
- Your stacks would do nothing but you can only have three stacks of one alignment at any time. For example, if you have two Astral stacks and two Umbral stacks and decide to use Pain, you gain three Umbral stacks. If you hit Mend after that, your Umbral stacks go back down to two and your Astral stacks go up to three.
Perfect. Not sure whether towards 10 or 15 seconds would be better. Oh, just to check (sorry if it's written) do any oGCD casts give stacks? That could be a factor on how much people feel delayed as well, say, if they could have re-ascended after dropping Ascension in 3-5 seconds but have to wait 15.Quote:
- Astral and Umbral Ascensions become just one ability, called Ascension (10-15 second cooldown?), that gives you the appropriate ascension determined by your alignment stacks. So using the above example, if you hit Ascension you gain Astral Ascension, consuming your three Astral stacks and leaving you with your two Umbral stacks.
Any particular ideas on how they would augment them?Quote:
- Ascensions would unlock additional effects to their corresponding skills rather than gate them. This would be so that if you're in Umbral Ascension and something goes horribly wrong, you can still do something to try to keep the group from wiping.
Anywhere from twice to thrice the Ascension CD should be acceptable to even the most greedy player on paper, remain fun, and look appropriate when glancing across one's hotbars. I'm curious though as to whether it might be worthwhile to make Ascension and Dichotomy scale with (Spell) Speed. [If you've seen any of my threads, you've probably seen that I'd very much like Spell & Skill Speed combined like Crit and Det.]Quote:
- Dichotomy would become more like Transpose (not sure on the cooldown, but I'd make it something like 30, since it's supposed to be used for quick emergency swaps).
Handy. Should be strong enough for a 60s CD, for sure. [I personally can only imagine myself using it as a way to quickly finish off healing phases and get to dpsing, but that's just because of, again, how I think of 'support', which is all I've ever thought of tanks and healers as.]Quote:
- Duality would be redesigned to allow use of an opposite aligned ability while keeping you in your current ascension (ex: you are healing in Astral Ascension and see an opening to drop some DPS, so you hit Duality, swapping your Astral skills to Umbral skills, thus allowing you to use something like Desecration or Dead Pool at full potency with all corresponding effects)
My only intent was to keep it in line with other jobs, but if one considers how often the same could be done with the abilities in place (2 being mergeable for WAR, 1 for DRG), it probably already is. I'd have to count, but am too lazy currently to do so.Quote:
Well, the abilities switching icons depending on ascension is more for the sake of concept. Not to mention that ability bloat is a real problem even now with HW. Conceptually, Astral is for healing, Umbral is strictly for damage. I wouldn't want to jumble things up by placing something like defensive utility (ex: damage shields) under Umbral.
I see. My first thought on seeing them was a more supportive version of the sort of Archon archetype, stealing stats from enemies or transfering them from oneself to others, and with a fair bit in common to what I had imagine for Time/Planar Mages, or what I usually assume as being sort of the backing idea behind (other) Arcanists - low power but masterful manipulators when it comes to diverting, transforming, and rerouting magic or abstract powers. Just read up on Kinetics and Defenders (couldn't find a combined entry). Pretty neat. That said, I don't entirely see the fit?Quote:
The transfusions are actually stand-alone from the rest of the mechanics. These were inspired by Kinetic Defenders from the game City of Heroes (imagine a healer designed entirely around the transfusions; that's what the Kinetic was). I've never seen any other game try to accomplish what Kinetics were capable of and we're sorely lacking for healers with unique mechanics as is, so I figured it was worth a shot.
I mostly meant how a lot of DRKs would prefer for their Salted Earth to be target-centered instead of a ground-click, just because of how often this game has issues trying to place ground AoEs when clicking through enemies. As much as a healing orbs, like Angelic Feathers or Lightwells, is in some ways great for the as-you-need-it-and-I-don't-have-time-to-watch-for-exactly-when-you-will-so-here-it-is-and-don't-bother-me-for-a-while advantage in raid situations, it would also be hardest to place in those exact situations, given FFXIV's clicking issues.Quote:
This I think would depend on how big the particle effects for the spheres are. I figured they'd be about the size of the orbs seen in the Nabriales fight or A4.
*Looked up gameplay* Ooh, scythe... why don't we have any scythes in xiv...Quote:
Actually, I was aiming for the Dark & Holy Magician (yes, that's what it's called) from the game Revelation Online. It's a healer that starts off as a dark caster and then gains a stance that changes all of its spells from dark-aspected attacks to light-aspected heals or support spells.
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09-07-2015, 05:51 PMDuelleNo idea on this. I know that they purposely removed accuracy from healer gear to sort of discourage it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
You mean instant casts, right? There's no such thing as oGCD casts; even stuff like Regen triggers the GCD. And yes, instant cast spells would also give stacks.Quote:
Perfect. Not sure whether towards 10 or 15 seconds would be better. Oh, just to check (sorry if it's written) do any oGCD casts give stacks? That could be a factor on how much people feel delayed as well, say, if they could have re-ascended after dropping Ascension in 3-5 seconds but have to wait 15.
As an example, I was thinking of getting rid of the Lingering Pain trait and instead make it a bonus to using Pain II while in Umbral Ascension. I would also extend a similar design for Mend II. So Pain II and Mend II would look like this:Quote:
Any particular ideas on how they would augment them?
So if you cast Pain II and it deals 1000 damage while under Umbral Ascension, the mob gets a DoT that deals 300 additional damage over 12 seconds.Quote:
22 Pain II - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of X. Grants Umbral Alignment. Umbral Ascension: Places a DoT effect that deals 30% of the damage dealt by Pain II. DoT duration: 12s.
26 Mend II - Restores HP. Cure potency: X. Grants Astral Alignment. Astral Ascension: Places a HoT effect that restores 30% of the amount healed by Mend II. HoT Duration: 12s.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I thought of it as someone taking stuff from one side of the scale and putting it in the other. In the case of Might, taking from the pile that's labeled "mob attack" and adding it to the pile labeled "PC attack". Think of it as a way of messing with combat variables in favor of your group. MYS may deal with balance of life and death, and I don't doubt they'd be able to manipulate factors that lead to one or the other.Quote:
I see. My first thought on seeing them was a more supportive version of the sort of Archon archetype, stealing stats from enemies or transfering them from oneself to others, and with a fair bit in common to what I had imagine for Time/Planar Mages, or what I usually assume as being sort of the backing idea behind (other) Arcanists - low power but masterful manipulators when it comes to diverting, transforming, and rerouting magic or abstract powers. Just read up on Kinetics and Defenders (couldn't find a combined entry). Pretty neat. That said, I don't entirely see the fit?
Oh, I see. Granted, in the context of tanking Salted Earth is very inconvenient to use. Not sure if it'd be the same way in the context of a healer. We'd need to ask career SCHs to see how they feel about stuff like Sacred Soil.Quote:
I mostly meant how a lot of DRKs would prefer for their Salted Earth to be target-centered instead of a ground-click, just because of how often this game has issues trying to place ground AoEs when clicking through enemies. As much as a healing orbs, like Angelic Feathers or Lightwells, is in some ways great for the as-you-need-it-and-I-don't-have-time-to-watch-for-exactly-when-you-will-so-here-it-is-and-don't-bother-me-for-a-while advantage in raid situations, it would also be hardest to place in those exact situations, given FFXIV's clicking issues.
What sold me on the idea was seeing it use it's dark ground attack with limbs of the undead tearing at the enemies, then switching stances and casting the same spell to create a holy patch of ground that healed the magician and his allies. I admit Revelation Online uses a very minimalistic design for abilities, which necessitates ability padding of sorts if it were to fit into FFXIV.Quote:
*Looked up gameplay* Ooh, scythe... why don't we have any scythes in xiv...
This said, a caster using a war scythe would be a new aesthetic to say the least. You'd probably get a mass of people glamour-cosplaying as Magus from Chrono Trigger, too.
I'm still trying to decide what would work best. I originally wanted alignments to be a ramp-up mechanic leading to its ultimate conclusion (Astral/Umbral Ascension) and little else. Thus making the goal during gameplay to hit Ascension as quickly as possible to heal or DPS at full power because your most potent skills were locked behind their respective Ascensions.Quote:
So, you can basically swap back and forth instantly (or, within a GCD) until you Ascend, at which point you could potentially change to the opposite side instantly (/within a GCD) but would need three casts to regain the full version of the stance you just had? Was this your primary aim in the stacking system, or was it just to require some build up time at the start of combat?
If we want to make switching a little more fluid, then alignments would need some sort of beneficial effect, which to me would be some effect on cast times (the way the SCH Arts worked in FFXI). So when getting Astral Alignment stacks, each stack would let you cast Mend, Mend II and Reverberation faster. This begets the question of how strong the effect should be.
So my idea here is that at 3 stacks of either alignment, you get a 5% bonus to spell speed for the corresponding spells. Going back to Astral Alignment, at 3 stacks you can cast Mend, Mend II and Reverberation 5% faster than you would at 0 stacks. Hitting ascension would increase the casting speed bonus to 10%.
Now since I'm allowing MYS to build and keep opposite stacks, what would happen is that once you hit Astral Alignment, you can finally hit 3 stacks of Umbral Alignment (which facilitate swapping to Umbral Ascension and has the benefit of being able to throw in Umbral spells a little faster than with no stacks). So I guess in a way, a "good" MYS would aim to keep stacks of both alignments out of Ascension, and in Ascension endeavor to keep full stacks of the opposite alignment for quick and easy switches.
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What I'm doing right now is rearranging some skills. The dual skills (the ones whose icons change depending on your Ascension) should be gained during the job quests. I also removed Life Wave/Death Wave and replaced them with:
By default (without an ascension), you'd have Absolve, and gain the effects as a bonus for being Ascended.Quote:
35 Absolve - Restores HP over time. Cure potency: 80. Duration: 30s. Astral Ascension: Regen effect grows stronger over time (final tick: 280 potency).
35 Condemn - Deals unaspected damage over time. DoT potency: 40. Duration: 30s. Umbral Ascension: DoT effect groes stronger over time (final tick: 90 potency).
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09-08-2015, 09:32 PMDuelle
Updated the OP Version 2 for those who are interested.
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09-09-2015, 09:03 PMLeidiriv
I have to say, I like the revisions. One question though, as I couldn't find the answer in the Notes. Are you able to gain stacks of the same alignment to which you're already Ascended?
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09-09-2015, 09:06 PMDuelleYou wouldn't. Once you ascend one way or the other, you cannot gain stacks of the same alignment, but can gain stacks of the opposite alignment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Leidiriv
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09-10-2015, 06:01 AMLeidirivThank you :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Duelle