Time Mage, Geomancer, Dark Knight, Templar, Berserker proposals

[Nahara]

A couple quick points:

1) Cleric Stance is for healers only. It's there to give healers a boost to their damage output, even while decked out in healing gear, so they can do solo content efficiently. There's no reason to give it to Time Mage.

2) How are you expected to recover MP in a long fight with your iteration of Geomancer? Every damage dealer needs to be able to reliably deal damage over an extended period of time. THM/BLM have Umbral Ice and ACN/SMN have Aetherflow, but your iteration of Geomancer doesn't contain any reliable source of MP recovery. Shroud of Saints is nice, but it will not cut it, especially since Geomancy and Nature's Embrace are an even bigger drain on your MP pool, in addition to your Stone and Aero spells.

3) Gladiator focuses on one-handed swords and shield. Any job that comes from it would also require swords and shields, so I don't think you can say DRKs can use two-handed swords and still branch out from Gladiators.

[MartaDemireux]

@IzumiRaito - Thanks for the input but as said several times in the thread already, Haste was left off of TIM because Yoshi has clearly stated that he hates the spell and doesn't want it. This being the case I based my idea around it. Yoshi might change his stance on it eventually and maybe implement content that would need it when level caps get unlocked later on. Unlike specific job mechanics like Greased Lightning, Haste would be very hard to balance. Imagine a MNK with GL and Haste, yikes.

@everyone On DRK - It was intended for Darkness to deal damage. In noting the change for Flash->Darkness and further down the change for Enmity->Potency I forgot to include that it would actually deal damage. I'll update the post to clarify this

@Kitro Thanks for the thought out response! Allow me to respond to you properly and will continue through edits:

Weapon types: I agree it would be a good chunk of work for animations but they'll be doing that eventually anyway. They wouldn't need to make as many as you may be thinking, though. Currently if you equip a different class's attacking skill, you'll do a "base animation" with the skill's visual effects. This is the physical equivalent of the casting animation.

For the worry on dual-hatchets, the stats could easily be applied to just one and the other one just be there for animation purposes (exactly like PGL/MNK, they have one weapon but its animated/displayed for both hands). As 2-handed and 1-handed swords/axes are still just that, swords and axes, they could be used by their classes but not by the opposing jobs. They already have the programming done for such a thing. For example: If you're trying to equip the SCH job while you're on SMN using a SMN/ACN only book it will ask you to first change to ACN and then equip a weapon a SCH can use. So while the display is the same for each job (books) the coding is different and can be applied directly to PLD/DRK getting different weapons. This means that even though a job is an extension of a class, the coding actually sees the job as its own entity. You bypass this error by utilizing gearsets however which is great.

On DRK: I definitely see your point on the HP cost. I like your idea for a % based activation instead of more damage as your health lowers. I'm going to tweak it a bit to activate at 75% health but perform a guaranteed critical at 50%. For your casting concerns with Drain, Swiftcast from THM negates any argument. I set Drain recast to 60s to coincide with Swiftcast's recast time for this purpose. In fights where you don't need to move a whole lot you can set a MRD ability instead but if you need to use Drain and you need to move, that's what the ability is there for. As you can change your abilities at any time in an instance while you are not engaged, it's easy to run MRD skills for clearing dungeons but then swap in Swiftcast for a dodgy boss.

On your note for Blood Weapon and Dread Spikes: these drain health from the enemy. MRD abilities heal you based on the damage, DRK would heal you based on the damage while deducting that from the enemy's health. So they're similar but not a copy and better fill the DPS role. I don't really see an issue with Dread Spikes though. Titan only hits for say 2.5k or so for instance. That would make him take 250 damage and the DRK be healed for 250 damage. With stomps he does about 4x 700 damage so he would only again take about 280 damage and the DRK would be healed the same. I do think the level priority needs switching though as with Titan as an example it feels like more of a level 35 ability. Doesn't do a whole lot of damage or heal a whole lot. I don't envision them having WAR's HP (more like a DRG's) so any attack that would make this too strong would likely kill them anyway.

I'm also guessing you didn't play FFXI? DRK there had abilities that would drain their health to which they would then just Drain it back immediately after or the healer would see a DRK in their party and keep an eye out for when they used their abilities to know they need to pop a Regen on them. Worked fine there and the DRK would only die if the healer hadn't played with a DRK or the DRK got overzealous.

On GEO: Similar to how BLM works to THM, GEO will primarily be using CNJ nukes. I think you skipped reading "Ignore Terrain" ability that would base the next Geomancy spell element on your own elemental resistances. There are potions in game that you can drink to raise a specific elemental resistance. These are easily crafted and currently extremely cheap. A tier 1 of these is enough to get my lowest element to be my highest as a follower of Thaliak (Lightning 267 : Earth 283). If a boss really needed a certain debuff like Slow you could use Nature's Wrath, drink an Earth Ward Potion and cast the spell once every 5 or 4.5 minutes (depending on HQ potion). Otherwise you get whatever your highest element is which is based on your Guardian, my Nature's Wrath would give Slow by default in this case.

This would make choosing your Guardian actually have meaning in-game. They could create a way to follow a different Guardian in-game via a quest which could include a pilgrimage. It could be repeatable once a week or maybe month Earth time to prevent abuse.

On TIM: I forgot to remove Cleric Stance from the OP. Originally it was there to boost their damage because I was limiting the stacks of AF/UI they could accrue. I changed the idea however and forgot to remove that from their abilities. They would definitely be too strong with it. Heavy however I don't think will be an issue. We still don't know how PvP will play out now as it has changed a lot since beta. There are going to be PvP only skills too and they could easily lock out certain skills from PvP like Heavy or at least limit its duration. There are several skills that would be OP in PvP currently in game anyway like Shadowbind (10sec Bind, 12 second recast) and Sleep/Repose.

My reasoning behind Stop being its own version of Silence/Stun was for future progression. If we have another classes bringing one of those in again, it's going to get messy or the skills will go unused. As an example: PLD stunning Ifrit can get wonky if anyone else stuns something. This would be a way for TIM to get a Stop in if they see a PLD's Stun got resisted due to the DRG Leg Sweeping either on purpose or accidentally.

Demi spells: I intended their damage is purely dependent on the MP cost. If you have 3k MP and use Demi, you will have 300 potency. The stat section in the damage formula will remain empty. This way, you could gear for Piety to not only get more Fire casts with slightly lower damage but also give your Demi spells more of a boost to offset this. As no class currently gears for Piety really I wanted to incorporate one that does. In retrospect however I want to reduce Demi I to 30s recast.

On BRS: I intended for them to have the 2 forms of critical boosting but Hone Senses was meant to give a 40% boost to account for the recast time. Woops! I do however like the charge idea. I'm going to try and tweak it to be a mix of Defiance/Wrath, Greased Lightning and Aetherflow. I don't want it to end up being too much like WAR with the Wrath being entirely consumed but don't want it to end up being too much like Greased Lightning with the building of stacks and needing to maintain it. Thanks for the inspiration!

Edit@Nahara (posted while typing this)
1) see above note "On TIM:"
2) You're right. For some reason I had it in my head SoS had a higher potency. Must have confused it with its recast. Instead of spreading out your MP to others I'll change Nature's Embrace to replenish your own MP, possibly others as well at a lower amount. I'll think on how to implement it. Thanks!
3) As said several times in the thread Gladiator is lit. "Sword Specialist" in the JP client, not "sword and shield specialist" or "Shield Specialist" so there is absolutely no reason why it couldn't use multiple forms of swords (which it already technically does, it uses daggers as well) and allow one job to focus on the 1-handed and another to focus on the 2-handed.

[Kitru]

Weapon types: I agree it would be a good chunk of work for animations but they'll be doing that eventually anyway. They wouldn't need to make as many as you may be thinking, though. Currently if you equip a different class's attacking skill, you'll do a "base animation" with the skill's visual effects. This is the physical equivalent of the casting animation.

I have to wonder why you think "they'll be doing it eventually". It a lot of work and, unless they decide to specifically allow for multiple weapon loadouts for each class, it's work that they wouldn't *have* to do, and it's exactly as much work as I think it would be. MAR has 10 different attacks with unique animations that would need to be remade to work with your 2 hatchet idea. The only animation that actually *had* an animation that *wouldn't* need to be remade is Mercy Stroke. Considering that you have about 10 abilities per class that actually require animations (most CDs have a minor particle effect at best), you're really asking for an entirely new class's worth of animations to be remade. On top of that, you're asking for new gear to be statted out along with entirely new models for each which is more work on top of that. For a tiny bit more work (i.e. come up with new ability names), they could some up with an entirely new class, which would be a *much* bigger payoff than simply allowing a single job to use some different animations.

For the worry on dual-hatchets, the stats could easily be applied to just one and the other one just be there for animation purposes (exactly like PGL/MNK, they have one weapon but its animated/displayed for both hands).

The issue with this is that 2h axes are not the same models as would be used by your dual-hatchets idea. Unless the items were coded to be size variable based upon what class is using them (of which there *isn't* any precedent), you'd end up seeing BZK packing 2 full sized axes rather than 2 hatchets.

Also, books are books as far as the game is concerned. The only difference between them is that some can only be equipped by SCH while others can only be equipped by SMN. You're not talking about creating separate weapon categories, which is what you're asking for. There is precedent for jobs based off of the same class using the same weapon category but there is nothing remotely close to classes using different categories. Furthermore, it's important to remember that weapon determines what you base class is.

For your casting concerns with Drain, Swiftcast from THM negates any argument.

No, it doesn't. You're effectively requiring DRK to use Swiftcast any time it wants to use Drain. The same would apply to Thunder (which, once again, would be useless; it's a class that is going to stack STR so that cast will be completely and utterly worthless). Abilities should be useful without forcing them to rely upon a different ability. It would be like requiring Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, and Unchained to only be used after Infuriate rather than at 5 stacks of Wrath. THM is completely and utterly worthless for DRK. None of the additionals would actually accomplish anything except for fulfill your concept that DRK should have access to THM.

On your note for Blood Weapon and Dread Spikes: these drain health from the enemy. MRD abilities heal you based on the damage, DRK would heal you based on the damage while deducting that from the enemy's health. So they're similar but not a copy and better fill the DPS role.

That's exactly what Bloodbath already does and all you're doing with Dread Spikes is giving Vengeance a functional 10% damage reduction. You're not appreciably differentiating them from other classes. Even more so, you're not really changing GLA to any appreciable extent with your changes. They'll still just be spamming Halone. All you're doing is giving them a couple additional tank abilities (Blood Weapon and Dread Spikes) and a few marginally useful attacks on long CDs (60, 120, 180). None of those abilities are even designed to have synergy with the existing GLA abilities so all that your DRK would be is a GLA that does some DRK attacks every couple of minutes (since I doubt Drain is going to be something used on CD).

I'm also guessing you didn't play FFXI? DRK there had abilities that would drain their health to which they would then just Drain it back immediately after or the healer would see a DRK in their party and keep an eye out for when they used their abilities to know they need to pop a Regen on them. Worked fine there and the DRK would only die if the healer hadn't played with a DRK or the DRK got overzealous.

I don't think anyone would claim that FFXI was anything remotely close to a good example of balanced game design. Using it as an example of "well it worked *there*" doesn't really carry much weight.

On GEO: Similar to how BLM works to THM, GEO will primarily be using CNJ nukes.

CNJ doesn't actually have "nukes". By the time you're 30, you'd have Stone, Aero, and Stone II, which really means that your rotation would be "Aero>Stone II spam". At 46, you'd get Aero II which just swaps out one of your Stone IIs every 12 seconds. The only "real" attack that WHM actually gets is Holy, and that's off of the job, not the class. All you'd be doing is adding a toggle that they activate at the start of the fight. For any DPS job to be based off of CNJ, you *really* have to do a lot of work to add to the CNJ attack rotation because, without it, there's not going to be much going on there.

You have to think less GLA>PLD (minor benefits to base class) and more ACN>SCH (a whole set of abilities that form the basis of your job/role). Right now, you're more on the GLA>PLD side of things. This is why I think that GEO would have 4 different abilities that are each tied to a different terrain that can be used independently of one another. If you just go with a toggle and some support CDs, you're not going to create anything that resembles what a DPS rotation/priority should actually look like.

I think you skipped reading "Ignore Terrain" ability that would base the next Geomancy spell element on your own elemental resistances.

Not really. Once again, it's just allowing you to ignore that one aspect once every 3 minutes. For everything else, you're at the mercy of a part of the game outside of your control.

There are potions in game that you can drink to raise a specific elemental resistance. These are easily crafted and currently extremely cheap.

And the devs have explicitly said that they don't want any classes to rely explicitly on consumables for their abilities. Saying "well, a consumable lets you kinda get around this major issue once every 3 minutes" is bad design on multiple levels.

This would make choosing your Guardian actually have meaning in-game.

Which I'm pretty sure they *don't* want to do. It would be like making your *birthday* have game impact or race more than minute differences.

Heavy however I don't think will be an issue. We still don't know how PvP will play out now as it has changed a lot since beta. There are going to be PvP only skills too and they could easily lock out certain skills from PvP like Heavy or at least limit its duration.

I'm assuming you mean "Gravity" here instead of Heavy, since Heavy is the status effect. If you don't think it'll be an issue, what's the point of saying that it can't be cleansed? NPCs already *don't* cleanse debuffs so the only possible reason for it to be on there would be for PvP.

There are several skills that would be OP in PvP currently in game anyway like Shadowbind (10sec Bind, 12 second recast) and Sleep/Repose.

Both of those break as soon as the target is attacked so it's not the same as "lolmelee for 30 seconds because I can kite you not problem".

As an example: PLD stunning Ifrit can get wonky if anyone else stuns something. This would be a way for TIM to get a Stop in if they see a PLD's Stun got resisted due to the DRG Leg Sweeping either on purpose or accidentally.

The entire point of the DR on Silence/Stun is that you have to actually sync them properly. The only reason to make this a "unique" status effect that operates off of a different DR is because you just don't like that aspect of the game. Given how specific the devs have designed content around specific stun/interrupt cycles, I'm pretty sure that they *don't* want to arbitrarily simplify it, especially if said mechanic is unique to a single job.

Demi spells: I intended their damage is purely dependent on the MP cost.

I got that. It also means that the ability would be completely broken. Use it at low levels, and it's worthless. Use it at high levels with high level gear, and it's suddenly monumentally powerful. Potency is a static value across all levels for a reason: if you don't turn it into a static value, it starts scaling exponentially and getting *way* too powerful the higher up you get. Just look at Flare: it consumes 100% of your MP for a 260 potency attack. Your suggestion would give TIM a 300+ potency hit for what is, for all intents and purposes, the cost of a Blizzard. The cost is arbitrary and the potency scales too well. It's not a good mechanic in any way.

[Noriega]

Eh...Geomancer was never really that much a high damage magic user (except for a few situational instances where terrain did good damage to a certain enemy), And iirc they were a magic physical hybrid in many games.

So it being a THM/CNJ mix doesnt make sense. Well, a high THM/CNJ anyway. It should be part monk (since traditionally monks were indeed physical but had a white magic accent in their skill set and in a few games used a mana based skills). As for the second class, it would be ARC or THM. Its not really a high burst dealer, which fits with ARC, but was aoe centric, which fits with THM.

I cant see why CNJ would make sense, but the elemental thing was kinda forced in this particular game and thats where the relationship stops.

:shrugs:

[MartaDemireux]

@Kitru Forgive me for not going much into a reply but you have a very hostile tone and I'm unsure why so I'll just say:

Bloodbath up: Damage: 500. HP healed: 125.
Blood Weapon up: Damage: 550. HP healed: 50.

They're not the same thing. Blood Weapon says "drains" for a reason.
To have Swiftcast being important for DRK is no different than Protect being important for SCH.

I misspoke with Demi and potency. I meant if you have 3.5k MP you'll do 350 damage.

Eventually animations for many weapon types will be in the game. 1.0's data on launch had a plethora of class names data mined which could have already been animated or in the process (it's been 3 years). They may have been waiting to release them with an expansion but due to poor reception early on postponed it. They may have salvaged a lot that we don't know about. Just look how tight lipped they were with ACN, heck even with 2.0 as a whole.

If you equip MRD/GLA attacks on ARC you'll see that the animations are ARC attack animations. Same is true for other classes and other skills. For many of the skills they could just use the same principal, at least for starters. Another thing to note is many skills use different combinations of the same animations. As GLA use Fracture and then Haymaker. You'll see that part of Haymaker is Fracture's animation. Aside from maybe 2-3 unique animations for GLA skills, they could make a handful of other animations and string them together differently for the rest. Each skill in XIV isn't an entirely new animation made from scratch, most are just a string of pre-made animations. This is a time saving technique that I believe they've even mentioned briefly in an interview.

@Noriega Actually that's exactly what it was in FFIII and FFV. In III most of their attacks had 120 power. Black Mage's Firaga as a comparison was 150 power. Both games their spells counted as magic damage. Later on in FFT they had weaker damage but magic was still its primary stat. FFTA had yet another different version but still gained the most from magic attack.

[Yagrush]

Berserker is too similar to Warrior, as far as flavor goes. If you had the chance to play the Job quest storyline, you would notice how the Job Master would remark the Warriros about "Mastering their inner beast" and "animalistic ferociousness", Berserker kind of does the same thing.

[Gorehound]

Since I enjoy making these, I wanted to make a true spellblade Dark Knight.

Dark Knight

30GLD/15THM

Passive
Can wield Greatswords

Cross Class
ACN/THM

LV30
Shadowmastery
Buff
Increases your INT by 33% of your STR
Critical strikes grant a stack of Blight
Blight: Reduce the cast time and GCD of all spells by 25%
Casting a spell expends 4 Blight
Lasts 15s

LV35
Bloodsword
CD 30s
Restores 3% of your total health and mana whenever you deal dmg with an ability
Each time you are restored health, you gain a stack of Blood Frenzy
Blood Frenzy grants 2% crit
Lasts 15s

LV 40:
Scourge
Single Target
60 MP
Combo Action: Riot Blade
Delivers unaspected magic dmg with a potency of 250
Target takes 10% more magic dmg
Duration: 15s

LV 45
Souleater
60s CD
Abilities costs 6% of your health and deal 20% more dmg
Lasts 15s

LV 50
Doom Blade
60 TP
30s CD
Combo: Savage Blade
Delivers an attack with a potency of 300
Always crits on targets with Scourge

[Kitru]

Berserker is too similar to Warrior, as far as flavor goes.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Berserker would work best as the PGL tank job, if it ever gets one. The only Berserker version that got to use axes was the initial implementation in FFV and one of the better combos to use with that was actually Barehand from the Monk so it wasn't even a straight up "only use axes" implementation either. All of the other implementations had Berserker using fist weapons or no weapons (Umaro in VI, Berserker Dress Sphere in X-2, Berserker Seeq in FFT:A2) and being very tanky, with a heavy emphasis on having lots of hp and high evasion, which would fit with a PGL style tank.

The only real changes you'd have to make would be to have Greased Lightning provide a +eva buff instead of the +dam buff and get rid of the positional requirements while adding high enmity to some of the others. It's already got a lot of thematically appropriate tank CDs so having it borrow from GLA and MRD would give it a really good total loadout. To work with existing PGL gear (since I don't see Berserker packing plate armor), you could have the tank stance increase defense/DR (to make up for the lower defense from using DoW armor) and provide an absorb shield based on either max hp or damage dealt whenever you score a critical hit in additional to the increased enmity/reduced damage (though it might not need all that much reduced damage since MNK expects to have 22.5% +dam from 3 stack Greased Lightning; the replacing of the +dam component actually ends up reducing damage by 19% so it could actually work as a tank stance that *doesn't* reduce your damage when it's up).

The only problem I could see would be that focusing so heavily on evasion creates some spikiness issues, though having an absorb shield would ameliorate that somewhat. As long as the class doesn't rely *too* heavily on the absorb shield (which would create problems where the absorb shield doesn't scale with incoming damage properly), it could work out very well while not playing like either of the existing tanks, especially if 1-3 of the job skills were straight up DR buffs.

The "Berserker as DPS Marauder" works, but, as Yag has stated, it suffers from being *too* similar to the Warrior, both in playstyle as well as theme (hell, it even has an ability called "Inner Beast"). "Berserker as tank Pugilist" creates a substantially different playstyle from the base class and other jobs in the same role while allowing you to follow a different theme (animal mimicry combat).

[Tzain]

So, I like theory designing, so clearly I came to the right thread. However I do approach it from a slightly different angle. To me, I take the class and then see if I can make a job to specialize the class into a sub role. After that I try and find a traditional FF job that meets the concept.

1.Geomancer – Proactive healer: Base Class of Conjurer with sub classes of Archer and thm
Concept: Uses proactive Shield type heals with a heavy use of Stone Skin. Designed with heavy use of Cleric stance. In order to heal without MND, the heals have to be shield based and scale with the targets own defense/hp.
Overgrowth – Direct Damage attack that heals nearby players for amount proportional to the damage dealt.
Touch of Stone – DOT on enemy, attacks made against the enemy has a chance to refresh Stoneskin or Earthen Blood (but not at the same time).
Avalanche: Self buff that temporarily increases Damage and Spell speed with each Stoneskin, Earthen Blood, Stone, Stone II, or Overgrowth cast. Stacks up to 5 times, casting any spell besides a spell on this list will cancel the effect immediately. Lasts until canceled. Cooldown. (note: by design, canceling cleric stance will cancel avalanche)
Body of Earth: Party wide effect. Decreases the damage done by the next hit by 80%, inflicts HEAVY on the party while in effect.
Earthen Blood: increases the hp of a party member by 25% in the form of a shield (damage done to the shield cannot be healed except by Touch of Stone procs). Earthen blood shield is affected by damage only after stone skin has been destroyed

[MartaDemireux]

Made some very big changes to the OP!

TIM:
AF/UI Demi effect chances increased from 5% per stack to 10%.
Fixed wording
Demi II now does AoE damage based on max mp instead of current mp, lowered recast.
Demi has a lower recast

GEO:
Ignore Terrain will now pop up a bar similar to a pet bar to select the element of your next geomancy yourself instead of relying on your elemental resistances.
CNJ's Cleric Stance no longer swaps MND/INT
Geomancy is now a normal nuke with high potency and low mp cost on a 20s timer
Nature's Fury is now the area of effect DoT. If it criticals there is a 5% chance Geomancy timer will be reset
Nature's Wrath now works only with Geomancy to have more control and prevent something from being too OP like an AoE DoT on top of an AoE DoT. Recast dropped from 3min to 2min to account for this.


DRK: (big changes)
Blood Weapon now drains 25% of your damage
Removed Dread Spikes (too much of a tank ability)
Added Diabolic Eye stance with Malevolence mechanic
Darkside now a weaponskill in combo with Riot Blade, combo grants 1 stack of Malevolence
Souleater now has the effect of old Darkside
Darkness now costs both MP and HP
Removed access to vengeance
Arcanist is now the required subclass
Lancer is now the additional skillpool class
Lore somewhat changed
Drain cast time reduced from 3s to 1s and will consume Malevolence

BRS: (major changes inspired by Kitru, thanks for your ideas!)
Changed from a MRD DPS to a PGL Tank
Lore somewhat changed
5 new abilities
Will wear current PGL gear
Gains substantial damage reduction under Berserk stance (15% through greased lightning, 10% through Fists of earth) to account for lower defenses/HP and abilities that change you to Raptor Form will increase enmity.

TMP:
Boncrusher increases enmity. Combo Potency increased
Discipline dmg increase lowered from 20% to 15%

With the major changes to Berserker I'm considering a different MRD DPS now, such as Viking. Vikings were more tanky in other games but I think they'd fit the class well with the whole sea pirate thing.

Also in the process of editing in my concepts as I did with FNC/FLA ideas for those familiar with them.