Red Mage as possible new tank class

[Gardes]

They can make a new class called fencer, a class based around wielding a one handed piercing sword like estoc with no offhand.

Then split it into red mage and mystic knight. Red knight would be a tank revolving around precasting spells on the RDM's sword that would ignite after taking enough damage or hits (either or). Basically, pre-cast cure (no cast time but doesnt activate effect), fight mobs, take damage/number of hits/parries fulfilled, cure activates and casts on self instantly. The rdm can also gain self buffs that stack that once it reaches maximum (like maybe 3 stacks with each stack reducing cast time of next spell by 33%), turns a spell into instant cast. Like, gain full stack, free off hand casts fire on sword hand, ignites and aoe around the rdm for damage and enmity gain (flash/overpower equivalent). Fire for enmity, water cures for healing, stone for mitigation, etc.

Mystic knights would be similar to the rdm I mentioned, except fully focused on damage dealing and debuffs and have a harder time of gaining stacks for instant cast spellswords (using fencer attacks to gain stacks, cant get hit or parry to ignite spells)

[Gandora]

.

That look great, but CNJ already has a fast cast job ability. This is what lead me to think some of what have been said before is not viable. SE could make RDM a job coming from CNJ, but set it on the other side of BLM with Support spells.

The requierment could be to have CNJ30 & THM @ 15, or even vice-versa. This would be the simpliest way for SE to make it a support job imo.

This being said, it is also difficult to make a non tank job coming from GLA because of JA such as these requiring a shield "Shield Lob/bash." It would force the DEV team to give a shield to jobs that natively don't have one.

In order to make a new DD (assume DRK), the DEV team would have to either make a new class because it does not make sens to have them share the same gameplay as already existing class.

Even to make DRK a tank would be ridiculous, because:

a) DRK using GLA as base class would have acces to flash/Rampart and would make the PLD rather useless, it would have every traits a PLD have, on top of being able to absorb foe's life, that would be broken (and ludicrous for DRK to use flash as base JA.)

b) DRK with MRD as base class, would be an "enhanced WAR?" again able to use Flash as main JA & using BB combo to make/keep hate, Tomahawk & I pass. Nonsens here again, unless Storm's eye & Storm path get a significant boost when used by DRK

What would be the point of doing this, really? It wouldn't take long for SE to sinc under an ocean of complain because PLD & WAR became useless.

I mean, you can argue as much as you want about DRK being a tank in older FFs (which it was not, and which had acces to Dark Magic in FFX-2 as well as FFII) but in the end its down to FFXIV mechanics, where it would be more logical for it to be a DD.

[Gardes]

This being said, it is also difficult to make a non tank job coming from GLA because of JA such as these requiring a shield "Shield Lob/bash." It would force the DEV team to give a shield to jobs that natively don't have one.

DRK soul crystal equip effect: renames shield lob to weapon lob, renames shield bash to weapon bash

[Kitru]

Then split it into red mage and mystic knight. Red knight would be a tank

If they're gonna make one of those a tank, it's going to be Mystic Knight. Red Mage would be DPS/support and Mystic Knight would be tank, mainly because, in every previous iteration, Mystic Knight was always more durable than Red Mage, not to mention that the whole "Mage v. Knight" kind of this really does suggest the first being a support/DPS and the second be a tank based entirely upon name.

[Akirakogami]

red mage being a tank doesn't make much sense. Mages =/= tanks.

Lancer > Dark Knight as a tank seems plausible.

[Kitru]

This being said, it is also difficult to make a non tank job coming from GLA because of JA such as these requiring a shield "Shield Lob/bash." It would force the DEV team to give a shield to jobs that natively don't have one.

How does being a damage dealer prevent someone from using a shield or force them into being a tank? BLM and WHM both are capable of using shields and it's not like it spontaneously makes *them* tanks or stops them from doing their jobs. Since weapon damage is the same for both a 1h or 2h weapon of equal level, it's entirely possible to have a DPS class based off of GLA to use a shield because, if you're not a tank, shields are just stat blocks. Even Shield Slam, which requires you to be attacked, doesn't make it any less viable to give GLA a DPS job since PGL already has something that's pretty much the same: Haymaker.

A DPS job based off of GLA would really only slight reworking of the secondary effects of the baseline GLA job abilities: remove the high enmity tags from Savage Blade and Rage of Halone, (possibly) remove the STR debuff from Rage of Halone and replace it with something more DPS-y like a DoT, and change Flash from flat enmity to something like 100 potency. All of this is both possible and relatively simple given what the devs have said about turning GLA into DRK before. Honestly, the visual effects are more problematic than the mechanics, though that's just giving the attacks dark visual effects as opposed to the white/light visual effects, which isn't too far outside the realm of what was done with SCH. Flash would likely need a rename, too.

Even to make DRK a tank would be ridiculous

Only if you base if off of an existing tank job, and those aren't problems with DRK itself but rather with creating *any* job for a class that already has that role. Adding a new DPS job to ARC, THM, ACN, LNC, or PGL would present the *exact* same problems. A *new* tank class that uses DRK as its job wouldn't have any of the "crossover" problems.

[Masenken]

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, war/pld are essentially meat tanks, whereas rdm is magic based, so instead of pumping vit out the wazoo, they could pump a magic stat instead and let whatever unique skills/traits they bring to the table do the tanking. That was my line of thinking anyway

[Gandora]

DRK soul crystal equip effect: renames shield lob to weapon lob, renames shield bash to weapon bash

Why make things simple when we can make them difficult, right guys? Especialy when Shield Lob is a job ability learned throu a quest, logic?

-

While most you say in the 2nd paragraph can be correct to some extends, can you tell me what would be the point of making a new tank with nearly the same attributes as the already existing tanks?

We have 2 damage mitigation tank doing it their own way, why would we need a third one? Now we need evasion & magical damage mitigation tanks.

This is where "again" the whole "DRK will come back as a tank" logic fall.

Also, as someone said, Red Mage =/= tank in anyway until its strongly backed up. I did RDM/NIN tank before in XI, it was easily possible because of RDM Haste Phalanx Refresh Fast Cast Stoneskin & Utsusemi. Unless the Dev team do something as reliable as that I don't see how it could be possible.


Right now we need some kind of buffer & somes DDs.

[Kitru]

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, war/pld are essentially meat tanks, whereas rdm is magic based, so instead of pumping vit out the wazoo, they could pump a magic stat instead and let whatever unique skills/traits they bring to the table do the tanking. That was my line of thinking anyway

Even with that line of reasoning, it still makes more sense to see Mystic Knight as the tank. It could be a lightly armored desert warrior, like they looked in FF5, that uses said sword magic.

[Kitru]

We have 2 damage mitigation tank doing it their own way, why would we need a third one? Now we need evasion & magical damage mitigation tanks.

You're acting as if PLD and WAR are the *only* ways that you could ever implement tanks that don't rely on evasion. "Magic damage mitigation" doesn't really say anything, since magic and physical are just themes, not explicit mechanics and you're talking about mechanical differentiation (if you just mean that it mitigates magical damage, that's a terrible tank because tanks have to be roughly as good at magical damage as they are at physical). DRK could just as easily be a parry tank, from a mechanical vantage point, or even be the evasion tank given the whole "darkness" angle.

Right now we need some kind of buffer & somes DDs.

We're talking about a trinity MMO here. The closest you're gonna get to a "buffer class" is BRD, which is DPS with support. Support is not a role in and of itself; it's a secondary role that they tack on to other roles, like SCH (Selene instead of Eos) or BRD (songs).

As to more DPS, there are *already* 2.5 times as many DPS options as tank options, and we *know* that we're getting Musketeer (likely with Corsair as the job or vice versa), which will put that at 3 times as many DPS as tanks and healers. You *have* to add tank and heal options to keep the ratio anywhere *near* balanced.