Fencer: Red Mage and Mystic Knight Proposal

[Duelle]

The potency numbers seem quite low though, even if we're speaking about a Support-oriented DPS.

I'll admit that I have no frame of reference for DPS potency simply because my only focus in-game has been PLD. I'm definitely willing to revise the numbers.

Duelle's Magic Barrier is better than a Tank's LB3.

Oops. I was under the impression LB3 for tanks reduced damage taken by 90% for 12 seconds rather than 50%. You can tell I've never used the tank LB3 if I can make a mistake like that. XD

Duelle's fairs a bit better, but I'm not sure which ones of his attack skills are off-GCD.

Froissement, Riposte and Death Blossom would be it for baseline FNC. On MTK, Runic Blade wouold be off the GCD (with an appropriate cooldown).

[Bebo]

se should pay attention to this this is good stuff

[Eremor]

I had a couple thoughts for Red Mage or Mystic Knight. Firstly, I thought in order to keep from having as many as 5 unused abilities (enspells are already in the game so we might as well call them that) they could be consolidated into a single 'Magic Sword' ability which would then pop up the pet action bar from which you would choose your element.

Also as a sort of counterpoint to Duelle's elemental mark mechanic for Mystic Knight, I thought Red Mage could receive a 'Flourish' mechanic, every time the Red Mage used a physical weaponskill he would receive a 'Flourish' counter and then the next spell cast would consume flourishes to augment or enhance it in some way depending on what the spell does (status spells could be converted to aoe, any spell could be instant cast, or simply increasing the potency of damaging or healing spells, possibly with more then one effect on a single spell consuming multiple flourishes, just as some examples).

Finally, since it doesn't appear that any current class is able to inflict the Paralyze status ailment, I thought that would be a potent addition to the Red Mage's arsenal.

[STARSBarry]

red mage needs its own unique heal spell, should not be required to take WHM cure over, also skills like Virus and Bio from arcanist would suit him well, He seems incredibly melle focus, which is fine but try not to forget that a red mage is still primarily a mage the fencer on the way up should nab a fair few ranged spells such as the aforementioned heal to point to this.

[Duelle]

red mage needs its own unique heal spell, should not be required to take WHM cure over

Assuming that Fencer is a DoW, it wouldn't have much to gain from equipping Cure outside of having something else to cast, specially if they went with something similar to my suggestion's Chant spell (based off Chant from FFTactics).

He seems incredibly melle focus, which is fine but try not to forget that a red mage is still primarily a mage the fencer on the way up should nab a fair few ranged spells such as the aforementioned heal to point to this.

Magic-melee/Sword&magic hybrids sacrifice a lot of the ranged advantage for utility and melee aptitude, otherwise you have an OP class (specially in PvP where range advantage can win you games)

[Rattleh3ad]

I love your ideas, but I would try and overlap some of the stances together, and replace them with more debuffs/enfeebling spells.

[MartaDemireux]

I love your ideas, but I would try and overlap some of the stances together, and replace them with more debuffs/enfeebling spells.

First, thanks But that's a little hard to do as the element of the stance dictates what enspell the MSK gets and which nuke the RDM gets. However I have updated the OP with a slight change to them.


FNC changes:
Elemental stances will now deal a small amount of additional damage upon their use. Shared recast time amongst all stances has been set up.
Overall DPS has been increased.
Paralyzing Blade will only activate if an enemy parries your attack. This was always intended but edited that in to prevent confusion.

RDM changes:
Overall DPS has been increased.
Some MP costs increased slightly.

MYS changes:
Overall DPS has been increased.
Instead of healing for half of the damage received and blocking the other half, Elemental Stance will now heal for 25% of the damage received and reflect an equal amount that was healed as damage to the enemy. Recast lowered from 5 to 4 minutes. Elemental Recovery debuff duration increased from 30s to 60s.

Reasons:
FNC already dealt less damage than a GLA with the tradeoff of being able to keep their debuffs up 100% of the time. I felt that they should have DPS close to a GLA while relying on their critical hits to place them slightly higher than a GLA. Raising the base class DPS meant raising the jobs DPS too but not too much. RDM should do more respectable damage now for their tradeoff of keeping debuffs up. MSK should do enough damage now to better maintain enmity. Elemental Stance was a bit overpowered before, now it gives more incentive for Mantra/Convalescence use as well (also by other's in group with Mantra).

[MartaDemireux]

After looking over the idea more and playing the game more I can definitely see how having so many stances would make gameplay more on the boring end. With that I've eliminated the stances and made significant changes to FNC, RDM and MYS to accompany:

Fencer:
Removed stance system
Added in Elemental Harnessing system
Lowered TP costs
Poisoning Blade > Swarmstrike
Slowing Blade > Shadowstick

Added in new abilities:
Swallowtail - frontal cone attack
Nighthawk - ranged attack
Riposte - attack that activates when you parry
Reflex - evasion and critical evasion +
Harness - allows next weaponskill to imbue you with its element, trait increases your resistance to it.
Inquartata - status resist + mob meva -, debuffs placed on you cannot be removed for the duration.

Mystic Knight:
Gave access to THM abilities Manaward, Thunder, Swiftcast, Surecast, Lethargy
Gave access to GLA abilities Rampart, Flash, Convalescence, Provoke, Awareness
Nighthawk and Swallowtail will have additional enmity.

Changes to abilities:
Sword Magic: Now a stance that grants enspells.
Anitmagic: Now reduces damage taken by 5% whenever you are hit with a magical attack.
Firewall: New level 50 ability. blocks all damage for 10s but can only be activated after being hit with an elemental attack.
Elemental ward: Changed to Ward. Increases HP Recovery by 20% and spreads elemental resistance from Harness to nearby party members.
Mememento Mori: New ability. Increases enspell damage and lets them heal you. if a party member dies you regain 10% MP.


Red Mage:

Changes to abilities:
Bleeding Thorn: Combo Bonus increased from 10% to 25%, combo potency removed, normal potency increase to 180, mp cost increased to 213
Saboteur: Duration reduced to 10s. Recast reduced to 120s
Arcane Stance: Changed from reducing STR and DEX by 15% to boost INT and MND by 20% to swapping your STR and DEX values with your INT and MND values.
Double Cast: Included add.effect increased Skill/Spell Speed on party members. RDM not included.

[TouchandFeel]

Also just another inspiration to throw into the mix.

Runic Knight (Celes from FF6)

So Mystic Knight or Runic Knight (whatever it would be called) is essentially a mixture of the two.

This would mean you could throw in Celes' unique ability "Runic Blade" as an inspiration for a defensive ability.

I like the concept of "Magic Sword/Blade" being their offensive mode, but I'm not sure that solely relying on debuffs and being hit by elemental attacks to proc damage resist will work in the long run. Debuffs are nice additions to mitigation and are great since they can provide benefit for the whole party, but they aren't enough. Also as far as I know, elemental damage isn't wide spread enough in the game to warrant basing a tanking class' defensive capabilities around. They could definitely be extra layers of flavor and goodness, but I feel that the main mitigation mechanic would need to be more.

What I was thinking would be neat is that they used their MP as a damage mitigation resource. In their defensive stance they put up a magic shield that redirects some of the damage taken to their MP, so for example they take a hit that does 100 damage and end up losing 75 hp and 25 mp.
In addition to using MP to redirect and mitigate damage, they would utilize parry similar to pld having block. They could then have the ability "Runic Blade" that for a short time would absorb damage taken and convert it into mp.
This is of course a very rough concept and would need to be fleshed out and balanced, but I hope it conveys the concept of what I am going for, a magic based tank that focuses on managing an alternate resource (mp) to mitigate damage.

[MartaDemireux]

.

I wanted to avoid giving RDM its own heal as they're not designed to be a healer. My design makes them a DPS with the option of equipping a CNJ's Cure for emergency situations (similar to how a SMN or BLM can cast Physick). I also wanted them to have the basic spells that THM and CNJ get without stepping on toes and because historically they get at least the bare minimum offered to WHM/BLM. Virus and Bio do fit the theme of enfeebling but I wanted to focus primarily on status effects instead of DoT and to focus on giving them access to nukes. My idea lets them either melee with enfeebles, stand back and nuke or melee with enfeebles while swapping to spells up close.

.

Yeah I looked up Celes's ability again and I do think it would fit better. I tweaked the level 50 ability to be somewhat like it but to fit into the game better (letting it block some physical damage as well). I like the reactionary aspect of Firewall (inspired by Bravely Default's Mystic Knight) but it wouldn't work as well on a tank as it would someone who wasn't meant to be hit in the first place (in the MMO world).

Most monsters actually have some form of elemental attack even though it's not all that obvious. A good example is an Eft's Bog Bomb. It looks like any normal monster attack but its actually dealing earth damage. Kind of tempted to keep my eyes peeled more now for other such monsters.

Using MP as a resource in that manner is hard to balance. You'd likely end up either increasing effective HP by a large amount, making it harder for a healer to cure you as they could only help your HP and/or being overpowered with 2 BRDs rotating Ballad on you. It's an interesting idea and I'm not saying SE couldn't find a way to make it work but it'd be hard I think.

Some changes made to OP:

Fencer:
Blinding Blade: Reduced TP and MP cost.
Piercing Blade: Now off GCD and no TP cost.
Swallowtail: Reduced TP cost.
Harness: Clarified effect ends upon reuse.Fixed error of it being on GCD (supposed to be off GCD)
Paralyzing Blade: Now off GCD, reduced TP and MP cost.
Checkmate: Added 30s Recast.

Red Mage:
Bleeding Thorn: Increased potency. Now off GCD. Added Recast of 60s. Will do physical or magical damage depending on if Arcane Stance is up. Thinking on changing its mechanic however. Any ideas welcome.
Arcane Stance: Now level 30 so cross classing spells is more beneficial at lower levels. Will make landing critical hits replenish some MP. Still thinking on a new name for it with the exclusion of the other stances.
Double Cast: Changed to Dualcast. Instead of doubling potency of next spell it will now make the next to spells you cast be off the GCD. Must have a casting time to benefit.
Saboteur: Changed to level 35 to facilitate more casting time.
Death Blossom: Increased potency.
New Cross Class Abilities: Fire, Blizzard, Stone. Does not gain THM benefits of UI/AF.Removed Protect. MP costs and potencies will have to be altered when cross classing to account for lack of UI/AF.

Mystic Knight:
Firewall: Changed to Runic. Nullifies all magic/elemental damage taken and a large portion of physical damage for 10s. Elemental damage blocked that matches your consumed Enspell will restore your MP.
Harness and Checkmate: Will increase enmity.