The Mystery Gun Job

[MartaDemireux]

Once I read that it "wasn't what players are expecting it to be", I thought of Orator.

Totally forgot they could use guns. They had a very unique role in that game though and didn't make another appearance so they could really be anything I guess.

What they did have was essentially Attack up buff, Attack down debuff, Magic attack up buff, Magic attack down debuff, Stall (delays attacks, perhaps changed to slow or stun), a sleep, a gil boosting move, Berserk, Doom and a charming ability.

I can't see how their charming ability would fit in XIV and if they bring in Beastmaster it would cause a riot. Berserk is already Warriors. Doom has no place for players unless it's an ability that is placed on the mob does damage when it wears off. Gil boosting would be unfair to other jobs especially if they add in Thief and give it to them.

So then what we're left with would be a Musketeer (likely DPS) with perhaps 2 variances:

30: Praise - Attack up on party member(s).
35: Preach - Magic Attack up on party member(s).
40: Intimidate - Attack down on foe(s).
45: Enlighten - Magic Attack down on foe(s).
50: Mimic Darlavon - Sleeps foe(s).

OR

30: Praise/Intimidate - Attack up on party member(s) or Attack down on foe(s). Effect depends on who is targeted.
35: Preach/Enlighten - Magic Attack up on party member(s) or Magic Attack down on foe(s). Effect depends on who is targeted.
40: Stall - Stun or a slow effect. Likely a stun.
45: Mimic Darlavon - Sleeps foe(s).
50: Condemn - Places a debuff on target for X amount of time. Damage is dealt when effect wears off.

Just my idea of how they'd probably bring in the job. Likely be much like BRD in this case. Would probably have to face a penalty when using their buffs/debuffs like BRD as well to prevent them from being too strong/in demand. Perhaps very high recast timers, MP cost or TP cost while at the same time being unable to receive their own buffs.

[Hadeed]

SOMETHING like this ;D !!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhONrCvbgKs

[Astralos]

Totally forgot they could use guns. They had a very unique role in that game though and didn't make another appearance so they could really be anything I guess.

There are Orators in FFXIV (e.g., Tempered Orators in Southern Thanalan) but currently they just act as generic spellcasters, rather than like the Tactics job. While not proof of anything (obviously) it was the reason why I thought it might be a possibility.

SOMETHING like this ;D !!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhONrCvbgKs

Lol, I was waiting for someone to mention Kaze.

[Marionette]

Personally I think the way it's going to go is. Main class being thief (or other equivilent name) With two split jobs, one being ninja with typical dual weilding ability, and a corsair like job which dual weilds with the offhand weapon as a pistol instead of a dagger (Think first boss of pharos)

[Kitru]

What they did have was essentially Attack up buff, Attack down debuff, Magic attack up buff, Magic attack down debuff, Stall (delays attacks, perhaps changed to slow or stun), a sleep, a gil boosting move, Berserk, Doom and a charming ability.

Brave and Faith weren't really offensive stats. They were... weird... and don't really have a good direct translation into FFXIV.

Brave only governed a few attacks (knight swords, katanas, and unarmed as well as the damaging dances) and principally governed the use of reaction abilities (Brade Grasp with 100 Brave basically rendered your immune to all physical attacks; it was fixed in the PSP version to be only melee, but that was still borkedly awesome) of which there isn't really an equivalent.

Faith was just as much about magic resistance as it was about magic potency; the higher your Faith the more effective your magic was but the more effective magic used upon you was. It was basically a variable magical version of B4B.

If they brought in Orator, I would honestly expect them to not mimic the existing abilities, just as the BRD doesn't mimic any previous BRD abilities (since a lot of them don't really translate well without making BRD into a straight up healer), so that they can provide a more appropriate suite of abilities. A slew of damage manipulation effects would most definitely make them more popular than BRD for any kind of support role since the BRD songs are largely conditional (Paeon and Ballad do nothing if you don't need TP/MP, and Foe's only benefits elemental damage, which only has a significant presence for BLMs, and only by 10%) whereas the ability to increase or decrease either magic or physical damage will *always* be useful.

I would expect them to have abilities similar in function to the BRD abilities without matching them explicitly, such as making them single target instant effects (re: targeted allies immediately regains 20% of max mp) with 1 min CDs, or making them incredibly strong but requiring them to be channeled (so that you can't move or attack while they're active; would probably have to restrict them to something like 10 secs and put a 30s or so CD on them).

Something like this:
1. Pep Talk: Increases target's TP by 300, 1.0 sec cast, 60 sec CD; shares the same CD with Lecture
2. Lecture: Restores 20% of target's max MP, 1.0 sec cast, 60 sec CD; shares the same CD with Pep Talk
3. Condemnation: Target takes 400 potency nonelemental damage when the effect wears off; 15 sec duration; instant, can only affect 1 target at a time (consumes TP)
4. Silver Tongue: Instantly ends the CD on Pep Talk and Lecture; 180 sec CD; off-GCD
5. Inspire Heroism: Target deals 20% more damage and takes 20% less damage for 10 seconds; 1.0 sec cast; 180 sec CD

[MartaDemireux]

[Brave and Faith ... don't really have a good direct translation into FFXIV]

Yeah that's why I said "essentially" in order for them to apply to XIV. While they didn't buff/debuff directly it was an effect they had.

I do agree that manipulating atk/matk directly is strong and will always be needed as opposed to BRD's situational songs. By "high recast timers" I was thinking along the lines of Hallowed Ground to prevent frequent usage. Basically encourage a DPS burst/hinderance at key moments in opposition of BRD's use of picking up the slack if things get drawn out too long.

Could make it more interesting by only being able to use them after building up charges with combos or something. Execute say 3 combo's in order to gain one charge to use on a job ability which then suffers a high recast time to cycle buffs/debuffs. And/or could use own HP/attack/determination/defense stats as a resource for a high-risk/high-reward scenario, make yourself weak to make your group strong.

I personally don't want to see "support" roles falling into an MP/TP restoral slump. Yeah they're really useful for when fights go on too long or accidents happen but I'd like to see a more pro-active support. Charge at the battle with guns blazing to down it ASAP versus BRD's more slow and steady, precisely aimed approach (in the eyes of the application of their support). So if you know you can beat the boss down with your group anyway, bring the ORA along to make it go more quickly but if you're unsure, bring out the BRD so that they can restore the healers MP or DPS TP if the fight is dragging on due to not knowing mechanics.

[Sanguisio]

I think the gun class mechanism should revolve around a chain shot progressive buff.
So lets say the first skill is a generic shot skill, each time you cast it you get a buff which lasts 2 secs but stacks, the skills you go on to unlock require you have to have certain amount of stacks to use

So a sequence could be, quick shot, quick shot, quick shot (3 stacks of buff), wake shot, (keeping the buff) which opens you up to having access to status ailments like stun or poison, there would be a max stack, where you would have access to the stronger skills.

I can elaborate if needed, but general idea should be clear.

[Kitru]

I do agree that manipulating atk/matk directly is strong and will always be needed as opposed to BRD's situational songs. By "high recast timers" I was thinking along the lines of Hallowed Ground to prevent frequent usage.

A CD that causes the ability to suffer from what I generally call "grenade syndrome" or "nuke syndrome" (after those uber-consumables that you get in FPSs/light gun games/side scrollers, where you don't ever use them and end up getting a massive stockpile because you're always worried that there will be a more pressing need for it later, especially if there's a reasonable chance you could get out of whatever shit your in without it). HG only really gets used in 2 situations because of its incredible CD: when it's part of the explicit strategy (t4 double dread; Levi EX; Titan EX single tank) or when the shit very *obviously* has hit the fan and you're liable to wipe even if you do use it (t5 tank death). Compare that to Holmgang which is much weaker but on a significantly lower CD (low enough that you actually stand to use it multiple times over the course of the fight) such that you're almost always going to use it any time that you could feasibly get killed within the next few GCDs.

It doesn't help that burst DPS doesn't really follow the same use paradigm as a tank uber-CD. More damage is always useful so it's not like you're liable to waste it if you use it at an inopportune time (like the start of the fight).

I personally don't want to see "support" roles falling into an MP/TP restoral slump.

The problem I see is that, as soon as you start providing damage increase/reduction abilities to support classes instead of resource management, you basically render the resource management moot because increasing damage dealt is *always* useful and, oftentimes, can be easily used to preempt the loss of resources in the first place (plummeting a boss's damage when they're about to drop a meganuke or major AoE so everyone takes less damage; increasing everyone's damage during a burn phase so that you spend less time in said danger zone).

The BRD songs represent a really good place for support to exist because they're not so restricted that you have to hold on to them until the perfect moment ("hey, it's an AoE phase, better turn on Paeon" or "healers are at half mp, gotta turn on Ballad") while still being somewhat restricted ("healers could use the extra mp, but it reduces my damage by 20% and consumes MP I might need for songs later"). Furthermore, they're generally applicable without being universally useful: there are plenty of occasions where you could want to restore party MP/TP but there's no value in using it *every single time* you have the option to (why bother turning on Paeon/Ballad when there's about to be a 30 second period where you're not consuming any resources at all). Foe's Req is a damage increase, but it's explicitly limited in who exactly it increases damage for (as I said before, it's elemental resistance, which basically means that it buffs BLM entirely, BRD/SMN a little, and no one else at all).

There isn't much other support you can provide that doesn't render BRD's support basically worthless (or, at the very least, significantly subpar). You could potentially include other intangibles like movement speed increases (not really provided by anything else but very useful in dodging plumes) or pulling allies (yank an ally out of a plume or getting them to stack up for whatever reason), but tangible advantages like straight up increases to all damage or damage reduction as the primary form of support are too powerful (the final ability I listed on mine is a DR/dam ability, but it's got a very long CD, a short duration, and only affects a single target so that it doesn't overshadow Foe's Req; the primary form of support you'd bring them for is the TP/MP, not the damage).

[Zophar]

Personally I think the way it's going to go is. Main class being thief (or other equivilent name) With two split jobs, one being ninja with typical dual weilding ability, and a corsair like job which dual weilds with the offhand weapon as a pistol instead of a dagger (Think first boss of pharos)

No, it's already been confirmed that there are going to be 2 separate classes, not just jobs. Also, I'd bet that There won't actually be a dual wield trait. I much more expect that the thf nin is actually going to have "Dual daggers" as their style of weapon. There are a couple reasons I believe this. The lesser reason is that Dagger already exists as a GLA weapon.

[Zophar]

The main reason though is animations. If they do dual wield like they did in XI, with two separate equipable weapons they would either have to limit all of the AC animations to include ONLY the main hand weapon, in the event that only one weapon is equipped. Alternatively, they would have to come up with 2 animations per ability, something that they wouldn't even do with BLM/WHM with their club/staff, and is not something they're likely to do going forward. Alternatively, they could just set certain moves to only work if a weapon is equipped in the sub slot, as they did with pld and it's shield moves, which is possible, but I think it somewhat unlikely.

As far as Musketeer though, I kinda doubt it would use a gun AND sword/dagger. Not impossible, but I imagine it would be a difficult class to program and balance.