Pipe Dreams: Mystic

[Duelle]

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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.)

[Leidiriv]

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.

[BlueMageQuina]

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.

[Shurrikhan]

(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.)

The 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.

[wicked-one]

the one and only PIPE DREAM

[Fevelle]

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?

[Leidiriv]

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?

My guess is a pair of scales, fitting with the whole duality/judgment theme this MYS has going on.

[BlueMageQuina]

The 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...

I 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.

[Duelle]

I wanted to start by thanking everyone who posted. I figured this was going to get ignored. XD

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.

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.

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.

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.
- 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.

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.

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.

The transfusions could, imo, use some work, but this should come with whatever you think of for the stances

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.

The Sphere abilities seem aesthetically interesting but nothing all that special, and likely annoying to some users (consider Salted Earth).

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.

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.)

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.

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!