Pipe Dreams: Mystic

[Leidiriv]

I made a rudimentary class icon for MYS

http://imgur.com/9TYMcsk

The idea behind this icon was to show the duality of Astral/Umbral via a combined sun/moon, while still fitting the simplistic art-style of the other Job icons in-game.

[Marxam]

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.

I actually see runes as a being more suited to the mystic's weapon. Stones attached to your gloves that create intricate glyphs similar to ley lines.

[Shurrikhan]

First, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I was checking the thread daily for a while after posting, but had forgotten after.

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

Ahh, I see. I had forgotten your positions on the dps-obsessed meta reaching into tank/healer roles. Have the devs actually released any plans to try to change the ease/viability of healer dps? As a healer who usually dealt more damage than one or both dps throughout leveling in my dungeon grinds unless my tank didn't know what CDs were, I never really expected that their position on healer dps was anything other than, well, exactly what the tools given would imply. That I tend to be about as everything-is-for-clear-speed dps-headed as everyone else.

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.

So, you can basically swap back and forth instantly (or, within a GCD) until you Ascend, at which point you could potentially change to the opposite side instantly (/within a GCD) but would need three casts to regain the full version of the stance you just had? Was this your primary aim in the stacking system, or was it just to require some build up time at the start of combat? [Kind of like how a WHM might pop a few Cure I's atop Regen while the PLD is using Sentinel, preparing a free Cure II, before mitigating for the PLD via Holy spam, or a SCH will tend to open with DoTs and Bane before really going into healing, especially if Rouse is up, Adlo/Skin done pre-pull, and/or tank has CDs?)

- 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.

Perfect. Not sure whether towards 10 or 15 seconds would be better. Oh, just to check (sorry if it's written) do any oGCD casts give stacks? That could be a factor on how much people feel delayed as well, say, if they could have re-ascended after dropping Ascension in 3-5 seconds but have to wait 15.

- 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.

Any particular ideas on how they would augment them?

- 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).

Anywhere from twice to thrice the Ascension CD should be acceptable to even the most greedy player on paper, remain fun, and look appropriate when glancing across one's hotbars. I'm curious though as to whether it might be worthwhile to make Ascension and Dichotomy scale with (Spell) Speed. [If you've seen any of my threads, you've probably seen that I'd very much like Spell & Skill Speed combined like Crit and Det.]

- 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)

Handy. Should be strong enough for a 60s CD, for sure. [I personally can only imagine myself using it as a way to quickly finish off healing phases and get to dpsing, but that's just because of, again, how I think of 'support', which is all I've ever thought of tanks and healers as.]

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.

My only intent was to keep it in line with other jobs, but if one considers how often the same could be done with the abilities in place (2 being mergeable for WAR, 1 for DRG), it probably already is. I'd have to count, but am too lazy currently to do so.

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.

I see. My first thought on seeing them was a more supportive version of the sort of Archon archetype, stealing stats from enemies or transfering them from oneself to others, and with a fair bit in common to what I had imagine for Time/Planar Mages, or what I usually assume as being sort of the backing idea behind (other) Arcanists - low power but masterful manipulators when it comes to diverting, transforming, and rerouting magic or abstract powers. Just read up on Kinetics and Defenders (couldn't find a combined entry). Pretty neat. That said, I don't entirely see the fit?

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.

I mostly meant how a lot of DRKs would prefer for their Salted Earth to be target-centered instead of a ground-click, just because of how often this game has issues trying to place ground AoEs when clicking through enemies. As much as a healing orbs, like Angelic Feathers or Lightwells, is in some ways great for the as-you-need-it-and-I-don't-have-time-to-watch-for-exactly-when-you-will-so-here-it-is-and-don't-bother-me-for-a-while advantage in raid situations, it would also be hardest to place in those exact situations, given FFXIV's clicking issues.

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.

*Looked up gameplay* Ooh, scythe... why don't we have any scythes in xiv...

[Duelle]

I had forgotten your positions on the dps-obsessed meta reaching into tank/healer roles. Have the devs actually released any plans to try to change the ease/viability of healer dps? As a healer who usually dealt more damage than one or both dps throughout leveling in my dungeon grinds unless my tank didn't know what CDs were, I never really expected that their position on healer dps was anything other than, well, exactly what the tools given would imply. That I tend to be about as everything-is-for-clear-speed dps-headed as everyone else.

No idea on this. I know that they purposely removed accuracy from healer gear to sort of discourage it.

Perfect. Not sure whether towards 10 or 15 seconds would be better. Oh, just to check (sorry if it's written) do any oGCD casts give stacks? That could be a factor on how much people feel delayed as well, say, if they could have re-ascended after dropping Ascension in 3-5 seconds but have to wait 15.

You mean instant casts, right? There's no such thing as oGCD casts; even stuff like Regen triggers the GCD. And yes, instant cast spells would also give stacks.

Any particular ideas on how they would augment them?

As an example, I was thinking of getting rid of the Lingering Pain trait and instead make it a bonus to using Pain II while in Umbral Ascension. I would also extend a similar design for Mend II. So Pain II and Mend II would look like this:

22 Pain II - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of X. Grants Umbral Alignment. Umbral Ascension: Places a DoT effect that deals 30% of the damage dealt by Pain II. DoT duration: 12s.
26 Mend II - Restores HP. Cure potency: X. Grants Astral Alignment. Astral Ascension: Places a HoT effect that restores 30% of the amount healed by Mend II. HoT Duration: 12s.

So if you cast Pain II and it deals 1000 damage while under Umbral Ascension, the mob gets a DoT that deals 300 additional damage over 12 seconds.

I see. My first thought on seeing them was a more supportive version of the sort of Archon archetype, stealing stats from enemies or transfering them from oneself to others, and with a fair bit in common to what I had imagine for Time/Planar Mages, or what I usually assume as being sort of the backing idea behind (other) Arcanists - low power but masterful manipulators when it comes to diverting, transforming, and rerouting magic or abstract powers. Just read up on Kinetics and Defenders (couldn't find a combined entry). Pretty neat. That said, I don't entirely see the fit?

It's a bit of a stretch, but I thought of it as someone taking stuff from one side of the scale and putting it in the other. In the case of Might, taking from the pile that's labeled "mob attack" and adding it to the pile labeled "PC attack". Think of it as a way of messing with combat variables in favor of your group. MYS may deal with balance of life and death, and I don't doubt they'd be able to manipulate factors that lead to one or the other.

I mostly meant how a lot of DRKs would prefer for their Salted Earth to be target-centered instead of a ground-click, just because of how often this game has issues trying to place ground AoEs when clicking through enemies. As much as a healing orbs, like Angelic Feathers or Lightwells, is in some ways great for the as-you-need-it-and-I-don't-have-time-to-watch-for-exactly-when-you-will-so-here-it-is-and-don't-bother-me-for-a-while advantage in raid situations, it would also be hardest to place in those exact situations, given FFXIV's clicking issues.

Oh, I see. Granted, in the context of tanking Salted Earth is very inconvenient to use. Not sure if it'd be the same way in the context of a healer. We'd need to ask career SCHs to see how they feel about stuff like Sacred Soil.

*Looked up gameplay* Ooh, scythe... why don't we have any scythes in xiv...

What sold me on the idea was seeing it use it's dark ground attack with limbs of the undead tearing at the enemies, then switching stances and casting the same spell to create a holy patch of ground that healed the magician and his allies. I admit Revelation Online uses a very minimalistic design for abilities, which necessitates ability padding of sorts if it were to fit into FFXIV.

This said, a caster using a war scythe would be a new aesthetic to say the least. You'd probably get a mass of people glamour-cosplaying as Magus from Chrono Trigger, too.

So, you can basically swap back and forth instantly (or, within a GCD) until you Ascend, at which point you could potentially change to the opposite side instantly (/within a GCD) but would need three casts to regain the full version of the stance you just had? Was this your primary aim in the stacking system, or was it just to require some build up time at the start of combat?

I'm still trying to decide what would work best. I originally wanted alignments to be a ramp-up mechanic leading to its ultimate conclusion (Astral/Umbral Ascension) and little else. Thus making the goal during gameplay to hit Ascension as quickly as possible to heal or DPS at full power because your most potent skills were locked behind their respective Ascensions.

If we want to make switching a little more fluid, then alignments would need some sort of beneficial effect, which to me would be some effect on cast times (the way the SCH Arts worked in FFXI). So when getting Astral Alignment stacks, each stack would let you cast Mend, Mend II and Reverberation faster. This begets the question of how strong the effect should be.

So my idea here is that at 3 stacks of either alignment, you get a 5% bonus to spell speed for the corresponding spells. Going back to Astral Alignment, at 3 stacks you can cast Mend, Mend II and Reverberation 5% faster than you would at 0 stacks. Hitting ascension would increase the casting speed bonus to 10%.

Now since I'm allowing MYS to build and keep opposite stacks, what would happen is that once you hit Astral Alignment, you can finally hit 3 stacks of Umbral Alignment (which facilitate swapping to Umbral Ascension and has the benefit of being able to throw in Umbral spells a little faster than with no stacks). So I guess in a way, a "good" MYS would aim to keep stacks of both alignments out of Ascension, and in Ascension endeavor to keep full stacks of the opposite alignment for quick and easy switches.

-------------------------------

What I'm doing right now is rearranging some skills. The dual skills (the ones whose icons change depending on your Ascension) should be gained during the job quests. I also removed Life Wave/Death Wave and replaced them with:

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 groes stronger over time (final tick: 90 potency).

By default (without an ascension), you'd have Absolve, and gain the effects as a bonus for being Ascended.

[Duelle]

Updated the OP Version 2 for those who are interested.

[Leidiriv]

I have to say, I like the revisions. One question though, as I couldn't find the answer in the Notes. Are you able to gain stacks of the same alignment to which you're already Ascended?

[Duelle]

I have to say, I like the revisions. One question though, as I couldn't find the answer in the Notes. Are you able to gain stacks of the same alignment to which you're already Ascended?

You wouldn't. Once you ascend one way or the other, you cannot gain stacks of the same alignment, but can gain stacks of the opposite alignment.

[Leidiriv]

You wouldn't. Once you ascend one way or the other, you cannot gain stacks of the same alignment, but can gain stacks of the opposite alignment.

Thank you