For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[ForsakenRoe]

That said, did you get a chance to read that Combust example?

I think you might be thinking of this, truly one of the crimes of our lifetimes. Anyway, I cannot fully understand the idea without playing it, but it seems... exceptionally convoluted for a DOT. To the point where I'd say it's not just 'a DOT', but more like the job's identity. Reading this confuses me more than the old HW card effects. Like, you would have to remove the cards entirely to free up the mental load required for this thing, and even then, I'd expect SE would say 'no that is too complex to juggle alongside healing' (and in this case I'd probably agree), so it'd go on Time Mage DPS as 'Singularity' or something. I'm 100% onboard with nuking Combust from AST because it's just boring as hell, if said nuking nets us additional gameplay in alternative parts of the kit more aligned with the identity of the class (ie, the cards), because the one thing Combust COULD have had going for it was integration with the Time Magic stuff like Time Dilation/Celestial Opposition, but now they're gone, so is Combust's reason to exist IMO. If they want to have some kind of... 'this move deals big damage, but in X seconds after you use it' to replace it, that's fine too

edit: re: Time Mage being a potential better fit. Casting Singularity begins the building phase, and you get two balls floating round your head. You'd have two sets of skills, with varying effects, DOTs, direct damage, whatever. One set, let's call it Matter and Antimatter. As you use skills from each of these two sets of skills, you'd do your rotation, but also add matter and antimatter to the two Singularities in varying amounts. You'd have to react on the fly to the levels of each, a bit like RDM mana bars I suppose, but I'd expect the builders to have more unpredictable gain amounts. For example, maybe only one of the two sides has a DOT that fills that side's bar per tick, the other has to be covered with extra casts of the filler spell to compensate. The idea would be, you'd be trying to keep these two Singularities roughly equal in size as with your idea, such that one doesn't just eat the other. Casting Singularity again would allow you to force the two to collide, causing big damage because mixing matter and antimatter does that, and that'd be your burst damage for raidbuffs. Rather than RDM's 50/50 spend, this would be 'consumes whole gauge, scales damage based on amount consumed', and if you imbalance the bars, rather than halving your gain till it's corrected, you'd get some kind of dud result that does big damage, just not as big as it could have been (a Celestial Revolution of sorts, even the name kind of fits). Maybe it sounds all too similar to RDM, but I'd like to think that having some actual Time Mage stuff in there to manipulate how fast you gain Matter/Antimatter (eg, Matter's the side with a DOT, having a way to extend that DOT, or instantly collapse it to get the benefit immediately to emergency-balance the meters) would help set it apart at least a little bit

[Shurrikhan]

I think you might be thinking of this, truly one of the crimes of our lifetimes. Anyway, I cannot fully understand the idea without playing it, but it seems... exceptionally convoluted for a DOT. To the point where I'd say it's not just 'a DOT', but more like the job's identity.

Aye. T'was the point. I didn't mean it as an example of DoT; again, I don't care whether AST has one or not, even I do think if having anchors or pace-setters enough to its GCDs for each to reach sort of 'critical mass' is better than having no such pressure/challenge/room for optimization (which GCD Cards and HoTs could provide anyways). I just want to see AST a proper Time-Space Magic + Cards/Divination Mage.

Sorry if my bringing it up after all this DoT discussion was... very understandably confusing.

For context, rq: I don't really feel like it's all that fitting for AST to be especially GCD-dependent in their healing or to be the kind of healer you expect to solo-pump through nightmarish scenarios. I expect they'd be more preemptive enabler by means distinct from just barriers. And, ofc, if Cards can already provide that sort of "pace-setting" or "anchoring", then a traditional DoT could easily be redundant.

Imo, DoTs are cool in that they pack a lot of potential nuance and functionality for their apparent complexity, but if the needs are already met through other, thematic ways, then they'd obviously be excess to requirement.

re: Time Mage being a potential better fit.

More on this later, but a quick Q for now: Do you really feel like giving Time (or Time-Space) magic its due would leave no room for Cards/Divination? Otherwise, I'd be fine with seeing this Singularity mechanic or its like... even right on AST.

Casting Singularity begins the building phase, and you get two balls floating round your head. You'd have two sets of skills, with varying effects, DOTs, direct damage, whatever. One set, let's call it Matter and Antimatter. As you use skills from each of these two sets of skills, you'd do your rotation, but also add matter and antimatter to the two Singularities in varying amounts.

As a general concept, my interest is definitely piqued.

Rather than RDM's 50/50 spend, this would be 'consumes whole gauge, scales damage based on amount consumed'

Tbf, I do feel like RDM would simultaneously have a lower floor but a higher ceiling (yes, Ren, that is possible; you simply missed the mark) if it had scaling gauge expenditure, haha. (I can expand on this later, if you like, Roe.)

Maybe it sounds all too similar to RDM, but...

So... the first analog that came to mind wasn't RDM so much as just... old Wildfire: Pop debuff, throw damage in, and voila -- you have... an otherwise totally normal damage buff... that craps out if the target dies too soon... and, in itself, punishes you for using AoE actions while it's active.

The RDM-like stuff does improve beyond that, and if you offer at least niche (rarely, but still occasionally, net-positive) uses for imbalances, it'd be better than RDM's current use of B/W Mana.

I think it could be a lot more Time Mage-y in practice, rather than just in skin, but I'd still probably dig it well enough -- certainly if compared to most mechanics on other jobs presently.
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To recap:

My Combust is akin to a Bishop Turret but multi-summonable (i.e., you can have more than one out), ramped through active actions, indirectly movable to new positions by other instances of that summon, with further optimization available via balancing resources generated (the HP of Summon 1 vs. Summon 2, or split among 3 if you ever needed the extra coverage and otherwise inefficient delayed burst), leading to a final burst of later payoff. Which is, admittedly, a mouthful.

Your Singularity is a highly flavorful buff that acts sort of like damage window or actively ramped action with later payoff that offers an additional optimization concern via (im)balancing resources generated therein? Is that a decent-ish summary?

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While we're at it, if you were to siphon off AST's claim on Time-Space magics forever more to give to a Time Mage, what other aspects or core gameplay components would you want to see on it?

For context/heads-up: For my part, I'm fine with jobs feeling a little bundled. I'd much prefer a MNK that could significantly vary its kit through its different stances; a Paladin that could actually make good use of its Shield skills and Shield Oath in addition to its sword stuff even if that means we can't get a separate "Templar" job or w/e; a Warrior that can more deeply swing its resources between "Too angry to die" and "Too angry to let you live" even if that means no Berserker job; for Summoner (Egis returned) itself to be able to consume and take on aspects of its summon even if that means no "Evoker" job opposite it; etc., etc.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeh, you got a pretty accurate summary of what I was thinking. I'd look at this 'Singularity' as... It's kind of Wildfire in execution, but in terms of 'phases of combat', I'd expect it to have an upper limit that you'd reach roughly every 30s of combat. So you'd have one land in raidbuffs, and 3 outside of them. I almost envision it as being like old HW Enochian, as that, you could 'reset' every 30s. Unlike that, however, if you goof the Singularity, you can fire it off early and reset with a new one at any time. This also means that, say you start up a Singularity 40s before raidbuffs (downtime forced you to or something), you could fire off a smaller one earlier on purpose, such that you get a fully charged up one into the raidbuffs.

IDK if you ever played Vampire Survivors, but I was thinking of the SpellStrom singularities while writing, and how they collide every now and again for a cataclysmic amount of damage on the whole screen. In FFXIV though, we actually have the VFX already for the detonation effect: depending on if Matter or Antimatter is higher, we can reuse the 'you failed a tower' from P12S. I don't know why, but I love the aesthetic of that 'you failed' screenwipe. Black with white highlight for Antimatter-attuned, white with black for Matter-attuned, and IDK what for 'exactly equal'. Actually, thinking on it, I think that having the whole kit be like this, just pure white and pure black, would look pretty cool and unique

Oh, and I wouldn't have it as a debuff on the enemy, it'd orbit around you ala BLM orbs until you launch it off, so if an enemy dies to your builders, you can target a different enemy and launch it at them instead. In fact, such a strategy might be interesting to play around, of building and holding onto a Singularity from hitting the boss, such that when a priority add appears, you can chunk it with a fully primed Singularity as your first GCD against it. As for Time Mage aesthetics, let's again say that Matter is the side which has a DOT, and Antimatter is built exclusively via standard 'do damage' GCDs. We can have things like Haste, to selfbuff your GCD speed, and increasing how fast you cast spells. We can have Quicken as a phase of instantcasts, and an Antimatter spell that generates more gauge, but has an obscene cast time, but can be Quickened to make it instant and therefore better than the filler. We can have an interplay between Matter and Antimatter spells, where eg a Matter spell might proc a speed boosted cast of the slow-hard Antimatter cast such that it's equal to the GCD in cast time for one use. We can use Slow as a way to extend the Matter DOT's duration, Stop to pause buffs on ourselves to keep buffs up for longer. We could even get super weird with it and have skills that convert between Matter and Antimatter, or generate some of both but at imbalanced amounts eg, a Blasting Zone style hard hitting OGCD builder, that creates 10 Antimatter and 6 Matter, so you have to make sure to be prepared with how your balance looks, going into using the skill. Also, skills that detonate their damage X seconds later. Meaning that you have to consider 'I am at 84/90 atm, but I have a Comet coming in 6 seconds that builds 10/10, thus I will cap out on Antimatter because of it. As such, I should use my filler Matter skill that gives 3 twice, putting me at 90/90 with 1 second of Comet left, and while casting 'Launch Singularity' (or Event Horizon, or whatever cool name), the Comet will push me to the full 100/100 mid-cast time'. Maybe a skill that accelerates the effect so that it lands instantly (slap it on Quicken if needed).

Also, I wanna see not astrology, but astronomy terms, and lots of them. Event Horizon, Red Shift, Conjunction, Syzygy, stuff like that

While we're at it, if you were to siphon off AST's claim on Time-Space magics forever more to give to a Time Mage, what other aspects or core gameplay components would you want to see on it?

As above. I would want it to be 'Balance Druid, but you're not a fat chicken, and it looks cooler (Starsurge looks terrible, New/Half/Full Moon should be the spender). People always said of Time Mage stuff 'you can't balance Haste/Slow in an MMO setting' but that was because AST had those effects, and could give them to allies. Keeping them self-contained to the Time Mage allows them to be balanced, we don't complain about how OP it is that BLM can effectively 'haste' itself with Ley Lines. But yeh, this is assuming that doing this (giving time/space stuff to Time Mage) would make AST's fortune telling more prominent as it's gameplay. Like, idk, making Minor Arcana actually worth a damn instead of '50% chance for a Malefic 1, and 50% chance for a Helios'. You could throw a very 'simplified' version on AST, but I feel like it'd be a bit of a waste to do so, as it'd never be able to reach it's full 'complexity', and at the same time, it'd be justification to keep the cards simple in SE's eyes, which... yeh, we don't want these cards any longer than we have to

TLDR, I don't think we'd ever see AST as a Time/Space AND Cards/buffing class, without one or both of those aspects being horrendously simplified to the point of 'why even have this'. Thus, rather than risk SE being SE and making a half-ass job of both aspects of the identity, I'd rather they split them and have one or the other, and give the unused identity to something else. Since Cards were the primary focus of AST (it's in the weapon/job splashart), I'd rather that be the focus of the class, make that system more interesting/complex, and then give Time stuff to a Time Mage. And before Ren comes in, no, giving away WHM's elements is not the same, as we changed from 'use Stone for damage, Water for OGCD damage, Wind for DOT' to 'use Light for damage, Light for DOT, and lose the OGCD damage skill entirely', transitioning to Light skills did not 'require' we lose complexity (ie, Fluid Aura could have gone LightMode too) and so giving the elemental themes away to a GEO does not make as much sense to me as the TIM thing

[Shurrikhan]

<Time Mage>

So, first off, all this sounds pretty great. Even the fact that every Tim will be confused with a master of time and space.

I almost envision it as being like old HW Enochian, as that, you could 'reset' every 30s. Unlike that, however, if you goof the Singularity, you can fire it off early and reset with a new one at any time. This also means that, say you start up a Singularity 40s before raidbuffs (downtime forced you to or something), you could fire off a smaller one earlier on purpose, such that you get a fully charged up one into the raidbuffs.

Love it.

Matter is the side which has a DOT, and Antimatter is built exclusively via standard 'do damage' GCDs

I guess my main/one complaint here is that it feels kinda arbitrary, rather than having much of anything inherently to do with their categories?

Both from what I can imagine from this description and that of the Quicken and Slow/Stop implications, the only thing that's feeling especially Time Mage-y are the ability to pause buff durations and to affect the time that "detonate X seconds later" effects detonate.

Which is still leagues better than most existing XIV jobs, but it just feels like there's still more you can grab here? Still, looks appetizing; would play.

People always said of Time Mage stuff 'you can't balance Haste/Slow in an MMO setting' but that was because AST had those effects, and could give them to allies.

Which... to be fair... makes no more sense than saying "You can't balance Damage buffs in an MMO setting."

They're just two sides of the same coin. Damage disproportionately rewards jobs with high potency-per-X-seconds' damage density; Haste disproportionately rewards jobs with high potency-per-X-seconds-uniquely-achievable-through-GCD-reduction (such as being able to use an extra Bootshine per Demolish back before it was fettered to Dragon Kick, or just barely able to use an extra Full Thrust per Chaos Thrust back in ARR/HW). The higher one's % of damage comes from oGCDs, usually the more Damage is favorable to them over Haste, and vice versa.

On which note, I don't think one needs to leave them self-contained to the Time Mage, though if it's to be primarily a DPS, it would make sense to have typically have greater haste synergy (inherently or by some passive advantaging it on self) than most jobs, with it only being used on others if you're Weakened or for emergencies (Haste the WHM whose GCDs are finally actually advantaged over other healers').

TLDR, I don't think we'd ever see AST as a Time/Space AND Cards/buffing class, without one or both of those aspects being horrendously simplified to the point of 'why even have this'. Thus, rather than risk SE being SE and making a half-ass job of both aspects of the identity, I'd rather they split them and have one or the other, and give the unused identity to something else. Since Cards were the primary focus of AST (it's in the weapon/job splashart), I'd rather that be the focus of the class, make that system more interesting/complex, and then give Time stuff to a Time Mage.

While I think we'd be fine with an AST that has the full slew of Time Mage components atop a full slew of Card components if this game just allowed for greater kit breadth in general (which would be preferable to me), I can definitely see where you're coming from here.

[ForsakenRoe]

So, first off, all this sounds pretty great. Even the fact that every Tim will be confused with a master of time and space.

My character's name is Samantha. You get used to it.

While out collecting some food, I did have an idea, of a DOT that gets stronger the closer to expiry it gets (something about time's relative speed, and your proximity to a black hole), so you could have interesting gameplay where you want to try and keep it lower duration (more potency) using Slow/Stop, etc kind of skills, but also not too low or it runs out on you.

The main issue with haste is that it's harder to quantify how much extra damage was gained from the buff, with regard to 'allocating that damage to the buffer on logs', but I suppose we shouldn't design around logs either way really. If you wanted to have partywise time magic stuff, the way I could see it is to have a Magick Barrier style mit, where the damage isn't mitigated at all, but instead a portion is dealt instantly, and the rest staggered out over the next X seconds. Say, 80% is dealt immediately, and 20% is dealt as 4 hits of 5% across the next 12s.

Would be interesting for the class if it had spellspeed synergy such that rather than getting a Singularity prepped every 30s, you got a slightly weaker one but every 20s, and it maths out that it's 'technically more damage' due to going from 4 per 2min to 6. Then BLM would have a gearset partner

edit: oh yeh, Matter being the side with a DOT is completely arbitrary. Just an example of a way that would 'force' the build speeds to be staggered so you have to adapt to the changing bar balance more than you do with RDM, where it's almost impossible at this point to imbalance them