Job Idea: Green Mage (Caster)

[Taranok]

Won't work.

Major flaws:

Further dilutes the game's caster design by focusing on highly mobile gameplay. Uses DoTs in a game that has extremely bad DoT server architecture. Range limitations on buff skills incompatible with modern fight design (impossible to balance.) Extremely easy to mess up resource management on a significant amount of critical skills (skill floor problems.) 'Embrace of the Dream' skills are low use, mutually exclusive. Typically only one real choice leading to stale gameplay. Has no skill/spell speed normalization. Frankly, it's only going to be used on BLMs or the caster themselves because it's purely just skill activations over time, meaning more activations = more damage, especially as it scales primarily on int. Find the fastest attacker, ???, flawed design. Overreliance on enemy debuffs, class will suffer in any fight remotely like BA/DRS.

Minor flaws: Too many party buffs, buffs step on the toes of Bard while still not being near a true rotation cycle, no overcap protection. No, really, one of your skills literally caps your green mana meaning you have exactly 1 spot you can use it in your entire rotation, this type of design sank manafication and is sinking dancer in general right now. Tanglevine->stranglethorn is a weird combo ability, would be better to prune redundant or low-use abilities and separate this.


Overall thoughts: This would be a decent starting idea for a class in a game with much better server design, but would be harmful to FFXIV as it exists now. Also has a strong sense of trying to be both bard and ye olde summoner in style while trying not to fall into SMN's pitfalls, but still flirting with it all the same. Still a more coherent idea than launch picto.

[Mimilu]

Snip.[/B]

Thank you for the feedback. (*´∀`*) ~♥

To go over your points:
• Focusing on highly mobile gameplay? Do you mean Tailwind, Ardor of the Green, and Emerald Tempest? Or maybe because the filler is only 1.5 second long? I was actually worried the 2.5 second cast times on the stronger spells might be too long for the games current design.
• I was worried about the buff ranges but wasn't sure. Maybe I can increase it to 30-yalms like AST? Maybe 50-yalms like BRD? Or make it just flat out affect every party member regardless of distance?
• By "resource management" do you mean the Green Mana? Would allowing people to hold 60 or higher help make management more tolerable? I had originally thought of making it 100 but was actually worried it would make things too easy/boring.
• I can see that about the Embrace of the Green abilities, I made them last minute during the final stretch and was more set on making skills with those names but made them more flash then substance I think. The general idea is that you use Dell of the Dreamer for AoE situations and Fleeting Familiar for single-target.
• This design made me notice quiet a few of my job designs involve placing debuffs/stacks on enemies. I never played DRS, is it the number of debuffs an enemy can hold or is there a mechanic in the fight that makes it impossible for debuffs? I was worried about the enemy's debuff number and though about making Seeds a resource you carry but thought seeds being planted on enemies was more on theme.
• I really didn't want a true rotation for the Green Mana buffs. I wanted the user to be able to have some choice on whether to start with Faith or Bravery depending on the party (granted, I don't think a Magic-heavy party goes with the more melee-centric meta but still, choices).
• Is it the effect of the "...of the Green" spells that step too much on BRD's toes or just because there's three?
• Yeah, I did make Focus of the Green just to facility Wrath in the opener. Maybe I could tone done Focus of the Green and make it so you just start out with max Green Mana when you start an instance?
• For overcapping on Green Mana, maybe I could make Ardor of the Green more spammable? Like get rid of the cooldown but make it so you need a higher amount of Green Mana to use it (in addition to increasing the Green Mana gauge to like 100)?