Gunblade Class: Soldier

[Altijacek]

I am just doing it for fun, not to make a suggestion

[saber_alter]

I am just doing it for fun, not to make a suggestion

you. i like you.

i also like this idea. if they could implement a class like this, i would have lots of fun with it.

[Altijacek]

you. i like you.

i also like this idea. if they could implement a class like this, i would have lots of fun with it.

Thanks haha I have other ideas to share later XD

[TouchandFeel]

A gunblade wielding job that is a dps class that is all about bouncing between melee and ranged sounds like a neat idea. I could see it maybe coming off of Corsair, or as you suggested a new Garlean Soldier style class. However I would only really see something like this being considered after the story has progressed and more areas have been introduced where we can venture farther into Garlean controlled territory.

[Nahara]

I'm sure a gun blade class has been mentioned, and yeah it would be bad ass.

It has, and while I don't have a link to it at the moment, Yoshi-P did express some measure of interest in the idea of a class that used Gunblades. If/when an expansion gets released that has us taking it to the Garlean Empire, I'd expect a gunblade class then.

[Ehayte]

Why are you doing SE's job? Seriously 98% or more of what you thought up and wrote won't even be considered esp the levels, names, etc. It's good your trying to give a suggestion for a future class, but the community can't spoon feed SE. They have a lot of brains working for them, they have loads of jobs and classes to choose from and they already have a vision of the classes and jobs they are considering. I'm sure a gun blade class has been mentioned, and yeah it would be bad ass.

Its fun to do this - stop being negative.

[Ehayte]

Also - killer idea!! I think some of the potencies might be low, and the SeeD class might be called "Specialist" (as that was what Squall was referred to by Cid in FFVIII: "Finally, a gunblade specialist!"). I haven't read all the way though everything yet, but regardless if all your ideas are totally off-base (which they aren't), it will still be so much fun to play, as it seems like this idea is centered around athleticism/mobility combined with power for interesting damage mechanics!

[Nathan061111]

Love the idea of a gunblade class, switching between melee and range is an interesting idea one I have had my own ideas about.

[Altijacek]

Thanks guys for positive responses, I appreciate it it's just a hobby for my spare time and yeah I imagine if a Gunblade class did exist it would appear in expansion down the road after some things happen with the empire.

[Kitru]

yeah I imagine if a Gunblade class did exist it would appear in expansion down the road after some things happen with the empire.

To really do this, you'd have to have some large-scale unit of imperial gunblade users change sides as part of it so that they can train the Eorzeans in the art of gunbladery. To avoid conflict with the main story, it would likely need to be an advance class that requires progression through the main story to the point where the gunblade users swap sides (not terribly hard to implement, methinks since there are already requirements on getting classes beyond your first).

Another interesting variation would be having your character get captured by said organization of gunblade users (who are loyal this time around), stripped of all of your gear, and forced to fight your way to your actual gear with a gunblade stolen from their armory: you would receive the class and the weapon as part of the story and then get to level 5 or so as part of a duty that involves fighting your way to your actual gear, past low level enemies that you can actually defeat, wherein you get your actual gear back and resume fighting stuff at level 50+ to free yourself. When you get back to friendly terrain, you then have the option to continue to level up as a gunblade user, likely with a quest contact that isn't a gunblade user but rather an engineer that helps you discover the secrets of gunblade combat (similar to the SCH job contact who is actually a marauder; imagine if it were Biggs or Wedge or even Biggs *and* Wedge :3).

As to the class itself, you didn't include a "basic" attack at level one. Swap and Reload are both support capabilities so leveling from 1-3 would involve only being able to autoattack. You probably want to pull Crosscut from level 6 to level 1 so that players actually have an attack that they can use from the start. Swap itself seems kind of arbitrary and unnecessary; since you're limiting the ranged attacks based upon a secondary resource, you don't really *need* to have an enforced swap function, especially since the existing gunblades are designed to fire whilst slashing rather than having to swap from one function to the other (the trigger mechanism is part of the grip), so that your only unrestricted attack capability is in melee range.

Also, keep in mind, you're calling it a revolver, so you don't have a magazine because revolvers use a series of chambers, and you can't really have a "large magazine" because revolvers are limited by the number of chambers which are a physical limitation of the weapon itself. If you want to have the number of ammunition stacks increase as you level, you may want to consider just having the gunblade be a magazine fed weapon rather than a revolver or just have it be some kind of magitek energy weapon that doesn't so much fire bullets as it does blasts of magitek energy, which is what the mechs do.

While it's not impossible for the traits to add to parry rating and determination rather than a main stat, I find it highly unlikely that they would do that for a couple reasons. The main stats are stronger point for point and scale in a much more linear manner whereas the secondary stats diminish in comparative value as you increase in level; you're adding 6 points of parry and 6 points of determination which is next to nothing at 50 (it takes something like 5 Determination to equal the contributions of 1 point of mainstat). It's also a bit strange because you're splitting the focus of the class. If you want soldier to be a tank class/job, you would probably need to follow the same mold as the existing tanks wherein you get Enhanced Vitality traits however you'd need to get rid of the positional requirements on the attacks because tanks don't really get to hit people from behind. If you want it to be a DPS class/job (which seems the most likely given how you didn't include anything else tanky other than the parry rating stuff), you could keep the positional requirements but you'd want to swap in Enhanced Strength (or Dexterity, whichever one you use).

You gave the class combos in which one of the attacks is an AoE that's *also* on a CD. On top of all of this, the levels you provided them mean that you're going to have a single attack as part of your "combo" for more than half of your levels. You probably want to change them so that at least *one* of them is a basic single target progression without any CD so that the player isn't screwed out of using said combo whenever there are CCd enemies or enemies that they're not supposed to attack about (not to mention that the potency, because it's an AoE, is low enough to drag down the rest of the combo). Also, because you effectively preselected where the player should be standing and landing so that you are bouncing around like crazy as part of the attack, you're preventing the player from actually getting to choose where they want to be, which is highly problematic in a game like ARR where dodging ground effects is a major part of the game. The acrobatic movements sound cool and would probably look cool but it would play horribly. Just look at how DRG deals with the jumps right now and then consider what would happen when you're doing that for *everything*.

It honestly feels like you designed this class more around aesthetics than how it would actually play. Reading it, I get the feeling that it would play *very* clumsily, given the schizophrenic and largely uncontrolled positioning. The attacks sound more like mechanics you drew from various games' limit breaks than actual attacks that you would realistically use as part of combat in an MMO.

P.S. Random point. You can edit a post to overcome the 1000 character limitation.