Think we'll get any Magic Tanks?

[VargasVermillion]

I was thinking about this actually and i thought spell fencer/magic knight could make a good magic tank class. basically it would apply elemental buffs to it's weapon that give different effects, fire could deal extra damage for enmity generation, earth for a defensive buff, wind for attack speed maybe? I'm not sure, it's not entirely thought out but basically it would switch between these different buffs. It's classes would be GLA/THM and it would use small shields and sabers. Feel free to throw your own ideas at it, just a brief idea.

[Gamemako]

I think transitioning Red Mage from GLA is fairly low hanging fruit.

No, not really. The only thing remotely similar to Red Mage is the use of a sword. Otherwise, you have a bunch of tank abilities which resemble Red Mage in no way and no appropriate spells. You would have no use for Rampart, Sentinel, Bulwark, Convalesce, Awareness, Tempered Will, Flash, Provoke, Shield Bash, Shield Lob, or Shield Swipe, not to mention that if spells are more powerful than spamming RoH combo, you'd never use that either. 11-14 of 17 abilities would be useless to a Red Mage, and the rest are MP regen combo and generic DPS boost.

A Mage based Tank....let's see what we can build, should be fun.
I'm going to go with a THM job to save time and because they have some interesting abilities we can leverage as a tank.

Doubtful. Manaward is extremely limited in scope with a very long cooldown, and Aetherial Manipulation is the antithesis of a tank ability. High damage has nothing to do with tanking; quite the opposite, high damage is an obstacle to tanking balance.

When you need for a tank is:

Complete Enmity suite, comprised of single-target and AoE enmity abilities as well as enmity pull (3 abilities)
Complete cooldown suite (Manaward is already like Thrill of Battle -- need ~3 others)
Appropriate baseline strength, including +1000 base HP over THM, +25% eHP boost on top of base HP boost and all other HP, +150% defense boost, and +50% magic defense boost

For enmity, you can't hijack DoTs, you can't hijack abilities that can't be readily used, and you really can't hijack anything with an interruptible cast. The closest thing you could use for AoE would be Blizzard II, and that went from unlikely to hell no in 2.1. Bind effects in generally are not acceptable because you'd simultaneously flatline enemy damage output and maintain aggro -- everything in the game would have to be made immune to the Bind effect. Pulling is simple because all of your abilities are ranged, but your spells have (and need) cast times which a tank cannot afford. You would have to completely dump on Swiftcast, a cross-class ability, and make all spells uninterruptible right from the get-go. You can't use MP as your mitigation resource due to Manaward, which already does so. You cannot make a casted spell into your mitigation ability because you'd have to completely kill your enmity generation to use it. And the last thing you would ever use to survive is a resisted debuff. Immunity hell, redundant with other jobs in your party, and generally a balance disaster.

THM's design has a brick wall at every step for a tank job. You might try to hijack with AF/UI for defensive abilities, but it's not only chewing up your enmity resource to survive, it's also stepping all over Manaward. You can't deal with interruption without making Surecast pointless, and you have an ungodly-massive stat barrier for which to account. You lack the core functions of a tank out the gate, and you lack the mechanics for adding them.

(Then again, most of the jobs will need to be made nigh-unrecognizable from the class to second job. GLA and CNJ are great examples in that they can do nothing remotely resembling anything but what they currently do. I would not be surprised if SE simply canned second jobs entirely for the original 7 classes.)

There really isn't a precedent for this outside of Paladin, who used cures to generate threat in FFXI.

That's not really a precedent, that's just the funny result of FF11's abysmal design.

[Kitru]

(Then again, most of the jobs will need to be made nigh-unrecognizable from the class to second job. GLA and CNJ are great examples in that they can do nothing remotely resembling anything but what they currently do. I would not be surprised if SE simply canned second jobs entirely for the original 7 classes.)

It depends upon how you define "nigh-unrecognizable".

LNC and PGL could both be made into tanks without *too* much mangling. Remove the positional requirements (and likely fold in the benefits as baseline effects), add some high enmity modifiers in their place, and they could be turned into tanks pretty effectively: they don't have too much in the way of DPS CDs (PGL just has Internal Release; LNC has B4B and Life Surge). MRD could be turned into a DPS without much, though its CD suite *is* a bit strong after the 2.1 buffs.

[Sylari]

(Then again, most of the jobs will need to be made nigh-unrecognizable from the class to second job. GLA and CNJ are great examples in that they can do nothing remotely resembling anything but what they currently do. I would not be surprised if SE simply canned second jobs entirely for the original 7 classes.)

I'd only agree with Gladiator. Conjurer has 5 offensive skills to work with. Not a great kit but enough to form the foundation of a DPS build (and the thematics behind the class' questchain just screams geomancer). You'd just need to backload offensive utility into jobskills (probably with a 'kitchen sink' stance at 30). Clumsy until it gets its entire kit, maybe, but not significantly moreso than a low level scholar.

[Kitru]

You'd just need to backload offensive utility into jobskills (probably with a 'kitchen sink' stance at 30). Clumsy until it gets its entire kit, maybe, but not significantly moreso than a low level scholar.

It wouldn't really need a stance at all. The devs would just need to give the job high INT and low MND, similar to what they did with SMN. Giving a stance doesn't really serve a useful purpose and cuts the potential kit down.

The issue with giving CNJ a DPS job is that you're left with a class that has more wasted abilities than useful abilities and 2 wasted proc traits. You *could* turn them into an effective DPS job, but you're left with too many healer role artifacts. Of course, because WHM has no native CDs that are DPS useful, they would have to rely upon cross-class abilities for any kind of burst functionality, which, since they're rDPS, limits them to Raging Strikes, Swiftcast, and Surecast.

[Joven]

Anyone remember Geomancers? I used to love those guys.

[XanderOlivieri]

I think the OP means a tank that uses spells as a primary means of attack and enmity control/ generation.

Yes this is what I was asking. A Tank class whose primary function is through Magic over Melee.

No I don't really count the Paladin as a Mage class. Even through history, yes they can use magic, but that is not their fundamental function. They are a Melee class that uses the divine. They can cross class with White Mages and use the basic spells from them, but then utilize their own physical skills as the main set for their build. Definitely more Melee than Magic. The basis of a Paladin is in a lot of other classes that can use minor magic skills.

I was wondering if a Magic centered Tank were possible in the future.

I never would have thought about a Geomancer being a Tank. They'd be healer or DPS but I'd find it both interesting and fun if they could make a Geomancer Tank.

[MomoOG]

PLD should have been the magic tank but they failed on the MAGIC side.

[AndrewAlexander]

Think creatively. Rdm was master of enhancing and enfeebling classes. SE could make rapier swords with magic dmg rather than physical. Actions could enhance attacks and combos could land enbeebles. Fast cast trait to speed up stoneskin and cure. Lets not forget phalanx. Enmity tags to hold hate. If se makes a base class for it, Dancer could be an analogue job based on how they worked in this fashion on ffxi.

[Gamemako]

It depends upon how you define "nigh-unrecognizable"... LNC and PGL could both be made into tanks without *too* much mangling.

I certainly agree about LNC. MRD is also fairly well-suited to a DPS already, especially in 2.1 with the awesome utility provided. I do think that GLA, ARC, PGL, CNJ, and THM will require some pretty large changes to make the change to another job (no need to bring up this PGL thing again).

I'd only agree with Gladiator. Conjurer has 5 offensive skills to work with.

I'll have to defer to Kitru's evaluation here. You have 5 offense-related abilities and 8 healing-related abilities (Cure/2/3, Medica/2, Protect, Raise, Esuna), plus the stance which is only meaningful for a character built with MND and class traits for MND and healing which are otherwise totally useless.

Think creatively. Rdm was master of enhancing and enfeebling classes.

Only in FF11. Those roles have never been related to Red Mage in any other game. Rant aside, enfeebles are not tank-specific and are therefore not generally tank-appropriate.