Knight: Samurai and Dark Knight Proposal

[MartaDemireux]

KEY:
(A) = ability off GCD, (S) = skill on GCD

Knight: The Knight (太刀士) is a two-handed sword user which specializes in creating combos which generate Sigils. These sigils are used in conjunction with MP to utilize their Breaking system to both lower their target's stats as well as increase their own by extracting the power lost from the enemy. They are a DPS role at heart with a little bit of enmity generation attached to their MP restoral. Should they draw the ire of the enemy they are trained in parrying with their mighty blade and have basic training in salves.

Abilities:

1: Hard Slash: (S) Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. TP Cost: 70.
2: Frostbite: (S) Deals ice damage with a potency of 140. Add. Effect: Slow (10s). TP Cost: 80.
4: Power Slash: (S) Delivers a critical attack with a potency of 100. Combo Action: Hard Slash, Combo Bonus: 180 potency. TP Cost: 60.
6: Weapon Guard: (A) Increases parrying rate by 25% (15s). Recast: 60s.
8: Power Break: (A) Consumes 1 sigil to reduce the target's attack power by 5% (15s). Extract Power: Increases your physical damage dealt by 10%. MP Cost: 100. Recast: 15s.
10: Blade Bash: (S) Delivers an attack with a potency of 50. Add. Effect: Stun (3s).
12: Shockwave: (S) Delivers an attack with a potency of 110 to enemies in cones in front of and behind you. TP Cost: 100.
15: Iai Strike: (S) Lunges to the target with a potency of 120. Range:15y. TP Cost: 120.
18: Armor Break: (A) Consumes 1 sigil to reduce the targets physical resistances by 5% (15s). Extract Power: Reduces your physical damage taken by 10%. MP Cost: 100. Recast: 15s.
22: Herculean Slash: (S) Delivers an attack with 160 potency. Add. Effect: 20% chance to Paralyze target (8s). Combo Action: Power Slash, Combo Bonus: 230 potency. TP Cost: 60.
26: Freezebite: (S) Deals ice damage with a potency of 120. Add. Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Frostbite, Combo Bonus: 180 Potency and TP Cost: 80.
30: Extract Power: (A) Absorbs the Break penalties you have placed on your target to increase your own stats (15s). Removes the Break effects from the target and prevents the equivalent Break buffs from being re-applied until they wear off. Recast: 20s per Break absorbed.
34: Mental Break: (A) Consumes 1 sigil to reduce the targets elemental resistances by 5% (15s). Extract Power: Reduces your magical damage taken by 10%. MP Cost: 100. Recast: 15s.
38: Bonecrusher: (A) Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Add. Effect: Potency is increased by 4 for every 1% of your maximum HP you are missing. (Example: You have 80% of your HP so the potency of this ability will be 180, when you drop down to only 20% HP the potency of this ability will be 420.) TP Cost: 100. Recast: 300s.
42: Magic Break: (A) Consumes 1 sigil to reduce the enemies attack magic potency by 5% (15s) Extract Power: Increases your magical damage dealt by 10%. MP Cost: 100. Recast: 15s.
46: Salve: (A) Recovers own HP with a potency of 400 over 10s. Magic Attack enhances the amount it heals. Recast: 180s.
50: Minus Strike: (S) Delivers an attack with 75 potency per Break effect active on the target. Removes the Break effects from the target. TP Cost: 90. Recast: 180s.

Traits:

8: Slashing Sigils: Successful combo's using Hard Slash, Power Slash and Herculean Slash generate one sigil. Maximum of 1 sigil.
14: Enhanced Strength: Increases STR by 2.
16: Zanshin: If an auto-attack misses you gain a 15% chance to swing again.
20: Enhanced Strength II: Increases STR by 4.
24: It's A Sigil Life: Raises the maximum sigils you can stack to 2.
28: Zanshin II: If an auto-attack misses you gain a 25% chance to swing again.
32: Tactical Parry: Parrying or having an attack parried will grant you 5 TP.
36: Enhanced Strength III: Increases STR by 6.
40: Extract More Power: Extract Power recast is lowered to 15s per Break absorbed.
44: Enhanced Tactical Parry: Parrying or having an attack parried will now grant you 10 TP.
48: Boneshatterer: Bonecrusher will now reduce your damage taken based on your HP% (5s). (Example: You have 80% HP upon use so you will receive a 20% damage taken reduced buff. If you have 20% HP you will receive an 80% damage taken reduced buff.)

Concept: The concept for Knight came from Auron, Steiner and Final Fantasy Tactics. These characters all had some moves in common when it came to the Break line of abilities. Auron was a Samurai with the abilities of the Knight from FFT and Steiner was a Knight with the abilities himself as well as some Dark Knight traits. All three of these characters/classes wielded two-handed swords so I thought it fitting as both Samurai and Dark Knight have in the series as well. Since Knight (ナイト) is what the Japanese use for Paladin the distinction I made for them is (太刀士; "Long Sword User/Specialist") which is equally appropriate as it follows the Japanese naming convention for classes.

The sigil mechanic is a way to both debuff your foe and buff yourself. This use will make the KNT's DPS start off slower but will excel in longer fights. They could in a sense be thought of as an idea for the first hybrid role with their ability to generate enmity and take a few hits. Their main order of attack would be relatively up for grabs but the basics would be: Hard Slash > Power Slash > Herculean Slash > 2 Breaks. At this point they have several options depending on the encounter:

They can repeat the process to place all 4 Breaks and cripple the enemy; They can repeat the process to place all 4 Breaks and then deal a large amount of damage with Minus Strike; They can repeat the process to place all 4 Breaks on the target and use Extract Power to remove all 4 breaks in order to greatly buff themselves up once every 60s; They can use Extract Power on 2 Breaks to empower themselves every 30s; They can use Extract Power with just 1 Break and maintain that one boost indefinitely.

With Breaks using a lot of MP they will also be utilizing Frostbite > Freezebite for MP recovery on occasion. This will generate some enmity however so they must be careful with it. Bonecrusher is usable at any time for a small amount of mitigation and damage but is best used with low HP (such as after a big attack) in order to gain a large amount of mitigation and damage.

Samurai: The Samurai (侍) is a nimble tank in heavy armor; unlocked with 30KNT/15PGL. They continue to use two-handed swords but specialize in Katanas which feature stats more suitable for tanking. They focus on evading, parrying and countering attacks focused on them. They utilize the elements of lightning (use their defense for their offense), ice (use their offense for their defense) and fire (use their defense to use the flames of rebirth for healing) in their Bushido attacks. Its relic weapon is the Amenomurakumo no Tsurugi.

Abilities:

30: Shirahadori: (A) Bestows the Bushido stance, reduces damage dealt by 25% and damage taken by 20% and increases enmity, evasion and parrying rate by 25%. Shockwave and Iai Strike gain increased enmity. Ends upon re-use.
35: Third Eye: (A) Allows you to counter the next physical attack with a potency of 100. Bushido Bonus: Suffer no damage from the attack countered. Recast: 90s.
40: Skyfury Blade: (S). Can only be used immediately after parrying an attack and while affected by Bushido. Deals lightning damage with a potency of 180. Affected by both magical and physical attack. Add.Effect: Increased Enmity, 25% chance next shockwave will cost no TP. MP Cost: 50. TP Cost: 70.
45: Hoarfrost Blade: (S) Can only be used while in the Bushido stance. Deals ice damage with a potency of 180. Affected by both magical and physical attack. Add. Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Freezebite, Combo Bonus: Reduces damage taken by 20% (10s). Damage reduction cannot be activated for 60s after it wears off. TP Cost: 120.
50: Shimmering Blade: (S) Can only be used while in the Bushido stance. Deals fire damage with a potency of 50. Add. Effect: Burns the target with a potency of 20 (30s). Affected by both magical and physical attack. Combo Action: Skyfury Blade, Combo Bonus: Each tick of Burn has a 10% chance to reset Third Eye's recast timer and a 20% chance to activate Phoenix Flame which heals the user for 10% of their current HP. MP Cost: 70. TP Cost: 70.

PGL:
Featherfoot
Haymaker
Internal Release
Mantra

GLA:
Provoke
Awareness
Convalescence
Sentinel

Concept: The concept for this type of Samurai stemmed primarily from Auron in terms of the Break abilities. The rest of the abilities are adaptations of abilities found in FFVI (Cyan), FFTA2 (Parivir) and FFXI (Samurai). They focus on using the ice elemental attacks to maintain enmity at first and then move on to utilizing the Break system to empower their defenses. With Skyfury Blade we see a reaction ability come into play which can help maintain AoE enmity. Hoarfrost Blade brings in additional enmity as well as damage mitigation when combo'd. The mitigation element of it can only be put to use once a minute. Shimmering Blade rounds out the three elements offering a chance of healing when combo'd with Skyfury Blade. This makes Samurai shine when tanking multiple enemies but still viable for single-target tanking.

Dark Knight: The Dark Knight (暗黒騎士) is a DPS which gains power through sacrificing its own life force; unlocked through 30KNT/15ACN. The more health the DRK sacrifices the more damage their attacks deal. This makes them a very busy job managing not only their TP and MP but their HP as well. If they're not careful they will be quite a hindrance for their healers. A successful DRK knows when and when not to sacrifice their HP for stronger attacks. They are quite formidable with AoE attacks in addition to their single target training as a Knight. Their relic weapon is the Caladbolg.

Abilities:

30: Nether Void: (S) While active it slowly drains your HP. Allows the stacking of Malevolence (Max 4). Each stack of Malevolence increases damage dealt and critical hit rate but also how much HP is being drained. Ends upon re-use or ≤10% HP.
35: Darkness: (S) Consumes 10% of your maximum HP to deal unaspected damage with a potency of 200. Combo Action: Shockwave, Combo Bonus: 150 Potency to enemies within 10y of target. MP Cost: 70.
40: Souleater: (A) Consumes 10% of your maximum HP to increase the damage dealt by your next ability by 30%. Overwrites and is overwritten by Life Surge. Recast: 120s.
45: Scourge: (S) Consumes all stacks of Malevolence to deal unaspected damage over time with a potency of 15 per stack of Malevolence consumed (18s.) Add. Effect: If DoT critical hits there's a 10% chance to reset timer on Bonecrusher. Combo Action: Darkness, Combo Bonus: Spreads the DoT to targets within 5y of the target. Magic Attack enhances the damage done. MP Cost: 90.
50: Darkside: (A) Consumes 20% of your maximum HP to instantly grant you 1 stack of Malevolence. Recast: 60s.

ACN:
Virus
Bio
Shadow Flare
Ruin

LNC:
Invigorate
Keen Flurry
Blood for Blood
Life Surge

Nether Void & Malevolence:
1 stack of Malevolence will be stacked for every 20% of your max HP is drained via Nether Void, Souleater and Darkness.

0 Stacks = 1% of max HP drained per 3 seconds. +3% Crit Hit Rate+Damage Dealt
1 Stack = 1.5% of max HP drained per 3 seconds. +6% Crit Hit Rate +Damage Dealt
2 Stacks = 2% of max HP drained per 3 seconds. +9% Crit Hit Rate +Damage Dealt
3 Stacks = 2.5% of max HP drained per 3 seconds. +12% Crit Hit Rate +Damage Dealt
4 Stacks = 3% of max HP drained per 3 seconds. +15% Crit Hit Rate +Damage Dealt

Changes to Knight:
Salve: Changes to Drain: Consumes all stacks of Malevolence to deal unaspected damage with a potency of 100 per stack of Malevolence consumed. Absorbs 100% of damage dealt as HP. Magic Attack enhances the damage done. Recast: 90s.

Concept: This version of Dark Knight was inspired by Steiner primarily. As he has several classical Dark Knight abilities as well as abilities shared by Samurai in the series I felt it would mesh well. The DRK plays very similar to Knight in building up sigils for use in their Break mechanic but also must now manage a new mechanic with their Nether Void stance. The stance can be very powerful but at a cost of increasing damage over time. With 4 stacks of Malevolence it would only take about 2 minutes to completely drain their HP. This is why there is a safety switch on Nether Void to turn off once the player gets to 10% HP or lower. Should they get very low on health they can make excellent use of Bonecrusher with Scourge giving a chance to reset its timer. They have three ways to remove Malevolence and reduce their HP loss: Scourge removes the Malevolence they've accumulated to inflict damage on enemies; Drain removes the Malevolence they've accumulated in order to heal themselves; Deactivating the stance will remove all Malevolence. With Shockwave, Darkness and Scourge they are adept at AoE encounters while their Break mechanic leaves them suitable for single target as well. With access to Bio, Shadow Flare, Ruin, and their native Mental Break, Magic Break, Nether Void, Drain, Scourge and Darkness they can function as a weak ranged unit if the situation demands.

[Exstal]

Since Knight (ナイト) is what the Japanese use for Paladin the distinction I made for them is (太刀士; "Long Sword User/Specialist") which is equally appropriate as it follows the Japanese naming convention for classes.

I don't know. It's kind of misleading to use 太刀士 (which I guess translates to fat katana artist, which is probably closer to Claymore artist) rather than 騎士　as ナイト is already taken and translated differently. I think you should change Knight into Squire or Page. Something lower on the class ladder.

I think the Japanese actually use パラディン (lit. Paladin) for Paladin. The FFXIV team just named it Paladin due to the class required being CNJ.

EDIT: I'm not sure I like having Sentinel as a cross class skill. I believe only skill that are available to most classes to be used rather than take some of the stronger skills and give it to new classes.
EDIT2: Souleat + Life Surge => ok.

[MartaDemireux]

The reason I went with 太刀士 (Tachishi) is because 太刀 (tachi) literally translates to great sword (synonymous with long sword in English). The tachi sword style preceded the development of katanas as well which I thought would be a nice work-in for leading to the Samurai job. I would have used 両手剣士 (double-handed sword user) but that would break the naming convention set in place of using only 3 kanji. In the class description their weapon type could be clarified to 両手剣 (double-handed sword) to include all manner of large swords. They do this with Gladiator already. Gladiator is 剣術士 which means "Sword skill user" but they clarify in the description that it uses 片手剣 (single-handed sword). As far as PLD is concerned: This link shows that they do use ナイト for it.　FFXI and FFXIV are both examples of using ナイト over パラディン. I think only FFTA, FFTA2 and FFIV made use of パラディン.

I think Squire is too weak of a name and in the series the Squire was bare-bones. Argath is the only Squire to have any Break abilities and they were Rend Helm and Rend Armor. Now when you look at Knight, they had all of them and then some. Knight is also a class I could see people wanting to play based on the name over Squire as well. I envision the story of Dark Knight being one to collude and corrupt the Knight for a literal name tie-in. As far as giving Samurai access to Sentinel it's more of an homage to Auron. Sentinel first came into the series with FFX in Auron's path which makes the first use of it belonging to a Samurai/Knight. I do agree with you on your opinion for cross-class abilities but I had to make this exception. The same goes for Shadow Flare and the DRK. While the DRK will most likely never use it due to its cast time, I just had to include it for the sake of FF history.

Good catch with Life Surge, I'll make sure they can't be stacked.

[DarkStar]

Okay, so admittedly my main is a DPS and not a Tank, but I really don't think Tanking classes should have a charge. My experience playing as a WAR is that face-pulling is not the way to go, since you could accidentally aggro more monsters than you had intended, leading to a party wipe. As such, I'd recommend making Iai Strike a melee attack. Instead, you could either make Shockwave a ranged pulling attack, or you could replace it or Iai Strike with Wind Slash (a move used by Paravirs, a Samurai-like job from FFTA2) for use as a ranged puller.

Also, Samurai lacks any sort of "Panic Button", like Marauder's Holmgang or Paladin's Sacred Ground. I know that Knight is intended to be a DPS role, but in that case, you should remove one of Samurai's offensive moves and replace it with something similar. Just as an example, but how about a move that both greatly lowers damage taken and gives you a potent regen effect? The two effects would have to be balanced such that combined they would make you effectively invincible while active while still being unique when compared to Holmgang and Sacred Ground.

Dark Knight looks good overall, though I do believe it should have native access to something like Drain, so it isn't reliant on a Second Wind variant and a cross-class skill to keep itself going without a healer. But that would mean having to decide between Darkness, Soul Eater, and Scourge to replace, and all three of them look so cool...

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this right now. You putting your own thoughts on a Samurai job and class has made me want to go back and work on my own idea again. It uses an alternate resource system similar to Warrior's Wrath, which I've kept messing with trying to get it to look good without just being a renamed Wrath...

[Kuwagami]

I was OK with it (and actually would have wanted to play it), until I read the traits.

44: Enhanced Tactical Parry: Parrying or having an attack parried will now grant you 15 TP.
48: Boneshatterer: Bonecrusher will now reduce your damage taken based on your HP% (5s). (Example: You have 80% HP upon use so you will receive a 20% damage taken reduced buff. If you have 20% HP you will receive an 80% damage taken reduced buff.)

Boneshatterer is totally OP. No need to explain why I guess. I know it's intended to give a "last chance move" to the tank (samurai), but it shouldn't really be made that way. Especially when we see how powerful that attack already is at low %HP (420 potency at 20% HP, really ?)

Enhanced tactical parry is tricky because... it might be totally OP too, or completely useless. But I'll come back on that just after with..

The samurai :
If anything, he should come from lancer and not from pugilist. Because you give him parry buffs => keen flurry.

That said, his tank stance is like the exact same one as shield oath, with evasion and parry rates upped just for the sake of it. Give them one or the other, not both. Increased defense (not damage reduced, just defense increased) and parry rate and/or parry strengh should be enough.

Anyway, increased parry rate with "enhanced tactical parry" means a TP generator which will be unlikely to be stopped.


I have nothing to say yet on DRK

@Marta I don't agree with samurai being a tank...it should stay dps.

why not ? It's traditionally an off-tank (or tanky dps, depending on how you see it). Still more fitting than ninja (despise what the crying "nintank" could say) or other stuff. Less than templar though, sure, but we aren't discussing about templars here ^^

[Kamifubuki-Yoakesetsuri]

@Marta I don't agree with samurai being a tank...it should stay dps.

[MartaDemireux]

.

I was thinking of adding a ranged pulling mechanic but decided on the charge for a couple reasons. First of all GLA & MRD already use a ranged attack and I didn't want to copy it directly. Then when I thought about it, should you pull a monster, any nearby will link and probably to the same effect of charging in. The only difference would be that they wouldn't have to run to you. If a mob is close enough to agro when you charge in, it's probably close enough to link to the monsters you would have pulled with a ranged attack anyway.

Samurai was intended to be more of a reactive tank. Shimmering Blade originally had a 300s CD with its mechanic altered a bit to make Third Eye reset it's timer more often. I thought that would be too strong though. In it's place I added Bonecrusher for both DRK and SAM to make use of. Bonecrusher gets a trait, Boneshatterer, that reduces the damage taken so it could work well as a panic button. If they drop to 5% HP and use Bonecrusher they'll do a spike of damage for increased enmity as well as gain a 95% damage reduction. I forgot to include its recast timer though so I'll edit that in now haha.

Dark Knight does get Drain. When the Dark Knight crystal is equipped Salve turns into Drain which consumes all Malevolence stacks and heals the user for 100 potency per stack consumed. Perhaps a 180s timer is a bit long though.

.

Yeah, Bonecrusher is meant to have a 300s recast timer on it but I forgot to include it. Definitely would be OP without one. The potency is high but only when near death and it will never prevent 100% damage taken so purposely waiting to use it could prove fatal. Only DRK could use it more often than 300s but that's on a low chance critical hit proc on their DoT. Even then with their constant health loss they'll have to be careful with its use since the spike of damage could potentially kill them alongside their higher enmity from their MP restoral combo.

As for LNC I was torn between it for the reason you mentioned or for PGL for Featherfoot and Mantra. I went with PGL in the end because it has more skills which aid in a tank situation. Life Surge from LNC would make it feel too similar to WAR to me and Keen Flurry could end up with too much parrying for too much returned TP with Tactical Parry. That's also why I added an additional evasion boost to the tanking stance. If you evade you don't parry afterall which retains mitigation but also prevents too much TP gain.

Because DRK and SAM take a bit of warming up to show their full potential while still using roughly the same TP as anyone else I wanted them to have a way to recover small amounts of TP during the fight. The Break abilities were also using 100TP in my original idea so that was a big part of having Tactical Parry. I don't think 15TP on a parry would be too broken but without Breaks using the TP perhaps I could lower them to 5 and 10.

As for the stance, it's not exactly like PLDs. The stance reduces damage dealt by an additional 5%. :P But in actuality I was afraid that using defense wouldn't scale well in later levels. A direct reduction to damage received would always scale appropriately. I'm pretty adamant in keeping both parrying and evasion bonuses but perhaps defense could work in lieu of damage reduction. Any idea on a good baseline? I'm not in a numbers mindset at the moment.

.

I respect your opinion but have to point out that it has always been tanky. It always had access to heavy armor and even in FFXI where most saw it as a strict DPS it could function as a fantastic parrying/evasion/counter tank. In FFXI they had to work for it though but if they equipped any "Enhances Rice Ball Effect" gear (3 slots of gear total) and ate a Rice Ball they would gain +50 defense for each piece of gear. That meant they had +150 defense (a lot at level 75 cap) from food. Combine that with Seigan and Third Eye for a lot of damage mitigation and counterattacks, /NIN for additional shadows if your Third Eye drops early and SAM's natural high damage output with Store TP and Meditate for enmity and you had yourself a great tank for leveling and an emergency tank in some end game.

[Kamifubuki-Yoakesetsuri]

@Kuwagami



With that same logic, we should also make Dragoons or any other Melee based, Heavy Armor bound based job into tanks.

[Exstal]

@Kuwagami

With that same logic, we should also make Dragoons or any other Melee based, Heavy Armor bound based job into tanks.

Yes, yes they could. However, being that your mindset is already corrupted, take a look at all the Final Fantasy classes that existed; pick me out the tank classes.

I'll wait.

[Kuwagami]

Yes, yes they could. However, being that your mindset is already corrupted, take a look at all the Final Fantasy classes that existed; pick me out the tank classes.

I'll wait.

Heresy !! this link is missing jobs from the FFT

FFTA :
-Paladin (aready in)
-Templar
-Defender
-Mog knight could do if modified a bit


other FF series :
-Viking
-Mystic knight could be tuned for the role