Mystic Knight Tank ideas

[Dioltas]

Mystic Knight, Primal Knight

First off, if you dont like this idea, no one is making you play this class so be happy I

had fun coming up with this and thinking about applications for it so I got a kick out of it,

if someone else thinks its a cool idea then awesome


First off, this is lifting mostly from the Mystic Knight in FF5 and trying to make it apply to

FF14 mechanics, with some fun twists added in

Summary of this post
i> General Class Concept
ii> Skills available
iii> Role in combat
iv> Lore


i> General Class Concept

Mystic Knight is generally a heavily armoured semi caster class who uses spell infusions of a

weapon to add that element to the weapons attack. Since elements dont really play that kind of

role in FF14 I'd like to change things up a little. So this class will use the 3 base elements

of the primals, Ifrit, Titan and Garuda (perhaps Ramuh, havnt thought that far ahead and 4

optional skill sets might be too confusing and overkill so I'll leave it at 3 for now.)

ii> Skills Available.

First off, the Mystic Knight will have lower HP scaling than the other tank classes. Based on

my current ILvl 90 WAR I have I think about 7k hp, maybe less, before Defiance. PLDs i see

have about 7.3k for this level. A MYK Mystic Knight will have lets say 6k hp. I'll explain why

soon.

Stance> Sword Infusion/Shield Infusion >> To any PLD or WAR player this should be fairly

obvious, Sword Infusions make the sword stronger, dps mode standard enmity generation, OT dps

mode.
Shield Infusions make the shield stronger, stance gives 15% damage reduction similar to PLD

and increases enmity generation.

shield stance will incur a 15% healing reduction due to the MYK's ability to technically heal itself, or instantly negate damage.

Fairly simple so far right?

Combo Attack 1 > Basic 100 potency attack, combo starter, no enmity gen

Combo Attack 2 > Basic 150 Attack, combo 2, enmity Generation

Combo Attack 3> This is where it goes differently. Here we split into 4 options, listen a-d

Combo Attack 3a> <<Mystic Rage (it's fun to come up with skill names ^^)>> 280 potency Enmity

generator and 10% increased healing to self buff(shield Inf.) (10% Damage Buff Sword Inf.)

Combo Attack 3b> <<Earthern Might>> Earth Infusion (Titan) Shield Inf. = 30% of max hp added

as an earthern shield, this shield must be broken before hp is taken again. All skills have a

20% slow effect added to them while shield lasts. i.e a 2.5s recast now takes 3.0s. Additional

5% global damage reduction while shield lasts + residual 2 seconds after shield is broken.

This is a turtle tank mode.
Sword Infusion = Sword becomes heavier means attack skills have 10% slow effect but attacks

are 20% stronger due to extra sword weight.


Combo Attack 3c> <<Gale Force>> Wind Infusion (Garuda)> Shield Infusion = 15% of max hp added

as tempest shield, this shield must be broken before hp is taken again. All skills have 20%

haste effect i.e. 2.5s recast becomes 2.0s Good for building enmity quicker. Light tank mode.
Sword Infusion = sword moves like the wind, all GCD skills have 20% haste but 5% reduced

damage.

Combo Attack 3d> <<Pain of Fire>> Fire Infusion (Ifrit)> Shield Infusion = 20% of max hp as a

Fire Shield. shield must be broken etc. All attacks this shield takes reflect (50% damage?

maybe, not sure exactly, similar to vengeance on WAR) damage to the attacker while shield is

active. After shield is broken effect remains for a residual 2 seconds.
Sword Infusion = sword is on fire and cuts through enemy defences more easily - reduces enemy

defences by 2-3% every time it hits. Great for supporting dps teammates.

All shields last until they're broken and have a lasting effect for 2-3 seconds
All sword skills last a set amount of time, 5 seconds perhaps so as not to have 100% up time,

or maybe 10 seconds so you could chain the base (combo attack 3a) in with it for bonus

damage/defence

This is the bread and butter of the MYK class which I think gives more control to the tank to

control burst damage by choosing his mode of defence appropriately, titan turtle or garuda to

fire off combos faster to keep aggro in multiple enemy situations.




Here's where it gets fun. Off GCD skills

Most of these are one button having 3 possible outcomes depending on which element is active.

They are unavailable if no Primal has been infused to either sword or shield.

<<Primal Saviour>> 60s cd Strongest Defence Skills 7y radius

Titan> Earthquake, pillars of earth erupt in an aoe around the tank, impaling and binding

nearby enemies and dealing damage. Good for a quick escape if things go wrong as the bind

will give your healer time to catch up a small bit of healing while enemies are bound.

residual -10% damage debuff for 6 seconds on all enemies (most useful for boss fights).

Garuda> Eye of the Storm> A large aoe knockback, pushes all mobs away from the tank, giving

healer some breathing space to catch up. Annoying for aoe dpsers but a lifesaver in a moment

of desperation, use carefully.

Ifrit> Primal Fires arise from the earth surrounding the tank, damaging any enemies in the

area for 5 seconds. similar ticks to Shadow Flare. Flames soothe and heal the tank for 5% of

hp immediately and 2% of his max hp per tick. Also increases healing of all party members in

the area by 5%




<<Primal Rage>> strongest attack/control skill

Titan - Quicksand - Similar to weight of the land but pulls all enemies in the radius (6y

maybe) towards the tank, suffocating them, dealing DoT for 3s and increases enmity on initial

hit only. additional 20% residual slow effect

Garuda - Cyclone - 250 potency attack to all enemies surrounding tank, increases enmity.

Reduces Skill and Spell Cast time by 20% to all allies in the area for 10s

Ifrit - Fire Ball - Massive Eruption centered on the tank that erupts 3 times in pulses, one

each second for 3 seconds, dealing increased damage depending how many enemies are hit each

time - +5% damage each for enemy hit up to a max of +50% Increases Enmity on last eruption

only.


<<Primal Calling>> 120s cooldown

Instantly call upon the aid of a Primal. Can cast Combo Action 3a,b,c or d instantly, once, without needing to build up a combo. Useful for stringing together massive damage reduction skills/regen or stringing binds/damage etc in different patterns.


Non elemental Off GCD skills

<<Blood Magic>> Potentially a game breaking mechanic so I'm unsure as to mention it or not.

The idea is to save healers or for a healer to help you. Tank can target another team member

and engage this skill. The max hp of the 2 players is combined to give one hp for both

players. so potentially a 6k hp MYK and a 5k hp whm would share a health bar of 11k for a

short time. Can be used to save a healer from a massive aoe or for a healer to save a tank

from a massive (Mountain Buster/Death Sentence for example) attack. Potentially game breaking

if tank can target another tank but if tank can only target a healer it makes it much more

selective and risky to use but potentially save the fight. If one player dies while sharing

the hp pool then both die. Very risky but very useful in the right hands. 200s cooldown.

<<Hypnotize>>

The Mystic Knights Ultimate Fight or Die skill, holmgang, hallowed ground. This skill

hypnotizes (same mechanics as Terror) all enemies currently aggroed on the tank for 6 seconds.

Allows healer time to catch up healing. Tank must remain casting this spell for the first 2

seconds of the 6s duration then has 4seconds of free time to recover, grab aggro on other

mobs, or let loose on his target. Only affects targets currently aggroed on tank, cant be used

to stun entire room (thornmarch for example, only WAR or PLD + King can be hit with this to

stop their attacks) For bosses such as Titan, his aoe will not be affected but his direct

attacks (autoattacks) on tank will be stopped momentarily. Needs more analyzing, any comments?


<<Titan's Grip>>
Simple single target stun, 20s cd

<<Ifrit's Fury>>
Perhaps if flash is denied as a cross class skill we could have an aoe burst of flames dealing minimal damage and generate enmity at a rate similar to Flash


Another idea: each time a primal is infused you build a stack of Primal Aether. At 3 stacks of Primal Aether you pop a skill, let's call it <<Primal Energy>> This will be a simple skill that negates the healing debuff imposed by the shield/sword infusion stance with a 30s cooldown. Useful to keep stacks for when you know a big hit is coming and are going to need healing fast, can be combined with <<Primal Fires>> to maximize hp regen after a big hit. Use of <<Primal Calling>> will become very important to maximize the defence of titan with the regen of ifrit in an ex dungeon. or perhaps to pop some ifrit regen and switch to garuda fast to spam agro for gathering ads in a dungeon.



Cross Class Skills

Gladiator Starting class I think but without taking full PLD skill set. Can only take shared

skills from PLD, WAR and PGL. Ideally thinking of Foresight, Flash, Convalescence, Inner

Release or perhaps Blood for blood from dragoon for fighting in Sword Mode??




Lore:

Can you guess where I'm going with this build yet?






no??


ok then, here it is.

ULTIMA WEAPON

of course

The story could start with Cid, Biggs and Wedge revisiting the ashes of Ultima after being

defeated at the end of the main story line. Cid begins to reverse engineer the technology used

to build Ultima Weapon. The individual Job missions would be similar to the summoner path

involving beating the spirits of Ifrit, Garuda and Titan to infuse your Soul Crystal with

their powers and thus unlocking each of the 3 element path skills (combo action 3b,c,d).

Havent given the lore a whole lot of thought and its quite late right now. I'll update this

post as more ideas come to me with more skills as this is still quite empty I realise but I'm

hoping some interesting ideas may come from you all

What do you think?

MYK the new support tank with high burst damage reduction, regen, healing increases and team

buffs depending on how the tank chooses to infuse. Good adaptability and requires more thought

and input from the player than the usual 1,2,3 combo crap.

I'm thinking perhaps a secondary combo could be interesting which changes again based on which

element is infused.

[SwordCoheir]

I'm not being biased when I say this, but it sounds like your trying to make a Sword and Board type of Summoner that utilizes a bunch of Max HP/Stoneskin type defenses to reduce damage through a seemingly complicated system, which I can't quite decide if it would be overall over or under-powered as the structure you built the job on (from what you described) is completely absent from the way the devs developed the other classes/jobs.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but look it over and build it up like the other classes/jobs and I think your idea would pan out alot better. If you need help on building it up like other classes/jobs just look at the way other jobs are designed, main/offhand weapons types, primary secondary stats, look at where each class tends to get an ability and a trait and observe how many stat and ability based traits they get.

[Warrlordd]

I like your idea, and it sounds like it would be fun, but i think you should just leave the primals out of it and rather find somewhere else for the class to receive its skills/powers. You also may want to reconsider how badly a tank REALLY wants to slow the enemies. It's more annoying than you think

Overall I had a good time reading this, I think you have a good idea!

[Dioltas]

I like your idea, and it sounds like it would be fun, but i think you should just leave the primals out of it and rather find somewhere else for the class to receive its skills/powers. You also may want to reconsider how badly a tank REALLY wants to slow the enemies. It's more annoying than you think

Overall I had a good time reading this, I think you have a good idea!

cheers actually the primals came more of an afterthought as to how to make it relevant to FF14 lore. Mystic Knight is an elemental sword wielder so it just seemed logical to link it to the primals given the story of the game. The basic concept is a support style tank who requires good skill management to ensure the right shield is up at the right time > earth shield for taking high burst damage, regen for fast recovery afterwards or for taking sustained damage over time. I think it would be fun to play but obviously it would need a lot of work and playtesting to get it to work with every mechanic in the game. I highly doubt SE is looking here for ideas but hey we can dream

to answer sword coheir, I don't see any resemblance to the SMN class other than the fact I use primal lore to link to the skills and make it relevant to the FF14 world. The power can come from other sources but the mechanics would be the same and I don't think have anything to do with how a SMN is played. The job would be based on the gladiator, as in you play GLD up to level 30 as normal and then take it as an optional job (like how summoner and Scholar are based on the arcanist). You would sacrifice certain GLD skills in place of the new Job skills, so as it doesn't feel just like a PLD with some extra shit thrown in. It would be a job in its own right, based on timing shield generation based on anticipating whats coming and also allowing some reactionary tanking with the 0s cast skills to change stance when needed. The same goes for building aetherial stacks, it's another mechanic for the tank to watch to maximize their tanking capability.

Pretty much I'm thinking of how I get bored sometimes while tanking (particularly GLD, bored to tears just getting provoke on that class) even on WAR sometimes it gets a little tired when I just spawn overpower in dungeons. Trying to find ways to give more mechanics to the Tank class to make it more interesting and versatile and the option to turn it into a semi decent dps class, somewhere on par with an unchained WAR in berserk mode, would make it more fun being an offtank in some boss fights.

One thing with the dps Fire sword mode I should put in is a damage reduction cap, ie cant reduce enemy's defences below 80-85% of their max stats or something like that. Can stack with WAR Storm's Path though making some synergy possible for maximum dps from the party.

[Duelle]

Mystic Knight is generally a heavily armoured semi caster class who uses spell infusions of a weapon to add that element to the weapons attack. Since elements dont really play that kind of role in FF14 I'd like to change things up a little. So this class will use the 3 base elements of the primals, Ifrit, Titan and Garuda (perhaps Ramuh, havnt thought that far ahead and 4 optional skill sets might be too confusing and overkill so I'll leave it at 3 for now.)

As swords mentioned, linking this to the primals is a stretch. I'd suggest going for something else when explaining the Mystic Knight.

A Mystic Knight will have lets say 6k hp. I'll explain why soon.

I know why you're doing it, but I can already tell you it'd have some difficulty tanking stuff and would suffer the "gimp tank" label WAR suffered from when the game launched. With the way non-raid content is tuned in this game, your MTK would probably be able to get away tanking stuff up to HM primals. The mechanics feel a little convoluted, and considering they might not even begin to make up for the HP gap with WAR and PLD just kinda makes things for naught.

This is the bread and butter of the MYK class which I think gives more control to the tank to control burst damage by choosing his mode of defence appropriately, titan turtle or garuda to fire off combos faster to keep aggro in multiple enemy situations.

The issue I see here is that I hightly doubt bosses will be as predictable as Titan or Garuda moving forward. WAR's shield with Inner Beast works because it is partly reactive and quick enough to be useful. Your shield mechanics, as mentioned earlier, just feel a little too convoluted.

<<Blood Magic>> Potentially a game breaking mechanic so I'm unsure as to mention it or not.

The idea is to save healers or for a healer to help you. Tank can target another team member and engage this skill. The max hp of the 2 players is combined to give one hp for both players. so potentially a 6k hp MYK and a 5k hp whm would share a health bar of 11k for a short time.

I REALLY like this skill, but I also see PvP issues here. Granted, in Frontlines you'd probably get jumped by the entire opposing team to kill both you and the person you're linking yourself to, but I can see it being an issue in the Wolves' Den.

<<Hypnotize>>

This can be either stupidly OP or stupidly useless. I'd recommend revising your goal with this ability and rethink an ability to use for this.

MYK the new support tank with high burst damage reduction, regen, healing increases and team buffs depending on how the tank chooses to infuse.Good adaptability and requires more thought and input from the player than the usual 1,2,3 combo crap.

And here's where I shake my head in disappointment. The reason tanks do the 1 2 3 thing is because a tank has to pay attention to what goes on during the fight and deal with stuff coming their way that no one else in the raid has to deal with. Most damage can be avoided by heals and DPS if they do what they're supposed to do, but a tank has to sit there and take it. This is also why tanks are given cooldowns and why active mitigation leans towards reactive rather than fully proactive.

You're essentially admiting that you're complicating things for the sake of complicating things. There is input when it comes to tanking, but it's less pushing buttons to make sparkly abilities go off and more knowing when to react to things, recognize environmental hazzards and do what you must, position the mob accordingly, and know how to adjust your gameplay to the group you're tanking for. I'll admit with a couple of tweaks and adjustments your suggestion would make for a great DPS job, but not really for a tank.

I'm not being biased when I say this, but it sounds like your trying to make a Sword and Board type of Summoner that utilizes a bunch of Max HP/Stoneskin type defenses to reduce damage through a seemingly complicated system, which I can't quite decide if it would be overall over or under-powered as the structure you built the job on (from what you described) is completely absent from the way the devs developed the other classes/jobs.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but look it over and build it up like the other classes/jobs and I think your idea would pan out alot better. If you need help on building it up like other classes/jobs just look at the way other jobs are designed, main/offhand weapons types, primary secondary stats, look at where each class tends to get an ability and a trait and observe how many stat and ability based traits they get.

This. Though I still say we should wait to see what it is the devs plan to do to the class=>job system. It's annoying to know that we have to wait until the fanfest to get any details on what the devs plan to do, but it's better to give suggestions when one has the understanding of the system and rules the devs want to use.