Ronin/Samurai abilities

[MomomiMomi]

The reason for the long timers is due to just that, the moves are so good that they should require a long cooldown.

I realize this part, hence me saying it breaks the battle system's design. Our strongest abilities are on 5 minute recasts. Our battles are generally 5-10 minute ordeals. Making these powerful abilities with super long recasts does two things:

1. Gives you an ability that is far too powerful for any given encounter.

2. Puts you on the bench until they're ready to be used again.

It doesn't fit into the game's design at all, and it'd honestly be a terrible design choice to include them. There's a reason they got rid of the "two hours" of FFXI.

[Exstal]

Here's one I made a few months back based upon the Hybrid role that will come with Dark Knight.

So far abilities range up to LV 50 but I'll add up to 60 shortly.

Samurai

Primary Stat: STR, DEX (Yes, Melee, and Ranged. It is a Hybrid.)
Main Weapon: Dai Katana (Great Katana)
Weapon Alignment: Slashing, Piercing

Hybrid doesn't necessarily mean two-stats but more so two different roles. I'll assume it's a DPS. Skills are based not on their stat but on the attack power. They had this back in 1.X where Monk was STR/INT and was terrible because your melee attacks suffered from less STR and your magic attacks suffered from less INT. So it was changed to just be STR/DEX = attack power for all skills. So splitting them up is a step backwards.

I don't understand why it's great katana either. What happened to normal katanas? Ninja use daggers/tantō, why not just give them katana?

Off-Hand/Secondary Weapon:
Weapon Alignment: (Example: Slashing, Piercing... and so on.)
Gear: (Melee, Ranged, Caster... and so on.)

Strengths: Example: High Evasion. Very high attack power.
Weaknesses: Example: Low Vitality. Is resistant to healing. Attack power is mostly depending on charging the abilities. Drains TP at an insane rate. Cannot move while charging an ability. Pick your slices and stabbings carefully.

I don't know why a DPS class would need high evasion since it's not tanking. If you are the tank, then your primary stats should change to reflect what current tanks use.

I notice you allow jobs to use skills;

Cloud Shaper (WAR) - Worthless since it changes the dynamic of WAR into the same as your SAM, which is a charge class
Tachi: Goten (NIN).- Would have been okay if you didn't have the fact that it's impossible to use without having Mist Thrust as a pre-requisite.
Mist and Shadow (NIN) Basically Hallowed Ground for a DPS..and it's cross-classable? Straight up overpowered.
Forging A Legend (WAR) Due to the fact that Sorrow is only something Samurai can get, this is unusable by Warrior.

*omitted skills*

Name: Solidify and Unveil
Cast: Instant
Recast: 2m20s
Range: 0 - Radius: 7y (Small Circle) - Melee, Ranged
Info: Only when playing Solo: Increases Defense by 20%. Prevents usage of Judan No Kamae for the duration.
Only when in a Party: Increases own Physical damage by 5%. Increases Main Stat for all Party members by +1% for each debuff currently affecting the opponent(s) for a maximum of 5 debuffs (+5%). Cannot stack with other "Solidify and Unveil".
Duration: 30s
Acquired: Lv. 8
Affinity: SAM

Basically everyone gets +5% stats all the time given that almost every DPS class puts debuffs onto the boss. If you meant only Samurai's debuffs, balancing content to make it so that a party without a Samurai is at a massive disadvantage would be a nightmare.

Name: Slashing the Horizon
Alignment: Slashing, Wind
Cast: Chargeable - 2s-4s (NOT instant.)
Recast: 3.5s
Range: 6-20y - Radius: 5y (Distant Flaming Arrow-wide Circle that expands while charging for up to a radius of 8y.) - Ranged
TP Cost: 150-250
Info: Delivers an Area of Effect Slashing attack with a potency of 180, 220, or 260 potency depending on charge.
Additional Effects: If 3 or more opponents are within the hitable area, this attack costs 150 TP. If less opponents than 3 is within the hitable area, this attack costs 250 TP.
Acquired: Lv. 20
Affinity: SAM

I'm not sure why there is a detriment for hitting less enemies. It basically always has to check if enemies are being hit. There is not really many tactical use in this skill. What if it was 3 enemies and one dies before you finish charge? You just wasted TP for no reason other than, "too bad, so sad, deal with it"

Name: Mist and Shadow
Cast: Instant
Recast: 13m
Range: 0y - Radius: 0y
Info: Temporarily turns you untargetable to all attacks including Area of Effect attacks and erases all DoTs currently affecting you. Does not work against instant-death moves. Lowers Enmity by 30%.
Duration: 15s
Acquired: Lv. 25
Affinity: SAM, NIN

Overpowered. Near invincibility for two DPS classes while giving them a super esuna?

Stance: Judan No Kamae (Fire Stance)
Cast: Instant
Recast: 3s
Effect: Increases Slashing Damage dealt by 20%. Increases damage taken by 25%. Increases innate healing magic resistance to self by 10%.
Acquired: Lv. 28
Affinity: SAM

A permanent Blood for Blood? I don't think this is a very balanced skill especially since it lowers incoming healing. As a DPS, this skill is too strong for the fact that it's a 100% uptime DPS buff. As a tank, lowering healing received is ludicrous.

Name: Ward of a Samurai
Cast: Rhythmic (Must be timed with the fully charged hit of Burning Skysplitter.)
Recast: 10s
Range: 0y - Radius: 0y
TP Cost: 80
Info: Cancels the Burn effect on the opponent(s) and converts the amount of Burn stacks into 11%, 15%, 19%, or 23% of the total damage dealt by Burning Skysplitter into HP. The amount is not affected by the innate resistance to healing or alignments decreasing healing potency.
Acquired: Lv. 32
Affinity: SAM

A weird healing skill which is significantly stronger than Bloodbath.

Name: Sorrow Throughout The Nine Worlds
Cast: Instant
Recast: 1h
Range: 0y - Radius: 0y
Info: Rapidly reduces HP to 0. Rapidly Increases Physical damage dealt for up to 200%. Increases Physical damage taken by 299%. Rapidly Increases Enmity gained for up to 500%.
Duration: 7s
Additional Effects: Upon death, grants 1 stack of Sorrow.
Acquired: Lv. 39
Affinity: SAM

A near godlike DPS buff, if you couple this with Mist and Shadow, you can massive DPS if the healers can keep you alive for those 15s. Needs a massive nerf.

Sorrow skills

They are all imbalanced. Not a single one is reasonable, especially the one that has a potency of 1800.

[MomomiMomi]

I will say though, Zanmato: I think your job sounds like a fun job to play. It's just not something that would fit into the current design. I also feel like it sounds more like a Dark Knight with Samurai names wrapped into it.

[Altijacek]

Hi, responses incoming

A counter-based Avoidance Tank is very nice. I like your class overall but it needs some adjusting.

A few notes though:
-I would like to know more about the Counter-Stances that some of the skills give. How long do they last? Are they like a buff? Are they the same or does each attack have a different stance that can add to the others? Do stances reduce damage done?


Counter Stance is a buff that lasts until you are hit physically or magically. All it does is deal low damage when hit. Think of it like having a vengeance buff, but without the vulnerability down buff. Being in Honor Stance decreases damage taken majorly ONLY when in counter stance. So a good samurai tank will cycle cooldowns and gcds appropriately so that they can be in counter stance more often than not.

- Mirror of Equality has a bit too much going on, it's a kind of like a Rampart with Second Wind built in that also attacks a foe for 250 potency and you get it at level 8! I get that you tried to balance it with the 20% HP limitation but then you're counting on the player to not have a healer there to cap them. It's either going to be too good or under used.

I like this skill a lot, and chose to have it at low level for soloing things. You're right in that it would be fairly useless with healers constantly keeping you up. Hopefully the trait alleviates that, but it's more of a solo/PVP skill than anything, but if it procs, why not use it! Maybe it can be balanced though, like lower damage/heal, or a TP cost, or longer cooldown, or a dodge rate of 30%. But the dodge rate only lasts for one attack anyways.

- Reverse Grip's Counter Stance stays up til the cooldown is done? That's an 120 seconds then just hitting the button again. That would make all the other ways to go into counter stance redundant then. >A>

thank you so much for pointing this out. The point was to make this kinda similar to Red Sky but stronger with a longer cooldown. However, with Red Sky cooldown so low, I'm gonna have to balance it so that these two will be cycled appropriately. Red Sky is too OP so I'll make sure to fix that.

- Purity Channeling, if I'm reading this correctly, turns an enemies attack into a DoT on the Ronin which can then be removed by a healer when they are in a counter stance? I don't mind the idea but the fact that it's cleanse-able is kind of broken. Also, how is the DoT's Potency determines? Does it just spread the damage over a period of time equally?

I was trying to be very careful not to make this skill broken, but I needed something similar to Hollowed Ground/Holmgang. If the Samurai takes a hit for 9000 damage, the damage is lowered to 6000, and spread evenly to a 30 second dot that can be cleansed only in counter stance. This gives something healers to look out for, because the samurai will take 6000 damage otherwise. I do realize this is pretty broken, so I'm seeing two fixes: don't reduce damage at all (still take 9000), or make the DoT last 10 seconds and therefore deal more damage with less ticks.

- Chirijiraden's comboing Potency is way to strong at 290, not even the DPS can reach that Potency, the only thing that can be higher is PLD's Spirits Within, when their HP is full and that has limited use because it's their Silence move. MRD only get's Storm's Eye at 50 and that's only 270 when comboed. And it also doubles their next counter's damage?!

thanks for catching this other typo: it should be 280. Still strong I'm sure, so perhaps it shall be reduced. But being in their tank stance they will deal low damage, and dragoons do have higher potency I believe. Counters are very weak attack, so a double counter would be akin to a critical auto-attack. Double countering is also meant to be used in conjunction with Heaven's Cloud.

- Hellish Slash is not very team-friendly. You're removing all you're team's DoTs, which I sure for a SMN, would be excruciating. Maybe if this class/job focused more on DoTs and this only effected DoTs placed by the user I could see some use but as it is, it lowers the whole teams DPS.

I am aware this skill is very strange for FFXIV. But I believe this game can use more team play then disembowling an enemy so that bard deals a bit more damage. This ability will not necessarily decrease DPS because all the damage the DoTs were going to do is dealt anyways, in a burst. Plus, it takes into account the oldest buffs, so it won't ruin the DPS rotation terribly. This skill is meant to be used as a team, and especially on adds that hit really hard. Imagine tanking melee snakes in t7. Get the DoTs up, burst this snake and take a lot less damage because of it. This will only work if the team works together.

- Kiyomori is like a Foresight on steroids plus Parrying and increase to Counter Damage.p

This is the scrub button, lol. For the players who want to play samurai more like a regular tank. Foresight increases defense by 20% and this only by 15% but it adds magic defense to that. So it only matters with good gear. The parry rate is just to help mitigate a bit, and the counter boost is really small. That said, it is a somewhat beefed up foresight. Maybe the duration of the ability should be reduced by 20 seconds.

- Muramasa is extremely underwhelming compared to other skills.

underwhelming? I was afraid this would be considered broken lol. Buffing the critical damage everyone deals from 1.5x a normal attack to 1.55x is fairly huge. Plus those extra heals will be very small, but very welcome. This is basically so that the samurai has more options juggling GCD as I feel the GCD abilities are a tiny bit limited. But if it's underwhelming I can buff it, or change it so that instead of higher crit damage, the enemy being debuffed has a 5% chance extra of being hit critically (allowing samurai and bard to get more procs).

- Free Lunch is a smidge too OP. Maybe if it just effected the user for an extended period versus a one use.

again, I'm going for "team strategies" over single player. That said, you might just be right. But the way it would work isn't really all that OP. Whatever spell is being cast or whatever weaponskill is about to be used, the TP/MP cost is just zero for that one and that's it. It's not like a party wide invigorate or shroud. And in a pinch it gets that samurai cooldown back up. Perhaps instead of a four minute cooldown it should be five?

- A lot of your skills say that they decrease damage taken but no for how long.

huh, I thought I detailed it enough. Since I'm on iPad, I will fix OP when I'm on a computer. Sorry about that.

- I would also recommend a skill that increases your odds of Criting. I'm sure you're probably thinking of adding PUG as a cross-class and getting Internal Release but I think Ronin or Samurai having their own to stack with it would be healthier especially considering you're main tanking tool comes from landing Crits.

definitely gotta make Muramasa offer a higher crit then. That's a better idea.

- For utility purposes, I would have two separate skills for stun and silence.

the point here is balancing with other classes. Paladin can stun lock but not stun Ogcd. Paladin can also silence separately. War can stun ogcd but obviously has cooldown. I was thinking that Samurai stun should also be a silence not because that would be overpowered, but because it means they have to use the ability with caution, and that is the drawback of the skill.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[Zanmato]

Snip

I MUST clap. Very well done I must say. You show great patience by breaking all of this down.

I disagree with a lot of this, of course, and found some things you said very... well... not so smart, such as the Tachi: Goten NIN affinity which probably everyone would think that it wouldn't need the mist thrust ahead of being used, along with some other things, there are a few things I can agree with.

I personally don't find 1800 potency of damage for 3 sorrows to be overpowered at all. It is pretty difficult to get those stacks, which is the idea, and there should be a reward for it for doing so.

I however must bow for you for taking time to go through all of this, that is very impressive, and I liked your post.

Few things to point out tho.

"I don't understand why it's great katana either. What happened to normal katanas? Ninja use daggers/tantō, why not just give them katana?"

Oh, you know... something very annoying called PERSONAL PREFERENCE.

"A near godlike DPS buff, if you couple this with Mist and Shadow, you can massive DPS if the healers can keep you alive for those 15s. Needs a massive nerf."

The duration is 7 seconds, 9 seconds with trait. Sorrow Throughout The Nine Worlds is counted as an insta-death mechanic once timer reaches 0.
Also, 200% is double damage, and since it goes from 0% and increases rapidly up to 200%, you will deal 200% of damage for perhaps at maximum, the last 2 seconds.

"A permanent Blood for Blood? I don't think this is a very balanced skill especially since it lowers incoming healing. As a DPS, this skill is too strong for the fact that it's a 100% uptime DPS buff. As a tank, lowering healing received is ludicrous."

Yes, it is very high risk, high reward. The damage from this stance is what makes the job. The damage without this stance is significantly lower. The risk is that with as little health as the job has, and with this going at the same time, combined with the innate healing resistance, one wrong move can cause healers to go all out on trying to heal the SAM, causing them to lose a massive amount of MP due to the resistance, or perhaps even Benedictions due to it.

"Overpowered. Near invincibility for two DPS classes while giving them a super esuna?"

A panic button for when in a tight spot. - Remember tho that I do not know if NIN actually has low HP. I took it for granted, and still do.

"I'm not sure why there is a detriment for hitting less enemies. It basically always has to check if enemies are being hit. There is not really many tactical use in this skill. What if it was 3 enemies and one dies before you finish charge? You just wasted TP for no reason other than, "too bad, so sad, deal with it""

Yup, the description said "pick your slices and stabbings carefully", not all skills can have positives only. Sometimes you burn, sometimes you fly.

"Worthless since it changes the dynamic of WAR into the same as your SAM, which is a charge class"

It adds 1 move that is a charge move to the coss-class skills. Can't deal with it? Don't use it. Also, just because it would change the dynamic doesn't necessarily mean that it would be worthless. That's a logical fallacy from your side.

"Basically everyone gets +5% stats all the time given that almost every DPS class puts debuffs onto the boss. If you meant only Samurai's debuffs, balancing content to make it so that a party without a Samurai is at a massive disadvantage would be a nightmare."

Any debuffs on any mob for the duration of 30 seconds. I agree with you here. It is too good and I should either remove it or redo it, for fun. :3
Changed it to +3% maximum. Bring a SAM for a potential +3%! ^-^

"Forging A Legend (WAR) Due to the fact that Sorrow is only something Samurai can get, this is unusable by Warrior."

I missed this! Thank you. Will fix. :3 - Now fixed.

[Deedsie]

I'm in the camp that says Templars (essentially Holy Dragoons) will be the new Tank Job. I mean, we're going to Ishgard, Ishgard is a Theocracy, and a ton of their soldiers use spears. So from that standpoint it'd kinda make sense.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Templar tank job eventually come out of the Lancer class.

That said, doing that won't be adding a new class, but a job on an existing one, and it was stated that a new tank class will be added to the expansion.

[Altijacek]

Updated opening post, bump!