My take on Samurai as a tank

[cyborgmermaid]

Yes, it's one of those threads again. Hear me out though.

At the moment, there are basically two types of gameplay: healers and everyone else. For the latter, gameplay is "press the buttons in the right order as fast as you can". With the healer, it's "wait and watch for the opportune moments to use your abilities. So my idea would be to take that healer mentality of "wait and watch" and apply it to a tank.

And as it happens to be, Samurai works perfectly for that.


The cornerstone of the samurai's gameplay, much like the ammunition is for Machinist or switching between Astral/Umbral is for Black Mage, would be iaido. Iaido is the art of quickly drawing one's sword for combat. In manga/anime you see it used all the time, where an unsheathing, an attack, and a subsequent sheathing will happen faster than the eye can see. While this a tremendous otaku exaggeration of the traditional art, as Ninja has made concrete, Final Fantasy XIV is all about tremendous otaku exaggeration.


So Samurai would have two major stances: sword drawn and sword sheathed. These act similar to the other tank classes' basic defensive and offensive stances (e.g. Shield and Sword Oath) but with some slight twists. When the sword is drawn, enmity is increased and the samurai auto attacks. This will be the stance used to build hate and do standard attacks.

While the sword is sheathed however, damage taken is reduced, but the samurai does not auto attack, and most of their offensive abilities are locked. This is the phase for soaking up damage, but it is also the one where that core idea of "wait and watch" comes into play. Similar to Cyan in Final Fantasy VI, the Samurai would have a "charge" ability in the sheathed stance (and sure why not, let's name it "Bushido" just like Cyan's was). When this ability is activated, a numbered bar slowly progresses upwards. An attack wil be unleashed when Bushido is activated a second time, its type and power dependent on what number the bar reaches. The Samurai can do nothing else while this is charging, and perhaps should even move at walking speed, so therein lies the tactics: how long do you risk charging the ability? Obviously if you wait a long time you're going to get a bigger bang for your buck, but stuff could go to hell in the meantime.

While that would be the primary mechanic of the job, there would be others to cycle you back and forth between sword drawn and sword sheathed. For instance, a move I like the idea of would be a simple iaijutsu technique that charges the samurai forward, attacking enemies in its path while giving increased enmity. It would act as a good opening move, as well as one to quickly reposition oneself behind a monster. And it would look hella cool. The other abilities would be up for debate, though certainly staples from XI and before (Hasso, Third Eye, Seigan) would make it in in some form.

Oh, and the cross-classes would be Gladiator and Pugilist. It's gotta have Gladiator for Provoke (that ability is too engrained in every major fight to forgo), and Pugilist instead of Marauder because iaido, and samurai in general, fight with finesse, not recklessness.

Lemme know what you think!

[Cakekizyy]

Enmity up and damage reduction on different stances?

[cyborgmermaid]

*snip*

It would be so constant changes between the two stances would be the mainstay of the job, much like a DPSing healer has to bounce back and forth between Cleric Stance on and off. So also, it should go without saying that swapping back and forth between the two would not be cumbersome or resource-intensive like it is with Grit/BloodWeapon or Shield/Sword

*snip*

You're thinking WAY too inside the box. The dev team can change the numbers however they want, and they have many times (A Realm Reborn in its entirety). Also you're assuming everything I said in my original post was EVERYTHING that Samurai would have. I was creating a base with which to build off of; there would plenty of other stuff to do while charging/waiting. Just off the top of my head, the auto-attack could be replaced with a triggered ability with a quick unsheath-slice-sheath animation, on a slightly-longer-than-GCD cooldown, much like how attacks were done in pre 1.1.

[Xlantaa]

You're thinking WAY too inside the box. The dev team can change the numbers however they want, and they have many times (A Realm Reborn in its entirety). Also you're assuming everything I said in my original post was EVERYTHING that Samurai would have. I was creating a base with which to build off of; there would plenty of other stuff to do while charging/waiting. Just off the top of my head, the auto-attack could be replaced with a triggered ability with a quick unsheath-slice-sheath animation, on a slightly-longer-than-GCD cooldown, much like how attacks were done in pre 1.1.

Is not that. It is be in place of the devs and see what they do before. The 3 tank jobs share similaties in the basics, this help to design and balace jobs easily. They won't do a suddenly big change for one single job, that can completely mess the entire metadata.

If Samurai is a god damn tank I riot. Give me a sword based DPS. Ridiculous there isn't one already.

Red Mage.

[EdwinLi]

Red Mage.

What if Red Mage becomes the Healer Job of 4.0 using a mechanic that everytime the Red Mage Heals a ally depending on the stance the Heal can also perform damage to all enemies near that Healed ally in Black magic Stance or provide a 50% chance of the healing skill potency to heal 2 times the amount in White Magic Stance. Turning Red Mage into a Burst/Berserker Healer capable of healing more than the other 3 healers if luck is on their side or constantly performing damage and healing at the same time without ever having to stopping to heal so they can DPS.

[Xlantaa]

What if Red Mage becomes the Healer Job of 4.0 using a mechanic that everytime the Red Mage Heals a ally depending on the stance the Heal can also perform damage to all enemies near that Healed ally in Black magic Stance or provide a 50% chance of the healing skill potency to heal 2 times the amount in White Magic Stance. Turning Red Mage into a Burst/Berserker Healer capable of healing more than the other 3 healers if luck is on their side or constantly performing damage and healing at the same time without ever having to stopping to heal so they can DPS.

No t bad idea though, but seems a bit Overpower. XD

[Xlantaa]

That's just a mess. Also, you need weaponskills even on tank stacne Autoattack onyl won't build enough Enmity, and not talking about groups. Also staying too much time without attack or using anything in charge is boring.

When you think on a job for this game, you must use as base the other jobs, the mechanic of battle.

This is the basic configurtaion in the game for tanks:

1. Tank stance and DPS stance
2. A main enmity combo (like Rage of Halone or Power Slash)
3. A Damage combo or two, with maybe a debuf or DoT (E.g. Gloring Blade, Royal Authority or Delirium Combo)
4. One or two DoT skills
5. AOE aggro skills (e.g Unleash, Overpower or Flash)
6. Some buffs, defensive or damage increase
7. Maybe some self-support to heal or help heal.

Once you have that, then you ca enter on the especific mechanics. For example, the Warrior has the Wrat and Abandon stacks to use specific skills, the Dark Knight can consume MP to enhance his skills and activate new ones by using Dark Side. Paladin does not have anythin special aside this, maybe his high damage mitigation, but are based on CD skills.

Even if much people compain because all jobs follow the basic scheme, it is how the game works, and probably won't change never in the game life.

[Wilhem]

I prefer how samurai works in 7th dragon. Different skills working with different stances (with each having an emphasis with either offence or defence) and you can either manually change your stance or use combo skills that have you fluidly switch between stances when you finish them. Add to that a reactive counter/parry system on very a short cooldown that either reflect damage or lower or nullify incoming damages depending on your stance and it might be a fun class to play but I'm no game designer and this would probably be broken in an MMORPG....

[FallenArisen0990]

I prefer how samurai works in 7th dragon. Different skills working with different stances (with each having an emphasis with either offence or defence) and you can either manually change your stance or use combo skills that have you fluidly switch between stances when you finish them. Add to that a reactive counter/parry system on very a short cooldown that either reflect damage or lower or nullify incoming damages depending on your stance and it might be a fun class to play but I'm no game designer and this would probably be broken in an MMORPG....

Omg, I completely forgot to take from that concept of Samurai. I loved the Samurai Class from 7th Dragon 2020 series. <3

[RaizeGraymalkin]

If Samurai is a god damn tank I riot. Give me a sword based DPS. Ridiculous there isn't one already.