Future Roles: Red Mage as a Tank

[Deigewolf]

Hey everyone!

Sorry if this topic has been spoken about on a separate post, did a search and didn't find anything recent about this kind of topic. I also know there's only speculation to make at this point about 4.0 jobs, but in thinking about keeping a fresh approach and keeping FFXIV innovative, I was struck with some inspiration about filling in the blanks, so to speak, for future tank roles.

Almost all discussion I've witnessed has to do with putting RDM in either DPS or Healing roles due to its ability to use white and black magic in previous FF games. However, I was thinking about how using both of those types of magic in tandem with the traditional fencer-type aesthetic to create a truly unique tanking experience.

Red Mage as an Evasion Tank:
My main inspiration for RDM as a tank comes from the fact that we currently have no tanks that use parry/evasion as their main stats for coping with damage. While this can be unreliable in FFXIV as we know those stats now, I do know that I've heard speculation about parry/evade being tweaked and re-worked over time.
Traditionally Red mages used fencing swords, and this style of fighting is dependent upon deflecting incoming damage rather than taking it directly. RDM would be able to mitigate a majority of the incoming damage with parries/evades.

Red Mage Abiltiies:
Tank/DPS stances
To stay in line -somewhat- with our current tanks, RDM could have a damage mitigation/tanking stance, as well as a DPS stance. My ideas are as follows:

Guard/Prise de fer:
This would be a tanking stance that would greatly increase evasion/parry, but reduce overall damage output. This stance would also increase the effectiveness of healing magic the RDM uses. Damage dealing magic in this stance would have increase emnity generation.

En-fire:
This is the DPS stance that would lower evasion, but increase damage to attack magic and physical attacks. This stance would also enable Doublecast for increase damage output. This would also likely carry an MP regen/refresh to help maintain damage output.

Attack rotation:
The basic attack rotation would be a 1-2-3 combo. 1 and 2 would be physical attacks, and then the third would be an attack magic spell. Under the effects of Enfire, doublecast would allow for an additional third magic attack to be used in combination.
The other attack tree could be an MP regen attack like siphon or osmose. Featuring a 1-4-5 branch from the first basic attack.

Cooldowns:
They could have a few cooldowns that further increase their evasion and parry, also having a counter attack or Riposte cooldown that would return enemy damage.

The Lore of the Red Mages
My thoughts are that the red mages would come from a multi-national scholarly group, perhaps a sister school to Sharlayan scholars?
In this sense, the lore and job quests of a Red Mage would start with uncovering a hidden relic found by a Sharlayan scholar, which would inform you of this sister school of magical study. In investigating this relic, you would make contact with a Red Mage whose spirit is left after a cataclysmic ruin of the school of Red Mages. It would be revealed that the Red Mage scholars fell into ruin because they stretched themselves too far between the opposing factions of magic, and delving too deeply into the void or calling too heavily from the elementals would rend your body asunder. In this respect, you train your body to maintain your vitality and grow stronger, while also incorporating the magical concepts from void and elemental magic.
This spirit would guide you to the points of contact with the beast tribes' Black Mages and the Padjal white mages who would have communed with the Red Mage scholars. (Alternatively, you could uncover black and white mage spirits form Amdapor and Mhach independently from any living entities). This would enable you to learn from both sides of otherworldly magic, and realize your magical potential in a way that is independently developed from the traditional study of Black and White magic separately.

[Sarcatica]

You can edit your 1st post to bypass that limit btw. No comment on the job since we can only speculate all we want but we have no details yet on if the job is locked in, let alone the details.

Japanese game companies (SE included) tend to not listen to the western playerbase and instead focus more on the Japanese (much like the PLD changes for A4S), so best luck to suggesting this to SE if any.

[Deigewolf]

Ohhh thank you for the info!! Still a bit of a forum noob in terms of editing/submitting.
And yeah, It's sort of what I figured ^^;; Honestly I just like discussing/tossing ideas out to speculate as to the potential for what could happen. I suppose you never really know what might leave some kind of impression, you know?

[koroko220]

Hopefully I eat my words, but... I think I 4.0 will have blue mage, samurai, and dancer :/ my reasoning is because of the iroha event for samurai armor and the blue mage/dancer glamour armor SE added a while back. Still hoping for rdm though >_<; but if they did add rdm and made it a tank, love your idea

[CeallaSo]

While I do believe the game could benefit from an evasion tank, I don't feel that Red Mage is the job for the job, so to speak. They're too heavily rooted in the history of the series, as dabblers in a variety of combat arts who can be utilized to fill holes in a team where they are lacking.

To that end I agree that they should be a tank, but a magically-inclined one; and, further, one whose lore is grown out of the traditions of both White and Black magic. As a group of researchers attempting to utilize both internal (Black) and external (White) aether, they tow the line between the two and forge themselves into aetheric conduits, in so doing gaining a strength neither school of thought possessed previously.

With that in mind it seems logical that the Red Mage would utilize spells reminiscent of, but not exactly like, Thaumaturge/Conjurer spells. The basic Fire/Ice/Lightning trinity, altered to aid in tanking through enmity generation or secondary effects, would be their bread-and-butter tanking abilities. No "combos" to speak of, as comboing has never been a feature of spellcasting (and should remain as such, barring the exception of Doublecast). Then there could be knockoff Cure spells and (of course) their own version of Protect as a defense buff, making them a sort of self-sustaining tank or pseudo-healer. Interspersed with these would be basic physically-oriented abilities, utilizing the RDM's signature rapier to inflict debilitating effects, round out their enmity control, and grant them the tank's necessary combo mechanics. Combined, these features make them into a job that uses both MP and TP in equal measure.

Next, as they do, the RDM is all but required to have some form of stance dancing; in their case, it seemed that they would need not two stances, but three. "Red" stance would be their version of the classic mitigation and enmity stance, reducing the damage they give and receive by 20% and granting a burst of enmity when they first enter it. "Black" stance would increase damage output at the cost of losing that extra defense and a severe loss of healing potency, for when they need to chip in as an extra DPS. But finally, they would have "White" stance, which would grant their healing effects new properties at the cost of providing no defensive benefit and an attack power penalty. This way they could reasonably slip into any role in the party on short notice, in the proper hands being able to shore up the party's weakest areas when necessary.

The final piece in the puzzle, at least in my mind, was providing them with a lasting self-buff to keep track of, not unlike the Warrior's Wrath and Abandon. The idea that came to me was Aethercharge; not entirely unlike Aetherflow, but gradually stacking rather than granting the full effect immediately. Aethercharge would grant a single stack (and have a 30s cooldown for gaining more) which would provide a small boost to damage output; let's call it 5%. Nothing major, but it lasts until spent on the abilities that use it, which would likely be in the RDM's upper range. The player would then be able to decide how to use them: do you hold onto them for the boost, or do you spend them for the extra utility they grant select spells? It becomes a game of determining the right moment to make use of each of the job's many tools, which seems to be very much in line with how it has functioned in past games (barring FFXI, where it was more of a buffer-debuffer).

It's food for thought, at any rate. Perhaps if or when Yoshida-san and the team can figure out a way to integrate the job into the game in a way they find satisfying, we'll see a line of thought similar to our concepts in the final result.