Job: Rune Knight
Source Class: Warden
Weapon: Longsword
Skillcap: Disturbingly High
Necessary Background Changes:
Interception - Almost all mob and boss attacks are now interceptable, acting either as cumulatively mitigated AoEs (every reduction to damage taken by a target along its path affecting the AoE itself, and therefore cumulatively affecting its damage to each enemy then and beyond), or striking the first in enemy in their path. Additionally, the hitboxes of tanks are conditionally enlargeable (such as by Shield Oath, Shelltron, Bulwark, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, Grit, Defiance, Thrill of Battle, and Vengeance), but this extra area is used only when overlapping with an ally's who would otherwise take an interceptable attack, making it easier to intercept the given attack in their place.
*Grounded Steps - This one's really pushing it... This essentially means that rather than gliding during any animation, one would take conditionally drawn steps in order to accomodate the chosen movement, and the player's weapon would be reangleable, and its dependents with it, based on the angle to the enemy. *Not wholly necessary, but important.
Lore:
The Warden were once a proud sacred, although largely secular, order hailing from the northeast and far eastern regions of what is now the edge of the greater region of Gardemald. Though the threats they face have since turned inwards and largely imaginary, the individuals of their order, especially those who still follow the older ways, are ever stoic, ever vigilant, adaptive but resolute. Theirs is a tactical and decisive form of defense, knowing when to retreat and when to charge. Though the modern order may pretend otherwise, their tactics are based, after all, on the mercenary parties of old. A warrior must pick their battles just as surely as he must win them; else he will die to circumstance.
Be it due to the turbulent wills of regional politics or grudges grown out of proportion from the Witch Wars almost two centuries past, the Warden has often been known as the guardians against corruption, and while that used to refer to tyranny and disorder, it has come to mean primarily magic -- now thought corrupt its every form not of divine basis. While the Wardens themselves are mostly more understanding of the necessary and peaceful keepings of magic in their realm, new orders have formed to seal away or crush any upsurgence of magic. These orders are collectively called Sanctum, and their members the Rune Knights, empowered with the ability to store away magic and redouble against anyone who may resist their peacekeeping. They have, in a sense, become what they originally most stood against, a perversion of reality, not in the sense of bent time or world logic, but of perception from fact.
Seeing this far truer corruption among their own, many of the order have tried to move themselves as far from the Sanctum or any of its political ties as possible, hoping to do good as they once had before. But having been met in Garlemald with distrust or persecution of any order as old and willful as their own, some have travelled still further, outside of their own lands... even as far as Eorzea. And there, free from the watch of the Sanctum and the now-rotted Warden hierarchy, many among them have come to embrace the full potential of their traditions and training.
Playstyle:
The Warden is what might be called a half-tank. While he provides as much overall mitigation as one who would take the brunt of each enemy's attacks, this is not always the best course of action for the Warden. Instead, he may support his allies in less direct ways, bending the battle lines and blending his presence fore and aft thereof, sweeping in, cutting through, and securing ground or using the attack's impetus to safely extract himself.
Unlike users of the greatsword, the Warden's attacks are swift and finely crafted, offering a high rate of attack at the discretion of the Warden himself. Positioning is of vital importance to the Warden, in a manner unique of course among tanks, but also among damage-dealers, able to hasten blows made in the direction of movement in order to manipulate windows of opportunity. This is not to say, however, that he is constantly redirecting enemy attention: so blindingly quick are the Warden's blows at times, that he can step aside unseen, and his technique of attack allows him to maintain a parry's displacement of his enemy's strikes even while winding in a blow, or several, of his own. Each of the Warden's attacks glides between any of five positions, which act as guards when stationary, and strikes or parries in transition: Boar, Falcon, Ox, Plow, and Tail. These are the basis of his strike combinations: each strike is dependent in upon distance, given by the position, to the opponent, and momentum is maintained between strikes, and reversed upon parries.
Weaponskills:
The following positionals are not relative positionals, as per Front, Flank, or Rear. Rather, they refer to a conditions shared by all weaponskills, whereby certain weaponskills are available from a given position -- Falcon (above one's head), Ox (above either shoulder), Boar (low, either side, downward facing), Plow (low, either side, upward facing), or Tail (far left or far right, low, downward angle, past the point at which hand position would switch when one the side opposite the dominant hand) -- or the one adjacent with a distinct swing time (GCD).
Wrath > Mansfall <Ideal from Ox. Ends opposite Boar.>
Turn > Knightsfall <Ideal from Ox. Ends opposite Ox.>
Hew > Housefall <Ideal from Ox or Falcon. Ends same Ox.>
Rise > Kingsfall <Ideal from Boar. Ends opposite Ox.>
Dive > Skyfall <Ideal from Falcon. Ends open Boar.>
Cross > Armsfall <During change. Ends variably.>
Hidden > Landsfall <Ideal from Tail. Ends variably.>
Bold > Godsfall <From mid-position. Ends variably.>
Will > Claimance <From any impale. Ends variably.>
(These were originally to be named after Meyer's longsword mastercuts / Meisterhauwen, such as Zornhau, Krumphau, Zwerchhau, Scheitelhau, and Schielhau, and a few more to fill out the clockwork of the positions, but some of the Masterhauwen had already been used -- as misnomers -- in the Red Mage toolkit, so I used English approximations of their embedded meanings. Thereafter, the augmentive forms -- as "---fall" seemed particularly fitting for the lore I'd alleged for the Warden. The head-taking cleave, Zwerchhau, or Hew, is the fall of a House, a lateral and decisive critical blow; Rise, or Unterhau, makes for the fall of Kings, unseen.. uprising. Cross, or Krumphau, is a disarming strike, and in a metaphorical sense as per Warden speech ideosyncracies (see below) crossing off or krumping (crumpling) an enemy force would be to disempower or defang it; the sweeping, length-cloaked strike from Tail via Hidden takes the land out from beneath its enemies; Zornhau, or Wrath, the most generally useful strike for quickly dispatching a single opponent becomes Manfall, and Schielhau, or Turn, the strike which inserts itself into and defeats a Zornhau becomes the bane of any arrogant knight.)
Abilities:
Dauntless
Bastion
Final Stand
With Honor
Inspirit
Mechanics:
- No GCD on weaponskills. Instead, weaponskills have refresh times based on the distance between where the sword is now and how long it'd take to strike the enemy from that position. Moreover, they do not merely queue the following skill: once the strike has been made, though it will carry through to a given position, it can already be blended into the following strike.
- Relative positioning. Moving into an enemy during lunge makes it hit sooner; stepping outward while drawing your sword back from their chest accelerates that. Moving past the opened side of an enemy during a strike from Tail deepens that lateral cut. Being further from an enemy gives you more time to build up swing momentum. Being closer hastens the strike. Etc., etc.
- True and False (Edges). Depending on which is closer for the particular strike at the moment, the Warden will use either the true edge (the edge which gives maximum reach, and least contorts the blow) or false edge (the edge that would normally be facing oneself, and as such has less reach) of the blade, where the true edge has more potential swing.
- Momentum. Your strikes, unless met with resistence (striking at all counting as some resistance, while strikes made while out of range will have neither damage, obviously, nor resistance and can therefore doubly ready momentum), will continually accelerate swing times in the same direction and at certain derivatives thereof. Complex to explain; watch any video about flourishing and await formulas for emulation thereof.
- Ghosting and Locking. Your strikes made while moving conditionally leave behind a ghosted image, which your enemies will continue to attack. You still receive a variable portion of this damage, but this allows you to use your relative positioning periodically even while tanking. Locking refers to forcing an enemy into a specific angle, whether by a maintained parry or by impaling the enemy.
- Interception. Positioning matters defensively as well. Rather than a passive parry chance, the Warden uses proper ending position relative to enemy attacks, rising up from the opposite edge to ready for a downward blow, etc.
Gameplay:
Warden feels a lot like a blend between an action game and your standard tab-target affair. It cares about positioning despite being a tank, is open to complex manipulation, and has opportunity for active mitigation, but because damage is still largely unavoidable this is felt in a more strategic manner, opening with one combo in order to prep into another at a precise time in order to take advantage of or nullify an enemy attack.
Sidenote: Though the Wardens are allegedly an anti-magical and almost anti-(new)scientific order, their diction often suggests otherwise, using such terms as eutectic for a nation made less resolute or more susceptible to change since the addition of another member people, despite its relation at the time to alchemy, or terms like convergent or divergent in the sense borrowed from Garlean manaficers, or the idea of sacred numbers drawn from the region's druids. Perhaps this is evidence primarily of a certain worldliness and deep sense of study. To converse with a Warden fully, one often seems to need to know excessively much about virtually everything, from smithing to mathematics to philosophy. Be prepared, also, for a large span of language use, wherever the client language may fail to generate a one-word translation. They can limit their references, but their speech among each other seems to assume an almost inexhaustible memory and an unconscious passion for knowledge that even Artificers might find troublesome. Rune Knights tend to take this even further in areas of magic, often giving practical theory and definition even to other's magics that had until then been performed unconsciously or on feeling alone, all while having the utmost, almost religious, respect for the presence of mind that would discover and produce such magics. This excludes, of course, those members in keeping with the Sanctum philosophies, who desire only to categorize magic insofar as is useful to dominating and quelling it.
Rune Knight
Summary: The basis of the Rune Knight lies in a practical application of regional druidic magics, or world-lie (as in latent potential lying beneath the world), whereby magic could be absorbed, shaped, and diverted similar to through Arcanistry, but without requiring the user to be aetherically or elementally attuned. Rather, they need only know the sign, and concentrate on the presence thereof, a process that tapped more deeply into meditation and language than it did into more typical magical foci. It was essentially a reception of magical force and spirit, rather than a manipulation. The Warden acted only as a mediator or instigator, allowing the magic to follow its natural course in a seemingly different direction, generally causing it dissipate into the worldlie rather than harming the Warden.
The Rune Knights took this one step further. Rather than merely consigning the magic to the worldlie, they found ways to trap and divert it -- still through the underlying rules of all magic, but in a way that played more into their own strengths, even allowing something very alike to aetherical or elemental attunement. These are derivative magics, based on a trapped but mobile, rather than generated, source. And throughout all of this, the wielder himself still has no need to be magic attuned themselves. They need only be receptive to it, and understand its forces and those that act upon it. This is carried primarily through four signs, which work in combination:
Earth - That which manifests - Principle of Cause
Fire - The impetus, and half of the spirit - Principle of Desire / Future
Air - The void between - Principle of Correspondence
Water - The reception, opposite half of the spirit - Principle of Understanding / Past
Of the two, Fire and Water are "hosts" and "mortal", Earth and Air are "domains" and "immortal", though all are of divine spirit. More on how this works later.
Notable Additions:
Earth*
Fire*
Air*
Water*
Crux
Smite
Advent
Wake
Pellucid
Labyrinth
Oblivion
Playstyle:
Naturally, the Rune Knight takes much from the Warden class sourcing it. It retains the positions of Falcon, Ox, (Mid), Plow, Boar, and Tail, and similarly avoids an actual combo system in favor of unshared cooldowns and momentum. But, it allows a noticeably higher sense of control. Where a Warden might open from a sprint into Hew > Housefall or Hidden > East Wind to rapidly engage in cleave as to prep himself into a Rise and Falcon on a focus target, this would be a more long-term decision for a Rune Knight, because, if given no magic to work with, he can still, in effect, generate his own. He always carries a bit of magic on himself, etched into his blade and armor, and this can work to generate elements of magic through his actions. In short, the Warden ought always to take the course of action that would be the most physically efficient for what he's trying to accomplish, always in short-term tactical stretches. Because there are derivative impacts of those physical choices for a Rune Knight, however, he may end up making some seemingly more gaudy or style-based choices in order to reach maximum efficiency in a much longer stretch of time and/or prepare for later events. These manipulations of weaponskill choices are paired against the Rune Knight's ability to absorb element from more direct, external means, whereby Lightning turns into Fire and Air, Ice to Water and Earth, and the remaining four their own individual elements; Unaspected sources whatever element is currently dominant for the Rune Knight.
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