Dancer - Blue Mage, how they could be done interestingly

[MicahZerrshia]

So I brought this up in another thread a whole long time ago and I wanted to put it out there for fun since I am relatively certain the devs don't read these anyway. So just out of curiosity of what you all think about it.

So there are a few jobs in the FF that would fit this, rdm was one of them but that ship has sailed, dnc and blu also fit it. And that is to take these jobs with very customizable skills and make them fit into all 3 roles in that very outdated holy trinity SE is clinging to so desperately, and likely make everyone happy while lessening SE's workload.

Dancer and Blue Mage could easily swap between tank-heal-dps by steps/dances or spell sets. They could feed off the same attribute points. Like dnc could be a dex character and dex could act like vit-mnd-str does in tank-heal-dps respectively. Same with blu and int. Or they could just throw charisma in as a new one that only those 2 jobs fed off of and create a set of chr gear for them to share, like casters share int and melee share str.

All there would be to do would be different ability lists and animations, some of which could even be reusable across stances (stuns, stat boosts and such). You would have 2 jobs that fulfill all 3 roles and wear the same gear, use the same weapons. Literally creating 6 jobs but taking out that element of theme, lore, gear (I vote fans for dncs and scimitar for blu), etc etc etc.

When you switch to the job you would have to set a stance, for lack of a better word, and stances would be unchangeable during combat or in instances. The stance would also determine what role they fulfill on duty lists.

It seems like it would just alleviate a whole lot of issues if they can make it work technically. Make everyone happy as all roles would be covered equally and make it so they would not have to create assets for 6 different jobs. Kill 6 birds with 2 stones.

Balance may be an issue but as generic as jobs are becoming and as more and more simple as rotations are becoming one would think it wouldn't be that much additional work, especially as they are loosing a lot of work in other places. But as someone who isn't a programmer I couldn't say.

I just think it would be a real interesting concept. Thoughts?

[Ekimmak]

I was about to go on a rant on how much harder it would be to have a tank that turns into an actual dps, but apparently you didn't actually mean that, you meant lock them in when you swap to the job.

Glad you thought of that, but I still have doubts on whether they'd be able to tank. It's more than just "give bonus HP and you instantly can tank". Tanking gear has a very high defence/special defence rate because they take that many more heavy hits. Either they'd need some sort of trait that drastically increases the defence of their left-side gear, or you might as well make it into three different jobs with a shared exp pool to start with.

Just levelling up Summoner doesn't make you capable of playing Scholar. Likewise, jI don't know if I'd trust someone to tank if all they did was level a dps Blue Mage.

[MicahZerrshia]

I understand your point but leveling as a summoner does also not make you incapable of playing scholar. You see plenty of ppl who can lvl their way through dungeons and still have no idea what their rotations are. Learning a job is not a product of leveling as much as it is a product of the player's willingness to learn it. I leveled my smn to 70 and am a very capable sch because I bothered to learn what my abilities do and how/when to use them.

There are plenty of people out there who burn their way through levels via DD or HoH and can be really solid at that job if they take the time to even read their tool tips so there wouldn't really be much difference in that factor. Dungeon spam and leveling pts are so antiquated and boring in a game where you can lvl all jobs people fudge through all the time already getting exp as fast as possible in situations that make no difference on how your job is played. So getting a solid feel via leveling isn't really as important nor as utilized as it once was. It helps but as simplified as combat is, its not mandatory.

And yes traits would have to play into things like def but its not out of the realm of possibility if thought out. It would give dnc/blu a higher base def in tank stance or have def modified by main stats like dex but is that going to really matter unless there is content that requires you to be fully nude? There is also different ways to mitigate dmg that could be used to make up for it.

[Selvokaz]

The blue mage in my opinion could work like summoner story wise, in that each job level of note after obtaining the class could have to venture to a certain local to face a certain monster, and thus fighting that creature you obtain a new ability. The job on other non story levels would give you skills that aren't specifically related to a monster but fit the unscholaristic magic casting style, in that you learn skills or spells that are "Wild" or "Beastial" in nature, I'm not sure if Blue mage is intended to be similar to redmage in that it can do melee or ranged combat but if it is, perhaps thats what you could learn in the between. Yes its very basic and keeps it very much as another caster type with different flavor, but really with the way the system is structured what else could you expect?

[Grimoire-M]

IMO the blue mage would be tied to the beast tribes, getting their abilities inspired from those races. Their method of acquiring abilities could be similar to Summoners in some sense, but rather than calling a primal into being, they'd instead embrace an alternative, voluntary form of tempering/drowning/etc to alter their bodies temporarily in order to gain the power of the tribes, but also invite the primal's influence into them. It would borrow some aspects of WAR and SMN's lore in some sense, most closely resembling Binder in D&D (for anyone familiar with that). Wrestling power from multiple primal patrons while also steeling oneself against their competing wills.

[Selvokaz]

Dancer: The close range healer job.

Dance focuses two stances, Freestyle and Fundamental,

Fundamental, dance steps used while in fundamental would work like most healing jobs, in that they can heal a target from any range within their range of the spell, and have the same cast time as such a caster would normally have. In this case they are very vanilla. The benefit of Fundamental however is that you regenerate MP and TP much more quickly (1% per second). Think of it as the cooldown phase of a dancing routine.

Freestyle, is where things get a little funky. While in freestyle the dancers casting time drastically decreases for both her healing and her offensive spells/skills, she also doesn't regen mp or tp, her healing spells heal more, and her offensive weapon skills hit harder.
Freestyle also builds up a gauge called fatigue, when fatigue reaches 100% your automatically drop out of freestyle and back into fundamentals.

Skills and or Spells used in either style carry additional effects based on the style. While in Fundamental style any spell or weapon skill used regenerates MP and TP for you the caster. On the flip side any Spell or Weapon Skill used in Freestyle builds the fatigue gauge more quickly. For the sake of the post any spell or weapon skill fills the gauge by 10%, also note that being in freestyle builds the gauge automatically by 1% per second.

Weapon Skills: The Dancer has 4 different dance steps that count as her weapon skills, The Jig, Two Step, The Spin, The Slide, these all have a range of 0 or melee range, they attack the enemy and expend TP, while in freestyle their potency increases by 30, while in fundamental they regenerate TP and MP(10% per skill activated), Like Ninja, perform certain combinations of the 4 weapon skills can create a additional healing effect depending on which step you end with. Jig = Cast Regen on allies within a certain radius of the dancer. Two Step creates a Barrier equal to 20% of the targets maximum HP, The Spin gives a small 5% increase to healing received for the next 12 seconds to all allies within a certain radius, The Slide = Reduces the Dancers fatigue gauge by 20 points. You can never uses a dance step more than once in a 3 button combination, so once you used that step it becomes temporarily unavailable.

Spells: The Dancer version of the time honored, Cure, Cure 2, AOE Heal, and AOE Heal 2, Raise, whatever their names they are spells just like the traditional healers, they cost MP no matter the style your in.

Skills: There are various skills called "Terms" that correspond to the various terms used in real world dancing, these "Terms" affect the dancer in various ways. Down Tempo = Resets the Dancers Fatigue gauge to 25%, allowing Dancers to remain in Freestyle a bit longer. Rhythm Allows you to gain the benefits of Freestyle while in Fundamental, and thus its only usable while in Fundamental, long recharge time on this one.

This was just a barebones off the top of my head type of thing. Honestly I could see Dancer being a DPS akin to Monk but borrowing heavily from FF6 Mog's style of dance where it changes the environment and utilizes various area based spells, and different idea though it is.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Problem with BLU as a tank and DNC as a healer is they would need to do something that can't be done by other jobs in those roles which would be difficult given the game's design. What could BLU do that isn't done by the other three tanks when one is already the odd man out?

Game isn't made for evasion based tanking to be viable and DRK was once a pseudo-evasion tank and has since been reworked to be more in line with the other tanks and its role as magic tank pretty much only extends to a single cooldown.

What could DNC do that isn't done by the other three healers when one of those healers is essentially the lovechild of the first two with its own gimmick attached to it?

While there is a needs for more tanks, the way the game is designed makes it difficult for any one of them to have some sort of unique characteristics especially tanks as they all follow the same premise of how they function. Which is why we probably have as many DPS jobs as we do as DPS jobs are easier to design because at the end of the day while they all do the same thing, they do it differently enough be they ranged, melee, or casters support abilities or not.

[Ekimmak]

Yeah, there aren't really any new ways to design a tank, because it's so strict on what they HAVE to be able to do.

[Selvokaz]

Yeah, there aren't really any new ways to design a tank, because it's so strict on what they HAVE to be able to do.

I dont know about that, search the forums for my idea for the Beast Master/Beast Trainer tank. A lightly armored Tank who has a pet/mount that helps out in combat. While in tank stance you're mounted onto the pet/mount, and you share damage between each other in the vein of damage mitigation of 20%, as well as a HP buff wherein you stack your combined HP together. While in DPS stance you are dismounted, and don't have the damage mitigation but since you both are essentially attacking the same target you're doing increased damage, your hp is also not stacked. Or if the HP stacking unstacking is to complicated to balance, then they have a shared HP total in either stance that is similar in total to the Warrior. The idea of a Pet that assist in tanking is very different than any of the 3 existing tanks, and depending on how they want this to interact, you could have the pet's abilities as CD's and the Players abilities be either Weapon Skills or Spells depending on the nature of the class. So CD's invoking the Pet to Roar and build enminity, sounds very in line with the job, and makes for a perfect AOE aggro builder, and perhaps the Player throwing a Weapon or Shout makes for a good single Target Aggro builder. The ideas just come naturally after you figure out the theme.

[Selvokaz]

Problem with BLU as a tank and DNC as a healer is they would need to do something that can't be done by other jobs in those roles which would be difficult given the game's design. What could BLU do that isn't done by the other three tanks when one is already the odd man out?

Game isn't made for evasion based tanking to be viable and DRK was once a pseudo-evasion tank and has since been reworked to be more in line with the other tanks and its role as magic tank pretty much only extends to a single cooldown.

What could DNC do that isn't done by the other three healers when one of those healers is essentially the lovechild of the first two with its own gimmick attached to it?

While there is a needs for more tanks, the way the game is designed makes it difficult for any one of them to have some sort of unique characteristics especially tanks as they all follow the same premise of how they function. Which is why we probably have as many DPS jobs as we do as DPS jobs are easier to design because at the end of the day while they all do the same thing, they do it differently enough be they ranged, melee, or casters support abilities or not.

I think i came up with a pretty different take on the Dancer that could merit some looking into, a Dancer is the Fastest Healer, but also specialize in burst healing. Having lower cast times than normal healers you'd like a dancer as a back up healer during raids and instances.