New Job Concept: Riskbreaker

[Seraphor]

With all hint and leaks pointing towards the new jobs being Tank and Healer, and considering role distribution, I figure the job roles we still need to fill are Melee and Ranged.

This is based on 4Tanks/4Healers/4Melee/2Ranged/3Caster role distribution and a typical end-game party composition of 2Tanks/2Healers/2Melee/1Ranged/1Caster, resulting in a slot-job ratio of 2:1 for all roles, except casters which are 3:1, therefore melee can afford 2 new jobs and ranged can afford 1 without disrupting job competition too much. In addition, the armour types Maiming, Scouting and Aiming are the ones that can afford to be expanded upon.

So I thought I'd take a shot at a Maiming job concept, and work in Blunt damage to synergise with Monk while we're at it.

Riskbreaker

Weapon: Mace/Hammer, could be dual-wield or even one large heavy weapon.
Armour: Maiming
Source concept: a kind of fusion between Vagrant Story’s Riskbreaker, and FFXII’s Foebreaker.
Style/aesthetic: Starting armour is kinda basic like Ashley Riots, but with pauldrons and torn gladiator style cloth added to it. AF gear is more like Rosencrantz’s outfit, more armour, and a rusty orange-red colour scheme. Could be Thanvarian or if they ever expand into XIV’s version of Dalmasca, base it there.
Should appeal to: Vagrant Story/Ivalice fans. Those who enjoy the playstyle of DRG or MNK. Players who wished DRK was a DPS.

Features a combo system based around Risk stacks and body part targeting.
Kinda like Monk in the way that repeated attacks build up your stacks, basically every weapon combo adds 1 Risk stack for 10s. Unlike MNK however, each stack drops off individually, instead of new stacks resetting the timers on already present stacks. Successive stacks unlock special skills and increase your Crit chance but lower your defence. This is mitigated by defence boosting cooldowns.
Branching combo’s with skills that target different body parts with debuff effects.
A ‘Momentum’ job gauge that decreases over time whenever you’re not in combat and is spent on special cooldown 'Chain Skills', but can only be spent when you also have enough Risk stacks. All attacks give momentum (I’m thinking 3 per weaponskill/autoattack as per usual) but some skills give extra momentum.

1 Risk stack: +5% Crit -5% defence.
2 Risk stacks: +10% Crit -10% defence.
3 Risk stacks: +20% Crit -15% defence.
4 Risk stacks: +30% Crit -20% defence.
5 Risk stacks: +50% Crit -25% defence. (only obtainable by using Temper, as the 1st stack will have expired by the time you get to 5 otherwise. FYI 50% would be the hard cap on Crit, so melding Crit would be pointless)

Weaponskill combo chains: (all GCD)
1 > 2 > 3 (> 4) > 1 > 5 > 6 (> 7) With 4 and 7 being optional combo breakers, whereby 3 can combo into either 4 or 1, and 1 can combo into either 2 or 5. These would be the five combos you’d need to pull off in order to reach 5 Risk stacks. You should just be able to pull it off within 13-15s, which means use of Temper gets you those 5 stacks.
1: Risk Break - Basic weaponskill
2: Raging Ache - Blunt damage debuff
3: Venom Ram - Flank positional, body targeted, inflicts a DoT (+10 momentum)
4: Quickshock - Radial AoE (optional combo, 50% chance of triggering Enhanced Quickshock to maintain combo chain, otherwise back to 1)
5: Dulling Impact - Arm targeted, reduces physical damage dealt by target
6: Disabling Blow - Rear positional, Leg targeted, inflict bind/heavy (+10 momentum)
7: Demon Crush - High potency basic attack (combo breaker, optimally used after getting 5 Risk stacks)

These would all have relatively low potencies, as you’d benefit from a far higher Crit rate than any other class, your Chain skills would be the real damage dealers.
AoE capabilities are intentionally limited by an RNG proc that would usually limit you to 3 or 4 Risk stacks, because a 5 Risk stack Crit rate would be way OP if you could hit multiple targets with it every time, instead it’s a lucky bonus.

Defence Skills: (all oGCD)
Clearance – Removes all Risk stacks (kinda separate from the other defence skills, but removing stacks does increase your defence so…)
Reflect Damage – negates and reflects 10% of damage received back at attacker for 20s, removes 1 Risk stack.
Absorb Damage – absorbs 10% of damage received as HP for 20s, removes 1 Risk stack.
Impact Guard – prevents critical hits received for 30s, removes 1 Risk stack.
Instill – functions like Dark Arts to ‘prime’ the next skill you use, allows you to cast one of your defensive skills (except Clearance) on a party member and replaces ‘removes 1 Risk stack’ with ‘gain 10 momentum’. (basically allows you to turn your defensive skill into an offensive boost and party utility)

Chain Skills: (all oGCD magic damage)
Temper – 160 potency attack that extends the duration of any Risk stacks by 5s, costs 10 momentum, can only be used with at least 1 Risk stack.
Soul Sap – 240 potency attack that recovers 10% of damage dealt as MP/TP, 30 momentum, needs at least 2 Risk stacks.
Life Sap – 240 potency attack that recovers 10% of damage dealt as HP, 30 momentum, 3 Risk stacks.
Phantom Pain – 200 potency aoe attack, 10% less for 2nd target, 30% less for 3rd, etc. 50 momentum, 4 Risk stacks.
Crimson Pain – 280 potency attack that deals 10% HP damage to yourself, 50 momentum, 5 Risk stacks.

You should aim to have enough momentum to use three of those skills in a combo rotation, Temper, one of the Saps and one of the Pains.
These potencies may not look that impressive for a DPS, compared to say DRG or SAM, until you realise that you’ll usually have a 50% Crit rate…

Other skills: (all oGCD)
Sirocco – doubles your momentum gain and prevents momentum loss for 30s.
Prostasia – Increases damage dealt by 10% for 10s.
Blood Sin – For 10s, if your HP dips below 30% you gain 30 Momentum and automatically have 5 Risk stacks. (kind of a last resort style skill, if you’re solo, and you don’t defeat your enemy immediately after this, you’re dead, but a great offensive boost in raids where you’re hit by massive AoE or something and can be healed back up)

You’d want to build around DHit, Det and SkS for this, as Crit would be wasted over a certain and fairly low threshold, as your Risk stacks would supercede it. AST’s Spear would also be pointless, instead favouring the Arrow.
Overall, this builds on the ‘risky’ nature of a Riskbreaker in Vagrant Story, somewhat like a Dark Knight, and the low potency/high Crit build reflects the somewhat ‘random’ damage of Hammers/Axes used by the Foebreaker in FFXII, plus their debuffing nature.
I think this would be really fun and rewarding to play. Maybe a pain for healers, but ideally no much more than DRG or BLM already are, and this would offset against its raid utility anyway.

[Meta-Flare]

I dig it! It is new, interesting, and has a unique gimmick. Building jobs in games is like one of my favorite things. We were talking about jobs in the healer thread, but I'll post my two jobs I made in here.

This is a DPS Beastmaster/tamer, though it probably wouldnt work since they want to make it a limited job (YUCK). http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-is-long-haha

This is my chemist idea - http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...st-as-a-healer

[Azle]

Overall I like the concept, though that's a lot of defensive skills for a DPS job. I do like the idea of a job that builds around something besides stacking Crit.

I'd maybe make the stacks spendable on the chain skills instead of just unlocking them. Then you're building up the stacks and spending them, instead of just hitting 100% during a boss fight and leaving it there. It would also help to differentiate it from MNK. (This might have been your intent, it's not clear.)

You could also work in FFXII skill name references like "Shades of Black" and "Inquisitor".

[Seraphor]

Overall I like the concept, though that's a lot of defensive skills for a DPS job. I do like the idea of a job that builds around something besides stacking Crit.

I'd maybe make the stacks spendable on the chain skills instead of just unlocking them. Then you're building up the stacks and spending them, instead of just hitting 100% during a boss fight and leaving it there. It would also help to differentiate it from MNK. (This might have been your intent, it's not clear.)

You could also work in FFXII skill name references like "Shades of Black" and "Inquisitor".

I think without the defensive skills it'd be a paper tiger far worse than DRG or BLM because it actually loses defense, healers would hate it. The skill would be in balancing your offensive skills with the defenses you need to survive.
If you don't need the defensive skills, you can turn them into party utility.
And it's really only 3 defensive skills. One of them is more resource management with a passive defense boost, or rather it negates your defense penalty. Another is a toggle that allows you to use the other three on party members while changing the resource/penalty for it.
Of the three actual defensive skills, one is a return damage so it's a DPS boost, the other two are minor single target mitigation, one of them is basically a non-tank Awareness, while the other is something DRG already has anyway.

You don't just get the stacks and sit on them, they each have a 10s duration, which means if you're not constantly attacking, you will lose the stacks quickly. Basically, if you stop attacking each stack will drop off every 2.5s, or whatever your GCD. It's more engaging than MNK in this sense, you can't just stop for a few seconds, unless you use the Sirocco skill.

The defensive skills already spend stacks, i think any more would be overkill, as you'd never actually get to 5 stacks long enough to use that higher crit rate.
Plus then there'd be nothing to differentiate risk stacks and momentum. They're similar and interact, but they're still meant to be two different resources used in different ways, one offensive, one utility/defensive.

I did try to think of FFXII terms I could use, but Inquisitor would basically be Soul Sap (Vagrant Story's name is actually Siphon Soul but that's too close to a DRK ability) and I'm not sure where Shades of Black would really fit, closes would be the Pain skills but it's not really black magic.

[Jandor]

With all hint and leaks pointing towards the new jobs being Tank and Healer, and considering role distribution, I figure the job roles we still need to fill are: Maiming, Scouting and Aiming.

Those are types of gear, not roles. To be honest I find the value of maiming and scouting gear even existing rather questionable, nothing would really be lost by merging them with striking and aiming.

The job itself seems pretty interesting though, assuming you'd like it adding to the game (however unlikely that might be) it might be worthwhile finding an existing FF job you can merge the mechanics with .

[Seraphor]

Those are types of gear, not roles. To be honest I find the value of maiming and scouting gear even existing rather questionable, nothing would really be lost by merging them with striking and aiming.

The job itself seems pretty interesting though, assuming you'd like it adding to the game (however unlikely that might be) it might be worthwhile finding an existing FF job you can merge the mechanics with .

I explained that in the next paragraph...

Also for an existing FF job to merge it with... how about Riskbreaker from Vagrant Story or Foebreaker from FFXII?

[Seraphor]

As for losing Maiming and Scouting gear.
IF they dont add any more melee jobs, then you might be right about Maiming gear. However having too many jobs sharing the same gear is going to make having multiple jobs with different builds very tricky to manage.
Same goes for Scouting if they dont add any more jobs that use Dex.

But as future melee and ranged jobs ARE likely, as I indicated in the OP, merging them would end up causing problems. They need to expand them instead.

[Jandor]

As for losing Maiming and Scouting gear.
IF they dont add any more melee jobs, then you might be right about Maiming gear. However having too many jobs sharing the same gear is going to make having multiple jobs with different builds very tricky to manage.
Same goes for Scouting if they don't add any more jobs that use Dex.

But as future melee and ranged jobs ARE likely, as I indicated in the OP, merging them would end up causing problems. They need to expand them instead.

They could get around materia problem, link it to soul stone like your stat points were in HW, provide a materia board with gear simply increasing or decreasing it's slots and stat levels, etc.

As for STR/DEX/etc. jobs, well the different main stats are pointless, they're all copies of each other anyway. As such picking a job based on which main stat it will use also feels a tad pointless.
I'd be slightly surprised if STR/DEX/INT and MND survive (at least as they are) in to 5.0, but I guess we'll see on that.

Also for an existing FF job to merge it with... how about Riskbreaker from Vagrant Story or Foebreaker from FFXII?

Never played either, that's my bad for not doing proper checking.

[Seraphor]

They could get around materia problem, link it to soul stone like your stat points were in HW, provide a materia board with gear simply increasing or decreasing it's slots and stat levels, etc.

As for STR/DEX/etc. jobs, well the different main stats are pointless, they're all copies of each other anyway. As such picking a job based on which main stat it will use also feels a tad pointless.
I'd be slightly surprised if STR/DEX/INT and MND survive (at least as they are) in to 5.0, but I guess we'll see on that.

I know they like to streamline things, but i doubt they'll dumb it down that much.
What is an RPG without stats?

[Jandor]

I know they like to streamline things, but i doubt they'll dumb it down that much.
What is an RPG without stats?

That's the thing though, we don't really have main stats anyway. If your main stat is DEX then all your gear will have the max amount of DEX it can have by default, if it isn't maxed out on DEX it's because it's for another role/job and it's locked so you can't wear it anyway.
There is no choice and ultimately no point, consolidating them would just be updating things to reflect how they actually are.

All main stats are at the moment is a minor newbie trap, where a fresh level 70 dexterity user might end up doing something like melding intelligence to their gear thinking it improves their magic attacks.

Sub stats are where the choice exists, to some degree anyway.

Edit: anyway, I don't want to hijack your thread with this, it's a pet peeve of mine and to be fair I should probably stop bringing it up in every thread where I see main stats and gearsets mentioned .