4th Range DPS idea after endwalker

[Ayche]

I think there's too much of Time Mage cannibalised by Astrologian, and it's unlikely to be split out of it.

AST is basically an amalgam of Time Mage, Gambler and Astrologer (Tactics, which is basically the 'ultimate time mage' npc job, similar to Magus being the ultimate Black Mage).
It uses Gravity (signature time magic spell), Celestial Stasis (Astrologer skill from Tactics), has a lot of time effects in it's skills and mechanics (time delays, it used to even have speed buffs), plus the Ishgardian Astrologians wear the iconic time mage hats. (there's enough content left that you can kinda see where their pre-HW plan was to have Astrologian be the base class for a future Time Mage job)

There's also the argument that time magic (really space-time magic going by Japanese perceptions and some translations) is a thematic basis for what AST does, uses celestial bodies (space) to predict the future (time). I would say that the devs recognised this and thought Astrology was a cool twist on time magic, and a way to implement it without being too broken of a mechanic in an MMO.

What time magic is there left to AST at this point other than lightspeed?

[Archwizard]

What time magic is there left to AST at this point other than lightspeed?

A solid way to answer this question is to look at the most common Time Magic spells:

Gravity and Regen are, in some way, available to Astrologian. Okay yes, "Aspected Benefic" isn't the same name but WHM has Regen anyway, just take what overlap you can get.
On a similar note, Meteor is already represented in game... through the BLM limit break. Arguably though, AST's upcoming "Macrocosmos" skill fits raining down Comets (in a healer-appropriate manner).

Haste has already been noted by Yoshi-P to be a spell we will never see available in-game, because he believes it would be wildly overpowered. (In all likelihood though, it would be considered the worst utility in the game since it would reduce your target's oGCD windows without their control.)
However! Besides Lightspeed, Astrologian's ability to buff allies' damage directly with its cards/Divination covers much of the same niche as Haste and the odd buffs it had in other entries. The upcoming "Astrodyne" skill will do much the same for AST itself.

Likewise, Reflect would also be overpowered, which is why we only see it contained to zones like Bozja.

Teleport and Doom... actually have precedent, thanks to the Trust version of Urianger having a copy of BLM's Aetherial Manipulation and his own execution-variation of Death. AST doesn't have them personally but, pin in that thought, maybe later if you can make an argument why it would need them (admittedly hard to do).

Most CC spells like Slow, Stop, Old, Disable, Banish and Mute would be kinda pointless to implement. Depending on what enemies they can affect, they would exclusively be either "completely overpowered, you would never take anything but an AST anywhere" or "completely useless, who even bothered programming these" with no in-between, which makes them more reasonable as BLU spells (where the point of the class is to pick the skills most useful for the situation, learning enemies' status resistances, etc).
We can also toss environmental buffs like Float and Invisible/Vanish into this pool too, given that instances would have to be designed with Float in mind, and a number of bosses already ignore NIN's Hide.

So all we really have left in the Time Magic list is Extend, which Celestial Opposition USED to be able to cover... but was removed because why waste precious hotbar space on such a button when the devs could just fold an extra 3-4 sec duration into AST's effects.

And, unique to Astrologian given their lack of precedent amongst Time Mages, are also effects like Celestial Stasis reversing time to resurrect and heal fallen allies, flavor of "predicting the future" attached to their card system, and a number of appropriate spells revolving around astral bodies such as Malefic and Combust, or delayed effects like Earthly Star and the new "Exaltation" and "Macrocosmos" skills.

You have to remember, "Time Magic" would be more accurately called "Spacetime Magic".

Really the question is, what would a Time Mage be able to salvage if implemented as a DPS job? Despite what you might think being a natural union, there's not much precedent of DoT effects amongst Time Mages, much less DoT manipulation. All you got are Bleed and Extend, and those aren't even available in the same games.
I mean, you could argue for a DoT caster and even name it Time Mage, but it would actually be scrounging for effects it could use because virtually none would fall under known Time Magic spells.

[Tulzscha]

A solid way to answer this question is to look at the most common Time Magic spells:

Gravity and Regen are, in some way, available to Astrologian. Okay yes, "Aspected Benefic" isn't the same name but WHM has Regen anyway, just take what overlap you can get.
On a similar note, Meteor is already represented in game... through the BLM limit break. Arguably though, AST's upcoming "Macrocosmos" skill fits raining down Comets (in a healer-appropriate manner).

Haste has already been noted by Yoshi-P to be a spell we will never see available in-game, because he believes it would be wildly overpowered. (In all likelihood though, it would be considered the worst utility in the game since it would reduce your target's oGCD windows without their control.)
However! Besides Lightspeed, Astrologian's ability to buff allies' damage directly with its cards/Divination covers much of the same niche as Haste and the odd buffs it had in other entries. The upcoming "Astrodyne" skill will do much the same for AST itself.

Likewise, Reflect would also be overpowered, which is why we only see it contained to zones like Bozja.

Teleport and Doom... actually have precedent, thanks to the Trust version of Urianger having a copy of BLM's Aetherial Manipulation and his own execution-variation of Death. AST doesn't have them personally but, pin in that thought, maybe later if you can make an argument why it would need them (admittedly hard to do).

Most CC spells like Slow, Stop, Old, Disable, Banish and Mute would be kinda pointless to implement. Depending on what enemies they can affect, they would exclusively be either "completely overpowered, you would never take anything but an AST anywhere" or "completely useless, who even bothered programming these" with no in-between, which makes them more reasonable as BLU spells (where the point of the class is to pick the skills most useful for the situation, learning enemies' status resistances, etc).
We can also toss environmental buffs like Float and Invisible/Vanish into this pool too, given that instances would have to be designed with Float in mind, and a number of bosses already ignore NIN's Hide.

So all we really have left in the Time Magic list is Extend, which Celestial Opposition USED to be able to cover... but was removed because why waste precious hotbar space on such a button when the devs could just fold an extra 3-4 sec duration into AST's effects.

And, unique to Astrologian given their lack of precedent amongst Time Mages, are also effects like Celestial Stasis reversing time to resurrect and heal fallen allies, flavor of "predicting the future" attached to their card system, and a number of appropriate spells revolving around astral bodies such as Malefic and Combust, or delayed effects like Earthly Star and the new "Exaltation" and "Macrocosmos" skills.

You have to remember, "Time Magic" would be more accurately called "Spacetime Magic".

Really the question is, what would a Time Mage be able to salvage if implemented as a DPS job? Despite what you might think being a natural union, there's not much precedent of DoT effects amongst Time Mages, much less DoT manipulation. All you got are Bleed and Extend, and those aren't even available in the same games.
I mean, you could argue for a DoT caster and even name it Time Mage, but it would actually be scrounging for effects it could use because virtually none would fall under known Time Magic spells.

Instead of Meteor they could have Comet or something similar though with AST being a thing I'm not sure how that'd fit with a Time Mage unless the two jobs were connected like SMN and SCH, if it's a job on its own it may be better to cut out the space part.

Haste could be implemented a number of ways. Bard already has a raid wide speed buff and they're not OP at all.

Reflect could have a cap, prevent some fixed or % of dmg and return some or all of it to the attacker.

Slow could work like the role action debuffs. Some jobs already have hard cc like Sleep for BLM so getting one or two of those is fine if extremely niche.

As a dps job Time Mage would need a bunch of new stuff (like most jobs in FFXIV), you can look up spells from previous games for inspiration but that only gets you so far in an mmo.

First look at anything related to time you could work with: Cooldowns, ability timing, and duration effects (buffs and debuffs including dots). I don't think Time Mage would be a great candidate for a dot-focused job, looking at what it could do it'd be much more interesting to go down the delayed dmg + cd manipulation route. I started designing this job a while back but while doing research someone already posted almost the exact same idea on these forums about 6 years ago lol. The job has a lot of potential though.

[Ayche]

A solid way to answer this question is to look at the most common Time Magic spells:

...

You have to remember, "Time Magic" would be more accurately called "Spacetime Magic".

Really the question is, what would a Time Mage be able to salvage if implemented as a DPS job? Despite what you might think being a natural union, there's not much precedent of DoT effects amongst Time Mages, much less DoT manipulation. All you got are Bleed and Extend, and those aren't even available in the same games.
I mean, you could argue for a DoT caster and even name it Time Mage, but it would actually be scrounging for effects it could use because virtually none would fall under known Time Magic spells.

Ah, you looked it at like that.
I did not really consider how Time Mage functioned in the old games, mostly just the aesthetics of time magic. Not like FFXIV Ninja is forced to spend their armory to do damage by sacrificing spare weapons.

"Slow" that damages and "Haste" that makes you do more damage can all be in the mood of "time magic to do more damage". Let AST keep the space magic, and let this DPS Time Mage just do damage with time-aesthetic spells. All in the game of just letting us get iconic Time Mage artifact gear into the game.

[LordMetal7]

Ah, you looked it at like that.
I did not really consider how Time Mage functioned in the old games, mostly just the aesthetics of time magic. Not like FFXIV Ninja is forced to spend their armory to do damage by sacrificing spare weapons.

"Slow" that damages and "Haste" that makes you do more damage can all be in the mood of "time magic to do more damage". Let AST keep the space magic, and let this DPS Time Mage just do damage with time-aesthetic spells. All in the game of just letting us get iconic Time Mage artifact gear into the game.

Question though but would time mage be more of a support type? because all i'm thinking is haste

[Shurrikhan]

Most CC spells like Slow, Stop, Old, Disable, Banish and Mute would be kinda pointless to implement. Depending on what enemies they can affect, they would exclusively be either "completely overpowered, you would never take anything but an AST anywhere" or "completely useless, who even bothered programming these" with no in-between, which makes them more reasonable as BLU spells (where the point of the class is to pick the skills most useful for the situation, learning enemies' status resistances, etc).

Not necessarily. All you need is literally any of various ways to balance the effect on a given enemy such that its potency, or duration, is proportionately lower as the mob's stats (or, average throughput) increases (i.e., by affecting one of the mob's stats by an amount based upon your own stats).

Even if, say, (a spammable) Disable were to still reduce the target's damage by a percentage, it needn't be the same percentage on every mob. A single percentage regardless of target fits a CD, since you'd want to potentially bank it for the greatest total mitigation across an encounter but makes no sense for a spammable spell. In such a case, it would essentially work like a stackable shield, increasing the tank's eHP at cost to MP and slightly to GCD-efficiency relative to just healing the tank up after. That's nothing inherently overpowered except to the extent that any means of potentially double-shielding would be.

In this game, Stop is effectively just stun, but the same balancing logic applies there as it would any very strong Slow or Disable. You could have it work on bosses, even, but it'd be highly situational -- only briefly delaying their skill queues (likely to the frustration of those playing towards very specific uptime strats).

[Archwizard]

A single percentage regardless of target fits a CD, since you'd want to potentially bank it for the greatest total mitigation across an encounter but makes no sense for a spammable spell.

Sounds like you're suggesting Addle, Feint or Reprisal but linking it to the user's stats, knowing full-well that such mitigation skills are ineffective on high-end bosses since their major raid-wide attacks are usually untargetable.

In such a case, it would essentially work like a stackable shield, increasing the tank's eHP at cost to MP and slightly to GCD-efficiency relative to just healing the tank up after.

So you managed to take Disable, and logic it into a Barrier Heal?
In a time when people are arguing whether Lightspeed and Divination are close enough to Haste for AST to be considered a Time Mage, where people argue Gravity isn't really Gravity because it doesn't halve target HP, where people forget Aspected Benefic is functionally the same as Regen, you're arguing that Disable -- a target debuff that has more in common with Paralysis -- should be a stackable shield?

Also, just putting this out there, I have no idea what you're trying to argue for here. Is this just a hypothetical to be contrary to the conclusion I gave? An argument for Time Mage as a DPS with a barrier utility? An argument for Time Mage as a Barrier Healer, despite AST covering the "Time Mage as a healer" niche?

In this game, Stop is effectively just stun, but the same balancing logic applies there as it would any very strong Slow or Disable. You could have it work on bosses, even, but it'd be highly situational -- only briefly delaying their skill queues (likely to the frustration of those playing towards very specific uptime strats).

I feel you'd be better-served having Stop or Disable just be a reskin on Sleep or Repose for whoever is using it.

[Shurrikhan]

Sounds like you're suggesting Addle, Feint or Reprisal but linking it to the user's stats, knowing full-well that such mitigation skills are ineffective on high-end bosses since their major raid-wide attacks are usually untargetable.

Which is an issue only if (1) you consistently need its eHP (i.e., if this hypothetical Time Mage must fill the role of a barrier healer specifically, rather than milk all possibilities attached to a time-themed healer), and (2) don't freeze categorically inactive duration timers (essentially, anything but DoTs) when the boss jumps away.

If this were to be part of a Time Mage kit, you wouldn't just be spamming status effects, though. You'd likely be taking stuff like Time Dilation to emergency-save someone by delaying their would-be death by 2-3 seconds (depending on if oGCD or GCD) to drop heals on them, Time Compression to stack someone full of HoTs or an enemy full of DoTs and then surge those through for higher relative mobility if your DoTs are tied to instant casts at above your filler ppgcd, et cetera.

That's besides the point, though. I'm just pointing out that status effects can likewise scale.

So you managed to take Disable, and logic it into a Barrier Heal?

As a spammable spell, a damage reduction to an attacker is an eHP increase to its target. As that is on demand, yeah, that works a whole lot like a barrier in how it affects one's tank.
A: The boss deals 20% less damage, reducing what would have been 10k damage. Target takes 2k less damage.
B: Tank gets a 2k shield, and therefore takes 2k less damage.

Difference? That the 2k shield can't stack with a(nother) 2k shield, while the 2k mitigation can.

Is this just a hypothetical to be contrary to the conclusion I gave?

The rationale is right there: CC and damage-dealt-reduction don't inherently break when taken off the CD, so long as they scale appropriately.

There are no strings. There is no baggage. There is no grand design. I just don't think CC is inherently dead by design.

(If I had my druthers, I'd give this shit back to AST, despite going further with it. I felt that Diurnal vs. Noct should have instead been exactly that from the start -- ways of manipulating time. I don't think we need a separate Time Mage job. But that is neither here nor there. I just don't think status effects are any more necessarily broken than is, say, any damage buff or barrier.)

I feel you'd be better-served having Stop or Disable just be a reskin on Sleep or Repose for whoever is using it.

If I weren't to make it its own thing, why wouldn't I just call the thing that just prevents all actions and doesn't break from damage... a stun? It is, again, effectively just a stun, so long as it doesn't pause all buffs on the target (which seems unlikely to be designed in).

[LordMetal7]

Which is an issue only if (1) you consistently need its eHP (i.e., if this hypothetical Time Mage must fill the role of a barrier healer specifically, rather than milk all possibilities attached to a time-themed healer), and (2) don't freeze categorically inactive duration timers (essentially, anything but DoTs) when the boss jumps away.

If this were to be part of a Time Mage kit, you wouldn't just be spamming status effects, though. You'd likely be taking stuff like Time Dilation to emergency-save someone by delaying their would-be death by 2-3 seconds (depending on if oGCD or GCD) to drop heals on them, Time Compression to stack someone full of HoTs or an enemy full of DoTs and then surge those through for higher relative mobility if your DoTs are tied to instant casts at above your filler ppgcd, et cetera.

That's besides the point, though. I'm just pointing out that status effects can likewise scale.


As a spammable spell, a damage reduction to an attacker is an eHP increase to its target. As that is on demand, yeah, that works a whole lot like a barrier in how it affects one's tank.
A: The boss deals 20% less damage, reducing what would have been 10k damage. Target takes 2k less damage.
B: Tank gets a 2k shield, and therefore takes 2k less damage.

Difference? That the 2k shield can't stack with a(nother) 2k shield, while the 2k mitigation can.


The rationale is right there: CC and damage-dealt-reduction don't inherently break when taken off the CD, so long as they scale appropriately.

There are no strings. There is no baggage. There is no grand design. I just don't think CC is inherently dead by design.

(If I had my druthers, I'd give this shit back to AST, despite going further with it. I felt that Diurnal vs. Noct should have instead been exactly that from the start -- ways of manipulating time. I don't think we need a separate Time Mage job. But that is neither here nor there. I just don't think status effects are any more necessarily broken than is, say, any damage buff or barrier.)


If I weren't to make it its own thing, why wouldn't I just call the thing that just prevents all actions and doesn't break from damage... a stun? It is, again, effectively just a stun, so long as it doesn't pause all buffs on the target (which seems unlikely to be designed in).

I apologize but is all of this MCH Related? O.o

[Shurrikhan]

I apologize but is all of this MCH Related? O.o

It was a reply to a post about Time Mage.

It follows from your title -- or, alternatives to your idea / what other ranged dps people would like to see added -- just not necessarily your particular idea for that space.