Freelancer, A concept for a [Solo] limited job.

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As of late I’ve been thinking about the Blue mage job, It’s solo capabilities with basic instinct and the future of limited jobs in general. Since Blue mage is always tied to group content for spell acquisition and the dev team are willing to put resources into solo content such as trusts and the masked carnival, I believe there’s a niche for a limited solo job.
With that in mind I’ll spew a load of opinions on how this niche could be filled with my concept of a limited Freelancer job.

What is a freelancer?
If you aren’t familiar, the Freelancer/onion knight is a final fantasy job that is versatile but weak, its strength being that it gets stronger from mastering other classes either by higher stats or from having access to multiple class abilities at once. Because of this trait however it would likely never be viable as a normal job but with limited jobs where devs can recycle content and not care too much about class balance it would be right at home.
The job would start at lvl 1 and possibly require completion of the 5.0 MSQ, something along the lines of underwater gerolt finds a job crystal that relates to Azeem to explain why only “You” can use it for a solo job.
How would this job work?
Role – Tank [Limited]
I came to the conclusion that it would work best as a limited solo job that can complete dungeons/trials/normal raids, since if it were in groups, it would basically just become Blue mage V2.0 with a different skill learning mechanic and I believe in that case the effort could be better spent improving Blue mage instead.
As a solo job that could run dungeons you would essentially be playing a tank with increase damage and healing capabilities, because of this the Tank role would best suit it as Rampart/Reprise/Arms length could provide some mitigation for players who haven’t levelled any of their tank classes. Interject/Low blow are also needed for specific situations so having them built in would be another bonus of being a Tank.
Weapons
Sword (Right arm), Crossbow gauntlet (Left arm)
Freelancers are jack-of-all-trades adventurer types so a sword would be the obvious choice for maintaining the job identity, this also has the benefit of there already being plenty of Paladin/Gladiator arms that are available for use to further cut time spent creating weapons.
While a physical weapon is needed, A freelancer in FFXIV would need to embody all classes in one, meaning magic and ranged attacks are also needed. My best idea to address this would be an auto-loading crossbow built into a gauntlet/glove as their side-arm (Would also help round out the stat numbers of the sword since their balanced to be held with a side-arm) for ranged attacks and then magic could be cast from their free hand. This could be as a primary and sub wep or just a combined primary wep.

[undull1]

Armor
Keeping with the Freelancer identity of being able to equip anything they should be allowed to wear any combat class gear except for Job-specific gear. This could potentially require adjustments to Freelancer stats to account for the differing stat types for different armours.
A trait that gave an extra damage bonus from intelligence and dexterity (e.g. 1.5x the amount gained from strength) could be given to give further choice to how a player wishes to build their freelancer, (e.g. focus on fending armour with high defence for survivability or take scouting armour for that increased damage).
Skills
1/2/3 melee combo, 1/2 melee AOE combo/1 ranged attack/1 full-cast single target spell/1 single target heal spell
Alongside the 8 default GCD actions and the tank role actions, the player would obtain the rest of their skills via a Freelancer skillbook. This would be practically identical to the blue magic spellbook (They could even use the same UI most likely) except it’s actions would be obtained via completing other job quests instead. From those actions the player could choose up to 20 skills. While Blue mage has a slightly higher 24 skills, this concept of a Freelancer would also have a lot more buttons to press than a Blue mage so 20 skills would be a safe amount if the devs wished to prevent button bloat.
Like Blue mage this job also wouldn’t have any job gauges due to already having a variety of skills to contend with.
Access to tank limit breaks with a unique level 3 could be an option although like blue mage it may not be considered necessary especially when multiple tank Invulnerability skills would be unlockable in its place. Despite this I feel like limit breaks could also play a more active role as a solo tank in helping to tank some of the harder stack marker mechanics that a Blue mage would usually diamondback through.
Traits
The one important trait would need to be immunity to vulnerability up/physical vulnerability up/magical vulnerability up. This would be to account for boss fights where multiple players are needed for a mechanic.
As mentioned, before it would also be imperative that stats can be adjusted via traits to give meaning to the player armour choice, or else it would likely be full fending sets every time.

[undull1]

Skill learning
The main feature of a freelancer is that they would gain skills learnt by other classes, in practice though if you were able to use any skill from any class it would lead to having plenty of functionally useless skills which would mean time wasted on making job actions that nobody would use. To address this, I’d give the following ground rules for what sort of skills would be added to the Freelancer skillbook:
• No GCD weaponskill replacements that are upgrades of the class default skills (123 melee, Heal spell, Casting spell, etc.) as they would likely become mandatory and take away player choice. DOT attacks such as goring blade, windbite and miasma or long cooldown attacks such as shadow fang, drill and sonic break would still be acceptable as they are adding to a player’s self-made rotation rather than replacing part of it.
• No skills that interact with their classes job gauge (e.g. Black mage fire spells, Paladin oath gauge, etc.).
• No set and forget skills (e.g. Monks fists of fire, Scholars Fairy summon, Astrologians sects).
• No AOE focused damage actions, this is more to reduce the need for AOE skills to deal with dungeon pulls that wouldn’t be useful against bosses. Instead, this lost AOE damage could be given as an increased potency for the 1/2 melee AOE Making it stronger than the standard for most tank AOE combo’s. An exception could be made for strong skills that also have an AOE additional effect such as Paladins Confiteor, White mages Assize or Dark knights Abyssal drain.
• No Blue mage skills, Part of the idea is to avoid competing with Blue mages after all and of the skills Blue mage has, Most are taken from monsters already which doesn’t flow so well with the Freelancer job identity of mastering specific jobs.
Alongside this, the skills would be added to the Freelancer skill book by completing job quests of the appropriate level. One specific skill would be acquired from completing the job quests at levels 15/30/50/60/70/80/90 (For jobs that start at higher levels they would have all the previous levels of Freelancer skills added at once upon completion, so completing the initial level 60 Gunbreaker quest would add the level 15/30/50/60 Gunbreaker skills to the skillbook all at once) and would require the Freelancer to be at the same level as the equipped skill to use it (e.g. To use a skill earned from completing the level 30 Monk quest the Freelancer would need to be level 30 or higher).

[undull1]

As an example of a potential skillset lets use Paladin up to level 80:
Level 15 (Gladiator) = Fight or flight (A powerful damage buff that only applies to physical damage meaning there is player choice as to whether they have enough physical skills compared to magical skills to justify having it).
Level 30 (Paladin) = Spirits within (Damage that would be dependent on players health, Players with plenty of healer abilities would find more use from it).
Level 50 (Paladin) = Hallowed ground (An invulnerability skill that could be useful for bypassing mechanics that would be fatal for solo players)
Level 60 (Paladin) = Goring blade (Used as the third step of the 123 melee combo when the DOT isn’t up, it would provide additional DOT damage)
Level 70 (Paladin) – Requiescat (A powerful spell buff that could improve magical DPS or healer skills)
Level 80 (Paladin) – Confiteor (Finisher spell that is only available under Requiescat effects and works primarily as a single target spell despite it’s extra AOE damage)
With this method of skill learning it provides a gradual increase in a freelancers capabilities while also keeping strong high level skills from trivialising lower level content too much (Which is a problem for Blue mage that still hasn’t been addressed) and if meta skill setups do arise it would still differ greatly between different levels of content due to the different abilities made available.
There is also the issue that some classes will inevitably have more viable skills for a freelancer (e.g. White mage has plenty of OGCD abilities that have no special requirements to activate) compared to others (e.g. Samurai skills are almost all reliant on using or building up their job-gauge). To alleviate this those jobs with few potential Freelancer actions could also include unused role actions from their own class (e.g. Bloodbath, Lucid dreaming, Feint) as learnable skills.
With all of this in mind, completing a job up to its level 90 quest in EW would provide 7 skills, Including current jobs and new jobs while excluding BLU this would be 19 x 7 = 133 possible skills to choose from at level 90, A large amount for sure although similar to the amount BLU would likely have at level 90.
Why bother?
So the elephant in the room is that opinions on limited jobs are…..mixed to say the least and while I think the way BLU has been implemented wasn’t great, a lot of its issues come from being overly-reliant on party-finder groups and a lack of value besides the unique experience.

[undull1]

So aside from the novelty factor, Freelancer would be ideal for speed run purposes due to being solo and having plenty of room for theorycrafting and experimentation. The rewards being possible mounts/glamours/titles for time-related achievements and also have weekly challenges like masked carnival that require completion of a specific level 15-29/30-49/50-59/60-69/70-79/80-89/90 duty within a time limit each week.
This would mean that content could be completable for players with few jobs levelled but beating it in good times to earn specific rewards requiring many jobs levelled to properly optimise your skillset.
Pros
• Solo content allows older dungeons/trials to be experienced in a new way.
• Uses pre-existing job actions, meaning less time spent on action implementation.
• Rewards players who have invested time into levelling multiple jobs and acts as a value add for those who haven’t already.
• Having access to all gear types on a single class would be a great addition for glamour enthusiasts who want to mix and match and since it’s solo it wouldn’t affect those who wish for class restrictions on other people’s gear in group content.
• Provides access to a classic final fantasy job that would be unlikely to get a place as a normal job.
Cons
• Limited job, not as many players will engage with it due to lack access to group content.
• Freelancer job action potencies would still need to be tested and tweaked for balance purposes
• The player animations for Freelancer job actions would need to be adjusted to account for Freelancer not having the same weapon or stance as the class it came from.
• Could create an unfair advantage in overworld content such as FATEs and hunts, I’m not familiar with how BLU affected these communities but I’d expect a Freelancer job would be a problem unless they set it so they can’t interact similar to the way you can’t attack FATEs below your level.
• If they were able to solo extreme raids/trials then it could disincentivize veteran players from grouping up for harder content when they could potentially clear by themselves.
• Certain bosses have mechanics that incapacitate a member (e.g. susanno, hades, that gooboo boss that eats you, etc.), This would be unavoidable death for a solo player as they cannot damage the boss enough to free themselves. This could be dealt with by giving salted earth a “20X damage when unable to move additional effect” or something but regardless, it would be a problem that needs a work around.

Overall, I’ve had fun mulling over how a freelancer could fit into the game as I sincerely believe the best way would be as a solo job but opinions will always differ. anyway i'm curious on what other peoples thoughts are, Would you like to see a freelancer as a limited job or not?

[MellowMink]

You definitely put a lot of thought into this well-organized thread, so I hope that a developer takes a look at it sometime! I appreciate the good writing and categorization as well.