Potential Green Mage: Hybrid Melee/Caster

[AriaValkyrie]

In the few games they've been included in, Green Mages are typically hammer-wielding mages with access to magic with tons of buffs and debuffs. My idea for them preserves this role, but enhancing the fact that they are wielding melee weapons to turn them into hybrid melee mages.


The core of Green Mage's gameplay stems from a simple concept that would come into play from early-on in their skillset, with a bit of a dance between a casting stance and a melee stance.



These two stances are swapped between fairly frequently in the general rotation of Green Mage, but is done automatically by certain spells and weaponskills. The abilities themselves just serve two swap stances outside of combat or pre-pull, based on personal preference, or the needs of the fight.
Visually, War Stance would involve two-handing their weapon, or wielding it in one hand for Magic Stance.

Here's their Weaponskills and Spells; sorted by the starting stances. Blue arrows indicate War Stance, Red indicates Magic Stance.







(upgrades to spells and weaponskills are below their original counterpart on top)

The general idea for the rotation is to perform the first four spells or weaponskills in War or Magic Stance, before using Gavel or Bravery, buffing and swapping to the opposite stance.

At level 52, swapping stances with Gavel or Bravery will grant the Green Mage the effect of Enchanted Arms, letting them use Crush or Drain with enhanced effect. Executing either of these at 54 will allow them to execute Deprotect after Drain, or Deshell after Crush, boosting the damage of their next weaponskill or spell, respectively; Ideally, this is used with the finishers of their boosted combos they gain at level 70: Smite for melee, and Toxify for magic.

[AriaValkyrie]

The Green Mage's starting stance is down to the fight and personal preference, though the decision may also be affected by another pair of abilities:



The Green Mage can form a Bond with one party member, increasing their damage based on their role whenever the Green Mage gains the effect of Bravery or Faith.


For personal utility, the Green Mage has 6 abilities that they can use:



Mostly all self-explanatory. Shield and Leap gain charges as the Green Mage gains levels.


For other utility, Green Mage has quite a few strong additions to their kit:



Spread is one of the more important abilities to head off these utility spells, making their next spell AoE at 50% efficiency for targets after the first.
Erase is a familiar face, fitting for a buff and debuff master to be able to remove debuffs, and this both removes a debuff and grants a short regen. Nothing major, but useful.
Barrier is effectively an additional cooldown, and can be Spread to all party members if desired.
Imperil is their main cooldown to increase the target's damage taken, and can be spread to use in trash pulls in dungeons as well.
Aura is an additional cooldown to buff the damage of a target party member, and can also be spread to affect all party members

While all their utility is powerful, the major drawback to a lot of them is requiring a cast time, or needing to be Spread to affect the entire party.

Another important thing to note is the range of most of their spells being reduced to 15 yalms, where most ranged classes have 25 yalm ranges.
Battle Trance helps make up for the loss of range, sacrificing a good chunk of MP to gain range for all spells and weaponskills until the Green Mage changes stances. Properly planned, the Green Mage shouldn't fall too behind in MP, as certain spells and weaponskills are able to restore their MP.

Spellbound is another ability that allows the Green Mage to increase the duration of their buffs. Typically will be used for downtime, and between dungeon pulls.

No raises though. If anything were to be added, it would need to be an auto-raise that would need to be applied preemptively, which i don't think fits with what we'd expect in typical gameplay.

[AriaValkyrie]

Speaking of AoEs, we also have their AoE abilities:


Simple enough, their weaponskills and spells still swap with each other and they still have access to swap stances with Mallet and Fear.


In terms of Traits, Green Mage gets plenty:



Many of them are split for flavor, such as weaponskill traits falling under Enspell, granting all of their weaponskills some variety of elemental damage, while Green Magic Mastery specifically affects their spells themselves.



In terms of numbers for potencies, I mostly just put what felt right to show the general feel of the job, real numbers would certainly be different. I imagine their overall damage being somewhere around the range of Red Mage or Dancer. Possibly slightly lower, due to their utility, or slightly higher, due to them being in melee range frequently.



From a design standpoint, I've been picturing Green Mages using hammers, maces, or flails that are capable of being one- or two-handed. For an in-game reference, picture Gaia's hammer in terms of general size, not something like Warrior's hammer from p4s.


Lore-wise, several of the Tactics games had Green mage being a Viera job, so I've imagined that Viera were the ones who started using green magic primarily, possibly due to their natural sensitivity for aether/mist, and its applications in spellcraft, eventually growing to encompass battlefield mastery.
I would imagine having the job trainer being a Viera from Rabanastre. Dialogue would likely include special mentions if the WoL completed Bozja or the Ivalice raids, possibly even guest appearances from some familiar faces.


Overall, this version of Green Mage has some simple aspects, but with a great deal leading into optimization that I feel leads to a versatile and complex style of gameplay.

Would love to hear additional thoughts on this, I've been working on its design for a while and I think it's at a presentable point now!

[Tulzscha]

The melee and short range hybrid idea is very cool, the battle mage theme fits Green Mage really well. That may actually be the best way to port the job into this game.

It's difficult to get a solid grasp of how these abilities work together but at first glance this build looks incredibly dull on a single target fight. I could be missing something though. Do you have a rotation in mind?

I get the impression it would really shine in more chaotic situations with the ability to buff different skills on the fly depending on the situation but FFXIV doesn't really work that way. I consider that a fault of the game more than anything, so much potential utility goes to waste.

I don't see the point of Battlemage and Spellblade stance. They're each a 20% buff that inverts melee/range, idk why you wouldn't use them every time you switch stances for the buff so they seem like annoying abilities to use. If they're meant to offer the ability to go full melee or ranged that creates a couple problems: For one it defeats the purpose of a hybrid job, you'd be left with half a job when you could just play something else. Second is balance, chances are one of the three modes will perform slightly better and that's what people will stick with outside of casual content.

[AriaValkyrie]

The general rotation involves using the main spells or weaponskills, like using Temper to buff the next weaponskills, and keeping their buffs active from their various abilities; the main ones being Bravery and Faith, with Concentration and Tranq enhancing them further.

Assuming all buffs are active, the best way to go through their rotation is to ensure they can use Temper to buff their higher-potency weaponskills, especially their dots, but needs to be timed at least two GCDs before they use Gavel to gain Faith, since entering Magic Stance would end the effect. Once they enter Magic Stance after using Gavel, they gain access to their tier 2 abilities, which would be Drain/Osmose, which in turn grants Deprotect Ready. Using Deprotect increases the damage of their next weaponskill and swaps to War Stance, which would ideally be used on using Smite as a finisher to end that branch of their general rotation and swapping over to Magic Stance, until the cooldown for Bravery comes up.

The main 5 spells and weaponskills are what their general rotation would be until their stance swaps, which functions primarily as a priority system. The three spells and weaponskills after those 5 function after their stance swaps.


A lot of what would make their utility stronger is knowing when to be in either stance, highly optimizing for each fight. Being in melee phase and using Spread won't consume the use of Spread when they use an auto-attack, so they could more readily Spread their various buffs like Barrier, Imperil, or Aura.
Optimizing their abilities and stances, and knowing the fights, are key to knowing when to most effectively


As for Battlemage and Spellblade stances, they're mostly a way to change the overall feel of the class. The idea is for them to use at least one GCD to incentivize remaining in one stance. Might be worth giving it a longer cast time. The damage buff is secondary; Battlemage's damage is meant to offset the lack of auto-attacks, and Spellblade's is meant to grant a bonus for remaining in melee range.
It is possible to change them both to instead affect auto-attacks and remove the damage buff, essentially granting them ranged auto-attacks in Battlemage, or adding int-scaling melee auto-attacks in Spellblade, but number-wise it would be better to grant a higher buff to Spellblade, since they'd be only in melee, and would have no ranged damage (as of now).

[AriaValkyrie]

For visuals, here's their damaging abilities in sorted by the general flow. In regular play, the order of first four will still be sorted and prioritized in various ways, and possibly repeated depending on rotation priority.

[Rayne6665]

Whats next? Yellow Mage? Pink Mage? (all jokes aside lmao) GO GO POWER MAGES! XD

[Jaquan]

I don't mind the idea but why Green Mage specifically? They never really struck me as the Melee caster (that was always more of the Red Mage fare).

[AriaValkyrie]

Green mages really aren't involved in many games, but they do typically wield hammers and maces. These weapons are used for item magic, granting access to generally a specific spell while wielding them, like Fire Staffs from the earlier games, but usually with buffs or debuffs like Protect, Shell, Tranq, Blind, Sleep, etc.

Since there's not a lot of games Green Mages are typically involved in, there's not a lot of precedents for their overall job identity. That being said, chances are if you wield a hammer or a mace as part of your job, chances are you'll know how to hit someone with the heavy end, and if a lot of your magics come from enhancing and enfeebling, you'll likely learn pretty quickly how to make those smacks deal respectable damage.

As for why Green Mage specifically, I just like thinking of what would be an interesting mechanics-wise and figured i'd go wild and mess with things for a while. I thought it was underutilized in a lot of games, like how green magicks were included in FFXII, but the job itself is only ever mentioned in the bestiary i believe? never actually becoming an actual job in the game (Though technically a side character from FFXII did become a green mage in Tactics A2, where the job is viera-specific).

Looking at the little we actually have for existing green mages, I thought it made sense to modify them slightly to becoming frontline support/combat mages rather than a backline support with occasional damage.

[Tulzscha]

A lot of what would make their utility stronger is knowing when to be in either stance, highly optimizing for each fight.

Fair enough. The cast times in spell mode make this much more interesting unlike some jobs *cough*smn*cough*.

One concern I have is with the short range of spells. No other job in the game (to my knowledge) has a short range like this and boss mechanics that force you out of melee are probably going to be balanced with the standard range in mind. What do you think about adding a way to temporarily increase range?

As for Battlemage and Spellblade stances, they're mostly a way to change the overall feel of the class. The idea is for them to use at least one GCD to incentivize remaining in one stance. Might be worth giving it a longer cast time. The damage buff is secondary

Hm. So is the intention more about letting players do what they want than being part of the rotation?

For visuals, here's their damaging abilities in sorted by the general flow.

Thank you. Y'know what, I rather like this. It looks like there's a good amount to keep track of between both stances with the long duration buffs and debuffs. Yeah, I think I'd enjoy this job.

Whats next? Yellow Mage? Pink Mage? (all jokes aside lmao) GO GO POWER MAGES! XD

Green Mages have been in previous FF games so it's not as silly as it seems.

But now I'm wondering what those would be like lol.