Sword Saint: another potential job concept!

[AriaValkyrie]

Hello again!

It's fun to make fake jobs like my Green Mage and Ranger, so I wanted to mess with another one. And since I've been running Orbonne a lot lately going for a glam piece that still eludes me, I settled on the Sword Saint!

To start off, for high concepts with this version of Sword Saint: Current iteration shares Maiming gear but could easily work with Caster gear, which should make sense thematically after reading the idea behind the job. Of course the Sword Saint is strength-based in Tactics, hence settling on Maiming.

Wielding a single Knight Sword, the Sword Saint is slow and strategic, dealing high weaponskill damage with no off-global damage. The best way to explain the core mechanics is with Traits for this one.



The Sword Saint uses MP for a lot of their weaponskills, but has no weaponskill combos like other melee. Instead they are more free-form with their abilities, to an extent. Their executed weaponskills are marked, likely on their job gauge, and the more unique weaponskills they use in a row, the more their damage increases.
Their combo ends once they execute a weaponskill in their current combo. It might also lower their damage dealt or make them unable to begin another combo, not sure yet.

In terms of their standard abilities, here's most of their weaponskills (potencies are mostly to show flavor, take them with a grain of salt)





These encompass the majority of the Sword Saint's offensive abilities. most of them use MP to execute, with a pretty hefty cost for them. Some have cast times and deal slightly more damage or have good bonus effects, some are instant with positional damage.

The higher overall damage is due to the slow, constant nature of the Sword Saint's damage, with all of their damage coming from the GCD.



They also have a set of weaponskills to recover their MP, since they don't recover MP in combat naturally.

[AriaValkyrie]

They don't have a lot of off globals or other utility, but they have a few to choose from at optimal times.



The two abilities on top are stances:
Focused Blade activates when switching jobs, basically a flat damage boost.
Balanced Blade, however, is how this Sword Saint changes to AoE, dropping their overall damage by 50% and dealing flat damage to all enemies in their AoEs

Rather than have a dedicated AoE rotation, almost all of the Sword Saint's skills can be modified to be AoE. Astute eyes might have noticed that most of the weaponskills have varying ranges, corresponding to varying shapes and types of AoE damage, with cones, lines, and circles.

Proper understanding of the ranges of the weaponskills and effects, are key to properly playing Sword Saint, keeping a combo active and planning ahead to ensure you don't end your combo early preparing the stronger sequences of weaponskills.

All of the weaponskills above are named after sword skills that Sword Saints have access to, besides Astral Munition, which was made if they have to be at a farther range than their weaponskills allow, and as a way to not break their combo if they need to delay by a GCD or so.

There is one other weaponskill not named after a sword Saint Skill, but i feel might work thematically for the purposes of this concept:



Courtesy of FFXII, Flame Purge is a combo-ending weaponskill with a long recast time, as a way for the Sword Saint to deal high damage before a boss jump.

All-in-all, this version of Sword Saint is the most similar to a Black Mage in function, with high-potency GCDs but no off-global damage. Their burst phase would require preparation and strategic use of their skills for optimal damage, but with no set rotation, it's up to the Sword Saint to determine the best flow for their attacks.

With 24 actions total, the Sword Saint lies at 2 actions under Samurai currently, for an idea about how hotbars would be set up with it.
While their hotbars would have a lot of actions, again, the sword saint's GCDs don't flow as rapid as the striking or scouting jobs, for slower and more strategic combat, giving a good amount of time between actions to maneuver along the wide array of possible actions.


Again, this is a concept to show how the flavor of the job works: potencies and percent buffs are not balanced properly for real play, but it is enough to get the point across!


Hopefully this is at least interesting to other people! It's a lot of fun to experiment with fake jobs like this. Personally I think their AoE would be the most fun aspect of the job with all the varied shapes of their weaponskills.

Let me know what you think!

[Theodric_Thorne]

Would this be kinda like WoW's Ret paladin but without the party utility from pocket healing? I'd be all over this if so.

[AriaValkyrie]

I haven't played WoW so I can't say if this would be like ret paladin or not. If it reminds you of it though, then maybe!

I try not to look up other MMOs/classes when making something new, personally, but possible there's inspiration there for improvements and such.

[Hezhi]

I'd be all over this.

[Lyth]

Interesting idea, and something that could fit with southern Ilsabard, given the Unyielding Blade sword style being taught in Corvos/Locus Amoenus. The main difficulty is that we have a lot of melee as it is, and a lot of sword jobs at that. Zidane-style double-bladed swords haven't been done yet, though, if you're going for multi-hit attacks, and you could put them under Scouting if you're opting for a more agile fighting style.

You're sitting at roughly the action budget, but I didn't see anything along the lines of mobility tools, unless I've missed it. That's the very first thing that I'm interested in when playing melee/tank jobs. Could we have a roll? A personal speed boost? Some combination of the two? Is there an Ivalice-themed gap closer that you could implement that feels different from what we currently have?

[AriaValkyrie]

Interesting idea, and something that could fit with southern Ilsabard, given the Unyielding Blade sword style being taught in Corvos/Locus Amoenus. The main difficulty is that we have a lot of melee as it is, and a lot of sword jobs at that. Zidane-style double-bladed swords haven't been done yet, though, if you're going for multi-hit attacks, and you could put them under Scouting if you're opting for a more agile fighting style.

You're sitting at roughly the action budget, but I didn't see anything along the lines of mobility tools, unless I've missed it. That's the very first thing that I'm interested in when playing melee/tank jobs. Could we have a roll? A personal speed boost? Some combination of the two? Is there an Ivalice-themed gap closer that you could implement that feels different from what we currently have?

Honestly, I made this with Sword Saint specifically in mind but the concept is capable of changing to a lot of different themes/weapons. I personally imagine it being less agile and more like a slow but persistent damage. Speaking of double weapons though, perhaps going less Zidane-style and more like Gabranth from XII.
Certainly a possibility.

I know we have a lot of melee jobs too, which is mostly why I wanted to make this one unique amongst the existing melees. I think the biggest problem is getting it to fit in organically with the other jobs, since it's more caster-like than the other melee but still.


As for movement utility, I did have one that I actually removed. Sword Saint does have access to a shared ability in Tactics being Counter Tackle, so we could give it a tackle and still have it flavored well. Of course War has tackles already so it's not unique, but it was an option.

I originally removed it after changing the range of their weaponskills, reasoning that if the Sword Saint needed to be at range, they would plan ahead to use their longer-ranged skills for that part of the fight.

Could add it back or stick a speed boost in there somewhere. As a couple options, would be able to split off Lightning Stab from Hallowed Bolt and toss a gap closer in there, or we could toss a speed boost onto Astral Munition, since it's meant to be used at range anyway. Clarity could get a move speed increase. Or a whole new ability, maybe.

There is a bit of a fine balance between giving it too much mobility with more range than the other melees, but there are options.

[Absimiliard]

I for one would love to see Cid's job become available to PCs in FFXIV.

[Housinginneed]

I've always wanted a sword/shield DPS class more than anything else, since holy paladin type jobs were my favorite in FF series, so I love the idea but I feel like this position has already been taken by paladin(at least visually) who, unfortunately is already in the tank camp.

[Runeslayer]

Ivalice Ivalice Ivalice, my forum name is based on my want for sword saint/rune knight from tactics, especially since return to ivalice exists.

I always pictured sword saint a kind of mashup between DRK and PLD considering they master Unaspected, Holy, and Darkness sword spells. Hells some of the moves thundergod can use exist kinda in those classes already, like DRK's unleash and salted earth are 14's interpretations of duskblade and shadowblade.

The Thundergod is depicted to be the ultimate blademaster, so I would like it's gameplay to reflect that.