Job Concept: Time Mage

[AriaValkyrie]

Hello again!

Back with another job concept, this time for Time Mage, since Green Mage, Ranger, and Sword Saint were all a lot of fun to make.

Again, potencies are only to show flavor, not to show the actual power of the job, as that would require a significant amount more math than I want to go for

To start off, Time Mage's whole deal is time, obviously, so it would make sense for them to be a dot mage.



Nothing too complex there. I chose Bleed since it was a Time Magick in XII, and Demi is a version of Gravity in certain games. Temporal Corrosion is AoE, and Recall Agony is just a cooldown spell to do pretty heavy damage if you're properly keeping your dots up.




Two of the bigger core mechanics for Time Mage as well are Countdown and Deja Vu.

Countdown functions like Spell-in-Waiting from e2, with a potency boost. In its current iteration, Countdown takes a full GCD and boosts the next spell's damage by 500 potency, and putting a 6-second delay on it, snapshotting buffs at the time of casting. This does activate the recast time for any spells with a recast time of longer than one GCD.
Countdown changes the spell itself

Deja Vu repeats the effects of the last spell cast, generally at a flat potency. Just off-global damage based on the spell itself. Deja Vu's action changes to match the spell, like how Tsubame-gaeshi works with Sam.

[AriaValkyrie]

A lot of their spells are AoE as well
Comet is typically a lower-level version of Meteor, which is actually a Time Magic spell, but BLM has that on lock with their LB, presently.
Time Bomb is another cooldown that coincides well with Countdown, high damage on a delay.
A good amount of their spells have various types of CC, particularly Slow, Immobilize, and Stop.
Temporal Entropy is a lower damage, AoE version of Time Arrow, usable in a pinch if the time mage's Dots are about to expire.
Gravity Well is inspired by Zeromus from XII. Similarities with AST's Gravity will be discussed later on.



Gravity Ball possibly upgrades to Black Hole at some point, inspired also by Zeromus (this time from IV), as well as something that ties in with how I picture Time Mage's Identity. The radius of Gravity Ball does seem like a lot but I did also imagine it being similar to Earthly Star; It could easily be reduced but the similarities are intentional based on the explanation below.
Gravity Crush is simply a way to actually do damage with Gravity Ball, probably also their biggest AoE damage dealer.


For beneficial Spells specifically, there's a few:



Old Wounds is a simple regen effect, but on a cooldown since I couldn't think of an easy way to add a cooldown onto a gauge increase for something spammable.
Haste's percentage boost is debatable. I considered having it be single target and giving a boost to the Time Mage for casting it on an ally, like Clemency.
Contingency is something I wanted to play around with. there may be other ways to handle it, like giving a short window where they could raise an ally after death, but having it be a Reraise type effect requires forward thinking and awareness. If we leave it as is, we could maybe also remove weakness from the raise like how it works in BSF.

[AriaValkyrie]

Quicken is the Time Mage's main gauge-spender, basically a resource-spending swiftcast
For Stasis I'm not positive about the damage reduction but it's a way to avoid damage. Cleansable debuffs are removed, and the ones that aren't are frozen. There's also a trait to add a HP/MP regen to it.
Metabolic Acceleration I've been using mostly for MP regen as a way to make the Time Mage pay attention to their MP with lower GCDs and higher MP costs for certain spells. the HP regen just made sense to add to it but doesn't need to be there at all.
Bind and Warp could have been something like Rewind, but they're a pair of movement abilities.
Disable makes a triumphant return after being cut from Astro, simple short cd damage down. Also traditionally a Time Mage thing.

Trait-wise:



Some of the bigger traits I felt like writing down. Auto-Haste should be renamed something, but might gradually build up like how Monk's Greased Lightning works now.

The Quickening Gauge / Second Gauge is what I've worked on for the Time Mage's Job UI. Definitely a clock of some sort, could also track the recast times of Countdown and Deja Vu.
Essentially, the Quickening Gauge ticks at one per second, which is reduced by Auto-Haste, possibly also with Spell Speed. Certain spells also increase this gauge, and it gets spent on spells like Time Arrow and Quicken.

Again, all the numbers here aren't optimized in any way other than what I was leaning towards for flavor, and would require a lot of work to balance out. This version of Time Mage is simply a fast-acting caster with a good amount of utility, and likely would have somewhat lower damage if their utility worked on bosses.

Attaching effects like potency increases on Stop if the target is immune to the CC would be the best way to balance stuff like that, in my opinion.

They would certainly shine best in dungeons where their CC would actually apply.

[AriaValkyrie]

Lore-wise, this would require an explanation. I've been picturing Time Magic and its study as a facet of how Astrologians and Geomancers study the Stars: Geomancers study the Star below (the planet) and Astrologians study the Stars above, in the heavens. I picture Time Magic more in regards to the space between and around the Stars, in the form of Gravity.
IRL, Gravity does influence Time: areas with higher gravity experience time at a slower rate than those with lower gravity, especially when you look at the extremes of Gravity with Black Holes (which you may have heard about in certain Science Fiction movies/books).

I've imagined Time Magic originating from an early Astrologian who took interest in the effects of Gravity, hence where things like Time Dilation came from before it got cut (obviously due to class changes but still). Lore-wise we could say this was due to a number of different reasons, possibly due to discovery of how dangerous Time Magic can be, or maybe due to Time Magic being deemed Heretical (which we did see in a certain storyline). Certain aspects, of course, would still persist, but flavored much closer to Astro's main focus, being the Stars themselves, and Time Mage’s version is focused more purely on the concept itself.

I've imagined the main focus of Time Magic is more the study of ensuring time flows normally, and to hunt those that would disrupt its natural flow or otherwise abuse it.


In terms of the job itself, Time Mage is, of course, a caster, and I've been giving them something between a Flail (heavy/spiked ball on a chain on a stick) and a Meteor Hammer (two heavy weights attached by a long rope/chain, quite interesting to see it in action if you haven't seen one), mostly because I can imagine a job based on the concept of Time would have an idle pose with a pendulum or a metronome.

Also in terms of Limit Breaks, I'm picturing a couple different choices; one being Great Attractor, Ultimecia's trademark ability, or Big Bang from Zeromus (both versions)

There's certainly a lot of room for improvement in this concept but it is just a concept, still.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on the job itself!