Job Design Contest

[Shougun]

Name: Radiants
Role: DD
Weapon: Whips and accessory (rosary, cross, whatever artifact)
Gear: Striking
Appearance: Belmont / Holy DD, but not the graceful type of holy, if holy magic was used in a violent and dark universe (so no snowflake explosion like Paladin). Like you might take your artifact attached to the end of your whip and whip bash it into the enemy for a giant holy explosion more akin to a nova (not the blue white used for holy normal, but like fiery sun white), may even be the job has access to both holy and fire and so the motif of effects is fiery holy. So one of the spenders might be clutching the artifact and throwing it towards the enemy, radiating light, and creating an exorcist like circle, where then you can smack any enemy in the sphere causing the sphere to pulse fiery chains upon the enemies, and illuminate a sphere at the end bounds, as you strike the whip passing through the orb creates fiery ('holy) chains that pass through the sphere and smash into enemies (imagine as the whip passes into the sphere the whip itself changes it large chains that then bludgeon and tangle enemies inside), meanwhile the skill itself that created the sanctified zone is replaced with a flurry attack which you can unleash to end the field effect, the flares from flurry will hold in position for a second before rupturing (like they were frozen in time, picture Alexander Savage time stop but on holy fire ).
Gameplay: Dark arts from Dark Knight except not spammed between every attack, building up your fervor (faith gone mad), the prayer mechanic allowing you to switch up imbuements with a minor cycle system in place to encourage not always picking the same one (like SMN or Reaper with their alternating attack choice). While the effects might be minor they would be far more accessible than other DD's in the sense you're more consistently buff an attack or offering support, rather than just sometimes, and all of these actions build up the gauge to allow you to make greater effects. The whip would have medium range so you would actually be able to attack at a greater distance than melee but not as far as ranged. Part of this would play into your effects having auto target to nearby (perhaps marked with optional UI, so you can see what the game considers the target), moving from ally, granting them a buff or heal, moving from enemy to enemy to inflict debuffs or improve the rate of your big spenders currency. You'd have decent mobility with multiple abilities that could move you in or around the enemy and allies, perhaps via press and holds built in for movement like your 1 2 3 combo might double over as movement skills simply by holding them rather than tapping (does the effect + adds movement). Add some proc abilities when smacking stuff with imbued skills.

I don't see it. The Blue Mage challenge log is nice, but also very specific and not content most people are interested in tackling. I don't really see the appeal in 'old content but with a team of only Blue Mages.' I don't think content build around a mono-job team comp does anything to compliment a game with a job system at all. It's certainly something, and I do think there is a place for it, but I don't think that alone justifies the existence of a job that literally cannot do anything else worthwhile. Now you can use it to farm bicolor gems I suppose in Shadowbringers zones, which is slightly easier than with real jobs, but beyond that, what else is there? One-and-done spell collection and One-and-done puzzle fights that we don't even get anymore.

At the very least, Blue Mage should be included in PVP, because PVP is already an environment that plays with a different set of tools than PVE. There's 0 reason why Blue Mage couldn't just have its own PVP set and limit break like every other job.

Personally Blue Mage's value to me is only to handle solo content that is awkward to do on normal jobs (which is also limited, though imo easier to 'maintain' than flash in the pan, flavor of the month, type multiplayer content they've given Blue Mage- which is one and done). Fair to say you don't see it, I try to give it the safety quint and I guess I'm just less disappointed than I was originally.. but that doesn't mean pleased greatly lol. Which was like "wow this is hot dodo turds, and should not have been released as such" and now its just a dull ache where I can point at neat spells or niche uses, but still think "it could have been better, it shouldn't have been like this". I'm glad some people have fun with it, and I'm at that point where I'm glad others like it.. Originally when someone liked release blue I was like "wow. your opinion is just bad" lol... I was not impressed XD

PvP Blue could be quite fun! Would like to see deep dungeons and exploratory content too.

I really cannot bring myself to understand why Beastmaster and Puppetmaster are almost universally seen as jobs that cannot be real jobs, because presumably no one believes the source material for Beastmaster and Puppetmaster is humanly possible to be interpreted in a way that works for FFXIV without hurting the integrity of those jobs' identities despite those identities being defined exclusively by FFXI and nowhere else. And yet that appeal to the sanctity of job integrity got yeeted out the window for Bard who is nothing like any Bard in any other RPG ever made, let alone Final Fantasy, Dancer, a job traditionally associated with random magic and debuffing has not a single unique debuff on its hotbar, Summoner who has never used dark magic or wielded books ever in Final Fantasy, Scholar who was never a healer or a pet job before FFXIV, Sage which has literally nothing in common with any Sage from past Final Fantasies, Warrior which is really just Berserker, or Red Mage who's more accurately a Mystic Knight wearing a Red Mage's outfit. This game's dedication to faithful job identity has less consistency than a McDonald's ice cream machine.

Same boat there mate. When people were like "it has to be this way because" there was NEVER an answer that I was even slightly impressed with logically speaking, even now. "BUT BLUE IS ALWAYS BROKEN".. like seriously no, all jobs have always been broken at different points of the game. It made me feel like people didn't play the sRPGs very well lol. "but you can one shot the boss after 10 failed casts!" .... woowee "I killed the boss in 3 moves with normal jobs, what is your point?". SMN, BLM, WHM, SAM, etc, etc they all had some sort of tool that was like O_O;;;; HOLY THAL once you got the combo- honestly in some FF blue was just underpowered in comparison and more of a meme, and certainly SE delivered on meme on release XD. So many bad arguments related to blue, and at release especially it only made me more annoyed because, imo, SE did a bad job making release blue feel good at all in a way that was like "lol so broke, this is awesome". Ultravibration would be an example of where they did much better in that regard.

Even thinking about how I felt back then I get a little miffed in present time lol. One of the few times I felt lied to by SE xD, which could have just been bad marketing but /shrug still quite upset at that time.

Agreed on the other element too though "got to be original, except when we're not". I am still a bit sad that Bard was eaten by Ranger, and as you might have seen from my other gameplay roleplay thread generally think SE's ability to represent the thematic elements of the roles they allow us to be is .. shakey and could use a lot of improvement. That said I'm okay with them trying new things but just need to be confident it's a good idea, for example I cannot honestly think that company wide they thought the most epic (visually) job in the franchise (Summoner) would be a good idea to give it some of the most ridiculous presence in the game via chibis. The chibis were cute, but they screamed anything but summoner. That's got to be like a one person choice lol, or bowing to a system limitation at the time rather than figuring it out or holding off until it was do-able. I'm fairly certain it was one person's given Yoshida mentioned in 1.0 era FC being able to summon primals in the world, and there would only be one primal available (which is interesting, but at the cost of SMN being cool I guess lol).

If the limited job is Beastmaster, puppetmaster, or morpher *(for personal reasons), I'll not be impressed out of the gate, and I'll certainly be annoyed if it just feels generic on top of that. No 20 different colors of the same potency blue mage thanks. Will still be unfortunate to lose cool jobs to 'we can't make jobs have character in normal content' but it'll be worse if they can't even give it good character in limited situations either lol. *Morpher, how FFXI did it, could be a bit logical as limited, but I really would like to see a proper transformation based job as it's just a thing I find cool (huge fan of Harmonixer from Shadow Hearts, Vincent from FF7 and dirge, and Illidan from Warcraft 3 was my go to hero in ladder and custom games).

Here's to hoping it's not going to cannibalize a cool idea and turn out into a very niche okay existence. . .