Honest idea for 8.0 rework: Trance gauges

[Queen-Mog]

Considering how Yoshi mentioned that there will be big changes come 8.0, one thing that i was thinking of is something that can make each job have that much more oomph, Trances!

Tied to their roles, it would charge based on what role you are playing (Less so for doing other things) So a tank charges from taking damage, healers from healing and DPS from dealing damage. But would also charge a little less from doing other actions like tanks healing, healers doing damage and DPS taking some hits.

The trance forms wouldn't be bound by normal burst windows and can be used whenever its charged, without being buffed by others like Astro's divination or dancers steps, that way it can move from being a "Wait 2 minutes until the burst window and deal big damage!" to give more incentive to just use the Trance instead of waiting for the right time in dungeons. But can also be kept for moments where it can be helpful in raids and trials.

Trances would be similar to when you play as other characters or ride certain mounts that change your main hotbar as to give you unique actions based on your specific job.

Some ideas for said Trance forms:

Dark Knight: Let Fray take over to gain increased damage and damage mitigation, having their main heavy hitters like flood of shadow, disesteem, shadowbringer, etc.
Warrior: Lose yourself to your rage, innate holmgang and bloodwhetting, fell cleaves and hard hitting aoes.

Summoner: Think gestalt from FF13 where you ride a summon and command its every attack until you unleash its main attack like bahamut's megaflare.
Machinist: Summon Automaton Knight and wear it like power armor, gaining 100% hp as shields, increased movement speed and damage, but if you lose the shields or run out of time, Knight is unsummoned and you go back to normal.
Monk: Unleash a torrent of attacks by setting all of your GCD to a single second with their attacks, becoming the fast paced brawler its meant to be.
Dragoon: Bring out the twin souls of the dragons and transform like Nidhogg does to Estinien, gaining increased damage, lifesteal, aoe size and more.

Sage: Manage all 4 of your nolinths separately, choosing to either keep all 4 on your enemies for damage, 4 on your allies to keep everyone safe or spread them out to heal and damage accordingly.
Astrologian: Divine the fates of all your allies to grant singular dodges to almost any attack, buffs and shields to whom you choose or doom your enemies to take a massive amount of damage after a certain period of time.
White Mage: Bathe the field in your healing light, granting all allies a hefty regen and cast your spells instantly.


Yeah I know its a bit of a stretch and definitely doesn't fit the MMO scenario, but I'd say it would be something that gives a huge amount of pizzazz and sparkle to each of the jobs and gives them something more to have instead of the homogenization that we have today.

[FeyFavilla]

So kind of like a smaller, class specific LB or ult ability? I think it would need some serious balance but might be interesting. Could maybe replace a major cooldown for each job that the ability is based on.

Honestly, press big button make number big is almost always entertaining. Especially when used on a unsuspecting trashmob. I can see something like this being used for cutting edge metas too, though, saving specific abilities for specific bosses that maybe the fight could be designed around kind of like some bosses require tank LBs.

[Queen-Mog]

Mhmm, using an Astrologian to completely nullify a hard hitting raidwide that would normally require a lot of healing to recover from.
Or using a dps trance to burn adds or mulch trash mobs would be quite a nice thing to see.

Visually seeing it too like watching the Machinist go full Vanquish dashing around the boss and avoiding the AoEs or even just using it to tank an AoE they couldnt escape from or a warrior using it after having already holmgang'd to pretty much be 15-20 seconds of unflinching resolve would be quite something to witness!
While some would make some raids and extremes feel a bit easier as certain tanks can ignore certain mechanics due to invulns, much like they already do, some can be used for damage while others can be used for damage control. Play a paladin and make it so the party is safer or play dark knight and dish out more overall dps.

Though then you would get the min max players who abolish certain jobs in their raids due to "Lack of DPS" or "Not the tank we're looking for" like how paladin and monk were back in 2.0 and 3.0 days, disliked cause they dont fit the meta.
But the overall use and variety of each job would be much better since some can do things better than others~

[Veritas-Ancora]

So would it stack on the 2 minute abilities? I just want to understand how this personal limit break would function.

[Queen-Mog]

I would say it wouldnt stack, that way its not tied to the 2 minute burst windows and can be used at any time when filled.
It charges based on what your role is supposed to do, so for people who do their jobs well get their trance faster than those who are not playing as well, rewarding people for doing their jobs correctly.

Like for DPS it charges with 10M-25M total damage dealt, Healers for 10M hp restored via any source (Tank self heals and dps second wind) and Tanks by taking 5M-10M damage.
They would also charge their gauges at 25% the rate from the other roles charging methods so tanks and healers can still charge their gauges by dealing damage and same with the other means.

Its so you can still do your 2 minute bursts (Unless they change that in 8.0), but outside of the burst windows, you can use your personal trance to deal damage without needing to worry about the burst windows.
It rewards players for doing their job effectively and correctly, even more so when using buffs together to reach those gauge fills faster~

[YumieYumiki]

What makes this idea any different than "heres another button to press during the 2 minute window"?

[NegativeS]

I get where you're coming from here, but in order to be balanced this would have to effectively be just another 2MM button. Even if it was available outside of the burst window, nobody is going to use it outside of their burst window.

Unless you're saying it's not a button and it just happens when the bar is full, in which case it is just bad design since in the examples you give it appears to change your rotation while active.

Basically what I'm saying is, remove the 2MM.

[Valence]

You know why we're struggling to properly design this idea further? Because pve is all about damage on scripted fights and nothing else. This works well with pvp LBs because they all seek to address specific goals that ain't just about pressing a nuke button on cd.
I'm afraid for this to work in pve you'd need SE to actually flesh out other variables in pve.

[Derio]

I would prefer it be not tied to the 2 minute burst window and it should exclude any party buffs for the damage. Should be a flat damage number that scales with your weapon's ilvl.

[Enkidoh]

We had this... years ago. It was called weaponskills and the TP Gauge. (In FFXI this was literally the idea behind it, and FFXIV 1.0 used a modified version originally.). You had to slowly build up TP until it was full enough to let rip with a weaponskill, which were powerful accordingly compared to regular attacks or autoattacks. It meant though that battle was far far slower than it is now (a major complaint of 1.0 players).

Accordiginly, SE changed it for ARR though that instead of building up your TP slowly to use a weaponskill, you started battle with a full gauge that only slowly replenished, allowing players to spam weaponskills and abilities until they ran out (which, was actually quite rare unless you were stupidly button mashing). Eventually, SE just scrapped TP completely, allowing you to use weaponskills to your heart's content.

Job gauges were sort of kind of meant to be the replacement, so unless SE alters Job gauges to better reflect an old style FFXI weaponskill system, I don't see SE going back to that.