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synaesthetic · **02-08-2014, 04:40 PM**

You're forgetting that each class can only use one type of weapon in the Armory System, since the weapon is what determines what class you are currently switched to.

So if Rangers use bows, they'd absolutely have to be an Archer Job.

Actually, almost everything you listed requires that the Armory System be thrown away and replaced with a "switch jobs in the settings menu" thing similar to FFV.

Aldotsk · **02-08-2014, 05:17 PM**

I am perfectly okay with not having armory system and not have limits to only one weapon.
I find FFXIV's "one weapon" per job to be extremely silly.

synaesthetic · **02-09-2014, 04:50 PM**

(02-08-2014, 05:17 PM)Aldotsk Wrote: I am perfectly okay with not having armory system and not have limits to only one weapon.
I find FFXIV's "one weapon" per job to be extremely silly.

I agree with you; I love love loveÂ the class switching and the ability to play anything on one character, especially as a PvE endgame addict, but tying it to the weapon is really silly.

It would be much, much easier and cleaner and give us far more gear variety and flexibility if we could just switch classes/jobs in our character pane.

Ideally what I'd like to see is a better split between classes and jobs. As things stand right now there's no reason to use a class over a job once you get your job, so the class beyond level 30 is basically pointless.

I'd like to see them do a few things:

Make cross-class actions wide open for classes. Don't really restrict anything. Give near-absolute flexibility to the classes. Of course, the traits would ensure that cross-class actions wouldn't be too powerful in the hands of other classes, but give us options so that getting those extra ten abilities is tempting rather than just a non-option.

Reduce the attribute gap between the class and the job. Jobs should get a specialization boost over classes, for sure, but it shouldn't be nearly as big as it is right now. Classes need a slight stat buff to close this gap.

Instead of allowing Jobs to cross-class actions as they do now, remove the cross-classing from Jobs entirely and give them five brand-new job-specific abilities (but make sure that the necessary utility features are filled... i.e. making sure WHM and SCH have a Swiftcast analogue, WAR has a Provoke analogue, etc). That way you have a real choice between flexibility (classes) and heavy specialization (Jobs).

Relics and AF/AF+ should remain job-only since they're the iconic equipment of the job, but add equivalent gear so classes can still gear up in the same way that's about as easy to obtain as relic/AF. The Grand Companies would be a fantastic place to put this; a ROLE/CLASS SPECIFIC (cannot be used by Jobs) set of item level 90 gear, including weapon, for each class that has the iconic Grand Company look. A Maelstrom Doublet of Casting (usable by ACN/THM), or a Serpent Tunic of Healing (usable by CNJ). That sort of thing. Make them purchasable from the GC vendor using both GC seals and mythology tomes. Make the class-specific weapons a reward as part of a Grand Company questline similar to the relic quest in scope.

Remove the stat point allocation entirely and instead replace it with Optional Traits that you can purchase with these points instead. Just add 30 points of the appropriate primary stat to the class/job's base attributes at 50 (ACN/SMN/THM/BLM gets 30 extra INT, CNJ/SCH/WHM gets 30 extra MND, etc), and then take the same 30 points you get for leveling up and use those to add extra traits to lower cooldowns, increase potencies, adjust other bits and pieces of your character's skills. Make them subtle but noticeable... examples would be to decrease the cooldown of Shroud of Saints slightly, or to add an extra flat amount of enmity to Provoke (to stop "rubberband" aggro).Â

I'd love one for BLM that would decrease the cooldown of Convert, for example, or one for SCH that would increase the duration of Adloquium shields. How about an Optional Trait for SMN that would give Fester a 10% chance to consume no Aetherflow stacks? One for BRD that would increase the duration of Straight Shot? One for MNK that would reduce the cooldown of Perfect Balance? Or how about one for CNJ/WHM that would allow Stoneskin to be cast on the entire party when out of combat? That'd be fantastic and would give us a lot more flexibility in creating characters that really feel like our own, rather than just simple clones of everyone else.

LiadansWhisper · **02-09-2014, 06:03 PM**

Such flexibility would be a nightmare to balance. Â It's pretty clear from how they structured the game that they do not want us to use Classes over Jobs. Â They're balancing endgame for Jobs. Â Adding classes into the mix would be a real difficulty, I think.

Naunet · **02-09-2014, 07:58 PM**

In which case, they may as well get rid of the "class" and "job" terminology all together, keeping the lore and whatnot but merging the concepts. As it is, the terms mean very little if anything, and the most important thing in terms of designing new jobs is distinguishing them from other jobs; therefore it makes sense to just toss out the useless parts of the system for something more streamlined and more easily adapted with new abilities.

synaesthetic · **02-10-2014, 04:20 AM**

(02-09-2014, 06:03 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: Such flexibility would be a nightmare to balance. Â It's pretty clear from how they structured the game that they do not want us to use Classes over Jobs. Â They're balancing endgame for Jobs. Â Adding classes into the mix would be a real difficulty, I think.

The biggest favor an MMO developer could do themselves is to throw out the idea that anything will ever be "balanced."

You've played RIFT, yes? Consider how complex RIFT's talent system is compared to what I just outlined. Consider also how well-balanced RIFT is, and consider how Trion doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time concerning themselves with "balance" to the exclusion of all else.

Naunet · **02-10-2014, 12:49 PM**

(02-10-2014, 04:20 AM)synaesthetic Wrote: Consider also how well-balanced RIFT is, and consider how Trion doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time concerning themselves with "balance" to the exclusion of all else.

... *crawls into a corner and weeps for the loss of Reaver tank*

Illira · **02-10-2014, 12:53 PM**

(02-10-2014, 12:49 PM)Naunet Wrote:
(02-10-2014, 04:20 AM)synaesthetic Wrote: Consider also how well-balanced RIFT is, and consider how Trion doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time concerning themselves with "balance" to the exclusion of all else.

... *crawls into a corner and weeps for the loss of Reaver tank*

Maybe this will help ease the pain?

Asgarn · **02-10-2014, 01:46 PM**

(02-08-2014, 04:40 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: You're forgetting that each class can only use one type of weapon in the Armory System, since the weapon is what determines what class you are currently switched to.

B-... But, Aeriyn. No class right now uses mammots. ;-; No Puppetmaster? SAY IT AIN'T SO!Â Cry

LiadansWhisper · **02-10-2014, 03:10 PM**

(02-10-2014, 04:20 AM)synaesthetic Wrote: The biggest favor an MMO developer could do themselves is to throw out the idea that anything will ever be "balanced."

You've played RIFT, yes? Consider how complex RIFT's talent system is compared to what I just outlined. Consider also how well-balanced RIFT is, and consider how Trion doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time concerning themselves with "balance" to the exclusion of all else.

But Rift isn't really "balanced." One of the complaints I constantly hear, for instance, is about how unbalanced PvP is.

If there isn't balance in the game, then you're going to end up with raids that class stack. Â When that happens in WoW, for instance, it's a sign that a class is not balanced and nerfs normally follow. Â The difference between balancing for 8 classes vs 15 classes is massive.

Ildur · **02-10-2014, 11:00 PM**

No matter what game I go to, I always hear how unbalanced the PvP is.
Most players always go for the "flavor of the month" class, no matter what you do. The difference between constantly rebalancing and nerfing classes and not doing it is the ammount of time flavorists will stay with the most unbalanced class. This is specially true for PvP.

But Rift is no different. I've been playing it for 30 levels, and I have noted the flavor of the month already. Most mages are necromancers or elementalists. All rogues I've seen are either rangers or tacticians. All the warriors I see are that one that uses electricty whose name I forgot. Clerics are the only class where I have recognized the bigger variation, but even then most of them are druids.

Proper balance is impossible to achieve. What developers have to do is just make sure that all clases are fun and viable and stop bothering with people who play the most overpowered class.
Of course, when you add PvP to the balancing equation you are screwed. Because in PvP the fun and viability is directly dependant on proper balance. Which, as I said, I do not think is possible to achieve.

Naunet · **02-10-2014, 11:14 PM**

The key to balancing PvP is to completely divorce it from PvE. The day all skills function differently in PvP from how they do in PvE is the day an MMO will truly be able to "balance" both (or as close as one can ever get to true "balance").

Regarding Rift, I've actually seen a rather wide variety of classes whilst dungeoning. The thing about that MMO, though, is that most people have 2, 3, or more roles set up that they switch between depending on any given situation (and in a raiding environment, often from fight to fight). It's extremely uncommon for a player to ONLY be a 61 pt Purifier and nothing else.

synaesthetic · **02-12-2014, 06:05 AM**

(02-10-2014, 03:10 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: But Rift isn't really "balanced." One of the complaints I constantly hear, for instance, is about how unbalanced PvP is.

If there isn't balance in the game, then you're going to end up with raids that class stack. Â When that happens in WoW, for instance, it's a sign that a class is not balanced and nerfs normally follow. Â The difference between balancing for 8 classes vs 15 classes is massive.

Ah, sorry, I meant to say "well-balanced" with quotes around it. I know RIFT's balance is balls, and it doesn't really matter. Class stacking does happen, sure, it's even happening in XIV now even with how restrictive and samey our classes are.

Garuda EX is an absolute joke if you take a bard and four black mages. A boring slog through her massive HP pool if you don't. Titan EX is far easier with more melee than casters. The ADS in Turn 2 is easier with two bards. Class stacking happens; theorycrafters will always reduce everything down to one and there's no way to stop them short of using a zero-sum/incomparables system (which are really hard to design well and keep fun).

PvE doesn't really need to be balanced. You can use mechanics to stop class stacking; Turn 4 does it by having two enemy types that can only be damaged by either physical or magical damage dealers. This forces you to diversify your party. There are loads of other ways to design encounters to keep any one class from being preferred over the other... withoutÂ nerfing the class directly and making your players feel slighted. It's still technically a nerf, but it's an invisible one. If you can, buff rather than nerf. Make the enemies stronger if the players feel too powerful. Raise the other classes up if one class sticks out as being stronger in all situations. Design encounters that forbid class stacking or at least make it harder to stack the flavor-of-the-month than to approach the encounter with a diverse party composition.

PvP is easy, just as Naunet mentioned: completely disjoin PvE and PvP. Do it one hundred percent. Any PvP nerfs, adjustments or changes to actions should only ever take effect when those actions are used against another player. Yoshida claimed that this is what his team would do with XIV, and it turns out they did not do this; several PvP-related changes affected PvE to a considerable degree--Rain of Death, Scathe, taking Thunder away from SMN and giving them the PvE-useless Blizzard II, the diminishing returns adjustment that was intended to make PvP stunlocking more difficult making encounters designed to be stunned using the old DR rules more annoying... I could go on.

Asgarn · **02-12-2014, 07:47 AM**

Don't you dare tell me you don't want these guys in FFXIV...

[Image: Puppetmaster03.jpg]

[Image: images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTWAXhS4Y8Un_7xb9Bd2ad...6y5_x-fElu]

Best. Support Class. Ever.

Mtoto Wamoto · **02-12-2014, 10:55 AM**

Gladiator > Dark Knight (GLA w MRD/LNC sub)
imo, DRK would be a status infliction and DPS class. I see it as a specialty hybrid that -could- tank if it wanted to, but its main function is to deal damage while enfeebling the enemy in various ways.

I feel a few adjustments would need to be made before this could happen. a.) Remove daggers as a sword type from the Gladiator base class and add it to another class (such as Scout) b.) add great swords as a sword type for the base class.

Adding a 2 handed option to Gladiator, they could do something like this:

When using a 2 handed sword, you lose access to the shield slot, thus losing shield lob and shield bash.
When using a 2 handed sword, all attacks generate 2x enmity in addition to any other multipliers.
When using a 2 handed sword, attacks are slightly slower but deal substantially more damage than using a 1 handed sword.

With a Dark Knight Soul Crystal set instead of a Paladin's...

Rage of Halone combo loses its enmity generating bonus. It instead receives status affliction bonuses such as fear, gravity, slow, or paralyze.Â

Riot Blade combo becomes more useful. Reduced tp cost to use vs Rage of Halone combo, increases potency, and an additional skill after Riot Blade to create a new 3 combo. Retains the MP restore bonus.

Skills added exclusively for Dark Knight could be something like this:

Souleater - Slowly drains HP while increasing damage dealt to targets. Grants the user Blood Magic debuff and is only removed when using Soul Eater again. Automatically switches off if the caster drops down to 15% HP. Cannot be used at the same time as Blood Weapon.

Blood Weapon - Applies a buff to the caster which grants a drain effect on all attacks. Converts 25% of damage dealt into HP. Stacks with Bloodbath from Marauder (total of 50% conversion). Lasts for 60s. Cannot be used at the same time as Souleater.Â

Fearful Impact - Next attack receives 100% accuracy and applies max fear to the target, regardless of built resistance/diminishing returns. (Fear prevents afflicted target from moving and using weaponskills/spells) Fear duration - 15s. 300s CD.

Absorb - A special skill that changes its bonus effect depending on the skill used before it. For example - If Fast Blade is used before it, Absorb will absorb the a portion of the target's DEX and apply it to yours. Absorb effect lasts for 15s. CD of 30s. Below is a list of skills which affect absorb. Will disrupt combos.

Fast Blade - Absorb DEX
Savage Blade - Absorb STR
Rage of Halone - Absorb VIT and PIE
Riot Blade - Absorb INT
Abyssal Blade - Absorb STR, INT, and DEX (only half the amount of the other absorbs however)

Abyssal Blade - Final weapon skill in the Riot Blade combo. 280 potency when used in a combo. Sacrifices HP to deal damage to all targets in front in a cone (max distance of 10y). The closer the target, the more damage dealt. Further targets take less damage. Would use quite a bit of TP compared to other weapon skills to offset how strong it is.

Anyways, that's my thought on DRK. I have thoughts on other classes and how they could become something else, but yeah. lol.

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