Time mage

[RPGdemon]

cool topic tazirai, after reading some of this topic i really hope that square add the time mage job.

some spells which could be useful to the time mage would be: (sorry if some have already been mentioned but i only had a swift look through the topic)

quick: makes walking speed twice as fast. (mostly used to escape and travel)

comet: (comet 1, comet 2 etc) large comet comes down crashing on an enemy causing large non-elemental damage

meteor: (ancient time mage spell) huge flaming meteor comes crashing down on enemies, exploding on impact.

rejuvenate: restores 2tp/3secs

time capsule: next move will draw NO hate at all, however it is quite expensive to get as well as costing a lot of mp- mostly used before using ancient spells and powerful WS.

reflect: reflects any magic attacks back at enemy

teleport: choose to teleport in any major city you wish (can cast on party members)

stop: stops enemies for a few seconds

photon bomb: causes damage to enemies and also causes a random stat (could be positive or negative so its a bit risky)

enhance- speeds up casting time for 1 ally (decreases it by 50% for about 1 minute)

cosmo rays- random positive status on party

bind- same as blk/rdm

these are all i can think of right now, i know some might be overpowered, however its up to square or you to decide how much mp they will cost, how hard they are to obtain etc to make them balanced.

[John Doe III]

Just my opinion, but I think it's a terrible idea for a job..specially becuase of the time FFXI takes place.

[Varo]

Geez, I remember Orlandu. The game was stupid from then on. Oh sure, I enjoyed playing God and being able to obliterate anything and everything in my path......for about a week. It got old real quick though.

[Tiamath]

They need a time mage. I mean, really... There should be a class for status buffing and debuffing only... It'd be cool. Like Haste spells, MP regen spells, MP pool increasing spells, sleep, stop, paralysis and all that junk mopped up into one class. Instead they're making classes like Summoners (Man, I'm going to argue this until the day I die) into a support class, and Summoners really shouldn't be.

[DM337]

Originally posted by Tiamath
They need a time mage. I mean, really... There should be a class for status buffing and debuffing only... It'd be cool. Like Haste spells, MP regen spells, MP pool increasing spells, sleep, stop, paralysis and all that junk mopped up into one class. Instead they're making classes like Summoners (Man, I'm going to argue this until the day I die) into a support class, and Summoners really shouldn't be.

That class you described is what I like to call a Red Mage.

[wraith203]

/agree DM337

I think demi would be cool as a 5 or 10 minute job ability. I'm sure they could balance it out pretty good then. Since you couldn't use it every fight(probably), and it would have a fairly large shot of missing(if it follows FF tradition).

Even as someone who plays a redmage, I think timemage could be a fine addition without stepping on the toes of other classes too much. But it would need atleast a few new spells

[Aniga]

I'm not going to disagree with the idea of a Time Mage being a fun class to play, but I am going to disagree with the way it is presented here. Mainly I have to go to an old rule I usually look at for MMORPG balancing:


You - Can - Not - Have - Abilities - Or - Spells - That - Effect - Percentages - In - A - MMORPG

Being able to land even a 20% Demi on a high encounter monster would make a Time Mage overpowered, and not being able to would make a Time Mage into nothing but a buff class. Being able to land a 50% Demi on Experience Monsters would make XPing way too easy.

It's sort of like adding % Cures for the WHM, and giving the WHM sub access to them -- they wouldn't work, they would be abused.

I know having percentage abilities in a game would be neat, and it would make games so much easier if you just stopped and thought about the effects and possibilities of these unique abilities, but they would simply be imbalancing and impractical.

[Karinya]

"Nothing but a buff class", says the bard. LOL. You as much as anyone should know the power of a support character.

And Time mages would actually have some MP for their probable /whm or /rdm sub, unlike Bards.

What existing spells should Time mages get:
Haste, Slow, Gravity, Bind, Warp I/II, Escape, all Teleports.

Regen is Time magic in FFV, so they could get it, but isn't really necessary.

What new spells should Time mages get:
Hastega, Haste II, Slowga, Slow II, Graviga, Gravity II, Bind II, Comet/Meteor (probably dark elemental, there aren't any dark damage spells unless you count Drain).
Quick - a more powerful Haste with recast equal to base duration (stacks with normal Haste). Probably should be level 40+ and have only one version.
Stop - effect similar to Stun, but uses a different resistance (maybe ice). Doesn't interrupt spells/gob bombs/etc. but delays them for the duration of the Stop (making it easier for something else to interrupt them). Possibly should be a series with later versions having longer duration for more MP (but keep the short cast time).
Age - as in FFV, lowers all stats. Unlike FFV, the stat decrease goes away when Age is Erased or wears off. Inanimate monsters (golems etc) and undead resist it highly (like bats and Blind).

Demi spells *could* be balanced (with long recast timers and high MP costs to make their damage/mp no better than BLMs when you can cast them at all), but shouldn't really be necessary with time mages' other tricks.

Degeon/Xzone probably can't appear in FFXI in any form. Speed (slows down battle speed) and Return (restart battle) wouldn't work with the overall flow of FFXI, and Void (stops all casting and music) is far too much of a two-edged sword.

Job abilities/traits:
2hr - Time Warp. All party members do everything 50% faster for 30 seconds (casting time, attacks, movement). Like the 2 hours of other supporting jobs (whm, brd), affects the party and not just the user.
Lv 20, 40, 60 - Magic Extension. Spells with a duration last 10,20,30% longer.
Lv 20, 35, 50 - Resist Stop. (Assuming monsters are added with stop abilities, or beastman time mages).
Lv 15 - Clear Mind.
Lv 30 - Conserve MP.
Lv 15 - Temporal Seal. The next spell you cast will last twice as long as usual (combine this with Quick, Stop, Bind, Sleep if you sub RDM or BLM...) Reuse timer same as the WHM and BLM seals.

Skills: Dagger D, Club D, Staff B-, Evasion E, Enhancing A+, Enfeebling A-, Dark C (assuming it's used for Comet/Meteor).

Would you play this job? Would you invite this job to your party for EXP? Missions? BCNM?

[midknight137]

one thing you have to remember about demi..
it took 25% of current hp.. so if the had 1000hp it took 250... then the next casting took 187 then 141 and so on... you could never kill a monster with demi... not practically anyway....

and in an mmorpg you would get

demi: Damage = 10% monsters current hp
demiaga: AOE Damage = 10% monsters current hp
demi II: Damage = 15% monsters current hp
demiaga II: AOE Damage = 15% monsters current hp
demi III: Damage = 20% monsters current hp
demi IV: Damage = 25% monsters current hp

and then just like the old games.. it missed usually 25% of the time

[tonka]

I think there's a danger of a Time Mage turning existing Red Mages into nothing but a Refresh bot.

If Time Mage gets better versions of Slow and Haste and Demi, they'll be better debuffers, buffers, and damage dealers.

I do agree there needs to be another advanced Mage class tho. Summoner is out of reach for many people, leaving only the basic 3.

[Karinya]

Originally posted by tonka
I think there's a danger of a Time Mage turning existing Red Mages into nothing but a Refresh bot.

If Time Mage gets better versions of Slow and Haste and Demi, they'll be better debuffers, buffers, and damage dealers.

I do agree there needs to be another advanced Mage class tho. Summoner is out of reach for many people, leaving only the basic 3.

Time mage as I outlined it above is a TERRIBLE damage dealer (on par with WHM), and if they can heal at all, it is only through their WHM sub.

Sure, RDM could be "nothing but a refresh bot" - if you had WHM, BLM, TIM and RDM in your backline. (Even then, the RDM would be the best secondary healer, letting the BLM and TIM save MP.) How likely is that? Most parties have no more than 3 mages (or 2+bard) - so if one is TIM, and another RDM, then the RDM is either primary healer or primary nuker (both if you have RDM, TIM, BRD as your backline - the RDM will be overworked even with refresh+ballad).

Also, note that RDM still has superior Enfeebling skill and a wider selection of enfeebles (blind, para, dia/bio, silence, dispel). RDM and TIM would work fine together, with the TIM handling some enfeebles (slow, grav, Stop) and the RDM taking the rest - and having more MP to fill in as healer or nuker.

In some parties above lvl 40, RDM is the primary healer in addition to refresh. TIM can't touch that (they could support heal with a WHM or RDM sub, like BLM already do). They also can't MB except on Compression, Gravitation or the lvl3 that includes dark, and although I didn't mention it above, I'd expect Comet/Meteor to be about as MP efficient as Banish, and probably with the same long recasts - something that is more used in solo than in parties.


About Summoner, I'd like to see it changed so that the elemental spirits were worthwhile, and keeping summons out to fight wasn't a pointless waste of MP. Then summoners wouldn't NEED the avatars (which can only be obtained at lvl 60+) to be effective. But that's really another thread.

[Lexar]

Time mages are cool in the other FF games but I rather see the mystic knight/Sorceror.

[Tukka]

I think the Demi spells could be reasonably balanced under the following conditions:

1) High resist rates.
2) Reasonably high aggro from the spell.
3) Does damage over time instead of instantly.
4) Damage per tick capped.

40% instant damage to an enemy seems nuts to me. I'm still a newb though, at level 50+, is there any single spell (not magic bursted) which will consistently do 40% damage to the mobs your party is typically fighting?

I realize Demi wasn't a DoT in the FF games (though few spells were, except Bio). Making Demi a damage over TIME spell seems pretty appropriate for a TIME Mage.

There are a few ways you could have it work, then (just using percentage numbers as an example here, S-E could plug in whatever number they feel is balanced):

1) Have it reduce the target's HP by 20% of its maximum over the course of 45 seconds.
2) Have it reduce the target's HP by 20% of it's current HP over the course of 45 seconds.
3) Have it do a certain amount of percentage damage per tick based on the target's current HP.

But overall it seems to me like Time Mage would just be a duplicate class. Most of the abilities and spells that I could think of for them that would be "class defining" are already possessed by other classes... Haste, Slow, Bind, Stun, DoTs/nukes, Teleport.

The person who said that you can't balance percentages in an MMORPG, that's pretty much true, it's a very tricky balancing act. It's hard to implement a class with "the power of percentages" without making that class critical to groups. Case in point: enchanters and shamans in EverQuest. For those unfamiliar with EQ, enchanters and shamans get Haste and Slow spells which will speed up and slow down the targets' attack rates by 70%+ at high levels. This is just as powerful as it sounds... having someone to slow/haste is critical to party efficiency in EQ from level 55 on up (there are a slim few exceptions, but by and large, you need someone to cast slow/haste).

And since most of the ideas for a Time Mage center around percentages, it'd be something Square-Enix would have to be very careful about putting in the game.

Oh, offtopic, but Final Fantasy Tactics was balanced, in its way. Sure, a Wizard with Math Skill made Orlandu look weak, but the amount of time you spend building up a person with all the requisite job levels to unlock Calculator, and the time you spend earning JP for the horrendously slow acting Calculator, and equipping your party to take full advantage of it, you could beat the game without one.

Orlandu as a "free" overpowering character was a bit much. I still found the game to have pockets of challenge after he was added to the party (more challenge than any other FF game), but yeah, it would have been better if they made him a different kind of knight with unique sword skills. Or what would've been cool is if he started as an Holy Knight with normal equipment, but through completion of side-quests, you could get him Excalibur and class change him to the uber Holy Swordsman. Or do that for Ramza.

[Retleyn]

Perhaps demi would be better as their 2 hour? Or else, it would need to be something like 5% of a monster's total hp for level 1. Or perhaps, make demi similar to an ancient magic, and taking off maybe 10%. Remember, this would draw a lot of hate.

Stop may be a good 2 hour, as well. Wouldn't last long, maybe a 10 seconds or so, but that would be enough.

I used to think a time mage would just be silly, but you may have just changed my mind. I would like to thank to topic creator for actually being a little creative.

[tazirai]

here comes da bump