Performer Development Thread

[Ilium]

Ability	Description	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Witch Hunt	A dance whose esoteric moves reduce enemies' MP.	1	All Enemies	17	100
Mincing Minuet	A dance whose fervent steps damage enemies' HP.	1	All Enemies	17	100
Slow Dance	A dance whose sedate pace reduces enemies' Speed.	1	All Enemies	13	100
Polka	A quick, vivacious dance that reduces enemies' physical attack power.	1	All Enemies	13	100
Dissilusion	An exotic dance that clouds the mind, reducing enemies' magickal attack power.	1	All Enemies	10	100
Forbidden Dance	A mesmerizing dance that inflicts status effects. Effect: Blind, Confuse, Silence, Toad, Poison, Slow, Stop, Sleep.	1	All Enemies	10	100
Last Waltz	The ultimate dance. Drops the CT of all enemies to zero.	1	All Enemies	5	100

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Fury	Increase physical attack power.	HP Loss	550
Brave Up	Increase Bravery.	Physical Attack	500

Support


None



Movement

Name	Description	JP
Jump +3	Increase Jump by 3.	1000
Fly	Fly over enemies as well as any other obstacles.	1200

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Name	Description	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Seraph Song	A song pleading for angelic protection. Restores MP.	1         	All allies	17	100
Life's Anthem	A song praising the vibrance of life. Restores HP.	1	All allies	17	100
Rousing Melody	A song of encouragement and inspiration. Increases Speed.	1	All allies	13	100
Battle Chant	A gallant song of battles fought and won. Increases physical attack power.	1	All allies	13	100
Magickal Refrain	A song of the laws of sorcery and of the source of magick. Increases magickal attack power.	1	All allies	10	100
Nameless Song	A thoroughly mysterious song passed down through many an age. Bestows various types of protection. Effect: Reraise, Regen, Protect, Shell Haste.	1	All allies	10	100
Finale	The ultimate song. Increases allies' CT to 100.	1	All allies	5	100

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Magick Boost	Increase magickal attack power.	HP Loss	400
Faith Boost	Increase Faith	Magick	500

Support

None



Movement

Name	Description	JP
Move + 3	Increase Move by 3	1000
Fly	Fly over enemies as well as any other obstacles.	1200

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[/p]

[kablizzy]

I've got some awesome concepts here, both for Dancer and Performer. I don't think it's too outlandish for us to have White Mage and Black Mage or Oracle and Mediator and not Dancer / Bard. I'll comment on both and Performer soon.

[Ilium]

Yes I would ultimately like to see Bard and Dancer separate jobs as well, and I believe between what we already have to work with plus your ideas we can get both of them ironed out. Plus keeping the two separate along with swapping out Mime with Blue Mage will keep our three tiers of classes equal.

[pendejochy]

If splitting them is giving you trouble, why don't you just make performer, but give it the choice between two master classes, master dancer and master bard?

[kablizzy]

That's a neat idea too, I just figure that with the drafts I have made, there's enough conceptual and mechanical difference between the two to justify two base classes, but we can explore that the more I get into things today.

[sunspawn]

The thing is, they have to do different things, in my humble opinion. One thing that pissed me off in FFT is the fact that these two classes are essentially the same thing, only one helps the party while the other unhelps the enemies.

There should be some way to make one of them do something different than the other.

[kablizzy]

I'll give some insight into what I'm thinking for each.

So, let's start with Bard. In my mind, the thing that jumps immediately to mind is Edward (FFIV), and the whole 'Spoony Bard' concept. So, Bards traditionally have done a couple things;

- FF3: They can perform 'Scare' to scare enemies away and 'Cheer' to boost physical attacks. They can also 'Sing' (Duh) to cast Protect, Aura, Shell, and Heal all allies, and then they have a single ability to damage all foes.

- FF4: Edward has a couple things that he can do. 'Sing' here inflicts basic status effects like Sleep, Silence, Confuse, Toad, and Pig, and also casts Regen and Haste on the party as well as raises their stats. Also has the 'Hide' Command, which is the first time Bard gets it. Also has 'Requiem', which puts an undead soul to rest.

- FF5: Bards here can Hide, Sing, and Equip Harps. Their sing performs a number of Buffs and Debuffs, including Raising the party's strength, magic, speed, and levels, casting regen on the party, and confusing and stopping enemies as well as Requiem again for undead.

- FFX-2: 'Songstress' is akin to Performer, where the Songstress can Sing and Dance. Singing buffs allies (Strength, Defense, Magic, Magic Defense, Accuracy, and Evasion), while Dancing debuffs enemies (Sleep, Blind, Silence, Slow, Stop). Dancing also buffs allies (Always Crit, Haste, Double Max HP, 0 MP Cost, and 100% Magic Damage Reduction).

- FF11: Bards are a party job, buffing allies (FF11 dudes can do a ton of stuff, so just a quick rundown: Soul Voice gives increased effectiveness of bard songs, Pianissimo alters a bard's AoE stuff to a single target for I assume increased effect, Nightingale halves the time required to sing songs, Troubadour doubles the duration of song effects, Tenuto allows Songs to stack, Prelude does dick-all, but is named specifically after the Final Fantasy Crystal Theme Song, so I naturally want to include it.

They can cast regen on all allies in a range, give elemental resistances, cause faster movement (as opposed to haste), lower enemy damage, increase party stats, poison enemies, give reraise, petrify resistance, grant protect, increase accuracy, recover MP over time, dispel positive effects on enemies, cast charm on an enemy, give evasion-UP, Haste, prevent Silence, cause blind, lower enemy resistance to spells, raise attack, Resists silence himself, and so on.

- FFT: Bards are battlefield-wide party buffs, including healing MP, HP, increasing Speed, PA, MA, casting 'Quick', Reraise, regen, protect, shell, and haste.

- FFTA2: THIS is the one I want to focus on for Bard. The Bard has requiem for undead-damage, Hide, Angelsong (Single-target Regen), Battle Chant (Single-Target Defense-UP), Magickal Refrain (Single-Target Magick Defense-UP), Nameless Song (Random positive buff to all in an area), Magick Ballad (Restores 10 MP to all in an area), and Soul Etude (Restores MP and status in an area), and Critical: Hide. I'd love to see this be our "Samurai AoE" class, as his songs can only carry so far in combat. Cool shit.

- FF4HL: Musician and Bard are separate classes, and shouldn't be. Bard can raise the party's attack and magic attack power, Defense and magic defense, raise the party's status attributes (The fuck ever this means), and stop the enemy in their tracks (Stop, Sleep). Musician gives Regen to the party, boosts MA, and Speed.

- FFD: Bard here can inflict sleep, stop, damage to undead, and max vs. current HP damage to all enemies, as well as raising allies' stats, healing HP and MP, increasing speed, strength, intellect, and so on, but ONLY WHILE SINGING THAT PARTICULAR SONG. Cool thing about this is that the bard can only be doing one thing at a time, and not stacking the everliving fuck out of PA / MA / Speed bonuses.

So, if I had to give Bard a niche, I'd say limited self-range AoE buffs, channeled, and non-stackable. Make the songs be +1 MA to all in that range, only while he's singing, and have him have to be positioned near the battlefield and continue singing that song (Like FFT) to give a static bonus, instead of procing each iteration.

Now, Dancer. Dancers are a lot more obscure, and step on a lot of toes.

- FF4TaR: Brina dances some random White Magic spells on the party at no cost.

- FF4: No Dancer class here, but there *are* Dancing girls in the taverns. One of which turns people into Pigs, one of which reduces the party's HP to 1, all of whom Dance to a bastardized version of 'Sabre Dance,' which I find hilarious.

- FFV: Can cause Confuse, absorb HP / MP, and for some reason, 'Sword Dance' for 400% damage. Can also 'Flirt' to charm, and Equip Ribbons.

- FF6 - Ah, here we go. So, Mog dances. He's a combination Dancer / Geomancer. This is what I was basinc my concepts of our Dancer on, in part. Mog has a few Dances that he does, depending upon Terrain - Wind Song / Wind Rhapsody, Desert Lullaby / Desert Aria, Forest Nocturne / Forest Suite, Earth Blues, Love Serenade / Love Sonata, Twilight Requiem / Dusk Requiem, Water Harmony / Water Rondo, and Snowman Rondo / Snowman Jazz. Each of these dances does four things, which all do a plethora of things, none of which I care about, and the geomancer terrain aspect, I don't really care about. Basically, I just like the naming convention.

Much in-kind, I'd love to have an ability called 'Dancing Mad', 'cause how fucking cool would that shit be?

- FF12RW: Dancers can raise faith and brave on nearby allies, disable enemies, and for some reason, restore HP and status to all allies.

- FFTA2 - Ah, here we go. Meat n' Potatoes. Mincing Minuet is ranged damage to a single foe, Blade Dance attacks twice, but only when holding a bladed weapon, Forbidden Dance inflicts a random status ailment, Witch Hunt deals MP damage, Polka lowers an enemies' attack power, Heathen Frolic lowers an enemies' MA, and Jitterbug deals damage and heals the Dancer.

- FF4HL: Can recover AP at differing speeds and rates and for differing allies. Cool concept if we can figure out a parallel for AP here.

Notable Dancer stuff: Arylon is an infamous Dancer. Perhaps naming a Dance after her? Also, Dancers should have ridiculously high P-EV, and a higher speed.

This is just a quick run-down of my ideas, and since these are hybrid classes, this is just a preliminary first-step here. More ideas would be hot.

[pendejochy]

May 26, 2013 1:28:44 GMT -6 sunspawn said:

The thing is, they have to do different things, in my humble opinion. One thing that pissed me off in FFT is the fact that these two classes are essentially the same thing, only one helps the party while the other unhelps the enemies.

There should be some way to make one of them do something different than the other.

But those are completely different things. You might as well black and white mages are the same thing because one hurts the enemy while the other heals the enemy.

Bards and dancers could be sort of like that one class from FFTA2: their statii targets all allies/all enemies, but have a low CoS to offput it.

[kablizzy]

Indeed. I did a spreadsheet a while ago detailing class roles, and what niche each class filled, and Bard and Dancer basically just had opposite roles, and roles that no other classes had. No other class had battlefield-wide buffs / debuffs, but the problem then became a power problem - for HoI, there was no interaction to the class. They just sat back in obscurity and spammed Speed+ songs and Speed- dances, and it was stupid as a french baguette. And the cool thing is that we've got more than enough class combinations for about 200+ classes to have a unique niche in the game, so that's kind of my concept behind why Bard and Dancer should at least get their chance in the sun.

Now, I didn't really like how HoI handled Dancers vs. Bards, for the simple fact that they didn't address any of the issues with Dancers to begin with, and bards were completely different. And herein lies the problem with the sim concept - Some classes are kinda relatively balanced, and some aren't. But if we're overhauling classes to the point where the only classes that will resemble ones from FFT are Black Mage, White Mage, and Monk, then I wonder why we're not just overhauling every class so that we can make them work.

So, to continue on from last night, I like the concept of battlefield-wide buffs and debuffs, but for power purposes, I think I'd like to attempt to keep those to Astrologer and other Master Classes / Awarded Classes. I really don't want players being less interactive in the beginning. Especially if they cross-class with Lancer / grab Move + X and just run around singing unfettered. So, that's kind of the direction I'd like to steer clear from.

[pendejochy]

Maybe make them wide AoE like summoners, but centered on themselves like samurai, to encourage dancers to get closer to the enemy (and make use of their high evasion) and bards to try to buff as many allies as possible while giving foes a wide berth?

[kablizzy]

That's actually a pretty good idea, I-80.

Edit: The Palace of the Dogs: Asylum, Dancing has long been forbidden for its subversive effects on its residents, and its tendency to lead to illegal magical practices.

[Ilium]

pendejochy

Good stuff right there. Bard/Dancer abilities are all Range 2 or 3 AoE centered on themselves, making their placement in battle crucial. That already is a major fix for both classes.