Rune Fencer Findings

[Kyte]

I would say a work in progress and heavily dependent on what future content is released (or unlocked).

[Taim Meich]

Pros:
- Very potent magic reduction: Without any kind of job-specific equipment nor merits, the RUN can have a constant -45% damage on attacks of one element, plus that same protection to the party 3/5 of the time. Added to this is the 96 extra elemental resistance of runes.
- Pflug plus the corresponding bar-element and bar-status almost grants immunity to the enfeeblings of the element of choice for 3 minutes every 5.
- Constant enspell helps against enemies who take added magic damage or simpli resist melee damage a lot.
- Higher parry rate than any other job, which is not super-awesome, but nice to have.
- Magic damage and magic defense lowering skills, both very potent but on long timers. Lunge can easily do around 2300 magic damage every 3 minutes, Gambit can give +30% damage taken for one element to the enemy for one minute every 5.

Cons:
- Squishy. Lack of heavy armor, lack of shields makes the job take hits in the league of THF, PUP or DNC. Only damage mitigation tools at its disposal are Phalanx and Protect IV, both easily provided by support jobs.
- Not enough damage avoidance. NIN has a ton of shadows, THF, PUP and DNC have lots of Evasion Bonus. RUN has neither of those, so the 18ish% parry rate won't be enough to overcome the just okay B+ evasion skill.
- No self healing other than Regen IV.
- On the offense, lack of attack and in general, offensive job abilities and traits. Despite wielding a GS, damage will be miles below a GS WAR or DRK.


That said, I still like the job, and have faith it will get much better in the future, with job specific equipment and merits.

[dasva]

It's +10% dmg taken of that element btw not -10 magic def

[Huntyadown]

@Huntyadown

I think the reason you see more discussions about damage for Rune Fencer than you do about super tanking is due to a few factors. First is the fact that the game had largely moved away from Super Tanking as your turtle tanks didn't have the enmity to match up with DD's. Secondly is the fact that, despite being able to gear for -pdt, physical mitigation of runes still comes nowhere close to that of either ninja's or paladins. Paladins have +72 more defense from traits, +40ish defense from shields, and another 30-50 defense difference from armor due to differences in heavy versus medium armors. Combine that with the fact that Paladins also get significantly better mitigation from shield block (very high rates and moderate damage blocked on good shields), as well as ways of mitigating enmity loss from damage taken and you can start to see why its tough to get Rune Fencer close to paladin in that super tank category.

For me personally I am fine on skipping out on major damage increases, I don't think a Rune Fencer should ever really compete with warrior or drk or mnk or sam as a DD. I do however think that it should be up there in the mix with things like Drg (maybe slightly behind) and it should have better physical mitigation (at least equal to samurai which is debatable atm).

Thank you for the input and I totally get what you're saying. I think RUN has a lot of potential and I don't want to see it get relegated to LOLPup status. And I totally agree PLD is the king of physical tanking, mainly due to having access to amazing tank gear and R/E shields that almost break the. I'm not saying RUN can out tank a paladin when it comes to physical heavy fights. But if it's a mix? or magic heavy? Oh man I see RUN being an absolute BEAST.

Everything I've seen so far in the new expansion, from the new jobs to the new fights, has lead me to believe that they are moving towards a slower, more methodical approach to the big fights. As it sits right now there's no notion that we will have abyssea like atmas to make us super godly, or VW like temps to make it LOLFaceroll. I mean look at Geomancer. Long duration buffs. And people are thinking "Oh man Geo's regen spells are so weak just bring a scholar" but Indi-Regen is a 30/tic regen for 6 people for almost no MP. That's a HUGE eHP(Effective HP) Increase for everyone in the party. I think gone are the days when mages can spam spells to their hearts content because of infinite MP pools. What if it's back to fighting without your insane mp/tic and the fights are 30min+? All the sudden the Geo's 5/tic refresh is looking really sweet when the mob is at 75% and everyone is out of MP because the healers have been spamming Cure V without regard because "That's what we're used to". And look at RUN. A native regen trait and a huge HP pool that I think is up there with paladin. That's all effective HP that requires no MP use.

And again people are saying "RUN gets no damage mitigation besides crap evasion and some parry". What about all the -DT% gear? It's the same mentality why Flags got voted first over signboard in Peacekeepers on almost all servers. Cause people either don't know or don't care. I have Thaumas and RUN can wear Thaumas so I should wear thaumas! right? Right? What does gearing RUN for DD accomplish? I mean really what does it do? It's pretty easy to see that even THF, NIN, and BST can out damage a RUN on any given Sunday. What do we really accomplish by trying to turn RUN into another DD to go along with the other 13(?) jobs that their main role is to DD? Even bard has more DD oriented traits than RUN!

Obviously if you're doing anything but killing hard bosses, then DD gear is where it's at, I'm not arguing that. But it's already pretty clear that RUN is going to come up short behind A LOT of jobs in the DD department. If we keep viewing it as a "lemme throw on TP gear and rock some Resolutions" type of job then everyone else is gonna see it that way too, and when they realize the DPS is crap, I fear it's gonna get tossed aside. If SE comes out the AF+3 Gear and other stuff that is specifically manufactured to turn RUN into a DD then hey cool I'm wrong and It's just another DD. But what have you see from ANYTHING that would lead you to believe that anything RUN get's from gear/merits is not going to be oriented towards evasion/parry/hp/-DT%/-MDT%?

I guess my argument is that if we keep talking about RUN as a "Half ass DD and a Half ass tank" then the word is gonna spread. When I see things like RUN's physical mitigation is crap and equal to THF or DRG or SAM or whatever is just makes me think that that attitude is going to spread and RUN will quickly get relegated to LOLPup status.

[Seha]

The banalities, and the headache this post gave me.

[Spira]

i'd say work in progress..
it has the potential to be pretty formidable with some adjustments, merits and gear.

if i might opine on what i foresee/would like merits to be like...

Group 1:
1) Enhance Rune effects - +3 resistance per merit level
2) Decrease Effusion recasts
3) Decrease Ward recasts
4) Inquartata potency - +2% parry rate per merit level

Group 2:

1) Raddoppio (offensive stance) - Attack speed +10%, low Quadruple Attack rate, Rune Enhancement enspell damage increased, Effusion recast duration halved, cannot use Wards
2) Passatasotto (defensive stance) - Increases parry rate and evasion by like 10%, Rune Enhancement resistances increased. Ward recast duration halved, cannot use Effusions.
3) Enhancing Magic Trait - Increase duration of Enhancing Magic by 10% per merit level. Also increases potency of Regen spells.
4) Riposte - moderate chance to counterattack on parry.

[Huntyadown]

The banalities, and the headache this post gave me.

Please explain. I'm a big boy I can take criticism.

[orakiodg]

@Huntyadown, going to breakdown response into a couple sections. Edit in process

Rune Dps
Again though I think part of why people are looking at the dps aspect is simply because its the first 2h tank, and because of the dps options for any tanky job using 2h weapons because of /sam. That isn't to say people expect it to be a dps powerhouse, but they do expect a solid potential there at least. When you take a 2h dps job with A+ skill and access to one of the better WS's endgame there is a reasonable expectation to at least deal moderate damage. I for one am not pushing for Rune Fencer as a true DD job, should be close to the jobs that it currently shares gear with, though not close to the dps of the top tier damage jobs.

Rune Gear and Defenses
I definitely get your point on gear, the problem is though that isn't anything that is unique to rune fencer really. Aside from at least having the option, non R/M/E gear shouldn't be the primary factor that determines the role of a job. Yeah rune fencer gets the dux set.... but so do war/rdm/pld/blu/drk/bst/rng/sam/drg. That armor set alone isn't enough to make rdm or blue or drk or beast or ranger or drg tanks for parties, and war/sam/pld only work because of either job traits or abilities that further boost their ability to tank over the top of just the gear.

Additionally you have to look at some of the other gear situations. While your Rune Fencer is equipping full Dux set + a ToM -pdt gsword to try and get reasonable levels of tankiness, a native DW like dnc or thief or ninja can do the same thing with 2xToM -pdt weapons and be only 5% mitigation behind while wearing full thaumas set. The non-inclusion of Run on 1h sword and 1h axe trials is painful for establishing a real capped pdt set without the total sacrifice of all dps on standard armor slots.

The Role of Rune Fencer going into the future
This isn't about turning Rune Fencer into a DD, but it is about making sure that Rune fencer has a secondary role outside of a super niche magic tank that is only better at magic mitigation than a paladin when the NM only utilizes one element of magic. There are needs for Rune Fencer no matter if you want to push it in the direction of a true tank, or keep that niche tanking spot and instead allow it to DD in the offtime when a magic tank isn't needed.

When you look at the subjob options for rune fencer to tank at the moment there are really only 2-3 choices in my opinion. You have /ninja, and its the only one that comes even close to having true tank levels of mitigation(but still falls short). The other two are /war and /blu which at least give you enough defense to maybe compete with paladin levels of armor on non-shadow friendly fights so long as the paladin doesn't have any subjobs for its own defender/etc. In order to pursue the true tank path rune fencer needs built in defensive options, either in the form of %+ defense to bring it up to heavy armor values, or in the form of -dt to help with the overall ineffectiveness of evasion/parry in T+ content. When you look at the surface of Rune Fencer it doesn't even appear to have Samurai (due to seigan/third eye) level of physical mitigation, and Samurai isn't even classified as a tank. Doesn't that kind of indicate a problem to you that goes far past gear?

If you want to push it in the DD direction (which i understand you don't) the changes are much simpler, it needs access to better weapons and a slight boost to rune enhancement effectiveness + either a)an offensive stance with either haste or %attack or b)more effusion options creating more of drg style active damage rather than stance based.

[orakiodg]

i'd say work in progress..
it has the potential to be pretty formidable with some adjustments, merits and gear.

if i might opine on what i foresee/would like merits to be like...

Group 1:
1) Enhance Rune effects - +3 resistance per merit level
2) Decrease Effusion recasts
3) Decrease Ward recasts
4) Inquartata potency - +2% parry rate per merit level

Group 2:

1) Raddoppio (offensive stance) - Attack speed +10%, low Quadruple Attack rate, Rune Enhancement enspell damage increased, Effusion recast duration halved, cannot use Wards
2) Passatasotto (defensive stance) - Increases parry rate and evasion by like 10%, Rune Enhancement resistances increased. Ward recast duration halved, cannot use Effusions.
3) Enhancing Magic Trait - Increase duration of Enhancing Magic by 10% per merit level. Also increases potency of Regen spells.
4) Riposte - moderate chance to counterattack on parry.

Group 1 is fairly bland, but that tends to be true for almost everyone anyway.

Really like some of the Group2 stuff and had a similar thought process myself. For Raddoppio, rather than the QA though i had thought about a % chance of like triple damage rune enhancements, gives it a unique aspect and limits the boost on WS's to prevent Rune from being a powerhouse DD. For a Defensive stance I think its better to pursue the path of fan dance for dancer, need some -pdt built in to make up for the lack of built in utsu or paladinesque mitigation.

Really like the group2 traits.

[agerknux]

I went outside WG to do some quick tests 1 Rune damage on various weapons of varying dmg/delay/skill doing about 100 hits(lolsamplesize)

These numbers are averages
Breidox+1: 17.55
Sanus: 17.46
Earth Staff: 4.674
Kalavejs (81dmg): 10.051
Coalition Sword: 16.267
Ark Scythe: 0
Warp Cudgel: 3.029
Rounsey Wand: 0

These values seem very close to DPS values (dmg*60)/Delay. But can't really say for sure. Hope this helps for anyone who can test further.

[Huntyadown]

@orakiodg

I completely get what you're saying. We can't really know the true potential of RUN until we see some very good, very specific RUN gear available. Most of my post was more *hoping* that it turns out this way, where RUN is a solid tank for physical and magical.

I guess the thing I can't wrap my head around (and please, feel free to educate me as I honestly don't understand) is how the mitigation of a SAM can be considered better than a RUN. The way I see it is it's like taking a Paladin, throwing a GS on him and full DD/haste/STP gear, and then saying that SAM has more mitigation than PLD. Well OBVIOUSLY it does because what makes a PLD great *IS* the gear. You wouldn't gear a PLD in full DD and a GS and then claim PLD has bad mitigation and SAM is better. I don't see how this is different. Lol maybe I'm just missing something blatantly obvious that everyone else sees 0_o.

[orakiodg]

In Paladins case it is "the gear" due to shields and how the paladin is built to interact with them. A few very specific pieces take this over the top, but you also can't discount the potency of abilities like sentinel as well as paladins inherent ability to self cure. While less of a mitigation tool this is a very potent survival tool and a cornerstone of paladins ability to tank.

As for samurai having better mitigation, it is due to being on some of the heavier (but not necessarily heaviest) pieces of gear that have more VIT (an important defensive stat), + having native seigan/third eye for mitigating melee attacks. This allows them the option of subbing /ninja for "more shadows" than a run/nin would get, or subbing /war for defender while still maintaining so form of forced physical evasion. In a solo situation sam/dnc is superior to run/dnc due to the superior tp generation of samurai allowing far more frequent waltz's while still WS'ing as well as the fact that samurai can utilize drain waltz while run/dnc sacrifices a significant portion (almost its entire toolkit because they are based on active runes) to do so.

Now realize that both Paladin and Samurai are complete classes that have been around a long time, and Rune fencer is not a complete class by any means yet (lacking merits and R/M/E or equivalents) so it really isn't that fair of a comparison. That being said it is illustrating what additional tools it will need to compete.

[dasva]

First 2hd tank!?! My gswd pld begs to differ!!! But really I expect witbout awesome att buffs and/or the few high end gswds they get axe would probably be better and give access to non pdt forms of protection helping keep some more dd gear at least in situations where you have actual tanks and not a throw everything at them blitzes

[orakiodg]

First 2hd tank!?! My gswd pld begs to differ!!! But really I expect witbout awesome att buffs and/or the few high end gswds they get axe would probably be better and give access to non pdt forms of protection helping keep some more dd gear at least in situations where you have actual tanks and not a throw everything at them blitzes

Hahaha, apologies. That wasn't meant to disparage 2h or overlook GSword Paladin, but you do have to admit GS paladin sacrifices alot compared to its sword+board counterparts in terms of tankiness. I also have come to believe 1h axe is the more ideal situation for a tanking Rune fencer compounded by the fact that I think run/nin is probably your best mitigation option at the moment for Run and the best way to mitigate enmity loss from damage taken as well.

A lot of my concerns on Rune's current physical mitigation issues would be solved (in the short term at least) simply through its inclusion on either 1hsword or 1haxe ToM elemental trials to allow for the utilization of DW -pdt weapons. That being said I would like to see something being done to address some of the native physical mitigation concerns of rune fencer outside of just gear options.

[agerknux]

First 2hd tank!?! My gswd pld begs to differ!!! But really I expect witbout awesome att buffs and/or the few high end gswds they get axe would probably be better and give access to non pdt forms of protection helping keep some more dd gear at least in situations where you have actual tanks and not a throw everything at them blitzes

Here's the problem with the current content. You kill the monster before it kills you. That's your mitigation.

It comes down to take ridiculous aoe/single target damage where you'd rather embrava/PD it down or there is absolutely no need for Embrava/PD and but you still rush it down.

[Huntyadown]

Ah Ok I totally get what you're saying now. I guess I felt that (Like you said) it was unfair to compare RUN's physical tanking ability to that of SAm/THF/NIN etc because it's so early.

I really like RUN and I think it has a lot of potential and I guess I'm just *HOPING* that the new stuff we get is more Tank oriented. I don't know why we would need another 2-handed DD when we already have 3 solid ones. Thanks for the insight!

[dasva]

Here's the problem with the current content. You kill the monster before it kills you. That's your mitigation.

It comes down to take ridiculous aoe/single target damage where you'd rather embrava/PD it down or there is absolutely no need for Embrava/PD and but you still rush it down.

I know that's why I specified actual tank situations vs the throw everything at it ones. In which case get a real DD. But SE has said they want to move away from that and indeed have already started taking steps to do so.

[agerknux]

Yeah, I am glad they are. They've already tried toning down aoe damage, decrease duration of invincibility/godly buffs etc etc. That's good and all, but monsters have not changed so strategies have yet to change. I feel that future content needs to be geared towards tuning the mobs first. And I don't mean simple number changes.

For Run to shine are single element magic heavy mobs that can outlast a zerg and/or have abilities that threaten healer's MP without being pitifully weak or a one shot cheese ability.

[Toth]

Can we stop with the lolPUP please....

PUP, if anything, shows that no matter how bad a job is at release, future updates will eventually make that job infinitely more useful and awesome.

[Sayzar]

Can we stop with the lolPUP please....

PUP, if anything, shows that no matter how bad a job is at release, future updates will eventually make that job infinitely more useful and awesome.

^ This. Lol, I don't care if people make fun of PUP, I still enjoyed leveling it.