Choose some abilities.

[Mando]

For 2.0 update. I want to allow some people to help build up 2 of the classes I am doing a MAJOR overhaul on.

One is the Hunter/Ranger class.
Second is the Blue Mage Class.

My Jobs so far are:

Freelancer (base)
Monk
Fencer
Red Mage (using instant spells)
Devout (cracked out white mage w/ some time magic)
Elementalist (aka black mage with illusions)
Saboteur (beowulf skill class w/ some time magic)
Ravager (fighter / dark knight hybrid)
Defender (Defender / Paladin hybrid)
Swindler (thief w/ stat breaks)
Shinobi (ninja)
Ronin (Samurai)

So here is a list of FFTA Job abilities that have to do with hunter/ranger style moves:

Sonic Boom     0    4      Cranequin        200  Long-range attack
Oust           0  Varies   Windslash Bow    200  Convinces monsters to leave battle
Advice         0    1      Twin Bow         100  Raises critical hit rate
Aim: Vitals    0  Varies   Fey Bow          300  Causes status ailments
Hunting        0  Varies   Hunt Bow         300  Earns extra JP
Addle          0  Varies   Master Bow       200  Causes 'Addle'
Ultima Shot   60  Varies   Seventh Heaven   999  Ultima damage
Sidewinder     0  Varies   Hades Bow        300  High damage to monsters
Capture        0  Varies   Ranger Bow       200  Captures monsters
Doom Archer    0  Varies   Max's Oathblow  300  HP & MP damage = your lost HP

Boost         0    Self    Longbow       100  Increases damage for next physical attack
Aim: Legs     0   Varies   Thorn Bow     200  Causes 'Immobilize'
Aim: Arms     0   Varies   Nail Bow      200  Causes 'Disable'
Cupid         0   Varies   Artemis Bow   200  Causes 'Charm'
Burial        0   Varies   Silver Bow    300  Bury zombies
Take Aim      0   Varies   Yoichi Bow    300  High hit rate, but low damage
Faster        0   Varies   Perseus Bow   300  Nullifies R-Abilities
Blackout      0   Varies   Char Bow      200  Causes 'Darkness'


Here is a list of blue mage style skills:

Goblin Punch    8     1       Goblin                 ---  Varying damage
Magic Hammer    8     3       Red Cap                ---  MP damage
Acid           12     3       Jelly, IceFlan, Cream  ---  Random status ailment
Blowup          2  AllSides   Bomb, Grenade          ---  Self-KO, high damage
Mighty Guard    8     1       Icedrake               ---  Raises DEF and RES
Guard-Off      10     1       Firewyrm               ---  Lowers DEF and RES
Dragon Force   12     1       Thundrake              ---  Improves all stats
Night          24    All      Lilith                 ---  All foes 'Sleep'
Twister        20     3       Lamia                  ---  Halves foes' HP
LV3 DEF-Less   12     3       Antlion, Jawbreaker    ---  Lowers DEF and RES if LV is x3
Poison Claw     8     1       Red Panther            ---  Damage and 'Poison'
Hastebreak     12     1       Coeurl                 ---  Cancels 'Haste' and lowers SPD
Bad Breath     20     1       Malboro, Big Malboro   ---  Multiple status ailments
Stare          12    Area     Floateye               ---  Causes 'Confusion'
Roulette       20  Everyone   Ahriman                ---  KOs 1 random character
Drain Touch    10     1       Zombie                 ---  Drains HP from target
LV? S-Flare    30  AllFoes    Vampire                ---  Dmgs all units w/ matching LV digits
White Wind     12     3       Sprite                 ---  Heal target's HP = your HP
Angel Whisper  24     3       Titania                ---  Heals HP and 'Auto-Life'
Matra Magic    24     3       Toughskin              ---  Switch target's HP and MP


Which ones would you like to see that could be easily implemented and balanced? AKA be done through patcher and currently exist to an extent in game.

[The Damned]

(Damn new list function.)

Although I still haven't looked at much of your patch beyond the brief bit of when we talked on mIRC, I think that I can help with this given that I already tried to do most of it like a year ago and FFTPatcher is more or less the same still. Even hack-wise, very few of them have changed formulas very greatly, so the same problems still unfortunately occur.

Let's first go over what is straight out impossible with the current formulas:

• Oust (Hunter): Unlike in FFTA, there's no "leave" battle effects sans turning units into crystals or treasure boxes, which would obviously be overpowered. Besides, Oust and Parley kind of sucked anyway.


• Advice (Hunter): At present, there's no mechanic that even deals with critical hits in a direct manner.


• Hunting (Hunter): Similarly, there's no attack/formula mechanic that deals with gaining extra JP. Not really worthy of a skill anyway, though.


• Sidewinder (Hunter): There are hardly any monster-specific formula as it is and none of them are involved with direct damage, much less direct damage against ALL monsters and only monsters. (Which is pretty much the key crux of trying to do anything generically monster-related beyond Mediator/Orator at present. Hmm...I wonder....)


• Capture (Hunter): The same problem with Oust, except that Train pretty much already fills this niche anyway unless you want to go through the doubtless extremely tedious, maybe impossible process of adding the whole Monster Bank system and Morphers to FFT.


• LV3 Def-less (Blue Mage): Yeah, you can't do Level Stuff at present due to Math Skill needing to be separate.


• Roulette (Blue Mage): Tried to make this ability for a Gambler class months ago. Learned that you can't have it target one random person because it targets the entire field. So either you'd have to hit everyone on the field (which would be broken and unfair) or it would have to be like a close-up linear AoE move that had a 50% percent change of hitting the user. You can't even do Gadgeteer effects because of the current restrictions.


• LV? S-Flare (Blue Mage): Impossible for the same reason that LV3 Def-less is. Even more so because the last digit parameter doesn't even exist in Math Skill: The closest thing would be 5 or maybe Prime.


• White Wind (Blue Mage): There's no formula at present that heals off the user's HP. Trust me, I know.


• Mantra Magic (Blue Mage): Utterly impossible. It was pretty overpowered anyway, so it's not a huge loss.

Let's move on to what's not really possible for one reason or another, but you can more or less approximate via "fudging" what the move did in FFTA and translating a version of it to FFT's less "advanced" (grrr....) capabilities:

• Sonic Boom (Hunter): Now possible due to the ARH. I mean, the technique has always been possible because it's just a Wind-based AoE 1 attack at distance of 4 or 5, but now you can properly restrict it to bows and such because of the ARH. Praise be to Xifanie.


• Ultima Shot (Hunter): Similar to the above, you can now limit the heavy damage to just bows. Hell, you could even make it a literal Ultima shot that's limited to bows due to the ARH.


• Doom Archer (Hunter): Basically Shock that works at weapon range, so you can do the same, just without hitting MP. Kind of stupid, though, but then again I despise "Shock"-based attacks unless there's a damn good reason for it, especially on generics.


• Boost (Archer): Technically, it's just an Accumulate that has the good sense to disappear after the next attack.


• Take Aim (Archer): You can make it unable to be dodged or maybe work on M-EV (though then the formula would have to use MA, which Archers tend to have very little of) instead of P-EV, but you can't just give it a lower chance to be evaded overall unfortunately.


• Faster (Archer): Similar to the above, you can make it not activate Counter Flood (if you're even still using that), but most other Reaction abilities will still go off unfortunately.


• Mighty Guard (Blue Mage): Well, Mighty Guard does tend to be Protect and some combination of other positive status, so you could easily do that as long as it was still ultimately inferior to MBarrier/Aegis.


• Guard Off (Blue Mage): Similar to the above, in that it already kind of exists in Dispel Magic. Otherwise, you do a Death-esque, percent-based Debarrier move, but that seems kind of too specific for Blue Magic and it would heal Undead on top of that.


• Dragon Force (Blue Mage): Similar to the above, already kind of existed in the Vanilla version of Scream, though there's nothing to raise defensive "stats" (because they don't exist in FFT for the most part) or MA. Also, Vanilla version of Scream was pretty broken due to the Speed increase on top of everything else.


• Night (Blue Mage): The problem here isn't the ability itself, but rather that Sleep is one of the statuses that prevents Learn on Hit as I found out to my annoyance when contemplating using this for my Blue Mage all those months ago. I suppose you could do what Eternal did in 1.3 for Skeletons and make it Sleep or Undead--I've been considering as such--but that's "slightly" different from just all Sleep.


• Hastebreak (Blue Mage): You'd have to use an MA-based formula that would probably heal the Undead and wouldn't affect Speed.


• Stare (Blue Mage): The problem here is that you can't replicate the fact that the units have to be facing each other. (That and the T-shaped AoE). Otherwise, just making it "Direct" replicates it well enough I'd imagine.

Yeah...that doesn't really leave very much, unfortunately. Thankfully, there are a bunch of other abilities from other games when it comes to Blue Magic, but Hunter/Ranger is kind of boned when it comes to both useful ideas and abilities that can be replicated within the current formula restrictions.

Of the abilities left, I'd suggest at least considering the following:

• For Hunter: Sonic Boom, Aim: Leg, Aim: Arm, Take Aim, Blackout and maybe Cupid.


• For Blue Mage: Goblin Punch, Magic Hammer, Acid, Poison Claw, Drain Touch and maybe Bad Breath.

[Mando]

Thanks a ton for those ideas!

I was thinking to use those. I haven't used ARH before but perhaps I will give it a try.
Considering I am going to turn Knightswords into Greatswords, I may as well.

[dinosaur]

I really enjoyed the Hunter in FFTA, especially the sonic boom attack. It would be nice to stray away from adding procs and focus on damage attacks.

When people do their patches they love added negative procs and shit to everything but not focus on damage abilities (for example, range, AOE, formula equations, evade%)

[The Damned]

Because there's not much CAN do with physical damage attacks that isn't related to differing them by some sort of proc.

If you have any ideas for physically damage attacks that aren't proc-based, make sense for the class and don't obviate magical spells, feel free to let all of us know.

[dinosaur]

Did I upset The Damned?

Well I know it is a struggle to figure it out. I think about it myself and it is difficult. I was just saying...

I was also trying to say that multiple classes shouldn't be filled with all status procs.   

[The Damned]

It'd be pretty difficult to genuinely upset me. You made me roll my eyes, though.

There would be a bunch of things that would be "nice" to see. Too bad that we still can't do a great many of them.