This is a continuation post to give ideas of how to make supports way stronger than they currently are to help players and certain jobs to either boss better or be able to boss for the first time ever, keeping in mind to avoid the bind-and-burst gameplay of "stacking a bunch of final damage" to nuke the boss in under 5 minutes.
Strong supports will make jobs shine and be strong that otherwise would not be without the need of a balance update to do so, which would include certain combination of supports jobs as well. In order to make this happen, both all current supports need to become stronger to a significant degree, this includes Bishop and Lynn as well, while also making a lot more supports as new jobs.
Once there is a large supply of supports and varying supports to choose from, both for the user experience with different gameplay patterns and those looking for party bossing, and after quite some time sitting in a very powerful support era would you then balance the supports among each other once players have time to discover what every one can do and what certain combinations of party can accomplish. This would be a long term project, not a short term one.
Mechanic:
Category: Inventor
Support Drone:
A Support Beacon Rework:
Active: Create a Support Drone that follows you around for 300 seconds [increased with summon duration] that aids you and party members in combat based on the 4 Support Modules assigned to it.
Cooldown: 200 seconds.
(This cooldown applies immediate for clarification, the cooldown is here and very long to make your Support Module selection meaningful, so choose wisely! The Support Drone will have more than a 100% uptime.)
The biggest difference to make this a Support Drone that follows you around rather than a Support Beacon, which still applies as a summon for Mechanic's passive, is so that it will stick around during screen and phase transitions so that the user does not need to remake the thing every time.
Support Modules:
New Skill that will Level Up Alongside Support Drone:
Active: Use to bring up a selection window for up to 10 seconds to then use the corresponding directional key to make up to 4 selections of the Support Modules you want to assign to your Support Drone. Multiples of the same Support Module can be assigned to the Support Drone.
Use again to put away the selection window, this can be opened and used as many times as you like until either 4 Support Modules have been assigned or a new Support Drone has been created.
Support Module: Offense: Grants +25% Normal Monster Damage to self and party members. Applies a debuff to nearby monsters that causes them to take increased Final Damage from party members equal to the total % HP that Mechanic has dealt to that monster.
Support Module: Defense: Decreases damage taken by -5% for self and party members, including attacks that deal % HP damage.
Support Module: Recovery: Heal self and party members for +5% HP per second.
Support Module: Swiftness: Grants +25% increased Speed to self and party members, this can exceed max Speed.
This is to create a fun experience for the user to make your own support skill. This will create a lot more of an interactive aspect for the Mechanic user despite having only one support skill, can feel really good about it rather than currently where the player only needs to press a button one time with no thought process behind it.
To clarify how this works: you can have a Support Drone that is Offense+Recovery+Defense+Swiftness for a bit of everything, Recovery+Recovery+Recovery+Recovery to be focused as a powerful healer, Swiftness+Swiftness+Swiftness+Swiftness to make everyone have the zoomies, Defense+Defense+Recovery+Recovery for a good balance of surviving a long fight, etc. there is a lot of combinations the player can do.
To clarify how the Offense Module works: If Mechanic has done 4% of the Boss' Total HP then for each Offense Module on the Support Drone will provide 4% Final Damage to the party (does not apply to self), if you have 4 Offense Modules then this would be 16% Final Damage for the party. Total HP of the boss, not the boss' current HP bar, so you can reach 396% party Final Damage as a debuff (absolute maximum with 4 Offense Modules equipped), but the Mechanic soloed the entire fight in this case since that is 99% of the boss HP and a gentle breeze will finish it off and into the reward room you go!
This approach completely removes the under 5 minutes bind and burst gameplay since it requires the Mechanic to have done damage to the boss first.
If the Mechanic is in a strong party then the Mechanic is dealing a lot less damage and thus providing less Final Damage. If they are in a weak party then they are carrying the party in an unique way where they might be the damage leader in the party, but are also providing a lot more party final damage which allows the weak members to carry their own weight with a much greater final damage boost to their damage output.
Lastly, the final damage is back ended, meaning you have to spend some time in the boss fight first before getting to a stronger damage dealing state. The rest of the stats is meant to be set up to help a party survive a long boss fight - defense and healing should be obvious for this - while increased movement speed is to help the less mobile jobs to move around faster to dodge boss attack patterns easier and survive that way.
