How to fixed Marked class - change skills to spells

[Jay Rock]

Basically the title. Marked is a severely underpowered class when you consider what you're giving up to get it: Princess(or Lord)/Werewolf/Vampire/Lich/Vessel. It isn't particularly strong when you get it in the story, and it honestly doesn't scale very well either. But it could, and it's such an easy fix.


Change the skills the spells. I mean just look at the name comparisons...


Warmage: Fire Bolt, Fire Burst - spells
Marked: Holy Bolt, Holy Burst - skills


They're a little different in stats & effect, but logically does Holy Bolt really belong in the same category as Boomerang Bounce?


No I think the real reason that they're skills comes down to game design. They're afraid of making those skills overpowered. But here's the thing... compare Kyrie to your other martial characters:


Anadine gets Corrupted Blade and Focused Rage
Reiner gets Doppelganger and Equip All
Katja gets Shadowstrike and Know Weakness II

And that's not even an exhaustive list of their amazing skills, and I would literally take any of those over Kyrie's kit.



However, if you change her skills to spells...

Holy Bolt Doublecast (might actually compete with Righteous Blade or Holy Locus)

Holy Burst + Warmage (might actually compete with... a regular Warmage)



Right now no one uses Marked in a late game dream team build, but with this change they might. Otherwise I'm just going to keep making her a templar or an assassin while pretending that, saved for the stat growth, Marked doesn't exist.

[Mechalibur]

I modded the drain abilities to be spells instead of skills. Made infused edge pretty fun.

They're entirely based on MND, so it seems weird to me that those two are skills in the first place.

[Sines]

Bear in mind, that Kyrie would still be using Doublecast I, not Doublecast II. It would still improve the skillset a lot while not doing much, but it's not quite AS good as it first sounds.

I would say it comes with one other advantage though. Allowing the abilities to count as Spells certainly enhances her through using Doublecast and Infused Edge, but it also benefits her ability to deal with Cripple, since she could then use those abilities while Crippled, whereas a more physically inclined Kyrie gets all (or most) of her skills shut down.

Of course, it would make her more vulnerable to Mute, but then, making the skills Infused Edge and Doublecast compatible would be more than enough of a boost to a magically built Kyrie to compensate for that small advantage.

Lastly, this would enable these abilities to benefit from Staffs. An interesting consideration for the Drains and Beams, by making the drains non-melee range (and thus a bit more well suited to a magier Kyrie), and the Beams having more versatility in starting points would make them fairly unique for their AoE. Just determine their direction the way Boomerang Bounce determines it's knockback direction.

Anyway, not yet familiar enough with the game to make a fair comparison, but considering the abilities your trying to change to spells are basically "Warmage spells, but worse except for their element", and this is the main character, who can't use special classes, I highly doubt this is some game breaking change to the class. Honestly, while I was at it, I'd swap out Avenger for a better skill. Execute is hardly one of the games 'defining' skill, although I think it fits Marked well (which does not specialize in massive single hit damage, and so it's not going to be wasted via one-shotting enemies). I feel like she'd benefit from having one of the badge class abilities available to her. Hallowed Body fits her well. So would a reflavored version of Chilling Touch (to match her Counter: Slow). These might edge more into the territory of being overpowered, though. But then again, considering what the Marked Class is supposed to be, I'd rather err on the side of being too powerful.

Although there is also Kyries free bonus stats to consider, which might outweight any benefits lost by not having access to badge classes.

[Jay Rock]

Sines,

I agree with everything you said here lol. I like the point of Hallowed Body - normally a fairly underpowered move compared to the specific attack/mind alternatives, but potentially great on a hybrid like Kyrie. It's strong, but she's also competing with Anadine's Cleave / Focused Rage.

Chilling Touch is interesting since it would move her one step closer to Agrias, a character from Final Fantasy Tactics that I assume was part of the inspiration for her character.

The staffs comment makes me think you'd only want some of her moves to be spells. The bolts definitely should be, but maybe not the beams. And to be honest I've never tried using a burst on someone with a staff. I'm gonna check out what that does real quick. I'm guessing nothing?

I feel like there's a lot of ways you COULD balance her class. One fun way would be if you give her an extra unlockable class in the late game, then cut down on her stat boosts to balance it. Hell, you could do that for any number of the special characters. You give them optional missions that dive into their backstory and unlocks some relevant class.

Imagine a mission where Anadine comes to Yates after discovering that Reiner was able to talk to his deceased wife, and she asks him if he can do the same thing for her mother. He does some magic ♥♥♥♥ and it works, but the mother is like undead or cursed or something. You fight, and at the end of it she returns to normal and Anadine can speak with her one last time. But it turns out she got bitten in the fight and now she can turn into a Vampire or a Werewolf, or maybe Yates can become a Vessel because of channeling all that dark energy. Even if they released that as DLC, I'd be all about that ♥♥♥♥.

[Mechalibur]

Bursts, lines (other than lateral lines), and cones aren't affected by spell range increases if you mod abilities with those shapes to be spells.