A few suggestions to try and alleviate the current issues with Rune Magician.

1. Chronos rune detonates when it gains a Count while at 4 like it was originally intended to.

Reasoning:

There was no good reason for the change to Chronos rune. Having it detonate earlier now means it's borderline impossible to stop a fully stacked Chronos rune as you only have one turn where it is vulnerable without the use of Air Pressure to remove Smoking rune's effect, if Swift Rune Casting is used to create it.

2. Focus Tuning gets a 3 (or 2 round if suggestion 1 is implemented) round cooldown.

Reasoning:

This is mostly due to Chronos rune's interaction, as now with Focus Tuning being 1m there is little reason not to cast it twice per Chronos rune to have them detonate within 3 rounds. Another alternative is to have this cooldown only if a Chronos rune if affected by it, given it is the prime offender.

3. Haste Rune gets a 3 round cooldown.

Reasoning:

Haste rune lacking a cooldown means Rune Magician doesn't even need to invest in Skill or Hit whatsoever to deal its damage efficiently. Resulting in the optimal build being to dump all your points into defensive stats + WIL for damage.

4. Herons can no longer cast runes while silenced.

Reasoning:

Stacking runes is on par in power if not greater than invocations can be, possessing the same ability for extreme damage if given the momentum equivalent of a Charge Mind boosted invocation, while being much, much harder to stop compared to an invocation. There are multiple methods to cancel an invocation, whereas if you are facing a rune covered in smoke your only option is Air Pressure and against a Heron you can no longer stop them from casting runes without killing them outright.



While there may be other contentious points to Rune Magician as it stands these are the major problems with the class at the moment.

I don't expect that all my solutions are perfect but I hope it at least illustrates what's currently wrong with Rune Magician in how overbearing it is.

I will give a special mention to the fact that currently Rune Magician is, once you learn how to use it, extremely boring. There is no diversity in how they're built as they can buy literally all their SP's worth of skills without destiny, the only thing that changes is what flavor of explosion you make (which is usually going to be Sound or Acid due to how difficult those elements are to resist given the lack of 30% resist items for them, bar running Luminary to abuse one of the applicable elements for max damage instead, resists be damned). Though this would be more inline with overhauling the class entirely to address, right now I am only trying to fix what we currently have to be less oppressive.

Right now it seems that if you have Innovator along with Twin Dance, you can attack with both weapons even if they're different types and even if they're out of range.

I tested this by having a Crazy Coyote and a Hikage equipped at the same time and attacking from both melee and range on both weapons on a character with Innovator and a character without.

   

Chorusaf's potential skill; 'Patient Prayer' has this range to begin with: 

This is the normal 2 range diamond its supposed to be. However, if you use Mass, it grows to become this size, regardless of mass's rank:


Making it a three range diamond. However, I believe this may be a bug as i'm not sure Mass is supposed to grow it at all, since it remains this size regardless of how big your mass's boost is to begin with. (In the above example, my normal mass graft has this area of effect

A trait I rummaged around in my head, thinking it to be worth suggesting just on it's own, one that I think would be a fun little idea that follows the same logic as Mixed Martial Arts, but with a little bit more limited of a nature. I think that it would be both thematic and kind of cool for the races with natural born galdr magic to be able to use their voices as an instrument for the new bard classes.

Quote:Required: Theno, Doriad, Heron

Born with the natural gift of an enchanted seeming voice, singing comes so naturally it could be considered a helpful tool when utilized correctly. When you are equipped with no instrument weapons, you will always be able to use instrument skills anyways through singing, the Scaled Weapon Attack for your singing instrument will be equal to your Character's LV + 40, and has no additional effects when singing.

Its evadable. Seeker flames are already weak and already have like. . . 1 in skill.
Please make it unevadable?

This has been an issue in the game for a good long while, and its infuriating to have it happen to you, and also infuriating to have it happen FOR me, as I don't like winning to buggy shenanigans. The main issue seems to be that when summoned units die, it reorders turns to allow slower people to move first. This generally allows for one side to get a double turn.

If you're fighting a summoner or an engineer, and you go down and they only have one unit left, it tends to allow them to move first in the next round.
Example: Summoner Joe goes down to Axeman Bob, Carbuncle remains standing. Turn order was always Joe, Bob, Carbuncle, now its suddenly Carbuncle, Bob which allows Carbuncle to move twice in a row, winning the battle despite always acting slower before then.

In 1v1 combat this tends to always allow the summoner with auto summon to move first even with no celerity too, as turns like to be staggered.

When your wraithguard dies it can still flip-flop turn order.
50 cel ghost with a wraithguard vs a 5 celerity black knight: Ghost always moves first as expected.
Instant wraithguard dies? Suddenly the 5 celerity black knight moves first. (Starting from the next round onwards, of course.)

This is often game determinative in the least fun way possible. 


Other issues:
Summoned units always act in the same section of turn order. Generally the bottom. But this becomes problematic when summoners fight each other. There's no staggering of turns for summoned units, so I've had battles where:
Person A, Person B, Person C, Person D, TEN YOUKAI OF PERSON A IN A ROW, then TEN YOUKAI OF PERSON C IN A ROW.
Which seems a bit silly for ten youkai belonging to one person to move before all ten youkai belonging to another person's.

Doing a lot of tests with the +10% Power to X types of spells line of weapons, I got these results:




Quinlogram with 56 SWA and 25 lightning attack:  91 power Ryemei
Screaming tome with 56 SWA and 25 lightning attack:  86 power Ryemei
Quinlogram with 61 SWA and 40 lightning attack:  114 power Ryemei
Screaming tome with 61 SWA and 40 lightning attack:  109 power Ryemei
Quinlogram with 61 SWA and 40 lightning attack and pure power with only the weapon equipped:  169 power Ryemei 
Screaming tome with 61 SWA and 40 lightning attack and pure power with only the weapon equipped:  159 power Ryemei

Cerron Scepter with 105 SWA and 62 water attack, 189.4
Impaler with 105 SWA and 66 water attack, 184.2  (Used 120% Water scaling kel for both) So effectively:
189.4 vs 179.4


Seems that its only adding 10% of the weapons scaled weapon attack to the spells? So +5, +10? Except then, why was 61 SWA quinlogram only adding 5 more power? And then why was +50 or 60 spell power from pure power and maybe evocation adding an extra 5? It seems a little strange to me how this works, and if its not bugged i'd at least like the effects of those weapons to be stated a little more clearly. 

+10% Power to Aquarian spells sounds like they should get a 1.1x multiplier for example, if its really supposed to be +10% SWA, it should say +10% SWA.

C-could pet-say and pet-emote get boxes to type in like normal say and emote?
(If they do already, then I am definitely having problems and need to be redirected to bug reports)

Currently, Bonder's Heaven Below does not state its maximum level, so it's impossible to tell for sure if you meet the requirements to earn the 10% Drop Rate and EXP boost for getting its maximum level to 30 or higher.

Some indication of your current maximum level would be nice.

Also some clarification as to if the skill stacks with itself would be nice, too, in the unlikely event you have more than one instance of it active.

Would be nice there was a way to quickly activate cores without needing to click them with WASD movement enabled.