Inquiry to the Devs

[Duelle]

Granted, that was the rdm complaint before is you didn't want to just be healers, but you had already taken the job of healer from whm in end-game at 75 on merits and most everything else. Perhaps if all the rdm out there refused invites when expected to be the healer, but that didn't happen. Seems to me the devs have simply been following the direction that play-style had taken rdm in.

The answer there has always been "buff WHM and make it the better healer, as it is supposed to be", not "leave things as they are". In our case, we want to see content as much as the next guy. We get dragged along as healers because no one will accept us as anything else. Simply saying no won't change anything because for every one of us that want to do something other than heal you have 10 bandwagon jumpers who love the fast invites.

[Supersun]

Granted, that was the rdm complaint before is you didn't want to just be healers, but you had already taken the job of healer from whm in end-game at 75 on merits and most everything else. Perhaps if all the rdm out there refused invites when expected to be the healer, but that didn't happen. Seems to me the devs have simply been following the direction that play-style had taken rdm in.

Be careful with this statement because there was some serious Bandwagoning on Rdm during the TouA era. Just as there was a gross exaggeration of Samurais in the TouA era there was also a gross exaggeration of Red Mages. It wasn't that Red Mages didn't refrain themselves from stealing Whms lime light, in fact it was the opposite, most career Red Mages agreed that White Mage should of been buffed. The issue was that there were a lot of people that leveled the job SOLELY to be their merit *****. Simply put Red Mage WAS the best at merit healing at the time and no amount of boycotting would have stopped the bandwagon because the bandwagon always flocks to whatever is the easiest and Red Mage healing was definitely that.

I know most of you are into the melee thing, and that's fine, but I really hope SE does not ignore the mage side of Red Mage. I leveled RDM solely because of its abilities and versatility as a mage, and I don't want to see that aspect of RDM take too much of a back seat. I enjoy it thoroughly. xD

I wouldn't be too worried. SE so far has shown that they are looking to buff melee/mage at the same time such as the gain spells, armor that increases buff durations, ect... And while I am skeptical that they can find an effective way to add to the mage side to keep it new and exciting AND "fix" the melee side they certainly haven't forgotten about the mage side and knows a lot of people play like that.

[Tassidaru]

I feel i should clarify something. My post and, by extension, this thread, is not about asking SE to 'fix' this or 'buff' that. While there are some things I would love to see changed, I do not have a right to demand those changes, nor do I know what SE plans, and cannot say with 100% certainty that any changes i want will keep the current balance, assuming this is the balance SE wants. My post is only some things ive wondered that i cant come up with a good explanation about short of RDM becoming the new black sheep of the XI family, something like how Dragoon was when call wyvern was it's 2 hour. I mean i can make conjecture that SE plans to raise our shield skill back to a C (like it used to be, pre refresh) and maybe give us flash back, but thats just conjecture, on the other hand i could theorize that se simply troll faced us with the same overall accuracy. what i do know is that generally when a job gets nerfed se OPd the job, or made a trait or ability op, resulting in nerf hammer being swung at their head. RDM has either been caught in the nerf hammer or been caught in the backswing repeatedly, but i dont remember a recent time of OPness.

[Glamdring]

I know the boycott wouldn't have worked, that's why it wasn't a serious complaint. To honestly expect every rdm on an entire server to refuse every end-game invite that involved main healing would be ludicrous, especially considerring how hard it can be to find a party invite. Lucicrous or not however, the consequence is that if SE follows the use path in development that is the direction the rdm job will go. However, some of the changes (enmity for cures, etc.) was not intended as a rdm nerf but a boost to other jobs. Unfortunately, with you using the same ability-Cure-as whm, sch and the like you get hit with their benefit, which is unfortunately not a benefit to the style you would like to play. Think of the poor paladins, Curing was one of their best hate control methods, and hate control is the heart of tanking; now they are relegated to Flash, shield bash, cover and whatever they can manage from their subjob.

No tweak is ever perfect. Your Enspells need a big boost in effectiveness if they decide you need to be able to melee to take hate. Otherwise, make it more realistic for you to be able to self-SC>MB. Not likely IMO that it will happen, SE doesn't want that many jobs able to self SC.

[Supersun]

Not likely IMO that it will happen, SE doesn't want that many jobs able to self SC.

>.> almost every job can self SC now days.

[Seriha]

In MMO speak, "Jack of All Trades" means "Suck at them All" depending on who you ask, which is basically every balancemonger that's argued against RDM buffs from the beginning. We're pretty much at the point in relative comparison. WHMs are the superior healers, duh. BLMs are the superior nukers, as they should. BRDs, CORs, and to some degree SMNs are better buffers, as I say Haste and Refresh do not a buff job make. We all know pretty much the majority of other jobs are better at physically DDing. I still call the enfeebler role a farce given merit restrictions and the sheer number of debuffs BLU gets, often AoE and damaging, over RDM's single-targets. We all know the MMO mentality is not to settle for second or third best if you can help it, either, which automatically puts RDM in a bit of a bind since making them top-tier in all aspects would definitely be bad.

So all you can really do is hope to make RDM unique, which is why I've been trying to pioneer ideas where integrating melee helps our other aspects to be better than just purely backlining. That style has its own perks in higher safety and needing fewer pieces of equipment. Those who risk themselves in the front deserve a more beneficial experience on the job, and even if we never individually match a heavy DD, what we should offer should at least multiply the performances of others, be it offensively or defensively.

[Tassidaru]

Think of the poor paladins, Curing was one of their best hate control methods, and hate control is the heart of tanking; now they are relegated to Flash, shield bash, cover and whatever they can manage from their subjob.

Actually Paladins are unaffected by the cure hate change this next update, The job trait is WHM/SCH/RDM only

[Glamdring]

Actually Paladins are unaffected by the cure hate change this next update, The job trait is WHM/SCH/RDM only

missed that, sweet! They noticed pld didn't need another back-handed nerfing...

[Devrom]

lets be honest with ourselves. most of us didnt even care that much about our DD potential pre-abyssea and recent major updates. now with all those broken atmas and cruor buffs coupled with evisceration and cdc, we are like "weeee~ lets kick some ass!". now with the upcoming voidwatch stuff and such, rdm will regain its prosperity and we will go back to "meh, who cares about DDing" because simply it would make things worse. who in the right mind would let a rdm tp on the upcoming end game stuff? no one. would you even seriously ask to do so? no.

for all these years, SE has been modifying the jobs according to the intentions of the player base, like how they thought of war as a main tank, pld and nin as support jobs etc at first. just look at those jobs now (inb4 lolpld). outside abyssea, rdm is simply far more useful than any other caster in most situations no matter how you look at it and you can't say it didn't make you happy that everyone used to look for a rdm before anything else. if they make rdm a better DD, they would nerf the mage aspects and then people would bitch about that. you can never make everyone happy with the changes. would you prefer being a really good mage and a weak DD or a week mage and a mediocre at best DD? like seriha had said, being "jack of all trades", while being fun and all in theory, is not nearly a good thing in an mmo. i would choose being the most useful mage than being a mediocre DD any day. abyssea shouldnt be the norm to decide if rdm needs to be a better DD since that thing is simply broken.

@ OP, i can't agree more. especially, no fencer while even brd has it + shield mastery with F skill = /facepalm

[Seriha]

Someone's stuck in 2005, it'd seem.

Basically, the RDM of then is the RDM of now, and we've gained no real "prosperity" of the past 15 levels while other mage jobs can sub us and basically get the same effect of curing through brute force with Convert and Refresh with yet more Refresh gear to wear (Hairpin, Owleyes, Subligar, some bodies with +2, Serpentine Set). I hope we needn't explain how BLM and WHM are superior at their respective roles again, and our primary basically boils down to a few more % from a Slow. If you think SE won't get around this with immunities or lots of DA/TA/AoE Spam, I dunno what to say.

Nonetheless, I agree with the TP feed argument if you're looking at us from a pure damage perspective and the definite "meh" of now. If you give that more utility, people might be able to tolerate it, but without that, MOAR DAMAGE is the default option to curb that opinion.