What would you want out of rdm melee gear?

[Mirage]

And lets face it, even if we were only using a Twilight Knife + Joyeuse and doing 2k Eviscerations in Abyssea at best, that's borderline *Decent Damage*, were still better than 1/2 the DDs that somehow make it into the parties anyway xD I mean honestly, its SAD seeing this huge wash of wasted souls that keep getting invited. I'm surprised RDMs haven't started lashing out at them, we all have a DD job or 2 (or 4) leveled, could simply replace the weaklings and do the Meleeing ourselves, hell that way, no one would have to heal us, we can do it ourselves (or more than likely never even get hit)

Yeah, I hate it when people below level 90 try to get stronger too.

[Yandaime]

thats my fault, Mirage I failed to Clarify. I meant Lv.90 DDs that seemed to not even have Raised Ruins or basic Atmas, wearing not even Perle sets but random stuff from Auction House. Saw a SAM the other day with a Hagun and I still respect Hagun but.. he was wearing 1 AGI ring and a Tiger Ring... I wouldn't pick on a lower level DD, that's just silly, Just wish some of these guys would try harder is all, put on some Perle Armor or something lol cuz I hate it when out of the whole alliance, only 4 or 6 people are doing any actual work and when those guys get the merits they want and leave, the whole party falls out.

But its situations like these that allow a RDM to start DDing if he wanted to, given the circumstances, I dont think many people would object if they saw you doing decent damage.

[Ophannus]

I wanna see a cheap/easy to acquire set with similar stats to Perle that focuses on +Att +Acc and +Haste with each giving a cumulative set effect of enhancing enspell damage. So each piece adds 2-3 dmg to enspells. It wouldn't be better than individual pieces (Zelus/Goliard Sao/Tumbler Trunks) but as a set it would be better than average like Perle(Which as a set isn't half bad compared to pre 80 gear like Homam/Askar/Aurum)

[Shiyo]

Giving RDM a self-cast spell that makes their attacks have 100% subtle blow, and another self-cast buff that gives them 80%+ PDT/MDT is the only way to make RDM melee useful(by useful I mean pretend to be useful and not hurt your entire alliance by meleeing things) outside of solo.

So..

I want the devs to not spend time on melee gear and instead focus on aspects that will make the job desirable and useful outside of solo situations.

Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

[tyrantsyn]

Something that converts the weapon's damage done into enspell damage, or reduces attack incredibly in return for a moderate boost to enspell damage. The idea here is to get zero damage from actual melee hits and get all the damage from enspell sources - which eliminates TP feed.

I like this idea, a magic base subtle blow threw decrease weapon damage and increased enspell damage. Would it work well on gear, or a JT. Or maybe both?

[Hyrist]

Giving RDM a self-cast spell that makes their attacks have 100% subtle blow, and another self-cast buff that gives them 80%+ PDT/MDT is the only way to make RDM melee useful(by useful I mean pretend to be useful and not hurt your entire alliance by meleeing things) outside of solo.

So..

I want the devs to not spend time on melee gear and instead focus on aspects that will make the job desirable and useful outside of solo situations.

Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

Ok, there's going to be a reality check here.

A good deal (if not everything) you said there is outright false.

First off, RDM's front line practice on endgame level mobs is currently in practice. If you want to refer to someone who actually does it, speak to savelle, to see hows and whens to his contributions there, I'll stick to things I can address personally.

In my opinion, the only thing RDM ability/spell wise RDM needs to offset the 'Yer feeding the mob TPz!" argument (which is BS in zergs and in any situation in which your group's curing power could be considered overkill.) Is a native spell that either lessens TP gain, prevents tp moves from happening, or dampens the effect of TP attacks so they are not as brutally dangerous. It's gaping hole in our native spell list that we currently use stun to substitute for. Once it's there, literally no one has a valid argument why there shouldn't be more melee on the monsters in general.

In regards to the Damage the Red Mage itself receives, it being weak is a complete misnomer. Red Mage is capable of capping both PDT -% with the right combination of gear, as well as a decent amount of -MDT % as well. Top this off with the Native Magic Defense Bonus, Native Phalanx, Barspells, Stoneskin, and Cures; Red Mage, in fact, is more resilient than Dancer and Ninja when it comes to situations in which they have no choice but to take damage.

It was one of the first two jobs to sucessfully solo Divine Might for that reason. Also remember, Red Mages tanking HNMs as well as certain bosses (Limbus in particular) was a reality before Magic Enmity was nerfed.


But more upsetting then any of these is this false creation of an imperative that Red Mage is in a desperate need to be more useful in endgame for fear of loosing invites.

For no other reasons than an enhanced duration Haste, Refresh II, and the CURRENT state of our Tier II enfeebles on the monsters, our slot in anything outside Abyssea is secure. The full package of what we offer, right now often makes us a boon if not an outright necessity for Voidwatch alone (even if it is in mule form on the weaker ones). And we are still useful in any event outside Abyssea even with the annoyance of enemy immunities to our status effects.

Additionally, the concept of being 'invited' alone is both aged and flawed logic. Given the state of the game as it exists 'blind invites' to endgame events is something more or less done for Abyssea alone. Anything outside it is done among friends or within linkshell. And situations in which you are not accepted into said linkshells or asked on a different job with friends is not due to the lack of usefulness of Red Mage outside of Abyssea, but most likely due to the fact that the role for the job is already filled (likely by one or more other Red Mages.)

The fact that Red Mages are not the prima donna of invites into random groups is not indicative of the job's loss of usefulness so much as the change in the game's very group dynamic. The only thing SE would need to do to secure RDM's invite in abyssea is to make our Merit Spells and/or Death Blossom proc.

I am more than supportive of further developments and changes to Red Mage to make it's Enfeebeling and Enhancing Magic more useful to the group. But this attitude that assisting it's martial aspects are somehow impeding the development of its magical aspects to the point of being harmful to the job as a whole is just a false front to try to enforce an ideal on players who enjoy differing aspects of the job.

Furthermore it has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is to discuss desires for those who do want additional martial support in gear.

So really the only thing of actual substance to the discussion you said was:

Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

I personally would not mind being slapped on some pink gear and have a wider library of strictly melee gear for us to use, so I'd be in support of this 'easy fix' so long as the gear was substantially helpful (Working for multiple roles rather than one specific task.)

However, for those who are discussing more Mage/Melee hybrid pieces, rather than more general Melee/WS use pieces. I'd like to see more of a line of a Scale Mail set built for RDM/DRK/BLU that runs the same lines as what Seriha is describing. I think gear more along that vein might be more realistic to actually being implemented as it pulls out three jobs that share a currently underused armor type and would benefit from both melee and mage stats on one set of gear.

But citing AF3+2 as a good "Start" might set unrealistic expectations unless you are aiming for this gear to drop from Voidwatch or some other high endgame event, which would kind of set some conflicts there on whether the pieces were 'worthwhile', compared to the typical min/max forte that players of that sort of game type would be drawn to.

That said I'd have no problem it being a battlefield or Seal/Crest NM battle drop.

[Economizer]

I like this idea, a magic base subtle blow threw decrease weapon damage and increased enspell damage. Would it work well on gear, or a JT. Or maybe both?

I don't see SE giving Red Mage a job trait for this, but it would be an interesting spell or job trait if it reduced attack greatly in return for a boost to enspell damage.

That said, gear would fit this well, but it would take a lot of work to get a perfect set - if you are doing even one point of damage with the weapon itself, you just fed the mob TP - which defeats the entire purpose.

The easiest way to do this is to use very low damage weapons along side gear that reduces attack, but as a Red Mage's base STR and attack get higher, it gets harder to pull this off even with a weapon that does low damage.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I personally would like to see some higher ws mod based gear to come, now with heavy and light DD jobs pushing +10 or higher str, and attack climbing into the 25-30 range, it is a must have for more slots for us.

[saevel]

Hyrist don't bother, he's trolling you. Just add him to your ignore list and you never gotta worry about him again. He's just another Cid / Shiyo.

Gear wise we just need to be added on everything that has BLU/DNC/NIN on it period, end of story. We should of been on Aura and teal (BLU was for crying out loud). We should of been on Alcides, Mexel, and other assorted gears. We should of been on that +crit / +DEX harness from Turil. Instead we shafted and stuck on gear that is weaker then what we already have, or within 1%. The other day I was looking over my set for ways to stack more attack and you know what jumped out ... the AJ. That's right the fcking AJ from WAY WAY WAY back turns out to be one of our better pieces due to us not getting much better. That dusk is still our "best" TP gears is sad, we finally get "haste" legs and they turn up with -8 accuracy, thought thankfully +small DA/TA. That DEX+6 is the best WS piece I can find is incredibly sad.

[tyrantsyn]

I don't see SE giving Red Mage a job trait for this, but it would be an interesting spell or job trait if it reduced attack greatly in return for a boost to enspell damage.

That said, gear would fit this well, but it would take a lot of work to get a perfect set - if you are doing even one point of damage with the weapon itself, you just fed the mob TP - which defeats the entire purpose.

The easiest way to do this is to use very low damage weapons along side gear that reduces attack, but as a Red Mage's base STR and attack get higher, it gets harder to pull this off even with a weapon that does low damage.

Perhaps take the physical damage out completely and make it all enspell damage? Additional piece's of armor could upgrade the damage, or maybe perhaps have it occ do enspells damage only. I wouldn't mind having to make a build that required me to seek out different piece's of gear to increase the proc rate or the damage. That's half the fun.