What would you want out of rdm melee gear?

[Mirage]

Super Spellblade
Sword
DMG 54
Enspell damage +250%
Enhancing magic +15
Latent effect: Attack -80% (Active when under the effect of enspell, not including weaponskills)
RDM90

Would something like this be worth using? I have no idea, i'm no RDM, just throwing out ideas. Hopefully, the attack penalty would lower damage to 0 most of the time (excluding the occasional crit, I guess) on most things that are strong enough for tp feed to be an issue, while the enspell damage would still get through.

[Economizer]

Perhaps take the physical damage out completely and make it all enspell damage?

Ultimately, a big issue with it is that SE considers subtle blow effects to be very powerful. But since the Red Mage doesn't get to weapon skill either, perhaps this will be okay? I really don't know - SE might not have intended the play style in the first place, and it isn't one I've seen very often at all, just one that is very interesting in my opinion.

Considering that this is Red Mage and not Dancer, I hope that if SE does this in a non-gear form, they make it a spell.

SE could make it very easy if they wanted to, and release a dagger that has a zero damage rating and a buff to enspell damage, alongside 150 delay and perhaps even double attack rate plus. Ultimately, super low delay is going to be one of the major selling points of making a build to match this style, along side Haste and Enhancing Magic.

Of course, a good Red Mage melee set should have Haste capped with as much Enhancing Magic stacked as possible for enspells, assuming you aren't ignoring them. I think that even if you don't go all out enspell, focusing on enspells to make up for any damage gap between Red Mage and another job (that you don't make up for with Dia and nukes) will be key.

While mages in general that enjoy melee (none of us should be held back) would benefit in a set that helps melee stats at a higher level then 70-75, Red Mage would benefit from a set that gives both Haste and Enhancing, so perhaps Enhancing Magic gains on pieces with Haste could be part of a mythical all mage set, for assisting Red Mages in particular?

[Economizer]

Again, this is an incredibly alternate playstyle vs. what happens most of the time, so anything with this should be taken with a grain of Rock Salt. It is by no means the only suggestion, nor should it be the only style a Red Mage uses, but I would definitely like to see it as an option.

Super Spellblade
Sword
DMG 54
Enspell damage +250%
Enhancing magic +15
Latent effect: Attack -80% (Active when under the effect of enspell, not including weaponskills)
RDM90

Would something like this be worth using? I have no idea, i'm no RDM, just throwing out ideas. Hopefully, the attack penalty would lower damage to 0 most of the time (excluding the occasional crit, I guess) on most things that are strong enough for tp feed to be an issue, while the enspell damage would still get through.

The damage rating on the sword is probably too high to get a low enough mark, and you have no mention to delay, but considering the huge buff to damage, perhaps this is intentional. Assuming about 400 Enhancing Magic skill with a tier 2 enspell (which for some stupid reason don't work on multihit) can go up to 50 damage, and with a buff of 250% enspell damage, 125 damage (tier ones get about half this). Swords, while generally the thing many melee Red Mages cling to (I disagree, I think Sword and Dagger should be used equally), generally have a higher delay then a dagger, which is a huge factor if you are only relying on enspell damage.

Would the attack minus be applied before or after other gear? If it was applied afterwords, assuming you had something like 400 attack before the reduction, that would take you to about 80. Taking that further, you could probably knock off 60 or so points from it, if the percentage is applied first. I'm not sure if this would overcome the damage rating of the weapon though.

Something else I forgot to point out is that enspell damage does not cause any enmity to my knowledge, another powerful factor which may cause SE's ire.

[tyrantsyn]

See my thought is that physical damage would be converted straight into enspell damage, meaning no tp gain. As this could be very broken on the fact that no tp would be gain either from the attacks for the player. For instance:

Tyrantsyn hit's "insertmobhere" for 120 fire damage

I know there's a lot of math that goes into hit calculations here. But maybe this would be a great way to change the math around. For instance maybe with this type of system we could base it off our mnd and int instead of our str, att? Kind of like the Oracle job was in FF tactic's, where it's att was base of it magical att stat. Could turn a lot of gear we already have into melee gold?

[Mirage]

Stuff

Sorry, my bad, I forgot to add a delay. Anyway, I didn't really think about when this attack penalty would come into effect, and I am of course also open to changes to my idea, I did not make it with the intention to be set in stone, considering I am not 100% knowledgeable about all the game mechanics.

The intention with the weapon is in either case for it to be possible, if you really tried, to get your regular melee attacks to hit for 0 "pretty often", perhaps not all the time, to reduce TP feed by a lot. Of course, this would also lead to your own tp gain being pretty slow. I gave the weapon a reasonable dmg rating for it to be viable to actually do a WS whenever you managed to get 100 TP. I'm sure it would be fine to lower the DMG to like something in the 40s.

Now that I think about it, an interesting side effect of this very slow tp gain, and therefore very low percentage of damage coming from WSes, is that the RDM wouldn't mind having to swap to a staff in the middle of battle in order to cast certain spells. They would lose some tp each time they did it, sure, but it wouldn't matter as much as it does if you get a very large amount of your damage from WSes.

As for delay, I don't know, let's make it 220-240ish?

[Seriha]

I'd suggest it best to avoid trying to convert physical damage to magical. I wasn't a fan of the Ceremonial Dagger exploit from back in the day, and giving an "always on" equivalent just recreates that 0 TP feed environment that I doubt SE would be keen on. Additionally, us giving 0 TP means we would get 0 TP, and therefore no WS or /DNC thingies if that's your sub.

So, while I'm for fighting the TP feed issue, that just isn't the solution. Meanwhile, if you really want to give Enspells a bump, aside from the obvious issue with T2s, is to somehow include the weapon's damage rating into the additional effect. So, if SE finally did fix T2s and you could creep up to like +45 a swing, a D57 sword could add another 57 to that. Step outside of Abyssea where our ATK deficiencies and such are more of a reality on harder prey, and suddenly a +102 is a bit more of an equalizer. Our general WS will still be comparatively weaker, but on mobs of higher physical DEF, we might actually be situationally appropriate if resists aren't an issue.

[Economizer]

Mirage, I definitely like your thoughts about it, don't worry about the examples you put forth being perfect.

I understand the idea that sometimes you'd hit for a non-zero amount of damage, and I like your thoughts behind making that possible, for various balance reasons.

Now that I think about it, an interesting side effect of this very slow tp gain, and therefore very low percentage of damage coming from WSes, is that the RDM wouldn't mind having to swap to a staff in the middle of battle in order to cast certain spells. They would lose some tp each time they did it, sure, but it wouldn't matter as much as it does if you get a very large amount of your damage from WSes.

This is yet another factor to add in addition to enmity less, TP feed free attacks. You have very little reason not to switch to another weapon if you need to enfeeble or nuke. That itself is a very powerful force. While I still have hopes that SE will make some sort of elemental shields that mimic the elemental staves in some way, being able to switch to a straight up staff is very enticing.

This play style definitely fits Red Mage very, very well, and is very unique. Even if it doesn't output a ton of damage, you could definitely use it to augment the damage of someone else smacking a mob.

For anyone who might not like this play style, I just want it to be an option, not the only solution. Giving Red Mage better access to subtle blow abilities and armor would be an important factor too, as would making it so you could deal more damage hitting with a weapon in general so you can justify TP feed.

[geekgirl101]

If anything I'd like to see gear that would improve RDMs specifically to a point where meleeing an easy prey target doesn't take 20x longer that the RDM has to rely on nuking all their mana away and barely get away from a battle. Some ideas would include enspells ignore a certain % of magic resistance unless the target is completely immune to magic, and either a weapon or a peice or armor that inflicts a mini-auspice effect on the mob so that RDMs aren't constantly TP-feeding while they're fighting hard to bring it down. Standard boosts such as accuracy, spell interruption down, haste, attack, dagger/sword skill, and enspell enhancement boosts are also not to be snorted at.

While not gear-related I'd like also to see boosts in RDM weapon skills. We're hardly a "jack of all trades" when our own weapon skills are super weak that even a WHM can massively out-damage an RDM with their unique club weapon skills.

[Seriha]

I'm sorry, but if you're taking 20x longer to melee down an EP target over nuking, you need some better gear. Nuking is probably the absolute worst way to kill individual EPs, especially outside of Abyssea.

[Rayik]

Seriously agreed with Seriha. I can do as much damage as my best nukes with 2 procs of double and/or triple attack in Abyssea. I can nuke something for maybe 1k-ish damage, or swing 5 times dual-wielding for 150-250 damage each in a few seconds, with WS's doing well over twice what a nuke would do(Evisc, etc). Even outside Abyssea, I only nuke to pull the mob if I just want a little extra damage. To each their own though, my nuking ain't that great.

If your melee'ing takes 20x longer than your nuking, then you're not even trying to gear for melee in the first place. Setting yourself up to fail will yield expected results.