Lack of decent Red Mage Gear

[Bublex]

Moving this to the Red Mage forum.

[Seriha]

The older gear you see is from the era where SE intended to dictate what every class does whereas the newer gear is representative of the trend in which most RDM avoid melee and stick to the mage aspects of the class.

Chicken or egg? Perhaps trends gravitated a certain way because the needed fixes to adhere to a job's concept didn't come soon enough. While some may express preference, for others it may have just been a matter of making due. After all, the old days weren't particularly flexible about EXP acquisition and endgame activities. Don't follow a leader's rules and expectations? Well, let's just say some would be more polite about the ensuing situation than others.

If people like you keep complaining about the melee aspect, which only affects the weak mobs/casual events/solo aspect of the job, then SE will think melee is all rdms care about and wont boost the mage side, which affects every aspect of the job. That's a problem. That's reason enough for you to keep your trap shut about rdm melee until we recieve the important mage updates we need.

Fear mongering at its finest, folks. For those not keen on these "debates", the anti-melee side loves to function off the rhetoric that attention from SE comes at an either/or basis. While at present, we can acknowledge that dev attention is spread thin between the 20 jobs with the cap increases and implementation of things like the VW system, WoE additions, or Dynamis adjustments, these are not forever. And while we all would enjoy attention to our favorite jobs sooner rather than later, no one should be doomed to playing a job thematically by having to solo or participate in content that "doesn't matter" anymore. It's just another one of their sly insults along with the fixation of the word "retard" or lol-affixed terminology.

Rdm melee is weak and has issues. However, Rdm's mage side is also equally weak and has even moe issues.

Forgive me while I guffaw.

RDM's "mage" side has grown far more than its physical within the past 20 levels, and on top of that it had a significant head start over the melee portion to begin with. Now, you may be willing to ignore the acquisition of the T4 nuke line and at least Gain-MND, Break, and Addle as mage supplements, but you're not kidding anyone if you're implying no gear has come along to improve what existed beforehand. We nuke harder. We cure better. We cast faster. Our buffs can last longer.

Both sides could be happy, but rather bluntly, I hope SE doesn't listen to those willing to ridicule and harass their fellow players just because they'd actually like a versatile job to be versatile in ALL ways.

[Absolutezero]

There are some good pieces out there, but as I'm sure has been mentioned in other threads, putting together a RDM melee set takes some effort.

You will also notice RDM gets left off of mage gear also. There are magic attack bonus pieces that WHM can use but RDM can't, and there was that cure potency body that SMN could equip but we couldn't. It would seem this is a way for SE to limit the job's potential, as if they are worried that a few gear choices might make the job overpowered. It wouldn't.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Because BLU and RDM are completely different entities. Just because both jobs use a sword and end in -mage does not mean they follow the same rules.

In that BLU cast enemy magic, and RDM casts normal magic... Melee wise, they're not that different they're both Hybrids that able to wield a weapon but not better than actual DD's.

[Doombringer]

there's stuff out there to wear.

i run this: http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/219339

and that's not ideal. as in rdm could wear better than that.

if you can't or don't care to get an almace, obviously badelaire is the second choice. if not that, mainhand a dagger. evisceration and vorpal blade are your best ws's atm, and vorpal blade isn't worth giving up duel wield. twilight knife and gnadgott were prolly your 2 best bets at 90.

for offhander, if you can't do the grauberg zone boss, a str or dex shamshir +3 is solid. actually, considering the jump to 95 now, they're probably better.. completely soloable as well, just time consuming. if you have the time, make both and just swap them out depending on wether you need the acc or not.

if you can't do sea, rancor collar is good, it's actually better than what i'm wearing now assuming you cap out your tonberry hate to feed "tonberry's grudge". not cheap though.

sadly however the cop ring and earring here really are high end.. i dunno of anything that can really compete with rajas and brutal.. or suppa for that matter.. on the upside, all those missions are easy now. and those pieces are also quite solid for any other jobs you might have. so it's completely worth the effort.

atheling mantle is honestly not that hard. find someone doing the cerb for there ukon and offer to help out for the night. odds are they'll be giving them away.

belt can be a pain, but swift belt is pretty easy now. or there's even a 3% you can buy off the ah.

tiara is also sort of a pain, but easy alternatives include w turban, or brisk mask. (mask is the same boat as atheling mantle. they hit the floor all the time cuz of people farming emps)

legs are ah-able or from kindred crest battlefield. alternately you could do the shantotto add-on augmented up right those are respectable. no triple attack, but no acc penalty either.

hands and feet are obviously both ah-able. not cheap but... i guess you could always go NQ. those ARE cheap now. there's also 2 new sets of rdm wearable boots that can also be ah-ed. one is 4% haste, but -3 store tp. might still be better than dusk+1 though. the other is only 2% haste but adds a good bit of acc and subtle blow. i'd personally wear those over NQ dusk but then you're right back into the HQ dusk price range.

body is from ose. easy solo. hell i soloed it back at like lvl 65 6 years ago. alternately, the acp body, properly augmented, is nice. and the nyzul body has 4% haste on it. then there's antares harness or pahluwhan body if you need acc.

bow is ah-able. not to expensive anymore. ideally you would use ammo's though, more freely swappable. demonry core is 1 more dex, but on my server is still clocks in well over a million gil. then that also gives you the option to just ws in the core, and tp in either an astrolabe or a smart bomb. there's also another newer ammo that offers even more acc but i forget what it's called.

but yah. even if you go with the lower end pieces i outline here, you could prolly put out respectable numbers in like... a sand sweeper party. just don't expect to be a hero. especially if you go cheap.

[saevel]

Chimeric Flueret lost most of it's charm when they nerfed / fixed it's +enspell effect.

STR Shamshir +3 is
DMG 57 Delay 230 STR+10 Attack +20 (25 actually)

That is a pretty ridiculous amount of fSTR / attack for a job who's biggest issue is attack. The DA+10 sword is the only other weapon that's close but it suffers from a high delay that I don't like.

Mainhand obviously is Almace or the WoE sword for CDC. That not being an option you can twilight dagger and the newer DMG 42 Delay 186 dagger, although it's kinda pricey. If SE was to give us Vorpal naively then we could go Sword all the time.

Body is really restricted. Your choices boil down to AJ, ACP Body, Goliard or Pahluwhan.

Legs are either ASA or the newer ones. I went with the AH ones due to acc really not being an issue anymore, but I might create a set of haste +3% attack +7 legs just in case.

Hands are Dusk mostly, I hear there are some new r/ex hands available but I haven't seen them yet.

Feet are Dusk, but the newer haste 4% ones are 700K now and the price is going down.

Rings I go with Brutal + Keen (Acc+3 Attack+7), seems a good balance.

Ranged / Ammo is really up in the air. Our best pure "melee" is the T.sting and it's weak. Some DEX ones available now that provide accuracy and a little WSC for CDC / Evis. Personally I use the Mag Acc+8 chakram off AV but that's not something you see often. It makes my enspells harder to resist so it believe it to be enhancing my melee damage, but in an alternative way.

Rest is pretty easy. We get tons of gear, just none of the super shiny *BLING* gear that everyone else gets.

[Doombringer]

the new hands are solid. 4% haste and 8 dex. if nothing else i'd cdc in them. then probably tp in them over dusk just to save myself an inventory slot.

alucinor mitts i think they're called. they also have mp+50 and darkness resist +50, so that's just gravy. i only didn't mention them because they're so new and uncommon.

there's also a new haste belt, phasmida. +6% haste with 6 acc and eva. i'd take that over goading, but again, brand new and uncommon. i also didn't mention AV belt cuz that's still fairly uncommon, but i guess it's also better than goading. then i suppose speed belt is a worthy mention as well.

i just tried to keep it "attainable"

edit: and yah, i'm working on a str shamshir now myself. the lvl increase was the final nail in the coffin for chimeric fleuret for me. but considering how easy and fast it can be to get if you have an aby group, i think it's still worth mentioning as a placeholder or stepping stone.

[Mageoholic]

It's the game telling you "Hey, this is a caster not a melee".

To be fair its a pretty terrible casting class to.

[Quetzacoatl]

To be fair its a pretty terrible casting class to.

Gotta agree on this one. I mean, What else does RDM have left in Abyssea? All I've ever done with it so far is make it a Phalanx II job for CW Burns, that's about it. And when it's down to that when your enfeebles outright resist on Higher-Tier NMs, You have to ask yourself.

[Swords]

Body is really restricted. Your choices boil down to AJ, ACP Body, Goliard or Pahluwhan.

Actually Crimson/Blood Scale mail makes a respectable body piece if your willing to invest time/money into getting the potential +3 Haste +6 STR augments.