The Unoffical "Let's Fix Red mage" Thread

[Trangnai]

Before you post please, read this entire post, as well at the rest of the posts in the thread to ensure your point has not already been addressed.

Please try to stay on topic and keep out of flame wars. You're opinion is welcomed but de-railing the purpose of this thread is not. I'm sure everyone who posts in the thread want to get the attention of the devs on this issue. Trolling and De-railing won't achieve that.

Let's face it, we all know rdm is broken, and not in a good way. The way the game has evolved in the last few years have made the class less and less relevant with every patch. The Job Class was given miniscule improvements while other classes were altered and improved so much that there entire roles changed.

Red Mage has been stuck in Limbo due to a huge slew of reasons. We need a breath of fresh air, for some of us, that may just be leveling another job entirely. But some people have devoted alot of time to there rdm and want the class to be relevant again.

Most people, and I'm sure you will agree wish for Red Mage to ether fill a specific role, or be a hybrid like blu, nin, dnc, sch and many others. The problem stems not only from its diversity but the fact that it lacks the tools to preform the role, be it a spell, trait, gear, or maybe the monster it would be most useful on is immune to there spells. There is alot of issues to be addressed.

I can go on and on for days about the issues people already know about, but I wish to see other players state there mind first, how do you feel about Red Mage and it's current role in the game? What can we do to fix it? What issues do you wish to see addressed?

Community Team please give us answers and help us get a once great job class back on its feet again. Players I look forward to hearing your thoughts and Ideas for fixes.

[ManaKing]

Enhancing needed to scale better past 75, we needed some job traits, and IDK enfeebling shouldn't have been written out of the game.

What's left to do? Not much really. Reason: Devs

Previous to the level increase, Devs considered RDM very powerful (debatable whether it was or not).

During Aby, Devs still considered RDM very powerful, even though no one that actually played the game would agree with them.

Temper was acquired and the Devs thought that was enough even though it only addressed 1 of 3 sides of RDM. Cure skill was readjusted favorably for all jobs, including RDM, so 2/3 sides were then ok-ish. BUT then they decided to adjust enfeebling magic to do something, but not really do anything, since it fixed absolutely nothing about enfeebling. It was and still is pathetic. RDM is still at 2/3 currently.

We ask for more utility from either enfeebling and enhancing magic, and we are told in very smug or snarky explanations about how AoE isn't for RDM natively and how Gravity II works. NA RDMs get the distinct impression that neither the NA correspondents or the Devs they represent have any clue how RDM works and don't appreciate the lack of transparency involving RDMs future.

We get a new BAUS. Devs have idea to adjust how many spells can go in the game. I personally am reserved but hopeful. It has the potential to fix the nuke/enfeeble side of RDM. It could also not. No one still thinks RDM is powerful or even average compared to most jobs. New administration has made no actual statement on where they believe RDM in relation to other jobs. If they think RDM is a very powerful job again, we are screwed.

There is no point in making yet another list on what we reasonably, or unreasonably, want until they express any interest in fixing our job or if it is even broken in the first place. Dev perception is our worst enemy.

[Trangnai]

I can agree entirely with this post, not to mention however these "fixes" or additions were minor at best.

A big issue is End Game NMs are resistant or immune to most of the enfeebles we can cast. This means the enfeeblement role is moot, our enhancing role is moot cause most of our spells are on par with whm who has AoE versions of most, The versions we have are self cast only, or the buff from subbable versions are minor and a party would be better going for a bigger overall boost to another role then having a slot reserved for one spell. (refresh)

When I play rdm, I literately feel like the gap between ourselfs and other jobs has greatly worsened from what it was 4 years ago, regardless of the role. If I'm in a party, it makes me feel kind of worthless and that I would be better off just leveling another job. But then again most EG content I do I end up on blu.

RDM just has little to nothing to bring to the table, it doesn't even have many procs for abyssea and voidwatch. While the dev team has there issues we as a community need to work together with them to find a fix. not fight with them or get upset with there responses or responses from others. but take the time to do the math in our head to help find a work around for issues and overall help Red Mage evolve into a new class that has a role in End Game content.

[Ophannus]

Silence= Most NMs are immune
Sleep=Most NMs are immune
Gravity=Most NMs are immune
Break=Most NMs are immune
Bind=Most NMs are immune

That leaves us with Slow/Paralyze/Addle/Dia/Blind. That would be like making most NM's immune to 2/3rds of all elemental magic. Paralyze is hard to land and even if it does land, the proc rate sucks on NMs. Slow is worthless since a mob's regular attacks are easily mitigated, its the TP moves that destroy players, not the autoattacks; slow has very little value. Addle is kind of cool, makes spells a bit easier to stun since the window of casting time is a bit longer.

RDM should get an Inhibit TP spell that stacks with Penance, a spell that gives a TP-Penalty(opposite of TP Bonus), it would reduce the power of TP moves, or a spell that increase the amount of TP a mob needs to use a TP move from 100% to 200% (but the TP move's power is still counted as if it was a 100% TP move) thus it would take a bit longer for a mob to use a TP move. A magic defense down or Plague spell would be neat too.

In order to make Addle somewhat more potent and useful, could it also double or even triple the MP cost of spells for the target?

[Emitremmus]

I agree that RDM needs some twerking to get put back on the table in terms of end-game, but as a mostly casual player (I still do plenty of endgame with a shell, but I ultimately log in to relax), I would like to see more canonical RDM like abilities and spells.

X-Magic / Doublecast / Quadra-magic
This was always a cool ability that sparked my interest in the older FF games in the series. While I understand RDM isn't the best nuker to begin with, this would still be a fun ability to be had. I ASSUME (that means I don't know the mechanics of the code that is used and how this could be implemented. Just putting that out there before people start yelling about it.) that it could be implemented just like Double Shot for RNG. Perhaps even a double-attack trait for magic that has a percent chance to proc.

Melee
I know what you're thinking. RDM + melee? luluzluzlulzulz. No. RDM is a swordsman as much as a PLD is a swordsman. They should definetely have a buff to their physical prowess. Whether this is through a buff to enspell damage/effect or through straight skill increase.

Parry
They're a swordsman, and so typically a swordsman would parry. I think it would be pretty rad for them to get a trait that ISN'T dual wield, but allows them to equip a parrying dagger in the off-hand. Think of it like how a strap functions for 2-handed weapons. The off-hand dagger would not attack, but greatly increase the chances of parrying.

Fast-cast
RDM is supposed to be the king of fast cast. Quick magic could be a trait native to RDM to compete with SCH's abilities. I understand some jobs can use equipment or atmas to utilize this, but a RDM could have a much higher proc chance with this.

Enspells
Since my Mystic Knight idea was kind of thrown in to Rune Fencer, I think RDM would benefit from En-spells with different effects. At the very least a 3 minute or so ability that adds an additional effect to en-spells along the lines of Enstone: adds additional effect Slow, Enthunder: additional effect Stun.

Crowd control
RDM could also benefit to have more crowd control resources. Perhaps an improved Bind. Old school enfeebles like Confuse. An intimidation spell, or a spell to lock an enemy's focus on the RDM while they kite it. (Old school Kirin kiting ftmfw).

Okay, I forgot to submit this earlier this morning. Forgive me if someone else happens to mention something like I have. Probably shouldn't get in a FFXI forum at work.

[Trangnai]

X-Magic / Doublecast / Quadra-magic
I sadly say I believe Spontaneity will be the closest we ever get to this. The ability to have a spell insta-cast 100% of the time then be able to prep another spell right after is nice, however alot of people agree that the recast is a little long, while I understand allowing us to use this ability constantly may be a little overpowered. I don't see why, if they ever add new job merits lowing the recast of this a little can't be an option for those who wish to insta-cast more often.

Melee
I agree that the melee role of the Red Mage has been greatly neglected, and if improved properly we could see a great change in rdm's role in EG content. Enspell buffs and better gear access are the first things that come to mind, the primary focus should be to allow additions to our support role while on the front lines. Not only make our DDing more potent (because its not just a little behind, its decades behind, I don't mind not being as strong as DDs but we need a boost) but also add debuffs through enspells or other means that require us on the front line to access, however don't make that our only option as a role, let backline rdms have some fun too.

Parry
Nice idea, but I wonder how they would implement it, having access to tactical parry would be nice as well, and alot more useful then shield mastery.

Fast-cast
The one place I havent seen many issues is our spell casting speed, this however doesn't mean we cast faster then other jobs. While I don't feel any boost to fast cast is needed. It seems like SCH gets a lil too much of our casting ability. However if this is only throught the use a Stratigems I don't see an issue as SCHs have to be careful on how they choose to use them do to resource management.

Enspells
This is something I can get onboard with, This makes rdms enspells a viable debuff resource to have on the front lines, I would also like to see a buff to our overall enspell damage. Seeing as we have half of our non AF JSE buffing enspell damage but not providing anything good outside of that. If enspells our where our damage output is supposed to be coming from buff it by giving us a trait that adds additional damage.

Crowd control
Yes, alot of people still wish to have rdm in this role, but its not useful due to lack of resources and requiring a spacific sub job to fill this role. Access to Bindga and Graviga would be nice, even if we still must limit Sleepga to /blm.



Alot of people argue over weather rdm should have a front line or a back line role, I feel that rdm would benifit from the ability to have both, depending on the situation. however this requires us to have destinct resources that are dependent on ether the front or the back line. and the party should be able to adjust to whats needed/play style.

If a Situation arisies where rdm is better on one role then another they should be able to switch and play the best role they can play in that point in time. This diversity would allow players to plan ahead and use rdm instead of having a dedicated DD switch to a Dedicated Mage and so on and so forth. At least thats part of how I see it. For example, blu is able to switch roles simply by swaping spells, there only penalty is a 1min cooldown to cast there spells, while they get access to all other pros immediately.

[Scuro]

*about to say something, but just shakes his head and walks away*
There are like 50 of these, and none of them turn up results, no point. Just go revive one of the other 50 How to fix RDM topics.

[Trangnai]

*about to say something, but just shakes his head and walks away*
There are like 50 of these, and none of them turn up results, no point. Just go revive one of the other 50 How to fix RDM topics.

Yes, and it's posts like these that make those threads a lackluster. gibberish filled mess. please read the opening statements. I would like to be able to form a discusion that dosn't focus on one key point or get entirely derailed by trolls that care less, like you. If people can see the post and we can keep it popular well managed and maintanied we may be able to make some progress. even thought I doubt the devs will directly say there considering our ideas.

Just for the record I don't want rdm to be blu or vise versa, but both being hybrids blu is one of the most common comparisons to rdm in terms of play style, thought blu is refined by the way the player wants to configure it, a blank slate that can pretty much allow you to make your own class.

Red Mage however is not nor would ever be player defined, but could have many roles like blu does now. A skilled blu can play every role except alliance healer, and thats because our healing spells are limited to party only. This is the concept that a rdm should have always been able to preform from most rdms prospectives. having two jobs that preform simular roles but still are able to bring something unquie to the table is not a bad thing, its just that rdm falls behind every role so much thats the issue.

[Shadax]

Ohlookitsthisthreadagain.jpg

But seriously, the deal with RDM is that it is a job that does a little bit of everything pretty well. The problem is that when you can level a job from 1-99 in a few days, nobody wants a job that that can do something "pretty well"... they only want a job that is the best at something, or at the very least can do the job better than RDM - which is pretty much all of them.

Need nukes? Get a BLM or SCH.
Need healing? Get a WHM or SCH.
Need enhancing? Get a BRD.
Need crowd control? Get a BLM or BRD.
Need refresh? Not with atmas, temps, JA's, RDM sub, etc.
Need enfeebling? Lol, what's that?
Need melee? Don't get me started.

Let's face it, the only thing RDM is the best at is enfeebling and unless SE makes it so that more than a handful of enfeebling spells can even land on NM's, RDM will continue to linger in this "pretty good" limbo that nobody wants. I will say that as misguided as they are on RDM, at least they made some effort. The Immunobreak system had some potential, but... well, we all know how that turned out. I really don't expect another attempt until after they figure out how to add more spells into the game and even then I won't hold my breath.

[Emitremmus]

My ideas were merely suggestions. The only thing I don't like seeing any of you say is that you don't expect something to happen. At this point with a new expansion coming out that everyone was CERTAIN couldn't happen, I would say anything is possible anymore.

I agree that our main focus has always been enfeebling, and that is where our strength should lie. But at this point, being able to enfeeble an NM is going to make or break the battle. Being able to have a higher tier slow/para/blind/etc. is going to make things too easy, whereas the slot a RDM would take up could be filled with Resolution to further destroy the enemy.

When RDM gets "fixed", I think we will see a huge focus on the melee and enspell side of things. Back in the day they added Composure to address this slightly. Perhaps a new JA that takes the focus off of casting and enhances the swordplay abilities of RDM, while adding penalties to spells.