So why do we have the worst Espells?

[Toadie-Odie]

In other words, the reason you don't like Enspell II is because it does not fit your playstyle, not because they are terrible; they could use some work though, I'll be the first to admit.

Or maybe I hadn't realized I was trying to use it in a way it wasn't intended to be used? I thought I was being objective in my post but I can't deny the human tendency to taint judgment with personal experience.

What sort of work would you like to see done on the enspells?

[Vicious]

Honestly there's a lot of good ideas floating around for Enspells; enfeebling effects, tertiary effects (critical hit rate +, MDB-), elemental charging (think Afflatus Solace + Holy)... I would take any with a smile. There's really no room to complain after Boost-STR + Temper.

I think the people that complain about this issue are never going to be satisfied; Enspell I are already disgustingly powerful when Dual-Wielding, Enspell II have their niche. RDM is second-string melee; useless against high-end targets, quite powerful against targets EM and below in the hands of a skilled/geared player. This is precisely as it should be.

[Toadie-Odie]

I like the idea of MDB- although elemental charging would be interesting to play around with too.

[Vicious]

That's my personal favourite; have the damage start high, then gradually decay to zero; lower the current damage, higher the boost to next matching nuke. Does not overwrite itself, duration should be 3 minutes, with the damage reaching zero around the 2 minute mark for average-geared players. Effect wears off immediately upon receiving the nuke bonus. Recast 3 minutes. How would this not be awesome? This guy doesn't know.

[ManaKing]

I don't even want a gimmick like bonus attack or acc, just fix enspell2 to be what we all thought they were gonna be when they were announced... stronger enspells...

make them proc on all hits, not just initial. make them start at max damage, as opposed to having to build dmg every strike. make them calculate damage based on enhancing skill at the time of cast, not at the time of strike.

is it original? no. but it should be an easy improvement. (hell, could they just copy/paste the enspell 1 info and put a *2 in there at the end?)

you could argue that even then they would still be lesser than endark and enlight, but endark and enlight decay, causing a lot of wasted casting time. (particularly with enlight) compared to how much casting you wouldn't need to be doing with a non decaying, composured enspell on rdm, and it starts to add up.

I'm still torn. 60 damage a hit x2-4 an attack round is really attractive. The occasionally attacks 2-4 times sword would probably also become really attractive as well as the Onieros Knife, depending on your tastes. Being nullified by accuracy issues or any of the issues that make most higher end mobs hard targets for magic damage, is kinda meh. There are things we would beat the crap out of because we already can. In some ways I would love this because it makes us great at dispatching trash and adds, which in many ways is what RDMs are generally allowed to melee.

50ish Attack and Accuracy goes a long way to making it so RDMs can actually hit most things with decent competency. The additional damage mostly serves as a stat counter as well as a measuring stick to test the waters for magical weakness in mobs. If your enspells aren't hitting well, it might be a decent indication that you shouldn't try to nuke. We aren't realistically ever going to get Dual Wield and /WAR which is what is required for 1H jobs to be good DDs. Both our Accuracy and our Attack are a problem, so these kinds of suggestions are really the only way I can see RDM playing by the current rules and succeeding.

If RDM is allowed to be its own kind of melee mage through Enspells, then accuracy and magic accuracy for more potent Enspells is what's needed to be able to keep RDMs melee potent. The other side of M.Acc is lowering M. Eva. I've always been a fan of RDM being able to reduce magical evasion for mobs, but we just never were really good at it. Everyone ever has said make Enspell 2s reduced the M.Eva of the element you are striking with. It's just common sense, since RDM doesn't have any other elemental wheel mechanics nor do they make sense for the job. We don't have the benefit of being potent or best at anything, to give us the slack to use inefficient systems.

If you make Enspell damage significant on RDM then our Mythic becomes the personalized weapon that we all want Mythics to be. Ton of M.Acc and Occ attacks 2x or 3x would be pretty darn good if Enspells actually hit for real damage. RDMs would definitely have their paragon status similar to Rainemard.

If only there was some kind of Enhancing SP that could fix a lot of our RDM woes.....

[SpankWustler]

Enspell II are designed to be used in situations where you are meleeing and casting in roughly equal amounts. The damage increases with each swing to encourage you to keep swinging; the maximum damage is set higher to compensate for lost damage while casting; it only applies to the first swing to prevent them from being used purely for the damage; the magic evasion reduction is there to increase the accuracy of your spells since you're not using a staff; the damage is calculated each swing instead of at cast because... nope, I got nothing.

In other words, the reason you don't like Enspell II is because it does not fit your playstyle, not because they are terrible; they could use some work though, I'll be the first to admit.

A much simpler explanation is that the second tier of en-spells were designed by a deranged maniac and thus just do a bunch of arbitrary and weird stuff. To support my "a crazy man designed Tier II en-spells to appease his giant insect gods of nonsense" theory, they don't even reduce Magic Evasion to their own element.

[Hashmalum]

Most players rightfully expect that Enspell IIs should be flat-out better than Enspell Is because every other job gets tier II spells that beat the pants off their tier I counterpart. Warp II can be used for exactly what Warp I can be used for in addition to warping other people. Likewise, Raise II does everything Raise I does only with less XP loss. Same with Reraise II vs. Reraise I. Cure II heals more, Regen II heals for more per tick, tier II nukes do more damage, Dia II reduces defense more, Bio II reduces attack more and does more damage over time, Poison II does more damage over time, and on and on and on. Even in our enfeebling magics, Slow II, etc. are stronger than their tier Is. There isn't some complex tactical decision based on how much casting you are going to be doing or how many swings per round you will be making or how angry God is with you at the moment to be made when deciding to use Slow II vs. Slow I, or Bio II vs. Bio I; either you are going for effectiveness or you are procing weaknesses, and in either case your choice is cut-and-dried.

But for some reason, SE tossed this logic out the window when they made RDM tier II enhancing magic. Part of it was the era; the new abilities and systems made during that time tended to be fiddly, overcomplicated, overbalanced things that were larded down with conditions and restrictions to make absolutely sure they couldn't be used for anything other than what they were intended for, because if anything escaped Tanaka's iron grip for even a microsecond BARANSU WOULD BE RUINED FOREVER. I mean, if players could combine abilities more freely without a dozen restrictions on each one, they might come up with combinations the developers didn't foresee, and that might make them more powerful than was planned for, and that might let them complete their goals faster, and that might lead to them dropping subscriptions earlier. And that long chain of 'mights' was allowed to determine everything. There wasn't the slightest second of reflection about how enjoyable this was for players, or whether the developer's vision itself might turn people off and lead them to quit early, or what this was doing to people's long-term perception of how fit Square-Enix was to create and run MMOs. No, it was just CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL WE ARE YOUR GOD NOW WE HAVE THE VISION AND YOU WILL FILL YOUR PART IN IT. Evoliths. Absolute Virtue. The enfeebling enmity nerf. Afflatus: Misery. They each, in their own ways, reflected this mentality. The other part, of course, was that this was RDM we were talking about, and RDM is not allowed to have nice things anymore, ever.

The devs don't even have the excuse that melee jobs would be too strong if they could get Enspell II effects because there is no way that they can consistently get those effects--the devs made sure of that when they set the Enspell IIs at level 50+ and made them incompatible with Accession. There is no excuse for Enspell IIs being the way they are. None. If the devs gave one half of one tenth of a damn about this job, they'd realize that and fix it. So, do I think that they care even that much, or that they will do anything? I've been playing RDM on and off ever since 2004. That should answer your question.

[Vicious]

A much simpler explanation is that the second tier of en-spells were designed by a deranged maniac and thus just do a bunch of arbitrary and weird stuff. To support my "a crazy man designed Tier II en-spells to appease his giant insect gods of nonsense" theory, they don't even reduce Magic Evasion to their own element.

If you want to deal damage, use Enspell I. If you want to lower the target's magic evasion to x element, use the appropriate Enspell II. The spells really do make sense if you think about them; if you try to make them fit into "It has a 2 after it, it has to be better according to whatever arbitrary criteria i come up with," you're going to come up short every time. Besides, if you're single-wielding, they are better damage than Enspell I by a very wide margin. I see many posters making a mountain out of the "accuracy determined via skill on proc," but... anything you would be meleeing in the first place is not going resist you nearly enough to make it worse than Enspell I damage.

All i get from a lot of these posts is that a lot of people think RDM should be competing with WAR DRK SAM etc., which is completely ludicrous. ACC/ATK +50, 60+ damage enspells on all hits, etc... you bash Tanaka and his balance, but endorsing this kind of nonsense shows that you are just as bad; you're just on the opposite end of the spectrum.

[Doombringer]

if you try to make them fit into "It has a 2 after it, it has to be better according to whatever arbitrary criteria i come up with," you're going to come up short every time.

Except that our arbitrary criteria is the precedent set by every other spell line in the game... Every other spell with a 2 after it's name, does the job of the spell with no number next to its name, better...

I see many posters making a mountain out of the "accuracy determined via skill on proc," but... anything you would be meleeing in the first place is not going resist you nearly enough to make it worse than Enspell I damage.

It's actually DAMAGE being determined at the time of the strike as opposed to the time of the cast to. for what sane reason should you reward someone for TPing in their enhancing skill build?



EDIT: oh, also, if you really believe spankwustler wants rdms to be competing with wars, drks, and sams... well, you must be new here...

Ask him where he got the name spankwustler...

[Aethon]

Enspells could stand a change in the formula or even better a 3rd tier of them. As it stands, RDM can get 43% double attack without sacrificing damage output. So assuming best case scenario... you get and extra 120dmg per round.
Now most rounds wont have a DA and some hits will get resisted, so ball park it to...90mg.
Yet say i want to use an Excalibur. my RDM usually has 1400 hp. If the added effect dmg triggers, i hit for an additional 350 dmg. BUT enspells overwrite the effect. Go for (mostly) guaranteed damage or gamble and hope for better?

Perhaps tier 3 priority could be placed between Added effects and sambas. Then we get the best bonus but won't get sambas meaning we can't have ALL the cake and eat it too.