Why did SE lie

[Carth]

The above post is half-right.

Allakazham had multiple melee RDMs that were studying how effective Melee RDM can be, and it was started with a parse showing a level 75 RDM/NIN in a ToAU EXP party, and it showed he was pretty damn good. That (re)sparked the interest.

So yeah, Alla RDMs wanted melee buffs, but just like with the clamoring for enfeebles on the official forum, it was given to use halfheartedly. Composure was the only good thing out of that list. Tier II Enspells are shit, and we never asked for Temper.

So no matter what way you look at it, SE's been giving half-hearted buffs to RDM, and in some cases severe nerfs. Nothing has changed regardless.

Has anyone looked at RDM/GEO and RDM/RUN?

[Losie]

Lying or not, they fucked RDM like normal. Like he said, they just made GEO a better enfeebler than RDM, which was the only viable role RDM had left it could fill and only if it got enfeebles that were new and unique. As of now, RDM has fewer enfeebles than GEO, many of the possible enfeebles have been taken if not almost all of them, so what exactly is there left for RDM that is unique? Amnesia? Good luck on that, super enfeebles like irremovable Para or Mute? Doubtful, not a ton of use in those anyways since most mobs do not remove their debuffs.

I admit, as much as I love my RDM I am about fuckin ready to quit the job or quit the game, I get screwed every update on upgrades to my job so it can see some use. We need unique enfeebles, nope, we need unique abilities to make us worth bringing, nope, we need light DD gear so we can be a jack-of-all-trades, nope, we need some form of DW, nope. This job wont be fixed, and SE doesn't care, they lie to us by telling us they have plans of RDM, but if so, where are the updates? Where are the plans? Are these like the Death Star plans where I have to send a group of Bothan spies to go steal them for me so I can figure out how to thwart the plan of the SEmpire? Its getting tiring getting screwed, can I have a piece of good news for once that will put me on my job for more than just 1 event, so I have something more to do than CSS ADL on my favorite and main job?

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that's a sad darn story. You want RDM to be a guaranteed-must-have in every single party, alliance, etc.? Well, I'm sure there are quite a few other jobs who have been the backseat red-headed step children for years, if not since their job came out, that would love the degree of desirability that red mages have long commanded.

Just play your character and enjoy the job - if the only reason you play RDM is because it's "the best" or something, then play whatever else is best. If you play RDM because you like it, then submit some ideas or something useful.. but this boohoo GEO got stuff I wanted for RDM so now I'm all mad is just silly. There are a lot of jobs that could use some more attention than red mages and have been left on the back burner for too long.

[Demon6324236]

You want RDM to be a guaranteed-must-have in every single party, alliance, etc.?

No, not all events, simply more than one event. When My LS tells me I can only go RDM to a single event while I must go SCH for literally every single thing we do besides that one its quite annoying. When I am able to come to a couple more events with my RDM without it being just a reject, Ill be a little less angry about it all, till then, not so much.

If you play RDM because you like it, then submit some ideas or something useful...

I have done just that many times, the same as many RDMs have, yet I have not seen a single meaningful adjustment to the job except Temper in probably about two years, and most would argue even that was worthless because it is a self only buff. Inform me of when SE starts to actually listen, so that I may continue to submit my ideas, until then it seems as though RDM ideas are simply given to other jobs or completely ignored.

[ManaKing]

Ummmm hmmmmm. This topic is ripe with butt hurt. Funny thing is I haven't had this much fun with my RDM in a long time. SoA is very solo friendly to.....lets see here....RDM, PUP, and PLD? How will I ever deal with the fact that people are hitting a wall when trying to fight mobs that I can easily solo AND land gravity II on? Probably with giggles. This probably won't last forever, but that's fine.

The spells may or may not come and I don't think that they lied to us, BUT they did what they always did, showed us that we aren't more important than any new job. They went out of their way to fix their game so they could squeeze in another job and dealt with RDM like they always have, with indifference.

We are better off than we probably ever have been on all sides. We have good cure potency. We are on relevant nuking gear. Our Enfeebles only balk when mobs are designed to make them Balk. Our Melee is stronger than it has ever been thanks to being lvl 99 for better subjob support and Temper. If you care about Enhancing, which I do, Stoneskin can be geared to be very robust and is probably my favorite thing about RDM currently. It really is my, I just don't give a F*** button. And blink can be almost instantly cast with almost no recast.

We are well rounded and many jobs should and probably will become jealous of were we are again. It seems we are just so used to what we don't like about RDM that we really don't seem to appreciate what we do have.

That being said, we could still use SOME small tokens and job specific adjustments, but I think people are really taking this the wrong way.

[Luvbunny]

Well then, all of you RDMs out there, let's don our red coats and use whatever subs that pleases you, and explore the new areas. Have fun!! And don't get eaten by Umbril, I saw a Blue got smacked pretty bad lol.

And for the love of god, please keep it to yourself if you find out how awesome you are in the new expansion. We do not need a bunch of threads and youtube videos showing how RDM soloing everything in SoA areas..... I don't think SE overcome their horror and shock over Avesta's Youtube Videos of the golden age of RDMs. We don't need another "adjustment"....

[Economizer]

Stoneskin can be geared to be very robust and is probably my favorite thing about RDM currently. It really is my, I just don't give a F*** button. And blink can be almost instantly cast with almost no recast.

I would really like to see higher tiers of both for White Mage and Red Mage, or at least better scaling for players that were bothered to build an Enhancing set.

[Miiyo]

Don't worry. Reive is spitting on ALL mages right now. Just continue what you were doing before the ZONE and QUEST expansion with your mage jobs.

[saevel]

The above post is half-right.

Allakazham had multiple melee RDMs that were studying how effective Melee RDM can be, and it was started with a parse showing a level 75 RDM/NIN in a ToAU EXP party, and it showed he was pretty damn good. That (re)sparked the interest.

So yeah, Alla RDMs wanted melee buffs, but just like with the clamoring for enfeebles on the official forum, it was given to use halfheartedly. Composure was the only good thing out of that list. Tier II Enspells are shit, and we never asked for Temper.

So no matter what way you look at it, SE's been giving half-hearted buffs to RDM, and in some cases severe nerfs. Nothing has changed regardless.

Has anyone looked at RDM/GEO and RDM/RUN?

Considering I was one those way back then that did this testing there was a reason we did that.. You can probably search for my posts showing magic accuracy of enblizzard to figure out how much to math in as average. Also did mad /WAR vs /NIN type setups.

A bunch of us old (as in 2003) RDM's have argued for buffs to all aspects of RDM, not just one. RDM is composed of three jobs fused together, White Mage, Black Mage and Warrior. For a long time RDM's healed not because they were good at it (seriously we weren't) but because that's all they could reasonable do. Refresh + Convert gave RDM a vastly larger MP supply then WHM and thus RDM's were chosen for fast paced melee spam XP parties where the RDM's role was a Cure / haste bot. For big alliance fights the WHM's were still the best healers, they only needed a RDM for refresh. Enfeebles have always been a joke, they were something you did since you were standing there and had 2:10 until the WHM needed refresh again. Eventually CSS was discovered and that became RDM's "niche".

Now from that we can see that all three aspects are woefully underpowered, only a few unique abilities made it desirable. SE has since fixed WHM's MP supply problem, much to the cheering and applauding of RDM's everywhere. SE fixed RDM's nuking potential at the same time, /SCH solves all ills. Then SE introduced composure which was a really good melee buff, lots of casting time saved there. Since then SE hasn't really done squat for any of the aspects. The healing got buffed as a consequence of a buff to SCH and WHM, otherwise nothing else. Temper was a really good start, SE should of followed it through with other similar spells to augment the RDM's abilities.

Anyhow I do believe RDM's everywhere want equal buffs to all aspects, melee just happens to be the most ignored and thus gets the most attention. I'd happily accept a mad buff to enfeebling, elemental damage and support capabilities, as long as melee gets it's fair share too.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Another consideration, is nuking in the current metagame vs ws power. On average 2k+ ws (low end gear in some respects) still can be maintained longer and more efficiently than nukes of equal power. I just had a conversation in ls yesterday actually about the ineffectual state of attack magic damage in the game (outside of wildfire) currently. While its true nukes can hit really well currently, they havent appreciated so much as melee has, and beyond that, it lacks the ability to be sustained. Mp costs spiral out of control and under normal situations, my BLM and SCH are between 1000 and 1200 mp with mp merits. Its not so bad until you take into consideration fire V (not even the most costly single target spell) is 270MP. This means that you can reasonably get off 4-5 nukes before full depletion (before conserves, refreshes, etc).

Could you imagine the revolt if DD classes were told they could only gain tp via regain and /heal and could only ws 4-5 times or use weaker ones 8ish times before being stuck with just auto-attacks? There would be rioting, pitchforks and torches, tar and feathering. Looking at nukes, the cost needs to drop steeply, cast times could too to be brought more in line with the physical blu spells, while shortening their magical cast times and reducing costs. Would it make blu more variable and stronger? Prolly. But helps rdm, blm, sch, and geo, and even drk. Also, maybe some whitemage banish damage recalculations are in order! And if we gave a steeper multiplier to damage via magic burst (3x, 4x) then people might look to utilizing them at times. Course it just changes from melee to magic zerg tactics.

[saevel]

Another consideration, is nuking in the current metagame vs ws power. On average 2k+ ws (low end gear in some respects) still can be maintained longer and more efficiently than nukes of equal power.

SE released a chart that had them reducing the casting time / recasting time and MP cost of many Tier II / III / IV nukes. The tier III's especially look nice with stupid low cast / recasts. If that update goes through as planned then the nuking jobs (BLM,SCH,GEO,RDM) will be able to chain nuke tier III's to their hearts content. That will help greatly in evening up the damage balance, though haste still largely effects melees DPS output.