General complaint thread

[Protey]

They're brother jobs. It's only natural to compare them in my opinion. I understand how it seems somewhat derailing but if this is a thread for general complains about RDM then BLU is bound to pop up as a tool for comparison.

Impetus is the main thing pulling MNK ahead of a PUP currently so far as I know. PUP has their Automaton to close other gaps, and that's before you count in Stringing Pummel, assuming it's the best H2H WS.

once SE upgrades empyrean armor and we're able to wear body again I can see MNK really pulling ahead again. At least against PUP.... against SAM we don't stand a chance. The damage output difference between SAM and other DDs is so unreal.

[Malthar]

Dammit Protey, stop! You're giving Dray a big head.

[Dale]

You state RDM is seen as a support job. This is your own bias. RDM is a jack-of-all trades; whether it be DD, support, tank, healer... I've done them all.

.

But there is no conflict in that analysis. You can view Red Mage as a support job and still recognize they are able to fulfill many roles. That is partly why this class is such a powerful support tool to begin with. Because it can recognize a weakness in a current group and successfully fill that hole. No other job can do this to the extent Red Mage can - at least not that I have encountered so far.

So I would agree with both of you. They are a support job but also a jack of all trades.

[Shirai]

and how about them PUPs getting A+ skill. That leaves MNK only with counter and kick attacks to outparse the puppet.... not seeing that happening.

2 more levels of Martial arts, Boost (where aplicable), Skillchain Bonus 2, Focus.

As a Monk, I am not too afraid of being knocked off the list, most puppetmasters are terrible and the good ones deserve to be put on par.

[Dale]

They're brother jobs. It's only natural to compare them in my opinion. .

Blue Mage was SE's answer to dissatisfied Red Mages who wanted to play a more offensive melee combat role I suspect. So it would be an ideal choice for players like you who want to be a more effective melee while still maintaining your ability to defend yourself with magic.

So instead of players asking for the Red Mage to be made more like Blue Mages perhaps they should just play as a Blue Mage.

[Protey]

2 more levels of Martial arts, Boost (where aplicable), Skillchain Bonus 2, Focus.

As a Monk, I am not too afraid of being knocked off the list, most puppetmasters are terrible and the good ones deserve to be put on par.

I wouldn't include MA as part of that list. KKK + cirque necklace + augmented JSE cape puts a PUP at about 40 delay lower than a MNK. Even if you didn't include a KKK that's still only 10 delay behind that of a MNK.

[Shirai]

As you say yourself, it still takes a considerably well geared puppetmaster to be on par with monk. (Not counting the little droid.)
If they have the dedication to get geared like that then they belong there.

[edit]
That said however, taking Kenkonken out of the equation, where Puppetmasters are cramming items to compensate for the lower MA, Monk has the option for other pieces such as multi-hit, accuracy or attack.
Apart from that, there are several fairly powerful items which Monk can wear and Puppetmaster can't, like the Felistris Mask, Mekosuchinae harness and Anguinus and Caudata belts.
And let's not forget the ammo slot, which Puppetmaster is forced to sacrifice at all times. (Surely for a good cause, but it's still a sacrifice to the Puppetmaster's own DPS build)

While this doesn't really matter on fodder where most melee jobs cap acc/atk anyway, later on on mobs where Accuracy becomes an important factor (T2 Delve and level 128+ Incursion bosses) Puppetmaster will start falling behind on monk again.
And then there's also Monk's defensive capabilities giving them a little edge over Puppetmasters.
(I do hope they don't mind us debating this in a red mage thread, though. )

[Zekander]

Don't forget RUN, that job was created solely to overshadow RDM tanking, and GEO was stolen from suggestions for RDM abilities. So, no, if I want to play a melee mage I'd rather not play BLU.

I also play MNK and was slightly concerned about PUP getting an A+ in h2h, mostly because of their automaton, but everyone else seems to be discounting that entirely. Last I knew PUPs automaton could deal significant damage with their ranged or black magic frame. But my biggest concern was their white magic frame, how do guard and counter stand up against toting around your own personal WHM?

[Dale]

Don't forget RUN, that job was created solely to overshadow RDM tanking, and GEO was stolen from suggestions for RDM abilities. So, no, if I want to play a melee mage I'd rather not play BLU.

I don't understand. What does RUN and GEO have to do with the fact Blue Mage is a fighter/mage and an excellent job choice for someone who wants to play as a mage who melees?

RUN is an elemental tank. GEO, from all I have seen (which I admit isn't much) seems like a support-style black mage with aura-like abilities. So I don't see either of these as replacing Blue Mage as the ideal fighter/mage.

[Demonjustin]

Didn't you say earlier you easily cut though very/incredibly toughs with your Red Mage melee without using distract or any accuracy support trusts? Now suddenly you are saying we have accuracy issues? I have a hard time understanding your complaints.

I believe you're thinking of someone else. That said, I'll still address this since it does apply to me in some respect. All VT/IT are not equal. On RDM I am capable of beating down basically any mob in Dho Gates with fair amounts of ease, they are for all intents and purposes classified as IT mobs. I require no Trusts nor do I require Distract for me to cap accuracy on these mobs. That said, Woh Gates is quite the opposite. They have high enough EVA that I require Accuracy Songs at very least on top of Food in order to cap Accuracy, and I think I need more than that still. Mind you I'm running what used to be the best possible Accuracy set for a RDM and I'm not likely to be far off still so these mobs are quite the issue.

All of that said, this is also assuming normal mobs are the extent of what you wish to fight. With songs I am capable of capping Accuracy on Gessho, the second most evasive NM of the MPNMs so far as I'm aware. That is on Difficult however, put me on Very Difficult and even in my high Accuracy set with full buffs and constantly keeping up Distract II and you'd see my Accuracy still quite a bit away from cap. Put me against AAMR and you'd see it get even worse, as generally I don't cap Accuracy on her even on Difficult in my Accuracy gear. So, it truly depends on the extent of what you wish to fight. If the mobs of Dho Gates are your only interest then RDM has no deep Accuracy issues and as such is fine as is. If you wish to push the limits and fight the hardest, most evasive mobs in the game, using gear sets built specifically to excel at such... you're going to be disapointed, and a large source of our missing Accuracy comes in the form of gear(specifically legs, for which we have no good Accuracy piece...) and our skill rating being only a B, rather than B+~A.

Anyway: I do half way agree with you here (though your previous posts seem to conflict with your current one) that Red Mages have a disadvantage in terms of accuracy when compared to melee jobs due to our lower rank. Where we disagree is you see this as a problem and I don't really. Because in the end this job is - a support mage- and not a melee class. And if you gear appropriately and make the needed sacrifices it is possible to overcome our accuracy issues. So it's a problem you can easily solve.

Though I admittedly only read this after my last part of my reply, I believe my previous bit of this reply addresses this as well.

It appears you think we should have great shield skill too now as well. It seems you want everything. But we already have excellent defense potential so giving us a high shield skill would make us too powerful. That is an advantage Paladins have and need to keep.

I believe you misunderstand. I am not saying we should have great shield skill, but rather, we should have skill to use a shield. For simplicity sake, I'll use a graph to show what I mean.



This graph shows the skill at level 99 for every skill level and how it scales. As you can see, D, E, and F, are all far behind the others. The slope is insane at those levels, if you're in one of those 3 categories your skill is so far behind that to some extent you might as well not even have the skill at all. RDM is a F rank Shield user, our skill is literally 103 behind C-, which is the first reasonable amount of skill on the chart. I'm not asking for us to have A+ or even B, just C- alone would allow us to make use of our shield. Currently even with a Beatific Shield +1 which is our best option for shields, we have only 372 skill, just under a C rank level 99's skill. That's a 119 shield's skill added to our natural, that's to say at level 119 a RDM should be just barely able to block a good deal of attacks from level 99 targets. See what I mean about how bad that is? At least if we had a C- skill rank we'd end up with 475 skill with this shield, which would be far behind that of most jobs still, but enough we could at least use our 119 Shield on level 99(~105?) targets with some effect.

To be honest, the greatest impediment to Red Mage melee is not our accuracy. It's not our En Spells II. Nor is it our lower rank in sword. It is simply put that our role in combat is that of support - and that is where we are expected to perform to our fullest and at times melee can complicate our ability to do this. So how well we can melee depends almost entirely on the situation and how well balanced our current group is.

Part of what makes a Red Mage so powerful is it can adapt to pitch-hit for many different roles in a variety of different situations. And from what I have seen, they are better at this than any other job.

While this is true, the main thing I take issue with is our capability to fill a melee role. The one and only time you truly go into an event asking for someone to be ready to switch it up on notice is when you've never done said event before. It's extremely rare for me to go into an event as a supporter via healing, buffing, and enfeebling, and during said event be asked to change to a frontline fighter Hasting, healing, and keeping up basic enfeebles. Ignoring the fact I use completely different subjobs for each of these roles and the fact no subjob can fit both well at once, it's simply not common to need such things.

I accept and admit our role in combat even on the frontlines largely includes support. That said, I don't think that is an excuse to rip away power from the job that it needs in order to close the gap between it and other jobs. As I said before, if we had even 80% of the damage of other jobs in equal gear then that'd be one thing. The fact of the matter is that it's not really the case, and the gap we do have isn't one that Haste II & Distract II can make up for alone. They are our only true support aspects we can keep up easily on the frontlines without drastically hindering our damage to the point of making us even less powerful/desirable.