Inquiry to the Devs

[Tassidaru]

As I have watched how Red Mage has developed with the post 75 cap updates, some questions have come up that I cannot for the life of me divine an answer to. My hope is a response that, while not explaining everything, will perhaps give me an idea about the future of my first 75, now 90 level job.

The first and perhaps my most important question is as follows:
At the 75 cap RDM had equivalent skill in both dagger and sword, having access to both relics as well as both trial weapon skills and a modest array of weapon options for both. Our mythic was a sword but considering that every job had its own, having one but not the other was understandable. At 90 however, it seems that this balance has become skewed. Our new weapon skill is a dagger, but outside of the twilight knife, no new weapons, not even the dominion augments, nor the Magian daggers.
We can use the Magian and dominion augment swords, but were passed up for the new sword weapon skill. However, our Empyrean is a sword. As someone who has little or no chance at attaining the Almace, at least for the foreseeable future, I cannot help but wonder why. While it seems balanced, it has made it very difficult to be competitive with other light DD jobs, especially considering we were somewhat deficient to begin with.

Another item that has me confused was granting RDM with Shield Mastery when RDM has a native Shield Skill of F, capping out at 90 at a 229, a far cry from WAR, whose C+ shield skill caps at 315. Another aspect is that both a shield and shield mastery only come into play when one is being attacked, which for RDM means solo. The only time I have pulled hate in a melee position was when the THF tank allowed me to pull hate so they could sneak attack, or use evisceration or Mandalic Stab after my Death blossom for either Darkness or Light respectively.

This leads to my next question. RDM is considered to be a jack of all trades correct? Would not tank be part of all trades? If so, then why have you, indirectly or otherwise, removed our hate tools? First it was the reduction of the Enmity of bind, blind and the sleeps, and now the new Curing trait that just so happens to have a RDM button. I maybe entirely out of line with this thought process. If so, please inform me.

Onward to the next thought.
I have heard repeatedly Blue Mage having been grouped by the community with RDM as the omni Melee mages. Assuming that is true, then why is there such a vast difference in the overall performance of these two jobs? I understand that they should have different means of doing things, but parse data suggests that a melee rdm will only do about 80~% the damage that a blue will. That is overall, not per minute.
This extends to the gear comparison of RDM versus BLU. At 75 RDM could wear cloth like the Errant Houppelande set, which BLU can use, as well as light armor such as the Crimson(Blood) Scale Mail Set and leather in the Dusk Jerkin Set, which also has the BLU button. In Limbus gear, however RDM is limited to the mage set, Nashira Manteel Set, where BLU, our fellow melee mage, has access to both the Nashira Manteel Set and the Homam Corazza Set which as an RDM, i would have loved to use. The trend continues in Abyssea where BLU can use both the Teal Saio set, as well as the Aurore Doublet Set where RDM can only use the Teal. It makes me wonder, again, why this is so.

Another curiosity to me is while BLU must set spells for job traits, as well as stat bonuses, which is balanced by the limit of available at any given time, RDM has no melee traits of its own, but a massive list of mage traits. Personally, i would gladly give up the higher tiers of Magic attack bonus and Magic Defense bonus for melee attack and defense traits.

And to wrap up this list of questions, our best skill is in Enfeebling magic, but with new notorious monsters, both before and after the level cap increase, I have noticed a continuing drop in enfeebles that can actually affect my targets. For example, the other day, I found myself in a group killing Orthus, and with an enfeebling skill of 422, plus stat gear and magic accuracy gear, could not land any enfeebles I attempted. I cannot help but wonder if our enfeebling is slowly becoming obsolete and useless.

I would like to reiterate that while clear answers explaining everything I have asked about would be appreciated, my goal is for at least vague answers that will allow me to draw somewhat accurate conclusions about my future as a Melee RDM. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Tassidaru Morinestri
Tarutaru RDM 90 COR 83
Quetzalcoatl Server

[Carth]

Liked.

A question I would like to ask is what is the direction, or overall "vague" plan that they have for RDM.

[Duelle]

Good questions. Hopefully the answers are fulfilling and can put some (if not most) of the issues to rest.

[Seriha]

Pretty much been itching for some kind of direction, too. We obviously know RDM's martial side has been lacking for years, but the magical has definitely lost some oomph, or perhaps I should say has finally been truly "figured out" by others in that it wasn't as super to begin with. It's unfortunate it took pretty much every other mage job getting their own buffs to cement this fact, but our immediate future of Thunder IV and a couple Gain spells is pretty meh overall when you consider BLM and SCH get their T5s while WHM can AoE their version of Gain and are possibly getting Addle, too.

In general, we could probably expect a new WS from level progression, but this also runs the risk of going the way of Sanguine Blade and not being something we'd get natively. The dagger side also runs this risk, as with us not being on Dancing Edge and Shark Bite, a future dagger WS could follow this trend.

So really, I think a lot of us just want to feel like RDM will be worth taking to 99 and not just a generic parrot of the specialists that people will only take as a last resort.

[lllen]

I agree with all that is said here. My first job and lol, the first with all Af3 is Rdm, however, I can't get an invite to save my life. Even if I do get one with friends, enfeebles are useless on many mobs. Where is Rdm going?

I have lvl 90 Blu, can get a party in 10 secs, my blm also and my whm....Poor Rdm hasn't seen action in months unless I decided to do something in the "real world" of FFXI. Like today I decided to finished up my Bastok missions (after 4 years of being at 9.1) 9.1 easy as Blm and 9.2 piece of cake as Rdm.

Rdm is my main job, it has gone the way of dodo bird.

[Tamarsamar]

This thread. Is full. Of so much win.

I love the Shield Mastery question, but here's another question: if S-E really wanted to give an incentive for single-wielding Red Mages (you know, the kind who would use a Shield), why in Altana's name have they not given us Fencer instead?

[Kaych]

Just so you know Tassidaru, I have started similar threads like this, asking SE if they can answer some stuff. They rarely do... And its a shame because, its a simple thing really. "We are thinking of this and this. We need more testing tho..." And you have an answer. But they seem to choose what they want to answer.
Things I would like to know.

Is SE satisfied with the way RDMs mele atm?
I know I am not... I would like significantly increase in the En-spells when I have Magic Attack gear on. Maybe even crit trait or Double Attack trait.

Is SE ok with all the things a RDM have to do in a party?
I know they want each job to be "busy", but with all the enfeebles, Enhanching spells, Curings, there is not much room for Meleing. This could be helped by giving use Hastega and Refreshga. When people hear: RDM-mele, they think... "LOL! Lets get a SAM instead" There is nothing wrong with meleing at the same time as you are Enfeebeling, Curing and buffing, but then the problem comes again that you dont get get TP and dont do any dammage cos your sword never hits due to all the other stuff ur suppose to do.

Another thing that could help this is a combination of Enfeebles. Since RDMs is a master of Enfeebeling, maybe its time that they got fused Enfeebels. Like, a spell that gives both Paralyze and Slow, lets call it Paralow (just for fun). This could also help our meleing process^_-

There is so much I want answerd, but I dont wanna make a "Wall-of-text" and scare people away from thread:P

[Eeek]

I've been a RDM for all of a month, but I think I'm the only one who has no interest in DDing.

If my Abyssea groups have all the key jobs covered, the first thing that usually happens is that I'm asked to gear RDM.

And I love it.

Even when I can't land all our enfeebles due to mob immunities, the enfeebles that do land still make fights go so much smoother. Also, I like that my friends give me the freedom to evaluate situations mid-battle and react accordingly. It's so easy to seamlessly change focus from curing/status curing to nuking to enfeebling and back again, and I have the gear to do all the above decently well.

I should have leveled this job a long time ago.

I know most of you are into the melee thing, and that's fine, but I really hope SE does not ignore the mage side of Red Mage. I leveled RDM solely because of its abilities and versatility as a mage, and I don't want to see that aspect of RDM take too much of a back seat. I enjoy it thoroughly. xD

[Glamdring]

The problem with the "jack of all trades" term is that people forget the rest of it, "master of none". Now, that's not entirely true of red; you are the kings of enfeebling and although your enhancing is all single target your skill is the highest in it. Now, that single target should really see a visit from the devs, although it might be intentional to keep whm viable; if you had group buffs and all raise tiers about the only utility whm would have is light based single target sleeps and the highest Curaga, i.e, not much.

Granted, that was the rdm complaint before is you didn't want to just be healers, but you had already taken the job of healer from whm in end-game at 75 on merits and most everything else. Perhaps if all the rdm out there refused invites when expected to be the healer, but that didn't happen. Seems to me the devs have simply been following the direction that play-style had taken rdm in.

Now as to tanking, the other "jack" job is dancer. Even though both rdm and dnc are jack jobs, dnc is clearly designed to be more combat oriented; their "MP" is TP and short of a regain ability you only get that by whacking/getting whacked. They have developed into a good eva tank in Abyssea, although I can tell you from personal experience that eva tanking is not particularily viable outside Aby at 90, i.e. we can be the 2nd tank to allow the prime to get shadows up or a cure off, whichever, but full-time tanking we'll be needing a curebomb if we fight VT/IT stuff at XP party speeds. Rdm is less suited to the role of tank than dancer-you can fill in for short durations but don't expect to live long as primary tank. You do have hate tools, Addle|Fire 4 is going to piss something off, and if you spam it you should get hate in a hurry. I think you need rdm/nin to really manage it well, and I've seen it used effectively by several good rdm of my acquaintance.

The big problem is Atma. People keep saying "this job is broken" as if it were. It's not. Abyssea is one segment of the game, roughly 1/32 of the content. Your job still works just the same as it ever did in the other 31/32 of the game. The problem is getting players to leave Abyssea (easy mode) to do anything else (insert brain here). That's not to say that your job was always useful elsewhere; most players read working strats and follow the cookie-cutter approach, so any job not in that build is "useless". The real answer is that they simply haven't figured out (or posted) the working strat for X job on whatever.

Regardless, just wait for the new content to be released, your concerns may already be addressed, not by giving you new balance-destroying abilities but by content that utilizes your abilities to be beaten.

[Carth]

As long as my party are a bunch of nice guys and talkative, I enjoy the backline aspects as well, mainly because I still have a lot to do. (Curebotting during the ToAU-era was just boring though). Like Seriha said some time ago, I'd be fine with how RDM is if they took that A+ Enfeebling and ran with it, but as it stands we're stuck in limbo, and it seems this'll continue due to the Voidwalker update.

Truthfully I just want an update that's worthwhile.