Why are we advertized as fighter-mages when White Mages can out-do us? [Archive]

Ketaru

06-24-2011, 08:43 AM

Pfft, 90 isn't too late for a job to be good at what it used to be good at. That is just crazy talk.

At this point of the game where only the end result matters and levels are meant to be steamrolled through, it isn't exactly nonsense either.

I like to think that I have accepted RDM's situation and have embraced the job for what it is. It is an enfeebler, it can heal some, it can nuke some. And, if you find yourself in a situation where you really, really have to melee, it can do that too.

But what I still cannot accept is the mixed messages the people behind the game continue to send about the job. They've given us an Empyrean armor set that is excellent for our magical capabilities, yet the name "Estoqueur" literally translates to "swordsman".

We cannot use one of the few decent magical damage weaponskills that are available in the game without conditional subjobs (despite the fact that, among all the jobs that are capable of using it, we are most capable of using it to its fullest potential).

Whenever the job is presented in promotional material, it is also as a frontline unit.

They even sometimes fit the job into nice frontline gear, like Atheling Mantle or Calmecac Trousers.

I would more readily say I accept that the job is just not cut out to be hybrid melee mage that it's purported to be. If only SE would stop sending out mixed messages about it...That's not fair to the people who still have faith that they will do something about. It's not fair to the people who want to have an honest discussion about what the job actually is. And it's not fair to the people actually thinking of playing it.

Duelle

06-24-2011, 11:01 AM

Doesn't help there is not enough inventory space for a properly, fully geared RDM. You have enough to hold it all in the Satchels, Sacks, Lockers etc.... but not enough to make full use by switching gear on the fly for all of RDM's roles.Maybe I've been spoiled by games where you don't need to switch entire sets of gear to be able to do anything, but the above quote is a clear sign that RDM is in dire need of streamlining in some way, shape or form.

@OP: Your sig makes sense. I would probably play off the fact that the bonus is really useful but has a rather ridiculous condition to trigger the effect.

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree. It makes no sense, and indeed needs to be fixed.

Tamarsamar

06-24-2011, 11:43 AM

@OP: Your sig makes sense. I would probably play off the fact that the bonus is really useful but has a rather ridiculous condition to trigger the effect.

It's more referring to the fact that they made the job trait "Fencer" and distinctly refused to give it to us.

----

Concerning the argument that we nuke better than White Mages . . . er, I'd sure hope that we did! That's hardly any consolation for them both besting us in melee while blowing us out of the water in healing, at any rate.

Honestly, the devs need to start taking Red Mages in a more solid direction. Do they want us to use Swords just like in the promotional videos? If so, then they need to start backing it up more seriously: physical Job Traits (SUCH AS FENCER HINT HINT), more frequent access to good front line equipment (like they currently do with Blue Mages), the whole nine yards! If not, they might as well edit out every single association of Red Mages with Swords in the game, and re-writing our job description as simply someone who can use White and Black Magic. They might as well re-name the job, while they're at it! How about something like Scholar?

ManaKing

06-24-2011, 12:14 PM

Lol i say the same thing. I dont know why people back line as RDM when they could be playing SCH. That being said, if you find RDM more comfortable/fun than SCH, then so be it.

I do have friends that play RDM as backline only. We don't bicker about which one of us is right. I let her have her fun, and she doesn't get in the way of mine either. I actually picked up COR for her because I noticed that COR Quickshot and RDM enfeebles were meant to be best-ies.

Hyrist

06-24-2011, 12:40 PM

Doesn't help there is not enough inventory space for a properly, fully geared RDM.

Utter hogwash if I've ever heard of it...

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

In fact, with Emperyian gear, most of your gear sets end up making use of the same items. There really should be no reason why you're having gear toubles. Let go of the placebo pieces you're holding onto. You don't need +50 Enfeebeling magic, +40 Elemental, 8 elemental staves etc, if you're showing up with any intent to melee at all.

As I said, gear for what you do. Some of the worst, idiotic concepts people have is that you need to have a full set for every action you make.

cidbahamut

06-24-2011, 12:59 PM

This really needed another thread?

Ketaru

06-24-2011, 01:17 PM

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree. It makes no sense, and indeed needs to be fixed.

The situation is the Final Fantasy XI people don't want to upset people that want updates that make us better mages, but they don't want to let go of their image of a magical swordsman. The whole situation reeks of indecisiveness.

First and foremost, they don't want to upset the people who have held the position for years that any update to make RDM a better fighter will break game balance. That was back when RDM held a monopoly on EXP parties, so in my opinion, that boat has sailed.

That and others call for more updates that make RDM a better enfeebler or enhancer. And I can see where this is coming from if you go after the upper tier mobs in the game. Depending on your linkshell, you aren't allowed to melee mobs even if you were a standard melee job like a DRK or DRG. That's the way our linkshell is. The only people allowed to melee tougher enemies are jobs that can double as tanks like PLD, NIN, or MNK. The targets are just easier to manage that way and less annoying people that need healing. You got a mage job? You're coming mage. You don't got a mage job? You're going to act as mage-like as your job would allow, like Stunning on DRK.

EDIT: Oh wait, and THF too...but only until they've finished Treasure Hunter-ing the mob.

The best melee update for us would likely go underused so why ask for one? The game culture, as it exists now, simply doesn't support it.

If you want the game culture to change in a way that redeems the image of RDM as a hybrid, you really don't have to look too far into the past for inspiration. People had all their gripes about Campaign. But fact is, prior to Abyssea, it was a very popular event that had plenty of people coming back to it day after day. It was one of the few times in a game when having a variety of skills was advantageous. Campaign enjoyed quite a heyday. And this was despite the fact it was not the optimal source of EXP at the moment. Remember, when it really did seem like they were going to make a genuine push to give RDM more frontline utility, that was during the Campaign era.

Saying "Bring back Campaign!" as a solution to the hybrid image problem is oversimplifying it. But I'm just getting at the fact that, really, it's the game's culture that needs to expand. Instead, it shrank. And for all the things I love about Abyssea, that is the one thing I find fault in it for.

They might as well re-name the job, while they're at it! How about something like Scholar?

Lol i say the same thing. I dont know why people back line as RDM when they could be playing SCH. That being said, if you find RDM more comfortable/fun than SCH, then so be it.

Oh you. You had to go there. All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can. The extremes, of course are harder to meet, since SCH is a much better main healer or main nuker. They don't have the same cycled spells and SCH's are arguably less useful. SCH also has a much tougher time getting nuking gear when nuking is actually built right into RDM's Empyrean gear. Most of SCH's Empyrean gear amounts to simply macro pieces.

There's a lot of give and take that balances the two jobs and to say the two are similar because they both cast White and Black Magic is like simplifying something like RNG and saying all the job does is shoot arrows.

This really needed another thread?

To be fair, this is a different take on the issue. To me, the development team is playing both sides of the fence on this and people have a right to be frustrated by such indecisiveness. The job may be backline in reality. But the players really are owed an explanation about why they keep promoting the job the way that they do. And until they give a proper explanation, some people are forever going to hold onto the hope the job will get a frontline update.

I gave up waiting for it a long time ago.

Raxiaz

06-24-2011, 01:50 PM

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

If you're not carrying all of those, why the hell are you on RDM?

Swords

06-24-2011, 02:11 PM

Honestly, the devs need to start taking Red Mages in a more solid direction. Do they want us to use Swords just like in the promotional videos? If so, then they need to start backing it up more seriously: physical Job Traits (SUCH AS FENCER HINT HINT), more frequent access to good front line equipment (like they currently do with Blue Mages), the whole nine yards!

You know, it's kind of misleading to compare RDM to BLU. Besides BLU having a smaller MP pool and limited spell selection, their melee skill/acc and/or magic skill/acc effects their spells utilizing both mage and melee sides together, which makes it easier for SE to create hybrid gear that BLU can use effectively.

RDM mechanics however make a huge rift between a mage and melee sides save when it comes to utilizing Elemental WS or En-spells. Most of the hybrid gear created specifically for RDM has lower stats under dedicated mage or melee gear, but the underlying problem is during melee your NOT using the mage stats, and during casting your NOT using the melee stats so you cannot optimally perform in either situation without swapping ridiculous amounts of gear.

The few grey areas where SE has tried to merge the mage side and melee side together such as enspells, you run into a big problem. This is where that mage and melee rift starts to show, because you have to either sacrafice power into your enspells or sacrafice melee gear letting one side or the other suffer.

Tamarsamar

06-24-2011, 03:03 PM

Oh you. You had to go there. All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can. The extremes, of course are harder to meet, since SCH is a much better main healer or main nuker. They don't have the same cycled spells and SCH's are arguably less useful. SCH also has a much tougher time getting nuking gear when nuking is actually built right into RDM's Empyrean gear. Most of SCH's Empyrean gear amounts to simply macro pieces.

Also, that whole Sword thing, but hey, not like that's important or anything . . .

And I laugh when you say that RDM's AF3 is better than SCH's because SCH's "amounts to simply macro pieces." I know you play the close-combat Red Mage from time to time, so you of all people should know how painfully situational the Estoqueur's set is. Now please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't jobs like BST almost full-time some of their AF3 pieces?

There's a lot of give and take that balances the two jobs and to say the two are similar because they both cast White and Black Magic is like simplifying something like RNG and saying all the job does is shoot arrows.

This analogy is flawed. The sort of "oversimplification" you see in play here is more like saying that BRD and COR are similar because they both give AoE buffs, totally ignoring COR's Marksmanship ability, among several other things, natch.

Duelle

06-24-2011, 03:35 PM

The situation is the Final Fantasy XI people don't want to upset people that want people that want updates that make us better mages, but they don't want to let go of their image of a magical swordsman. The whole situation reeks of indecisiveness.The ideal solution would have been the developers stepping in to say "this is what we want the job to do. Now STFU and play our game" early on, rather than leaving things be for years on end.

First and foremost, they don't want to upset the people who have held the position for years that any update to make RDM a better fighter will break game balance.The thing is that it wouldn't hurt much once the changes actually go through. At the risk of annoying the WoW haters, what you're mentioning are the exact same arguments I used to see on the WoW boards whenever someone mentioned Retribution (AKA melee) Paladins and their then-lacking melee. The first argument that came out of the nay-sayers' mouths was "omg no pallyz r foar heelz!! melee pally = OP and no1 wuld playz neting elz!1!!", subsequently followed by "uz good pallyz that heelz luk bda becuz of u lolmelee pallyzz!".

The big bad update that fixed retribution came and went and....everyone still played their normal characters. You had a bunch of people that finally decided to roll a paladin after seeing your endgame fate did not HAVE to be healing in raids, but aside from that not much changed. So yeah, I can't help but roll my eyes when people start crying about the hybrid apocalypse.

Depending on your linkshell, you aren't allowed to melee mobs even if you were a standard melee job like a DRK or DRG. That's the way our linkshell is. The only people allowed to melee tougher enemies are jobs that can double as tanks like PLD, NIN, or MNK. The targets are just easier to manage that way and less annoying people that need healing. You got a mage job? You're coming mage. You don't got a mage job? You're going to act as mage-like as your job would allow, like Stunning on DRK.This is more testimony to XI's crappy encounter design than anything else.

Aside from that, I don't think I'd be the only melee enthusiast here that would be alright with abiding by the rules the melee classes follow when it comes to that sort of thing.

The best melee update for us would likely go underused so why ask for one? The game culture, as it exists now, simply doesn't support it.As I've constantly argued, a big enough change would have an effect on how people do things.

Saying "Bring back Campaign!" as a solution to the hybrid image problem is oversimplifying it. But I'm just getting at the fact that, really, it's the game's culture that needs to expand. Instead, it shrank. And for all the things I love about Abyssea, that is the one thing I find fault in it for.No offense, but I don't see what this has to do with anything, outside of hint "save melee for when you're in campaign".

All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can.SCH happens to have a stance mechanic built-in. I would venture to say SCH is better at switching roles than RDM seeing that the switching of roles is built into the job rather than implied through spread-thin stats and profficiencies like RDM.

The other requires inventory space and doesn't have built-in mechanics that support its roles. It is one of the reasons I'm in favor of RDM getting stances to help the front and back liners stand apart from one another rather than leave the job a compilation of "what if"s that get in the way of the job's development.

To be fair, this is a different take on the issue. To me, the development team is playing both sides of the fence on this and people have a right to be frustrated by such indecisiveness. The job may be backline in reality. But the players really are owed an explanation about why they keep promoting the job the way that they do. And until they give a proper explanation, some people are forever going to hold onto the hope the job will get a frontline update.I agree 100% here.

Ketaru

06-24-2011, 05:40 PM

Also, that whole Sword thing, but hey, not like that's important or anything . . .

And I laugh when you say that RDM's AF3 is better than SCH's because SCH's "amounts to simply macro pieces." I know you play the close-combat Red Mage from time to time, so you of all people should know how painfully situational the Estoqueur's set is. Now I'm simply making conjecture here, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't jobs like BST almost full-time some of their AF3 pieces?

The fact you're getting offended over me not mentioning "that whole Sword thing" reflects more on you than it does on me because we were talking about casting spells here.

But to answer your question, no, I do not full-time my Ferine gear. In fact, I don't use it as much as I would like. My body piece and my head piece are not really designed for full emphasis on the pet. Not when I'm trying to solo things. In place of the head, I use Spurrer Beret (I could be using the AMK head piece, but eh, if I don't have it, I don't have it) and for the body I use the ACP body piece with Pet Acc/Pet DA. I hardly join EXP parties because I simply don't care for them anymore (and nobody else cares about them for that matter, I'll get to that later). This means, whenever I'm using my BST, it's to fight NMs I want to solo. And most of the time, those NMs have frightening strong Area attacks. I can't even full-time the hands and feet because those are key Reward pieces: Ogre Gloves+1 and Beast Gaiters+1 (apologies, I don't have Monster Gaiters). Plus all that MND crud. The legs are the only thing I come close to full-timing, and even those I swap out when it's time for the pet to do a weaponskill. I switch to Herder's Subligar cause, you know, missing is kind of a drag. I don't know what other jobs you have. But gearing BST isn't as easy as you think it is.

As for the comments about our Estoqueur set, obviously you're looking at this from a melee standpoint because, as far as casting is concerned, the set has a wide range of applicability to it. I don't melee in it.

The ideal solution would have been the developers stepping in to say "this is what we want the job to do. Now STFU and play our game" early on, rather than leaving things be for years on end

No, that would've been a useless situation. Even now, that's what the developers are saying with every bit of promotional material they have about RDM right down to their promises about what kind of updates the job will get. They could shout until they're breathless and people are not going to listen if, for the purpose of the game, it just doesn't work.

The big bad update that fixed retribution came and went and....everyone still played their normal characters. You had a bunch of people that finally decided to roll a paladin after seeing your endgame fate did not HAVE to be healing in raids, but aside from that not much changed. So yeah, I can't help but roll my eyes when people start crying about the hybrid apocalypse.

Yeah, I kind of agreed with you on that. But you forgot to quote me where I said: "That was back when RDM held a monopoly on EXP parties, so in my opinion, that boat has sailed." You can melee in EXP parties now. But more out of the playerbase's indifference because it simply just don't care really. You'll probably even outdamage some people because, once again, people just don't care.

This is more testimony to XI's crappy encounter design than anything else.

Aside from that, I don't think I'd be the only melee enthusiast here that would be alright with abiding by the rules the melee classes follow when it comes to that sort of thing.

...

As I've constantly argued, a big enough change would have an effect on how people do things.

And that is the design we have to work with right now. Then you should really get why backline people want a job update that is designed for backline purposes.

No offense, but I don't see what this has to do with anything, outside of hint "save melee for when you're in campaign".

Hey, if you didn't like Campaign, that's fine by me. The fact it used to be high in participation, despite the fact Colibri parties were getting 25K+ EXP per hour while your best hopes were maybe 10K EXP per hour, speaks for itself. And a lot of the people you saw out there weren't seeking for EXP parties. Don't try to belittle or downplay it as if it were nothing. It was a huge part of this game's history. As I pointed out earlier, this was also the time period where they actually did make somewhat of a push to give RDM frontline abilities. Because Campaign was what was "in". It was what people talked about. It was what people whined about. It was what people expressed their ideas of what they think it should be like. And despite being popular, it was never the only activity available to the playerbase.

If you ask me, around the time it was popular was when Final Fantasy XI truly felt like it was at its biggest. There was a variety of content for everybody to choose from. That feeling of variety is not the game as it is now. There is a feeling of malaise that it has been reduced to Abyssea. And as long as Abyssea is the "in" thing to do right now, it will be the benchmark with which everything will be measured. And if you don't do it, you will fall behind your peers drastically.

I'm all for players having options for doing things, not indoctrinating people to think one or the other. If suddenly they announced that anybody who takes place in successfully defeating the Yagudo Liturgists and earned at least 1000 Allied Notes gets a Card of Ardor, I'll be the first person to sign up. And I will be good at it because I believe in using all my skills in Campaign (and I wasn't one of those turds who didn't put mobs to Sleep or heal others). Even if I could get them faster by spamming Alfard. Right now, I've been getting them by helping somebody defeat Sobek after Sobek. Am I somehow more skilled for my ability to spam Sobek than win Campaign?

I want them to update the game in a way that will make everybody feel like they play this game on their own terms, and they won't be damned to failure for doing so.

SCH happens to have a stance mechanic built-in. I would venture to say SCH is better at switching roles than RDM seeing that the switching of roles is built into the job rather than implied through spread-thin stats and profficiencies like RDM.

The other requires inventory space and doesn't have built-in mechanics that support its roles. It is one of the reasons I'm in favor of RDM getting stances to help the front and back liners stand apart from one another rather than leave the job a compilation of "what if"s that get in the way of the job's development.

You know, as somebody who actually plays SCH and RDM, I am disappointed I somehow can't convince you guys otherwise of this. I already tried to hammer across in the other thread that playing SCH requires some foresight and a lot of "setting up" to do the things that it does well and the two jobs still play on different strengths. Even now, RDM's strengths are more valuable to the playerbase than SCH's and, if you can't see that, than I'm afraid nothing I say will convince you otherwise that the two jobs are different.

Prior to the cap increase, everybody was up in arms that SCH was going to take over RDM's role. Where are you guys now?

Daniel_Hatcher

06-24-2011, 08:00 PM

Maybe I've been spoiled by games where you don't need to switch entire sets of gear to be able to do anything, but the above quote is a clear sign that RDM is in dire need of streamlining in some way, shape or form.

@OP: Your sig makes sense. I would probably play off the fact that the bonus is really useful but has a rather ridiculous condition to trigger the effect.

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree. It makes no sense, and indeed needs to be fixed.

The fault was in SE allowing Armour and so on to be changed before hand and gain the buffs, so if you don't do that, you'd be told you're a bad RDM.

Utter hogwash if I've ever heard of it...

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

In fact, with Emperyian gear, most of your gear sets end up making use of the same items. There really should be no reason why you're having gear toubles. Let go of the placebo pieces you're holding onto. You don't need +50 Enfeebeling magic, +40 Elemental, 8 elemental staves etc, if you're showing up with any intent to melee at all.

As I said, gear for what you do. Some of the worst, idiotic concepts people have is that you need to have a full set for every action you make.

A RDM is capable of curing, nuking, enfeebling and meleeing, you need all this equipment, it also helps to have a -MDT and -PDT build.

Do you need it all in your inventory at all time? not always, but sometimes you jump between mobs you can melee on, and others where they only want enfeebles or nuking and this change between mobs is far too quick to allow you taking and replacing your equipment every minute. So yes, there is NOT enough space even with 80 slots.

GlobalVariable

06-24-2011, 09:39 PM

I don't usually admit I do this, but I'm braving a rdm melee thread anyway so I may as well...

I sometimes use dagger when I melee. I think its sad that SE wants to steer rdm into swords yet I can outdo that whm if I use dagger and gear for dex on my ws set. *ducks and covers* pls dun lynch me. >.>

Gnadgott (dmg 42 o.o but way over priced ;.; ) and Twilight look like the only really good daggers we got in a long time. Even with a pretty gimp dagger I was outdamaging my sword build (non emp..yeah yeah I know) by a fair margin. I think because it was just easier to gear for and my sword setup was simply gimped. Pre abyssea I was doing evisceration when I solo'ed stuff, and post abyssea I love aeolian edge since a lot of my mage gear actually helps it allowing me to carry less gear around. Hopefully somewhere 91-99 we get a nice solid magic ws for sword that doesn't require a melee sub.

Tamarsamar

06-24-2011, 10:25 PM

Prior to the cap increase, everybody was up in arms that SCH was going to take over RDM's role. Where are you guys now?

Well, you know me: I was actually wanting for that to happen. But nobody saw the level cap increase coming, and since White Mages are now the kings of healing once more, I still got my desired result, but just through a somewhat different method.

Of course, if White Mages can still melee better than us, too, then the job is really only half-done. Thus this thread.

Hyrist

06-24-2011, 11:40 PM

A RDM is capable of curing, nuking, enfeebling and meleeing, you need all this equipment, it also helps to have a -MDT and -PDT build.

A Red Mage with a 'full curing build' needs to be slapped, hard and repetitively. Any 'set' that amounts to more than a light's staff (IF that's ALL you're doing) and you're spare MND Gear from your potency set and you're over-doing it.

Most of our casting needs are covered by piecemealing our Relic, AF, and Emperyian in various set ups. You can choose to try to push Nuking or Enfeebeling potency for specific situations, but RDMs are known for going WELL overboard with min/maxing every possible cast.

Other than that, our Gear crosses over well. INT and MND pieces, as well as any Magic Attack bonuses, fit well into Aeolean Edge and Sanguine Blade. (MND for Death Blossom as well) The Melee sets tend to stick out somewhat but that's because they're an entire different department.

Sure, you're carrying a number of sets on you a lot, but this is no different from ANY OTHER JOB. And with a full 80 inventory, plus a possible additional 160 from Satchel and Sack, there really should be no complaints on inventory room. You just need to look at what clutter you're hanging onto and get rid of the junk. Retire pieces that aren't giving you much of a bonus or can be substituted for something that fights multiple roles.

If you're on gear overload, you're over-loading yourself. Quit being obsessive about a faction of a percent.

I sometimes use dagger when I melee. I think its sad that SE wants to steer rdm into swords yet I can outdo that whm if I use dagger and gear for dex on my ws set. *ducks and covers* pls dun lynch me. >.>

Dagger will be your best main hand weapon until you get a Badelaire +2 And you will notice that CDC kinda blows Evisceration out of the water in spite of being 2 hits less. (Double the Dex Mod on a 58 Damage Weapon kinda makes up the difference.)

Daniel_Hatcher

06-25-2011, 12:38 AM

A Red Mage with a 'full curing build' needs to be slapped, hard and repetitively. Any 'set' that amounts to more than a light's staff (IF that's ALL you're doing) and you're spare MND Gear from your potency set and you're over-doing it.

Most of our casting needs are covered by piecemealing our Relic, AF, and Emperyian in various set ups. You can choose to try to push Nuking or Enfeebeling potency for specific situations, but RDMs are known for going WELL overboard with min/maxing every possible cast.

Other than that, our Gear crosses over well. INT and MND pieces, as well as any Magic Attack bonuses, fit well into Aeolean Edge and Sanguine Blade. (MND for Death Blossom as well) The Melee sets tend to stick out somewhat but that's because they're an entire different department.

Sure, you're carrying a number of sets on you a lot, but this is no different from ANY OTHER JOB. And with a full 80 inventory, plus a possible additional 160 from Satchel and Sack, there really should be no complaints on inventory room. You just need to look at what clutter you're hanging onto and get rid of the junk. Retire pieces that aren't giving you much of a bonus or can be substituted for something that fights multiple roles.

If you're on gear overload, you're over-loading yourself. Quit being obsessive about a faction of a percent.

Dagger will be your best main hand weapon until you get a Badelaire +2 And you will notice that CDC kinda blows Evisceration out of the water in spite of being 2 hits less. (Double the Dex Mod on a 58 Damage Weapon kinda makes up the difference.)

I disagree, having a Cure potency set whether we are meant to cure or not is a great investment. AoE and such forth a RDM healing is a great help to the main healer as it'd lessen the load and reduce the risk of a stray hit or nuke killing a DD when the WHM prioritizes (rightly) the current "tank." (Which in my opinion is how a RDM is supposed to work along with helping the WHM buff SE just messed the durations up) Getting less potency out of your cures is pointless.

I also disagree that 80 spaces are enough, they're not, I'd be happy with 100 (or happier with more than 100) but 80 is not enough, having ourselves limited due to the PS2 is a pain, even more so when SE don't allow you to macro from your sack or satchel.

SquareEnix made the game so switching gear beforecast/midcast effects the potency so as such they should allow enough space for us to get maximum sets and use them. Jumping in and out of your sack/satchel is not logical either.

Seriha

06-25-2011, 12:40 AM

Orenwald

06-25-2011, 12:48 AM

I take NIN to most abyssea events because let's face it, I'm the only Empyrean NIN my friends know. This being said, my RDM/pld outside abyssea does some stupid crap. With a good build for it and your trusty Joyeuse, Sanguine Blade will mess things up, and the auto-refresh from /pld really helps make up for the time you don't rest. It's pretty dope.

Supersun

06-25-2011, 02:20 AM

To be fair, it's not like Rdm gets a TON of cure potency gear., and you'll likely already have the serpentines set and the TotM staff on you if you have them.

After that there's only 2 more pieces that I know of which are the Fylgja Torque (+1) and the Roundel Earring. Both of which are slightly expensive for their relative benefit and at least for me are lower on my priority list to grab.

Other then that the only other pieces that will have potency on them are augmented pieces like the 3 add on expansions which since we are talking about melee Rdm...yeah..., and the genbu shield which unless SE gives us some awesome new trait to go with shield mastery makes it rather hard to use with the staff.

Hyrist

06-25-2011, 02:23 AM

Cure potency isn't that fractional, though. Sure, WHMs get more of it, and it's more effective with Cure V and VI since those spells start with higher base numbers, but even if you manage somewhere around 30%, that's 20% more than just the light staff, and for C4, roughly 80 HP. When curing consistently...

Stop yourself, right there.

If you're curing consistently, you're not meleeing, period. Augure sets nice as it fits and works well as part of your idle gear. Surya's is good when you' are focused on healing.

But when you're gearing for rounded play, you wear rounded gear. We've already long since established that the roles of a front and back line Red Mage differ, as should their gear sets and usages.

That means pick and choose. There are pieces of gear that serve no other pourpose but to push maybe 1 spell. Those could be done without.

Now, going through the gear (remember I've been gone half a year) for direct cure potency, I see there's been some decent bits added. But don't be stretching yourself for "Healing Magic Skill" Gear. (And if you front the money for Rondel Earring, I'll take a 2 mil donation.) But mainly, I see Torque, Staff, Gloves/Feet. I really woulden't call 4 pieces a set, but I see the reasons for getting them.

In the end what peices you drop and what pieces you keep will depend on your circumstnaces. For me, curing is in abundance, damage is not. So Healing gear takes a back seat to nuking gear, and even then I'm likely not maxing out my nuking gear.

I'm not ignoring the point made that if you try to push yourself in every direction, you're going to hit your inventory limit. My counterpoint is that you should balance your gear out with what you do, and weigh in on what's important, and what's you just fluffing yourself.

Pushing your cures in a situation in which your cures a highly needed makes sense. But if that's the case, why are you toting around your full nuking gear? If you consider your gear limits like Blue Mages consider their spell set points, gear really isn't an issue.

Gear for what you do, stow what you don't.

Seriha

06-25-2011, 06:16 AM

Hiiiiiii BG!

Anyway, I just look at it from the perspective of, since we're behind the specialists in most any given field, employing whatever gear to help bring us up to their level should be one of our priorities. While it's part of a leader's responsibility to guarantee a given role is covered, the impracticality of shuffling needed gear around when a situation arises (Of which it's suddenly the melee RDM's fault when shit hits the fan) is largely why I've been parading for hybrid gear that doesn't suck. Few others classes actually need to break 70 slots just to do their primary and more common secondary functions well. Meanwhile, we've gotta weigh options just to make sure seals can randomly fall to us or other loot if not trying to be a one-trick pony.

ManaKing

06-25-2011, 06:42 AM

Duelle

06-25-2011, 09:23 AM

No, that would've been a useless situation. Even now, that's what the developers are saying with every bit of promotional material they have about RDM right down to their promises about what kind of updates the job will get. They could shout until they're breathless and people are not going to listen if, for the purpose of the game, it just doesn't work.Well, words alone won't change much. I meant more along the lines "Our intention for Red Mage is <insert intention>. While we understand mechanics are/aren't in place for allow for this, we do plan on making changes to the job so that this becomes reality. We'll also be looking at X, Y and Z as possible candidates for buffs/nerfs". And them actually going through with it.

You know, as somebody who actually plays SCH and RDM, I am disappointed I somehow can't convince you guys otherwise of this. I already tried to hammer across in the other thread that playing SCH requires some foresight and a lot of "setting up" to do the things that it does well and the two jobs still play on different strengths. Even now, RDM's strengths are more valuable to the playerbase than SCH's and, if you can't see that, than I'm afraid nothing I say will convince you otherwise that the two jobs are different.What I'm saying is that SCH is better at playing an effective hybrid game than a RDM ever would. SCH has mechanics in place that support their roles and allows the player to go off on that to do what they want to do. RDM, on the other hand, has no such things and is thus burdened with an uphill battle to prove "hey, I can do this too".

The only reason SCH is "useless" is because it has not been given refresh or haste natively and can't cure bomb the way WHM is currently capable of. The day that changes will be the day RDM's relevancy as support will finally be extinguished.

Prior to the cap increase, everybody was up in arms that SCH was going to take over RDM's role. Where are you guys now?Not everybody. The bandwagon Red Mages were. I've been sitting here waiting for it to happen so that our job can be given a real direction without being burdened by the current perceived duties and role of the job.

I sometimes use dagger when I melee. I think its sad that SE wants to steer rdm into swords yet I can outdo that whm if I use dagger and gear for dex on my ws set. *ducks and covers* pls dun lynch me. >.>*blink* Why would we? Sword is known to have generally crappy selection when it comes to WS, made worse due to RDM natively lacking the better ones of that bunch.

Winrie

06-25-2011, 09:54 AM

My mind is fried after reading this, once again for the thousandth time in FFXI history, a RDMs place is not on the frontlines, keep that to your solo escapades and fun little adventures. RDMs place is on the backline, offering support healing(Notice i did not say main healing) ENFEEBLING! Doing what RDM is made to do. Just because a job can frontline doesnt make them frontline worthy. You dont see WHMs frontlineing everything in any kind of event other than to hit Blue or Red on something in Abyssea.

Secondly, Making a Cure potency set is foolish? I'm sorry but if your job as a support role is weaker in comparison to other jobs you would want to excel your performance. RDM can hit 50% Cure potency without an issue, it just takes a little bit of effort(Magian staff) and a little bit of gil for the buyables.(Dom OPs for gil and cruor trading is hard yo)

RDM has always been sub par in all departments compared to BLM and WHM in terms of nukes and heals, this hasnt changed over the last year and a half since abyssea, it's always been this way, i dont see a point to screaming about it. WHM has always been able to Hexa things into the dirt for more dmg than a RDM can WS for, this isnt new. Having fun and doing what you want to do is fine, but when were talking about an overall jobs role in anything event wise RDM has never been a frontline, and it never will be, this fact has been absorbed over the years, you are backup healers and the best enfeeblers in the game. Thats what you are. And i'd really like to know how a SCH outdoes a RDM in terms of usefulness, cause it can AoE buff and things? Sorry for the rant, this topic just gets old after years.

Ketaru

06-25-2011, 09:59 AM

Winrie

06-25-2011, 10:01 AM

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).] Whether RDM is truly frontline or backline isn't the problem here. The problem is why, if the job is backline in practice, does the Final Fantasy XI team continue to send mixed signals to the playerbase about what they think RDM is?

And whether I agree with you or not, I still stand by my position that SE owes the playerbase an explanation at the very least for what the hell they think they're doing.

thats just it, there are no mixed signals, RDM is the same as it was before, just fixed due to WHM upgrades and placed where it was supposed to be in the first place. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).] Besides your explanation i already gave you in the first post i made, Just cause a job can do something doesnt make it worthy to do, a whm can frontline but you dont see them main doing that while healing because it isnt efficient, a pup can have a healing automaton and heal decently but they dont main do it cause it isnt efficient, you see a RDM can frontline with sword with decent WS's but they dont do it cause it isnt efficient, point is, just because a job can do it doesnt make it what it was intended to do. There is no 'Mixed signals'. RDMs place has been severely distored by a lot of things over the years. Colibri camps, you would invite a RDM to heal, due to refresh and decent healing magic, cant beat a WHM on hp recovered per heal but you could keep your mp up, now if you had a WHM and a BRD, that RDM would be LFG no doubt. Now you go into abyssea, RDM is downsized to its performance level it is intended to be due to WHMs enhancements and SE increasing RDMs ability to nuke, which before abyssea was only barely decent. This distortion has caused your so called 'Mixed signals of what a RDM is'. But hey at least we know RDM wasnt intended to be a tank! They fixed that too. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).]

Ketaru

06-25-2011, 10:09 AM

thats just it, there are no mixed signals, RDM is the same as it was before, just fixed due to WHM upgrades and placed where it was supposed to be in the first place. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).]

If you cannot see the mixed signals, then there is just no discussing this with you. Our Empyrean gear translates to "Swordsman". Our relic armor is "Duelist". Many of our JSE pieces are "Fencer". When our job is used in promotional material, it always seen holding Swords. It is used in the promotion of the new sword item, Sagasinger. It was used in the promotion of Wings of the Goddess to show the playerbase promise of new job-exclusive weaponskills. It was promised frontline utility during the discussion of future job direction.

If the job is destined to be a backline job, they have to put a stop to this crap, or people are just going to continue being lead on to think SE really wants to move them to the frontline. Either that or start putting out updates that actually support what they keep showing the job as.

Winrie

06-25-2011, 10:15 AM

If you cannot see the mixed signals, than there is just no discussing this with you. Our Empyrean gear translates to "Swordsman". Our relic armor is "Duelist". Many of our JSE pieces are "Fencer". When our job is used in promotional material, it always seen holding Swords. It is used in the promotion of the new sword item, Sagasinger. It was used in the promotion of Wings of the Goddess to show the playerbase promise of new job-exclusive weaponskills. It was promised frontline utility during the discussion of future job direction.

If the job is destined to be a backline job, they have to put a stop to this crap, or people are just going to continue being lead on to think SE really wants to move them to the frontline. Either that or start putting out updates that actually support what they keep showing the job as.

I can kinda feel you on that, it does seem a little deceptive, but i think youre looking a bit too much into it and should wait for what the future holds and embrace what is now. Remember they intended ninja to not be a tank, but it is now, and they intended SAM to be a tank, and it isnt. The one fact that is clear is the players form the jobs role, no matter what SE does. The only thing that stops us is SE c**kblocking us on it by making nerfs, i.e. RDM/NIN tanking.

Duelle

06-25-2011, 10:38 AM

Just cause a job can do something doesnt make it worthy to do, a whm can frontline but you dont see them main doing that while healing because it isnt efficient, a pup can have a healing automaton and heal decently but they dont main do it cause it isnt efficient, you see a RDM can frontline with sword with decent WS's but they dont do it cause it isnt efficientA healer archetype actually healing makes sense. PUP is a weird thing that has gotten more developer attention than any other job in the game, though the automaton's lacking AI is partly to blame for why they can't at least do part of the healer duties.

Both are VERY different from a hybrid concept like a magic swordsman being forced into healing/support.

Supersun

06-25-2011, 02:18 PM

RDM can hit 50% Cure potency without an issue, it just takes a little bit of effort
BULLSHIT! Red Mage can't even come CLOSE to +50%

+22% from the staff
+5% from hands/feet combo
=27% which should be the realistic minimum

+3% Fylgja Torque +1
+5% Roundel Earring
=35% which may or may not happen considering one of those pieces drops from a campaign BCNM and we all know how much people love campaign atm >.>

+3% Selenian Cap
+5% Tatsumaki Sitagoromo
=43% which are already a bit much to require since they are likely going to be used for other things

So remind me how again this is even close to "50% Cure potency without an issue"? Because last I checked even BARDS AND SUMMONERS can hit 50% cure potency easier then Rdm.

Daniel_Hatcher

06-25-2011, 08:09 PM

BULLSHIT! Red Mage can't even come CLOSE to +50%

+22% from the staff
+5% from hands/feet combo
=27% which should be the realistic minimum

+3% Fylgja Torque +1
+5% Roundel Earring
=35% which may or may not happen considering one of those pieces drops from a campaign BCNM and we all know how much people love campaign atm >.>

+3% Selenian Cap
+5% Tatsumaki Sitagoromo
=43% which are already a bit much to require since they are likely going to be used for other things

So remind me how again this is even close to "50% Cure potency without an issue"? Because last I checked even BARDS AND SUMMONERS can hit 50% cure potency easier then Rdm.

Quoted for truth.

And the quote is all I'll say in relation to that poster, I tire of people that only come here to tell everyone they're wrong.

Seriha

06-25-2011, 08:28 PM

Rescuer atma would be 10% in Abyssea, so in theory you could drop the Torque or Cap. However, you'd have a hard time plucking me away from MM/Beyond/Ultimate combo if I happen to be on RDM. And if I was there to heal, I'd be on WHM.

Hyrist

06-25-2011, 11:37 PM

Stating/Taking opinions as fact.

That's really new.

See. Here's the problem I have here. I've no objection to those who desire to play Red Mage as strictly a back line job. But I take offense when they take the inverse about Melee.

Red Mage, by both design and advertisement, is supposed to be an all-range job, nothing less. The fact that even mentioning melee in any context sets off sparks states how broken the job has been and how a selling portion of the job has been thrown by the wayside in favor of being a Psudo-Scholar strips it of it's iconic identity.

I'm not interested in the dissenting opinions, I've heard every single argument against Red Mages in the front lines more times than I care to recall, and have seen the performance level teeter back back and forth.

The point of the matter is, it's been adverised to death as a front line presence, not a back line. It's 7 years past time for them to back up what they advertise better.

As far as 'for the last time'. I have a good laugh at anyone who thinks they're ever going to convinced RDMs to put down their blades so long as they have Relic-level weapons in the sword and Dagger catagories. Those should not be reduced to solo toys for the RDM. Nor should a Red Mage feel disuaded from getting these weapons because of a social stigma surrounding an aspect of their job class they DO receive (admittingly inadaquate) job ability and spell support for.

Hyrist

06-25-2011, 11:56 PM

.

Secondly, Making a Cure potency set is foolish? I'm sorry but if your job as a support role is weaker in comparison to other jobs you would want to excel your performance. RDM can hit 50% Cure potency without an issue, it just takes a little bit of effort(Magian staff) and a little bit of gil for the buyables.(Dom OPs for gil and cruor trading is hard yo)

Ok, if you're cruor trading for gil, you better have a ton cruor. Why the heck would you value Cruor for gil over brews, especially consitering the majority of the good loot pool comes from rare/ex gear.

Also, support role is varied depending on your context. I'm not going to main heal a party with 2 dancers in it, if anything, status removal should be my focus to save their waltz timers from having to deal with it.

Also, it should be noted that I'm still catching up on available gear. Wiki is rather effing miserable now as a source of info.

But buy in large, as you wanted to stress how great our 'enfeebeling' is. I'll point out on how pratically useless it becomes in Abyssea. DD + Curebot = Win. And when it dosen't, there's brew.

Anyway, I just look at it from the perspective of, since we're behind the specialists in most any given field, employing whatever gear to help bring us up to their level should be one of our priorities. While it's part of a leader's responsibility to guarantee a given role is covered, the impracticality of shuffling needed gear around when a situation arises (Of which it's suddenly the melee RDM's fault when shit hits the fan) is largely why I've been parading for hybrid gear that doesn't suck.

We cover way too much ground to make Hybrid gear realistic. I'd be more interested in seeing gear that pairs say, cure potency with Magic Attack Bonus and condence gear that way. Hybrid our mage roles together in gear. Our AF3 already does a bit of that for Ehancing/Enfeebeling

Tamarsamar

06-26-2011, 03:30 AM

Eh. Some of our AF3 is really more like Enhancing/Nuking, to be honest, but that's just splitting hairs.

As much as I do genuinely love the Enfeebling part of our job (or else I really would've simply just picked up another job that didn't have an A+ in Enfeebling), as Hyrist mentioned, please call me when it's usable again. I would very much appreciate the notice.

I also say that our melee does not interfere with out ability to Enfeeble, and we even have skills that make the two parts of our job compliment each other (such as Enspells II and Death Blossom), and that while our Enfeebling always has and always should come first, our melee should still not so woefully neglected as to put us on par with, again, White Mages.

Sekundes

06-26-2011, 04:16 AM

Even with my Almace, I'm not particularly impressed by rdm's melee nor with the latest additions to melee gear for rdm. Even though I know SE has no plans for increasing my inventory, I'll still say that lack of space in my usable inventory is an issue. I like to use the best possible gear for any action. To me, that is what this game is about, perfecting macro sets, building the best you can do and excelling at whatever you do. Gimping myself severely on what I equip or being limited on what roles I preform at my best at any given time because I don't have the space to carry all of my critical sets annoys me. To melee, I have to put away all of my staves, my resting gear(if I even have it out at all) and my nuking gear. So if I need to switch modes on the fly I get to spend the next 35-45 seconds flipping through my satchel and sack and if anything has fallen in to the 2 free spaces I keep then I have to deal with that as well.

I only keep out the obi for the day and if weather pops up then I have to specifically remember to take it out. I keep all meds in my sack and only take them out to use them or if I'm doing a fight that needs them quite often like holy water with doom spammers.

I can't really tell where SE wants to take the job atm but I can tell you it isn't melee. Our entire empy set, including earring back and neck, does not have a single melee stat on it. I'm not cross because of what they put on it, I'm fairly happy with it but the thought of rdm being a "melee mage" is laughable at best.

Making most of the new nms immune to everything doesn't help much either. I found very quickly that my rdm wasn't pulling it's weight and I've been on Blu ever since. Hell, blu is a better healer than rdm. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me about as much as whm being a better melee than the "melee mage".

I have hope for my rdm in the future but as it stands the only use I get out of it is if I want to do something on my own for fun and most times my other jobs do it better...

ManaKing

06-26-2011, 04:39 AM

Quoted for truth.

And the quote is all I'll say in relation to that poster, I tire of people that only come here to tell everyone they're wrong.

Pfftt you guys are totally wrong. I like making up round numbers and I hate reading entire posts. I should post whatever I want here without caring about the context. I probably don't even play RDM.

cidbahamut

06-26-2011, 06:19 AM

Stating/Taking opinions as fact.

That's really new.

The fact that even mentioning melee in any context sets off sparks states how broken the job has been and how a selling portion of the job has been thrown by the wayside in favor of being a Psudo-Scholar strips it of it's iconic identity.

Hmmmmmm....

Hyrist

06-27-2011, 05:02 AM

Wow Cid, you're horrible at comparions.

The iconic Identity of RDM included it's melee side.

RDM has functioned extraordinarily like Scholar in it's previous iterations throughout its lifespan.

And having a conversation about RDM melee, more often than not causes argument.
And it is a selling point of the Job.

None of these are anything short than fact, as in for provable with existing evidence.

Whether or not RDM SHOULD be more toned to the front lines, or whether it it should not, is an opinion to be discussed.

I don't blur those lines. Try again. And when you do, try using a bit of reading comprehension.

I can't really tell where SE wants to take the job atm but I can tell you it isn't melee. Our entire empy set, including earring back and neck, does not have a single melee stat on it. I'm not cross because of what they put on it, I'm fairly happy with it but the thought of rdm being a "melee mage" is laughable at best.

If what you say turns out to be reality, be ready to have a very dead job class population. As it stands, even in the back line capacity Red Mage is an exercise in redundancy. There is nothing of value to this job that cannot be made up by a specialist, or choosing to jobs that can cover their own identities, and what Red Mage can do for the party.

I mean, someone just tried to justify 8mil for 8% in cure potency gear to me in this very thread, when our max cure is cure is IV. If I wanted to dump that much money into my cures, I'd be a White Mage, or at the very least, Dancer. I would rather spend that amount of gil giving our enfeebling potency that much of a gain. There should be gear of more value to us, as Red Mages, then trying to stretch a cure or a nuke. Right now, our AF3 seems to be the only gear that does it. The rest is us piling on loads and loads of single-function gear trying to play catch-up to the specialists.

Our Enfeebeling has very little utilization beyond low man/solo game, which puts it on the same level as the Melee you're laughing at, while it's supposed to be a key component of our job. Yet your stressing nuking and curing gear which can arguably be considered fourth rate behind PUPPETMASTER in BOTH departments, (With control being our only edge.) and yet Puppetmaster is still the better melee.

I'm sorry but IMHO this job is broken down to it's core, and the only parts it has that defines it away from other mage casting jobs are either laughed at, or are too often not needed. And what SE tempts and advertises the jobs with, is a stark contrast from what it's being aloud to do, or being supported in terms of abilities and gear.

SE needs to make it clear where they want to go for this job, because AF3 goes one way, and our best weaponry goes another. If they want to have the job be middle of the road, they they should support that aspect better.

In the end, they need to put their money where their mouth is, and break the job like they broke all the rest with a couple glaring exceptions. Red Mage has been on the long road of stagnation and what little they've given us thus far since the cap raise has not been sufficient. Sorry, but buff duration and Saboteur does not cut it, as fun as they are to have.

ManaKing

06-28-2011, 04:09 PM

Oh Hyrst, I was pretty sure you were going to work out. I think you are quickly becoming one of my favorites on these forums.

Karbuncle

06-28-2011, 04:15 PM

Think the only thing i disagree with is the part where he says Brews > Gil when it comes to Cruor.

Brews aren't really needed for anything, Gil is. Consumables, Etc. Cruor is a great way to make gil. No one should hoard cruor for Brews. I mean, Have a safety net (~300k Cruor)... But really the only thing you generally brew would be mobs like Rani or Shinryu, some people have all the drops from those and brews are more or less pointless for those people as they aren't "needed".

Cruor to Gil is probably the best thing you can do with your cruor so long as you keep your safety net for basic things like Cruor buffs, Atma, and maybe ~1 brew or so.

Daniel_Hatcher

06-28-2011, 07:18 PM

Karbuncle

06-28-2011, 07:24 PM

Use Dominion Notes buy the augmented weapons, NPC the augmented weapons. You should never sell cruor gear over this other useless "currency."

The money for a brew is still annoying to get unless you leech all your jobs from 30-90.

Mmm, Some people don't really need brews as much as you seem to value them.

Gil is far from useless. You can still buy Empyrean upgrade items(Merc'in) with them, Foods, etc. People working on Relic Weapons also value gil... I know i do.

Cruor is in itself a useless currency to me atm, I keep a safety net (like i said, about 300k), but i convert the rest.

It will vary from person to person however.

Daniel_Hatcher

06-28-2011, 07:32 PM

Mmm, Some people don't really need brews as much as you seem to value them.

Gil is far from useless. You can still buy Empyrean upgrade items(Merc'in) with them, Foods, etc. People working on Relic Weapons also value gil... I know i do.

Cruor is in itself a useless currency to me atm, I keep a safety net (like i said, about 300k), but i convert the rest.

It will vary from person to person however.

Outside of Shinryu, I've never used a brew.

I'm not saying Gil is useless, I'm saying Dominion Notes are, once you buy the eAF items from them for your jobs they have no real use outside of buying a doom-shield.

I'd much rather save all my cruor when I can use the notes to get the same amount of gil from the items and the notes are much easier to get as well.

Perle Hauberk - 5,000 cruor sells for ~7,500
Savate Fists - 2,500 dominion notes sells for ~7,000

Karbuncle

06-28-2011, 07:56 PM

Outside of Shinryu, I've never used a brew.

I'm not saying Gil is useless, I'm saying Dominion Notes are, once you buy the eAF items from them for your jobs they have no real use outside of buying a doom-shield.

I'd much rather save all my cruor when I can use the notes to get the same amount of gil from the items and the notes are much easier to get as well.

Perle Hauberk - 5,000 cruor sells for ~7,500
Savate Fists - 2,500 dominion notes sells for ~7,000

Well yah, But you could do both and double your gil.

To some people Cruor is a worthless Currency and gil hold more value, Sometimes its the opposite, i can agree to that. But acting like someone is... "Crazy"? for turning Cruor into gil is just uneducated at best is my point.

To some people, Cruor is as worthless as Dominion Points. Brews aren't all that important, some people rarely ever use one, I usually carry 1 on me, and have my safety net of ~300k cruor, and i never feel like i need more than that ;X

Seriha

06-29-2011, 07:25 AM

Yeah, I think people are overvaluing brews in general across the community. I used my first one a couple weeks back only because the friend I was duoing Ahmaluk with (admittedly he was quad-boxing x.x) had a sudden connection hiccup and was basically just me on BLU to handle it after it took out two of his characters. Can everything be brewed? Yeah. Is it practical to do so? Well, I guess if you like spending a few hours in between in cruor parties, sure. Eventually you'd run out of cruor otherwise. The requirement of procs on a lot of things makes it a bad idea to outright zerg some stuff if you don't have a proc crew working on a mob while you're delaying the timer in a menu.

Doombringer

06-29-2011, 10:55 PM

brewing stuff is just plain fun. who didn't laugh maniacally the first time they used a brew?

hell, i wasted 2 brews doing somebody else emp just cuz i got to brew 3 draguas at ONCE. for a total of 9 draguas +whatever they could pull into cataclysm range.

did we "need" to brew dragua? no. we've killed it straight up with less people than we had just to hold pop items.. but was it worth the 400k cruor just for lulz... yup ^^ plus we burned a pair of verethrangas from 85 to 90 in like 2 days, so that was cool.

Bubeeky

07-01-2011, 01:24 AM

Who doesn't have fun opening up a 50k damage ws on an unsuspecting NM that has laughed at u while bending u over its knee, spanking u?

Aleste

07-01-2011, 03:31 AM

Ontopic: I've always assumed it was because of the quantity of offensive options each job had.

White mage offensive consists of Banish 1/2 ga/ga2 which are relatively naff; that leaves just Holy and Banish 3 and both of them have pretty long recast timers (with pretty poor damage considering the lack of decent nuking gear for whitemage).

RDM on the other hand gets the usual selection of Tier4 nukes...

In terms of combat weapon proficiency (B+ C compared against B B D), the only real difference is Hexastrike, and relative ease of gear for whm melee imho. Although there has been a fair few decent pieces for RDM melee from the past few updates.

Bubeeky

07-01-2011, 03:43 AM

I'm not sure where ppl get the idea that it's easier to find melee gear for whm than for rdm, clubs sure, but the rest of it, is no easier than for rdms...aside from the blessed hands/feet/legs I can't think of specific gear pieces that I use in melee that rdm couldn't use as well.

Aleste

07-01-2011, 04:07 AM

In terms of haste gear...

A basic whm with blessed gear, walmart and a haste belt sits around 18-19% haste.

A basic rdm would also wear the walmart and a haste belt.. but would wear dusk hands/feet instead. 13-14% haste total.

There's a 5% difference in just AH/easily accessible gear.

Harder gear (requiring actual work) would include zelus tiara, goliard saio, better haste belt (goading or ninurta) and those new trousers rdm got in the last update.

It's easier to gear more haste for whitemage than it is for redmage...

Hyrist

07-01-2011, 05:34 AM

It's easier to gear more haste for whitemage than it is for redmage...

That is probably my biggest standing complaint, gear wise.

Anyways, right now I am working on that FAQ, trying to find a good neutrally worded explanation, while hitting all the good points. Taking my time on it as I want it to be halfway decent off the ground.

Aleste

07-01-2011, 06:14 AM

Hyrist

07-01-2011, 07:18 AM

That's understandable, but it shoulden't be a comarison issue. Red Mage should be more offensively capable in BOTH departments, not just one. White Mage has superior support and healing capibilities than Red Mage, even though Red Mage is the one commonly deferred to for Haste.

Truth of the matter, before Abyssea, Red Mage could handle the support/healer role better as a single unit, than White Mage, but even that was situational.

Now, White Mage can do both healing, and Support better than Red Mage, both individually and as a single, whole role, as WHM simply has more to offer to the table, even with extended buff duration and superior refresh. And that's going to get even more of a gap once WHM gets Boost STR and Boost DEX.

So Superior Healing, Superior Support AND Superior Melee, just because we can nuke and enfeeble better?

Nah-uh, not ok with me.

Daniel_Hatcher

07-01-2011, 07:31 AM

I was implying that perhaps the reason why white-mages are more melee capable is because they lack any other form of offense.

Red-mages, while not having the same caliber of melee capability, have more offensive spells in their arsenal to compensate for it.

Perhaps, but it's still not logical. WHM is a job based entirely on party support whether it be Healing or Enhancing always has been, always will be.

Whereas RDM on every other game was based on the offensive with the ability to ease the load for the WHM, though in reality you'd have a WHM or RDM not both on older games.

So putting WHM better melee than RDM is just illogical.

Hyrist

07-01-2011, 07:56 AM

Whereas RDM on every other game was based on the offensive with the ability to ease the load for the WHM, though in reality you'd have a WHM or RDM not both on older games.

Says you.

War, RDM, WHM, BLM. Absolute Faceroll FF1

Aleste

07-01-2011, 07:56 AM

Truth of the matter, before Abyssea, Red Mage could handle the support/healer role better as a single unit, than White Mage, but even that was situational.

Now, White Mage can do both healing, and Support better than Red Mage, both individually and as a single, whole role, as WHM simply has more to offer to the table, even with extended buff duration and superior refresh.

Abyssea, enough said. There's little need for buffs inside with the exception of haste/shell/barelement, and when paired with the massively increased max HP and damage recieved, it's no wonder why the job with Cure 5/6 is seen as more useful.

Although, in all seriousness, phalanx2/debuffs/refresh2 are particularly useful outside abyssea; our linkshell makes a habit of bringing a RDM to every voidwatch because of the utility they bring.

Superior healing and superior support I can understand of the primary healing/buffing job. Although 1 decent weapon-skill does not a DD make.

Hyrist

07-01-2011, 08:27 AM

Superior healing and superior support I can understand of the primary healing/buffing job. Although 1 decent weapon-skill does not a DD make.

But it is enough to outdistance the Game Designer Declared "Fighter Mage", with the gear that is available to both.

Not. Kosher.

As far as the mentions of Phalanx 2 and Refresh 2.

I personally do not like the impact Atmas have on the average caster's habits. There used to be pride in being able to preserve your MP pool and stretch out what you got to be most efficent.

Now... not so much, at all. Refresh II is a plasebo to the real problem of casters not remembering how to function outside Abby.

Phalanx 2 really only has the duration going for it, and, IMO, isn't worth the merits compared to some of the other spells you could be getting/maxing. Great if you've got multiple RDM's that have Slow/Para fully covered though.

Seriha

07-01-2011, 09:07 AM

You don't really need more than one good WS to open yourself up to the DD game. More opens up flexibility when it comes to SCs or defense properties on higher level mobs, yes, but otherwise people will settle what does the most damage, be it your only WS or one of a dozen.

As is, on neutral mobs, Hexa has a higher potential than Evisceration. Part of it is WHM getting D60+ clubs, the WS itself having more hits, and for a while there, RDM's post-75 dagger selection had dried up a good bit. Both jobs get Haste. Both can cap Haste from gear, with WHM having an easier time of it. Both tend to suffer juggling the ACC/ATK/Haste act on harder prey, though. I try not to look at things from the "Abyssea is forever!" mindset, but suddenly dropping atmas doesn't change any of the preceding comparisons. I might have been okay with the, "Well, RDMs have better nukes..." logic if nuking outside Abyssea didn't drop off like a rock in terms of longevity and efficiency compared to melee, but it doesn't. Eventually we'd run out of MP, even with a fully merited Convert and Refresh II if you're dropping a Blizz 4 every time you can. Hell, this was part of why BLMs were shunned from EXP groups in the old days.

Either way, I've never been fine with the idea that we need CDC to match or exceed Hexa. Just looking at the Census, there aren't even 3k CDC-capable weapons in circulation, which if you want to assume a 250k population, isn't a terribly high percentage. Yes, it's the second easiest path after GKT/Gun/GS, but at an average of maybe 180 per server, it's hardly indicative of everyone having one. WoE still sucks, too. Nobody will argue CDC is nice to have, but good freakin' luck convincing people to pander to a melee RDM or even a PLD. You've got better luck on this as a BLU solely due to the exclusivity of grellow procs, and the job itself might arguably be the best suited for the weapon with native DW, DA, and other buffs.

Swords

07-02-2011, 03:13 AM

Says you.

War, RDM, WHM, BLM. Absolute Faceroll FF1

Actually MNK in FF1 outclassed every melee job in damage after the first 7-8levels. A few level 50 Blackbelts with haste on can easily finish off Chaos within a few turns. (I'm speaking from the NES version not the remakes.)

Anyways bantering aside, there is lots of gear RDM can use that put out the numbers. Just not everyone is willing to work for it. Prior to the 2h update back at 75 even reaching 750 attack was feasible (with food and self-buffs) which was almost unheard of even in the melee classes. You just have to be willing to put the effort to get what you need, be willing to swap out accuracy/atk/STR gear as needed, and go all out falling back when necessary for mp or supporting your party when you/they need it.

On a side note, for the love of altana focus on STR/Atk/Acc over Enhancing/En-spell gear. You can put out much higher DoT with melee no matter how much Enhancing/En-spells you try to rack up. En-spells are supposed to be there to support your damage not be your main source of damage.

Raxiaz

07-02-2011, 03:36 AM

En-spells are good though for low-dmg daggers when you don't wanna give a mob TP. Very rare situations for that though, IIRC.

Swords

07-02-2011, 03:53 AM

True, I'm not discounting situations where it might be useful, but in an ideal setting where you are meleeing for damage your goal should be the same as other DD's trying to out damage each other, even if its not possible it should be the focus.

Dale

07-02-2011, 06:51 AM

Too many people complain about White Mages outdoing us Red Mages in the healing department now, but quite frankly, that is how things should be.

How things shouldn't be, however, is that White Mages can also out-do us in the physical damage department. Now, I can understand when people warn to be cautious with the updates to give Red Mages more front-line prowess so that we don't end up out-stripping the usefulness of specialist jobs, but when we're not even easily out-doing White Mages, who aren't even front-line specialists . . . when we are at best the fifth-worst physical job in the game . . . then something drastic needs to be done.

The devs have been giving us subtle clues that they want us to use our Swords (the most recent example coming to mind is the use of a Red Mage to showcase the abilities of the Sagasinger); I say drop the subtlety and let it stand out so blatantly that even others would no longer argue against a Red Mage's spot on the front lines!

I tend to agree with you. I haven't been overly impressed with Red Mage melee. They are missing too many key elements, like an effective weapon skill forcing them to sub a melee based job which ends up weakening their support ability, which is really what the job excels at in my mind, so it's counter-productive to try and attempt a decent melee build.

If you want to be a fighter/mage i'd go blue. If you want to play a support role then I'd go Red Mage. They are the the best support job in the game.

I think what would go a long way to fixing the problem is giving Red Mage access to counter spells such as paralyna and erase. Doing so would enable them to have more leeway in choice of subs and then I could see the job successfully pulling off a fighter/mage style of play.

Hyrist

07-02-2011, 06:52 AM

On a side note, for the love of altana focus on STR/Atk/Acc over Enhancing/En-spell gear. You can put out much higher DoT with melee no matter how much Enhancing/En-spells you try to rack up. En-spells are supposed to be there to support your damage not be your main source of damage.

In the case of Tier1, both are appropriate. As far as gear that enhances enspells. As far as gear that enhances enspell damage, they're often on the weapon itself.

Accompanying Attack Gear with RDM is a tough juggle as you have to balance it with Accuracy Gear and Haste, Haste Trumping everything. What makes Attack more valuable than enspell damage is how plentiful it is.

However the appropriate enspell with the proper gear supporting it will give you equivilant damage boost a great deal more attack than is piratical to equip. Coupled with the fact that it effects our other given buffs, most especially our Gain Spells which will give us a projected +20 in the chosen stat makes Enhancing gear a high priority to have.

That said, attack is most defiantly needed. But +20 Dex can give us that extra 10 Accuracy to take off our gear load to swap out for more attack gear.

It's funny but SE is slowly addressing smaller bits of our Gear Issues through spells and trickling items. But of course that won't be enough on it's own.

Swords

07-02-2011, 09:21 AM

In the case of Tier1, both are appropriate. As far as gear that enhances enspells. As far as gear that enhances enspell damage, they're often on the weapon itself.

Accompanying Attack Gear with RDM is a tough juggle as you have to balance it with Accuracy Gear and Haste, Haste Trumping everything. What makes Attack more valuable than enspell damage is how plentiful it is.

However the appropriate enspell with the proper gear supporting it will give you equivilant damage boost a great deal more attack than is piratical to equip. Coupled with the fact that it effects our other given buffs, most especially our Gain Spells which will give us a projected +20 in the chosen stat makes Enhancing gear a high priority to have.

That said, attack is most defiantly needed. But +20 Dex can give us that extra 10 Accuracy to take off our gear load to swap out for more attack gear.

It's funny but SE is slowly addressing smaller bits of our Gear Issues through spells and trickling items. But of course that won't be enough on it's own.

Well my main gripe about enhancing gear is that a lv90 RDM can easily hit the 21 damage cap for tier 1 enspells w/o help from gear or merits. Any additional Enhancing gear is really just for resists which can be negligible as long as the monster isn't resistant to magic to begin with.

I suppose En-spell enhancement gear like the enhancement sword is kind of negligible because there are only 2-3 you would realistically use in any given situation.

Admittedly I haven't messed with the Gain buffs because I've yet to get RDM back up to par on this toon, but I had assumed that the gain/boost spells are affected by the skill at the time of casting, which you would macro swap in enhancing gear for casting if that's the case. In either case I fail to see the benefit of fulltiming for +1 DEX or STR per 10 enhancing skill vs using one slot for a +3~10STR, DEX, Atk piece (Or better yet haste, DA, TA piece). I mean most of the stat boosts would come directly from our native enhancing skill + merits which at 99 I'm guessing roughly 400-420 skill, so that would still give us at least a solid 15+ from a gain spell proving there's not a cap on gain spells.

TBH it's really hard to play the ideal setup, you have to constantly gauge yourself and how well you do, what your fighting, knowing your enemies weakness and so on. One method I've found to work pretty well for me was go in full haste, TA, DA, STR, ATK, gear. Melee a few and gauge your hit rate, and keep swapping in Acc piece by piece until you can hit a reasonable rate. Then consume food and adjust your gear based on one of the following ideals.

- If you can hit fine with ~20 Acc, consume Atk/STR food.
- If you need about 20~40 Acc. I recommend consuming a Pizza then falling back on the starting melee setup.
- If you need excessive Acc beyond what a Pizza provides, consume Sushi and fall back on your starting melee setup.
- If you STILL need more Acc you probably need to skill up or not melee at all in that situation.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop I think I've started rambling. If I misconceived what you were trying to say Hyrist do tell.

Hyrist

07-03-2011, 01:14 AM

If I misconceived what you were trying to say Hyrist do tell.

You have, severely.

Enspell Tier 1s, Gain Spells, Stoneskin, Phalanx/ etc base their caculations of how potent they are at the time of cast. Enspell II's are the only one that focus on our enhancing skill at the moment it connects with the enemy.

So the use of a full enhancing skill set, is when you are casting the spell not while you are meleeing. The sets are mutually exclusive, and thus, having BOTH sets to push your performance is encouraged.

Also, while you can hit the 21 damage cap with native skill at 90, the resist rate of your enspells are factored by your enhancing skill, and are relative to your opponent. Meaning the larger your skill, the lower the resist rate. That'll be a major factor in how much Enspells can assist your damage.

After that, balancing your acc/attack/haste can be figured normally. But you should never cast your Gains or your Enspell Is outside of a full ehancing skill/enhancing duraton set if you're going for max effect.

Doombringer

07-03-2011, 01:26 AM

i dunno if ensell1 has a cap.. mine do 24 and my enhancing skill still isn't capped. so even if it does cap, it's better than 21.

the problem with building for enspell is your only options are (as far as i know) 2 earrings that require you to not wear suppa/brutal. and a ring than requires low health. it's not practical. (not counting weapons obviously.)

enspell2 is even worse, requiring you to melee in the enhancing gear. fuck that...

so yah, i sorta agree.. enspell can't be the focus. ESPECIALLY in abyssea. atma doesn't put your ENSPELL dmg through the roof. like 3 dmg per swing from a hollow is gonna compete with a 5% DA? especially when you can crit for 200-300 dmg, and run a 50-60% crit rate?

edit: just checked, @ 400 skill (thats not capped, but it is including merits and gear) and 97 mnd (dunno if mnd affects gains so i'm just throwing it in there) i get +15 agi and a 25 dmg enspell1. all that gear can be taken off and i maintain the +15 agi and 25 dmg enspell1.

Swords

07-03-2011, 02:10 AM

You have, severely.

Re-reading what I wrote yesterday I must have been dead tired when I wrote that, and was far from what I was trying to convey in the discussion. XD

In any case, I admit I may have become a bit jaded when it comes to RDM melee arguements. The reason for my original comment you quoted me on was, while you can use enhancing skill gear to reduce resists on your en-spells, I just fail to see the reasoning behind it outside of physically damage resistant mobs. It's not because I do not see the power in en-spells, it's because I know RDM can easily squeeze out another 20-40 damage per hit with melee gear, while en-spells will always be subject to resists. The trade-off to sacrifice your base DoT over potentially losing some of your en-spell damage just does not sit right with me, hence my comment.

Hope that makes alot more sense compared to my original reply.

Swords

07-03-2011, 02:14 AM

i dunno if ensell1 has a cap.. mine do 24 and my enhancing skill still isn't capped. so even if it does cap, it's better than 21.

Do you have any enchantment damage + gear like the hollow earring? That can surpass the 21 damage cap en-spells get from enhancing skill, unless they've increased potential damage since they raised the level cap past 75.

Neisan_Quetz

07-03-2011, 02:43 AM

Pretty sure it's increased from 75 cap, haven't checked since I haven't meleed on Rdm lately.

Hyrist

07-03-2011, 02:58 AM

I haven't breached 21 yet, but my enhancing skill is woeful at 90 right now.

Anyways, again, Sword, you're compltely getting it wrong.

You're stating gear confict where there is none.

1. Swap to Enhancing Skill Gear
2. Cast Enblizzard
3. Swap to Melee Gear
4. Resume Tping.
(Note, this can be done with rapid speed.)

Enspell tier 1s, their damage AND their resist rate are figured out based on the enhancing Skill you have DURING THE MOMENT YOU CAST IT. (meaning you do not have to be wearing it afterwards) Only Enspell II's calculate your Enhancing Skill from strike to strike.

You're not wasting DoT at all in this process. In fact, if you're NOT swaping in the gear for when you cast/recast your enspells, you're losing DoT in not minimizing your resist rate.

Absolutely nothing prevents you from doing both, at all.

Dale

07-03-2011, 05:26 AM

Hyrist, are the same Red Mage that used to be on midgardsomr?

Doombringer

07-03-2011, 10:17 AM

Do you have any enchantment damage + gear like the hollow earring? That can surpass the 21 damage cap en-spells get from enhancing skill, unless they've increased potential damage since they raised the level cap past 75.

i accounted for that. i don't use hollow /nin, but with chimeric fleuret, i'm getting 32 dmg per hit.

Hyrist

07-04-2011, 03:40 AM

Hyrist, are the same Red Mage that used to be on midgardsomr?

Dale? Is that really you!? Could have swore you quit for good man.

But yep, it's me! There's only one Hyrist! I moved to Odin a long while back, spend some time in Herberus but Odin seems to be where I settled for now. I've got friends kinda keeping me around here.

Lots has happened, shoot me a PM sometime.

Also, side-note. I just hit 22 consistent damage regardless of day/time so yeah that cap isn't there anymore Sword.

Hyrist

07-05-2011, 01:41 AM

Ok. So the brainstorming has finally born some fruit by combining some ideas together from some of our recent updates.

Ability name:
Prise de Fer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prise_de_Fer)
[definition](French : Literally take the steel); also “Taking the Blade”; an engagement of the blades that attempts to control the opponent's weapon. See also beat, press, expulsion, bind, croisé, envelopment, opposition, transfer.
Alternate Names: Duelist, Opposition.

JA 'Stance' type:

Increases Enhancement Spell damage and inflicts: 'Hesitation' upon enemy while striking with an enspell active.

Hesitation (Status effect): Hesitation is a stacking status effect that reduces monster TP gain from both normal attacks an incoming attacks. Additionally, when a Monster Uses a "TP Attack" Hesitation adds a delay to the TP attack's usage based on how many stacks of the status is on the target. Hesitation wears off in 20 seconds or when the target uses a TP attack. Duration is refreshed if struck by a Red Mage under the effect of Prise de Fer.

-----------------------------------------------------

I'm keeping the actual raw numbers of this flexible, as I'm unsure as to what DEGREE of this would be deemed most acceptable.

As far as Prise de Fer's Enspell damage increase, I'd say 'doubles' but comes at the cost of loss of something on our mage side. Not certain what, however, maybe magical attack. Trade off our nuke numbers for enspell numbers.

With Hesitation, at absolute maximum I'd like to think that the status effect can stack anywhere between 5-10 times, and that each stack adds 1-.5 seconds to a TP move, per. Meaning, on top of a TP gain reduction (which I would say on the level of Auspice for gain reduction.) a fully stacked Hesitation would had a flat 5 seconds to the enemy TP attack delay. Again, at maximum. It would still be incredibly useful, especially in situations that the tank was crit right before the monster readies a TP move, and gives other players the chance to swap on their defense gears or run out of range.

And the fact that some mobs flatly spam TP moves regardless keeps this move from becoming broken, as the stacks would wear off each time the enemy uses a TP move.

Supersun

07-05-2011, 04:47 AM

Adding a delay to a monsters TP attack just seems to be asking for stun abuse though. It had the potential to make what used to be nightmarish fights into complete jokes.

Hyrist

07-05-2011, 04:54 AM

... and?

This has happened progressively as new levels and abilities came into the works anyways. This would be no different.

Besides, push comes to shove, have some mobs resistant or flat out immune, like every other debuff in existance. NM's only get a 2.5 second delay or some such. (Or just be immune to stun, like a lot of NMs are.)

Besides, you've already got CSS, Stun rotations, Alexander rotations and all the other would be abuses in this game that are far more dangerous.

This one is easily adjusted for.

Supersun

07-05-2011, 06:40 AM

Besides, push comes to shove, have some mobs resistant or flat out immune

This is mostly what I'm worried about. What's the point in adding this super awesome buff if they are just going to make everything worthwhile immune to it.

I'm not saying that this isn't impossible to add, but this is just one of those things that would need to be looked at very carefully first.

Hyrist

07-05-2011, 06:59 AM

I think that is a fair assumption of any ability, however.

Something that can just be implemented as is would likely be too minor of a change to make any impact on the job, or the stigma surrounding it.

While this can be something that specific NMS (think end bosses) could be resistant or in rare cases, immune. I think the majority of the foes, from fodder up until 'tier 2/3' nms should still be able to have this benefit in some way shape or form.

Nor do I think this is the only change that should happen to RDM. But having double enspell damage would make the ability useful against fodder, even if it is on Enspell IIs (Which would double the totals at the end of the calculation not the beginning.) And the effect of Hesitation would be useful against the more tricky enemies.

On top of this, if it was implemented as is, I'd see EX weapon skills freed up, more accessible haste gear, and further improvements on the gear we do have available.

And for Altana's sake, fix Enspell II calculations!

Seriha

07-05-2011, 08:57 AM

Hyrist

07-05-2011, 09:38 AM

Eh, adding 1s to ready timers without any convoluted building system would be enough. It'd take a sting out of a lot of the instant moves with attentive stunners, while the direct TP manipulation should at least offset the RDM's presence so there's a net gain of damage and utility.

Adding 1 second or less to the timer makes the ability's utility moot on anything that builds stun resistance quickly or is flat out stun immune. The building mechanic for increase potency is a carrot to keep the RDM there, especially in cases in which a Mob's attack could potentially 1, shot the tank. I'd say bare minimum, 1.5 seconds, if not 2.

As far as the TP manipulation mechanic, RDM meleeing alone would not be enough to offset the RDM meleeing. But the more who were meleeing, the more it would be offset (flat rate per person.)

Though, you bring up an interesting thing, a flat rate loss of M.Attack for a flat gain in Enspell damage. 1 MAtk lost, 1 bonus enspell damage. Problem is, when that gets to be +20 enspell damage, just how much have we lost from our nukes? I'd rather let the developers mull over the conversion rate on that one.

As far as DB's utility... honestly, there's nothing wrong there, if you see it's purpose being a near-universal opener. Maybe change TP mod to crit chance and give that Status Effect a flat rate of landing. But beyond that there's not much you can do to that WS.

Mageoholic

07-12-2011, 04:29 AM

It's more referring to the fact that they made the job trait "Fencer" and distinctly refused to give it to us.

Fencer isn't that overly good anyway. The amount of DoT we lose from droping a multihit (or DA weapon in abby) is way more than what fencer gives. Since it requires to be single wielded it is inferior. If we are single wielding we would likely be /WAR as the only practical reason to SW is /WAR in aby for access to EX Sword Club Staff procs anyway.

(or as /BLU in melee blood solo's which is slower, yet more fun than /nin melee blink solos).

As far as the WHM vs RDM thing, WHM is at the moment better equipped to DD then us because they have Clubs that are proportionate to level, where as RDM missed on all the magian daggers, and currently must have a Twilight Knife to see the best results. (or CDC but lets avoid using that as a basis requirement.) Outside of abyssea where RDM can get access to its Enspells for maximum effect (yes in abby they are still maximum but drop from like 20% of total damage to <5%). Enspells 1 can be pushed to 35 relatively easy and with enhancing magic sky rocketing over the last 15 levels, and the ability to dump 8/8 to enhancing merits as well the ACC holds pretty steady around 85-90%. That is a lot of extra damage when you consider the possibility of nearly 3 attacks /round essetially its a full time berserk (that does not apply on WS unfortunately).

RDM outside of abyssea is pretty solid DD when geared right, inside of abyssea its melee issues are just another factor in the laundry list of problems with the job and the unfriendly relationship it has with abyssea.

Ketaru

07-12-2011, 07:39 AM

RDM outside of abyssea is pretty solid DD when geared right, inside of abyssea its melee issues are just another factor in the laundry list of problems with the job and the unfriendly relationship it has with abyssea.

Yes and No. It all depends on whether you're considering the maximum potentials of jobs (something most people will never reach) and the company you actually tend to keep in pickup EXP groups (the NBs of the world...I'll leave it to you readers to figure out who NB is). As much of a blessing it is for parties to have become more inclusive, it is also kind of a pity an entire alliance of 18 people can be carried by perhaps 3 or 4 skilled players.

RDM actually did get kind of lucky with the way Atmas ended up favoring critical hit weaponskills because RDM does get access to 2 very good ones (Evisceration and Chant du Cygne). It just, unfortunately, requires more annoying gear to get than your standard damage dealer's weapons. But who knows? Some people might actually get lucky. I got Twilight Knife on my 3rd time solo brewing Shinryu.

Almost anybody can be an MVP in Abyssea. In a way, your accomplishments in Abyssea are more important than what your actual job is.

Supersun

07-12-2011, 10:28 AM

Enspells 1 can be pushed to 35 relatively easy

...maybe with a Fencing Ring and a Chimariac Fleuret

Mageoholic

07-12-2011, 10:31 AM

Ketaru

07-12-2011, 10:42 AM

I dunno doing 80-85% of a top tier DD's damage, while increasing that damage by 35% or so (17% via Dia III, and 15% haste) is pretty badass, if you bogarted that stuff to yourself that gap closes even more.

That doesn't really count because you can be casting Haste on those DDs and Dia is aiding everybody who is swinging at the mob, not just you. What you're describing is a scenario where everybody is on their own with no outside support. And, most of the time, that situation doesn't exist in the game.

...maybe with a Fencing Ring and a Chimeric Fleuret

I, for one, think Chimeri Fleuret is a pretty solid subhand weapon if you want to go for strong hits over more swings.

All the more reason I go back to the whole "mixed messages" stuff. They clearly know what kind of gear you need to be a serviceable frontline damage dealer. They just don't want to give it to you.

Supersun

07-12-2011, 12:19 PM

I'd be very surprised if outside of abyssea Rdm still does 80% of a DDs damage like we did at 75. Other DDs have had HUGE increases to their performance while comparatively we've pretty much stayed the same since 75 with the only real significant increase being CDC, but even then once the abyssites and atma are stripped away our lack Str, Dex, and attack on our WS gear compared to other jobs starts to show quite a bit.

Neisan_Quetz

07-12-2011, 12:55 PM

Every (1 handed DD) loses that though, unless you have Crit attack bonus/Skillchian Bonus/Impetus/Blood Rage (war only and why is it dualwielding?) going for you. Oh and obviously the usual better gear/traits/JA than Rdm.

Supersun

07-12-2011, 03:49 PM

Yeah, but unlike most DDs I don't go from capping the Str-Vit function to barely breaking 0.

I mean AF3, Twilight, and Eponas for most DD jobs just brought a whole new level of retarded.

Neisan_Quetz

07-12-2011, 09:09 PM

Aside from Epona's/Belt, TP/WS Head Option and TP/WS Body Option (alcide's is slightly better but if you need attack Tarasque+1/Rager Ledelsens isn't too far behind) Rdm Tp set isn't that much different from Blu aside from whether you're capping haste/using ACP body with DW/Blu has Mextli harness.

It's really the ability to set DA/attack bonus/go /war and still have DW (assuming you benefit from Zerk and Aggressor) and Self SC in addition to the above that has them ahead. DNC has more DD oriented traits (justifiable, they need TP for abilities), Thf can force crit on weaponskills/more dual wield/stats depending on gear (Dnc can do the same now), Bst/Pup are pet jobs.

EDIT: Not getting Twilight Belt was annoying to say the least with next best belt being N sash.

Svith

07-12-2011, 09:43 PM

Okay. I normally don't reply to stupid things: but this in particular piqued my interest;
The melee WHM revolution started in the 75's era, about 4~ years ago, when sea robber and sea wolf cugdels came out, then with the addition of the morganstern, whm became a formidable soloist with Hexa strike + Stoneskin, and /nin. I remember a few of my whm friends going after the Reverend Mail from Shen, because they wanted more solo capabilities.
NOW; this brings me to my next point; ANY job in this game can be broken, if done properly. RDM in particular could easily be made into a front line job if executed properly, in both gear, and mindset. If you want to DD in abbysea, then get yourself some crit gear, (off the top of my head; Pln. Khazaghand, Heart Snatcher) RR SS GH atmas, and go eviscerate the crap out of something.
An example of ingenuity: (Circa 6 years ago~) I recall a RED MAGE I used to fight in ballista, came to matches as RDM/RNG, i thought "wow, this guy is touched in the head", then he busts out his Kclub, hastes himself, and starts going to town, clubbing and sidewinder'ing people into little bits. /w stoneskin and cure, he was nearly impossible to take down, before he'd allready slaughtered you with repeated sidewinders.

Its not that you CAN'T do it, its that you haven't found the way TO do it.

Neisan_Quetz

07-12-2011, 10:06 PM

It seems to be more the desire to melee stronger mobs imo, if you don't care to you don't really find anything wrong with Rdm melee. Buffs to it would be nice but I hardly see it as a pressing issue.

Eeek

07-13-2011, 09:51 PM

It seems to be more the desire to melee stronger mobs imo, if you don't care to you don't really find anything wrong with Rdm melee. Buffs to it would be nice but I hardly see it as a pressing issue.

RDM melee capabilities are absolutely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and it should never be the job's focus.

If the developers want to throw a bone to RDM's melee capacity from time to time, that's cool. I consider fighting on RDM a fun hobby on the side. The people I know who take meleeing seriously do it well since, instead of whining about Fencer and EX weaponskills on forums, they went out and completed Almaces and impressive TP/Weaponskill sets. They'd appreciate a little buff to RDM's melee capacity. But when it comes time to play as a mage, they play as a mage. And they're damned good.

FFXI has too damn many melees already, and RDM should never be retooled to join that crowd. It'd simply fade into irrelevance like the other weaker DDs. RDM is an exceptionally strong mage and it needs to remain on a mage-centric line of development.

Hyrist

07-14-2011, 04:44 AM

FFXI has too damn many melees already, and RDM should never be retooled to join that crowd. It'd simply fade into irrelevance like the other weaker DDs. RDM is an exceptionally strong mage and it needs to remain on a mage-centric line of development.

I find this statement to be slightly amusing, and confusing at the same time.

You are aware that in the initial design of this game, it was assumed on the part of the developers that all classes would be meleeing, yes?

This is of course back in the game's infancy before the MMO conventions piratically took over the game. But I just find it amusing that someone can say 'there's too much melee!' Given the history, and the simple fact that Melee itself, the act of actively participating in combat, is one of the game's alluring elements.

I'm really not sure what you're basis for 'too much' is, honestly. However, I'm more than in agreement that simply moving to the front lines for damage contribution should not be the sole thing on a Red Mage's mind. This is why I seriously would like a utility for the front line instead of a damage boost. RDM's pushed the damage envelope before, it convinced no one.

It either resulted in the 'you're skewing yer parse!' , 'yer deedees sux!' or 'Yer a mage! Get in da bak linz!' Spats. After so many years I've grown rather bitter and jaded towards people who act that way.

I'd rather RDM be thrown a bone that could be used as a utility in a wider array of situations than monsters that die in 30 seconds or less with a strong DD group.

Rafien

07-14-2011, 05:23 AM

Hyrist

07-14-2011, 05:52 AM

I just want to throw out my two cents and say.. The day the finally knocked RDM down a few pegs I was ecstatic. Seeing RDM/NIN destroy everything in the game with ease was a joke. There is no reason for that class, alone, to be next to god when it comes to killing things.

Kind of a bias viewpoint, don't you think?

RDM wasn't the only job destroying things, and honestly, the only thing that changed in that departement is now EVERYTHING destorys things.

Ok, who cares? It took HOURS for Red Mage to be able to do what it did back then, and honestly, it could have been easily fixed by preventing Gravity and Bind from working the way it did.

The only department that RDM was taken down a peg, was hate, which all that did was pin the opportunity to tank on 2 jobs until Abyssea came out. (Dancer has picked up a bit in that department now, which makes me a touch happier.) Honestly I believe that was the wrong stance to take as the game could use more tanks, not fewer. No idea how many viable tanks there are for Voidwatch, which really is the only thing that still fits into the old HNM style play currently.

Oh, and we're falling behind in cures too, but that has absolutely nothing to do with our solo game.

Eeek

07-14-2011, 07:49 AM

I find this statement to be slightly amusing, and confusing at the same time.

Of course you find it confusing. RDM is actually a damn good mage when adequately geared and played as a mage, but I suspect all the doom and gloom over RDM's capabilities and future arise from people who can't capably handle the job. I can't say I'm surprised either - I've yet to see a pickup RDM play the job at a passable level.

So ... the answer is to retool RDM into a front-line melee? I'd hate to see such a valuable job decimated and transformed into a Mog House champion alongside the likes of PUP and DRK (and I guarantee you DNC will be right there again once the Abyssea age ends). I'm passionate about THF but I'm well aware that SE hasn't the slightest clue what to do with it and that THF will always be wanted only for TH. THFs like me will push the job to suck as little as possible, but at the end of the day, it still sucks as a DD.

RDM has never pushed the damage envelope and cannot push the damage envelope. That's why you melee RDMs are such an easy target - the vast majority of you endlessly cite decades-old lore in an ever-changing game series, confuse equipment naming conventions as sworn blood-oaths with the melee gods, and lack the cognitive abilities to astutely analyze the state of RDM affairs and somehow believe, if you wish really really hard, that RDM will suddenly strut onto the scene as a top-tier DD.

It'll never happen. It should never happen. Melee RDMs are the WAR/WHMs of old who tried to fool the world into thinking they were just like PLDs.

It either resulted in the 'you're skewing yer parse!' , 'yer deedees sux!' or 'Yer a mage! Get in da bak linz!' Spats. After so many years I've grown rather bitter and jaded towards people who act that way.

"Hey, join the f**king club! I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Sox! Life sucks, get a f**king helmet!"

-Denis Leary

Duelle

07-15-2011, 02:24 PM

So ... the answer is to retool RDM into a front-line melee? I'd hate to see such a valuable job decimated and transformed into a Mog House champion alongside the likes of PUP and DRK (and I guarantee you DNC will be right there again once the Abyssea age ends).Valuable? On what level? Spam refresh/cures/haste level? Or more along the lolenfeebles level?

What we've been looking to do is fix an error in implementation that has been allowed to run amock for god knows how many years. Yes, we know you don't care because to you RDM is a cure/haste/refresh bot with a bit of mezzer mixed in an attempt to make the job seem less trite (while failing to do so, might I add).

I'm passionate about THF but I'm well aware that SE hasn't the slightest clue what to do with it and that THF will always be wanted only for TH. THFs like me will push the job to suck as little as possible, but at the end of the day, it still sucks as a DD.Then make a thread about THF. No one here would stop you from doing so. Hell, I'm very likely to support a thread about THF with discussions on how to make it more than just TH. I know their plight, and would wholeheartedly support discussions on improving their situation. I feel the same way about the guys that want to DD on NIN instead of burn gil away spamming Utsusemi.

RDM has never pushed the damage envelope and cannot push the damage envelope.State a reason other than the asinine and debunked "no one would play any other job" or "all RDMs would melee only and no one would cover the back line", please.

That's why you melee RDMs are such an easy target - the vast majority of you endlessly cite decades-old lore in an ever-changing game seriesThat while ever-changing, remain constant in presentation of the jobs. The only real job that ever strayed was, surprise surprise, Paladins. You can thank Agrias Oaks for that one.

confuse equipment naming conventions as sworn blood-oaths with the melee godsName and title lend credence to purpose. RDM is proclaimed and sold as a magic fencer, yet is anything but. Why would anyone be surprised to see a collective of people having a problem with this?

and lack the cognitive abilities to astutely analyze the state of RDM affairs and somehow believe, if you wish really really hard, that RDM will suddenly strut onto the scene as a top-tier DD.If by "RDM affairs" you meant "well, guys, we don't get insta-invites anymore just for having refresh. We'z in trubble!!", we've been aware of that for a while. We also followed the sequels, "spam nukes thanks to all that +MAB in our AF3 set and infinite MP", "well damn, WHMs are wiping the floor with us in heals!", and the latest addition, "After 90 levels of refresh-botting, enter Almace: the Equalizer!". I even have the sidestory "Even being inferior in heals, people still invite RDMs to heal groups because old habits die hard" on VHS.

I'm guessing in your eyes the proper action would be to put up and shut up? Can you blame the melee camp for getting sick of seeing their favorite job being treated like that?

Jeez

07-15-2011, 06:57 PM

Hyrist

07-15-2011, 10:27 PM

Apparently, SE agrees with my assessment of RDM's mages side, seeming they're going to work to adjust HNM (in)vulnerability to many status effects.

We want to see red mages play a more vital role in HNM battles by making enfeebling magic more effective against high-level notorious monsters and their legendary levels of resistance as well as allowing them to better contribute to party member enhancement.

For HNMs, this is what I want to see. Honestly, if Bravery is a single target party member buff we can use, and Quick cast is sufficient enough to cut some of the tedium out of cycles. Then this paired with the better enfeebling mechanics and new enfeebles, than this will make me feel better about that situation.

Again, that does not address the other problem.

As far as people who like to make assumptions about me, whatever. They're only paying half attention to begin with. Why would I care what they think when more than half the time we're in agreement and the other times it doesn't effect THEIR gameplay one bit?

Eeek

07-15-2011, 10:38 PM

In recent Abyssea exp parties, I see THF tanking (they never pull), PLD pulling (they can't hold hate), and WHM DDing (even their offensive magic get some use). It seems like the old roles of everything are being flipped upside down, why not RDM too? Come to think of it, I haven't seen very many RDMs these days....

Pickup RDMs are absolutely worthless and shouldn't be invited to anything aside from exp alliances. The RDMs I do see in Abyssea are generally people I know and who handle the job well. Personally, my RDM gets a lot of use as well. Every server's Port Jeuno brigade will swear up and down that I'm wrong, but WHM's upper-echelon healing capacity isn't always required. RDM, while not ideal 100% of the time, works well in lots of situations in Abyssea.

I love my THF to death, but I'm a realist. My THF and my DNC will cease to be capable DDs once the Abyssea age ends. In the 75 days, my THF commonly parsed among the top DDs in easier events like Dynamis and Salvage, but I attribute that to poor competition rather than THF's DD prowess. A properly geared and played DD like WAR or SAM should out-damage a THF in event settings. I always hate admitting that, but it's simply reality.

I like where SE is taking RDM according to the roadmap they posted today. It's asinine that the highest-level NMs often rendered RDM's enfeebling talents useless, and I'm glad that SE might fix that. I'm hoping the new enfeebles will be more along the lines of Paralyze II and Slow II (in terms of usefulness, not necessarily function) and not like Break (which is just another Bind, really). Also, Quick Magic might be interesting if it can be cast on party members.

Hyrist

07-15-2011, 11:21 PM

Pickup RDMs are absolutely worthless and shouldn't be invited to anything aside from exp alliances. The RDMs I do see in Abyssea are generally people I know and who handle the job well. Personally, my RDM gets a lot of use as well. Every server's Port Jeuno brigade will swear up and down that I'm wrong, but WHM's upper-echelon healing capacity isn't always required. RDM, while not ideal 100% of the time, works well in lots of situations in Abyssea.

I love my THF to death, but I'm a realist. My THF and my DNC will cease to be capable DDs once the Abyssea age ends. In the 75 days, my THF commonly parsed among the top DDs in easier events like Dynamis and Salvage, but I attribute that to poor competition rather than THF's DD prowess. A properly geared and played DD like WAR or SAM should out-damage a THF in event settings. I always hate admitting that, but it's simply reality.

I like where SE is taking RDM according to the roadmap they posted today. It's asinine that the highest-level NMs often rendered RDM's enfeebling talents useless, and I'm glad that SE might fix that. I'm hoping the new enfeebles will be more along the lines of Paralyze II and Slow II (in terms of usefulness, not necessarily function) and not like Break (which is just another Bind, really). Also, Quick Magic might be interesting if it can be cast on party members.

We agree with Abyssea. This goes doubly if you are often group with other hybrids, such as Dancer. RDM's usefulness in Abyssea is small compared to other more specialized jobs, but it can be a helpful addition.

Quick Magic seems to be a JA ability, primarily, and has been discussed up and down on the boards. The only thing that would make it good is if it is a controlled job ability on a sizable smaller recast time than your typical 5 minute ordeal.

I'm glad enfeebling will be getting it's long-overdue adjustments. It's been a thorn in Red Mage's collective sides for far too long.

But I hope our buffing side isn't being neglected either. Haste and Refresh does not turn someone into a 'demigod'. They're both really nice buffs, granted, but without further support spells to share, I don't think SE's vision matches the reality here. Again, most of our buff spells are self only.

I'd like to see some more development along this vein. I'm not opposed to sharing buffs in situations that call me to the back lines, in fact I wish I had more of them and could distribute the more easily. Quick cast could do that for us if it's frequent enough, so there shouldn't be an issue to widen our variety in buffs a bit.

cidbahamut

07-16-2011, 12:11 AM

I'd like to see some more development along this vein. I'm not opposed to sharing buffs in situations that call me to the back lines, in fact I wish I had more of them and could distribute the more easily. Quick cast could do that for us if it's frequent enough, so there shouldn't be an issue to widen our variety in buffs a bit.

You don't have any experience using celerity to keep up a Haste cycle do you? All it does is make the cycle asymmetric and force you to keep burning the JA during every cycle at the same time. A quick magic JA isn't going to really do anything to ease the buff cycle situation. At best it'll be useful for throwing out a timely nuke or a raise.

Hyrist

07-16-2011, 01:02 AM

You don't have any experience using celerity to keep up a Haste cycle do you? All it does is make the cycle asymmetric and force you to keep burning the JA during every cycle at the same time. A quick magic JA isn't going to really do anything to ease the buff cycle situation. At best it'll be useful for throwing out a timely nuke or a raise.

No I use Celerity for Refresh or larger casts, there's no reason to use it for haste.

But the difference between Celerity and Quick cast is shortened recast vs no recast. You're essentially pairing two casts of it together. Which isn't asymmetrical if you split it between 2 functions, depending if the recast on Quick cast is sort enough (about a minute max would be the only fair, but I'm hoping for 30 seconds.) In which case, dedicating Quick cast to that function wouldn't be bad. At least then it gets more mileage out of it than simply throwing out a quick nuke or raise.

cidbahamut

07-16-2011, 07:44 AM

You don't seem to understand what I'm getting at. Once the cycle is established you're tied to it and celerity/quick-magic isn't actually helping you. Sooner or later you'll find yourself with the JA down and waiting on a spell's recast timer so you aren't actually speeding up the distribution by eliminating the need to wait on the spell's recast timer unless you burn the JA on it every cycle, restricting other things you might be accomplishing with the JA. Cycles will be the same problem forever, and a quick-magic style JA doesn't resolve it. The only real resolution is to AoE them via Accession, but SE doesn't seem to want us doing that much. So yeah, Quick Magic is will not be our salvation from cycling single-target buffs.

Hyrist

07-16-2011, 08:17 AM

No what you don't seem to get is that quick magic would reduce both the control burden and the casting time of these cycles, freeing up time for other tasks. In this case, you ARE speeding up distribution in direct relation to time taken to do the cycle.

Does it mean you'll get to stop cycling spells? Hell no. But if you haven't gotten used to the mechanic by now, feel free to quit the job over it.

There's only one way to truncate a cycle mechanic: AoE. What Quick magic does for us, is alleviate some of determent that cycle mechanic does for us, IE, it's all we do because we're stuck in casting time.

Think of it this way. If a good chunk of the spells we had to cycle took about to cast individually as an elemental barspell, would it really be that tedious? No, because then it becomes more of an afterthought to maintain in the background of other things you're doing, like meleeing, debuffing, nuking and curing.

As far as waiting on the spell timer with JA down? Split your buffs into pairs based on the JA timer and you're golden.

Only issue with this would be if the timer was 5 minutes, in which case it would pretty much be a useless skill. But it's a 1 minute timer, it will cut down the aggravation of cycling buff's quite nicely.

As far as 'other things you might accomplish with the JA' What? A double MB? Now you're just getting into situational arguments, and entirely dependent on what you're there to do. What you're arguing about that long endurance cycle buffing that gets horrendously tedious... when was the last time you were in anything that long? The duration of our buffs with the correct gear on others gets highly extended. So between casting them quickly and having them last longer, the old 05 argument of "OMG I HAVE TO CAST A SPELL OVER AGAIN!" doesn't have the steam it used to, and we've no idea what gear may further that in the future.

I mean for things like BC fights and events, when your nuking/curing matters, sure, save the JA. But otherwise, what else are you going to use it on consistently?

cidbahamut

07-16-2011, 08:24 AM

I just don't think it's the miracle fix you so desperately want to believe it is.

You go ahead and burn it on cycling to little effect. I'll be over here sneaking in instant Blizzard IVs so I don't get caught with my pants down when someone needs an emergency cure bomb.

Supersun

07-16-2011, 08:31 AM

I HIGHLY doubt the ability will have a recast of less then 3 mins.

Hyrist

07-16-2011, 11:53 AM

You go ahead and burn it on cycling to little effect. I'll be over here sneaking in instant Blizzard IVs so I don't get caught with my pants down when someone needs an emergency cure bomb.

Really, the timing is beyond negligible. Your insta-nuking might have a better argument, except that when you're cycling a full regimen of buffs, you likely are not in the position to desire to nuke except maybe to blow MP before you vert.

Better to put the ability to a consistent use than to sit on it wasting your timer. Same could be said for convert, no?

Seriha

07-16-2011, 03:30 PM

Haste or Refresh will always last a set time. Seriously, using a Quick ability to save yourself 2-3 seconds is not the wisest of choices and a partial testament to the overall worthlessness of the idea in general. If it's down when the cycle renews, you'll wind up leaving someone without their buff for 10s or so, and that'll stutter to everyone later on the list. Barring abnormalities like Dispels or overwriting Slows, you don't want to mess up that rhythm.

Now, if it were 10-15s of mini-chainspell, then it might hold some greater utility, but as a one-shot ability, it's rather meh and at best a nuking supplement.

Deadvinta

07-17-2011, 01:48 AM

In another thread, I said that I would vote 100% toward making our buffs self-target only and giving Scholar and White Mage the party-friendly versions. That way Red Mage can focus on using its buffs on itself, and have greater strength in enfeebling magic and sword skill. It would turn us into better Saboteurs, and then we'd have a better-defined role.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 03:54 AM

Why when our buffs are single target only in the first place.. Self target only is a horrible idea. If you actually mean self target only and not single target only.

Swords

07-17-2011, 04:35 AM

Each side has it's quips, but I think we all agree we'd like to see some reduction in our spell payload. If nothing else to free up a moment to rest, cure, or whatever else and not pull out our hair every time someone needs something while were mid-casting something else.

Duelle

07-17-2011, 07:16 AM

Why when our buffs are single target only in the first place.. Self target only is a horrible idea. If you actually mean self target only and not single target only.How so? It plays into what is needed to change the dynamic between players and RDM: you forcefully remove the option to have RDM spam buffs, giving room for adjustments to ease the move into the front.

I mean, think about it. You remove Refresh, Haste and Phalanx II from the equation in terms of what it brings to the party, toss in front-line relevant changes and adjust from there. It'd be hard to use what remains of RDM's healing power as a reason to keep the job rooted to the back row (even moreso when you take into account WHM being the new popular job). Single-target Protect and Shell are MP-heavy and inefficient to use, so buffs provided by RDM would be limited.

Granted, this pretty much kills the backrow support playstyle, but... *shrug*

Swords

07-17-2011, 07:22 AM

How so? It plays into what is needed to change the dynamic between players and RDM: you forcefully remove the option to have RDM spam buffs, giving room for adjustments to ease the move into the front.

I mean, think about it. You remove Refresh, Haste and Phalanx II from the equation in terms of what it brings to the party, toss in front-line relevant changes and adjust from there. It'd be hard to use what remains of RDM's healing power as a reason to keep the job rooted to the back row (even moreso when you take into account WHM being the new popular job). Single-target Protect and Shell are MP-heavy and inefficient to use, so buffs provided by RDM would be limited.

Granted, this pretty much kills the backrow support playstyle, but... *shrug*

I don't think that would happen, players probably would make RDM into a 2nd or 3rd rate nuker with respect to slightly higher curing capacity and enfeeblement capabilities.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 07:54 AM

I wouldn't play Rdm anymore if all of our buffs became Self target. Enfeebling alone doesn't justify not being able to cast buffs on others. It's also stupid since our set bonus depends on casting buffs on others.

Rdm is 3rd rate nuker anyway technically, Blm and Sch have higher tier nukes.

Duelle

07-17-2011, 07:54 AM

I don't think that would happen, players probably would make RDM into a 2nd or 3rd rate nuker with respect to slightly higher curing capacity and enfeeblement capabilities.I admit there is a risk of that happening. The risk would be higher if the cap was still 75. Right now, the only reason nukes even came to matter for RDM was because of refresh/MAB atma and the crapton of +MAB we got from gear.

Granted, I'd say the suggestion I was referencing would be the first of several changes. I really wouldn't expect the devs to relieve us of the refresh/haste burden without a little extra to help us claim a new role.
Enfeebling alone doesn't justify not being able to cast buffs on others.This depends on what is given to replace the busywork created by cycles and spamming buffs.
It's also stupid since our set bonus depends on casting buffs on others.That'd just mean our AF3 set would have to be adjusted accordingly. Nothing too difficult.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 08:00 AM

The hell, nukes always mattered to Rdm, that's why we have MAB Traits and gear for it...

Supersun

07-17-2011, 08:29 AM

The hell, nukes always mattered to Rdm, that's why we have MAB Traits and gear for it...

Oh please, nuking was even more of a solo toy post TouA - pre abyssea then melee was.

Duelle

07-17-2011, 08:39 AM

nukes always mattered to Rdm, that's why we have MAB Traits and gear for it...You mean just like how we have all those shields and Shield Mastery to go with it? >.>

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 08:49 AM

Supersun

07-17-2011, 09:02 AM

Nuking was just fine except on stuff that heavily resisted it/had really high intelligence such as wyrms/khim etc.

Bringing up troll traits doesn't help you, Rdm has had MAB/Nuking gear and the second highest tiers of elemental magic since day 1.

We also have the lowest elemental skill in the game next to a Scholar without dark arts up.

We've had SOME nuking gear back then. Pre Scholar our nuking was pretty awful.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 09:06 AM

Because Drk should be nuking with no MAB, equipping weapons that give no bonus and elemental tiers below Rdm...

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 09:06 AM

Supersun

07-17-2011, 09:10 AM

Red Mage solo'ing relied on nuke spamming. Red Mage was the strongest nuker in the game for a few months in between Visions and Scars of Abyssea releases. What the hell is this about Red Mage nukes being an afterthought or useless?

Red Mage soloing used to rely in Bind + DoTs and dumping whatever you had left between convert cycles into nuking.

It was pretty bad in the time between TouA where everything was bred to resist manaburns and /sch where we could actually get a respectable nuking skill.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 09:27 AM

Supersun

07-17-2011, 09:54 AM

DoTs were nice, but the majority of my damage when solo'ing always came from nukes. Bind, Gravity, Nuke nuke nuke, throw DoTs as they wear off. Run out of MP? Recast Utsu/SS, Rest, Nuke more till Convert was back up. Was resting impractical on some solos? Definitely. But I found that many Rdm soloers were simply overly cautious and took significantly longer because of it.

Gravity is pretty dangerous to rely on. The resistance a mob builds to it can quickly screw you over if you aren't careful. I mean sure now days you can easily kill plenty of things before that resistance will come back to bite you but back then where your nukes had a relatively high chance of getting resisted.

I mean sure, if your bind timer is up and the mob is still bound and you have MP to spare go right ahead, but I'd be surprised if nukes out damaged your DoTs.

Nukes become a lot harder to use when you are trying to use gravity as a safety net as opposed to the primary method for stopping the mob.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 10:00 AM

Supersun

07-17-2011, 10:39 AM

Gravity as a safety net? Safety net?

I think you're misinterpreting. Think about it a minute. What would happen if I cast bind, and then started nuking?

Right. And even then, Red Mage is very much capable of straight tanking monsters if it means throwing out more damage. You're talking about safety nets, I'm talking about Red Mage being sturdier than most Rdms think and not requiring all those safety nets. Edit: Qualifier, assuming the RDM has a PDT set that doesn't suck and a FC/Haste set for Utsu, knows how to use Aquaveil, etc. Bonus points for Rdms rocking 104% SIR sets pre-Veil Update.

As for nukes versus DoT on total damage dealt? That's not even a contest. Nukes are going to destroy DoTs in overall damage. That doesn't mean DoTs are bad, they're an addition to the arsenal and they're cheap. But you're either overestimating the power of DoTs, or underestimating the power of nukes. I'm not sure which.

It's not like all of those things were fully known at the beginning of TouA. Haste sets were relatively lacking until the turban was discovered (and remember information tended to spread quite a bit slower back then), 104% SIR certainly wasn't as well know about back then. It really depends on the time you are talking about. The farther we got into TouA and the more stuff we learned about it and the game in general the better Red Mage got at soloing and the more viable nukes became.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 11:08 AM

Why are we talking about the beginning of ToAU now? Your stated timeframe was ToAU release to Visions of Abyssea release. Was everything fully known by everybody? No. Is that even the case now? Hell no. Does that mean it was less true? Absolutely not.

104% SIR was extremely common before Visions of Abyssea and the Aquaveil changes among well geared players. Nukes didn't become more viable as time went on. People just became less stupid. Regardless, they were never "More of a toy than melee was". Comparing RDM's nuking capacity, where they were even the best nuker in the game for a few months, to their melee capacity which has always been crap-tier is absolutely ridiculous.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 11:11 AM

I said TouA - /sch aka WotG.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 11:17 AM

Nuh uh. 0912345

Oh please, nuking was even more of a solo toy post TouA - pre abyssea then melee was.

Edit: I see what you're talking about. But no, /SCH didn't change anything because all of the real difficult solos were attempted /NIN anyways. You're not getting Dark Arts that way =/.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 11:31 AM

It was pretty bad in the time between TouA where everything was bred to resist manaburns and /sch where we could actually get a respectable nuking skill.

I thought we were talking about this?

Even still, pre abyssea in general nuking was a terrible source of DoT because of the lack of MP regeneration and MP efficiency.

As long as the mob wasn't some craptastically difficult mob where only samurais would be attacking it anyway I'm pretty sure Rdm melee would beat it's nuking game back then. Hell, it still probably beats it even now outside of abyssea and that's saying something :(

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 11:36 AM

Our melee options were even worse than nuking ones aside from piercing weak targets at the time.

What lack of MP regeneration? Rdm has never lacked that... it just got better with levels.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 11:40 AM

Are we talking about the same situation any more?

I'm talking about solo'ing. You seem to be talking about group play where the MP could be spent on other things?

As far as Melee's effectiveness compared to nuking, that's going to depend on the target. The weaker the target is, the more relative effectiveness melee is going to have. The stronger the target, the less relative effectiveness melee will have. Nuking will have roughly the same amount of effectiveness either way, assuming the Rdm switches between potency and accuracy sets as necessary. I wouldn't bother nuking an EP or TW, that's just a waste of time and MP.

I'll just take this apart point by point.

1) Nuking was more of a joke than Melee'ing before Abyssea. False.

2) Nuking was ineffective in solos. False. It is, and always has been, significantly more effective than DoTs. DoTs are an addendum to Nuking, not a replacement, and relying on them will make everything take much longer.

3) Nuking was ineffective before /SCH was released. False. How many half-difficult Solos were RDMs subbing SCH for? For everything else, NIN sub was most definitely not getting Dark Arts so the release of WotG made absolutely no difference.

4) Nuking as part of group play was a waste of MP per damage dealt. Agreed. I'm not sure why this was brought up at all, but I never implied that casting Nukes was an awesome use of MP when you had DDs there with you to deal damage and you had to concern yourself with Hasting/Curing/Buffing them.

Was nuking always the best thing to do? Definitely not. Was it somehow super weak because of Rdm's low skill? No way. Was it anywhere near the kind of joke Melee was? Absolutely not. Nuking was something you did on targets that were strong. Melee'ing is something you got away with when targets were weak.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 12:19 PM

1) I said nuking was more of a solo toy then melee was

2) DoTs aren't an addendum to nuking. If anything it's vise versa. Sure those solos take a lot longer without nuking, but they aren't even possible without the DoTs. The monster would likely turn white and regen HP if those DoTs weren't on

3) Yeah, you're right on that one. Too used to abyssea candy where I can get away with /sch for plenty of things as the arts reduces the solo time by quite a but.

I still think you are underrating Rdm melee back then a bit more then you should. It wasn't like leagues worse then any other 1h weapon user post 2h update. Hell, pre 2h update it was probably better then Drk (on birds) lol.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 12:22 PM

Worse than (at best equal to) a Thf not using SA/TA is leagues worse than other 1h users. Cept maybe... pre update Dnc not using Saber Dance I guess (assuming both using haste samba, still putting money on Dnc)? I suppose you could compare to 75 Blu since they had it pretty bad back then, and they still had Vorpal/CA going for them.

EDIT: not gonna lie though, pre 2h buff 2h melee was pretty awful, but Drk could just /nin and spampage so still not seeing how you're beating that.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 12:27 PM

DoTs neither keep claim nor prevent regen. I'm not sure why that myth is still being perpetuated.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 12:46 PM

DoTs neither keep claim nor prevent regen. I'm not sure why that myth is still being perpetuated.

my mistake then.

(Also I'm pretty sure Rdm could have beaten a thf if they didn't use using SA/TA. You really have to give more credit to the brokeness that the joyeuse was)

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 12:47 PM

Hard to when they had X's if using Evis and DE crapped all over Evis if they didn't.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 12:48 PM

Hard to when they had X's if using Evis and DE crapped all over Evis if they didn't.

There's more to DDing on Exp mobs then just the WS. We trounced them pretty damn hard in the DoT department.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 12:50 PM

You're still assuming they never used SA/TA, which is hard to believe unless they were awful/geared badly/didn't have SA/TA sets.

Oh, and perma TA +10%. And Asscharge.

EDIT: wow, maybe thief after all, still cutting it close assuming they're not even using JA...

Supersun

07-17-2011, 01:01 PM

TA + Charge isn't going to even get close to a job that can equip a 13.5 DPS weapon that increased your WS frequency by 45% and a spell that more or less had the same effect as adding 50-100 Str during the TP phase.

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 01:12 PM

It isn't like adding 50-100 str during tp at all, and you're still assuming they never used JA. Shit if skill wasn't an issue Thf could use Ridill...

Seriha

07-17-2011, 03:12 PM

DoTs neither keep claim nor prevent regen. I'm not sure why that myth is still being perpetuated.

Claim, no, regen prevention, yes. Otherwise, there's no way in hell RDMs could've soloed Duke Berith back in the day if trying for their Chapeau as it was basically an exercise in DoT, reraise, repeat.

Greatguardian

07-17-2011, 03:22 PM

Casting an offensive spell (in this case, a DoT) will reset the timer before a mob will start to regen. The act of having a DoT will not prevent a monster from regenning after they go idle. You're welcome to try it out. Nuke something, cast a long-lasting unresistable DoT on it like dia or bio, then die and watch it idle/regen.

Seriha

07-17-2011, 04:29 PM

Ran out with a mule and gathered a couple bees to take me out. Deliberately took one to 30% or so. When I got near death, I proceeded to Dia as many as I could. The 30% one died while I was dead, others continued to lose HP until Dia wore off 48s later. Sorry, but it stops idle regen.

Supersun

07-17-2011, 05:14 PM

I knew I wasn't crazy.

Had to be some reason my Zone -> Bio -> Zone strategy worked on Murphey to get my hat back in the day

Neisan_Quetz

07-17-2011, 05:15 PM

EDIT: Memory is foggy, still think later NMs recovered hp a lot faster than that. or just prevented it from depopping... I do remember Tyger going to hell once and once idle was regening 3-5% hp/tick easy.

Seriha

07-17-2011, 06:45 PM

Granted DoTs only offset innate regens, which SE's added to some later (H)NMs. Other conditional aspects like rage modes could possibly introduce things we hadn't quite picked up on, either. Still, the passive stat and initial regen should be under 30s of going idle, probably closer to 15.

Ryozen

07-18-2011, 09:21 AM

Why are people continuing to compare well/optimally-geared melee RDMs to classes which are apparently AFKing for 3/4th of the fight?

How does this make any sense?

Supersun

07-18-2011, 10:15 AM

Why are people continuing to compare well/optimally-geared melee RDMs to classes which are apparently AFKing for 3/4th of the fight?

How does this make any sense?

Because people are still taking DDs that afk for 3/4th of the fight over Rdms?

TybudX

07-18-2011, 10:28 AM

Of course we will, your melee RDM is still onlyu doing at most 80% of what those poorly geared, 3/4 of a fight afking DDs do.

Supersun

07-18-2011, 11:20 AM

Depends on your definition of poorly geared.

Because I've been in shells where my Rdm was the #2 or #3 DD

I mean I'm not trying to say Rdm is some super awesome DD because of it. I know it speaks more of the people in that shell, but even then I wouldn't call them 'poorly geared.' They at least made an attempt with that they had. It's not like they were full timing dex gear or something.

Neisan_Quetz

07-18-2011, 11:31 AM

Doesn't really mean anything. I've outnuked 3/4 of an LS on Rdm/drk and I'm not going to begin to delude myself into thinking Rdm was an awesome damage dealer by any standard. It wasn't the absolute worst at least.

Ryozen

07-18-2011, 03:07 PM

Ryozen

07-18-2011, 03:13 PM

That being said, I fully intend to melee my RDM from 90->95 when the time comes. I'm certain that I can put forward several times the damage of the standard are you joking 4/5 perle and seiryu kote what the fuck Abyssea pick-up DDs.

I don't have any illusions that it makes my RDM a good DD, though.

Supersun

07-18-2011, 03:36 PM

Sounds to me like the answer to your ills is to stop surrounding yourself with shitty players.

1) I wasn't in that LS for long lol

2) They weren't shitty, just casual.

Olor

07-21-2011, 02:34 AM

can't jobs like BST almost full-time some of their AF3 pieces?

I pretty much full time my pants - but you're missing the point. OF COURSE jobs like bst, which are essentially a one trick pony, would be more likely to be able to full time some of their top tier gear.

I would not even full time the pants if I had the movement speed ones from ACP - but stout servant +1 is pretty much always useful - because a bst is pretty much always using their pet to tank for them.

So you will only be satisfied with gear so overpowered it is good for nuking, healing and meleeing?

This goes to the heart of why rdm don't get what they want - because they will never be satisfied until they are overpowered. Well, too bad, so sad.

Olor

07-21-2011, 02:39 AM

Because people are still taking DDs that afk for 3/4th of the fight over Rdms?

I have never been in an exp alliance that gave a damn what job people came on as long as they had someone to heal and someone to azure

Urteil

07-22-2011, 07:08 PM

You're advertised as fighter mages for the same reason that its advertised that my job somehow has great innate worth with something called Elemental and Dark Magic.

Karbuncle

07-22-2011, 07:13 PM

2) They weren't shitty, just casual.

Now you're just splitting hairs!

For curiosity and the fact im on the same server, what Linkshell was this?

Eeek

07-22-2011, 10:42 PM

Now you're just splitting hairs!

For curiosity and the fact im on the same server, what Linkshell was this?

Back in January, I was farming WoE for Birth Coins on DNC at the same time Supersun was farming coins. I can't say I was impressed with his damage output, but I never expect to be impressed with a melee RDM's damage output (and anyways, I'm sure we've both drastically improved our gear since then). But it's WoE (in this case, farming NQ mobs in Fluxes 01 and 03 for single coins), so who cares? Melee away and have some fun. WoE was an annoying grind.

But if Supersun's RDM was really among the top DDs in that old shell, then it seems something was wrong with the DDs in that shell. It's one thing for a casual to have modest damage output with modest gear, but it's something else entirely if they incorrectly used the gear they did have. :/

Supersun

07-23-2011, 02:44 AM

Now you're just splitting hairs!

For curiosity and the fact im on the same server, what Linkshell was this?

That was actually when I was back on Fenrir. No clue if they are still active or not.

Back in January, I was farming WoE for Birth Coins on DNC at the same time Supersun was farming coins. I can't say I was impressed with his damage output, but I never expect to be impressed with a melee RDM's damage output (and anyways, I'm sure we've both drastically improved our gear since then). But it's WoE (in this case, farming NQ mobs in Fluxes 01 and 03 for single coins), so who cares? Melee away and have some fun. WoE was an annoying grind.

But if Supersun's RDM was really among the top DDs in that old shell, then it seems something was wrong with the DDs in that shell. It's one thing for a casual to have modest damage output with modest gear, but it's something else entirely if they incorrectly used the gear they did have. :/

In #3 I agree with you. I HATED that flux so much. I mean it's like they made a flux where all the NORMAL monsters were immune to your enfeebles and they spammed silence.

In #1 I pretty much a Damask Crabs worst enemy. Yeah, I wasn't set up as well for the other crabs, though I could still kill them decently, but I was mainly geared to stomp those lil physical resistant bastards into the ground.

And to be fair WoE isn't the best example of my damage, at least when watching my WS. Those things had a pretty hefty amount of MDef.

And even then, I'm not one of these insane melee Rdm enthusiasts you claim that we are that has to melee everything. Whenever one of those boss crabs came waddling over and aggros one of our party members and we decide to might as well attempt to try it the last place I want to be is within a 25' radius of that thing.

But then again, it's WoE, I didn't come to WoE to DD most of the time. I came to tank since just like campaign taking damage is the fastest way to rack up points, and in #2 I was able to pretty consistently take top 5 unless there were a bunch of leech plds in there, and I sure get a lot more points melee as Rdm then standing in the back.

(also unfortunately my gear hasn't improved that much since then. College has been rather time consuming. Summer classes just ended though so hopefully I can log on a bit more again)