Some Red Mage Fun!

[Zindel]

Hello everyone, I am an old school RDM player. Rom back in the days when being in the front line was acceptable if we could keep up with the refreshes, enfeebling, back up cures, with an occasional magic burst tossed in. (Remember refreshing a party of six people with magic points?)

Now I am not looking to do this in any parties right now, but I want to have some fun beating up some monsters. What I need help with is picking up some gear which will allow me to toy around solo. Any advice would be most welcomed on what weapons/armor to get. I do have one requirement. I am not looking to spend months to get the best of the best. This is a spare time task for pure fun. I am not looking to solo NMs. I am presently a level 90 RDM.

[cidbahamut]

What are you trying to say?

[Trangnai]

I think Hes trying to say he needs help with gear sets, while attempting to off flamers but justifying it lol. But honestly It's not very hard to understand the principle of a standard TP and WS set, and cast sets for spells when needed.

But, Protips go.

- Dagger's tend to be the better Main-hand pre-empyrean weapon due to Evisceration, grab a Blau for your main hand and a Joyususe for your off-hand thats at least a decent start that requires little effort and gil nowadays.

- Dusk Hands and Feet are still our best haste pieces, Walahra Turban is always great for Head Piece and shouldent be too hard to come by if you have the Imperial Standing. Swift Belt is easy is to come by now that should give you your first 14% easily, other haste gears take effort or alot of gil (i.e. dusk +1 and Swift Belt)

- Red Mage Lacks alot in the accuracy department, sense you don't have access to alot of the higher tier haste pieces focus on acc for tping. a Simple Scorpion Harness should do you fine, sadly most of our other body pieces require work or are rare things to find on AH. Focusing on Acc in these slots keeps your rings open for STR and DEX rings if you can cap your acc.

- For Weapon Skills its as simple as focusing on WS mods. Acc and Atk help as well, to a lesser extent.

- Assuming you do plan to work on a non-melee build taking advantage of a good enhancing set along with composure will help you deal more dmg in the long run due to not casting as often. an Enfeebling set is pretty much also required solo for casting de-buffs on mobs.

[Kuvo]

My solo gear isn't the greatest but as a rdm it would take a lot to boost our warrior stats like str, dex, and agi. So i seem to focus on increasing our already powerful stats like MND, IND, MP, enfeebling and enhancing gear. Enhancing being a strong focus. I don't waste my time with increasing dex or str since we would need to increase more then 30 points in each stat line to be usefull. So in all actuallity I use and macro a lot of my party gear. Rings, earrings, cape, and weapons will make up the differences in either MP or accuracy or whatever is needed. This depends on what I plan on doing that day either hard hitting NMs solo or just farming. Sorry I don't has specific gear to list for you but my advice would be to focus increasing what our job traits already are enhancing with a few gear selections to acc, haste, or fastcast.

[Protey]

My solo gear isn't the greatest but as a rdm it would take a lot to boost our warrior stats like str, dex, and agi. So i seem to focus on increasing our already powerful stats like MND, IND, MP, enfeebling and enhancing gear. Enhancing being a strong focus. I don't waste my time with increasing dex or str since we would need to increase more then 30 points in each stat line to be usefull. So in all actuallity I use and macro a lot of my party gear. Rings, earrings, cape, and weapons will make up the differences in either MP or accuracy or whatever is needed. This depends on what I plan on doing that day either hard hitting NMs solo or just farming. Sorry I don't has specific gear to list for you but my advice would be to focus increasing what our job traits already are enhancing with a few gear selections to acc, haste, or fastcast.

don't pay attention to this guy. First off, focus on haste and acc (make sure you have a good enhancing skill as well for your enspell damage). This is to maximize your DoT. Next focus on your WS set. This of course depends on which WS you are using. If you are using Chant du Cygne (which I highly recommend, 2.5k WSs (or higher if using Almace) on RDM rock!), you'll want to focus mainly on DEX. If you're doing Aeolian Edge to kill massive amounts of mobs at once... then you'll want to WS in nuking type gear (INT/MAB) but also throw in DEX as well if for some reason you don't have a decent INT/MAB for that armor slot.

[Nepharite]

Gear for haste/acc/att for tp like a normal DD would:

http://www.ffxiah.com/members/item-sets?id=204492

Build yourself a WS set that works best for the specific ws your going to use.
Use Marinara Pizza.

Remember that each time you cast a spell, you are going to lower your overall melee dmg.

[Hoshi]

It seems like for rdm melee the same things that were good at 75 are still good at 90. Nepharite's set is nice... you might find zelus tiara hard to get (but turban is a fine substitute). Basically haste and double attack are your friends... some acc is nice and store tp is always great. When I solo on RDM I swap between 5 different gear sets: buff casting set (with fastcast and - spell interrupt), int enfeeb set, mnd enfeeb set, melee set, and ws set... I think most of the gear I use is easy to obtain.

[Nepharite]

It seems like for rdm melee the same things that were good at 75 are still good at 90. Nepharite's set is nice... you might find zelus tiara hard to get (but turban is a fine substitute). Basically haste and double attack are your friends... some acc is nice and store tp is always great. When I solo on RDM I swap between 5 different gear sets: buff casting set (with fastcast and - spell interrupt), int enfeeb set, mnd enfeeb set, melee set, and ws set... I think most of the gear I use is easy to obtain.

Haha, I wish I had that tp set for rdm. It was just one already built and shows what you should aim for. (in terms of maximizing haste/acc/att and showing what is available)
But as Hoshi mentions, carrying different gear sets will definitely help you maximize what you can do with rdm.

[Kuvo]

don't pay attention to this guy. First off, focus on haste and acc (make sure you have a good enhancing skill as well for your enspell damage). This is to maximize your DoT. Next focus on your WS set. This of course depends on which WS you are using. If you are using Chant du Cygne (which I highly recommend, 2.5k WSs (or higher if using Almace) on RDM rock!), you'll want to focus mainly on DEX. If you're doing Aeolian Edge to kill massive amounts of mobs at once... then you'll want to WS in nuking type gear (INT/MAB) but also throw in DEX as well if for some reason you don't have a decent INT/MAB for that armor slot.

Wow abyssea truly brought the stupid out of people but I guess you have your opinions. Inside abyssea sure the rules change but outside it depends on what your trying to solo. HNMs, Gods, etc I wouldn't go with a TP building set since your feeding the mob TP as well and as rdm we can't outlast going toe to toe with high level mobs like that. Like I said it depends on what you are going to fight and outlast.

[Protey]

Wow abyssea truly brought the stupid out of people but I guess you have your opinions. Inside abyssea sure the rules change but outside it depends on what your trying to solo. HNMs, Gods, etc I wouldn't go with a TP building set since your feeding the mob TP as well and as rdm we can't outlast going toe to toe with high level mobs like that. Like I said it depends on what you are going to fight and outlast.

the OP said he wasn't looking to solo NMs... at least pay attention to what the OP said before you post calling people stupid, cuz you're the one that looks stupid.

[Kuvo]

the OP said he wasn't looking to solo NMs... at least pay attention to what the OP said before you post calling people stupid, cuz you're the one that looks stupid.

I know I was referring to how I set up for NMs, thats also why I said it depends on what you are trying to solo. If your in abyssea, gear isn't as inportant as it used to be since you can get killler atma but outside it sure depends on what you are looking to fight solo. My point I was trying to make is that when your soloing higher level mobs, yes it's harder to hit them so maybe acc gear and haste gear would be nice but at the same time a RDMs strengths are in enfeebling. If you can't enfeeble the mob or are recasting the same enfeebles over and over during the fight then is it really an efficient set up? I don't know it's things you need to ask yoursellf. And in MY opinion low level mobs (under T) acc, haste, TP gain is ok but anything more I mix in different set macros with some acc and haste along with enfeebles, INT, MND and so on.

[Doombringer]

sanguine blade makes life easy against lower mobs, it's decent damage, unnafected by weapon dmg (rock that joyeuse all day) that heals you.. it's effected heavily by int and magic attack, stuff you probably have sitting around anyway.

only downside is it requires war, pld, drk, or blu sub. i recommend drk, as solo you can't really afford to use bergressor anyway, and joyeuse reduces the utility of da a little bit. absorb tp on a job that can afford the mp to cast it every time it's valid is pretty sweet. it'll take some getting used to, but just keep in mind that you can only absorb what tp the mob actually has.

pld is kinda lame now since you get refresh2, not much need for auto-refresh, and we have shield mastery innate.

blu can be good, though it's not my favorite. cocoon stacked on top of phalanx makes you hard to kill.

[Xikeroth]

My solo gear isn't the greatest but as a rdm it would take a lot to boost our warrior stats like str, dex, and agi. So i seem to focus on increasing our already powerful stats like MND, IND, MP, enfeebling and enhancing gear. Enhancing being a strong focus. I don't waste my time with increasing dex or str since we would need to increase more then 30 points in each stat line to be usefull. So in all actuallity I use and macro a lot of my party gear. Rings, earrings, cape, and weapons will make up the differences in either MP or accuracy or whatever is needed. This depends on what I plan on doing that day either hard hitting NMs solo or just farming. Sorry I don't has specific gear to list for you but my advice would be to focus increasing what our job traits already are enhancing with a few gear selections to acc, haste, or fastcast.

I agree with this guy on one thing.... ENHANCING GEAR. Yeah haste accuracy double attack is good, but en-spell damage doesn't cap. If you're /BLU laughing at mobs as they hit you for 0 damage use enspel 2s since they yield higher damage results, but if you're dual wielding(with a multi-attack weapon such as joyeuse) use enspel 1s, why? Because you'll net more enspell damage from 3 attacks of enspel 1 then you will of enspell 2. Since enspell 2 takes time to get to max damage and enspell 1 only takes 2 hits to rival enspell 2 max damage. This is increased purely through enhancing magic skill.

Through testing at the same time, unlike other magic skills unless they recently changed it(been too busy playing NIN to try) any reduction in enhancing magic skill will lower your enspell damage AFTER the cast, of course this is subject to the enhancing spell damage formula falling on a specific number. This best works if your enhancing skill is well over 300 which if you spend all that time buffing people with haste and refresh like I did it should be. lol

Other then that haste, STR, ACC, double attack all work the best for RDM. Our best subjob? Debatable and it depends on the situation and what you're fighting. Blue mage will give you access to a few stronger sword WS, enhancing your defenses without losing your attack. NIN will give you dual wield and shadows. dancer(thought i don't like subbing it to my rdm as it doesn't have much purpose. will give you some accuracy bonus allowing you to focus less on that but will weaken your overall damage output.

There isn't much post 75 that RDM can use that enhances our frontline abilities. Kinda makes me believe that SE rushed abyssea as a way to charge us $10 per addon but didn't really think about game balance what so ever.

Kinda the same way they killed any value relic weapons had with emp weapons(which I still think their WS dmg needs to be reversed as relic weapons take much more time to obtain and upgrade then emp weapons...) Knights of round and mercy stroke should be able to destroy Almace's WS with no issues and the WS on emp weapons need to be nerfed a TON because of how easy they are to obtain(compared to other weapons). but that's for another thread. On the topic of THIS thread... we shouldn't NEED an emp weapon to be viable in the front line.