Alternative to Cure 5

[Ophannus]

If we can't get Cure V, please implement a spell that's self cast only that boosts Cure Potency by a function of Enhancing Magic Skill. To make this not worthless, the bonus needs to stack with Cure Potency+% from gear and not contribute to the same cap. Could start small at 5-10% but with proper Enhancing Skill gear/merits it could cap at 15-25% at 99 along and with the right Cure Potency Gear could contribute to a ~75% + Cure Potency boost to RDM's cure spells. This would give us a cure spell as potent as Cure 5 but with the massive hate of a Divine Seal+Cure4.
To make it even more balanced give it a short duration/long recast so that RDMs remain situational healers and not main healers. Maybe 30 second duration, 3 minute recast like Reprisal or something. This way we wont have a 900hp cure 5 but a 800ish HP cure IV for bad situations and we can't abuse it because of the recast and duration.


Another option is to make 2 job ability stances for RDM. One to focus on melee abilities, the other to focus on mage duties.

Bravery:Enhances attack speed, accuracy and Sword Enhancement Spell Damage "Allows the use of extra weapon skills" but increases cast speed.

Effect: Grants a +10% Attack Speed Bonus like Hasso, +10 accuracy and +5 damage to Sword Enhancement Spell damage. Allows the use of exclusive sword weapon skills i.e Red Lotus Blade/Vorpal Blade/Seraph Blade/Sanguine Blade.


Piety: Enhances Magic Accuracy, Magic Attack and Cure Potency but MP cost increases and Enmity is defense is lowered

This will grant a bonus to Magic Attack, increase Magic Accuracy and provide an ample bonus to Curing power but at the cost of +10-15% MP across the board. Additionally +10-15 enmity will make us think twice before spamming cures or nukes due to hate gain.

I'd rather have both of these be spells since it's RDM nature to have both White and Black magic AND Melee ability available to them at the same time unlike SCH which has to choose between Black or White magic or BLU that has to set spells.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Nothing against stances per-say but I'm fed up of having to need to be gimped on one side of our job to buff the other.

[cidbahamut]

I'm fed up with stances in general. That's Scholar's gig.

[Orenwald]

Yeah, it's RDM's job to be able to do all things at the same time, stances kind of ruins that

[Crimson_Slasher]

I think the people (myself included) are so inclined to stances comes partly from other jobs we play AND the power they offer. While the flexability is nice, having a stance is a powerful thing, and it has its own built in limiting and balancing factor being that the ability MUST be active for full rewards. In that sense i see a lot of rdms wanting the "Melee" stance so that we can be given impressive and otherwise broken buffs to melee, and nobody can cry broken because we need to shed them if we wish to switch back into the mage based stance. I like the flexability, but in many cases im not required, nor given the need (or chance) to have to swap roles instantly and then back more frequently than every 2-3 minutes. Just my thoughts.

[Ophannus]

Stances adds some degree of focalization to an otherwise mediocre 6/10 multipurpose job. For us to be able to melee we'd need NATIVE fencer traits since RDM's style is more Sword+Shield compared to BLU's Dual Wielding. So we'd need native Fencer traits, A- sword skill, ability to use stronger sword weapon skills like Vorpal Blade. On the mage side we definitely need a boost of some degree to curing power, strong and unique debuffs that other jobs dont get and strong enhancing spells that WHM's don;t get AoE version of(kick in the balls to RDM that WHM has Boost-Spells when we have higher enhancing magic then them, seriously Gain-AGI and Gain-CHR and Gain-VIT are utter wastes of spell slots that could have been used for unique and useful spells)

[saevel]

Stances adds some degree of focalization to an otherwise mediocre 6/10 multipurpose job. For us to be able to melee we'd need NATIVE fencer traits since RDM's style is more Sword+Shield compared to BLU's Dual Wielding. So we'd need native Fencer traits, A- sword skill, ability to use stronger sword weapon skills like Vorpal Blade. On the mage side we definitely need a boost of some degree to curing power, strong and unique debuffs that other jobs dont get and strong enhancing spells that WHM's don;t get AoE version of(kick in the balls to RDM that WHM has Boost-Spells when we have higher enhancing magic then them, seriously Gain-AGI and Gain-CHR and Gain-VIT are utter wastes of spell slots that could have been used for unique and useful spells)

Umm RDM is more DW then Sword + Shield, or did someone miss the F shield skill. WHM's have better shield skill then we do. F skill wasn't bad until 60, after that it just goes downhill until it's utterly useless.

I would much rather have a D57 Delay 230 STR+10 Attack+20 sword in my off hand then either a Genbu's or even a Vikings. Heck take the -PDT sword over a Genbu's if damage intake is a concern. Then you got that Cure Potency +10% sword that's in the dats, hasn't been made into the game yet so we're figuring its in the unreleased BC fights. Off hand a D57 Delay 224 +MP +Cure Pot 10% sword for when your needing to focus more on support / healing then killing.

The possibilities are endless for combo's, swords are amazingly strong in this game, just sucks that RDM can't use Vorpal natively.

[Ophannus]

Umm RDM is more DW then Sword + Shield, or did someone miss the F shield skill. WHM's have better shield skill then we do. F skill wasn't bad until 60, after that it just goes downhill until it's utterly useless.
Except RDM can use Shields natively and can't use Dual Wield unless they sub DNC or NIN. BLU gets it natively and has no shield skill. Also I'll remind you RDM gets Shield Mastery and +Shield Skill on our AF. So Shield fits more with RDM's 'theme' than dual wielding. So we're more likely to see Fencer bonuses than Dual Wield. Shield Mastery has helped me massively since I idle in PDT sword and genbu shield and macro it into all spells i cast with up until the spell is released. You haven't any idea how many times a shield block has prevented an interrupt(Shield Mastery) during an utsu or a cure4 which has saved my bum.

[Stylin]

(kick in the balls to RDM that WHM has Boost-Spells when we have higher enhancing magic then them, seriously Gain-AGI and Gain-CHR and Gain-VIT are utter wastes of spell slots that could have been used for unique and useful spells)

No it wasn't. Everyone is so quick to say something is a slap to Red Mage's face or a kick in the balls. This is nothing new. Protect, Shell, and Barspells ring a bell? Having a higher skill doesn't mean we should be getting the AoE version. The higher skill is there to give our self-buffs an edge over whatever the WHM is handing out. Of course these days WHM can reach a similar or even higher enhancing skill with /sch and gear but that's a different problem.

I don't know about you but I like having Gain-VIT. It's pretty helpful for /blu solo fights. AGI now effects Subtle Blow, and CHR is there for /BST so there's that. Very niche applications but it's far from a waste of a spell slot, especially when they're part of a line of spells. That's like complaining about Barpoison.

[Motenten]

I'd say all the self-target spells would be far more practical if they were single-target, like protect/shell, instead. Self-target benefits no one but the rdm. Single-target can benefit others, even if it's annoying and inefficient (eg: Protect 5 on all 6 people in the party instead of Protectra 5). The fact that the AOE version exist means it's not considered detrimental for other people to gain these benefits, though it may be appropriate to restrict the target to only in-party players, like Refresh/Regen/Erase.

[saevel]

Except RDM can use Shields natively and can't use Dual Wield unless they sub DNC or NIN. BLU gets it natively and has no shield skill. Also I'll remind you RDM gets Shield Mastery and +Shield Skill on our AF. So Shield fits more with RDM's 'theme' than dual wielding. So we're more likely to see Fencer bonuses than Dual Wield. Shield Mastery has helped me massively since I idle in PDT sword and genbu shield and macro it into all spells i cast with up until the spell is released. You haven't any idea how many times a shield block has prevented an interrupt(Shield Mastery) during an utsu or a cure4 which has saved my bum.

Umm no, on anything that matters your chances of procing a shield block on right up there with parrying or evading it. Our skill is so low that we're at the floor for proc rate on whatever tier shield we're using. That is why shield mastery was a laugh fest, it's useless on us as we won't be procing a shield block to begin with.

The lack of DW is annoying, but so did everyone not NIN until very recently. Should a THF run around with a shield on until 80+ when they get DW 1? Should BLU's run around with a shield until they get the spells for the set points at 80+? How about WAR, BST, or even our dear Winja's?

No, your fantasy about running around with a sword+shield is just that, a fantasy. DW provides a 42% increase in DPS along with whatever stats we get from our off hand weapon. Your not getting anywhere near that with a shield on, the closest is /DRK for when I'm on stun duty. At least then I can spam Absorb-TP to built TP prior to running in and LR SE CDCing it up. Otherwise I'll keep my /NIN, 42% extra damage along with my various swords is simply awesome. That and the NI line of spells are useful for landing things, you probably completely forgot about those. +30 magic accuracy for 15 seconds on whatever element you want, juicy.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Not to start a fight, but you just presented a reason for shield use saevel. /DRK, and verymuch so you would benefit from a shield then, even if the selection of shields isnt good, i think he is looking at it as having fencer (which has a crit rate bonus) and vorpal blade, would allow us to atleast hit harder when not married to subbing ninja or dancer. And as for the statement to a theif, or blu, or war, or bst using a sheild, well yes. If you are unable to use a certain sub (as we can't change subjobs in the field) and are forced to use a one hand weapon (looking at you theif and blu.) then it would be downright foolish to have nothing in the sub slot. Even if shields are at this time ineffective, they still have two things to consider. They do NOT increase delay at all, period. And there are some with decent effects that may help round off a build. Granted some of those other jobs have other options to single wielding a weapon (war with greataxe, blu with staff at times) but if your thief is /rng to say track and claim a NM for you, and is too low to dual wield natively, then yeah, maybe he could use a shield. Or maybe your blu/thf at 75 using SA cannonballs could use a +def +vit shield.

I personally prefer to dual wield, but if i cant, i use a sentinel (3 str 1% haste) or a genbu sheild.

A happy thought about shields though would be if they released a general purpose shield, with a large job selection, that featured some pretty potent stat buffs (+10% critical hit rate, +5% crit damage, 5% double attack?) to make it atleast BETTER than NOTHING.

Anyway enough of the derail, this is a Cure 5 Alternative thread. I have an idea, it would make a lotta DDs mad but could be interesting if there was a spell that converted the target's tp into a potent cure. Dunno how it would work but 1TP for 10hp wouldnt be bad, 100hp for every 10 TP, but it would make some DDs MAAAAAAD as hell. Just figure its something else intersting and it could scale somehow based on percentages.

[saevel]

I use a shield on /DRK precisely because I can't use one of my off hand swords. I would much rather have DW then a shield buff. But if I'm forced to use a shield, then I'll go with the best option I possibly can. And I did do Sword + Shield back at 75, Joy + Viking as /WAR with vorpal spam. Was pretty good but you got knocked around a bit. Now at 95 the mechanics of the game have grown such that there is no contest, DW beats Sword / Shield, even if your stuck using Death Blossom.

He specifically was pushing for sword / shield over DW, a mistake about as bad as full AF RDM/WHM meleeing.

-=Edit=-

Actually a better fix would involve changing a basic game mechanic. Introduce "Both Hand" in the form of anytime you have a 1H weapon equiped without a shield / sub weapon the game would treat you as using a 2H weapon. You could even equip a grip if you wanted. This would apply to the atk / acc formulas as well as Seigan / Hasso and DB type stuff. Would be an interesting fix indeed.

[Ophannus]

I didn't say DW was worse than sword/shield. I said it's more likely that SE will buff sword/shield options for RDM than DW. RDM doesn't have DW natively but we have shield/sword and shield mastery natively and SE said they were considering Fencer in the form of gear for RDM. This is evident that SE is considering buffing RDM's proficiency with single wielding not dual wielding. To that end I was requesting buffs like Fencer traits and disregarding DW because it already fits RDM's theme more than DW does. Giving RDM a B- Shield Skill and a few tiers of Fencer would be pretty decent for solo as stated before Fencer gives a crit bonus and TP bonus. It's evident SE doesn't want to focus on Dual Wielding aspect of RDM/NIN because even our Enspell II's only work on the first hit and not any offhand hits. So instead I'd like SE to explore making Sword+Shield somewhat more comparable to DW. Of course it'll never be stronger in terms of damage output but I give them credit for at least giving us Shield mastery which even at floor % still seems to proc often enough when I solo to prevent interrupts when I equip it during precast along with FC gear.