On Red Mage melee...

[SpankWustler]

*stares at his one Blind II merit*

...

...

LEAVE THE POOR SPELL ALONE! IT'S SPECIAL!

(Just because all the other spells are actually useful... *sniff*)

It's okay, man. It's okay, Blind II. I'm sure that White Mage would never have obtained a set of Fazheluo Radiant Mail if you guys hadn't been in the right place at the right time. I still believe in you!

[TybudX]

And you still left my quote there, even though the rest of your response is falsely aimed at it. Get out of here with that stuff, man. Hello Ignore button.

I left your quote there because you were referring to the post I made in response to somebody's use of that video as an example of all the free time a RDM mule had that they could have been doing something else with. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).]

[tyrantsyn]

Wow, think this thread my need a bump so some of the more fanatic RDM melee'rs have some where to post.

[tyrantsyn]

So what's the current state of RDM melee, any one have some number's they like too post or gear set up's they like to share. I'd really like to get this thread rolling again so that we can get some of these guy's rolling around posting in other thread's a place to share there knowledge in all thing's RDM & melee. There's been quite a few updates to the job's gear set's, and i'm sure some one would like to share some of there discovery's.

[Neisan_Quetz]

TP

Almace/Shikargar/x/Smart Grenade(Oneiros Pebble, Tiphia Sting)
Zelus/Rancor (Portus)/Brutal/Suppa
ACP Dual Wield/Brego/Rajas/Fencer's(Mars's, Tyrant's)
Atheling/Phasmida (Ninurta's)/Calmecac (Rubeus)/Eurus

OR

Excal/Shikargar/x/Smart Grenade(Oneiros Pebble, Tiphia Sting)
Zelus/Rancor (Portus)/Brutal/Suppa
ACP Dual Wield/Brego/Rajas/Fencer's (Mars's, Tyrant's)
Atheling/Phasmida (Ninurta's)/Calmecac (Rubeus)/Eurus

WS

Almace/Shikargar/x/Demonry Core
MKD head (Brego)/Moepapa/Brutal/Moonshade
Antares/Alucinor (Warlock's +1)/Rajas/Thundersoul
Rancourous/Cuch/Tumbler's/Lithe

Excal/Shikargar/x/Aqua Sachet
Ruach Crown/elegorget/Brutal/Moonshade
Heka's (Nefer+1)/Duelist's+2/Aquasoul/Aquasoul
Atheling/Elebelt/Rubeus (tumbler's, Tethyan/Nares)/Estq.+2

Probably the best sets for Swords at the moment. For Requi set replace Excal with Str Shikargar.

[Duelle]

So what's the current state of RDM melee, any one have some number's they like too post or gear set up's they like to share. I'd really like to get this thread rolling again so that we can get some of these guy's rolling around posting in other thread's a place to share there knowledge in all thing's RDM & melee.That's until the same guys who invaded this thread the first time decide to show up again. I give it 4 days. Today being march 14th. They know who they are, and most likely won't disappoint me.

There's been quite a few updates to the job's gear set's, and i'm sure some one would like to share some of there discovery's.I have a pretty good idea for a melee set, just need to actually get the pieces.

TP
Head: Walahra Turban or Zelus Tiara
Body: Assault Jerkin or Goliard Saio
Hands: Brego Gloves
Legs: Calc. Trousers, Rubeus Spats
Feet: Eurus' Ledelsens
Ears: Suppanomimi (even if its one of those "lol good luck getting someone to help with Divine Might" things), Brutal Earring ("lol good luck getting someone to help you kill Ultima and Omega and Tenzen to get you sea access")
Rings: Rajas, ???
Belt: Ninurta's Sash, Speed Belt, Swift Belt
Back: Atheling Mantle
Ammo: Tiphia Sting

That's something to start with. The sad thing is that it turns into a uniform instead of being knick-knacks you pick up here and there to gear yourself. I don't think there's even much in terms of hold-overs when it comes to melee gear for RDM. Kinda makes me wish we had been added to Epona's Ring or Twilight Belt or Toci's set.

[Neisan_Quetz]

You could probably solo CoP. You can definitely duo it.

Brego Helm pretty much antiquated Wal Turb if you were still using it for some reason over Zelus, such as using Goli body because ACP is tied up elsewhere.

[saevel]

Since I have a moment before work.
Main: Almace or Magian STR Sword
Sub: Magian STR Sword
Ranged: Aeorle (the Mag.Acc+8 one) helpful item in general
Ammo: Demonary Core (if not using aerole)
Head: Z.Tiara
Neck: Rancor Collar, otherwise Fort Torque
Ear1: Suppa
Ear2: Brutal
Body: Goliard
Hands: Brego
Ring1: Rajas
Ring2: Tyrants
Back: Atheling
Waist: Phasmada
Legs: Calmac (unless acc is issue then Rub spats)
Feet: Ragar Ledelsens

I'll post CDC set later. If you don't have CDC then get Req, turns out it's better then we thought due to fTP passing on all hits. Moten's got it beating vorpal on pretty much everything.

And get 500 Enhancing set, 2nd best thing you can do, 1st being getting an Almace.

[Duelle]

You could probably solo CoP. You can definitely duo it.I'm sure I can solo Ultima and Omega. The problem is Tenzen, as I don't think I can dish out the damage needed to take him out quickly. I don't think that's a fight I can take my time with given his SCs and Cosmic Illucidation.

[Economizer]

Belt: Ninurta's Sash, Speed Belt, Swift Belt
Back: Atheling Mantle
Ammo: Tiphia Sting

Goading and Hasty Pinion give 6% Haste while being sTP neutral for their two slots, which is especially useful for builds where you are too poor to get the 6% belt (hopefully the price flatlines on the Speed Belt or whatever when that rumored 7/8% belt comes) and the Store TP won't bump you up even one hit (very likely with 1h weapons).

Of course, if you do have a better haste belt a White Tathlum is a pretty good option too.

[Karbuncle]

One Set:
Almace/Ephemeron/???/Demonry
Brego/Nefarious/Brutal/Suppa
Goliard/Brego/Rajas/Mars
Rancor/Phasmida/Rubeus/Savat.Gait

Can replace Phasmida with Ninurta, Rubeus with Calm. Ephemeron offers the TP:Drain, Which, Is actually pretty potent from what I'm assuming(lawl). Might be a good benefit. Also has Haste+3 lets you switch out Zelus for Brego.

A second Set:
Almace/99STR/???/Demonry
Zelus/Nefar/Brutal/Suppa
Golia/Brego/Rajas/Mars
Rancor/Phasm/rubeus/Savat.

Sava can be replace, It'll leave you a half a % Short of True haste cap, But if you got better DD Feet, Easily replaced. Either way, Rancor + Nefarious is probably better combo than any Atheling Mantle pair.

Also, Mandau + Exenterator Isn't half bad, Won't come close to the WS output of CDC

[Neisan_Quetz]

Rancorous/Nefarious has always come behind Rancor/Atheling when I plug it in. It's pretty negligible though, like under 1%.

There are more confirmed coruscantis than Ephemerons, I definitely wouldn't bank on it on any build. I'm not too sure on the TP drain effect but I haven't heard anything spectacular about it (seems to be high but low proc rate). Proth mentioned it before for Blu, but I can't seem to find the post.

[saevel]

Rancor Collar + Atheling will beat out Nef + Rancor back. Rancor back has +3% DA to go with the +20 Attack. Your looking at gaining 3%crit at the expense of 3% DA and some attack.

Brego helm sucks vs Zelus, the 6 STR and DEX don't even compare to what the 2% haste does, but more importantly it opens up other slots for different stats. Brego help does make a good Ws piece, and a good stand-in until someone has Zelus. If your acc is over cap then Calmeric over Rub, Rub is slightly better if your need the 18 accuracy, extra 5 attack and +2.2 fSTR. STR Sword is pretty much your best option unless your fighting EP's bordering on TW's.

The big rub is the body piece, Goliard is 4% haste and ACP Body can be 10 attack 10 acc, or 3% DW. I've been debating which way to go, ACP DW (10 atk 3DW) Erus's feet or Goliard + Rager feet. I'm leading toward the ACP set being stronger in the long run but god I hate the look of that body.

[Neisan_Quetz]

ACP/Eurus is coming out 2% ahead of Goli/Rager if acc capped. Falls behind by the same amount if acc uncapped.

[Karbuncle]

Brego helm sucks vs Zelus, the 6 STR and DEX don't even compare to what the 2% haste does, but more importantly it opens up other slots for different stats.

You do realize that Ephemeron has Haste+3%, Which allows for the use of a Different head other than Zelus and still cap haste, Which is the only reason Brego Helm is even in the first set? Thats why the second set, without Ephem, Has Zelus.

Second, I actually mentioned Calma. Trousers.

Also, The only reason theres more Coruscantis is because Qilin is spammed way more often than Aello :| If people actually did Aello... The Sword is still really nice though.

[saevel]

You do realize that Ephemeron has Haste+3%, Which allows for the use of a Different head other than Zelus and still cap haste, Which is the only reason Brego Helm is even in the first set? Thats why the second set, without Ephem, Has Zelus.

Second, I actually mentioned Calma. Trousers.

Also, The only reason theres more Coruscantis is because Qilin is spammed way more often than Aello :| If people actually did Aello... The Sword is still really nice though.

Ok 3% haste on sword for 6STR 6DEX on head vs 11 STR 22 Attack on sword 8% haste on head. It actually ends up very slightly behind. It would entirely depend on how potent that Drain Tp effect is and how it interacts with Enspells. If it's anything like what recent Coruscanti testing has shown, it'll be a very low proc rate.

[Karbuncle]

Ok 3% haste on sword for 6STR 6DEX on head vs 11 STR 22 Attack on sword 8% haste on head. It actually ends up very slightly behind. It would entirely depend on how potent that Drain Tp effect is and how it interacts with Enspells. If it's anything like what recent Coruscanti testing has shown, it'll be a very low proc rate.

You're completely discounting Ephemeron's TP: Drain, Which, IF the video is any example(Which is a huge stretch i know), rather potent. Sure, Its an Unknown Factor, But if it drains even ~10~20 TP, Its offering more than a piddly amount of Acc and attack will ever do for your TP Phase.

Plus, Ephemeron may be hard to get, But that doesn't discredit its uses... If you're going to get a Level 99 Almace as an Example, You can Put Ephemeron as an Example.

Since you can Spam Aello for Pouches for your 99 Almace anyway :D

As far as proc rate, Even 10% Proc rate with 10-20TP Drain would be a significant Boost. Coruscanti is just... Sad, i admit. Wish I could find someone with this Sword. The one i saw drop went to a WHM i think. yah...

[saevel]

Turns out ACP ATK/DW body + Eurus feet is better then Goliard + Rager's, so looks like I'm switching out my ACP body after all.

And IDK if moten broke something, but Req is kicking CDC's ass in WS damage. With all the MND we can get it jacks the WSC up. Gorget and Belt add +0.2 fTP to each hit, turns a 5.0 fTP ws into a 6.0 fTP one before off hand. CDC's ODD might put it ahead in the end but both wiki's lack any info about the proc rates. I would take a WAG at ~10~20% but I really want the actual tested one.

[saevel]

You're completely discounting Ephemeron's TP: Drain, Which, IF the video is any example(Which is a huge stretch i know), rather potent. Sure, Its an Unknown Factor, But if it drains even ~10~20 TP, Its offering more than a piddly amount of Acc and attack will ever do for your TP Phase.

Plus, Ephemeron may be hard to get, But that doesn't discredit its uses... If you're going to get a Level 99 Almace as an Example, You can Put Ephemeron as an Example.

Since you can Spam Aello for Pouches for your 99 Almace anyway :D

As far as proc rate, Even 10% Proc rate with 10-20TP Drain would be a significant Boost. Coruscanti is just... Sad, i admit. Wish I could find someone with this Sword. The one i saw drop went to a WHM i think. yah...

For starters,
I said,

It would entirely depend on how potent that Drain Tp effect is and how it interacts with Enspells

I didn't discount it, but there is no known info. And if it's anything like twilight then it'll be overwritten by enspells. Once I have actual into then I can count it. Also I didn't use 99 Almace, I used 90 Almace because that is what I have. I try to only use gear that either I have or can easily acquire. This allows me to be somewhat realistic about gear.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Turns out ACP ATK/DW body + Eurus feet is better then Goliard + Rager's, so looks like I'm switching out my ACP body after all.

And IDK if moten broke something, but Req is kicking CDC's ass in WS damage. With all the MND we can get it jacks the WSC up. Gorget and Belt add +0.2 fTP to each hit, turns a 5.0 fTP ws into a 6.0 fTP one before off hand. CDC's ODD might put it ahead in the end but both wiki's lack any info about the proc rates. I would take a WAG at ~10~20% but I really want the actual tested one.

Req is actually 'fixed', since I informed Mot about the issue with replicating ftp. Excal actually beats Almace on weaker mobs. Falls behind on stronger stuff due to attack penalty.

Although I doubt you'll even read this.

[saevel]

Ok played with things a bit and using ACP DW body + Eru's feet I can get 90 Almace + Eph to be 0.00839% better then 90 Almace + STR Shikagar.

-=Edit=-

I stand corrected, VS anything T or higher the Eph off hand starts to lose to the Shikagar. LCF's effect sucks.

-=Edit=-

Don't want to create a bunch of self reply's.

With 0 ODD (can't find a number to put in there) Req Spam beats out Almace CDC by a very narrow margin on harder things (high defense NM's over your level). Vs weaker things it easily beats it. On much harder things it lose's to CDC. Really want a better ODD number to plug in because that could sway the numbers on the NM with high defense.

Otherwise, the Req gear is ridiculously easy to get. Any decent RDM will have most of this already, its your MND enfeebling gear.

Well Seriha finally got what they wanted. A "hybrid" WS that RDM can naively use.

[Neisan_Quetz]

What do you mean better ODD number? unless you can't keep up AM1, ODD is applied to main hand only on sheet. Set it to whatever level AM you have, unless you can't keep any AM up at all.

[saevel]

Moten's sheets do not have AM1/2/3 as a list.


Melee Multiplier 1 1
ODD Rate (main hand) 0% 0%


What is the proc rate of the ODD on Emp weapons? The sheet is wanting that number to calculate out the average melee damage.

[Neisan_Quetz]

30%/40%/50% AM 1/2/3.

EDIT: Mandau is 13% Triple damage, Excalibur is close to 15% iirc.

[Aana]

Req is actually 'fixed', since I informed Mot about the issue with replicating ftp. Excal actually beats Almace on weaker mobs. Falls behind on stronger stuff due to attack penalty.

Although I doubt you'll even read this.

Wait...so req used to have replicating FTP and now it was 'fixed' to not replicate, or the other way around? I hadnt heard anything about this being changed so which way is it now?

[Neisan_Quetz]

Other way around, We didn't know Requi had replicating ftp at first. This is in regards to Mot's DPS sheets. It also means elebelt/elegorget are best in slot for the WS above any other options.

[Aana]

Wow i missed that memo. Ive been living it up dual boxing with my Thf/dnc and rdm/dnc mule Req<=>Rudra darkness. Makes me sad ive been missing out on a 20% boost to WS damage via gorget/belt all these months :(

If my crappy mule can do half the damage of my super pimped thf, im curious what someone that gives a crap can do :P

/goes to change macros and make an ele gorget >_<

[Crimson_Slasher]

My requie/deathblossom builds arent maximal but outside abyssea ive spiked 1800s a few times on the goblins in dangruf (EP) and the skeletons (1700 atleast a few times) in Labrynth of onzozo (the ones that drop seasoning stones). Using elebelts, but so far, mnd hasnt seemed to impress me too much yet. Im still finding my str/attack to win, but im still lacking some of the best mnd gear (in slot) at the moment. Due to inventory woes ive been packing hybrid int/mnd pieces into slots (Praeco doublet for example) so yes.

[Duelle]

Ok, so assuming we're putting together Requiescat sets, do we focus on balance between +Attack and MND, focus more on MND or focus more on Attack?

Well Seriha finally got what they wanted. A "hybrid" WS that RDM can naively use.lv97 and requiring 100 merits dumped into it to make worthwhile is not what I'd exactly call native. Not to mention there are those other 96 levels to account for. Well, 66 really because you can probably get away with having just Fast Blade going into lv30~.

[saevel]

Ok, so assuming we're putting together Requiescat sets, do we focus on balance between +Attack and MND, focus more on MND or focus more on Attack?
lv97 and requiring 100 merits dumped into it to make worthwhile is not what I'd exactly call native. Not to mention there are those other 96 levels to account for. Well, 66 really because you can probably get away with having just Fast Blade going into lv30~.

Ohh I agree it's not perfect, but then again our last "Native" WS was level 75 and required a R/EX weapon from Nyzule, a 100 floor disc, or a retarded amount of time (14,000 Ws points I believe).

Merit Points seem much easier to do, especially in this day of Abyssea and 15K XP from Voidwatch. Seriously I did Req almost exclusively from Voidwatch XP.

Gear wise, crap MND into every slot you can. Ele gorget / Belt and Atheling mantle are the exceptions. If we had a MND+15 back then I'd use it, but 20 Atk 3 DA will beat 6 MND. It's basically your "max potency" MND enfeebling set. Praeco (or Cure +10% body) is a perfect piece for body, its +15 MND, only thing better is the R/EX Akvan drop at +17, but he can kiss my a$$ (0/ridiculous so far). Our Emp gear and Relic +2 provide a ton of MND in various slots. Aquasoul rings for +7 on each finger. Ruarc crown is kinda rare on the AH cause nobody does that VWNM now. So I'll be using Emp +2 Head for 8MND. Duelists +2 is +7 on the hands and used for your Enhancing set anyway. Legs would be rubious but if you don't have those then some +7 pair off the AH. Self buff with Gain-STR not Gain-MND, the MND will do more for your WS but the STR will do more for your melee, most of our damage is from melee not WS. Gain-DEX + CDC was the exception because it also enhanced our crit rate to some degree. That being said, if your primary role is landing a maxed our paralyze / slow on something, then the difference between Gain-MND and Gain-STR isn't very big.

The gorget / belt turn it into a 7.2 fTP WS (5+1 + fTP bonus). The -20% attack hurts .. lots, yet the +fTP and our easy access to ridiculous amounts of MND makes up for it and then some.

[Duelle]

The gorget / belt turn it into a 7.2 fTP WS (5+1 + fTP bonus). The -20% attack hurts .. lots, yet the +fTP and our easy access to ridiculous amounts of MND makes up for it and then some.Guess I have more ahead of me, then. Oh well. Guess I'll start shouting for boot farming parties and then see who is still doing +1 items before I can even think about getting +2.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I just use Tumbler for Legs for Req, it's about the same as Jet. If I actually won Tethyn from Neo Nyzul I'd have used those however. Earring is another exception as moonshade should outperform MND earrings.

[tyrantsyn]

Saevel I'm assume you do some dyna in valkrum, and I was curious to know what kind of numbers you were seeing out there with your current set up's? Easy and decent prey mob's?

[Duelle]

Earring is another exception as moonshade should outperform MND earrings.With the "Occasional Bonus Damage on TP" or the "+25 TP bonus"?

[Neisan_Quetz]

TP bonus. I don't think the occaisonal bonus damage will ever activate as all TP is consumed on WS. And the effect is pretty bad in the first place, being like chance of double damage at 300 TP.

[saevel]

With the "Occasional Bonus Damage on TP" or the "+25 TP bonus"?

No info yet as to how much the Tp Bonus would decrease the attack penalty, at least none posted on BGwiki. Without knowing that can't place a value on Moonshade other then Attack+4. TPBonus +25 is really nice for Shoha though.

[Neisan_Quetz]

What needs to be tested thread, the information is still being debated. It looks like Requiescat's attack penalty is halved at 300 TP according to a JP site that needs verification on values (they have Requiescat listed as -22% at 100TP, not -20%).

There is a TP bonus value on the sheets and at least for crit/damage modded by TP weaponskills it is being applied correctly.

Going by the JP website TP bonus +25 would reduce the attack bonus on all hits by ~1% at 100TP.

[saevel]

What needs to be tested thread, the information is still being debated. It looks like Requiescat's attack penalty is halved at 300 TP according to a JP site that needs verification on values (they have Requiescat listed as -22% at 100TP, not -20%).

There is a TP bonus value on the sheets and at least for crit/damage modded by TP weaponskills it is being applied correctly.

Going by the JP website TP bonus +25 would reduce the attack bonus on all hits by ~1% at 100TP.

Umm we currently have no clue what level of attack penalty that Req has at 200 and 300 TP. Req doesn't gain fTP or crit from TP only an amount of attack that we don't know. Any math done with it would be flat wrong as the value isn't known. TP bonus effects rarely scale linearly from 100 to 300, typically it's a curve or stepped scale. We won't know the damage bonus from 100 to 125 TP until we know how much attack penalty is on 200TP.

[Neisan_Quetz]

... What...? TP effects do scale linearly, why do you think I brought up crit based weaponskills... the only ones that really don't are either broken (exenterator) or poorly worded (anything with 'chance based on TP' as it's accuracy is actually based on skill level). I did mention the data wasn't verified, but the attack penalties on new weaponskills is reduced based on TP. the Amount it is reduced by was not confimed, but TP bonus should still be the best earring next to Brutal.

TP bonus is applied linearly for crit weaponskills, Moonshade adds ~2% crit rate to CDC at 100% and ~3% to VS/Ukko's.

And sadly, TP scaling linearly hasn't been written down properly anywhere. For Ukko's TP bonus will increase damage over str+4 pearl, post here by Ejiin:

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/19774/ukkos-fury-setup/36/#1768007

EDIT: TP bonus is also being applied to Blade: Shun, so you'll have to ask Mot how it's being calculated. It's certainly doing something however.

At any rate, the best MND earring is +4. Even Aesir is equal to/better than that, so the TP bonus only needs to make up for equal to or more than 3 attack.

[saevel]

... What...? TP effects do scale linearly, why do you think I brought up crit based weaponskills... the only ones that really don't are either broken (exenterator) or poorly worded (anything with 'chance based on TP' as it's accuracy is actually based on skill level). I did mention the data wasn't verified, but the attack penalties on new weaponskills is reduced based on TP. the Amount it is reduced by was not confimed, but TP bonus should still be the best earring next to Brutal.

TP bonus is applied linearly for crit weaponskills, Moonshade adds ~2% crit rate to CDC at 100% and ~3% to VS/Ukko's.

And sadly, TP scaling linearly hasn't been written down properly anywhere. For Ukko's TP bonus will increase damage over str+4 pearl, post here by Ejiin:

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/19774/ukkos-fury-setup/36/#1768007

EDIT: TP bonus is also being applied to Blade: Shun, so you'll have to ask Mot how it's being calculated. It's certainly doing something however.

At any rate, the best MND earring is +4. Even Aesir is equal to/better than that, so the TP bonus only needs to make up for equal to or more than 3 attack.

Shoha,
Calamity
Gekko (pretty much all SAM WS's)

And those are just what I thought of in 5s. Give me longer and I can find more.

And I was referring to the +fTP one WS's, the ones people talk about using Martial Weapons for, or did anyway. Typically it's a line from 100 to 200, then a different line from 200 to 300, some WS's it's a straight line, others it's a stepped line. Without knowing what 200 is, we can't figure out want 125 would be.

100 is -20
200 is ???
300 is ???

It could be -20/-10/0, or -20/-15/-10, or -20/-10/-8, ect.. All those would place different values on moon shade earring. In all likely hood it's the best in-slot, but until we know those valued we can't say for certain that it is. And we sure as hell can't do any form of math to say how much better it is.

[Neisan_Quetz]

EDIT: Had values mixed up, Better for harder targets. Your best bet is to light the Mot signal and ask exactly how it's being figured for Shun/Requiescat.

[saevel]

I don't actually see the earring listed on the RDM sheet. It looks like she's just applying a blanket -20% attack to Req and that's the end of it.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Are you sure? It was in other sheets so I assumed it was naturally there (I use the same name for all of them). But there is a section in gearlists for TP bonus, and adding 25 TP bonus will affect damage on CDC and Requiescat. If you don't want to use insert replace Coral Earring with Moonshade's stats.

For CDC TP bonus+25 comes out somewhere between +2-3% crit rate (if you put that in the gear lists instead), which is the expected value for weaponskilling near 100 TP.

[hiko]

what about murgleis with ao2-3 AM up?

[Neisan_Quetz]

It should win, but it's only viable in VW, which is where Rdm melee isn't really viable.

AM3 is hard to figure but with full temps I'd say it's at least ~15% ahead of 90 Almace. Assumed 40/20 OA2-3 and Death Blossom. Target was supposed T3 VWNM.

[saevel]

RDM can melee on the weaker ones, but you have better things to do on Jeuno T3 / T6 NMs. Namely help the BLMs proc.

[Duelle]

Something I've been thinking about is the supposed revision of skill profficiencies per job. I'm hoping that is still part of the plan and that something worthwhile comes our way because of it.

Currently, we sit at:

B Sword
B Dagger
D Club
D Archery
F Throwing

D Evasion
E Parry
F Shield

C+ Elemental
A+ Enfeebling
B+ Enhancing
C- Healing
E Divine
E Dark

Personally, I'd get rid of Archery and Throwing and give us back Marksmanship at probably D. Shield should really be raised to D or maybe even C-. If C- is too much, then raise Shield and Parry to D. Everything else as far as I can tell would be acceptable, though I would not be against Sword and Dagger being raised to B+.

[Neisan_Quetz]

What is marksmanship going to do when you need to sub or main Rng/Cor for the weaponskills? The current ones we have they should consider adjusting, assuming they even do so, are Elemental, Enhancing, (maybe healing post cure adjustment, Divine is useless with no divine spells, Dark skill isn't a huge importance but could be bumped up as well) and Sword/Dagger. The defensive skills aren't really worth adjusting at all. Even if they raise Parry, it would still most likely be floored at anything even marginally close to giving you Exp.

[Kristal]

Something I've been thinking about is the supposed revision of skill profficiencies per job. I'm hoping that is still part of the plan and that something worthwhile comes our way because of it.

Currently, we sit at:

B Sword
B Dagger
D Club
D Archery
F Throwing

D Evasion
E Parry
F Shield

C+ Elemental
A+ Enfeebling
B+ Enhancing
C- Healing
E Divine
E Dark

Personally, I'd get rid of Archery and Throwing and give us back Marksmanship at probably D. Shield should really be raised to D or maybe even C-. If C- is too much, then raise Shield and Parry to D. Everything else as far as I can tell would be acceptable, though I would not be against Sword and Dagger being raised to B+.

Don't forget staff skill. I don't think there's any other job so reliant on a weapon type, yet have no skill in it..
So like BRD, give RDM C+ staff skill with relevant weaponskills. (And unlock all elemental weaponskills on sword.)

[saevel]

F Shield

But... but ... but .... we have Shield Mastery!!
LMAO
SE trolled us so badly with that.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Don't forget staff skill. I don't think there's any other job so reliant on a weapon type, yet have no skill in it..
So like BRD, give RDM C+ staff skill with relevant weaponskills. (And unlock all elemental weaponskills on sword.)

They wont give RDM Staff skill ever, Like it or not SE don't want them using Staves regardless the fact a few are good for RDM such as the nuking ones, just be grateful they still put RDM on the good Staff Trials.

If anything they'd only up Club skill weapon wise.

Truth be told, the only use of Staff Skill would be for Triggers in Abyssea and that's it (not that I'd mind this), no RDM in their right mind would use a staff if they planned on melee.

[Kristal]

They wont give RDM Staff skill ever, Like it or not SE don't want them using Staves regardless the fact a few are good for RDM such as the nuking ones, just be grateful they still put RDM on the good Staff Trials.

If anything they'd only up Club skill weapon wise.

Truth be told, the only use of Staff Skill would be for Triggers in Abyssea and that's it (not that I'd mind this), no RDM in their right mind would use a staff if they planned on melee.

RDM staff melee would be worse then RDM sword melee.. that alone should be enough to convince any dev...

[Duelle]

Don't forget staff skill. I don't think there's any other job so reliant on a weapon type, yet have no skill in it..
So like BRD, give RDM C+ staff skill with relevant weaponskills. (And unlock all elemental weaponskills on sword.)I can agree with unlocking Sword WS for RDM, but not on giving the job a staff skill. Thematically it doesnt fit and I'm sure there's room for abuse in some way if we weren't given said skill in the first revamp.


But... but ... but .... we have Shield Mastery!!
LMAO
SE trolled us so badly with that.Why do you think I was so mad when that change was made? >.>


What is marksmanship going to do when you need to sub or main Rng/Cor for the weaponskills? The current ones we have they should consider adjusting, assuming they even do so, are Elemental, Enhancing, (maybe healing post cure adjustment, Divine is useless with no divine spells, Dark skill isn't a huge importance but could be bumped up as well) and Sword/Dagger.The marksmanship thing is personal preference, as I have it leveled for DRK. Knowing "balance" and all, I don't see them raising our skills without taking something away, which is why I so easily volunteered Archery and Throwing. I mean, if the revisions come with no if ands or buts, then I agree with you on what they should raise.

[Motenten]

Saevel -- Think you're using the wrong term for what you mean. All TP scaling (when TP affects damage) is linear, however many weaponskills have discontinuous functions (ie: different between 100-200 TP and between 200-300 TP). There is no "stepped" scaling.

What I've got in the current spreadsheet assumes a reduction in the attack penalty by 7.5% per 100 TP, giving it -20% @100 TP, -12.5% @200 TP, -5% @300 TP (calculations are done on the weaponskill page). I don't remember where I got the -5% from, and yes, it all needs more testing to more properly pin down the numbers.

However even moving it from -12.5% @200 TP to -15% (ie: scale up at 5% per 100 TP instead of 7.5%), that's a difference of getting effectively +7 att instead of +10 for the TP bonus. Overall, the 4 att/25 TP bonus earring is likely worth somewhere between +11 and +14 attack, total.

[saevel]

Saevel -- Think you're using the wrong term for what you mean. All TP scaling (when TP affects damage) is linear, however many weaponskills have discontinuous functions (ie: different between 100-200 TP and between 200-300 TP). There is no "stepped" scaling.

What I've got in the current spreadsheet assumes a reduction in the attack penalty by 7.5% per 100 TP, giving it -20% @100 TP, -12.5% @200 TP, -5% @300 TP (calculations are done on the weaponskill page). I don't remember where I got the -5% from, and yes, it all needs more testing to more properly pin down the numbers.

However even moving it from -12.5% @200 TP to -15% (ie: scale up at 5% per 100 TP instead of 7.5%), that's a difference of getting effectively +7 att instead of +10 for the TP bonus. Overall, the 4 att/25 TP bonus earring is likely worth somewhere between +11 and +14 attack, total.

Linearly between anchor points, when you graph then 100 to 300 (or 0 to 300 for BLU) it's not a flat line for every WS. Which is what I was saying, that without knowing how much attack reduction 200 and 300 have, then we can't figure out what 125 would be. I've been checking on BG and nothings in the wiki nor could I find any testing in the forums for the 200 / 300 penalty's. Biggest MND per ear is 4 with 3 being the most common. So we're comparing 3 MND @100% WSC vs some unknown attack value, between 7~12.

[Neisan_Quetz]

EDIT: Keeps changing when I change swords! Aquapearl is like 0.2% better for fodder using the current formula than Aesir. If moonshade is worth +11 attack it loses by the same amount.

[hideka]

you would think 1500 posts would tell SE something is being desired here....

[saevel]

Their not sure what they want to do with RDM. They know they want RDM's to buff themselves and enfeebles monsters, but not sure how to go about it with "breaking" the game (in their minds).

Honestly RDM melee is the one area that RDM really can't break anything game wise. We soloed all that stuff at 75 not because of melee capability but because of our enfeeble set and players abusing AI pathing.

[Kaych]

Duelle, I just have to compliment you for keeping this thread still alive. 1559 posts!!! :D

[Duelle]

Duelle, I just have to compliment you for keeping this thread still alive. 1559 posts!!!Thank you. I just hope someone at SE is actually reading these posts and getting a read of what we're asking for.

Anyway, Saev mentioned the 500+ Enhancing skill set. I'm guessing he means:

Enhancing Torque = 7
Duelist's Tabard +2 = 15
Duelist's Gloves +2 = 18
Warlock's Tights = 15
Estoqueur's Houseaux +2 = 15
Estoqueur's Cape = 6
Olympus Sash = 5

Merits = 16

Base Skill @ 99 = 404

Total = 501

Which means 30 damage Enspells, 45.2 damage reduction on Phalanx, and approximately 20% double attack from Temper, if the math is correct. (note: Corrected base value. For some reason I assumed RDM had A+ in Enhancing instead of B+.)


Honestly RDM melee is the one area that RDM really can't break anything game wise. We soloed all that stuff at 75 not because of melee capability but because of our enfeeble set and players abusing AI pathing.The funny thing is that it wasn't even enfeebling as a whole, but rather Bio DOT, Bind and Gravity. If they had nerfed Bio's DoT (and made it stack with Dia while they were at it), nerfed Bind to be more like a 2 second stagger on a running mob, and changed Gravity to a pure Evasion Down spell (and a much longer duration to compensate) without the running speed shenanigans, boss soloing would have died right where it started.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Er, your base skill is off, it's 404 +16 merits which is 420. Need Olympus sash or cascade+augmenting (or augmenting Zenith Crown) with what you listed to hit 500.

[Duelle]

Er, your base skill is off, it's 404 +16 merits which is 420. Need Olympus sash or cascade+augmenting (or augmenting Zenith Crown) with what you listed to hit 500.Oops. I either read the wrong number or was hit by overly wishful thinking. At least that explains why olympus sash is so rare and expensive on Lakshmi.

[saevel]

Oops. I either read the wrong number or was hit by overly wishful thinking. At least that explains why olympus sash is so rare and expensive on Lakshmi.

It's only obtaining through a HKCNM. The one with the five Tauri that get stronger as you kill them.

That's how I got mine, me and some friends did it like 5 or 6 times in one day, got two of those sash's and one Lacotrice. It's a good money maker if you got friends to run it with.

[saevel]

Duelle,

Your off on your phalanx calculations. After 300 skill it changes and it's growth is nerfed, hard.

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Phalanx


Over 300 skill: F = 28 + Floor( (Enhancing Magic Skill - 300.5) / 28.5)

Gets you 35 damage reduction from 501 skill on Phalanx 1. It takes 28 skill to raise it by 1 after 300 instead of 10 for 1 under 300. It's why Paladins' can get 30+ with their own Phalanx and renders Phalanx II as pretty useless.

And yeah it was specifically Bind + Grav that allowed those few RDM's to solo big stuff. You bound in, Doted it and ran away running circles or around big rocks. BLM's ended up being better then RDM's at this after 80. SE could buff the heck out of RDM melee capabilities and it wouldn't break the game one bit. Would piss the pink mages off though.

[tyrantsyn]

Duelle, I just have to compliment you for keeping this thread still alive. 1559 posts!!! :D

Actually I re~bump the thread after all the rdm melee stuff started to over flow into every other rdm thread there was. It had been pretty much dead since September 9th of last year. Duelle has been so kind tho to keep thing's going here so Kudos to him. I don't really like too post to much unless it's something worth adding or asking.


Wow, think this thread my need a bump so some of the more fanatic RDM melee'rs have some where to post.


That's until the same guys who invaded this thread the first time decide to show up again. I give it 4 days. Today being march 14th. They know who they are, and most likely won't disappoint me.


Been 10 days no invasion yet ;) try not to be too disappointed.

[Crimson_Slasher]

New dagger and hat added that are rdm useable and decent for melee. Shame the hat is a wee bit ugly. And still, our best ws body for non CDC is morrigan body. Names escape me right now but its a 51 dmg jambia, and the had has 8 int, mnd, and str. Happy hunting!

[Kaych]

Actually I re~bump the thread after all the rdm melee stuff started to over flow into every other rdm thread there was. It had been pretty much dead since September 9th of last year. Duelle has been so kind tho to keep thing's going here so Kudos to him. I don't really like too post to much unless it's something worth adding or asking.





Been 10 days no invasion yet ;) try not to be too disappointed.

I'll contribute with another bump someday if necessary ^_-

[Duelle]

New dagger and hat added that are rdm useable and decent for melee. Shame the hat is a wee bit ugly. And still, our best ws body for non CDC is morrigan body. Names escape me right now but its a 51 dmg jambia, and the had has 8 int, mnd, and str. Happy hunting!There's also that body piece with 5% haste but has healer stats instead of something useful for melee. At least we're not seeing much in terms of "melee gear BLU is on that the devs forgot to put RDM on" again like the last couple of patches.

[saevel]

Looks like SE finally listened ... at least somewhat.

http://juliandev.com/ffxi/2012-03-26/

RDM is on a ton of new gear. Not the absolute best, but we've now got another haste +4% and haste +5% body choices. Also MUCH better WS options are now available.

TP:
Hedera Cotehardie Rare Exclusive
Body
DEF:52 HP+60 MP+60 Magic Accuracy+10 "Conserve MP"+6 Haste+5%
Lv 99 WHM BLM RDM BRD SMN BLU PUP SCH

Kudzu Aketon Rare Exclusive
Body
DEF:60 STR+10 AGI+10 Attack+13 Ranged Attack+13 "Double Attack"+3% "Store TP"+5
Lv 99 MNK RDM THF BST RNG NIN DRG COR PUP DNC

Haste 4% legs
Gardyloo Pants Rare Exclusive
Legs
DEF:46 AGI+6 "Magic Defense Bonus"+4 "Subtle Blow"+5 Haste+4%
Lv 99 MNK WHM RDM THF BST BRD RNG SAM NIN BLU COR DNC

Haste +7% belt
Phos Belt
Waist
DEF:8 Haste+7%
Lv 99 WAR RDM THF PLD DRK BST BRD RNG SAM NIN DRG BLU COR DNC

And it's +1 version which is haste +8%.

And for dagger wielders, some love
Aluh Jambiya Rare
Dagger
DMG:51 Delay:201 STR+10 VIT-10 Attack+15 Increases critical hit damage
Lv 99 WAR RDM THF BST BRD RNG NIN COR DNC

Very interesting sword, looks like a better Cure Sword, nice for Req spamming.

Sanus Ensis Rare Exclusive
Sword
DMG:60 Delay:228 STR+13 MND+13 "Cure" potency +13% Potency of "Cure" effect received +10%
Lv 99 WAR RDM PLD DRK BLU COR

Don't know how to obtain all these, there is a ton of other gear for WS, especially if you like daggers and ext spam. Definitely want those body pieces.

-=Edit=-

Looks like the body's come from Morta, the Tier II mega boss of the Aht Urhgan path. Seeing how bad Rex and Aello are, lets see what they do with Morta.

[Duelle]

Interesting. I was going off the list shown on BG that had us on some cure potency gear and little else.

[Doombringer]

i am all about the kudzu aketon <.<

also, this exists: http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10352/ghadhab-nails might be nice.

but i heard a nasty rumor that the new haste belt uses sonic belt as an ingredient. i mean it's so outlandish that it almost HAS to be a lie, right?......right?

as for the new sword i'm on the fence.. i mean i want it.. just cuz it's a sword and i like swords.. but i dunno when i'd ever use it? i have a magian cure staff if i need the potency THAT badly, and a simple str path magian shikargar is a better offhand for almace.. it lines up well enough with death blossom or requiscat, but with that new dagger... the only reason you'd use those is if you had an excalibur?

i dunno.. maybe as a "good enough" offhander while still squeezing out some cure potency. sure beat the hell out of galenus i give it that.

[Duelle]

as for the new sword i'm on the fence.. i mean i want it.. just cuz it's a sword and i like swords.. but i dunno when i'd ever use it? i have a magian cure staff if i need the potency THAT badly, and a simple str path magian shikargar is a better offhand for almace.. it lines up well enough with death blossom or requiscat, but with that new dagger... the only reason you'd use those is if you had an excalibur?

i dunno.. maybe as a "good enough" offhander while still squeezing out some cure potency. sure beat the hell out of galenus i give it that.Eh, considering I have staff allergy, that sword does look nice to have for cures. The MND doesn't hurt if you use/prefer Req.

[Doombringer]

i guess in combination with the new head +10/11% and new boots +1/4% that sword would let you get to 50% cure potency cap without a staff.. (but with an ideal set you may not even need the sword... YAY!!!) so it's definitely not BAD... but when a shikargar is gonna outdmg it it's a tough sell to me.

still though.. judging by the icon it's gonna be badass looking so i'd keep it even if just for town gear.

[Doombringer]

oh, and if you like daggers, there's an entire set with agi and att +

at first i thought it was more of that junk se throws in so crafters have something to lvl off, but at least SOME of it is solid exenterator gear i'm sure.

[ManaKing]

The new sword is amazing for what RDM can be used for...which is dual wields with full cure potency. Is there better off hands? Sure. For Damage. But I would gladly take that sword over most things, just because if I show up to an event I can fight and cure with it. If that's not melee enough for some people, well then you completely ignored that we can cure exceptionally well again.

Does this feel like Pink Magery? Somewhat, but honestly if you don't like using all of your job, there are more specialized jobs out there. At least it has a ton of good stats in one piece. If anything, I noticed that RDM got a lot more gear flexibility with this patch because they gave us access to more robust gear. You can cap haste a ton of different ways, which makes me feel like RDM is getting some decent attention.

ALSO it's gorgeous.

[tyrantsyn]

The sword is actually quite idea if your on front line/duo/small group and your tossing out heal's on the fly. It's actual quite tailor for a front lining RDM or PLD for that fact. Yeah there's better damage option out there. But that's a great fact of FFXI. There's lot's of option for all types of build's.

[Duelle]

Does this feel like Pink Magery? Somewhat, but honestly if you don't like using all of your job, there are more specialized jobs out there.You're confusing willful pink magery with front-lining melee mage. Tossing a cure in emergencies is one thing, and something I have no qualms with doing. It's another to try to encourage bringing RDM to heal. Helping out the real healers is very different from carrying out their responsibilities.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

i am all about the kudzu aketon <.<

also, this exists: http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10352/ghadhab-nails might be nice.

but i heard a nasty rumor that the new haste belt uses sonic belt as an ingredient. i mean it's so outlandish that it almost HAS to be a lie, right?......right?

as for the new sword i'm on the fence.. i mean i want it.. just cuz it's a sword and i like swords.. but i dunno when i'd ever use it? i have a magian cure staff if i need the potency THAT badly, and a simple str path magian shikargar is a better offhand for almace.. it lines up well enough with death blossom or requiscat, but with that new dagger... the only reason you'd use those is if you had an excalibur?

i dunno.. maybe as a "good enough" offhander while still squeezing out some cure potency. sure beat the hell out of galenus i give it that.

One of the other pieces require the Strider Boots so most likely does require it.

[saevel]

The new sword is good for when you need to do more supporting. Your sacrificing some damage for enhanced cures, and with the recent cure update your talking 700+ Cure IV's now. It's a perfect Req sword which is why you'd use it with the STR sword or off hand it with Almace. Deal damage while sprinkling cures around the group.

[Demon6324236]

Also we see new haste bodys which is nice seeing as there are so few for RDM, though I have to say the sword is amazing too, with dual wield you can use this new sword with Tefnut & the body from Akavn to hit 43% potency which to me is very impressive. While clubs may not be a great thing to RDM if your willing to give into it for a bit Tefnut would do you well, if not now we have two cure swords to dual wield so we can DD & cure like the badasses we are seeing as Galenus with this sword is still 23% total, 38% with the body I mentioned, that head piece with Praeco Slacks and you have yourself capped cure potency easy while still giving us swords to use to melee and low cast times.

[Kitkat]

Seems the new dagger is meh for other jobs that can use it, but "good" for rdm given it is the highest base dmg dagger (outside of relic) and is similar to ToM str dagger. Seems the Crit Dmg increase is coming out to 3% according to some test on rng. Might be a decent offhand with almace for CdC being it isn't much of a loss from str sword and goes toward lower overall delay.

[ManaKing]

I'm pretty sure Oneiros Knife is better for total DPS, but also harder to attain.

[saevel]

I specifically mentioned that dagger for RDM doing Ext spam. Off hand will almost always be a Magian STR sword or the Cure Pot sword (more support, less damage). With some of the new cure items coming out, it should be possible for RDM to hit 50% or near 50% without needing the magian staff.

Also when dealing with STR, do not forget that it's fSTR and fSTR favors low delay weapons over high delay ones. The 10 STR translates into 2.5 fSTR, so it's not a 51 DMG dagger but a 53 DMG one and +2 to whatever your off hand is.

Mostly I'm looking for better haste options, it opens up other slots and lets us get rid of those -3 sTP boots or -acc pants.

[Kitkat]

Just question some of the new haste items to be honest. Most alternate options that don't have the negatives require you also get other pieces in current spots that do give some positives to maintain capped haste.

5% haste 5stp> 7/8% haste (would only consider this if switching out feet, doubtful given the synth ingredients)
DW+3%/DA>5% haste (personally I'd rather not switch this out at all unless single wielding)
4% -3stp>2%haste +5enmity +2%DT 15att (would only switch these out if using higher haste belt to make up difference of haste loss)
3%haste -8acc 2%da/ta>4% haste AGI+6 "Magic Defense Bonus"+4 "Subtle Blow"+5 (this is about the only piece I have little to no issue swapping out)

Main reason I'd rather not swap out body is that it is factored outside of haste to lowering our cumulative delay and has very little impact on tp return. Legs I can support swapping out as the 2%da/ta doesn't outweigh the -8acc on higher eva targets, mostly just on fodder. As I said above, belt has a rumor of needing the sonic belt to synth and feet is an issue since they have lower haste than Eurus' meaning you have to make up the loss in another slot which best suits waist rather than swapping out body making the -stp negligible since you lost +5stp from swapping waist out anyway.

If acc and Stp are your biggest concerns then using new legs, feet, and haste body does allow you to remove those stp issues without sacrificing +stp in other slots, but will slightly lower your DoT in return. Also depends on what you augmented your body with (some went dw/acc, others went dw/da, and I know of some that went dw/stp) on whether swapping out would be really worth it or not.


I'm pretty sure Oneiros Knife is better for total DPS, but also harder to attain.

Same could be said for Mandau being better in offhand also. It is mainly the fact of availability and higher base/fstr values the dagger brings to the table in comparison to Mandau or Oneiros. The main reason I said "good" was to state it is subjective to what you are willing to do for a better dagger option. Easiest route is this new dagger, alternative is Oneiros, and longest is Mandau. I know at 90 Mandau and Oneiros was fairly close in trade off between Dot mainly due to the boost to cdc that oneiros made up for in exchange of dot loss in offhand. As much as I hate agreeing with saveal, he makes a point about the daggers fstr additions making it better over all for Exent than Oneiros since you're comparing a 53 to a 30, and given new gear options for Exent you'll cap out Oneiros Fstr much sooner than the new dagger also.

[Neisan_Quetz]

The feet are 3% haste and replace Ledelsens +1.

Goading + Eurus isn't any better than Phasmida + Dusk+1... haste 7 belt and dusk +1 > Goading and Eurus if using dual wield body.

Most of the combinations not including the haste 7 belt are very close however. I'll look over it more later.

Haste 8 belt + nails is coming out as best waist/feet combination while dualwielding.

[Kitkat]

My bad, thought they were 2% for some reason, makes better sense to use them then. I still use goading since I seem to have horrible luck with pretty much any VWNM drop worth while, so I displaced Phasmida. Don't see the Haste 7 belt being widely available for a while however given the recipe for it. Primarily the need for Sonic belt which is made from speed belt making it more likely to see Phasmida + Ghadhab than the Haste 7 belt.

Curious which haste build you're using since you mention 8haste belt? Figured just swapping belt, feet, legs would still leave one at capped haste? 4 hands, 4 legs, 3 feet, 8 head, 7 waist = 26% unless you're still using Calmecac? Can understand using them in capped acc settings, but against harder targets wouldn't they be detrimental due to the -acc?

[Crimson_Slasher]

Brego gloves do kinda offset Calmecac pants. With that and a few rings/pcc you can offset accuracy problems rather easily and maintain haste cap, course for me, im about 3% over cap co i could swap those or my belt to swift for some more acc personally.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Yes, unless you're having accuracy issues should still be using Calmecac. For Neck I use Rancor most of the time since the +DT isn't a huge issue when I do melee, and if it is can switch to Fortitude/Ziel (once I kill that damn bird...).

[Kitkat]

Nevermind, spaced out composure when i was factoring accuracy earlier. Really need to not try to multitask when I'm doing gear builds. Always manage to forget something in the calculations.

[saevel]

If you can cap haste in other slots, then the Kudzu body is a must for TP pieces. STR +10 Atk +13 (18 with STR) DA+3 sTP +5 is insane considering our other options. Closest one is possible the DW+3 DA+2 ~if~ your atk is really high / near cap.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Just wish it wasn't on Morta ><

[Demon6324236]

Also to point out Rubeus Spats are still 3% haste without the -acc Calmecac gives you, if you can get your hands on them, I myself have been after them for some time but fail to get them due to Kalasutrax shouts being few and far between.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I feel like there should be a new guide or resource to point to the sort of gear a meleeing rdm should be looking to obtain. I mean ofcourse everyone can go "Oh go make a empyrean weapon!" but i mean the other, finer points of melee. In general i wish there was like an equipment resource for each job, possibly a wiki thats dedicated specifically to helping jobs get on the right foot for gear. Redmage with so many performable functions could particularly benefit from this. Problem i see with this is where to make the cut-off for gear. Top 5 pieces for a slot for function? Top ten? Range them by level? Or just a large, almost catalogue of gear? Just musing.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Depends on WS Sub etc. I generally assume either /dnc or /nin if meleeing, and the only major changes I saw for TP/WS sets from what I previously posted have been already mentioned. Kudzu is a pretty good WS body as well (seems to outperform Antares for CDC unless you're hurting for accuracy. Behind Nefer/Heka's for Requiescat). Aluh Jambiya is a fair offhand assuming accuracy capped if dagger skill is capped and merited. Probably falls behind Str Shikargar otherwise.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Its less about us knowing what rdms should wear for meleeing than letting others know. I mean yeah, theres a lot of rdms who just dont know what to wear, but if theres a resource somewhere that they can look up a list of stuff, then that can only help. I always remember whenever someone at 75 asked me about rdm melee id direct them to this page

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Red_Mage:_Head%2C_Shoulders%2C_Knees_and_Toes

And they would see what was advised, and why it could be good. Im just thinking something like that but much bigger would be nice. Its no small undertaking by any means, but having a list of gear for melee, nuking, healing, and everything in between.

[Ophannus]

How about a JA similar to impetus? It could grant a +10% Job Ability Haste effect and every successful hit increases accuracy,attack and adds +2 to sword enhancement damage. Missing a hit would reset the acc/att/damage but the haste effect remains until the effect wears. Or a JA that makes your attacks ignore defense for a while(similar to twilight scythe effect).

[Neisan_Quetz]

Its less about us knowing what rdms should wear for meleeing than letting others know. I mean yeah, theres a lot of rdms who just dont know what to wear, but if theres a resource somewhere that they can look up a list of stuff, then that can only help. I always remember whenever someone at 75 asked me about rdm melee id direct them to this page

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Red_Mage:_Head%2C_Shoulders%2C_Knees_and_Toes

And they would see what was advised, and why it could be good. Im just thinking something like that but much bigger would be nice. Its no small undertaking by any means, but having a list of gear for melee, nuking, healing, and everything in between.

Motenten's sheet is a good starting point, although he probably doesn't have the most recent gear updated for it. It's not too difficult to change the stats on the sheet however as long as you can use Excel/Open Office.

[Duelle]

Its less about us knowing what rdms should wear for meleeing than letting others know. I mean yeah, theres a lot of rdms who just dont know what to wear, but if theres a resource somewhere that they can look up a list of stuff, then that can only help.You mean something along the lines of maxdps.com, retpaladin.com, femaledwarf.com, and several of those sites with apps that take into account possible gear upgrades and present what is seen as BiS (best-in-slot) for the current patch. I guess someone could try to put something like that together, but gear progression in FFXI is not exactly streamlined. The only real value that can be reliably capped is haste, as everything else fluctuates from mob to mob to the point there's not solid line of progression. Most jobs don't really have a "best" stat that they scale off, nor are they entirely balanced around said "best" stat (honestly, the only job that comes close to this style of design is SAM), and so on.

It just makes compilation and organization of gear a little harder when you factor all this stuff in.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Im not talking a list of parsed or calculated gear as much as a "Dress for success" guide. I dont care if say antares is 6% stronger than assault jerkin. More so that "If you want to melee on rdm, these are pieces that are recomended for it, this one for example is very good/best (on its own) for X function" then extend that to other functions. Seeing a bunch of numbers, or being told to get something and not knowing why its good or what to do with it is kinda pointless. Again the link i posted is close to what im thinking. We can calculate for days on end what is best, and sure a tutorial/guidelines are important too, but if you only list 2 pieces of gear that are say nigh-impossible to get, having say a top 10-20 list of pieces might be better so they can pick to fit their playstyle, or work their way up, as well as know why its good, and read some reviews. Id have said something sooner but we are all kinda stubborn here so i didnt want to make any waves. But this was a bit of a more direct question.

[saevel]

Several people have attempted this in the past. What tends to happen is it starts off as a good idea, but quickly devolves into trolls coming on and telling them "go play a real DD job" and all that jazz.

[Neisan_Quetz]

What is best in slot can easily change depending on mob and other gear, although not as widely as it would for say Thf.

[saevel]

Honestly absolute "best" is pretty straight forward for RDM, if only because we don't have that many options. Your going to want 25% gear haste, 500 Enhancing magic, and either a DEX build for CDC or a MND for Req (or both). Honestly most RDM's will find the MND build far easier to make due to us using that for enfeebles anyway.

[Crimson_Slasher]

What is best in slot can easily change depending on mob and other gear, although not as widely as it would for say Thf.

See that isnt what im saying at all. Im not looking for a penultimate or ultimate option of "THIS IS IT!"

What im more talking about is...Okay well let me give a few examples.

Antares Harness.
This piece is great for those red mages using CDC, having the most DEX of any body availible to red mage. On a second note it also has a fair dose of accuracy and evasion making you hit more often while getting hit less often! Lastly the AGI this has also means less TP fed to mobs, and with 2 less AGI than the highest +AGI body this piece can also be used effectively for Extentiator!
Rating; **** (Four stars, which would be voteable)

Brego Gloves.
Here are some great gloves for reaching the haste cap. While the 4 haste is a nice bonus on its own, the 9 accuracy helps make certain you wont be missing as often. Sadly the STR and AGI are nice, but arent particularly high and dont offer too much for the TP phase and with better options for weaponskills, it seems the STR/AGI+5 are just an afterthought. Despite that, this is a great piece that has satisfied my expectations for a haste piece.
Rating; *****

Heafoc Mitts.
Hmm, hard to say clearly on this piece. It offers the most STR of any hands availible to Red Mage, but with penalties to DEX and Accuracy, it really hurts the score of these piece. All in all its still a great piece but its hard to balance at times, use em if you can, but dont stress it if you dont.
Rating; **

See thats the kind of thing i mean, it doesnt say "best for CDC when fighting X" and while it lists some obvious things, it also lists something less commonly talked about by new players (Being that agi affects TP feed).

Thats the sort of thing i am refering to. Like i said, it doesnt need to be just for rdm and not just melee. But thats what im getting at.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Well pre update, Antares pretty much was 'it' for CDC body, the next best option being Assault Jerkin, anything after that wasn't worth mentioning. The first piece that's come close/surpassing it in damage is the new kudzu body. For Haste Hands, Brego are a step up from Dusk+1 (barely if you don't need the accuracy and a large one if you do). Discounting +str during TP phase... idk what to say...

Heafoc were only good for Vorpal Blade/Death Blossom, neither of which are either viable most of the time, or have been replaced by meritable weaponskills.

It's probably far easier to check with various forums with Rdm melee threads and ask there for ideal/fairly easy to acquire sets. If you know where to look, ask Motenten about his DPS sheets, he has several made for several jobs and it will give you a good idea of example pieces to use for tp/ws once you get used to reading it.

[Crimson_Slasher]

For people who do this regularly like us, there isnt much need for this, i know what gear i want to aim for, and the only doubts i ever have are when two pieces of gear are close and need to be measured. Its true that these newbie rdms and all jobs for that matter, should be on the boards asking about this stuff, but some people get embarassed, or are too shy. And still others dont/cant understand spreadsheets. Say what you will, i still think a catalogue of sorts is the way to go. Thought it really feels like you are taking me saying this as more of me personally saying "I dont know what to wear!" Im already working on ruby pants (Wish people shouted for Kalasutrax on my server more than 1x a week...)

All im saying is those visual learners can do better with a graphical representation, and too many resources now dont even have a mid-range of gear options. That player without an assault jerkin, a morri body, and antares harness (and Kudzu now) would just look at the list and go "What do i use until i can get one of those?" and unlike nearly every other job sans sch, smn, whm, and blm, they dont have pink or white gear to hobble along with. /endrant. All im saying is if i had a place to put it up that wouldnt look shabby and allowed some sorta voting/comments/Reviews functions, id do it myself. I just lack the resourced to make such a website that wouldnt look cheezy, and doing it on the wiki i feel would take up more space than id be allowed. Would be a nice community project though, just i dont think this (the rdm community) is the one to spearhead it. But a guy can dream. The resources are out there, theyre just scattered wide, or have big gaps in them i guess.

[Duelle]

All im saying is those visual learners can do better with a graphical representation, and too many resources now dont even have a mid-range of gear options. That player without an assault jerkin, a morri body, and antares harness (and Kudzu now) would just look at the list and go "What do i use until i can get one of those?" and unlike nearly every other job sans sch, smn, whm, and blm, they dont have pink or white gear to hobble along with. /endrant.We realize this, but this goes back to a point I made in the OP: RDM melee gear is lacking. Unlike the other jobs with melee capabilities, we don't have much in terms of hold-over gear. This is made worse by my other point, in that non-linear gear progression compounds the problem when your options are either mediocre or non-existant.

That was largely why I went trough the trouble of coming up with a revision for Evoliths in General Discussion, just so that our job could have something that could hold us over in some capacity, specially taking into account that the devs aren't going to directly help us in that regard. By comparison, BLUs got melee hold-overs (and then some) on a silver platter, and believe me when I say it annoys me to no end.

All im saying is if i had a place to put it up that wouldnt look shabby and allowed some sorta voting/comments/Reviews functions, id do it myself. I just lack the resourced to make such a website that wouldnt look cheezy, and doing it on the wiki i feel would take up more space than id be allowed. Would be a nice community project though, just i dont think this (the rdm community) is the one to spearhead it. But a guy can dream. The resources are out there, theyre just scattered wide, or have big gaps in them i guess.The infighting seems to have died down between the two RDM camps, but with such a small playerbase I don't see anyone leading an effort with lasting results. The websites I mentioned earlier exist solely because you have a ton of dedicated individuals theorycrafting left and right, creating spreadsheets and sites like Elitist Jerks largely contributing to that. Even now that WoW's population has taken the hit due to cataclysm, there are still numerous individuals providing parses and results and allocating DPS/HPS/Effective Health values to gear. In all honesty, we'd need to have like 20 Motentens to start catching up to that kind of momentum. With their own websites. On top of a large community of people looking into things in connection to the three roles in a group (I focused on DPS sites, but you also have sites like restodruid.com for people who play healers). Without the devs trying to throw curveballs to keep things "mysterious"; seriously, the biggest contribution to theorycrafting during Wrath of the Lich King was made by Ghostcrawler himself, where he actually explained how the stat Armor Penetration worked in detail, down to numbers, formulas and everything. We don't see Ito or Tanaka stepping into threads to contribute to that degree.

[Demon6324236]

Im already working on ruby pants (Wish people shouted for Kalasutrax on my server more than 1x a week...)

I feel your pain.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Like i said, if i had the means, id spearhead it myself, i have coding experience but not on webpages. Webdesign is largely foreign to me. I could see a large ls, elitist or not doing something like this, sadly, my social ls feels sometimes like everyone is too busy to skill/gear/etc on most jobs. If they cant have time to do that, then i dont want to distract them more for what is largely a side project. Especially with so many roles, functions, jobs, specialized ws and spells, its no small undertaking. Im sure when we stop getting pelted/flooded with updates it might get easier for it to be done.

[Demon6324236]

Honestly Im happy they keep updating though, it means 2 things. 1 we might see this game live on & grow some still even after 14 is redone. 2 is we might also see RDM get fixed up a bit, which is always a happy thought.

[Karbuncle]

also, I was discussing with Saeval i think earlier about Ephemeron as a weapon. Haste+3, TP Drain. Well

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/18904/ephemeron

Looking at accounts here, the TP Drain is incredibly significant. 59~ "Almost 100% TP" drained. Proc rate I didnt get too, BUt it drains an absurd amount of TP. So i think i can safely say this kills just about any other offhand depending on the mob you're fighting and if it would resist. :D (Still impossible to obtain, and no i dont care if you already sicussed it)

[Demon6324236]

That is very nice :O

[ManaKing]

I wanted the thing anyways. This just makes it better.

[Runalin]

So, lowbie RDM just returning to the game, and I have to say, I'm already getting a bit frustrated. Are there any melee RDM-friendly linkshells around on Odin? Kind of tired of getting treated like I'm an idiot for even suggesting that the class can be played that way, whenever it comes up in a party.

[Doombringer]

i'm not on odin, but i still feel pretty comfortable saying.. no.. there isn't.

rdm as a melee, even the THEORY of rdm as a melee, is generally unpopular. i don't LIKE it, but that is how it is.

on a personal note, as a bit of advice.. at this point in ffxi... melee RDM should not be your first job. (rdm in general prolly shouldn't be your first job) to even get to a point where people are willing to yell at you about how wrong you are, as opposed to just completely dismiss you, you need a lot of gear.

a proper redmage needs gearsets similar to what a whm, a blm, AND a war would carry. obviously not identical gear, but sets with similar intents: cure, nuke (maybe 2 nuke sets for varying resist rate mobs), buff, pdt, mdt, mnd based enfeeb, int based enfeeb (and variants on these sets for, resist rate, and the specific enfeeb. no such thing as silence potency) then to be a melee red mage, add on tp and ws sets.

you can't really half-ass any aspect of the job, ESPECIALLY if you claim to be a melee-rdm. people will grasp onto that and use it as ammo against not only you, but me, and anybody else who happens to fall on the pro-melee side of this great 162 page chasm.

for what it's worth though, a proper rdm can put out respectable numbers. but there will always be the catch 22 in that to DD, you have to not cast... every spell you cast, lowers your DPS. but if you don't cast at all, you might as well just be a warrior. dungeon crawls are rare nowadays, and they're really the only situation i can think of where the idea of rdm would be legitimately useful. having a melee that can switch over to being a mage at a moments notice is useless when you spam the same single monster fight all night and you KNOW exactly how many mages and melees you're gonna need. (and even that is assuming you are legitimately GOOD as a melee and a mage. some will argue that rdm is neither right now but.... meh..)


so yah, sorry for this soul crusher of a post, i REALLY wish rdm melee was more useful.. i have argued for it, i have done my best to represent it in a positive light, and i will continue doing it whenever possible just because that's how i want to play... but the cold hard reality is that "whenever possible" is fairly uncommon.

[Karbuncle]

RDM Melee does suffer a significant amount. You even pointed out exactly why, Casting lowers your DPS potential, and if you're not casting, You're not really a Red Mage, You're a Weak Warrior. So it is a conundrum.

Even with a Mandau and Exenterator (<3), RDM Melee is still difficult for me. I'm sure Chant would probably be better... I Just made Mandau for my THF. Need to work more on my WS gear too on RDM. my TP Set is a bit behind but still competitive.

You can do RDM Melee well on fodder content, For instance, in Dynamis you'd not be half bad if you gear right, But it just falls to the problem again, like in past Final Fantasy Titles, RDM can do a lot, just master none. You can cure, But not as good as WHM, you can nuke, not as good as BLM, you can melee, but not as good as WAR. RDM has always been a combination of jobs that favors adaptions over mastery.

Unfortunately in FFXI, SE has made them too mediocre, and they suffer greatly for it. Boosting their sword to an A- and actually giving them a few JT/JA on the side of Melee would be nice. I wish they'd make up their mind (Composure having +10 Accuracy comes ot mind....)

They have Enspells, Which could be so much more than they are now. one of the biggest (in my opinion, Non-complaints..) about Enspell is the removal of possible Haste Samba. My opinion is, RDM Should get a Job Trait, say level 30, That increases their Attack speed with Enspells on. Give it tiers to not be too powerful early on (Even though hasso.... grumblegrumble)

Level 30/50/70/90 - : Adds 3% Attack Speed Bonus with Enspell Active.
*Each Additional Tier +2, +3, +2 (Total of +10 Haste with Enspell, Same as Haste Samba, and Hasso, Counts as JA Haste).

Alternatively, Make it a Job Ability. Able to be kept up like hasso, but offer a small negative effect in return. Also would be nice to have equipment more designed toward Enspell/Enspell II, Like High Haste RDM-set with Enhancing magic skill. (If I'm not mistaken, Enspell II damage goes up based on your enhancing skill when you land the hit, Not the initial Cast, right? Or did that change...)

Theres a lot of potential with the job that would not overpower it. SE is so afraid of RDM returning to the days of Solo'ing everything, They've removed any light of what made it unique. Its an issue that needs to be addressed, but falls on deaf ears because its not their "Vision".

Mark of a bad game designer is ignoring any advice given and continuing down their path regardless of feedback. Having a "Vision" is nice, But games, even if just between Devs, are a collaborative journey. Between Devs, or Player Feedback. Not everyone can agree on RDM Melee, but every RDM in this forum would agree the job desperately needs something.

[Llana_Virren]

Just brainstorming... but with the manner in which players wish RDM could have meleed better, perhaps a JA or JT for Enspells would have been more appropriate than just the spells alone with/without Composure.

None of these are honest "suggestions" to revamping the FFXI incarnation of RDM, however, for the sake of argument, let's assume the FFXI environment for these suggestions:

====If Job Ability====
RDM.40
Instant, 5min Recast
Manablade (Allows you to target yourself with the following spells, granting an "additional effect" to your mainhand weapon:
(Additional effect chance and potency based on Enhancing Magic, despite Spell's native group)

Fire (creates Enfire, and random chance of "Additional Effect: STR down")
Water (creates Enwater, and random chance of "Additional Effect: MND down")
Thunder (creates Enthunder, and random chance of "Additional Effect: DEX down")
Stone (creates Enstone, and random chance of "Additional Effect: VIT down")
Aero (creates Enaero, and random chance of "Additional Effect: AGI down")
Blizzard (creates Enblizzard, and random chance of "Additional Effect: INT down")
Dia (creates Enlight, and random chance of "Additional Effect: Defense Down")*
Bio (creates Endark, and random chance of "Additional Effect: Attack Down")*

*Effect will stack with native spells Dia and Bio

==Merit Category (put current Tier II enfeebles on scrolls and replace with the following): Max per category 30:

=Appel (cost: 15 merit points ):
"Additional Effect: Fire Resistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: STR Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Water Resistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: MND Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Thunder Resistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: DEX Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Earth Reistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: VIT Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Wind Resistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: AGI Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Ice Resistence Down" added to "Additional Effect: INT Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Magic Defense Down" added to "Additional Effect: Defense Down" bonus
"Additional Effect: Magic Attack Down" added to "Additional Effect: Attack Down" bonus

=Riposte: cost: 15 merit points
Increases Parry rate, and grants additional effects to a parry, as if the parrying player had struck the target

=Insistence: cost: 15 merit points
If your attack is parried or blocked, immediately follow up with a second attack.

=Fleche: cost: 15 merit points
Sacrifice remaining enspell effect duration to boost the next attack. Chance of critical hit is increases with TP.z
(must wait 1 minute after using this ability before reapplying an enspell effect)

=Noblesse Oblige: cost: 15 merit points
Instant, 5min cooldown
When used before Manablade, allows the Enspell effect to be cast on another party member for full effect.

////////////////////////////////////

or, if we didn't change the -way- Enspells worked, we could add:

====Job Trait====
Lv.45 Enspell Bonus I (Increases accuracy and attack speed while Enspell is in effect)
Lv.65 Enspell Bonus II
Lv.85 Enspell Bonus III

[Doombringer]

If I'm not mistaken, Enspell II damage goes up based on your enhancing skill when you land the hit, Not the initial Cast, right? Or did that change...

that is correct, and it is utter nonsense... why reward someone for NOT tping in melee gear? the spell is flawed at the very foundation... after that it's all suck-gravy.

i don't immediately take 80 dmg to my stoneskin as soon as i take off my buff gear? the fuck should my enspell drop 10 points?

the ability to swap gear is like... key to just about everything any job does in ffxi.. why take that away for one spell? sometimes i consider submitting a bug report about it..

like seriously you guys... the fuck?!

[saevel]

Enspell II's suck in general, they only beat Enspell I's when your not DWing. DW with around ~30% DA makes means 2.6 average attacks per round. 30 * 2.6 = 78 average per round. Assuming Enspell II started at maximum potency (420 skill) for 52 damage (26*2) per round. Enspell I's end up 50% better, enspell II's would have to be 79 or higher in order to beat out I's. Yeah that "only on first hit" part was a really stupid idea by SE, coupled with its max potency being determined by skill on-strike.

[SpankWustler]

I don't think it's a stretch to call the second tier of En-Spells the most confounding thing in all of Final Fantasy XI.

They are working correctly unlike some of the broken Blue Magic, so that's not the reason they're so bad.

They were never the target of a heavy-handed and ham-fisted adjustment as was Modus Veritas, so that's not the reason they're so bad.

A Red Mage hitting a thing with a thing doesn't do enough damage that more damage would be an issue, so it seems unlikely the spells are awful for job balance reasons.

Yet, from applying only to the first hit to using Enhancing Magic on hit rather than on cast to requiring time to build to full damage to weakening stuff to elements in the most nonsensical way possible, the second tier of en-spells do everything wrong. Literally every decision made pertaining to these spells was the wrong one.

It is as if the Development Bros wanted to make something extraordinarily awful just to experience the pure pleasure they derive from making awful things.

[Demon6324236]

Only use I see in them is the fact of using Sambas with /DNC and still getting the effects, mainly haste samba but thats about all they are good for, other than that they are just a massive fail on SE's part, which should be changed, make them more powerful if only on 1 hand or still more powerful than En1s and both hands... If they wanted to mess with En2s and make them not just better than En1s they could have went the path of Phalanx, cast on others, but instead they gave us with very little use : /

[tyrantsyn]

i'm not on odin, but i still feel pretty comfortable saying.. no.. there isn't.

rdm as a melee, even the THEORY of rdm as a melee, is generally unpopular. i don't LIKE it, but that is how it is.

on a personal note, as a bit of advice.. at this point in ffxi... melee RDM should not be your first job. (rdm in general prolly shouldn't be your first job) to even get to a point where people are willing to yell at you about how wrong you are, as opposed to just completely dismiss you, you need a lot of gear.

a proper redmage needs gearsets similar to what a whm, a blm, AND a war would carry. obviously not identical gear, but sets with similar intents: cure, nuke (maybe 2 nuke sets for varying resist rate mobs), buff, pdt, mdt, mnd based enfeeb, int based enfeeb (and variants on these sets for, resist rate, and the specific enfeeb. no such thing as silence potency) then to be a melee red mage, add on tp and ws sets.

you can't really half-ass any aspect of the job, ESPECIALLY if you claim to be a melee-rdm. people will grasp onto that and use it as ammo against not only you, but me, and anybody else who happens to fall on the pro-melee side of this great 162 page chasm.

for what it's worth though, a proper rdm can put out respectable numbers. but there will always be the catch 22 in that to DD, you have to not cast... every spell you cast, lowers your DPS. but if you don't cast at all, you might as well just be a warrior. dungeon crawls are rare nowadays, and they're really the only situation i can think of where the idea of rdm would be legitimately useful. having a melee that can switch over to being a mage at a moments notice is useless when you spam the same single monster fight all night and you KNOW exactly how many mages and melees you're gonna need. (and even that is assuming you are legitimately GOOD as a melee and a mage. some will argue that rdm is neither right now but.... meh..)


so yah, sorry for this soul crusher of a post, i REALLY wish rdm melee was more useful.. i have argued for it, i have done my best to represent it in a positive light, and i will continue doing it whenever possible just because that's how i want to play... but the cold hard reality is that "whenever possible" is fairly uncommon.

@Doombringer I couldn't have said this any better. /bow

[Runalin]

i'm not on odin, but i still feel pretty comfortable saying.. no.. there isn't.

rdm as a melee, even the THEORY of rdm as a melee, is generally unpopular. i don't LIKE it, but that is how it is.

on a personal note, as a bit of advice.. at this point in ffxi... melee RDM should not be your first job. (rdm in general prolly shouldn't be your first job) to even get to a point where people are willing to yell at you about how wrong you are, as opposed to just completely dismiss you, you need a lot of gear.

a proper redmage needs gearsets similar to what a whm, a blm, AND a war would carry. obviously not identical gear, but sets with similar intents: cure, nuke (maybe 2 nuke sets for varying resist rate mobs), buff, pdt, mdt, mnd based enfeeb, int based enfeeb (and variants on these sets for, resist rate, and the specific enfeeb. no such thing as silence potency) then to be a melee red mage, add on tp and ws sets.

you can't really half-ass any aspect of the job, ESPECIALLY if you claim to be a melee-rdm. people will grasp onto that and use it as ammo against not only you, but me, and anybody else who happens to fall on the pro-melee side of this great 162 page chasm.

for what it's worth though, a proper rdm can put out respectable numbers. but there will always be the catch 22 in that to DD, you have to not cast... every spell you cast, lowers your DPS. but if you don't cast at all, you might as well just be a warrior. dungeon crawls are rare nowadays, and they're really the only situation i can think of where the idea of rdm would be legitimately useful. having a melee that can switch over to being a mage at a moments notice is useless when you spam the same single monster fight all night and you KNOW exactly how many mages and melees you're gonna need. (and even that is assuming you are legitimately GOOD as a melee and a mage. some will argue that rdm is neither right now but.... meh..)


so yah, sorry for this soul crusher of a post, i REALLY wish rdm melee was more useful.. i have argued for it, i have done my best to represent it in a positive light, and i will continue doing it whenever possible just because that's how i want to play... but the cold hard reality is that "whenever possible" is fairly uncommon.

I actually know a couple melee rdm on Bismarck that would've invited me to their LS if I'd been on that server, so I thought it'd be worth asking here. Disappointing to see my favorite class has degraded to this, though.

Will say though, I don't plan on class-switching regardless. I haven't been able to play often, but I started up my rdm about three years ago, and I'm not stopping now just because it's not easy to play.

[Doombringer]

Disappointing to see my favorite class has degraded to this, though.

yah.. it's a fuckin shame dude.. i've been an rdm for like.. i don't even know at this point.. i got ffxi the day it was released for ps2 so, what, 7 years? 8?

i hate to be the party shitter i just figured i'd be honest with yah.


Will say though, I don't plan on class-switching regardless. I haven't been able to play often, but I started up my rdm about three years ago, and I'm not stopping now just because it's not easy to play.

if you insist on toughing it out, good luck. i'm with you in spirit.

i only suggest you level something else first because it will make rdm life SO much easier. a whm could show up to abyssea or voidwatch naked and still "get by" with the right atmas or temps. find a small aby group that needs a whm, and see if it's allright with them if you also take the rdm stuff. most people have multiple jobs nowadays anyway so this wouldn't be an outlandish or greedy thing to ask.

if your group really takes off you'll eventually start making an emp or 2 for each other. nobody will expect you to make your emp for your whm.. and almace is pretty damn cool.. makes rdm infinitely more fun.. but i only got mine because my aby group needed a war and i happened to also be one. sadly i've done very little aby on rdm.



and before anybody jumps down my throat, i understand there is a HUGE difference between a solid career whm and a cure mule, i recently burned whm myself and just having it skilled up and being payed attention to was like night and day compared to my friends whm mules. so i cannot fathom how much better it would be were my whm geared properly or if i knew what i was doing. but that fact of the matter remains people USE whm mules so it's got a low bar for "acceptable"

[Economizer]

and before anybody jumps down my throat, i understand there is a HUGE difference between a solid career whm and a cure mule, i recently burned whm myself and just having it skilled up and being payed attention to was like night and day compared to my friends whm mules. so i cannot fathom how much better it would be were my whm geared properly or if i knew what i was doing. but that fact of the matter remains people USE whm mules so it's got a low bar for "acceptable"

Or when they invite people's gimpy WHM they bring instead of actually gearing a job, and often will fill WHM slots in a Voidwatch over career White Mages, but will only accept damage dealers with super weapons.

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.

Scholars just do it better though, which is one of the reasons Red Mages don't get into many events, since anything where you don't need a White Mage's curaga/shellra/barelementra spells (pretty much the only benefits now since good White Mages only rarely dip into Cure V, and Scholar can match this) is better served with a Scholar. Some creative players might come up with something, but based on current trends it would be reasonable not just to expect Red Mages to stay in the invite light category but to see White Mages start to veer towards the same category once the metagame starts getting unstuck unless something changes.

[cidbahamut]

I think leveling White Mage is pretty much the worst advice you could give someone who wants to spend time playing Red Mage. Level a useful job, sure, but once they know you have White Mage there will be very few situations in which you'll be able to come Red Mage instead. White Mage is just that ridiculously powerful and overshadows Red Mage's utility in so many group activities.

I can't even begin to count how many times people have asked me if I had White Mage leveled.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Just pretend you didn't level it even if you did.

[Demon6324236]

Problem is say I goto a party, and its for instance a seal party, I take WHM over RDM simply for light procs because its coming up, now I join a VW party with one of the same people from that seal party and they point out I have used it with them before. Has happened to me, even if not common :x

[Llana_Virren]

That's when you just say "I'm going WHM" and stick around... there are very few people that DON'T have RDM levelled, and those that complain can just go level it themselves if they think it will make-or-break the dynamic of the group.

[scaevola]

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.


It's worth mentioning that if you're a RDM duoing in Abyssea and your potential target is so dangerous that even your tricked-out RDM is incapable of healing it, your melee partner is not without options to cover the slack, so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous considering they knew they were playing with a RDM.

At this point, IMO the biggest thing overshadowing RDM duoing in Abyssea is not WHM, but rather SCH with Embrava and SSL chests.

[Economizer]

so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous

I get Future Fabulous since it has Magic Defense Bonus, but I don't get Mounted Champion. How is 20HP/tic going to save someone when you're healing for well over 400 on Cure III and 800 on Cure IV? I know you lose a bit of a safety net going Red Mage but there are few things in Abyssea that will be so dangerous a well equipped Red Mage won't be able to handle it, assuming the duo partner isn't a mushpot for brains.

And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.

[saevel]

And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.

Nope not even close. You'll always bring a WHM over both SCH and RDM for two reasons, first being yellow light procs (seal / +2 items), second being Hexa during Blunt for blue procs. The only situation you'd bring a SCH over a WHM is if you already had the pops and only planned on doing two Apademaks / Azdaja, then and only then would Embrava actually mean anything. Otherwise your already overpowered for everything else.

Abyssea is about procs pure and simple. Anyone with a half decent brain can easily kill any NM except maybe Azdaja / Apadamek due to their rather unique set of TP moves. And for those two you can easily brew them should things get messy.

Now outside of abyseea, you bring SCH for embrava on super zerg fights inside Legion / Provenance, but we're talking about Abyssea here.

[scaevola]

I get Future Fabulous since it has Magic Defense Bonus, but I don't get Mounted Champion. How is 20HP/tic going to save someone when you're healing for well over 400 on Cure III and 800 on Cure IV? I know you lose a bit of a safety net going Red Mage but there are few things in Abyssea that will be so dangerous a well equipped Red Mage won't be able to handle it, assuming the duo partner isn't a mushpot for brains.

Personally, I don't think there are many situations in Abyssea a RDM couldn't duo-heal at 99 if any at all, but my point is that Abyssea in particular gives the DD/tank a lot of options to take pressure off her healer. Saying "RDM can't heal that!" unfairly gives the DD a pass from having to actually make the duo work.

My mind just went to MC because I happen to like it a lot; obviously FF/+HP/a particular elemental resist atma is going to be the more obvious and consistent choice.



And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.

I actually didn't read the end of your post before responding to it. Sorry.



Nope not even close. You'll always bring a WHM over both SCH and RDM for two reasons, first being yellow light procs (seal / +2 items), second being Hexa during Blunt for blue procs.

Yes, waiting all day for a specific time to pop trivial shit for which we could just solo another popset rather than just go right now with what we've got is definitely something people still do in Abyssea.


The only situation you'd bring a SCH over a WHM is if you already had the pops and only planned on doing two Apademaks / Azdaja, then and only then would Embrava actually mean anything. Otherwise your already overpowered for everything else.

It's about killing faster, not simply killing at all.

Embrava is perhaps even more meaningful for KI farming, as the pretty-substantial Regain shaves a TON of time off cycling through potential red procs and a 70ish/tic Regen leaves the SCH "healer" free to go off and find the next SSL chest.

The main reason people gravitated towards the "light/darkday for everything" paradigm was because they were leaning on WHMs to dualbox everything already and going with a different time meant bringing another body. That's no longer relevant now that other healing jobs can easily handle the burden; if you are that desperate for yellow procs out of your healer, you might as well have a BLM/SCH or something come heal. That Hexastrike rounds out the Blunt procs is fine and good but it is yet another fringe benefit to a job you were bringing for totally different reasons; only the greatest of doofuses would have ever refused to pop an NM on the basis of being "only" 14/15 on blue procs.

[saevel]

Umm lightsday / darksday what? Never heard of only going on specific days cause no matter the choice you'd still be missing a ton of procs. If your seal +2 farming you bring a BLM, otherwise your wasting a large amount of time.


Yes, waiting all day for a specific time to pop trivial shit for which we could just solo another popset rather than just go right now with what we've got is definitely something people still do in Abyssea.

You won't be "soloing" another popset anytime soon, not without red procs. If you try to proc blue outside of blunt time then your list of potential procs grows to pretty much every other job in the game. Don't proc blue and your wasting your time.

Abysea has and always will be about hitting procs to maximize loot, hitting procs is like having TH +50, its the difference between 0~2 seals dropping and 2~4 seals dropping. From 1~2 +2 items dropping to 3~5 +2 items dropping. The only time you can get around that is with timed spawn NM's that you just drive-by kill with THF + healer and hope for the best.

I only say all this because we're talking "low man duo", so two people max. MNK + WHM being ~the~ most common for blue !! procs and THF + WHM for anything else. Honestly I don't see the point in killing sh!t with only two people, even if one of them is my dual box WHM. It's a huge waste of time. Instead get these things called friends and take turns helping each other out, you can get loot much faster then constantly killing NM's hoping to get *lucky* without procs. BLM/BRD + WHM + BLU/NIN + THF is an absolute monster low man group. The WHM / BLM can be someone's naked dual box mule, so technically it's still a "duo". You will proc yellow on almost everything you fight along with hitting high TH for tons of drops. If red is an issue then switch the BLU out for a WAR/SAM (gets Jinpu, certain gear can get you Koki). You can now proc both yellow and red on pretty much everything your going to fight. If your needing to fight something for a blue proc then just have someone go change to MNK prior to the H2H time. If you don't have one of those jobs then get off your lazy arse and go level one of them. Abyssea @99 is a joke, the "hardest" NM is easily kill-able by a single person using a single temp item. Those "hardest" NM's are kill-able with low to moderate difficulty by a group of three to four people without using any brews.

[scaevola]

Umm lightsday / darksday what? Never heard of only going on specific days cause no matter the choice you'd still be missing a ton of procs. If your seal +2 farming you bring a BLM, otherwise your wasting a large amount of time.

You were the one to mention yellow procs in the context of WHM.




You won't be "soloing" another popset anytime soon, not without red procs.


If you try to proc blue outside of blunt time then your list of potential procs grows to pretty much every other job in the game. Don't proc blue and your wasting your time.

If you have MNK leveled, going for blue !! outside of blunt time is indeed a waste, but only because blunt time rolls around once every 40 minutes and MNK blows everything else out of the water to a degree that I have a hard time seeing as anything other than an oversight on SE's part.

If you don't have MNK leveled, you shouldn't sweat it, because pretty much every DD can hit a good third of the potential blue procs during at least one phase, and there are maybe a half dozen drops in all of Abyssea worth worrying about that come from NMs with popsets that any DD/WAR capable of not dying can't solo in under an hour.

Abyssea is easy. Only idiots allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.


Abysea has and always will be about hitting procs to maximize loot, hitting procs is like having TH +50, its the difference between 0~2 seals dropping and 2~4 seals dropping. From 1~2 +2 items dropping to 3~5 +2 items dropping. The only time you can get around that is with timed spawn NM's that you just drive-by kill with THF + healer and hope for the best.

No, Abyssea is about hitting procs when it is convenient to hit procs. Otherwise it is about getting things done in as little time as possible, and procs are only relevant insofar as they help this goal. If you say, "gosh, I had better wait until light/darksday so my WHM can hit yellow procs for +2 items," you're doing it wrong, because right now there is a different NM you could be killing for a substantial chance at a procless +2 item you're after.


I only say all this because we're talking "low man duo", so two people max. MNK + WHM being ~the~ most common for blue !! procs and THF + WHM for anything else. Honestly I don't see the point in killing sh!t with only two people, even if one of them is my dual box WHM. It's a huge waste of time.

You only think that because you don't understand the value of time.


Instead get these things called friends and take turns helping each other out, you can get loot much faster then constantly killing NM's hoping to get *lucky* without procs. BLM/BRD + WHM + BLU/NIN + THF is an absolute monster low man group. The WHM / BLM can be someone's naked dual box mule, so technically it's still a "duo". You will proc yellow on almost everything you fight along with hitting high TH for tons of drops.

To the rather debatable extent that scheduling one's free time around the vast reserves of wasted time in which manchildren populating this game swim is ever worth it at all*, it certainly isn't worth it for the purposes of procs in Abyssea.


If red is an issue then switch the BLU out for a WAR/SAM (gets Jinpu, certain gear can get you Koki). You can now proc both yellow and red on pretty much everything your going to fight. If your needing to fight something for a blue proc then just have someone go change to MNK prior to the H2H time. If you don't have one of those jobs then get off your lazy arse and go level one of them. Abyssea @99 is a joke, the "hardest" NM is easily kill-able by a single person using a single temp item. Those "hardest" NM's are kill-able with low to moderate difficulty by a group of three to four people without using any brews.

NIN/WAR for everything you need a KI from, BST for everything you don't. Just buy Epona's Ring.

*HEY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ANIME AND/OR REDDIT MEME

[SpankWustler]

I'm not sure what the point of this current discussion is, at least as pertains to Red Mage.

Much like a pair of short-pants made out of living porcupines, Red Mage's use in Abyssea is due entirely to a very subjective choice made for personal reasons or desperation due to lack of other options. Not that the former can't be a valid reason, it definitely can be when something can be as laid-back as Abyssea can be, but both are totally unrelated to effectiveness and thus any attempt to discuss effectiveness sounds a little ridiculous.

I really, really, really want to continue my stupid simile about porcupine short-pants but I have nothing else to say. So, I looked up a ridiculous picture using Google Image Search to satisfy my juvenile sense of humor.


the vast reserves of wasted time in which manchildren populating this game swim

http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/bikini-fat-man-photo.jpg

I am sated.

[Llana_Virren]

No, Abyssea is about hitting procs when it is convenient to hit procs.

It is -never- convenient to -not- hit procs.

[Economizer]

I actually didn't read the end of your post before responding to it. Sorry.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, it was more of an afterthought that I almost didn't include because it falls into the more controversial category.

I probably didn't make myself too clear, because I was actually trying to refer to stuff outside Abyssea as the focus on that statement. Abyssea is pretty figured out and I don't really think out discussion is really going to be saying much except to newer players.

At 99 everything is powerful in Abyssea. Red Mage is powerful in the sense that just like Scholar you get to cure "good enough"™ to cover healing, with the added bonus that you can do other stuff (generally better) then a White Mage, such as Phalanx if you are doing an AoE farm (native MAB for Aeolian Edge doesn't hurt either if doing it more solo-y), or having better nukes. Of course you have procs and other stuff that might throw a wrench in your job selection, but really if it is a situation where you need 100% coverage on procs it is probably a situation where bringing a party rather then trying to super lowman it will get the job done way quicker, and the benefit of having a Red Mage is somewhat lessened.

I don't even know why in this aside which is clearly not aimed towards newer players why I have to explain anything about Abyssea, but I suppose I wasn't as clear as I could be that I was trying to focus away from Abyssea when making such a statement... but that doesn't even matter, because despite this not being the focus, it still generally holds true even inside, particularly for the lowmans that were being discussed before. In Abyssea, you lose what, one blue proc? Since the discussion was about duoing that brings us to yellow procs, which Scholar (and Red Mage) handles with more variety then White Mage does by far. Scholar just gets to come out ahead with common Embrava coverage, better healing, and better nuking. If having less then a handful of procs in certain rare cases is better then healing just as good, having more haste most of the time, and being able to contribute to damage, then maybe there would be merit to those claims. But there isn't, even though that's not the thought I was trying to convey.

[saevel]

Did Tiger NM today for body seals.

BLM/RDM (no /BRD leveled)
NIN/DNC (was just helping)
WHM/SCH (me)
THF/DNC
DNC/NIN (don't ask he had a pop set)

Out of four NM pops here are the results.
NM #1: Yellow Proced, 2 seals dropped
NM #2: Not Proced, 0 seals dropped (nothing dropped)
NM #3: Yellow Proced, 4 seals dropped
NM #4: Yellow Proced, 3 seals dropped

THF had Relic +2 hands, Emp +2 feet and TK in off hand, would proc to at least TH8 on every fight.

I'd say procing yellow was pretty damn important, I'd even say not procing yellow would be a complete waste of time.

If you absolutely HAD to go "duo" then THF/NIN + BLM/WHM or BLM/SCH period, end of story. During that entire fight I didn't have to cast more then a Cure III. At 99 a THF has such high evasion and evasion gear that they would rarely even be hit, with minimal healing they could easily kill any NM while also having a large chance at getting a yellow proc. If we're talking blue then it depends if it's a drive by killing (Loki's ect..) or a poped NM (Ocelot ect..). If it's drive by the just throw TH at it until it drops, if you get luck you can proc it. If it's a planned pop, why in the hell would you not plan out to have the appropriate procing jobs available prior to poping it. You would seriously throw away an EE, Lacovia or Chloris pop on the low ball chance you happen to get the R/EX drop anyway? I've done more Chloris's then I ever want to remember, something like 300+ now, those hands have a low drop rate without blue proc. Lacovie is stingy as hell on that belt without blue proc, heck he's stingy even with blue proc. That's just with the Tahrongi zone NMs, there are still 8 other zones and the Shinyru fight.

So please tell the entire forum how you'd like to throw away you and your partners pop sets just so you can prove how great embrava is on SCH.

In the entire time I've been doing abyssea, I've never once heard SCH being asked for. My LS's resident SCH is asked to come on BLM or MNK constantly to events. SCH ... overshadowing WHM ... wow ... just ... wow.

[scaevola]

Did Tiger NM today for body seals.

BLM/RDM (no /BRD leveled)
NIN/DNC (was just helping)
WHM/SCH (me)
THF/DNC
DNC/NIN (don't ask he had a pop set)

Out of four NM pops here are the results.
NM #1: Yellow Proced, 2 seals dropped
NM #2: Not Proced, 0 seals dropped (nothing dropped)
NM #3: Yellow Proced, 4 seals dropped
NM #4: Yellow Proced, 3 seals dropped

THF had Relic +2 hands, Emp +2 feet and TK in off hand, would proc to at least TH8 on every fight.

I'd say procing yellow was pretty damn important, I'd even say not procing yellow would be a complete waste of time.

If you absolutely HAD to go "duo" then THF/NIN + BLM/WHM or BLM/SCH period, end of story. During that entire fight I didn't have to cast more then a Cure III. At 99 a THF has such high evasion and evasion gear that they would rarely even be hit, with minimal healing they could easily kill any NM while also having a large chance at getting a yellow proc. If we're talking blue then it depends if it's a drive by killing (Loki's ect..) or a poped NM (Ocelot ect..). If it's drive by the just throw TH at it until it drops, if you get luck you can proc it. If it's a planned pop, why in the hell would you not plan out to have the appropriate procing jobs available prior to poping it. You would seriously throw away an EE, Lacovia or Chloris pop on the low ball chance you happen to get the R/EX drop anyway? I've done more Chloris's then I ever want to remember, something like 300+ now, those hands have a low drop rate without blue proc. Lacovie is stingy as hell on that belt without blue proc, heck he's stingy even with blue proc. That's just with the Tahrongi zone NMs, there are still 8 other zones and the Shinyru fight.

So please tell the entire forum how you'd like to throw away you and your partners pop sets just so you can prove how great embrava is on SCH.

In the entire time I've been doing abyssea, I've never once heard SCH being asked for. My LS's resident SCH is asked to come on BLM or MNK constantly to events. SCH ... overshadowing WHM ... wow ... just ... wow.

Leaving aside the issue that

1) whoever needed seals wasted the time of anyone who didn't by dragging them along to kill something they could have handled without them,

2) that person/people could have just gone out and gotten kills in without waiting up for other people for omg procs and even waiting a half an hour means a round of kills they didn't get on account of waiting,

3) just like you don't pay $13 for other people to tell you how to play red mage, I don't pay $13 a month to stand around Port Jeuno shouting/beg my LS mates for handjobs, and

4) the majority of time anybody spends in Abyssea these days is spent making Emp weapons for which procs other than red are irrelevant,

your group wouldn't have been better off with you as a SCH/RDM rather than WHM/SCH because ___

[Neisan_Quetz]

Wth is being argued here again? If you can shout and make a group for seals you do that, if you can't you go with w/e you can and get seals the best way you can. Is it going to take longer? Of course it is, you're being sub-optimal about it, but going in and trying for some seals is still better than sitting around doing nothing, provided you're not lazy.

Body seal NMs just suck anyway. I got more seals spamming the quest than that tiger (obviously some jobs have terribad quests).

Going Rdm for seal farming means you were foregoing optimal proc conditions in the first place, it has the exact same grellow procs as Sch and you probably should have just brought a Blm.

[scaevola]

Saevel had a dumb opinion and I have been explaining why it was dumb.

If it's impenetrable to anyone else, I apologize, but I find calling people dumb a way more rewarding use of these message boards than actually trying to convince anyone of my own dumb opinions, so here we are.

[Llana_Virren]

1) whoever needed seals wasted the time of anyone who didn't by dragging them along to kill something they could have handled without them,

Because no one actually voluntarily helps friends out anymore or plays a MULTIPLAYER game to play with other people....



2) that person/people could have just gone out and gotten kills in without waiting up for other people for omg procs and even waiting a half an hour means a round of kills they didn't get on account of waiting,


I must have missed the part where he said ANYTHING about having to waiting for anything...?
Of course, 2 rounds of 2 drops beats 3 rounds of no drops... just sayin'.



3) just like you don't pay $13 for other people to tell you how to play red mage, I don't pay $13 a month to stand around Port Jeuno shouting/beg my LS mates for handjobs,

Ok, yeah I just re-read the post, and I still can't find where he said anything about waiting for or begging people to help... so would you mind fabricating that for me? Thanks!

[Demon6324236]

So~ what are we arguing about again? SCH being better than RDM or WHM in seal partys? Or Embrava being good in seal partys? Or what?

If its at least 3 hours from light even being a possible proc then it really shouldn't matter 1 way or the other if you bring a SCH or a WHM, or a RDM, SCH I would say is best in the event light procs are not likely to pop up for the reason between its Emp gear, Klimaform, and weather, I'm sure Threnody will land nicely, more than a BLM that has to wait on ES to land it.

Embrava good in seal partys? Well yeah, I can use it, 1 time, every 2 hours, for upto 12.5minutes duration... yay~... taking time for lights is nice so I get the occasional ISL to give me my Embrava back but really I think it more of a waste of time, most people doing seal partys have enough stones they don't normally care, they can throw them at a seal party with no lights with no problem, thus meaning no ISLs, and no Embrava past the 1st cast, so not to much of a point arguing that.

Now if your doing Emp NMs, Bria, Sobek, C-C, the like then yes, you have lights, you should have lights, and you should have Embrava up full time, but at that point you probably have a larger party with linkshell members or friends, enough a WHM should be there for procs, and leave room for SCH, you would have BLM BLU & maybe even a BRD as well to make sure of procs, so thats pointless to argue, when my ls goes for Emps we don't go with 3 people and take forever, we get a bunch of pops, kill them, move on.

Is RDM better in seal partys than WHM? No, it works in a WHMs place, especially if geared well enough, some NMs may take a bit more than RDM, but seals? No, no seal NM in the game is THAT much of a problem, if WHM can heal it, RDM probably can too, some +2 NMs like Apa, yeah, I can see you having WHM over RDM or SCH(if no Embrava) but not on seals, it goes back to the point, if lights day isn't nearby, it wont matter, because WHM procs wont be needed, and in that case, neither is a WHM.

Lastly I don't think anyone is saying procs are pointless, they are obviously better to have than nothing, would I piss & moan that I don't have ALL procs or that I'm wasting a pop without procing it? No, thats stupid, I cant proc everything that walks that is a NM. However if you can proc it, by all means, do it, better to proc, but if you cant don't act like its a waste of time, things can and will drop still even if not as many or as well. Simple as that.

If there is something else I can explain to you please, let me know, this stupid convo is just annoying to me, I like reading things here, sometimes things get my attention, when all the new posts are retarded comments about a WHM being outdone by SCH in a seal party its annoying, wanna know the truth? Its like almost everything else in this game, situational!

[scaevola]

Because no one actually voluntarily helps friends out anymore or plays a MULTIPLAYER game to play with other people....

If you have multiple people, go do something that you couldn't do solo. The entire reason the Abyssea proc system exists is to give you a reason to not solo or dual-box literally everything, but just because there's an actual reason to drag along people you don't need doesn't mean you aren't wasting their time just the same.



I must have missed the part where he said ANYTHING about having to waiting for anything...?
Of course, 2 rounds of 2 drops beats 3 rounds of no drops... just sayin'.

He was questioning why anybody would go to solo something without magic procs. 3 rounds of no drops (which would be rare enough to not expect) is still better than not doing anything in that time because your pocket BLM would rather do something that benefits her.




Ok, yeah I just re-read the post, and I still can't find where he said anything about waiting for or begging people to help... so would you mind fabricating that for me? Thanks!

When talking about playing with other people, I should hope it's implied that you're doing so at a time convenient for all parties, not just you. This necessarily involves waiting, unless you've got 3 or 4 other people completely wrapped around your finger, ready to drop anything and do whatever you want at a moment's notice (which might be what some folks have going but I personally find distasteful).

Again, there may be some reason to schedule your limited free time around other people playing this game, but Abyssea procs are not it. Most DDs can pick a time when they have a solid 1 in 3 or 4 shot of landing blue !! and only need to get the relevant drop once, and you simply don't need enough seals/+2 items in the long term to sweat it. So the group of five targets Yaguarogui and gets done in 2 hours over one night what it takes the soloer 6 hours over the course of a week to finish. Who cares? They both get their stuff by the end of the week.

Empyrean weapons may be another matter, but the only thing that matters there is red, and if you were really serious about it NIN/WAR can solo most of your potential KI mobs with no difficulty.

[saevel]

Wth is being argued here again? If you can shout and make a group for seals you do that, if you can't you go with w/e you can and get seals the best way you can. Is it going to take longer? Of course it is, you're being sub-optimal about it, but going in and trying for some seals is still better than sitting around doing nothing, provided you're not lazy.

Body seal NMs just suck anyway. I got more seals spamming the quest than that tiger (obviously some jobs have terribad quests).

Going Rdm for seal farming means you were foregoing optimal proc conditions in the first place, it has the exact same grellow procs as Sch and you probably should have just brought a Blm.

He's saying that SCH is overshadowing both WHM and RDM in abyssea because it has Embrava. He is saying that procing is not that big a deal and it's completely acceptable to go farm NMs without the goal of procing them.

Overall it's a ridiculously twisted statement that requires him to completely dismiss all concepts of obtaining loot and to instead waste pop sets just to prove that Embrava is better then procing because you kill faster.

[scaevola]

He's saying that SCH is overshadowing both WHM and RDM in abyssea because it has Embrava. He is saying that procing is not that big a deal and it's completely acceptable to go farm NMs without the goal of procing them.

It's not really that complicated, even if you're hung up on proccing. SCH has all the procs RDM has. In order for WHM to have more procs than SCH, you need to wait for a certain time of day, which is worse than not proccing. How will I know I will be available to play whenever Light or Darksday comes up? Do I just wait until tomorrow to complete easy content I could finish right now?

No amount of waiting or proccing will give WHM or RDM Embrava.



Overall it's a ridiculously twisted statement that requires him to completely dismiss all concepts of obtaining loot and to instead waste pop sets just to prove that Embrava is better then procing because you kill faster.

In what way is pointing out that killing faster will generally get you more stuff twisting anything?

I am finishing a Kannagi on my lunch breaks at work. I hop on NIN/WAR, buy the pop items, and finish the KIs for a pop in 40 minutes. If I'm going at a good clip I switch to DNC to kill Briareus, if not I just wait till I get home; either way, that takes ten minutes. It's slow-going (about halfway through helms and 10/50 on skins a month in) but I only do it intermittently because holy shit is this boring. I miss a good number of red procs, of course, but tell me how this process would be more efficient if I waited for a friend to get on WAR and help me out.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

In what way is pointing out that killing faster will generally get you more stuff twisting anything?

This is true in many places, but as far as Abyssea is concerned it very rarely is the case.

Killing 6 enemies in the time it'd take to kill and proc 3 doesn't mean more drops, in 99% of cases it mean no drops.

Trigger > 4 Seal
No Trigger > 1 Seal (if you're lucky, most likely not one you're doing the NM for anyway)

Anywhere but Abyssea, and non Emp Weapon items, however I'd agree with you.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Seal drop rate isn't so low you can't do it without grellow, it's just not advised. If you have no other option then yes I'm going to say it's better to kill without grellow than sit around and do nothing. Blue item drop rates in scars+ heroes is better than in Visions from my experience as well.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Seal drop rate isn't so low you can't do it without grellow, it's just not advised. If you have no other option then yes I'm going to say it's better to kill without grellow than sit around and do nothing. Blue item drop rates in scars+ heroes is better than in Visions from my experience as well.

As a BST when it had TH3 it was very low for me.

Of course if no WHM exists then yes, take SCH, RDM whatever you can get, but in today's Vanadiel the odds of not finding a WHM are ridiculously low (at least on Phoenix.)

[scaevola]

As a BST when it had TH3 it was very low for me.


1) Had it ever been shown that TH affected seal drops? There's no reason why it shouldn't, of course, but I never really noticed a difference between killing things procless on THF vs. other jobs.

2) Very low compared to what? The droprate you'd come to expect from Abyssea thanks to procs, or FFXI in general?

[cidbahamut]

This is true in many places, but as far as Abyssea is concerned it very rarely is the case.

Killing 6 enemies in the time it'd take to kill and proc 3 doesn't mean more drops, in 99% of cases it mean no drops.

Trigger > 4 Seal
No Trigger > 1 Seal (if you're lucky, most likely not one you're doing the NM for anyway)

Anywhere but Abyssea, and non Emp Weapon items, however I'd agree with you.

Are you factoring in time spent keeping the NM alive? Because you can tear through most seal NMs in roughly a minute if you don't bother with procs.

If you've got a full set of proc monkeys then go for it, but if you've only got a few procs covered then just rip through the NM and hope you get a proc along the way.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Are you factoring in time spent keeping the NM alive? Because you can tear through most seal NMs in roughly a minute if you don't bother with procs.

If you've got a full set of proc monkeys then go for it, but if you've only got a few procs covered then just rip through the NM and hope you get a proc along the way.

I don't find keeping them alive, killing and proc'ing that annoying or that it wastes time anymore thanks to the Abyssite. (though only seal wise really, WS are still an annoying time sink)

As I said, if you don't have the procs then by all mean go for quick kills it'll probably work better, and in that sense SCH would 100% be better, but if you can get them, at least for me I'd opt for the procs over speed.


1) Had it ever been shown that TH affected seal drops? There's no reason why it shouldn't, of course, but I never really noticed a difference between killing things procless on THF vs. other jobs.

2) Very low compared to what? The droprate you'd come to expect from Abyssea thanks to procs, or FFXI in general?

1) To be honest I've no idea, TH was always dodgy for me. I once went 5/5 on the club in Oztroja (S) with TH3 when a THF I knew never got it in 24 goes with ~9+.

2) Low in the sense I fought one NM 7 times and got nothing at all, that said I've also proc'ed and got nothing so yeah!!

[scaevola]

Are you factoring in time spent keeping the NM alive? Because you can tear through most seal NMs in roughly a minute if you don't bother with procs.

If you've got a full set of proc monkeys then go for it, but if you've only got a few procs covered then just rip through the NM and hope you get a proc along the way.

To be fair, it's not like it takes a long time to land all your potential yellow procs provided you don't have three DDs feeding the NM endless TP while you're doing it.

More importantly, we've kind of deviated from the central point of this little digression, which was that even if procs in general are a nice enough thing to pursue the actual spread of proccing potential between WHM and SCH doesn't justify not using SCH as your main healer for preeeeetty much everything unless you HAPPEN to be going after something for seals/+2s on dark/lightsday.

Saevel was saying, among other things, that we ought to weigh Hexa Strike over Embrava when choosing an Abyssea healer, which is pretty lol.

EDIT: punchline is that EVEN ON LIGHT/DARKSDAY, SCH/WHM only has one less magic proc than WHM/BLM. It loses Banish III, Holy, and Bio II, but picks up two spells from Fire or Lightning.




....man, I really need to level scholar.

[0nionKn1ght]

I have a full melee set for my RDM, and often go RDM/WAR for exp now, as in alliances, there is minimal to no healing needed, so I just keep myself hasted, enspelled and wail away on the leeches. The reason I go /WAR is for the extra double attacks and it unlocks a few more Weapon Skills.

I am able to keep up with other DD's and find it alot of fun to be able to finally play on the front lines with some modicum of success.

Only returned a few days ago though so im probably doing everything wrong, backwards and in a way that causes the very fires of hell to freeze at my noobness.

[Karbuncle]

If you can get an Almace, I'd recommend that, and sticking to /NIN, will offer you better overall DPS, especially in Abyssea.

As far as whatever goes, I'm finally picking up my RDM Again after so long, Got my Mandau, and i'm looking forward to having fun with it. Wish i could Merit Requiscat... but Already locked on Exenterator, Resolution, and SHATTERSOULZ - Luckily, With a Mandau, I'll get more uses out of Exenterator

[Demon6324236]

Myself I prefer /DNC or /NIN, the Dualwield massively helps your DPS and while you may be hurting for WSs, with the Merit WS, Almace, Excalibur, Death Blossom, or Mandau, you can still have a great WS to use. As for your melee set I am curious what you use, as you said you are returning I am curious if you have seen the wide verity of gear RDM has gotten and how much of this you have/use. Myself I aim to have this set (http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/260962) as it is the best possible TP build set for RDM imo. I currently use this (http://www.ffxiah.com/members/item-sets/?id=266033) instead till I am able to get the rest of the gear.

Also welcome back to FFXI, I hope you enjoy RDM and can make it successful for you as I have for myself! ^_^

[saevel]

I sold my Calmecac trousers once I got Phorcy's for DRK. I just use Rubeus for both TP and for DB / Requiscat. Only piece I'm missing is that G*D DAMN Aketon. Been slaughtering Morta and it still refuse's to drop, drops for everyone else in the alliance except me.

If someone doesn't have Almace then Requiscat is a good WS for most content a RDM would be meleeing on. RDM has a metric sh!t ton of MND gear that we carry anyway for our enfeebling sets. KoTR is actually decent if you got Excal @95, the 25% bonus helps being it more in line with other WS's, provided your dual wielding.

RDM's only issue is that the lack of great melee gear. Lots of mediocre / good gear, but very few really great pieces. And they keep putting RDM on generic "any mage" gear that just turns into a bunch of situational pieces.

[Karbuncle]

Wish i could even see or find a Morta shout >_>

Edit: Also, RDM was put on some pretty decent Melee/WS gear recently. So its not all bad. I'd have to look it up, But i know they got put on some nice armor recently.

[saevel]

Wish i could even see or find a Morta shout >_>

Edit: Also, RDM was put on some pretty decent Melee/WS gear recently. So its not all bad. I'd have to look it up, But i know they got put on some nice armor recently.

Our LS does Morta x 6 every now and then, depends what else is going on. We've gotten tons and tons of bodies, just me and one of the COR's hasn't got it and it's driving us nuts. Morta really isn't that hard, just needs a solid voidwatch group who aren't on "proc onry" jobs. It piss's me off to no extent when people say they got 6 or 7 jobs "at 99" when I ask them what they can come as. I want to know what they got geared, skilled with full macro sets, not what they threw together to get invites.

Gear wise Morta's body was about it. Everything else is scavenged from other sets or is all jobs. Z.Tiara, Rub pants, Rajas / Tyrants / Mars, Brutal / Suppa, Phasmida Belt, Ath Mantle. Just the generic all purpose DD gear that everyone else gets. It's got nothing that compares with most jobs Emp armor, Thaumas / Phorcy's sets, or Toki / Octh / Athos gear.

Honestly I'm of the opinion that SE should just stick BLU on all the sets RDM is on and stick RDM on all the sets BLU is on, then call it a day. Would instantly fix the gear issue, RDM would still be behind BLU due to RDM needing /NIN where BLU gets /WAR. For now everything feels cobbled and hacked together.

[Demon6324236]

BLU gets to much of the gear RDM should be on. Between VW & NNI on the gear sets BLU got great TP & WS pieces that make RDM's look bad, while RDM still got just plain old mage things that while useful help nothing to do with wielding a blade at all. We have good gear coming to us outside of these sets but the sets are what shine the most. For instance Toci's makes Antares look like crap for CDC however Antares is the best for RDM still when it comes to CDC, while BLU gets Toci's. Much the same with Thaumas & Athos, they are great for DEX and TPing gear, but RDM gets put on Nares & Rubeus which while they are good, are nothing by compare to BLU's sets. And the worst part is so far as magic damage goes BLU wins over RDM by far without the high amount of mage gear because they have fast potent spells.

I love my RDM melee but I have to say sometimes I still feel the shaft when it comes to gear overall. :(

[Daniel_Hatcher]

BLU gets to much of the gear RDM should be on. Between VW & NNI on the gear sets BLU got great TP & WS pieces that make RDM's look bad, while RDM still got just plain old mage things that while useful help nothing to do with wielding a blade at all. We have good gear coming to us outside of these sets but the sets are what shine the most. For instance Toci's makes Antares look like crap for CDC however Antares is the best for RDM still when it comes to CDC, while BLU gets Toci's. Much the same with Thaumas & Athos, they are great for DEX and TPing gear, but RDM gets put on Nares & Rubeus which while they are good, are nothing by compare to BLU's sets. And the worst part is so far as magic damage goes BLU wins over RDM by far without the high amount of mage gear because they have fast potent spells.

I love my RDM melee but I have to say sometimes I still feel the shaft when it comes to gear overall. :(

BLU also gets put on a lot of light armour which doesn't fit the lore of cloth armour, it does however fit the lore of RDM with Cloth and Light Armour, but this is SE so no real shock.

[Babekeke]

Not sure if you're all aware of this little beauty (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Shedir_Manteel). Using it instead of aketon allows you to use a different off-hand instead of Ephemeron, and even drop to a 2% haste feet like Savateur's if you need the acc. Or keep the Ephemeron and swap out Zelus for Brego.

[saevel]

RDM can already hit 25% haste without that sword or a haste body.

Z.Tiara: 8
Brego: 4
Phasmida: 6
Rubeus Spats: 3 (Or cal pants)
Eurus' ledelsens: 4

Aketon is
STR: 10
AGI: 10
Attack: 13
Ranged Attack: 13 (not important to us)
DA: 3
Store TP: 5

Shedir Manteel
Attack +10
Accuracy +10
MAB +5
M.Acc +5
Haste +4%

It's basically just the ACP body with 4% haste. Though it is juicy if it allows you to play with other gear, though there isn't much to play with. You can wear Rager Ledelsens instead of Eurus' for more acc / atk. Though I've never been able to get a pair of nails. Which goes back to what I was saying before, really lacking in the atk / STR / DA departments now.

[saevel]

RDM has been the victim of something known as overbalancing. It's when you attempt to compensate for a job / class's perceived strengths by limiting their choices or making them weaker in multiple areas. This results in a job / class that has no strengths and thus is useless. EQ did this to their hybrids originally. They were weaker in melee then the melee specialists and weaker in magic then their magic specialists, they also had to get nearly x2 the XP to level up as their specialists counterparts. The results were crap class's that contributed nothing to a group and were generally deemed not worth it.

They've limited RDM's options in too many area's simultaneously, the result being a crap job / class that has no strengths. RDM shouldn't be unlimited in all area's, that would be overpowered, but neither should it be severely handicapped in all area's. SE seriously needs to unscrew RDM's gear potential.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Back for much delay, and i feel for ya on that morta body Saevel. I got unlucky for that and there arent many VWNM ls on sylph (or if they are they arent recruiting too hard, or have people id rather not socialize with...) so instead im rocking myself the following build more or less for TP build.

Weapon/weapon/blank/Astrolabe
Zelus/Chiv/brutal/supa
Dux/brego/raja/(fencer/keen)
Aethling/goading/(Calmecac/Rubeus)/Eurus

I opt for the Calmecac for the DA/TA since i lack the STP and DA from Kuzdu in body. That also nets me 24% haste currently. If i can manage a phasmidia i may swap to that but i think i like the STP to offset the Eurus boots. Though i am considering swapping neck for Twilight Torque. That would give me 9% PDT just when autoattacking.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Chiv > rancor/fort/portus(if you have, perhaps even nefarious)

You can use Phasmida/N sash and Dusk+1 feet which is same haste as eurus/goading (2 less STP if that breaks a hit, which I'm fairly certain it did not last I checked).

[Crimson_Slasher]

I have rancor but again was utilizing a little STP. As for the dusk, i am so sick of wearing dusk i opt to not wear em and tough out eurus'. Might do the rancor swap though.

[Babekeke]

RDM can already hit 25% haste without that sword or a haste body.

Z.Tiara: 8
Brego: 4
Phasmida: 6
Rubeus Spats: 3 (Or cal pants)
Eurus' ledelsens: 4

Ok, but that's only 25%, not 'true' haste cap, which you need another 1% for.


Aketon is
STR: 10
AGI: 10
Attack: 13
Ranged Attack: 13 (not important to us)
DA: 3
Store TP: 5

Shedir Manteel
Attack +10
Accuracy +10
MAB +5
M.Acc +5
Haste +4%

It's basically just the ACP body with 4% haste. Though it is juicy if it allows you to play with other gear, though there isn't much to play with. You can wear Rager Ledelsens instead of Eurus' for more acc / atk. Though I've never been able to get a pair of nails. Which goes back to what I was saying before, really lacking in the atk / STR / DA departments now.

It was basically another option for people really struggling to get the aketon to drop, or even find the shouts for it.

[ManaKing]

http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/265028

That's what I'm working on right now. I have everything but the swords, body, and boots. You can change the ammo, neck, or tyrant's ring and still have 15 hits + WS to WS, even if you have no S-TP in your WS set.

If that Aketon had any amount of haste on it I would have built a set around it, but RDM only gets so much melee gear. I personally don't like Zelus because it doesn't have stats on it. I don't think RDMs can afford to give up what you can get on the head piece, in my case 14 Atk and 4 S-TP. At some point I would consider builds that involve Phos Belt +1, but that would probably be around the time I have a Phos Belt +1 and a Kudzu Aketon^^.

[saevel]

Ok, but that's only 25%, not 'true' haste cap, which you need another 1% for.

Gear haste cap ~is~ 25% or 256/1024. Gear tends to lie though as 5% on a gear item is only 51/1024 (4.98%), 8% item being 81/1024 (7.9%) and 4% being 40/1024 (3.9%). Thus 25% worth on gear equip ends up being 24.5% or so. That last half percent rarely is noticeable unless your getting BRD buffs and approaching cap. Since this is a RDM melee discussion, I'm assuming the only haste buff your getting is the haste spell 153/1024 (14.94%). That above set should be 252/1024 or 24.6% haste.

Relying on an extremely rare drop off the harpy is worse then relying on a rare drop off Morta / Neo-Limbus (haven't done the new fights so don't know their drop rates)

[Demon6324236]

True its not great to rely on to cap haste, but its good to try to get, till you have Ephemeron you can put more haste in places such as using a haste body, using Ninurta's/Phasmida/Phos for 1~2% Haste then use Eurus's for the 1% more. The sword itself is great for TPing not only because of the haste but the amazing TP drain, thats the reason why I myself want it.

[Karbuncle]

Kudzu Aketon isn't super rare, Its on the same level as say, Lux Pugio, its decently common, Nothing like Toci's or something. I actually, funnily enough, Did a few VW Wins yesterday, and went 1/3 on Kudzu Aketon, also went 1/1 on Aluh Jambiyah amongst other things, it was a great and productive day.

RDM is now 95, Its getting there... i'm working on its melee set, I want that Acc/atk+10 Haste+4 Body... But i'll get there. Kudzu is my current WS Body, especially for Exenterator <3 - I'm actually using some of the Urja set for Exenterator. I haven't completely my WS Set, But it looks something like... - Things in parenthesis are unknown/haven't given thought too. (Note; Can't equip most of it just yet, but this is planned)


Maat's Cap/ Gorget/ Brutal / Drone
Kudzu / (Urja) / Garrolous / (Rajas)
Atheling / (Crudelis) / Urja / Urja

I haven't seen a lot of information on RDM WS Gear for Exenterator, So i'm just looking at it. also giving thought to using some of the DUX gear, say for one or two pieces, for the STR/Attack Bonus on higher level enemies. I use Garrolous cause its 3STR/3AGI, Not a perfect combination, But i need the fSTR on most enemies, even though an AGI+7 ring would probably be better.

I've given some thought to using Rubeus Slacks as WS legs over Urja, I'd lose a good ~7 AGI, But i gain 13 STR and 10 Accuracy, Which is actually very valuable.

[Neisan_Quetz]

You don't have to absolutely cap gear haste on Rdm (at least not if you're missing brd).

[saevel]

On my RDM I use CDC and Requiscat so AGI is kinda useless to me. RDM has a sad supply of DEX gear, though its good amount of STR gear available. Has a metric sh!t ton of MND gear though, makes Requiscat an amazing WS for T or below mobs.

Morta's body has become an obsession just about. I got toci's and my helka easily enough, got lots of atho's and ogier's, but this ONE item is eluding me. Our LS has done Morta x 6 on four separate weekends, and on each occasion at least 3~4 people get the body, just never me or our COR.

I'll be looking into getting that Limbus body sometime, just to have another option for caping haste out.

[Demon6324236]

I know how you feel with that body. Most VW gear I want for RDM is a pain to get, but for some reason SE thinks I should play DRK because everything pertaining to DRK drops to me within 1~5 kills.

As for the Limbus body setup I would use it as a set for when you need more acc, just like with Rubeus/Calmecac, with Limbus/Khthonios you get acc with some attack, but with Kudzu/Zelus you get attack, STR, and DA.

[ManaKing]

Kudzu Aketon isn't super rare, Its on the same level as say, Lux Pugio, its decently common, Nothing like Toci's or something. I actually, funnily enough, Did a few VW Wins yesterday, and went 1/3 on Kudzu Aketon, also went 1/1 on Aluh Jambiyah amongst other things, it was a great and productive day.

RDM is now 95, Its getting there... i'm working on its melee set, I want that Acc/atk+10 Haste+4 Body... But i'll get there. Kudzu is my current WS Body, especially for Exenterator <3 - I'm actually using some of the Urja set for Exenterator. I haven't completely my WS Set, But it looks something like... - Things in parenthesis are unknown/haven't given thought too. (Note; Can't equip most of it just yet, but this is planned)


Maat's Cap/ Gorget/ Brutal / Drone
Kudzu / (Urja) / Garrolous / (Rajas)
Atheling / (Crudelis) / Urja / Urja

I haven't seen a lot of information on RDM WS Gear for Exenterator, So i'm just looking at it. also giving thought to using some of the DUX gear, say for one or two pieces, for the STR/Attack Bonus on higher level enemies. I use Garrolous cause its 3STR/3AGI, Not a perfect combination, But i need the fSTR on most enemies, even though an AGI+7 ring would probably be better.

I've given some thought to using Rubeus Slacks as WS legs over Urja, I'd lose a good ~7 AGI, But i gain 13 STR and 10 Accuracy, Which is actually very valuable.

Props on the Mandau. You don't see many dagger RDMs just because CDC came out. If I were a Mithra, I'd go for a Mandau instead of an Excalibur, but I'm an Elvaan so I like shiny swords.

Your WS list looks good, if you have the elemental belt I would try that out for a bit and see which one you like more. If you want to be a crazy person, or you just have too much gil, obviously there is the +1 version of the Urjas you are already using. It really is a shame that Aife's Ring has STR on it instead of AGI. Kinda the same way you can't use the Moonshade earring for TP bonus.

[saevel]

Yeah being elvann = good STR / MND / VIT, sh!tty DEX / AGI / INT. I never was fond of daggers, but it definitely is a viable option, especially as there is quite a bunch of gear with attack / acc and AGI on it that RDM can equip.

[Kaych]

Did they fix RDM yet? >_>

[Karbuncle]

Not even sorta

[Demon6324236]

They gave it some more gear that is relatively subpar when compared to other jobs gear. In other words, no.

[saevel]

It got a new body that is somewhat ok and a new CDC head piece that's sorta ok.

Otherwise ... nope not even close.

Ohh and update, I finally got my Aketon and good god this thing is fugly. Looks eye wrenching on an Elvann. LS and I figured it's gotta have some hidden additional effect where it terrorizes the enemy with it's appearance.

[Demon6324236]

Honestly I prefer the look of the Aketon over a Antares or Shedir look... RDM gets no visual appealing gear though in my opinion.

[Rieul]

a big (about 100%) boost to en-spell damage or en-spell cap would be perfect, since it would enable us to do more damage in a way that is specific to our job, and has its quirks, advantages, and even specific gear (Enhancing Sword +1 <Can I have it?>).

and it wouldn't be too much of a change in game mechanics or existing gear requirements. in fact something that could probably be changed and tested for any of the future minor upgrades.

maybe tier III en-spells?

^ +1 to this ^
Maybe even give the tierII effect (tier1 better imo for dualwield) and a unique elemental DoT debuff applied like DNC sambas. Enburn anyone :D

[Karbuncle]

I got bored and remade my RDM melee set since i just got my 99 Mandau (!!). So uh, Here's what I'm using... Sorta. Some pieces I don't own just yet, But are on my Goal list.

TP:
http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/275056

WS(Exent):
http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/275059

WS(Mercy):
http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/275060

For Mercy, my Current WS feet are Savage Gaiters (LoL) with STR+3. For Exent, i'm stuck with NQ Sthira because no one sells HQ Anymore :(. Outside of that, Everything is just about the same. Use Dusk+1 for TP on weak fodder crap, Brego for hard crap.

I have to admit, Mercy is pretty amazing, even unstacked, at 99 now... Just need a bit stronger STR build and I'm golden.

Some upgrades im looking for for Mercy are... Ire Torque +1, Vulcan's Pearl, Pyrosoul Ring, and Cerberus Mantle +1

[Babekeke]

Some upgrades im looking for for Mercy are... Ire Torque +1, Vulcan's Pearl, Pyrosoul Ring, and Cerberus Mantle +1

I'm going out on a limb here, but (unless this is what you're implying) if you're getting rid of atheling, you might as well get 2 vulcan's pearls. Brutals is only cancelling out the waist so total DA when you swap backs would be 3% from body.

[Karbuncle]

I'm going out on a limb here, but (unless this is what you're implying) if you're getting rid of atheling, you might as well get 2 vulcan's pearls. Brutals is only cancelling out the waist so total DA when you swap backs would be 3% from body.

But of course. Honestly, that Brutal is only there because I haven't got my Vulcan's/Flame Pearl, Or it'd be replaced now lol.

[saevel]

I wouldn't be swaping out DA gear like Atheling / Brutal. MS is only 60% STR WSC, that's not high enough to go with "throw as much of X stat at it as possible". The first hit is 3.0, each additional hit is 1.0. As DW your looking at 4.0 with two chances at DAing, one DA increase's damage by 25% (5/4). Also RDM will ~NEVER~ be zeroing out their DA, we have Temper which provides up to +20% DA on it's own. Between Atheling / Brutal and Temper your looking at 28% during WS, the -5 from the belt isn't ideal but your still left with 23% DA during WS.

[Karbuncle]

Having a 60% STR mod is only half the picture. The other half is fSTR. Which is most entirely the reason STR mod WS's are quite fantastic. Its well worth stacking. Especially on higher level Enemies.

Having Temper makes the DA even more replaceable as the diminishing returns on it, Depending on the Value, Would most likely favor the STR further based on Value. In that light, I'd take 4STR over Cut Even Double Attack (5% brutal countering -5% belt).

but, Honestly, I'd have to do the math for it, But there's nothing IM putting on my Belt except Prosilio, its too good to pass up for too many reasons. Cerb Mantle+1 is a fantastic piece, But maybe more so for THF due to THF's high Triple attack being a priority.

IDK, I might rework my WS set to incorporate Brutal's benefit.

[saevel]

Having a 60% STR mod is only half the picture. The other half is fSTR. Which is most entirely the reason STR mod WS's are quite fantastic. Its well worth stacking. Especially on higher level Enemies.

Having Temper makes the DA even more replaceable as the diminishing returns on it, Depending on the Value, Would most likely favor the STR further based on Value. In that light, I'd take 4STR over Cut Even Double Attack (5% brutal countering -5% belt).

but, Honestly, I'd have to do the math for it, But there's nothing IM putting on my Belt except Prosilio, its too good to pass up for too many reasons. Cerb Mantle+1 is a fantastic piece, But maybe more so for THF due to THF's high Triple attack being a priority.

IDK, I might rework my WS set to incorporate Brutal's benefit.

Having already done the math. 5% DA beats 4 STR easily. 4 STR = +2.05 WSC and +1 fSTR. Going from 23 to 28% DA will beat out 3 base damage. If 5% DA is beating on a 100% STR WSC weapon skill then it's beating a 60% STR weapon skill. Assuming Prosillo your talking 18% to 23% DA difference.

Atheling / Brutal are absolute musts unless it's a crit WS, then it's the rancor mantle instead. Prosilio Belt is absolutely amazing on a job with such low attack, of course you should be using it on your waist. Just remember RDM will never be "zeroing out DA" so you get the full +5% from brutal instead of only +3% as the above poster thought. Also remember that one-hit WS's only have 1 chance at DAing while WS's with two or more hits have two chances at DAing. This makes DA worth more to WS's with 2 or more hits.

[Karbuncle]

Thought it was shown some time ago DA/TA can only proc on the first hit of Any WS?

Either way, When i made the WS Set, I quite frankly forgot Temper existed. So Maybe just 1 STR Earring, Saves me the trouble. But for THF, I'm getting 2. No reason to bother with Double Attack on THF when Triple attack is higher priority and more useful.

But RDM, I'll have to rework my train of thought.

[saevel]

Thought it was shown some time ago DA/TA can only proc on the first hit of Any WS?

Either way, When i made the WS Set, I quite frankly forgot Temper existed. So Maybe just 1 STR Earring, Saves me the trouble. But for THF, I'm getting 2. No reason to bother with Double Attack on THF when Triple attack is higher priority and more useful.

But RDM, I'll have to rework my train of thought.

QA / TA can only proc once, DA can proc up to twice. If a QA / TA proc they preclude a DA from procing. This was first noticed by DD's without TA getting weird returns on WS's. Now we've got so much DA available that it happens pretty often. Those extra hits are still subject to acc cap though, so the more you have the less likely they'll all land.

Anytime your in positive DA then Brutal wins, it's only when Brutal's effective DA rate drops under 5 that other items start to beat it. Honestly the STR earring is rarely the best choice in slot, there is a reason nearly everyone use's brutal.

[Karbuncle]

There's a reason a lot of SAMs used to wear Hachiman Domaru too.

Ignorance.

I see you're right with RDM Saev, and to a deeper point, Right for the most part. However, I Think THF is just the exception to the Brutal Rule, as Triple Attack priority over DA, and our high rate of Triple Attack degrades the value of DA Ever so very slightly. Still, Maybe 1 STR Earring is the solution for even THF. Truthfully, I wouldn't be entirely too surprised, But at the same time, It'd just save me a couple Mil, I'd be okay with that.

Just, You have to understand my skepticism when it comes to things like... "Everyones doing it" when we're perpetually surrounded by people who would likely forget how to breath if not for need too. For all we know, Much like the "Double Attack takes priority over Triple Attack", People could have just assumed it was this way X year ago and never bothered to retest it.

Still, That note aside, Saev, Whats your WS Gear like?

[saevel]

Well when I say "everyone" I'm talking about all the math peoples and the gear buildings over at ffxiah.com job forums. You can get pretty detailed gear sets for things like Resolution (100% STR mod) and what not. I purposely exclude the snowflakes and ignorant (proper meaning of the word) from my comparisons.

For RDM I use CDC and Req, toyed with the idea of making a Mandau but I'm a sword lover at heart (sword chucks yo).

Current CDC WS set


head>Brego helm</head>
<neck>Rancor collar</neck>
<lear>Moonshade earring</lear>
<rear>Brutal Earring</rear>
<body>Antares harness</body>
<hands>Warlock's gloves +1</hands>
<lring>Thundersoul ring</lring>
<rring>Rajas ring</rring>
<back>Atheling mantle</back>
<waist>Wanion belt</waist>
<legs>Tumbler trunks</legs>
<feet>Lithe boots</feet>

Requiescat set


<head>Ruach crown</head>
<neck>Soil gorget</neck>
<lear>Moonshade earring</lear>
<rear>Brutal earring</rear>
<body>Heka's kalasiris</body>
<hands>Duelist's gloves +2</hands>
<lring>Aquasoul Ring</lring>
<rring>Aquasoul Ring</rring>
<back>Atheling mantle</back>
<waist>Soil belt</waist>
<legs>Rubeus spats</legs>
<feet>Estoqueur's houseaux +2</feet>

TP Set


<head>Zelus tiara</head>
<neck>Nefarious collar</neck>
<lear>Suppanomimi</lear>
<rear>Brutal Earring</rear>
<body>Kudzu aketon</body>
<hands>Brego gloves</hands>
<lring>Tyrant's ring</lring>
<rring>Rajas ring</rring>
<back>Atheling mantle</back>
<waist>Phasmida belt</waist>
<legs>Rubeus spats</legs>
<feet>Eurus' ledelsens</feet>

Their pretty decent, not much else I can do except the Arch Ultima body coupled with those boots from the Quitrib NM. RDM's gear selection really sucks, very limited DEX options and mediocre TP options. Lots of MND options for Req though, just not enough attack boosts to counter it's -20% penalty. That penalty really needs to go.

[Babekeke]

I have to admit, having only levelled RDM as a P2 whore, I've never melee'd in it, and I doubt I ever even bought Temper, so I forgot it's existence >.>

[Demon6324236]

Just a question rq, which would be better for RDM to TP with, Mars's or Pyrosoul? Current goal is this (http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/260962) so tryin to figure out which ring should be better overall.

[Karbuncle]

Mars by leaps and bounds.

[Demon6324236]

Assumed so, ty!

[Babekeke]

Wouldn't it depend on what you're fighting? And whether you already have enough acc to use att food, or if you're using acc food and over-capping acc already?

[Demon6324236]

Probably but when generally speaking about RDM so far as I know its assumed your wanting more acc, however T3 Zilart VW has had me with capped acc in parse for each kill lately so~ dunno if that really would be better in the end. I would think its still better overall probably because my current set has about~ 20 more acc that that set does without Mars's, I would figure Mars's probably offsets that loss for the most part.

[saevel]

Mars in general is the better choice, or possibly Tyrant's if it helps you lower your hits to 100. WS time is important to anyone doing damage, not just 2h melees.

[Demon6324236]

Yeah, using Tyrants right now actually, just curious about those 2 against eachother because of all you were saying in the other thread about how STR helps 1 handed jobs more. Figured it was worth asking about just to make sure.

[ZeroResolve]

RDM was my 1st and still the job i love the most, Originally was suppose to be a frontline melee mage that could cast and fight but then came the 1st fatal blow to rdm yep you guessed it Refresh. Player base all of a sudden RDM was a main heal and you even equipped a sword you were looked at with scorn so SE jumped on thier nerfing band-wagon and after awhile RDM became obsolete, then the introduction of scholar with much the same job description but not as much on the melee side but the life of that job is approaching the same end. Rdm melee is sword preferred dagger 2nd never ever staff yet was all was allowed by player base.
Then all rdm's heard was a rdm can kill any Mob in game, some yes with about a 2 hour time investment face it with Melee dmg at 99 of a lvl 60 magic dmg at 99 of a lvl 50 blm are you kidding me rdm forte' enfeebling so by the pure love of the job SE made most worthwhile NM's immune new system did nothing more than announce that the mob was immune in case you didnt realize you were doing nothing.
In abyssea RDM melee still not up to par, and with new content coming moving away from that What is to happen to my Favorite job. Suggestion if you are going to completely kill RDM just delete it plz so seeing in job list everyday reminding me how you caved and killed a good job slowly because of pet JP jobs like blm and there whining.

Or actually go back do some useful updates use the supposed test server to reinvigorate a good job think of the satisfaction you will feel afterward when you get a paycheck you have actually earned after 7 years of skating by

[Babekeke]

RDM was my 1st and still the job i love the most

Character: Zeroresolve
World: Quetzalcoatl
Main Job: SCH lv. 99


Then all rdm's heard was a rdm can kill any Mob in game, some yes with about a 2 hour time investment face it with Melee dmg at 99 of a lvl 60 magic dmg at 99 of a lvl 50 blm are you kidding me rdm forte' enfeebling so by the pure love of the job SE made most worthwhile NM's immune new system did nothing more than announce that the mob was immune in case you didnt realize you were doing nothing.

Anyone fluent in jibberish able to translate this?

In abyssea RDM melee still not up to par

With DD atmas, every job's melee is up to par in Abyssea.

[Karbuncle]

Wouldn't it depend on what you're fighting? And whether you already have enough acc to use att food, or if you're using acc food and over-capping acc already?

Generally Speaking for RDM, If you're fighting something thats weak enough that Accuracy is not an Issue, Generally its weak enough fSTR is less of an Issue and the Attack would probably be better.

STR Rings just generally aren't good melee choices, The only one that comes close is Rajas, And thats because It has other awesometastic qualities.

But this has been answered it seems. Also, (not to you) we know RDM melee isn't superb, Thats never really been the point... At least from my point of view.

[ManaKing]

I would agree with Carbuncle. If you are fighting things that you can hit, you would do best to load up on Attack and Store TP, since the gear you would be picking has both of them anyways. If you are trying to fight things harder than that....well they really don't have gear for that for RDM. You'd need STR, Attack, and Accuracy. Any solutions you can come up with, usually sacrifice more attractive Haste/Store TP gear.

[Trangnai]

Character: Zeroresolve
World: Quetzalcoatl
Main Job: SCH lv. 99.

You're assuming that a persons Main Job was there first to be maxed out.

BLU is my main and was my first 75. Only because I wanted to try it and see how it compared to rdm, I liked it so I kept playing it. After I was done I went back to rdm. and I can say I enjoy rdm equally if not more then blu.

[Babekeke]

You're assuming that a persons Main Job was there first to be maxed out.

BLU is my main and was my first 75. Only because I wanted to try it and see how it compared to rdm, I liked it so I kept playing it. After I was done I went back to rdm. and I can say I enjoy rdm equally if not more then blu.

He says it was his first and the job he likes the most.

SMN was my first to 75 because I had quit twice and couldn't afford much gear. SMN was cheap.
Then I levelled BLM because it turned out SMN was very situational, and not much use for the events that my LS did.
Finally I got around to finishing off my favourite job (THF). since it's my favourite, it's the one that I manually selected to show as my main job on the forum. ^^

[Luvbunny]

With so many fun jobs to play and level, it is really hard to pick just one absolute favorites :)

[Crimson_Slasher]

Without a doubt rdm is my main, favorite, and truest calling on ffxi. Even now, when i look at gear for other jobs, i try to select gear that can be shared with rdm first with benefit, and in the event it cant, then i look if it can be shared by my second favorite, DRK, and if thats impossible i look for whats best for the job. Melaco mittens over magmas for pld are one example, sacraficing 1% pdt for more widespread utility as it can be used by more jobs. These are the things i do when selecting gear even. Thats not to say its always the case, but its the driving force for me in FFXI. Its what has driven me to get my Kudzu, my maat's cap, and will drive me into getting a Vara Brigandine and possibly a Bendis hairpin.