On Red Mage melee...

[Duelle]

It was a given that I would post on this, so let's get it done with.

The general state of our class' melee has been questionable for a very long time. We're usually stuck with healing and casting refresh/haste because our other faculties never really provided much of a benefit in parties.

Abyssea gave us atma and gear with a lot of support to our elemental spells (+Magic Attack Bonus and +Magic Accuracy on both gear and atma). The problem is that as a result, our martial side was almost completly neglected in the process (barring a couple of pieces). This is very much a shame, as a class that is themed as a fencer/magic swordsman (look at the name on our gear if you don't believe me) is used as anything but.

I know suggestions have been kicked around and back-and-forth discussions on RDM melee have taken place for years, now. At the same time, nothing has ever been really done to make our melee side stand out in a way that we can use our swords as more than just soloing toys. While I acknowledge one or two individuals who tote the melee side of RDM as workable, I also note anyone wanting to do more than just heal, refresh and haste instantly meets notable resistance because the way our class is designed doesn't really help us say "I want to melee in this party and am justified in wanting to do so". To add insult to injury, we are so associated with heals, Refresh and Haste that I've even encountered individuals who say they'd be fine with RDM melee so long as the heals, refresh and haste are still coming from us.

Personally, we kind of need a way to define the roles we choose to undertake. I can't think of anything we as players can do to accomplish that. I'd think a change in mechanics for our class would be in order.

I have my own wishlist of changes for our class, but I just wanted to get that out of my chest and see how other people feel about the matter. I just think it's wasteful to have a class that dresses like a french musketeer and wields magic and a rapier but is used exclusively to heal and buff.

[rog]

I'm surprised this thread took so long.

Honestly, i think rdm melee is more or less fine how it is. With atma, etc, now, rdm can certainly hold their own with a sword. It's not so much the job, so much as the player base that makes it impossible. Of course some adjustments would help, but i don't think it needs anything major.

[Duelle]

I can understand that the playerbase is a monumental obstacle, but I don't think anyone can change the mind of that many people without some in-game intervention from the creators. I mean, we're talking about a mindset that has been around for several of years.

I also know how Atma has helped us in Abyssea, but I try to think beyond atma and of those leveling the job with no other roles available to them. They can't get away with standing in the front lines the way other jobs can. Not when people expect us to cover other roles in parties (roles that we unfortunately happen to be somewhat effective with).

Part of my issue comes from the lack of weapon skills. We have everything but the bread and butter sword WS natively. The equalizer was Chant du Cigne with DEX atma and a DEX build. I know some think empyrean weapons are easy to obtain, but I still consider it unreasonable that our class has to go several extra steps to start justifying a spot in the front. CDC should be the icing, not the base of the whole cake.

[rog]

I agree entirely about low levels, but honestly, they go so quick, i see little reason to bother trying to come up with a fix.

For 75+, rdm can still do well with evis, if they don't have CDC.

[Duelle]

For 75+, rdm can still do well with evis, if they don't have CDC.I have a natural aversion to daggers, but point taken.

[Trangnai]

While Abyssea and ToTM have been great additions to our melee potential, it hasn't really opened the option in all areas. There are several things that are the cause of such. Honestly the rdm melee role isn't seen as effective due to alot of aspects of the job, playing the role players want you will be constantly forced to stop and cast.

My foremost concern is the lack of gear as our level increases, the few we get are rare and shared by multiple jobs that in most cases, could use the item better. due to such most items are in high demand and most LSes won't give up a piece of gear like that unless you have a DD job leveled. Other options are Augmented items such as the original add-on items and Mage pieces that we get that are lucky enough to have some boost to our melee abilities such as haste. Then of course theres older items such as dusk, rdm is one of the only jobs that can melee that still need dusk for a decent haste set, most other jobs that can use it have other options or only use it cause there lucky enough to have HQ.

In terms of Weapon Skills, while we lack sword Weapon Skills we still get most decent dagger WSes, excluding Dancing Edge sadly, Also keep in mind our best dagger atm is twilight knife, another high demand multi-job item. As for our swords, we have alot more options in terms of weapons, but lack in the Weapon Skill department our best WS by far is Death Blossom which while still being a good weapon skill, lacks the crit bonus of Vorpal Blade, due to such it can't take full advantage of Razed Ruins Like Vorpal, CDC, and for the dagger users Evisceration can. Sangune Blade is also a decent option due to our natural MAB and high INT as well as gear, something which most jobs that have access to the WS don't have, The worst part about it, is the fact that in order to access those Weapon Skills we must sub one of the jobs able to use it, Which means we cannot use /dnc or /nin, losing dual wield and lowering our damage output, as well as losing the additional support options that /dnc provides.

While composure was actually a nice boost to melee, it allows use to cap our accuracy easier, it does nothing for our other stats, most light DDs have some Job Abilities or Traits that give them the boost in dmg to allow them to more easily keep up with the high damage of two-handed weapons, thf has Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, blu has its spells, dnc has flourishes and in some cases steps and Sambas, nin, and dnc also have high levels of dual wield allowing to attack at a much quicker rate with two one handed weapons, mnk also has a similar aspect in the form of Martial Arts for its Hand-to-hand skill, ontop of that these jobs also get access to more haste gear, dex gear, crit rate and crit dmg gear then rdm, rdm has enspells but in most cases its not a high enough boost to be considered, and even with composure, we have to consistently re-cast it.

[Pyrsos]

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?

[Trangnai]

That's a good idea actually, better yet a Job Trait that would give us a Attack Bonus and Accuracy Bonus while having en-spells up, much like Enhancing Sword, as well as giving rdms a higher cap on en-spell dmg and accuracy, allowing them to get the get more out of en-spells then other jobs.

[Pyrsos]

and it would also mean you have to know the way en-spells work (ie: day/weather bonuses, monster weaknes, etc). for me that's one of the most interesting aspects of rdm: you can (in fact you should!) adjust to each fight with your buffs (barspells, spikes) and debuffs / enspells.

most of the other jobs (blm and maybe blu being the exceptions) don't really need to care about elemental relations. and that's part of what makes our job different!

[Trangnai]

You should know how to do that regardless, but sadly, i see alot of rdms that run around casting enthunder and full timing mage gear when meleeing. I would also like to see boosts to rdms support role that increase the usefulness of the job on front lines.

[Duelle]

You should know how to do that regardless, but sadly, i see alot of rdms that run around casting enthunder and full timing mage gear when meleeing. I would also like to see boosts to rdms support role that increase the usefulness of the job on front lines.I think a part of that problem is that the class is not really streamlined for performance in any way. If you want to melee you need a full melee set. If you want to enfeeble at the beginning of a fight you need another set of gear just for that if you're looking to cast something other than Dia or Bio.

I personally don't know how support in the front would work. I've seen ideas for aura effects for Refresh and Haste (thus negating the need to cycle the spells), but not much more.

Built-in traits to boost our stats when under enspell effects is a neat idea, though. I would readily endorse that.

[Andradi]

With Chant Du Cygne and some investment in gear (and atma inside abyssea), there is nothing wrong with the job's melee capacity. In fact, it's probably better than it ever has been. The fact that it requires a 'high-end' magian weapon to be competitive is hardly unique to RDM; in fact, only a few jobs (THF, BST, DRG off the top of my head) don't get left in the dust without their respective empyrean weapon-skills.

The real issue with RDM at this point in the game is lack of high level cures which leaves it useless as a healer (and to a lesser extent, lack of trigger options.)

[Trangnai]

I think a part of that problem is that the class is not really streamlined for performance in any way. If you want to melee you need a full melee set. If you want to enfeeble at the beginning of a fight you need another set of gear just for that if you're looking to cast something other than Dia or Bio.

I personally don't know how support in the front would work. I've seen ideas for aura effects for Refresh and Haste (thus negating the need to cycle the spells), but not much more.

Built-in traits to boost our stats when under enspell effects is a neat idea, though. I would readily endorse that.

Well of course, and thats exactly how the job should be, another thing is, the haste-refresh cycle is honestly what kills our ability to melee for the most part rdm should be able to fill whatever is needed.

in abyssea refresh for the most part isnt needed, and whm can cast haste, for 6 man pts outside or alliances outside you should only need to refesh a whm, and the whm should be able to haste, of course thats saying that your in the DD/melee pt of the Alliance. As for aura spells, a stat booster would be nice, i.e. attack or str something of the like. but rdm has usualy been a support role, but that may also be due to our lack of luster in other roles. which is probalby where it should change as well :P.

[Duelle]

The fact that it requires a 'high-end' magian weapon to be competitive is hardly unique to RDM; in fact, only a few jobs (THF, BST, DRG off the top of my head) don't get left in the dust without their respective empyrean weapon-skills.The difference is that other melee have tools to get them by in the leveling process, for one. DRK is pretty much set once they get guillotine and spinning slash. SAM is set when Yuki/Kasha/Gekko enter the picture (and even before that enpi is pretty strong and makes easy skillchains to boot). DRG gets pentathrust baseline. BST gets rampage to hold them over until they can get Primal Rend. WAR has Sturmwind and then Raging Rush.

On sword we have Fast Blade and...erm...yeah. We have to complete an empyrean to get another sword weapon skill worth using. That's way more than any of the above classes have to deal with. They also do not have to deal with perception issues and people expecting them to do something completely different.

The funny thing about the weapon skills for sword is that Vorpal Blade has the potential to be decent on RDM with proper gear and atmas, but we have no native access to it, which means that a standard DD set up (/NIN or /DNC) is going without it and is worse off as a result.

[Trangnai]

The difference is that other melee have tools to get them by in the leveling process, for one. DRK is pretty much set once they get guillotine and spinning slash. SAM is set when Yuki/Kasha/Gekko enter the picture (and even before that enpi is pretty strong and makes easy skillchains to boot). DRG gets pentathrust baseline. BST gets rampage to hold them over until they can get Primal Rend. WAR has Sturmwind and then Raging Rush.

On sword we have Fast Blade and...erm...yeah. We have to complete an empyrean to get another sword weapon skill worth using. That's way more than any of the above classes have to deal with. They also do not have to deal with perception issues and people expecting them to do something completely different.

The funny thing about the weapon skills for sword is that Vorpal Blade has the potential to be decent on RDM with proper gear and atmas, but we have no native access to it, which means that a standard DD set up (/NIN or /DNC) is going without it and is worse off as a result.

This is true, we don't get a good WS till 73-75 and even then its not really as good as needed, Dagger rdms get the better end of the stick sense evisceration is better then Death Blossom rdms don't get a good WS for sword Natively and the worse part is, SE keeps pushing rdms to use Sword (see ToTM) but Doesn't give them a worthwhile WS without subbing war, drk, blu, or pld and hence losing our DoT and TP gain. Pre-73 even dagger is useless and we only have Fast Blade to deal damage with, we can't even get access to the decent Elemental WSes without subbing the jobs mentioned above.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Furthermore, Sanguine blade is rather lethal on RDM, but again, no access.

[Seriha]

I'm sure me popping my head in will be of no shock to some. I've been for RDM melee improvements for a long time now, and have been both critical and disappointed in SE's choices for the job's growth over the years. Personally, I feel like they could have taken RDM multiple ways, but instead have almost been too cautious despite (in)direct nerfs and preventative measures to curb some of the old exploits that allowed solos the devs may not have intended under the 75 cap. Nonetheless, the game's heading in a new direction, but one where many RDMs feel like they're being left behind for whatever reason.

Specific to melee, numerous issues have snowballed against RDM over the years. I'm going to note these and then go into more specifics.

1) Lack of Hybrid Gear and/or active inventory space.
2) Lack of Hybrid Foods.
3) Casting burden.
4) Role Identity.
5) Lack of native melee traits.
6) Poor native weaponskill selection.
7) Bugs or unwanted "features".

With the bases outlined above, I'm now going to get more specific on the listed points. No doubt this will rouse opinions for and against things I'll say, as such has happened quite a bit over the years. I'm just going to preempt it all and say that RDM melee is not "fine" until people allow without giving you the third degree. Meanwhile, I also understand some favor the backline role the job has taken up over the years. While I feel some would be better off looking into more specialized jobs for those perks, or even hop to SCH come 99, I'm not trying to make it go away. In part, I may even cover issues that style has while going through this list.

1) Lack of Hybrid Gear and/or active inventory space.

We all know the game's macro system is limited. To make the best of any action, we're forced to juggle our needs against situational equipment. For a RDM looking to cover everything (just in case), they will need numerous equipment sets ranging from INT/MATK for nuking, MND for enfeebling potency, a TP set of varying levels of Haste/ATK/ACC, and WS sets to give those more oomph. That's not everything, but just a start. Problem is, being limited to 80 active inventory spots means RDMs will have a harder time getting the most bang for their buck. Hybrid gear is largely non-existent, but of what few decent pieces there are out there, Morrigan's Robe probably stands out as one of the better items that qualify for this purpose. Its only weakness is a lack of Haste, but who knows, maybe the pending synergy augments could enable it.

Either way, RDM needs more gear like that that isn't grossly weaker than more specialized pieces. That's typically the fault in more mediocre or even terrible hybrid pieces like the level 72 JSE. With better gear consolidation, RDMs will have more freedom to act as battle dictates. Personally, if I wanted to melee, I'd have to swap out a dozen mage pieces into my satchel to bring out the melee stuff. Doing this frequently is tedious and irksome.

And as an added point, however this gear manifests needs to be both readily accessible and created at varying strengths throughout level progression. RDM melee should not begin at 75, 90, or whatever arbitrary level a must have piece of gear can be equipped.


2) Lack of Hybrid Foods.

Just like RDM has multiple equipment needs, we don't really have the luxury of food that tries to tackle that, either. Mage food has been universally laughable for a long time now, offering only MP, INT, MND, hMP, or -Enmity. None of these will help you if you're looking to melee. On the other hand, Pizza's ATK/ACC won't help you nuke or land your enfeebles any better. A food that adds ATK, ACC, MACC, and MATK all in one would be welcome. I'd also lobby for more potent MACC/MATK foods for backliners or other jobs like BLM.


3) Casting burden.

This one is probably one of the worst. Call it the Refresh cycle, the Haste cycle, needing 30 seconds to self-buff before engaging a mob when solo, or whatever. RDM casts a lot, and each time you cast means you're not able to swing. Those familiar with parsers will know that the damage of party members can be logged and reported for varying purposes. When you can only swing a fraction of the time relative to more established DDs, you're going to naturally fall behind in the pecking order. Multiply this against being a weaker physical DD to begin with and its no surprise RDM melee is shunned even when someone is trying to do it right with all the proper gear.

Now, Composure helped this a little, but this only applies to buffs to ourselves before you get into the Empyrean gear. Frankly, I think it's a slap in the face that a RDM has to get the +2 Set and the Cape just to start alleviating the casting burden on others. I'd very much simply want the Composure duration bonus to extend to EVERYONE with the Empyrean set then being tweaked to add Haste (4/9/14/20%) and ATK (10/15/20/30) to its Composure bonus. This even starts us toward our needed hybrid gear, but I still hate the idea of limiting RDMs to the +2 set just to get started or gain some footing in the DD rat race.

Other alternative ideas involve Enhancing Magic duration being boosted by your skill level, or an old idea of mine prior to Composure was a tiered trait that upped durations 25/50/75/100% that other jobs could've subbed RDM for to get up to the 50% tier. I'd still be for these, both at once even, and especially if they did stack with Composure. Nobody likes casting Refresh or Haste repeatedly, let along being yelled at by their fellow players if either drops for a particular period of time.

The last idea was what some of called the Combat Caster trait. Basically, the melee timer would still tick while casting, just at a slower rate that could tier in speed. All hybrid jobs (RDM/PLD/DRK/BLU) could receive this trait. No need to be greedy.


4) Role Identity.

What is RDM good for? Back in the day, people would claim they were better at being WHM than a WHM. Nowadays, that's not really the case in Abyssea and with all the other nifty toys they've received over time. Of course, as a nuker, RDM also competes with SCH, BLM, the BLM automaton, and select BLUs. Personally, I felt RDM should have stayed off the T4 nukes in favor of melee buffs to offer some distinction from SCH, who come 99 will basically be the RDM of 75 on top of all the things they have and got from the cap increases.

That said, RDM needs things that make them unique, that would make their melee wanted even if it wasn't the best possible damage. Sadly, some of this thunder was lost with the implementation of DNC as a job. Just look all their steps: various enfeebles that would've been perfect for the RDM main, but really, the only thing worse than the Cast Burden is stacking JA delay on top of that if you /DNC, and in turn are giving up precious WS frequency for what few steps and flourishes you can use. In part, SE tried to be unique with the T2 Enspells and their -resists, but they're both too weak and too pointless in general play. Where they may have been useful, people would never want a RDM around a harder mob due to arguments of TP feed and their inefficient damage.

So, what can you do to make RDM stand out either individually or at least support the party without feeling like a slave to it?


5) Lack of native melee traits.

This point is fairly obvious. You could call Composure a modest ACC bonus, but other jobs like DNC get that in tiers to greater benefit. Generally, RDM could benefit from at least the T1 traits for ACC, ATK, and maybe DEF. I'd like for more unique things that somehow tie into your active enspell like Enfire giving +ATK, but overall, it's hard to justify RDM's melee presence when they have to use a subjob to get any of the above three. Shield Master with F grade skill doesn't count. By the way, bump RDM's Shield and Parry to at least C. And give the job Fencer already.


6) Poor native weaponskill selection.

Other posters hinted at this earlier in the thread, but like with certain traits, limiting RDM to specific subjobs to gain access to better WS isn't the best move when you consider all that's working against it for now. Sword WS pre-Vorpal Blade aren't really the best. Death Blossom wasn't as good as VB and good WS wasn't seen again until Sanguine Blade and then CDC. If you're going to insist on keeping things like this, then at least tweak DB to crit and for a future WS, give RDM a null-elemental as good or better than Sanguine that shifts element based on your current enspell. Doesn't need to do anything fancy, but if it can guarantee at least 1k outside of Abyssea, I'd call it a win.

(Continued in next post due to 10k char limit)

[Seriha]

7) Bugs or unwanted "features".

A) Tier II Enspells: Bug?

Unlike their T1 equivalents, T2 enspells have their accuracy and damage determined on-strike as opposed to on-cast. Demanding your RDMs to melee in +Enhancing gear is not a means to endear them to others. For the most part, we're better off sticking to T1s where multi-hitters also trigger the added effects more often and more accurately.

B) Enfeeble Immunities: Feature?

I can understand Bind and Gravity at least building resistances to curb solos, but when you consider that, even with A+ Enfeebling, RDM's Enfeebling selection is rather limited. Every time a mob is immune to a debuff, that selection dwindles even further. When I earlier hinted at directions SE could take RDM, a more dedicated enfeebler was among them. As of now, BLU actually has a wider variety of debuffs than RDM, and some are even AoE.

C) Accession: Feature?

When the level cap increase was announced and people started talking about how subjobs would open up more for everyone, Accession from /SCH was one of those RDM dreams. Nevermind the fact RDMs have wanted the ability to AoE their buffs for years, now we at least had the chance with /SCH. And then you block Haste. And Refresh II won't work with it. Not nice, SE. Not nice. This was one of those things we looked forward to to help alleviate the Cast Burden.

D) Merit Spells: Feature?

This isn't a RDM problem specifically. I'm just going to say that all merit spells and abilities should be available to everyone with the proper level (and scroll used). Instead, these merits should be changed to affect potency and such. Blind II, Bio III, and to a lesser degree Phalanx II (thanks to /SCH) are often neglected by RDMs because they're just not worth giving up precious merits for.








I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but it's late for me and I think I've brought up most of the glaring points. In the end, I'm not personally looking to make RDM the best DD out there. I just want both a reason to engage in a party and not be eaten alive by the ridicule or passive aggressive demeanor of my peers. You can make it work. I know you can. You just have to try and not cut corners.

[Trangnai]

To respond to the only post in this thread longer then mine :P:

1) I have to agree with this, back when Abyssea first started, Empyrean gear wasn't anything but what i hoped it would be Seeing other jobs gear first when scars came out and even before that with the neck pieces, I was disappointed. Rather then seeing what I wanted (a lil bit of everything but enough to make it worthwhile) we got lolwannabeblm or whatever the heck it was they were trying to give us. We not only lack in Hybrid gear but melee gear in general, i know i use at least 60 slots just for gear, thats basic TP gear, WS, Enfeebling, Enhancing, and Weapon Choices depending on the situation. and considering i don't have most the gear i would like, you can imagine that over time that will increase. I keep my staffs and primary nuking/healing gear in my Mog Sack when Melee and Vise-versa.

2) Really foods only enhance what a job can do even more, most of the time i don't waste the money for food on exp. But thats just personal choices.

3) I'm sure every red mage would agree, this has always been, composure helped alot with this, but its only useful when when not being stuck in the haste and refresh cycle, which players have forced our party role to become. to even be able to do both roles semi-effectively, you need the entire empyrean +2 set.

4) Most people seem to forget this game existed before Aht Urhgan, And I honestly believe only when the game was first released were we able to play a melee role in parties, with the addition of Refresh and the "Cycle" we were permanently pushed to the back lines, Being used solely to relieve whms of Mana, back up healing, refreshing and hasting. When ToAU was released, we revealed whms of there role as healer entirely due to the weaker mobs to exp on along with the additional suppor brd and cor could give to a pt, rdms less effecent cures/mana pool was more then enough when it wasent there was convert. rdm also had sleeps to back up brd and cor in there pulling/sleeping duites if needed and Divine Seal with /whm allowed then to resotre there HP when they needed to convert or need an extra boost to there heals due to these tools rdm outshined whm in exp/merit pt healing roles and stayed this way till today, with Abyssea.

5) Alot of good ideas have been pushed for this already. I'll stick to those.

6) I still don't see why SE has limited our Weapon Skill Selection, for the skills we have in dagger and sword, as well as being one of the few jobs that Utilize either of these as our main weapon. There is honestly no reason we should not have access to most if not all Weapon Skills usable by the main sword/dagger users in the game


(Cont next post.)

[Trangnai]

7) A) According to what i've heard there is a bug that would occur due to allowing tier 2s to proc on multi-hit due to the way dmg is calculated. The Method used for it (without the increasing dmg) was used back at the beginning of the game for tier 1s as well. However the idea of increasing the dmg from the enspell overtime insead of just doubling the effect to begin with is where the heart of the issue stands but i geuss SE thought that would be broken, like everything else they've nurfed rdm.

B) Once again, SE's fear of rdm being overpower has caused it to be underpowered, however I don't see why SE doesn't release more enfeebles for rdm to use, giving us an additional use, a use that with abyssea, seems useless sadly.

C) I woulden't use /sch when melee anyway, but the point is still there.

D) Merits are about choosing how you want to take your job, but i agree, the spells shouldn't need to be gotten by merits, it should only increase what is already there.

[Seriha]

Merits are more of an illusion of choice. For a lot of jobs, there's simply stuff that's good and stuff that isn't. While this philosophy really wouldn't change even if all spells and abilities were naturally progressed, if we had a generic Slow potency+, for example, it could make both the T1 and T2 versions better if for whatever reason you're being more frugal about your MP or alternating between timers due to fast kills or even resists.

Anyway, I wouldn't use /SCH if the intent was to mainly melee, either. Though, if I'm out in the field and melee wouldn't result in party wipe, there shouldn't be miles of difference between /SCH and /NIN or /WAR. Giving up Dual Wield or Berserk/Aggressor/DA/ATK Bonus is bad enough, but losing out on EX WS is just more salt on the wound.

[Mog]

The fencer job should atleast get the Fencer job trait that's been given to other random jobs instead... ;)

[Tamarsamar]

The fencer job should atleast get the Fencer job trait that's been given to other random jobs instead... ;)

This.

Upon the first level cap increase, the devs thought it would be funny to give a job trait called "Fencer" to Warrior and Beastmaster . . . but not the Fencing-flavored job. Upon the second level cap increase, to add insult to injury, they give it to Bard before us (and give us Magic Burst Bonus the same update . . . ). What do they give us the update after that? Shield Mastery, which is particularly offensive to me since I already favor the use of RDM/PLD (Auto-Refresh and EX Sword Weapon Skills on the same sub is delicious) and would've had that particular Trait, anyway.

Thanks to the gifts of the Magians, though, as well as other equipment introduced over the updates, we can most definitely hold our own physically, and the last update in particular gave us a lot of Enfeebling Magic Skill to make staves further in to things of the past (as they darn well should be). These, in combination with amazing updates to our Enfeebling side such as Saboteur or Break, as well as the fact that we no longer play the role of the game premier healers (as we darn well shouldn't), means that Red Mage as a job, as far as I'm concerned, is just about completed, and seriously doesn't need a whole lot else.

All I ask is that the devs have the decency to acknowledge Red Mage's background in Final Fantasy XI and give the job Fencer already, instead of perpetually teasing us with the Job Trait's name.

(Though Enspells III as our level 99 merits certainly wouldn't hurt, either.)

[GERM]

Yes I was very disappointed in seeing what the AF3 +2 gave the RDM, I liked the increase to duration of enhancing spells but the way the RDM has been forced to play in the past this is long overdue and especially a wasted set for the RDM. Even with SS and Phalanx and Protect4 the defense rating for RDM is still lacking giving their set of combat skills. As noted before a RDM has been given the concept of a Fencer and yet SqEnix gives RDM shield Mastery with a crappy shield skill? That is insulting where you would think a fencer would have a higher parring skill then a RDM has and augmented with tactical parry would of been the way I think it should of went. En-spells need to be proced on 2nd hit it is what gives the RDM their DoT even with lacking of WS I can hit for a single hit damage with an enspell that can compare to some DD's so why gimp a natural thing?
Also the role in which RDM has been forced into is just annoying, yes RDM has refresh and if that wasn't a spell that could be distributed to anyone in the group how many people do you think would RDM would be as wanted with its limited amount of MP and only haste? It took me forever to get a party (Beore ToAU days) for rdm betwen 38 and 41. After that there is nothing but the annoying "Party do you need it?" when your not even looking for one.
I agree with everyone on this SqEnix needs to do something to make the RDM stand out even with its lacking combat skills their spells mixed with their melee should be the concept SqEnix needs to go with to finish out the next 9 levels. Though most of the levels have been wasted on what other people think a RDM should be able to do those of us that play RDM outside of a merit PT should have the option to be seen as multi tasking jobs like it was intended and not just a cycle job. Improve the natural WS so I don't have to sub War for savage blade because I dont have blossom or CDC because the need for nyzule isle has been wiped from existence since abyssea, thank god its going to be revived with the synergy augments in the next update.
Im hoping that the AF3 gets a +3 version also in the next few updates that will allow this job to have a melee side that compliments its ability to self enhance and enfeeble.;.

[Karumac]

I always saw Fast Cast as something that lets you cast spells in between getting smacked in the face anyways.

[Mirage]

Aren't you guys like one of the most versatile jobs in the entire game already?

If you get this, I want my war to tank at 95% the efficiency of a nin or pld :(

[rog]

Aren't you guys like one of the most versatile jobs in the entire game already?

If you get this, I want my war to tank at 95% the efficiency of a nin or pld :(
Jack of all trades, master of none, etc.

Rdm is not currently a very useful job. The only time we shine is when it's important to have one person able to dd, tank, heal, buff, and debuff, all at once. This of course only happens when soloing. Outside of that, our healing is nearly useless. dd is ok, but nothing special. Tanking is above average, but with whm curebots with infinite mp that isn't important. Buffs and debuffs are both fairly unimportant. Rdm is nearly useless in a group.

Honestly, in a group, our dd is probably our most useful contribution. And we're really just an average-ish dd.

[RaenRyong]

NIN and WAR both already tank better than PLD anyway :p

[wildsprite]

honestly I would like to see more tanking gear for RDM, I dont like how SE has basically screwed the ability for the RDM to keep hate, it makes it harder to kita certain mobs as well, cmon SE let us have better gear to tank with, RDM is a fully capable tank job if they can keep hate from the mobs

[rog]

honestly I would like to see more tanking gear for RDM, I dont like how SE has basically screwed the ability for the RDM to keep hate, it makes it harder to kita certain mobs as well, cmon SE let us have better gear to tank with, RDM is a fully capable tank job if they can keep hate from the mobsYeah....

They killed rdm's ability to tank because they don't want us to tank.

[Tamarsamar]

honestly I would like to see more tanking gear for RDM, I dont like how SE has basically screwed the ability for the RDM to keep hate, it makes it harder to kita certain mobs as well, cmon SE let us have better gear to tank with, RDM is a fully capable tank job if they can keep hate from the mobs

This also.

Shame that, in between mediocre generation of damage, healing, and raw enmity, we couldn't make a mob try to kill us even if our lives depended on it.

That Black Magic Enfeeble enmity nerf was all kinds of uncalled for. I'd make a thread on it, but I'm starting to wonder if anybody actually does care about tanking any more (because if they don't, such a thread would be mostly moot) . . .

[wildsprite]

I dont honestly see why, I mean in a party situation if the tank is getting pounded by too much at once we used to be able to take a mob or 2 off em till they were ready for it, I used to do that a lot if we got links, I got called a crazy Mithra RDM who was Incredibly Tough because I kept fighting a mob when the rest of my party zoned, they came back and I was just there slowly beating the mob, they all thought it was great

[wildsprite]

so anyway, I just got my RDM to 90 not long ago, what is the best melee gear avail for that level? suggestions?

[wildsprite]

This also.

Shame that, in between mediocre generation of damage, healing, and raw enmity, we couldn't make a mob try to kill us even if our lives depended on it.

That Black Magic Enfeeble enmity nerf was all kinds of uncalled for. I'd make a thread on it, but I'm starting to wonder if anybody actually does care about tanking any more (because if they don't, such a thread would be mostly moot) . . .
I do care, I used to admire my ex roommate and her ability to tank, I still want to be able to tank

[Aliekber]

It would be nice if melee were an option without having to get Badelaire+2/Almace, but I don't really see it changing this late in the game. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

[Duelle]

Aren't you guys like one of the most versatile jobs in the entire game already?

If you get this, I want my war to tank at 95% the efficiency of a nin or pld :(It'd be true if we were used in different ways while partying. That isn't really the case because our melee and nukes never matched the amount of benefit a party gets from having us heal and buff others. That's largely where the problem comes from and why all the melee frustration for RDM exists. The fact that we are melee-themed yet can't melee at all due to how our mechanics have affected others' expectations of us never really helped.

On the topic of tanking, tanking as a whole would require a bigger amount of changes to be made viable again for RDM. We don't have a way to constantly generate emnity, which is what needs to be looked at without reverting the emnity nerf for enfeebles. Someone should probably make a thread on RDM tanking, though. I'd like to stick to the OP topic as much as we can.

[rog]

It would be nice if melee were an option without having to get Badelaire+2/Almace, but I don't really see it changing this late in the game. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
Depends on what you want to accomplish. You can melee just fine with evis. Obviously it's not up their with the empyrean, but it's still acceptable. If acceptable is good enough for you, then there's no problem.

[Duelle]

Merits are more of an illusion of choice. For a lot of jobs, there's simply stuff that's good and stuff that isn't. While this philosophy really wouldn't change even if all spells and abilities were naturally progressed, if we had a generic Slow potency+, for example, it could make both the T1 and T2 versions better if for whatever reason you're being more frugal about your MP or alternating between timers due to fast kills or even resists.Personally, merits as a whole were poorly-thought out for RDM and BLM (to a degree). They introduced things like fire magic accuracy yet no one bothers with that because everyone knows Ice accuracy gets more bang for your buck due to Blizzard always being our highest tier nuke and paralyze and bind benefiting from that merit. Were it not for the fact that touching merits in any way would force people to remerit, I'd be all for condensing some of those things and tossing in something a little better.

[wildsprite]

I started a RDM tanking thread, please post any future comments about RDM tanking there

[Aliekber]

Depends on what you want to accomplish. You can melee just fine with evis. Obviously it's not up their with the empyrean, but it's still acceptable. If acceptable is good enough for you, then there's no problem.

Well, I meant without the playerbase at large blowing a gasket over it. If the WoE changes they're supposedly implementing turn out to be any good, I'll likely build a Badelaire +2 as-is (I do have every job that can use it, after all), but I can guarantee you people will still complain if I use it on RDM (but would be fine with me standing there doing literally nothing).

[rog]

Well, I meant without the playerbase at large blowing a gasket over it. If the WoE changes they're supposedly implementing turn out to be any good, I'll likely build a Badelaire +2 as-is (I do have every job that can use it, after all), but I can guarantee you people will still complain if I use it on RDM (but would be fine with me standing there doing literally nothing).
That's why you ignore the playerbase, and do what is most productive, regardless of complaints.

[Duelle]

That's why you ignore the playerbase, and do what is most productive, regardless of complaints.While at the same time doing nothing to change what people expect of us.

[Aliekber]

That's why you ignore the playerbase, and do what is most productive, regardless of complaints.

Fair enough.

[Mirage]

I f you want to make the playerbase fine with it, you'd have to make rdm close to what the best non-2handed job in the game can do :(

[rog]

While at the same time doing nothing to change what people expect of us.
I don't think that's really a problem. We certainly won't be invited to melee, so what's wrong with being expected to heal/haste/whatever in between swings?

[Aliekber]

I f you want to make the playerbase fine with it, you'd have to make rdm close to what the best non-2handed job in the game can do :(

Either that or give them some non-damage-related utility for being up front (think THF's TH3 enhancements). It's basically wishful thinking at this point, though.

[Duelle]

I f you want to make the playerbase fine with it, you'd have to make rdm close to what the best non-2handed job in the game can do :(Not really. At the simplest, most basic level it requires adjustments to composure, enspells and access to more weapon skills. None of that will have us wiping the floor with the other DDs.

Another thing to consider is that people are attached to the expectation for heals, refresh and haste because in part they're desperate for those. Desperation and the lack of healing classes in this game had a hand in our being shackled to the back row. That being said, I'm of the opinion the community needs to be weaned off cure/refresh/haste to allow us to start taking up more roles should be choose to. Again, we as players are not enough to bring about such a change, hence why I call on the developers to do something about it.

We're also heavily disadvantaged in terms of gear because while people are capping haste and accuracy with a couple of pieces and thus are able to focus more on attack, double/triple attack and other goodies, we still have to scrape everything we can together just to reach haste cap. We're limited on what we can use to boost accuracy, and that doesn't cover some of the other stats melee value that they have a much easier time getting. It'd be one thing if we were on stuff like Twilight Belt, Epona's Ring, the pink light DD set and so on, but we are not on any of those. Our only sword outside of magians is a sword that drops from a zone boss everyone hates doing. Our "best" gear set is now several echelons below what everyone else can get.

[rog]

Not really. At the simplest, most basic level it requires adjustments to composure, enspells and access to more weapon skills. None of that will have us wiping the floor with the other DDs.
yeah, i doubt that. People don't change their minds of the nonsense they've believed for years easily.

[Mirage]

to be more specific, I think RDM could probably get a melee boost, but that unless they're close to a "real" melee, the rdm is still considered a wasted party spot because a melee could have taken their place and you'd get a party that gets more exp/hour. I'm also saying that even if this is just a very slight decrease in exp/h, the player base is simply not going to be cool with it.

and if they do get a melee boost that will let them melee and backup-heal or whatever other backup duties they could do, while still lettign the party get the same exp/hour as if he was on heal/support duty only, we're going to get a lot of mad melees who want their jobs to be able to solo lv95 NMs.

[wildsprite]

yeah, i doubt that. People don't change their minds of the nonsense they've believed for years easily.
yeah I have high doubts the people who have decided RDM shouldnt melee will ever change their minds,
people forget things like the en spells don't give mobs TP either, so I see less RDMs actually use them when they should, killing the mob faster while feeding it less TP is nice

[Duelle]

and if they do get a melee boost that will let them melee and backup-heal or whatever other backup duties they could do, while still lettign the party get the same exp/hour as if he was on heal/support duty only, we're going to get a lot of mad melees who want their jobs to be able to solo lv95 NMs.I'd feel no pity for anyone who feels that way. I have two other melee jobs at high level, and while the change in play is notable between, say, my DRK and my RDM, I also acknowledge there's a difference in how the classes are designed.

Something I was kicking around that no one seemed to like was the idea of splitting what a RDM could do in the front and in the back. Say, heal and buff while in the back, melee and enfeeble while in the front. I've never been in favor of just having melee mixed with heals/refresh/haste because that creates redundancy while at the same time causing us to lose potential melee time due to casting cycles. It's certainly doable, but not fun and casting-intensive.

[wildsprite]

Something I was kicking around that no one seemed to like was the idea of splitting what a RDM could do in the front and in the back. Say, heal and buff while in the back, melee and enfeeble while in the front. I've never been in favor of just having melee mixed with heals/refresh/haste because that creates redundancy while at the same time causing us to lose potential melee time due to casting cycles. It's certainly doable, but not fun and casting-intensive.

I like this idea

[rog]

Ehhhh. I dunno. Maybe. I'd need more details to really say.

[Pyrsos]

i still think better enspells would really fix a ton of problems. if a meleeing rdm could make the same amount of damage per hit as other DDs, but at the same time give less TP to the mob, enfeeble it, make use of weather/day bonuses and weaknesses, all at the same time... that's a DD i'd want to invite!

and btw people do change their minds. aby has changed the value and use of lots of jobs in the game (MNK, THF, NIN as main). we could probably change this if we got the tools.

[rog]

and btw people do change their minds. aby has changed the value and use of lots of jobs in the game (MNK, THF, NIN as main). we could probably change this if we got the tools.
It's not the same. Those jobs were never considered useless, or to hurt more than they help.

[Duelle]

Ehhhh. I dunno. Maybe. I'd need more details to really say.Admitedly, the idea never really fleshed out due to lack of discussion.

A bare bones way to look at it is that melee RDM would have an easier time enfeebling a mob than a back row RDM (maybe through increased accuracy, shorter cast times, shorter recasts, longer durations pre-saboteur). Conversely, a back row RDM would have an easier time supporting a party than a front row RDM. That could create enough room to start developing both roles in a way that both are beneficial to a group in their own way (and allowing some of those coveted adjustments to our melee side to start coming our way), while at the same time not stopping either role from being able to cast the opposing spell (a melee RDM could still cast single target buffs like we currently do, while a back row RDM would still be able to enfeeble, just without the longer durations, shorter cast and recast and increased accuracy, for example). Sadly, due to lack of fleshing out, I never did figure out how nukes would come into play.

[rog]

a melee RDM could still cast single target buffs like we currently do, while a back row RDM would still be able to enfeeble, just without the longer durations, shorter cast and recast and increased accuracy, for exampleSounds decent enough to me.

I can't even begin to imagine SE agreeing though. Stances MUST come with a downside.

[Trangnai]

The issue with rdm melee is simple, the jobs frontline and backline skills are unbalanced.

- We lack High damage Weapon Skills more so on the sword side, the weapon which we have more access to.

- We lack the Light DD gear which all other non-2handed jobs are accustom to.

- We lack something to make our job unique on the frontlines, to make it more wanted, and increase damage output.

First off, if blu can have access to both Melee and Mage gear, why can't rdm? Our Melee gear choices are low I think and our skill will be more reflected in our gear then anything else, While a melee role is possible I believe that the playerbase isnt seeing it due to lack of gear/Abilities/Traits that "melee" jobs get. But yet, we get all sorts of Mage Abilities, Traits and Gear. We are suspoed to be a "Jack of ALL trades" not a jack of one trade, its upsetting that blu outshines rdm in the aspect of what a jack of all trades should be. Blu and rdm should play Similar Roles, but preform it in different ways.

[wildsprite]

Blu and rdm should play Similar Roles, but preform it in different ways.

I totally agree, its almost like RDM is SE's redheaded stepchild that they hate

[RaenRyong]

- We lack High damage Weapon Skills more so on the sword side, the weapon which we have more access to.

Minor thing here; Chant du Cygne is very powerful even on RDM but obviously that's not something most people will have.

[Trangnai]

Minor thing here; Chant du Cygne is very powerful even on RDM but obviously that's not something most people will have.

Yes, but a job that should be able to melee shouldn't need an Empyrean Weapon to be allowed to consider doing it. post 75 and even before that, we have more swords available then daggers. We should have the skills to utilize those weapons natively, and not require a very time consuming weapon to be completed to do so, this is anything but a minor issue as lack of these things have been an issue with rdm for years. It's been mentioned several times that CDC should be a boost to a jobs ability, not what makes it.

[Silvers]

I agree with a lot of what is being said about making RDM more balance, and distinctive at the same time. I also question the thought of how SE tags RDM as a fencer/duelist (a sword specialist), yet it is so limited in sword weapon skills. I also question the sword cap with it's fencer label. I think composure should mod weapon skill ratings instead of accuracy. Maybe it also should allow the use all WS's you could only access by WAR, PLD, BLU, DRK sub as well. To revamp and melee with en-spells, maybe add a job ability or trait that allows them to have another added effect such as poison, stun, slow, silence, paralyze, & addle (each associated to it's rightful element). Can have the effects increase in potency with subsequential hits, and have them also boost spells that landed of the same name. Just a couple ideas, but I think they are interesting concepts worth exploring.

[Supersun]

First off before I start let me state that Rdm melee is the best it has ever been maybe with the exception of lvl 30; Certainly there are other jobs that are in need of melee buff more then Rdm that doesn't mean we should ignore other jobs. Keep in mind as well that CDC solves a lot of these issues I'm about to bring up but with that being said here is the Ironies of Red Mage Melee.

1) Our gear is much harder to get and weaker then jobs that have no business outmeleeing a Rdm, namely Brd and Whm.

Before abyssea the only thing holding back Whm was their lack of accuracy. Now with Razed Ruin though any job that wants to melee more or less now does not have to worry about accuracy any more; With their accuracy issues gone now with Hexa Strike and Blessed gear Whms actually out DD Rdm without CDC by a decent margin.

Brd actually has a lot of the same TP gear Rdm has with the exception of kitty pants (why brd is on these...). It's their WS sets that are better then ours and considering we more or less use the same WSs...yeah.... THe fact that they can use Hetacomb (why they ever got that...) makes their WSs hit quite a bit harder. Not to mention Fencer which is already a slap to the rapier masters. Now before abyssea this was solved because whatever difference a brd would beat us in damage we would more then make back with our enspells. Which brings up another point...

2) Our Weaponskill and Weapon seletion, for swords we aren't that bad in our weapon selection, the only problem is unless you have CDC or are using sanguine there isn't any reason that you should be using a sword over a dagger in the main hand because our sword WS are terrible. Even if Death Blossom was a crit WS Eviceration has nearly double the hits and fTP. Well just use a dagger then, the only problem is that while we have excellent dagger WSs we haven't received a new decent dagger since the Blau Dolch besides the Twilight Knife. It's doesn't make sense, we have good swords but bad sword WS, but we have good dagger WSs but no good daggers. No other job has this problem, Whm had good clubs and hexa strike, bard has good daggers and can still use their WSs. Yeah, the twilight knife is nice but that also brings up another issue...

3)Enspells and Additional effects hate each other. The twilight knife's additional effect overwrites our enspells and while that might be a good thing considering that the twilight knife does have a beastly additional effect it doesn't change the fact that we have to "lose" something to get it while no other job is in that situation (like Brd). In addition the additional effects that I personally would want to overwrite our enspells, the TotM swords because they have potent debuffs and are infrequent enough that losing our enspells for one swing would be well worth it, in fact can't activate with our enspells on yet they CAN overwrite sanbas...(At least it was this way last I checked, they could of ninjaed it in at some point, I know the lvl 90 swords can block certain status effects that the lvl 80s could not). It just doesn't make sense that the supposed master of enfeebling has to sacrifice the most to use some of the best enfeebling based weapons (that and when dual wielding having the actication rate be the same as when single wielding would be nice too). Speaking of enspells

4) Our enspells, which besides composure, are the only thing Rdms have going for them in melee have scaled terribly in the face of atma, new gear, and higher damage weapons. The rate at which our enhancing skill increases our enspells just can't keep up compared to how fast everything else is rising. I remember a recent Rdm parse that had his enspells at 7% of his damage. I've seen wyverns that do more then that and those are pretty pathetic compared to Drgs now days. Either we need a new tier of enspells or they need to be able to scale up with our damage in some way so atma doesn't leave our enspells in the dust. I don't need to mention the problem with T2 enspells that have already been mentioned. It seems that the biggest complaints arise from things that don't scale up in abyssea compared to everything else like our healing.

5) Which brings up another point, since we are more or less using lvl 75 mage armor when meleeing our defense is way lower then it should be. I understand if it's lower to some extent, but it shouldn't feel like if the monster uses a physical AoE that I'm taking like double damage compared to everyone else because the monster has capped pDIF against me, and this is only going to get worse on the way to 99 (not to mention the odd fact that Warlock actually has like the 3rd highest defense out of all the AF1 sets while Estoquers has less defense then some of my 75 gear >.>)

6) Back on the topic of armor, the new synergy system sounds nice as long as it isn't too restrictive because now we can take some of our rare/ex pieces and add augments to them. Only problem is that some of our most important pieces already contain augments like our legs. You have 2 leg options, Nashira which aren't terrible and the ASA legs. Yeah...I'm predicting that we can't add augments to the ASA legs can we. On the other hand Brds with their Kitty pants will be enjoying brand new augments on an already superior piece of gear. Not to mention I only see this working with certain pieces which I'd be surprised if Rdm can use any of them (well ones that were melee orientated in the first place). If it's limited to certain pieces I can see Nashira legs, Goliard body, and the Morgan's set. Brd will probably be able to augment their Kitties and their Hetacomb. Yeah, those are upgrades, but it's another case that while we gain a small buff everyone else gains a much larger one.

I guess the biggest point I'm trying to conclude is that no other job has to jump through as many hoops as Rdm just to reach a basic level of performance.
-----

Fixing all this wouldn't even be that hard. It doesn't require reinventing the wheel, just using what you have already given us.

1) When life gives you ton of MAB gear use elemental WSs. Really a lot of our pre-CDC sword WS problems would be solved if you gave us a strong native elemental WS. Like mentioned before it would be even more interesting if you let the element of the WS match our current enspell. We can already do some pretty decent numbers with Sanguine and Aeolian Edge (with a martial knife), just create a slightly stronger version of one of those and let all the gear you've already created do the rest.

2) Create a basic mage "perle" set that Rdm, Whm, Brd, Sch, Smn, and Blm can use. Now by "perle" I don't mean literally perle, but create a basic hybrid set like mentioned before that is easy enough to get and can adequately allow the user to melee. One of the biggest barriers from melee acceptance is simply all those gimps out there meleeing in their convert set. At least this way they have no excuse. There's no need really for a WS set if you create that elemental WS for Rdm. Most jobs can already gear fairly easily for their primary WS.

3) Create a new tier of enspells that don't exactly mimic the concept of Enlight and Endark. Rdms in general swing WAY too fast for that concept to work. It would only increase our casting burden more since for all intents and purposes that spell would pretty much ignore composure and our increases enhancing magic duration. The if you do that I'd just touch the enhancing skill issue with the T2s and maybe the gradually increasing damage part and those would be pretty good. I kinda like the fact that they only activate on the main hand. If anything instead of adding those hits to your additional hits just add even more to the initial swing. I like having the option of using a Sanba with an enspell up.

4) Continue to lighten our casting load. Estoquier's was a good idea, only problem is expecting someone to have a full set just to melee is kind of ridiculous. Now this issue might be solved as the set becomes easier to get, but there should be other ways that we can cast and melee without one or the other affecting the other one so much. I mean what's the point of Rdms versatility if we can't do everything simultaneously (imo this should be the difference between Blu and Rdm, Blus should be great at a lot of stuff but have to pick one or two things, Rdm should be good at everything and be able to use everything. Not saying that each job can't have their niche for specialization obviously).

5) Create new ways of enfeebling, whether it's just new enfeebles like confuse (you know you want too and it wouldn't be that hard. Just have the monster have a low chance to be countered by whoever he attacks which should simulate the effect), or making our new tier of enspells apply an additional effect.

[Duelle]

1) When life gives you ton of MAB gear use elemental WSs. Really a lot of our pre-CDC sword WS problems would be solved if you gave us a strong native elemental WS. Like mentioned before it would be even more interesting if you let the element of the WS match our current enspell. We can already do some pretty decent numbers with Sanguine and Aeolian Edge (with a martial knife), just create a slightly stronger version of one of those and let all the gear you've already created do the rest.I can't really see this happening unless the weapon skill in question is added to our skill gain progression. It'd need to show up at around the time other melee get their bread and butter WS to be worthwhile, if not earlier. Could use that as a placeholder WS until Sanguine (which would have to be made native to RDM), which itself would cover for CDC.
2) Create a basic mage "perle" set that Rdm, Whm, Brd, Sch, Smn, and Blm can use. Now by "perle" I don't mean literally perle, but create a basic hybrid set like mentioned before that is easy enough to get and can adequately allow the user to melee. One of the biggest barriers from melee acceptance is simply all those gimps out there meleeing in their convert set. At least this way they have no excuse. There's no need really for a WS set if you create that elemental WS for Rdm. Most jobs can already gear fairly easily for their primary WS.I don't agree with hybrid gear for one reason and one reason alone: item budgets. An actually workable hybrid set has a chance of being stupidly over-budget, and the alternative to that is having a bunch of gear with a lot of stats spread out.
4) Continue to lighten our casting load. Estoquier's was a good idea, only problem is expecting someone to have a full set just to melee is kind of ridiculous. Now this issue might be solved as the set becomes easier to get, but there should be other ways that we can cast and melee without one or the other affecting the other one so much. I mean what's the point of Rdms versatility if we can't do everything simultaneously (imo this should be the difference between Blu and Rdm, Blus should be great at a lot of stuff but have to pick one or two things, Rdm should be good at everything and be able to use everything. Not saying that each job can't have their niche for specialization obviously).Estoqueur's set did not really get rid of cycling, which is what needs to dissapear to improve front-line quality of life. The only two things I can think of is some way to AoE Haste and Refresh and overall longer durations when playing RDM as the main job. 10-minute AoE buffs would be a god send for the melee enthusiasts.

The alternative would be to change things in a way that haste and refresh are removed from the equation when front-lining and make up for that elsewhere.

[Supersun]

I don't agree with hybrid gear for one reason and one reason alone: item budgets. An actually workable hybrid set has a chance of being stupidly over-budget, and the alternative to that is having a bunch of gear with a lot of stats spread out.

All depends where you get it.

[Duelle]

All depends where you get it.Which often lends itself to being way out of reach or something that doesn't reward other people for helping you get it. Like the Chimeric fleuret.

[Supersun]

Which often lends itself to being way out of reach or something that doesn't reward other people for helping you get it. Like the Chimeric fleuret.

Or it could be just as easy to get as Perle. Once again, it's situational with how you get it.

[Xikeroth]

Well all that's being said is well and good, let us not forget that Abyssea will soon be over, the level cap is planned to be raised to level 99 and content for that will come out eventually. Which means we may not always have atma so you can't always count on those buffs.

I do have one thought that would get rid of the elemental staff question... what if we had some job traits that gave us massive magic accuracy bonuses with sword or daggers equipped but didn't work with staves equipped would help solve this problem. This would allow us to work more with swords and get rid of the thought people have that a RDM without elemental staves or magian staves are useless. (again I talk for when we no longer have abyssea buffs.)

Another thought is raising our sword skills to an A to rival Blue mage and give us access to all the same weapon skills. We can NOT be expected to have relic, mythic or even Almace to have a decent selection of WS to chose from in order to melee properly, nor should we have to sub WAR BLU PLD or DRK to have access to said WSs.

Dancer can heal quite well, support the party in their way AND do respectable damage, so whats wrong with us being able to do the same in melee? That's the real question.

Perhaps even add enfeebling effects to our enspells... for example make Enaero lower VIT(by a good amount so its not ignored like Choke is)

There is no reason we should be looked at as nothing but healers, both inside and outside of abyssea. In that respect we have two other jobs that can fill the role just as well, WHM and SCH.

[rog]

Well all that's being said is well and good, let us not forget that Abyssea will soon be over
Did your crystal ball tell you that?

[Xikeroth]

Did your crystal ball tell you that?

No, but it is simple common sense.

What you really expect it to be the final event everyone will do? Look at other more successful MMOs they constantly add new content making older content obsolete. If SE wants people to keep playing FFXI they will have to add content beyond abyssea.

Its no "crystal ball" thing Its called common sense. If it was so many people are basically almost done with their gearsets they will lose the want to do it anymore and just stop playing.

Does SE want this? No they want our money.

[Seriha]

Yeah, XI stagnating into more or less the same level 75 endgame for years was kind of an exception to the flow and evolution of MMOs. I don't quite agree with the belief that some have with Abyssea being an overpowered sandbox swan song of the game, but I will never sit here and think of the future with it being the standard.

This is why once we're looking elsewhere and things like MP limitations are a concern again, RDM's actual balancing factor (MP) will be there to determine how much it can do within a certain span of time. Ideally, the melee role would tie up that MP for self-buffs, an emergency cure, enfeebles, and maybe the odd MB. If you try to main heal and nuke aggressively at the same time, you'll pretty much empty your gas tank quick.

Nonetheless, RDM melee shouldn't begin with CDC after 85+ levels and hours of running trials. And until WoE is more hospitable for individual progress, demanding it just to even enter baseline acceptability isn't good. We don't see people refusing to invite WARs who don't have Ukko's, but I'm sure they'd be pitching a fit if that was indeed the case.

[rog]

What you really expect it to be the final event everyone will do? Look at other more successful MMOs they constantly add new content making older content obsolete. If SE wants people to keep playing FFXI they will have to add content beyond abyssea.
I don't know, since SE hasn't said a word about it.

[Xikeroth]

I don't know, since SE hasn't said a word about it.

Its very simple, SE knows that staying at level 75 for so long was a mistake whereas the other MMOs constantly raise the level cap and add new content. SE has been known to keep its players guessing. They wont tell us for maybe 2-3 months at most about the new content we'll get.

[Supersun]

I don't expect any major new endgame content to be released this update (or at least anything as expansive as abyssea).

Keep in mind that when visions of abyssea was released I would venture that the other 2 abyssea expansions were close to completion as well (similar to how all 3 add-on expansion were probably created around the same time, hence when the first one was complained about the other 2 weren't fixed in response because...they were already most likely created and done) all that was really needed were specific tweaks to get them ready for launch such as the level of monsters, but the basic mechanics were already determined ahead of time (such as Bastion and Dominion). What they didn't know was how successful it would be. So here we are at the end of their abyssea queue and they probably didn't expect the way things turned out with XIV failing and people falling in love again with XI so they probably didn't work a lot on new content up until now. They are probably working hard on some new content, but content takes some time to create. In the mean time though I expect them to revamp older content to stall like they are doing with dynamis since such adjustments are easily done.

but this is getting off topic a little so...

I know people have suggested in the past that adding utility to Rdm melee would help encourage people to let them melee more in parties. Enspell IIs were an attempt at this although I'm not sure when they will realize that elemental resistances really don't do that much unless they are in large numbers since people either gear to near perfect accuracy or don't even bother due to their stupid high resistances. What type of things could they add to Rdm melee to give it extra utility? I personally want to see enspells that lower monster statuses like maybe enblizzard III could also lower the monsters evasion since those statuses are really not used that often (especially the magic related ones).

[Duelle]

I know people have suggested in the past that adding utility to Rdm melee would help encourage people to let them melee more in parties. Enspell IIs were an attempt at this although I'm not sure when they will realize that elemental resistances really don't do that much unless they are in large numbers since people either gear to near perfect accuracy or don't even bother due to their stupid high resistances. What type of things could they add to Rdm melee to give it extra utility? I personally want to see enspells that lower monster statuses like maybe enblizzard III could also lower the monsters evasion since those statuses are really not used that often (especially the magic related ones).I like the idea, but it would have to be something implemented to take effect when an enspell is active, not tied to specific spells. Otherwise things get horribly skewed towards one spell (Enblizzard, in this case, given all the ice merits we're required to take as is). My take on that would be:

Job Trait - Appel (RDM lv55): Occassionally reduces the evasion of the enemy while under the effect of a weapon enhancement spell. Requires Composure.

Proc rate would be about 80 or 90% of what a THF sees at max Trasure Hunter potential. The RDM could even get a message similar to what THF gets saying "The enemy's evasion has decreased by X".

[Supersun]

I think you sorta missed the point. Each of the new enspells would have their own separate debuff.

Enfire - Lowers Magic Attack Bonus
Enaero - Lowers Defense
Enthunder - Lowers Magic Defense Bonus
Enwater - Lowers Attack
Enblizzard - Lowers Evasion
Enstone - Lowers Accuracy

The only issue is that some of those debuffs are better then others.

[Swords]

I think you sorta missed the point. Each of the new enspells would have their own separate debuff.

Enfire - Lowers Magic Attack Bonus
Enaero - Lowers Defense
Enthunder - Lowers Magic Defense Bonus
Enwater - Lowers Attack
Enblizzard - Lowers Evasion
Enstone - Lowers Accuracy

The only issue is that some of those debuffs are better then others.

I made a similar suggestion in another thread yesterday. A JA that enhances the power of Enspells and adds additional enfeebling or elemental DoT effcts such as Enblizzard I/II = Paralyze or Frost that increases with each successful hit to a degree like the resistance down effects from Tier II enspells.

For added effect SE can make it where the success of landing the additional effect can be directly effected by the players Enfeebling/Enhancing/Elemental skill, just to add a bit of balance to the mechanics.

I really think our potential to melee could be greatly increased, if first and foremost SE finds some creative ways to reduce the amount of spells we have to cast while still letting us use our main strengths.

[GERM]

Quote Originally Posted by Supersun View Post
I think you sorta missed the point. Each of the new enspells would have their own separate debuff.

Enfire - Lowers Magic Attack Bonus
Enaero - Lowers Defense
Enthunder - Lowers Magic Defense Bonus
Enwater - Lowers Attack
Enblizzard - Lowers Evasion
Enstone - Lowers Accuracy

The only issue is that some of those debuffs are better then others.

I like that idea but more then likely the element would have an effect that would be based off its opposing element for instance enwater would reduce attack or str and enthunder would reduce VIT or def and ect ect down the line... or even add a reduction to the resistance of the element your using / or opposite that way you can still throw a nuke in and do more unresisted damage then you would otherwise

[Seriha]

While I'm not against enspells having additional effects, the problem with those listed is people will basically only pick one (Probably the DEF down), and using anything other than that one would make you a bad RDM.

And old idea I had ages ago involved giving RDM a couple stances whose effectiveness was then tied into enspell use. I had to dig a little on Alla to find it, but here it is. Some of the wordings from the pre-Abyssea/cap increase mindset, so spare me corrections relative to the current game.


First, let's come up with two stances. The first we'll call "Magic Fencer" and we'll loosely call this the Enhancing side. The second we'll call "Runic Knight" and let it emphasize offensive casting. Now, while either of these are active, Enspell damage inflicted will build toward a pool, a bit of a mix between Sublimation and DNC steps. For every 30 Enspell damage inflicted, you will gain 1 level in this pool, up to 3, that you can then apply to a spell via another set of abilities. We'll simply call them "Feedback I, II, and III" for sake of demonstration.


Magic Fencer effects with Feedback:


Feedback I II III
Duration: +30% +65% +100%
Phalanx: +2 +4 +6
Haste: +3% +4% +5%
Stoneskin: +15 +30 +45
Regen: +3 +4 +5
Refresh: +1 +2 +3
Blink: +1 +2 +3
Aquaveil: +5% +10% +15%
Barspell: +10 +20 +30
Spikes: +1 +2 +3



Runic Knight effects with Feedback:


Feedback I II III
Duration: +30% +65% +100%
MACC: +5 +10 +15
MATK: +5 +10 +15
CMP: +10 +20 +30
Slow: +3% +4% +5%
Paralyze: +1 +2 +3
Blind: +5% +10% +15%
Poison: +2 +4 +6
Bio ATK: +3% +4% +5%
Dia DEF: +3% +4% +5%



Prior to using any of these boosts, you'd have to pop the appropriate tier of Feedback before casting. It would only work for that spell and then deduct the appropriate amount from your Feedback pool. Feedback I would be first gained at 55, II at 65, III at 75.

For those interested in playing RDM as a tank or a more rounded party buffer (Especially with Accession), they'll probably flock to Magic Fencer. I'm on the fence with this stacking with Composure to allow like 12 minute Hastes and such on the RDM, but the main goal is to reduce your cast load on other people and therefore giving you more time to swing. These also technically eliminate the need for Haste II and Refresh II as spells, or at least allow the former to go to WHMs. Spikes enhancements are a bit more general, but figure Blaze to do more damage while Para and Stun proc more on the others.

Runic Knight should obviously portray itself as the offensive aspect. All enfeeble durations would be upped, making a RDM/BLM ES+Slow II comparable to a BRD's ES/Troub Elegy in duration. Paralyze would gain a minimum number of procs, Blind reduces ACC more, Poison gets more DoT, Bio/Dia's respective status downs also get a boost. The MATK is there if you want to partake in MBs. The presence of Conserve MP is to promote uptime since the costs of T2 debuffs and T3 nukes is rather high.

At present, a RDM with Enhancing Sword, Fencer's Ring latent active, Lycopodium Earring, Hollow Earring, and 300+ Enhancing Skill would get around +33 per strike on T1s if the mob isn't resistant or has Shell/MDB. Technically, a lot of RDMs would probably just use Joyeuse (and off-hand Justice) with Fencer's and settle for +25. This should allow time between recasts to build your pool up for another Feedback if you're going to be using exclusively on one spell. To some degree, it'd also allow hopping between modes if, say, starting a fight in Knight and switching to Fencer after landing your debuffs. Pools would also reset when switching, too.

Conceptually, I know some of this has the pro-backline seething about how it has no benefit to them. I'll just point out that if you're hanging back, you're likely swapping your weapons to up potency, something that isn't possible if you're sticking to a sword or dagger for TP gain. Being at a distance also limits the AoEs you endure while also cutting your enmity gain to spells you cast. Meanwhile, the melee RDM is building up melee enmity on top of what spells they do use. Your advantage is the safety net, and as far as nukes go, more potency.

Otherwise, some of the numbers are conservative. I'd actually want to make Phalanx's buff better, for example, and maybe change the MATK boosts to a universal elemental Affinity like the magian staves. Not as high, of course, but if you could match the old elemental staves for HQ, peachy.

[Supersun]

One big problem with that though is that our melee time could be drastically cut down from spamming Feedback so much. Maybe another solution is that the Feedback JAs are like on/off switches. If you have feedback III on for example it will automatically try and use 3 charges of feedback for any spell you cast and any spell you don't want to use feedback on because you want to save the charges you can turn feedback off.

It'll also allow a programming type method for how we want the game to handle feedback. If you have feedback II on it will always try to use 2 feedback charges if you have them or none at all. If you have lvl 3 on like mentioned before it will only try to use 3 charges or none at all. If you have lvl 2 AND 3 on it will try to use 3 charges and if you don't have 3 then it will try 2 charges and if you don't have that it won't use it at all.

That's just in example though, but making feedback a JA you have to activate for every spell would certainly eat our melee time

[Seriha]

It's an option, yeah. Could also just pop one, then any spell cast in a 10s window could have the appropriate buff. Obviously if you're munching through fodder mobs, you probably won't need to use it every single fight, of which point extending your buff durations for everyone might be more beneficial. I just look at is as something to offer spice without simply being about MOAR DAMAGE.

[Bjoern]

With daggers mentioned... We've been left out of that equasion with new gear released.... Red Mage is equally skilled in dagger but have been forgotten when trial weapons were introduced.

[HFX7686]

I have no interest for more melee skill on my RDM. I'd like to see more usefulness for Enfeebling Magic before melee skill. I find meleeing dull. While others may like to see this, this kind of enhancement would do nothing for my personal game play style.

[Genralzod]

playing since May 2005, RDM was my 1st Job & my 1st love in this game. I melee'd in every party from dunes to 75 (before composure & enspell2's) I had several repeat invites to PT's & many compliments on my ability to keep up the enhancing/enfeebling, all while scoring decent dmg (using enspells to exploit mob weakness & capitalize on weather/day is key). and yes there were those ppl that would endlessly complain & complain, but I chose to perform as front line RDM & did a damn fine job at it. (& composure makes this even easier)
So I say all the power to any RDM that wants to do so, as long as they can multitask. Some ppl just have a hard time multitasking up there, but I actually found it easier to dispel when I was up close.
The only time I backlined RDM was on Anticans & Imps, silencega is the worst.
Currently my RDM is 90 full merits & good gear, & I always look for opportunity to get in there & swing.
in closing, some of the best RDMs I've seen are those who embraced their Melee skills, not just the Mage skills.

[Imole]

It really wont help much outside abysea... But even with a crappy garudas dagger i was able to drop well over 1k aelion edges on RDM with standard nuking atmas.

[Supersun]

If you ever are using Aeolian Edge, use a Martial Knife. Nothing else even comes remotely close.

[Duelle]

So I say all the power to any RDM that wants to do so, as long as they can multitask. Some ppl just have a hard time multitasking up there, but I actually found it easier to dispel when I was up close.
The only time I backlined RDM was on Anticans & Imps, silencega is the worst.Multitasking is fine, but there's only so much that can be done once you start to focus on the front line (specially if you're crazy like me and used Flat Blade to interrupt casts or TP moves). I'm perfectly fine with landing the occassional cure. I'd help deal with status effects if I could baseline (I go /DNC because Healing Waltz is a wonderful thing to have because of silences and other nasty effects that need to come off ASAP). That's totally different from having to run a buff cycle while front-lining.

That's kind of why I had that idea about splitting roles. You melee and enfeeble with occassional cures while in the front, and heal/buff while in the back.

[Cryptic]

I think that if we are masters of fencing, then we should be able to dual wield. If red mage had dual wield besides going /nin or /dnc, we could choose other subjobs that could enable us to WS selection.

It would also be cool if RDM had a way of casting -aga version of buffs, in a way similar to sch, then we could be front of the line, and still buff and enfeeble. Boom, I've solve the problem on how to fix RDM.

I have a Khanda+2 OA2-4, and i am working on another at the moment. Outside of Abyssea when i am in yellow hp, i equip the fencers earring [ latent effect: +5 enspell dmg under 100tp] and get atleast +100 additional damage on top of my initial attack as RDM/DNC. When i have too i'll have the potential of doing +200Add.dmg, on top of an initial, lets say, 200-400 dmg for a total of ~600 dmg. No atma, and depending on the mob.

I think Red Mage should get gear that adds damage to en spell, similar to how the fencer earring works, except without the latent effect. Would even be cool to get a trial weapon that added +25Add.dmg to your enspell.

[Supersun]

That's the Fencing Ring that adds +5 enspell damage.

Also, just to stop you before you get any further...The Khanda +2 is rare, you can only have 1.
While your idea does sound nice and all are you really losing that much damage comparatively by replacing one of your weapons with a dagger and actually getting a good weapons skill?

Now if we happened to get an elemental sword WS natively that would be a whole different story on the other hand.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Just sub nin like a good boy and dual wield the new and old anhancing swords.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Wow, stupid fingers tonight. >.<

[Trangnai]

I Disagree with allowing us to dual wield, we are a jack of all trades, if they give us every thing we need then we would just be a melee job that casts spells :P. Yes, it would allow us other sub job options, but honestly i feel needing the sub job to allow us additional melee support is something that should be. However our own lack of melee support is the issue. We should have a little bit of everything. the issue is most of our abilities are only for magic purposes. Hence why i believe we should get unique melee boosts, our own set of JA/JTs that take advantage of what rdm melee already has going for it.

After looking through Update History. I noticed that rdm had its skill rank in its weapons increased at curtain times as well as curtain skills removed (Marksmanship) assuming these increases were a full rank it seen one dagger skill increase and 2 sword skill increases making it C dagger and D Sword Initially, This explains the lack of Weapon Skills for sword, Due to most initial jobs having the WSes it is missing had B- or higher. It should be noted that only 2 jobs currently do not fit that criteria now, rdm and cor. Its possible SE missed this when increasing skill levels. As they slowly worked there way to making rdm the sword wielder it is now. Its most notable that SE originaly intended them to be a dagger user, hence why we start the game with a dagger.

[Varchesis]

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?

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! since replaying some of the older FF games I stopped to think "why the heck doesn't En- spells crack with major damage and cost a lot more to cast like this?"


When I first read about En - II spells I got worked up and then when I saw the result the balloon popped right in my face.
Imagine seeing +100 per hit from Enfire with Joyeuse for example. I would love to see that for 250MP or more. Sure this would totally rebalance the way the game is played.
In FFXI, RDM has always been a defensive melee at best. So sad... my first 75 and I never want to play it now that BLU is around.

Who else has been told to come as w/e job you want to an event you show up RDM/NIN and then everyone says "man, you need to /WHM for more healing support!" Screw that!

Oh snap! maybe PLD can hold hate with no /WAR... /stagger... lol no one can imagine that!

Crank up En- spells like the old days!!
Crank up En- spells like the old days!!
Crank up En- spells like the old days!!

[Seriha]

Honestly, if we're gonna prattle about native dual-wield, I'd ask for a variant befitting the whole fencing image. One where you can only equip a sword in the main-hand with a dagger in the off-hand. The perk? You can use WS from both weapon types. Any other weapon combo wouldn't work without the dual wield trait, though.

[Trangnai]

Honestly, if we're gonna prattle about native dual-wield, I'd ask for a variant befitting the whole fencing image. One where you can only equip a sword in the main-hand with a dagger in the off-hand. The perk? You can use WS from both weapon types. Any other weapon combo wouldn't work without the dual wield trait, though.

Interesting Idea, I like it, seems to complex to be implemented though sadly. not to mention SE would probably think its broken and wouldn't do it anyway. Also, the views when i clicked this thread this time was 3.333. just saying lol.

[Duelle]

Honestly, if we're gonna prattle about native dual-wield, I'd ask for a variant befitting the whole fencing image. One where you can only equip a sword in the main-hand with a dagger in the off-hand. The perk? You can use WS from both weapon types. Any other weapon combo wouldn't work without the dual wield trait, though.This certainly seems doable. Modern fencing is all about using a weapon in one hand with the other arm being used more for balance. Fencing during the era where duels were common included schools that taught use of a rapier, main gauche and cape (all at the same time). Definitely something to look into, provided the devs have any interest in helping the job become more like an actual fencer. I'll help with the in-game wording.

Escrime: Allows user to equip a dagger in the off-hand while equipping a sword in the main hand. Allows access to weapon skills for both weapons.

Just to tickle the imagination, should this be tiered and/or reduce weapon delay at all? I'd probably make it three tiers that give 8% delay reduction per tier (at max level this would be considerably behind Dual Wield, as DW5 is 35% reduction before gear, whereas Escrime III would give a total of 24% reduction but would be balanced out by the extra WS...kinda).

[FioryGriever]

Meh i know how great the potential /nin is n all but i never really played it, just wasnt my style. untill lvl cap raise i usually stuck w/ /pld /drk, but now w/ lvl cap ive pretty well chucked /pld .. and cuz they removed our tank ability. /drk i get all the abs stat spells minus ACC. working on emp weapon for some CDC, abs TP, CDC fun~ not to mention rdm can survive using last resort + souleater, and w/ /drk sub u gain access to sanguine blade (/shakes fist @ SE for not giving rdm native access) 1.4k ish on SB after a LR+SE CDC would be pretty fun id imagine~ and you still get access to stun, weapon bash for emergency stun, drain and aspir (b4 ppl talk down rdm's dark magic skill, its a non issue... gear up properly like for any other rdm magics!) this play style would benefit more from fencer, wouldnt hurt to have more hybrid shields, or str8 up dmg shields for rdm. only thing more would be to fix our skill in sword, shield, parry (spose dagger too for ppl who still like dagger, but SE is leaning on sword for rdm), ive posted some other ideas thatd augment rdm's frontline needs w/o breaking it, and really arent all that unreasonable.

~* Fiory Janus Griever *~

[Seriha]

This certainly seems doable. Modern fencing is all about using a weapon in one hand with the other arm being used more for balance. Fencing during the era where duels were common included schools that taught use of a rapier, main gauche and cape (all at the same time). Definitely something to look into, provided the devs have any interest in helping the job become more like an actual fencer. I'll help with the in-game wording.

Escrime: Allows user to equip a dagger in the off-hand while equipping a sword in the main hand. Allows access to weapon skills for both weapons.

Just to tickle the imagination, should this be tiered and/or reduce weapon delay at all? I'd probably make it three tiers that give 8% delay reduction per tier (at max level this would be considerably behind Dual Wield, as DW5 is 35% reduction before gear, whereas Escrime III would give a total of 24% reduction but would be balanced out by the extra WS...kinda).

I'd just make it a 15% reduction in delay. Nothing fancy. No real need to tier it. The ability to use Evisceration with a high-damage sword would go a long way in helping the conflict between our weapon selection and WS choices. I thought about refining the weapon types down to rapiers/stilettos for the combo, but that would basically eliminate the magian swords from use and our daggers are still meh.

[Satyr]

I figured I might chime in with an idea:
How about a JA that is similar to composure and addendum.

Engarde: 30min duration 5 min recast
Enhances accuracy, attack, and non-direct spell damage, but Elemental and Healing magic become unavailable.
Also enhances ability to wield Swords.

Explained: It would greatly increase accuracy and attack. The enhances non-direct spell damage means that it would boost en-spell damage and damage from DOTs (Dia, Bio, Poison). Enfeebling and enhancing magic are unaffected so you can still enfeeble and buff. The trade off is that you cannot nuke, and your only HP recovery spell would be Regen since it counts as enhancing. Enhances ability to wield swords means that it would unlock sword WS that are not normally available to RDM (Specifically: Red Lotus Blade, Seraph Blade, Vorpal Blade, Sanguine Blade. Excluding Swift Blade because you cannot unlock it even if you sub PLD.)

This would give RDM the ability to put out some respectful melee with the trade off being that they lose the ability to heal or nuke. It also plays to the idea of the RDM as the jack of all trades able to literally fill any role, yet not be the optimal job for filling said role (other than enfeeb).

[Supersun]

but...then we aren't versatile anymore.

I mean if we can't back-up cure or nuke when needed while meleeing that defeats the entire point of being a Red Mage.

Also I do like the idea where if a sword is equipped we can equip a dagger in the offhand. We would definitely need the ability to access the daggers WSs otherwise that would really defeat the purpose and I mean if Rangers can access weapon skills from 2 weapons at the same time I'm sure it's not terribly broken to access sword and dagger WSs at the same time. The only thing is I'm not sure if they could actually calculate WS damage with the offhand weapon meaning if they can't then we are doing our eviscerations with a sword...That could be an issue. It might just be easier to not limit which weapon is in which hand but still keep the requirement that it can only be done with a sword/dagger combo.

[Seriha]

Since WS now use the main-hand's weapon damage rating, tweaking some kind of exception on that level isn't really needed. The only thing "broken" about using a sword's damage with dagger WS would be Evisceration, but if you're using a high damage sword, you're giving up the TP gain of something like Joyeuse, and RDM currently has no multi-hit daggers. Dagger jobs like THF and DNC have a number of daggers with over 40D in comparison, with abilities to help boost their WS. So, while we may come close at times, it's likely a good THF or DNC would still use it better. When you consider life outside Abyssea, Evisceration will also lose some steam since its potential drops off when your crit rate diminishes. The other jobs can fall back to Dancing Edge or, in the case of high DEF mobs, THFs can use SA/TA Mandalic Stab.

So, you're basically looking at a choice between individual WS power or WS frequency.



And yes, things that lock us from other things is not a help. Ideally, a RDM should've been opening SCs for heavier DDs and using MBs to help with their damage contributions and riding Convert/Refresh so we wouldn't have had to rest and thus lose TP, but the players basically perverted those abilities into a healer's tool. The rest of RDM's flaws building upon that didn't really help the situation.

[Varchesis]

You know what's versatile? More damage
You know what's a great sword/dagger skill? More damage

If base or enhanced damage isn't increased your fights will still forever and no one will want you to melee anyway.
En- spells need cranking up as a reward to sword/dagger use and a penalty to magic casting. That's how things work: you give up magic casting to focus on physical damage.
Melee VS. Magic

Why must RDM forever be not so great at anything BUT enfeebles? Should change the name to Enfeeble Mage. This fencing argument is ridiculous. Does a fencer need to poke you in the chest 400 hundred times to kill you?

I solo'd Khalamari on RDM and it took half an hour. Sure I can say I did it but I used one stone to get there. That is not efficient or cool. If an En- spell was in there backing me up for good 50~100 DMG ,as it should, the fights would not take as long and RDM would... oh /waitforit god-forbid be asked to come do melee!! Otherwise get in the back row and heal.

[Supersun]

You know what's versatile? More damage

Even if they did buff our enspells I don't see them buffing them that much, and even then it really wouldn't matter. With dual wield we can probably average 60-70 damage per attack round. That's not terrible, yet inside abyssea that damage averages under 10% of a good Red Mage's damage. Simply put enspells don't scale in abyssea like everything else does which means unless we get some enspells that scale don't expect them to really contribute that much inside abyssea, because for them to actually do a meaningful amount inside abyssea they would pretty much break the game outside abyssea.

(You should really put 2 merits into Dia III, an alliance wide +17.5% (minimum) attack boost is pretty big especially for a Rdm's damage)

[Varchesis]

Even if they did buff our enspells I don't see them buffing them that much, and even then it really wouldn't matter. With dual wield we can probably average 60-70 damage per attack round. That's not terrible, yet inside abyssea that damage averages under 10% of a good Red Mage's damage. Simply put enspells don't scale in abyssea like everything else does which means unless we get some enspells that scale don't expect them to really contribute that much inside abyssea, because for them to actually do a meaningful amount inside abyssea they would pretty much break the game outside abyssea.

(You should really put 2 merits into Dia III, an alliance wide +17.5% (minimum) attack boost is pretty big especially for a Rdm's damage)

I disagree but, the concept of game-breaking is some sort of fear we all have. Abyssea is game-breaking cause it makes you not want to do any content outside of it. So, the point seems moot.

The game is broken. Who needs a RDM now anyway? :mad:

If RDMs want to melee more (which is the focus of this thread) then RDM melee needs to compete with other melees to deserve a spot. Why would that break the game?
There would be just one less SAM DRK BLU RNG WAR in the party...
Merits and enfeebles are not the answer I am sorry. Like I said just forget thinking about building gear for melee or SE ever giving you gear for melee because RDMs constantly show that they will take magic gear over melee gear anyway.

BSTs complained and got more of what they want. RDMs won't complain cause we have some notion of chivalry or fencing or Altana knows what... and the result is RDMs will be haste-healing-refresh slaves forever. Heck, even refresh is mostly moot in Abyssea. So Haste and backup heal 'cause you can't main heal against NMs like a WHM. Wait.. don't Haste cause we need to proc and ppl are already doing too much damage...
God, why am I the only one who sees RDM dieing slowly?

Want to see RDM melee one day? Ask for a real enhancement:
Crank up the En- spells like the old days!!

[Supersun]

There would be just one less SAM DRK BLU RNG WAR in the party...

A well geared Rdm already competes (if not beats) all but one or two of those.
I mean when you give examples for DDs why would you list 3 of the worst DDs in the game atm.

You have to realize, there's not just one way to improve Rdm DD. It's perfectly possible to improve it and STILL keep it in the style of the job.

(and are you really complaining about Red Mage's damage when you haven't build a Red Mage DD set O.o)

[Varchesis]

I'll take En- III with 30~60+ per hit over Dia IV any dang day!! And that's being conservative. Improving RDM melee means hitting harder and/or faster. For RDM that means Enhancing Magic or... enhancing sword/dagger DMG. Not enfeebling magic.

Here are the opposing scenarios:

RDM: "Hey guys, I have Dia IV. We can hit much harder now!"
PT Leader: "Nah, but we can do without Dia IV. RDM hits for crap. We need a DD."
RDM: /cry

=VERSUS=

RDM: "Hey guys, I have En- III. I can hit much harder now!"
PT Leader: "Sweet. That'll work. RDM hits about as hard as other DDs now and can support the party, too."
RDM: "Great! Let me gear up."


Greater En- spell damage. Can I have it?

[Supersun]

Dia IV is a bad example considering it's really not that hard to cap attack. Saying that an enfeeble can't work is just not looking at a wide enough scope. For example if we got an enfeeble that caused the monster to take double damage from everything well...Red Mage would likely be the most wanted job. Now obviously that example would be over the top a bit, but enfeebling doesn't necessarily have to mean a defensive effect and it doesn't JUST have to mean defense down. There are weaknesses to enfeebles as well though, mainly that trash monsters die too fast. If a monster dies in 3 seconds that's hardly MP efficient to try and keep an enfeeble on every monster though at the same time you can debate if the increased killing speed at that point is really worth it.

Likewise, Enspells only affect the TP phase which Red Mage has generally NEVER had problems with. Red Mage throughout the history of FFXI has generally been one of the best DoT jobs. It's always been the Weapons Skills that blow us out of the water and it's been those Weapon Skills that always created the huge gap between Red Mage and other DDs (that and leg selection D:). Now with abyssea things have become slightly inverted now. Our Weapon Skills are actually decent but now our TP damage isn't so hot due to our enspells not scaling as well and the fact that we generally are forced to use a lvl 75 dagger in the main hand.

I'm all for T3 Enspells what their effect will be will depend a lot on where the content of FFXI is going imo. If we are going to keep atma then sure, create some broken enspells, but if they ever want to leave abyssea at some point either they will have to balance them so that they are insignificant inside abyssea or that they will have to scale with atma in someway (besides elemental affinity).

[Varchesis]

Yeah, you're right, Supersun. Blast it all to high heaven.
Blast it all to high heaven!!

[Duelle]

Simply put enspells don't scale in abyssea like everything else does which means unless we get some enspells that scale don't expect them to really contribute that much inside abyssea, because for them to actually do a meaningful amount inside abyssea they would pretty much break the game outside abyssea.Depends. I could see enspells scaling with attack power or weapon damage. Granted, weapon damage is not as big a factor in this game as it is in some other games, but is still an option. Enhancing skill could still be treated as a modifier of sorts, but no longer be the sole factor that determines enspell damage.
RDMs won't complain cause we have some notion of chivalry or fencing or Altana knows what... and the result is RDMs will be haste-healing-refresh slaves forever.I disagree. We don't complain because our class is one of the two classes in all of MMOs that embody internal struggle between enthusiasts of different roles. For every one of us who wanted to melee there were 20 who would stomp on us because they were happy with their instant invites to cure/refresh/haste. The facts the devs have favored that crowd without giving the melee enthusiasts much of a glance says quite a bit on its own. Doesn't stop people like me from talking about it, though. =P

As for the fencing thing, that's been part of our theme, and I certainly would want to keep it. As I mentioned elsewhere, we have rapiers, wear tabards and have hats with feathers in them; a magical version of the french musketeers.

That being said, I am a proponent of creating role emphasis depending on what the RDM chooses to do. I don't feel right out-right locking things like magic types, though. I'm more for empowering certain types of actions depending on what role the RDM has chosen to take up.

[Protey]

Our Weapon Skills are actually decent but now our TP damage isn't so hot due to our enspells not scaling as well and the fact that we generally are forced to use a lvl 75 dagger in the main hand.

Could use one of the two swords that give Chant du Cygne, or could use Twilight Knife.

[Supersun]

I wouldn't consider CDC the norm and the twilight knife kills your enspells for that hit which for TPing at least is hard to justify an additional 7 weapon damage for 20-30 enspell damage.

[Protey]

your enspell overwrites the additional effect of twilight knife (if you don't care about getting additional hp/mp/tp from hits). and not to mention the 3% quad attack, it's not a lot, but it is extra damage.

[Supersun]

your enspell overwrites the additional effect of twilight knife (if you don't care about getting additional hp/mp/tp from hits). and not to mention the 3% quad attack, it's not a lot, but it is extra damage.

Do they? I wouldn't know myself since I don't have one (have a CDC sword myself), but the wiki at least says that the additional effect overwrites enspells (not that I put a lot of faith in the wiki now days, but still XD)

[Protey]

yea i have both CDC sword and twilight knife. the main page is incorrect about enspells (as someone also mentioned on the talk page)

[Protey]

there, fixed the main page

[Duelle]

Engarde: 30min duration 5 min recast
Enhances accuracy, attack, and non-direct spell damage, but Elemental and Healing magic become unavailable.
Also enhances ability to wield Swords.

Explained: It would greatly increase accuracy and attack. The enhances non-direct spell damage means that it would boost en-spell damage and damage from DOTs (Dia, Bio, Poison). Enfeebling and enhancing magic are unaffected so you can still enfeeble and buff. The trade off is that you cannot nuke, and your only HP recovery spell would be Regen since it counts as enhancing. Enhances ability to wield swords means that it would unlock sword WS that are not normally available to RDM (Specifically: Red Lotus Blade, Seraph Blade, Vorpal Blade, Sanguine Blade. Excluding Swift Blade because you cannot unlock it even if you sub PLD.)

This would give RDM the ability to put out some respectful melee with the trade off being that they lose the ability to heal or nuke. It also plays to the idea of the RDM as the jack of all trades able to literally fill any role, yet not be the optimal job for filling said role (other than enfeeb).To give a more direct response, the idea is decent (I'd call it Bravazzo instead of Engarde, though), but our job is not one that would greatly benefit from a true blue shape-shifting mechanic (which is what your suggestion adds up to). "Nerfing" healing and nukes by increasing cast times or increasing MP costs would probably be better. I'd lean more towards higher MP cost just in case an extra cure would come in handy, while at the same time preventing people forcing the RDM to suddenly focus on healing while in the front (meaning the RDM would have to cancel Bravazzo and run to the back to actually start heals and support).

Nukes, on the other hand, would become inconvenient to cast due to higher costs, but I can bring in a suggestion I once made that would probably cover that piece of the puzzle:

Botta Majica- Instant. 1 minute cooldown.
Instantly casts one elemental spell through the equipped weapon in the main hand. Accuracy is determined by mainhand weapon skill. TP bonus to spell damage. Spells cast through Botta Majica count as a magic burst. Requires Bravazzo.

MP costs of spells cast through BM would be the baseline costs, provided Bravazzo's downside would be to increase MP costs on heals and nukes. This would make it the preferred way to land spells on enemies with hard-casting nukes as a secondary but less efficient option.

[Luces]

I think that if we are masters of fencing, then we should be able to dual wield. If red mage had dual wield besides going /nin or /dnc, we could choose other subjobs that could enable us to WS selection.

It would also be cool if RDM had a way of casting -aga version of buffs, in a way similar to sch, then we could be front of the line, and still buff and enfeeble. Boom, I've solve the problem on how to fix RDM.

I have a Khanda+2 OA2-4, and i am working on another at the moment. Outside of Abyssea when i am in yellow hp, i equip the fencers earring [ latent effect: +5 enspell dmg under 100tp] and get atleast +100 additional damage on top of my initial attack as RDM/DNC. When i have two* i'll have the potential of doing +200Add.dmg, on top of an initial, lets say, 200-400 dmg for a total of ~600 dmg. No atma, and depending on the mob.

I think Red Mage should get gear that adds damage to en spell, similar to how the fencer earring works, except without the latent effect. Would even be cool to get a trial weapon that added +25Add.dmg to your enspell.

if lets say you brake the average and do 4 attacks per round using that khandi+2 off hand, with capped enhancing magic(including merits/gear/day or weather) is 28 damage per hit so 112(132 with ring, + hollow earring, 144) damage extra per round. Now fencing ring that you use, your hp has to be less then 75%, if your in abyssea fighting nm's you are risking major trouble just for an extra 20 damage per round. Outside if you aren't tanking and the mob doesn't aoe the ring is fine then, but just means your gunna be pausing your tp build for even longer to cure yourself carefully to the right amount of hp. If you could use 2 Khandi's(rare so not possible) that would still be only 224 damage per round(264 with ring, + hollow earring 288)) and that's assuming every round you get the max 8 hits. The fact would be your base damage of the weapon on both hands would be 25 vs 54 from other weapons so all your damage is coming from purely enspells. Since you would only be spamming savage blade or death blossom(you would also be overgoing 100tp everytime aswell and neither of those ws damage increases with tp making many attacks wasted) /nin, compared to someone using evisceration, vorpal blade, CDC, sanguine, or AE you damage falls even further behind due to the ridiculous low base damage weapon and no real adequate ws. Further this by a rdm with proper double atk gear using real sword/daggers will push them even further ahead and you behind since OAx2-4 reduces the impact of double atk substantially. Put this all in abyssea and you couldn't dream to compare with anyone else.


Twilight knife originally did override enspells when it first came out they edited it to not.
I have been reading in this thread people who have been saying rdm has access to good mellee gear ummmm, have you ever built a rdm gear set and looked at the gear any other job has access to?(rhetorical question the answer is no) even brd can build a better tp/CDC set then rdm can, and it doesn't even have to bust its ass for gear(well brd uses daggers so, rng has better gear access still, and whm even more so as far as tping goes). If you want capped gear haste you have 1 choice for head, 1 choice for body(golaird, pure mage), 1(2 if you count hq vs nq)pair of hands(dusk), feet(see previous), Goading belt, king arthoros's belt, or AV's belt(goading being the only realistic belt for majority of players), and the legs are the only 2 choice piece, non of the haste pieces we have access to (except ASA legs) give any type of real bonus to dd(dusk hands and feet have all of like +4 atk so no that does not count). If you have every really tried to build a real rdm melee set your going out of the way for rare armor that really just can't compare to the armor other jobs have access to and the ease at which they get it. Most the gear also has no use except for this specific thing for rdm(unless you have war, or drg lvled aswell then Zelus has another use, haste belts are more important for other jobs so those those should be crossing over form your other jobs to rdm not from). Good luck telling your ls that your rdm(Almace or not) needs a zelas tiara over a warrior. That is actually the reason rdm fell behind in the DD department when TAoU came out and all this new holy crap dd gear came out rdm wasn't on but very very few pieces(but blu was on every single piece and even added to existing gear that looked like it had been made for rdm, but rdm can't use them). Until then rdm was very easily able to keep up with dd as it had access to comparable dd gear, with the release of blu mage SE basically forgot rdm could use weapons. When the lvl cap raised above 75 rdm could begin to wear actual nuking gear vs having to stack elemental magic skill + and this made nuking more a of a viable option for rdm, more so then the addition of T4. Only real new gear we got(outside of empy) was Zelas(which is what makes us finally able to reach haste cap),twighlight knife(which depending on your set up, like mine, can be completely worthless and just a trophy item) and chimaric flueret(which is an amazing sword). They had to stick us on the TotM swords because its our main weapon, Honestly I was amazed that they even remembered that. Also rdm and blu are the only Jobs with magic who don't get the magic damage to tp trait, which rdm should get it at the same lvl as drk. Blu mage should not get this trait as their spells are actually worth the time to cast(because you aren't gaining tp during this time), and mp use because the actually do damage and serve a purpose(Though with T4 access and real nuking gear(damage + not skill +) this has made nuking a more viable option), they also can bet set to use tp to further increase their damage.
Outside of haste while rdm may now have acess to some deceant DA gear my thf still has more da then rdm try's to reach(bar the combo of chimaric + double atk khandi) and 30% triple atk(with 5/5 set bonus) and my thfs not really even trying for the double atk part is just kinda a nice bonus.

I have put far more work into my rdm gear and its actually the most space consuming job since majority of its gear does not cross over due to the "best" gear we have access to being outdated and weak. I can put 10 hours into rdm gear for a 1% improvement(most of which would be hunting/farming for lvl 75 gear) or I could put 10 hours into any other jobs gear and get a 10%+ improvement.

If anyone remembers what rdm was like back in the NA release it was epic I won the Itour back in 05 against all the prince's(first na group to do it, possibly even first group of people to actually do it according to the ffxi developers at the event), and that was after a couple, but not all, of the early rdm mellee nerfs the commentator of the fights was bitching about me melleeing but I did my job perfect including perfectly timed chainspell raise/nuke and my knowledge of how to mellee on rdm allowed me to beat every other person play as rdm I went up against that day at the event. If I could find the vid, the commentator actually eats his own words. So yes I do know how rdm has progressed overtime.

[Swords]

I'd really have to agree with you on the point that RDM has really gotten the shaft on alot of newer melee gear. Specifically I remember that they purposely excluded RDM from wearing any of the VNM sets specifically for fear of overpowering RDM when VNM was first introduced. What's even more perplexing however they've more or less excluded RDM from future releases of gear that they normally had access too like Doublets and Harness armors.

I know SE has claimed in the past they are trying to increase RDM's melee capacity so they can do more frontline work, but it's awfully counter-productive to nix RDM on any melee orientated gear updates and lock them into a spell orientated setup.

[Doombringer]

remember when an aj used to be more than novelty gear? now rank it among rdms melee bodies.. where is it.. 3rd place at the lowest? yah... just an example of how our available gear is laughably behind the times. it makes me not want to play ffxi anymore. rdm is no longer the job that was sold to me all those years ago.

i'm hoping the inevitable emp armor+3 remedies this.

[Seriha]

I can't see SE doing a 180 on the Empyrean set. I held out for some modest hope that the Composure set augment would've meant Haste and other melee perks, but so far it just seems like it's the duration bonus to others. Yay, but at the same time, boo.

If they somehow came to this design choice seeing how RDMs play, then it's unfortunate they've overlooked the whys of how that playstyle came to be, and instead all I can do is point them back to my earlier long posts about the cumulative issues against RDM melee.

[Duelle]

I can't see SE doing a 180 on the Empyrean set. I held out for some modest hope that the Composure set augment would've meant Haste and other melee perks, but so far it just seems like it's the duration bonus to others. Yay, but at the same time, boo.

If they somehow came to this design choice seeing how RDMs play, then it's unfortunate they've overlooked the whys of how that playstyle came to be, and instead all I can do is point them back to my earlier long posts about the cumulative issues against RDM melee.The only other thing I could see happening is them making a second set for the less common job roles. Melee RDM, DD PLD, melee WHM, that sort of thing. Would have been ideal if they had done that with the empyreal sets, though.

[Ordoric]

be nice if they had variants of sword fighting style. you cant weild a bastad swords same as a bilbo. so some minor tweeks to unique weapon skills might be interesting to separate rdm from pld from blu

[Kensagaku]

I skimmed through the majority of this thread, and there are a lot of valid points. Honestly I was expecting a lolRDMmelee thread, but this one actually seemed a lot more reasonable than most. >.>

Personally, I don't have a melee RDM. I haven't put the effort into a melee set when my nuking, enfeebling, healing, fast cast, resting, enhancing, PDT- and dark magic sets put me at about 70/80 inventory. That's not to say I couldn't use a sword and my PDT gear for a melee set if I offhand a Genbu's Shield as well for 36~41 PDT- (Cheviot Cape causes the variability), but that's more of a tanking setup rather than a full melee setup for a party.

The problem is twofold:

1) SE has seen how players take a job, and adjust accordingly. Take NIN for example; it was not released to be a tank. It was meant to be a durable DD, using shadows to survive while dealing a high rate of attacks and crits for damage. However, players implemented those shadows as a tanking boost, and as a result gear started to be tailored towards tanking. Emnity+ gear, PDT gear, etc. Because most RDMs tend to stick to a mage role due to their higher versatility (which Abyssea has unfortunately gimped by removing the need for Refresh and Cure IV being our best cure), SE has built around the popular use.

2) With such a versatile role, it's hard to have a melee RDM that hasn't gimped itself in another slot. As I mentioned with my above sets, I hit about 70/80 slots with all of my gear. If I were to toss in DD gear (Turban, lol Swift Belt, Dusk Gloves, Goliard Saio, weapon/shield or 2x weapon, etc etc) I would either run out of inventory or be at bursting to full, which would provide other difficulties. Need more inventory space for all the stuff we use. x_x;

Pretty much, the majority of RDMs (at least that I've seen on Valefor) play a mage role and not a melee one. SE sees this and tries to adjust to such, though they do recognize the melee aspect. For example, Chimeric Fleuret + OA2-4 Khanda+2 could be a reasonable weapon setup using tier 1 Enspells. +7 Sword enhancement damage, 4% DA rate increase under enspells, and fast, rapid attacks to do more damage with the enspell in a shorter period of time all would be useful. It's not that SE is ignoring the RDM's melee aspect, but they're trying to tailor the game more towards the majority's playstyle, in my opinion.

[Supersun]

But with the case of Rdm and Nin I'd debate it's not more that the player base WANTED to play the jobs like that but that they NEEDED the jobs to play like that. With ninja for example especially in that period of the games life span there was always a dire need for more tanks and with player experimentation they discovered that ninja could use its shadows to tank effectively adding another job that you could invite to be a tank. From there it started to really only be used as a tank since the demand was so high and people started leveling it as a job to tank on.

Similar case with Rdm, there has always been a high demand for healers, and with the release of refresh and convert people discovered that Red Mage can in fact main heal a party. They began getting invited for that role because the demand was so high and then people started leveling Red Mage for the role.

The difference is that while ninja received abilities and armor to fulfill its new tanking role it never really lost its ability to compete in its original role as a damage dealer and continues to receive new gear and armor to assist with it. In fact for a large majority of the games lifespan Ninja has in fact been one of the BEST DDs as well. (2h jobs for a while definitely eclisped ninja for a bit but that was due to other issues).

Red Mage on the other hand has virtually been completely neglected from the ability to supply melee damage which is part of its advertised versatility. Sure, they throw us a nifty weapon from time to time that is a nice alternative if we don't have like an 8 year old sword, but when you get down to it our gear selection is atrocious. In fact do you know what was one of the biggest buffs that Red Mage has received? The 3 add-on expansions armors.... It wasn't even SE releasing suitable melee gear for Red Mage as opposed to them just releasing some universal augments and we could just happen to put on some mage armor. In fact pretty much post CoP every advancement in Red Mage melee has pretty much included the tag "All Jobs" on it. In addition we have actually been LOSING armor sets as time has gone on. We have been getting more and more isolated to ONLY mage armors and while some might say that makes sense since we are a mage there is no reason we can't be on multiple sets like some of the other hybrid jobs such as blu.

It just seems laughable that a job that was advertised as the "Jack of all Trades" has about as much melee prowess as a Bard.

[Glamdring]

let the poor rdms melee! let all the mages melee! as long as you are still getting your role in party build accomplished swing away (that's why you're carrying that stick you know). Of course, if you die I will point and laugh; if I die because my healer did already I will point and growl.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

let the poor rdms melee! let all the mages melee! as long as you are still getting your role in party build accomplished swing away (that's why you're carrying that stick you know). Of course, if you die I will point and laugh; if I die because my healer did already I will point and growl.

Why so foolish?

RDM is a Melee mage, not a healer, nuker or otherwise. They are able, but not the best.

WHM is a Healer, BLM a Nuker, so they therefore stay out of the midst of battles to do such jobs, Simple enough.

[Glamdring]

I was actually being serious, I melee on all my mage jobs unless I find I can't keep up and still heal or whatever (not to mention the occasional Spirit Taker is SWEET!). I agree rdm is not a healer mage, the enspells sure say "melee" to me. However, I don't build alot of parties, which is why you guys get hired for main healing (along with almost everything else).
I'm a 90 bard, i'm expected to pull, sleep, buff, debuff, and backup heal in 30 second repeat cycles, I know about work and you guys don't really have it any better (at least I can point at my whopping 186 MP at 90 and say "really? I'm healing? you guys must be desparate"). How dare you refresh that dark knight, the monk just lost 1.7 seconds of haste!

So draw your pointy stabby things and do your worst to the bad and evil stuff!

END THE OPPRESSION! DOWN WITH ARBITRARY PARTY RULES! RISE UP AND TAKE DOWN YOUR LEADERS! VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

i forgot to use my inside voice again, didn't i?

[Trangnai]

Lets take into consideration the many points already talked about. Red Mage was envisioned as the premier Hybrid job of the game. It was ment to be able to undertake any role when needed. While at the same time, not being able to preform the roles as well as a trade off. Thought the higher level rdm becomes the less melee gear it has available to it. These new levels are no different. But pushing that aside for the moment.

Red Mage suffers from a lack of weaponry, but to make matters worse, it also suffers from a lack of weapon skills, while its actual proficiency in its weapons is average. It still lacks the skills that most wielders of the same weapon posses. At low levels this isnt as much of an issue, but in later levels people expect a melee role to be able to deal damage while its still possible it fars much more behind then any other job that can play a melee role and even under mage jobs like white mage.

Simply put rdm like most of this game simply suffers a lack of balance. this game has been unbalanced sense it was released, but anyone can say that it was more balanced then then it is today. There are alot of examples that can be put into place.

- Most of this game (barring abyssea for the time being) the monsters are so powerful that heavy tanking is required for them, even in standard situations like exp you require a large amount of damage reduction to the point that Warrior can't even tank most exp mobs in the game (once again barring abyssea for the time being).

- Most hybrid jobs are stuck into one role rather then being seen for all the ones they can do. SE responded by enhancing these roles rather then even out other roles. Which may have been the biggest mistake.

* Red Mage - Backline Support, Healing, Nuker

* Bard - Support

* Blue Mage- DD due to its high damage quick casting spells. This job however can fill any role entirely on how it sets its spells.

* Ninja - Tank due to high evasion

* Dancer - DD with some Support and Healing

The current game isnt so much as a lack of ability as it is a lack of need, most hybrids got there roles demolished by Atmas. SE rather then making the mobs easier to handle and adding more of what jobs lacked added these insane temporary powerups (temporary being that they are lost when outside of Abyssea) that Strengthens players to the point where 2 players are all that is needed in cases where 18 should be needed. These items in some cases even take jobs that did have roles well placed for them into limbo where no player needs there role.

[Duelle]

Pretty much, the majority of RDMs (at least that I've seen on Valefor) play a mage role and not a melee one. SE sees this and tries to adjust to such, though they do recognize the melee aspect. For example, Chimeric Fleuret + OA2-4 Khanda+2 could be a reasonable weapon setup using tier 1 Enspells. +7 Sword enhancement damage, 4% DA rate increase under enspells, and fast, rapid attacks to do more damage with the enspell in a shorter period of time all would be useful. It's not that SE is ignoring the RDM's melee aspect, but they're trying to tailor the game more towards the majority's playstyle, in my opinion.We go as we are generally needed. Even with all the hubbub about RDM healing being lesser compared to everyone else, I still get called in to spam heals.

You brought up an interesting point in inventory space. If anything, it kind of supports my belief that the ability to swap gear hurts (or at least inconveniences) hybrids way more than the one or two-trick pony jobs. Of course, you could call that balance if all roles available to a hybrid were on par with one another so that the player could definitely choose what they want to do based on the gear they carry. Sadly, that's not the case as so well put by Trangnai; to add to his point, our healing was far too valuable in a game that, at the time, had only one real healing class.

Of course, correcting the problem is a monumental task in and of itself. I'm more for streamlining the class so that you need less spread-out stats (and thus less gear) to do the job. Others I've seen want an approach similar to how the Arcane Warrior plays in Dragon Age (where their equivalent to INT doubled as their STR stat as well without having to raise STR in any way).

RDM and NIN are in a way representatives of what seems to have been Team Tanaka's design philosophy for classes pre-TAU: throw a bunch of mechanics together and see what comes out.

[Carth]

I skimmed through the majority of this thread, and there are a lot of valid points. Honestly I was expecting a lolRDMmelee thread, but this one actually seemed a lot more reasonable than most. >.>
We wore people out. :p

Seriously though, it's mainly because people don't care anymore. RDM Melee has been talked about ever since the game came to NA, and really got an enlightenment at ToAU due to finding out that Enspells are pretty awesome. Colibri being weak to piercing helped too. Back when Allakazham's Job forums were strong (I see the majority of RDMs there either quit or moved to here), pretty much every thread posted there was about enhancing our melee capabilities. We were pretty much the drama-llama forum but it was pretty secluded compared to the rest of the community.

It's actually well-known that RDMs can melee, and has been like this at the beginning. However, it takes more effort and skill to do so due to a harder gear selection and reliance on enhancing skill. Compared to RDM Mage, which is just there for cures most of these days, RDM Melee takes a considerable amount of knowledge and heavy effort just to be comparable to DDs. And if you do it, kudos to you.

The problem is, however, that RDM Melee has, and always will be, inferior to a good DD. This wasn't the case during the ToAU era where a decked-out RDM could actually be even with most DD jobs except SAM, WAR, and MNK, but now it's just inferior, period. RDM is also inferior to WHM and SCH in terms of healing and enhancing, but as it stands now there's far too many DD jobs compared to Mage jobs for it to really matter from that standpoint, so RDM healing is currently the niche.

Allow me to make this point however: Just upping the overall damage of our DPS or even gaining super-duper-awesome weaponskills wouldn't be enough if you want to make RDM Melee a standard option. For it to become standard you need utility, and really RDM has all the utility in the world, but it's largely dependent on what you fight and how you fight it.

The reason why we have piss-poor WS is because we can magic burst skillchains. It doesn't truly matter but this is what we're suppose to use to make up for our poor WS. The reason why we don't have extreme melee-heavy gear is because we have our spells to make up for it (Dia, Gravity, Enspells and eventually the rest of the Gain spells). The only problem with this is SE failed to make this scale appropriately as the levels got higher. Pre-FOV/ToAU, the main problem was MP management and the overall community fighting IT++ mobs.

To be fair, if you're ambitious enough you can quite easily get a static or a linkshell that welcomes melee enthusiasts as long as you realize there's a time and place for everything (pretty much anything Boss-worthy), but RDM Melee becoming an open standard to the community is left at the hands of SE to open everyone's eyes, and with SE giving RDM Shield Mastery I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

[Seriha]

Being even with other melee jobs in the ToAU era is a pretty out there claim (we largely sat on an ATK deficiency with Enspells resisting on harder prey), as well as "easily" finding people willing to tolerate melee right out of the box. Otherwise, I've been saying for years that SE needs to do something pretty drastic to shake up the perception of the job. Their whole baby step angle hasn't done jack and I dare say the only reason we got CDC was because we happened to be on sword trials with BLU and PLD.

[Carth]

Long time no see Seriha. 8)

I largely based my "even" claim on the data from Alla, mainly from Starfox and Savell.

The only reason why the baby step angle hasn't worked is because SE failed to follow up with anything after Composure and the Enspell II line. Everything after that has either been mage-based or a general toss-out towards everyone (Khanda for example) which pretty much gives me the sign SE simply gave out Composure and Enspell II just to give us a slice of cake, only to take away the rest of it when they essentially killed off RDM tanking, rather thoroughly at that.

[Seriha]

Eh, you'll never win me over with that "80% of a true DD" crap that old stuff tried to boast. Aside from no guarantee those parses weren't done with gimps, AFKers, and idiots in the group, when the best you can do is 80%, why not go for the 100% of another job when they don't have to jump through as many hoops? "But you can cure!" doesn't help when the role is already covered and a bit why I've also believed RDM's improved melee prowess should hinge largely on MP to keep all the people afraid of the next Superman in check. Of course, that's only if we're looking purely at damage as an improvement.

[Supersun]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

[Trangnai]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

If wern't using a piercing weapon weapon on Colibri something is wrong. Rdm or not, any other weapons didn't really make the cut unless your job couldn't use piercing. But war, sam and drg owned the ToAU era as DDs thought most jobs like blu that could easily deal as much dmg due to there spells were overlooked.

My issue isn't as much as dealing damage as it is making front lining a valuable choice. A job that was designed to be a hybrid should be able to fill all roles, while never being able to equal a master of that role. This means that we should be the goto guy of any role if that role cannot be filled. we don't do the best job but were workable. The problem is our efficiency is TOO low. The lack of gear available to use doesn't help the fact. Even more so the fact of the high need to swap gear in this game requiring us to be able to get gear sets for every role we wish to play. And considering this game has one of the worst inv systems i've ever seen... you can expect that to fill up quickly. Our lack of new gear for curtain roles like meleeing is another issue.

[Duelle]

My issue isn't as much as dealing damage as it is making front lining a valuable choice. A job that was designed to be a hybrid should be able to fill all roles, while never being able to equal a master of that role. This means that we should be the goto guy of any role if that role cannot be filled. we don't do the best job but were workable. The problem is our efficiency is TOO low.The name of the game for front-lining hybrids has always been a numbers game. There have to be insane extenuating circumstances to allow a hybrid to take a non-optimal front-line position when the group is better off having that hybrid heal and/or support. Even utility takes a backseat to damage at the end of the day.
Even more so the fact of the high need to swap gear in this game requiring us to be able to get gear sets for every role we wish to play. And considering this game has one of the worst inv systems i've ever seen... you can expect that to fill up quickly. Our lack of new gear for curtain roles like meleeing is another issue.Glad to see I'm not the only that takes issue to overt gear-swapping.

[saevel]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

*Cough*
The numbers were not done vs colibri, they were mostly done vs mamool. Calibri while being weak to piercing have annoying magic resistance, it took ~LOTS~ of enhancing skill to get reliable full land rates on Enblizzard.

That being said, RDM melee in ToAU was "ok", it needed "super gear" more than anything, our best stuff was basically AH level gear. A RDM in our best "AH Level" gear could compete with other melee's in their "AH Level" gear, of course they got MUCH better "end game" gear later, we got ... Nashira. BRD got better "end game" melee gear then RDM, eventually even PUP was given better "end game" gear.

As a job RDM is pretty well balanced in all aspects, our not getting Sang Blade naively yet getting Aero Edge while being on the Magian swords but not on the Daggers is a huge ~WTF~, it still has me scratching my head over what the devs must of been thinking. Composure is pretty amazing, especially once you got some yummy +2 emp armor and 420 enhancing magic, Enspell 1 is starting to lack in the damage category and the 2's are still broke. We're getting stat based self buffs, and while SE is obviously being stingy and making us wait for the STR/DEX/INT versions, they are coming. Spell wise we're pretty well set.

So what it comes down to is gear, we ~NEED~ better melee gear. We need stuff like what BLU and DNC got. Haste / attack / accuracy all wrapped up together in a warm yummy bundle. We need access to better Sword WS without needing an Emp Weapon, native S.blade would be perfect for RDM's style. Other then that the job is balanced.

As for the 80% concept, its simply. If RDM could equal a MNK / WAR / DRK / BLU / DRG, while still having all our tools, then there would be no reason for the other jobs. You could just have RDM RDM RDM RDM, ect.. on everything and not want for damage. It is the exact same as giving a WAR a MP pool, Cure IV, sleep, dispel, slow, dia, convert, haste, refresh, phalanx, stoneskin and tier IV nukes. Just imagine the nightmare beast that would create.

And its Saevel, not Savall

[Trangnai]

The name of the game for front-lining hybrids has always been a numbers game. There have to be insane extenuating circumstances to allow a hybrid to take a non-optimal front-line position when the group is better off having that hybrid heal and/or support. Even utility takes a backseat to damage at the end of the day.Glad to see I'm not the only that takes issue to overt gear-swapping.

Its not as much the swaping as it is the inventory system, if you really want to play a rdm or any cast job correctly (this also includes rdm as a front line role) you need alot of sets of gear. Playing the front line role as a rdm i use 60 of my slots just in gear. This includes TP setup, WS setup, Enfeebling, and Enhancing Sets, as well as a dark magic set for Bio III. This also dosent inculde the ammount of gear sotred in my mog house/safe that i may need to use for the roles on occasion or when using curtian sub-jobs or my back line gear.

Jobs like nin also suffer due to needing tools ontop of casting/WS/enmity etc.

Curtian fixes could be obviosuly making sets that we won't need to swap (Hybrid gear etc.) or making it so we can swap gear for other invs we have available to use via macros (like Mog Sack/Satchel).

Most jobs got decent full time gear via AF3 but rdm still lacks a decent full-time set. and jobs like blu got there gear split 60/40. Red Mage got a Ghetto blm setup or something unless your using AF3+2 you don't even get most of the buffs to what a rdm is primarly used for. In fact exculding anything +2 the only pieces i personally find useful for rdm for me is the feet and cape.

[saevel]

Ehh most of the RDM set is decent casting gear, its better then what we ~had~ previously. The legs and head are amazing nuking pieces, the feet are obviously for buffs and the hands are for enfeebles. Body is a good all around casting piece with refresh on it. It could of been much ~MUCH~ worse, I was fearing DEX+5 CHR+5 type stuff, seriously.

[Duelle]

Its not as much the swaping as it is the inventory system, if you really want to play a rdm or any cast job correctly (this also includes rdm as a front line role) you need alot of sets of gear. Playing the front line role as a rdm i use 60 of my slots just in gear. This includes TP setup, WS setup, Enfeebling, and Enhancing Sets, as well as a dark magic set for Bio III. This also doesn't include the amount of gear stored in my mog house/safe that i may need to use for the roles on occasion or when using certain sub-jobs or my back line gear.This makes me go back to my comment about streamlining certain aspects of the job. I can understand swaps for WS from TP (I do have melee jobs leveled, after all), but I've taken issue to the fact that some mages need individual sets per spell they cast.

Certain fixes could be obviosuly making sets that we won't need to swap (Hybrid gear etc.) or making it so we can swap gear for other invs we have available to use via macros (like Mog Sack/Satchel).I'd rather make it baseline and native to the class. I've never been a fan of fixing things through gear. Not to mention that things like Corselet have been tossed at me when discussing hybrid gear, and I cringe both because of the price and the fact that the hybrid in question would still be stuck waiting to hit the level reqs for such a piece of gear.

[saevel]

You have to dismiss any claim about "hybrid" gear, its usually people finding excuse's for why their inventory always seems to be full no matter how much space SE gives us. At 60 it was "full", at 70 it was "full" and at 80 it was "full" now with mog sack and mog satchet.. its still "full". To properly melee on RDM will require twice as much gear as other jobs for the simple reason that you have two different facets. Thing is you shouldn't ever have both full sets on you at all times, your role is decided when you leave the MH by which sub you choose. If your going "mage" then bring your mage gear and leave most if not all the melee stuff at home. If your going "melee" then bring your TP / WS sets and a then only a few other sets, namely "emergency healing" "basic melee enfeebling" and "melee enhancing" with the possibility of a token nuke set thrown in.

Now for the reason "hybrid" gear is a complete BS argument. In FFXI we switch our gear depending on the action we must do. WAR's don't WS in TP gear, and they don't TP in WS gear. Your going to TP in the best TP gear you can get, WS in the best WS gear you can get, and cast in the best casting gear you can get. You will not TP in a casting piece just because it has a few melee stats on it. If there is a better TP piece available you will be wearing that piece instead of some "hybrid" piece. If there is a better casting piece available then you'll be using that to cast instead of some weaker "hybrid" piece.

Ex,

Theoretical TP Body Piece
Accuracy +10
Attack +10
Haste +2%

Theoretical Casting Body Piece
INT +15
MND +15
MAB+5
M.Acc+5

Obviously those two pieces have dedicated functions. Now let me introduce a "hybrid" body piece.

Theoretical Hybrid Body Piece
Acc +5
Atk +5
Haste +1%
INT +8
MND +8
M.Acc +2
M.Atk +2

There a piece that has parts of both the above specialized pieces but isn't better then either. No one would possible TP in that if they had access to the TP body piece, conversely no one would Nuke in it if they had access to the Nuke body piece. What the "hybrid" people really want is this,

Omega Supreme Body Piece
Attack +15
Accuracy +15
Haste +5%
INT +15
MND +15
M.Atk +10
M.Acc +10

They want gear that is the "best" at both melee and casting. This isn't "hyrbid" gear, its simply new casting gear.

[Trangnai]

Considering AF3+2 stats, is this gear really much to ask for? But honestly, a Hybrid Gear setup wouldent be that good, or that bad.

Theoretical TP Body Piece
Accuracy+15
Attack +10
Haste+5%
STR +10
DEX +5

Theoretical Casting Body Piece
Magic Acc+10
Magic Atk Bonus +5
INT+10
MND+10

Theoretical Hybrid Body Piece
Accuracy +10
Haste +3%
INT+ 5
MND +5
Magic Acc +5
Increases Recast Timer on Spells

This seems to be a more realistic Standard. Keeping in mind that the Melee Piece can only be equipped by a melee job and the casting piece can only be equipped by a casting job. But Barring rdm from both of those pieces. considering the real situation is we are at least unable to equip the melee piece. However a Hybrid Piece like the one in my example shows what we need. Something that improves both our roles in retrun for a trade-off, not only that the piece dosent out class ether piece of Melee/Mage gear equippable by a main job of the role.

[Seriha]

Oh please, spare us the broken equipment spiel. The fact the issue is even an... issue, is because the options we have haven't been satisfactory in terms of getting people to accept the full breadth of RDM's potential. So, while one person might be fine giving up a good percentage of their mage potential to melee a bit better, if they're suddenly in a situation where they need that? Tough? Congrats, you're then a "bad" RDM or better off playing some other job.

Even giving up hMP, Dark Magic (if not subbing DRK, BLM, or SCH), and (in Abyssea) a Convert set, inventory is still tight while juggling TP, WS, INT, and MND gear. This translates to fewer seals, crystals, or other incidental drops in the long run. This tends to be a problem any mage faces, really, but at least BLM, SCH, and SMN have the luxury of staff WS that feed off their mage gear.

More of the same isn't gonna change RDM's position (Take the last 15 levels, for example... we've fallen behind). And if SE isn't going to address the job directly, it will have to come through gear. Otherwise, we may as well start the loljob memes.

[Duelle]

Oh please, spare us the broken equipment spiel. The fact the issue is even an... issue, is because the options we have haven't been satisfactory in terms of getting people to accept the full breadth of RDM's potential. So, while one person might be fine giving up a good percentage of their mage potential to melee a bit better, if they're suddenly in a situation where they need that? Tough? Congrats, you're then a "bad" RDM or better off playing some other job.He does have a point, though. And it is one I've touched in a different way when I talked about item budgets earlier in this thread. The potential good hybrid piece simply can't exist without making it broken like all hell. Such is the downside of being versatile at the core with no inherent mechanics to streamline the class in any one direction.

[Seriha]

And like I said later in the post, gear's the next step over job-specific qualities. If SE wanted to give us some kind of trait that converted some percentage of INT/MND into meaningful STR/DEX equivalents if you have an enspell active, I'd let up a bit on the idea. Functionally, when people just mass gear swap anyway, the only thing gained by gear consolidation is inventory space. In the long run, is that tantamount to a glaring, overpowering balance issue in RDM's favor? Why is it "fair" that a good, well-rounded RDM in all aspects needs like 120 of 240 overall "active" inventory spaces (80 of main usable aside) while the next joe could get away with just 60? Plan B would be to let us equip things from our sack/satchel just like our main inventory, but you still run into the issue of RDMs basically having to work twice as hard to fully gird themselves while never actually adding up to match the mains. Some might call that the balancing of a hybrid job, but it doesn't quite account for how people don't want hybrids over specialists when a strong niche isn't needed or non-existent. Meanwhile, people know this, so those on the fence don't bother because they'll never get the chance to put said gear to use, so they don't try, so SE thinks RDMs don't wanna melee, and we basically get the Empyrean set that we got.

It's been a stinky situation for years. The whole DoT/pinning solo angle or "stealing WHM's role" didn't help as it merely gave fodder for naysayers to play down class gripes.

[Duelle]

And like I said later in the post, gear's the next step over job-specific qualities. If SE wanted to give us some kind of trait that converted some percentage of INT/MND into meaningful STR/DEX equivalents if you have an enspell active, I'd let up a bit on the idea.Then we should probably focus on trying to get the devs to give us something like that. I'd specifically wouldn't gun for INT/MND, though. I'd gun for Magic Accuracy derived from Accuracy and modest or minor boosts to spell potency from Attack. Sure, INT=>STR would mean I'd finally get to melee while wearing the pimp hat, but it just doesn't sit well with me.

Functionally, when people just mass gear swap anyway, the only thing gained by gear consolidation is inventory space. In the long run, is that tantamount to a glaring, overpowering balance issue in RDM's favor? Why is it "fair" that a good, well-rounded RDM in all aspects needs like 120 of 240 overall "active" inventory spaces (80 of main usable aside) while the next joe could get away with just 60? Plan B would be to let us equip things from our sack/satchel just like our main inventory, but you still run into the issue of RDMs basically having to work twice as hard to fully gird themselves while never actually adding up to match the mains. Some might call that the balancing of a hybrid job, but it doesn't quite account for how people don't want hybrids over specialists when a strong niche isn't needed or non-existent.Indeed. It's a sign of how poor balancing of hybrid classes have been for the last decade or so. And that's not just here, but in other MMOs as well. Well, that's barring WoW, but that's because it has been the only game to date that has allowed hybrids to do something other than heal and support in the content that mattered.

On hybrid gear, another gripe I have with hybrid gear is that it deals with the symptom, not the actual problem.

Meanwhile, people know this, so those on the fence don't bother because they'll never get the chance to put said gear to use, so they don't try, so SE thinks RDMs don't wanna melee, and we basically get the Empyrean set that we got.Things would probably have turned out differently if we'd actually gotten some feedback on RDM melee on some of the fansites that were our hang outs before these forums opened up. Hell, I've yet to see any mods set foot in here. DRK and DRG got responses, but we're still in the dark about what the devs intend to do with our class and whether they are even aware of what we need to make RDM more than just a support bot.

It's been a stinky situation for years. The whole DoT/pinning solo angle or "stealing WHM's role" didn't help as it merely gave fodder for naysayers to play down class gripes.Team Tanaka neglecting those issues got us where we are. Communication really needs to open up from the devs and the community team, in my opinion. It's been depressing to see so many Q&A sessions with the devs go without any mention of RDM melee despite all the threads and discussions, really.

[saevel]

Seriha still at the "give me broken gear" argument? I rebuffed you years ago on this. What you want isn't "hybrid" gear, you just want melee + casting gear +1. You want a single set that is the best at everything and keep lying to others that its "hybrid" when its not.
Using Tran's example,


Theoretical TP Body Piece
Accuracy+15
Attack +10
Haste+5%
STR +10
DEX +5

Theoretical Casting Body Piece
Magic Acc+10
Magic Atk Bonus +5
INT+10
MND+10

Theoretical Hybrid Body Piece
Accuracy +10
Haste +3%
INT+ 5
MND +5
Magic Acc +5
Increases Recast Timer on Spells

If I had both the TP body and casting Body I would ~NEVER~ use the "hybrid" piece. Heck the current Teal Body makes a better nuking piece then that "hybrid". The "Hybrid" piece just becomes mog house decoration or town gear. Or it is full timed by people too lazy or too incompetent to make decent macro swaps. The "inventory" argument is complete bull sh!t. You have as much space as you desire, if SE was to give you 20 more spaces you'd just fill it with more specialized casting gear then complain that you don't have room for melee gear.

Our AFv3 was actually amazing casting gear, I was impressed that SE took a single direction with it instead of the schizo approach they usually do. We're still lacking in the melee gear department, I'm carefully optimistic that SE will be looking into that soonish. Honestly the "cheap" and effective fix would be to put RDM on the same gear BRD / BLU is on and call it a day, somehow I doubt they'll do that.


Team Tanaka neglecting those issues got us where we are. Communication really needs to open up from the devs and the community team, in my opinion. It's been depressing to see so many Q&A sessions with the devs go without any mention of RDM melee despite all the threads and discussions, really.

This is totally true. What I've come to understand is there is some sort of internal disagreement on the "vision" of RDM. Some devs see it as a "Casting only" mage job while others see it as the multi-role job from previous FF's. Tanaka obviously sided with the "mage" guys. The current team has had its plate full making abyseea and modifying the older content, hopefully they'll take time to give this a serious look. RDM desperately needs a direction to go in. In the past we were basically WHM-1 but with abyssea and level 85+ content RDM can no longer cut it as a healer. We're now WHM-2 and BLM-2, and while we're good enough to get by on our own, in groups we need to contribute more. I find myself being asked to come BLU and WAR to abyssea LS runs rather then RDM, even though I'm the main RDM for the LS. We simply don't have any need for what RDM brings to the table.

[Trangnai]

If I had both the TP body and casting Body I would ~NEVER~ use the "hybrid" piece. Heck the current Teal Body makes a better nuking piece then that "hybrid". The "Hybrid" piece just becomes mog house decoration or town gear. Or it is full timed by people too lazy or too incompetent to make decent macro swaps. The "inventory" argument is complete bull sh!t. You have as much space as you desire, if SE was to give you 20 more spaces you'd just fill it with more specialized casting gear then complain that you don't have room for melee gear.

Well keep in mind, my theories are assuming that only the hybrid piece is equipable by rdm. Basically I'm comparing an example of prime job gear to what a hybrid job like rdm would have in response. More then likely we would never be able to utilize most big DD pieces. It would be nice to have gear that pushes us in the melee direction, but along with that were gonna need Traits/Abilities to complement it.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Considering AF3+2 stats, is this gear really much to ask for? But honestly, a Hybrid Gear setup wouldent be that good, or that bad.

Theoretical TP Body Piece
Accuracy+15
Attack +10
Haste+5%
STR +10
DEX +5

Theoretical Casting Body Piece
Magic Acc+10
Magic Atk Bonus +5
INT+10
MND+10

Theoretical Hybrid Body Piece
Accuracy +10
Haste +3%
INT+ 5
MND +5
Magic Acc +5
Increases Recast Timer on Spells

This seems to be a more realistic Standard. Keeping in mind that the Melee Piece can only be equipped by a melee job and the casting piece can only be equipped by a casting job. But Barring rdm from both of those pieces. considering the real situation is we are at least unable to equip the melee piece. However a Hybrid Piece like the one in my example shows what we need. Something that improves both our roles in retrun for a trade-off, not only that the piece dosent out class ether piece of Melee/Mage gear equippable by a main job of the role.

No thanks, Composure added enough to the recast timer as it is and now we more or less have to full-time composure if we do anything non-solo with the EA+2.

[Seriha]

If I had both the TP body and casting Body I would ~NEVER~ use the "hybrid" piece.

I can't help it you're stuck in the thinking that a hybrid piece has to be all around weaker. Every job should get what every job needs to thrive. To arbitrarily declare some should have to chase twice as much loot, if not more, is not good game design. Doubly so when you consider RDM is still at a disadvantage if they managed to do that in its current state.

Hint: Matching a BLM's INT or MATK doesn't automatically make us better than them as they still have T5s, -agas, and other goodies. Similar applies to WHM with Cure Potency and having their subbable status cures. Working on RDM doesn't exactly mean attention itself should be focused on RDM, but we're at the point where personal diversity is a priority. Even if by some freak of nature we could match a DRK's ATK/STR, we're still bound to swords and daggers, the former further restricted by WS limitations.

[Greatguardian]

Is it even worth worrying about hybrid pieces when it's not impossible to fit PDT/MDT/TP/WS/Idle/Mage-Nuke/Mage-Enfeebling/HMP sets with 9 Staves and 2 swords within the 80 slot limit? =/

The easiest way to condense your gear needs down is to get better gear, as it means you'll need fewer pieces to reach the same/higher stats. I don't ever bother melee'ing with my RDM personally, but I took a few minutes to try and come up with an example Inventory that fit pretty much everything you'd need in it. It's not the absolute ideal, but it's extremely solid and sits at 79/80 Inventory with Shihei included.


Almace
DA+ Khanda
+2 Water staff
+2 Ice staff
+2 Wind staff
+2 Light staff
+2 Fire staff
+2 Thunder staff
Terra's staff
+2 Earth Staff
Pluto's Staff
Vallus Grip
Raptor Strap +1
Tiphia Sting
Witchstone
Duelist's Chapeau
Warlock's Chapeau +1
Walahra Turban
Estoqueur's Chappel +2
Darksteel Cap +1
Maat's Cap
Artemis' Medal
Orochi Nodowa
WS Gorget
Twilight Torque
Novio Earring
Suppanomimi
Hecate's Earring
Brutal Earring
Loquacious Earring
Antivenom Earring
Merman's Earring
Warlock's Tabard +1
Duelist's Tabard
Goliard Saio
Augur's Jaseran
Estoqueur's Sayon +2
Teal Saio
Coral Scale Mail +1
Antares Harness
Darksteel Harness +1
Dusk Gloves +1
Estoqueur's Gantherots +2
Serpentes Cuffs
Eradico Mitts
Darksteel Mittens +1
Warlock Gloves +1
Dark Ring AUG 6/6
Dark Ring AUG 6/6
INT+ Ring
INT+ Ring
MND+ Ring
MND+ Ring
Minerva's Ring
Rajas Ring
Hoard Ring
DEX+ Ring
Atheling Mantle
Lamia Mantle +1
Umbra Cape
Aslan Cape
Gleeman's Cape
Goading Belt
Witch Sash
Cuchulain's Belt
Sagacity Lappas
Estoqueuer's Fuseau +2
Nashira Seraweels
Tumbler Trunks
Crimson Cuisses
Darksteel Subligar +1
Refresh Subligar
Dusk Ledelsens +1
Estoqueur's Houseaux +2
Duelist's Boots
Serpentes Sabots
Darksteel Leggings +1
Lithe Boots
Shihei


A lot of jobs can do a lot of things, not just RDM. Trying to advocate god-mode Hybrid gear is just silly when the job is already incredibly powerful. As with any job, when you go out to do something you generally have to pick and choose what gear sets you bring based on what you will be doing (easiest example, old-school PLDs had to put away a lot of other gear in order to carry Fire/Earth/Ice Kits for applicable fights). If you want to do everything at the exact same time, well, yes you're going to run into inventory issues. That's not a problem limited to RDM, and it's not one that it's at all possible for the game to fix (PS2 RAM limitations).

Either way, RDM doesn't "need" 120 slots to have melee gear and acceptable mage gear. Personally, I think it's folly for RDMs to stock up on 80 slots worth of melee gear and completely ignore, or use completely sub-par casting gear to make up for it. RDM can do a lot of things well, and yes one of them is Melee, but it can be a massive inconvenience to the group when a Mage class refuses to cast spells. It's important to remember that melee is an addition to Enfeebling, Buffing, Healing, and Nuking; not a replacement.

[Seriha]

And with the above you're then constantly ferrying seals and other items to the side inventories while most other classes can get along just fine hovering around 60 slots. The listed also isn't much of a Convert of hMP set, which while not really needed in Abyssea, could be a requirement once newer content is added outside of it. You're also absent stuff like Dark magic to make Drain/Aspir count, and as with the old days of HNMs, RDMs would need more MACC/Elemental skill to help land something reliably on a tough mob over more of a potency set like listed. Similar could apply to enfeebling where some MND might have to be swapped out to help something land. I don't think there's much -enmity to speak of, either, as if you are expecting a RDM to main heal for long durations, you'll want that with Cure IV as your best option.

So, while you might be okay with playing hack and slash at job facets, this panders back to people just favoring the specialists instead. It's very much all or nothing for RDM and currently there's very little incentive to seek the all.

[Greatguardian]

There is not a single job in this game which can get by with 60 inventory slots and not be horribly gimp/lazy. Truth.

I actually did include a fairly solid MND build in there, as well as plenty of Macc for most targets. Yes, I did leave out Dark Skill and Elemental Skill gear, but I can't think of a target worth RDMelee'ing that RDM has Elemental Acc issues on. Enmity- was left out as pretty much anyone who's dealing damage, RDM included, is going to cap Enmity at some point anyways. If a RDM is sticking to a heal/buff-only role for a fight, it would take a *ton* of healing for them to reach the TE cap while the DDs should be there within 60 seconds. I'm not really sure of any fight that takes long enough right now for it to matter. The longest I've ever seen even the strongest Heroes NMs take with 1-DD is 10 minutes (bar Rani, which is just kinda dumb to do with a Rdm healer).

But yes, you are constantly ferrying seals over. The same applies to food, and toolbags, and other consumables. That's what I do on all of my jobs already =/. I never said the above was ideal (in fact I did say the opposite), but it is a solid TP set, a solid WS set, capped PDT/MDT, access to every Refresh piece RDM has, a not-suck HMP set, a solid Nuke set, and a solid MNDfeeble set with every stave in 78 slots+Shihei. I'm not advocating using a copy-pasta-onry of my random example set, but it's there to show that it's definitely possible to play RDM in multiple roles effectively with an 80-slot limitation.

[Doombringer]

to be fair, staffs and swords don't need to be in the inventory at the same time. same goes for say, a hardcore PDT set. if your in a group with solid dd's how often does it really come up? there's a lot of situational gear that is situational enough that it can reside in the mog satchel until you need it.

i get by on 70~ inv on rdm, not counting food/tools. this varies a bit depending on what my group is fighting and what i'm doing. 8 staves and 2 grips vs. some combination of 2 weapons/weapon and shield. if i'm duel wielding why do i need my af boots and my shield torque in my inventory? why can't they sit in the satchel with the shield?


not to say that i don't think rdm needs some kind of buff, just that i think a lot of the inventory pains are self inflicted.

course it might be easier on me, i still only have 3 90's

[Seriha]

Ultimately, it's part of a complication where if you're presented with a sudden need shift. Sure, if you're in a party where a WHM's around, you can probably get away without the cure gear, but if said WHM has to leave, you might be presented with the choice of having to go change your sub, juggle gear around, etc..

Overall, I'm someone currently sitting on 9 level 90 jobs with some others still sitting at 75. Some of RDM's magey gear may piggyback over to BLM, SCH, or WHM, just as some of the melee stuff could work for WAR, DRK, etc., but when I'm sitting around arguing for hybrid gear, I'm not exclusively pining for it for RDM, either. More inventory space can help everyone, both out in the field and generally managing things back in your MH.

[Greatguardian]

The problem with Hybrid gear is that it's always going to be weaker than Specialized gear. If Hybrid gear is weaker, you're intentionally gimping yourself in some manner in order to conserve inventory.

As Doom mentioned, Mog Sacks and Satchels are wonderful tools for in-field paradigm shifts. You can relegate MDT gear to your Sack if you aren't fighting anything that casts Magic. You can store Staves if you're going to be melee'ing. If you need to switch to a casting role, you can bring out your Staves and store some of your WS gear and swords. Anything that's not covered in an 80-slot-catch-all set can be placed in your Sack/Satchel and moved in/out as you do different things.

I feel your pain when it comes to inventory clutter, but it's really not that impossible to work with right now. Even if it was, Hybrid gear is not a viable solution. If anything, additions to the Armor Storage systems would provide a much greater benefit.

[Seriha]

Storage isn't quite the issue, just active space. And as I mentioned earlier, if you're going to run under the assumption that hybrid gear should never match two or more specialized pieces, then of course it's basically gimping yourself. If people are fully swapping anyway, why does it actually matter if the gear is one slot or two plus? Because then you're basically treading into the territory that someone having more active inventory space is a balance issue, while a lesser issue would be those interested in diversifying would only need to go for one piece for their catch-all needs instead of two or more. Even if it means cutting out only 5 visible equipment slots, it'd be a win. Accessories tend to be the more universal pieces, anyway.

[Greatguardian]

FFXI has never been a game to cater to making Hybrid pieces as strong as 2 Specialized pieces. See: Hale Ring.

If the Devs went that route? Sure. That'd be pretty boss. Do I think it's likely enough to even consider in the realm of possibility? Nupe.

[Seriha]

And they were never gonna increase the level cap. Past != Future.

[Supersun]

Obviously it's because 2 pieces of gear takes longer to get then 1.

[Datola]

I know i kinda browsed through this forum after page 3 or 4 but an Idea I've kinda always kept to myself is a Job Trait or Better yet Job Ability that we can activate and while Enspell active our Enhancing Spell Duration is x1.5 or better yet x2 and after an Enhancing Spell is cast we gain a fraction of MP split in to 1/2 given to Atk and Acc so haste which I cannot remember the MP amount atm for this Example will be 40mp when said ability is active we'll expend 40 mp but in a sense we get 1/2 back in the form of 10Atk and 10 Acc effects from enhancing magic last per spell so you can cast a few enhancing spells but the same spell will not grant you a bonus and effect last as long as ability. So Said Ability is 5 Min Duration Recast 1Min you cast 3 - 4 different Enhancing spells totaling 120MP you'll get 60 of it in the form of Atk Acc buffs, 30 each, give us a piece of RDM only hybridish gear that augments the effect from 1/2 mp to 3/4 =) Maybe the Tier III Enspells could have stat Boosts for STR DEX and MND too... Not large large bonuses but +3-5 would help and DMG boosts I did like that Enspell/WS idea maybe it could have a Mana Leach bonus ;) and no it wont make RDM OP to all you RDM Haters RDM only seems OP cause it can Kite... very well... melee'ing has nothing to do with kiting LET US MELEE

[Datola]

Another Idea Geared towards the Hybrid gear idea is RDM only Shield with Stats Geared to make using a 1h sub more complimentary towards RDM i prefer RDM/BLU when I melee so give us a shield with some bonus to composure STR DEX MND INT MAcc/Acc i mean there is limitless ideas give it haste or DA honestly as an Elvaan I'd like to see a shield around 70-80 to have something like DEF:30ish STR+5 DEX+5 Macc+5 Acc+10 Auguments "Composure" to whole party.... Hidden Effect Haste+5% when TP >20% and Enspell is active...

[saevel]

As you can obviously see, Sehira doesn't want "hybrid" gear she just wants better gear. And yes "hybrid" automatically means weaker then specialized, its in the fcking definition.

Ex
Ring 1
INT +10

Ring 2
MND +10

Ring 3
INT +5
MND +5

All three rings have +10 to stats, two are specialized while one is a hybrid. There is no circumstance where you would equip Ring 3 over either Ring 1 or Ring 2. If you were not allowed to instantly change gears in FFXI then there would be a very strong argument for "hybrid" gear as you would be forced to balance out your gear prior to engaging in combat. Instead what Sehira is really arguing for is (and trying to hide it),

Ring 1
INT+10

Ring 2
MND +10

Ring 3
INT +10
MND +10

Where in there would no situation where ANY job would chose to wear either Ring 1 or 2 over Ring 3. Ring 3 is simply better in all aspects then either Ring 1 or 2 and thus obsoletes them upon its acquisition. The inventory+1 is just a happy side effect. And the moment you allow non-RDM jobs to equip that gear, its no longer remotely "hybrid", its simply the best. The conclusion to this line of reasoning is that Sehira desires RDM-only super gear that has better stats then all current gear put together. It must have better melee / WS / nuking / enfeebling / buffing / tanking stats, or some combination therein of all currently available options. AFv3 is good, but no job got gear like that. Everyone got amazing gear, but all the "hyrbids" got gear that was spread out a bit. BLU's head / body / legs are amazing TP pieces, but their hands / feet are nuking / s.blade pieces only. The "set" can be considered "hybrid" because the pieces are not all focused on the same thing, but each piece is specialized. WAR is the same way, feet / legs / body are TP pieces with head / hands being WS pieces. The legs can also be used as a WS piece depending on what else you have access to. RDM got a pretty good set, each piece is amazing at what it does and put together with our other casting gear is pretty amazing. Its all pure casting gear but at least each piece is specialized, no more DEX +5 CHR+5 parry +3 stuff.

And ultimately inventory is not an issue, ever. You don't need all the staves in a melee set, you don't need most of your casting pieces. A TP set, a WS set or two (Dagger vs sword), a full +enh set and some +Fc gear. The only "mage" gear you need is the big +enf pieces for sleep / bind / grav, you won't be doing maxed out Slow II / Para II while in melee mode. You might include a few -PDT / MDT pieces if your tanking things, that is a situational set. RDM worked at 60 inventory spaces, it can most certainly work at 80. All the complainers did was find 20 more "situational mage" pieces to stuff in those 20 slots, the continue crying about inventory.

[Duelle]

RDM got a pretty good set, each piece is amazing at what it does and put together with our other casting gear is pretty amazing. Its all pure casting gear but at least each piece is specialized, no more DEX +5 CHR+5 parry +3 stuff.

And ultimately inventory is not an issue, ever. You don't need all the staves in a melee set, you don't need most of your casting pieces. A TP set, a WS set or two (Dagger vs sword), a full +enh set and some +Fc gear. The only "mage" gear you need is the big +enf pieces for sleep / bind / grav, you won't be doing maxed out Slow II / Para II while in melee mode. You might include a few -PDT / MDT pieces if your tanking things, that is a situational set. RDM worked at 60 inventory spaces, it can most certainly work at 80. All the complainers did was find 20 more "situational mage" pieces to stuff in those 20 slots, the continue crying about inventory.Ok, let's try to move on beyond the calling out.

The main gripe with the gear we've been getting is that there's little that actually works for melee. Not to mention that while we are melee mages our AF3 has had next to nothing that reflects that. You're right in that the BLU AF3 is amazing, and I wish RDM had gotten at least one piece like that instead of more casting gear and extensions to buff durations that do nothing for us in the bigger picture (outside of enhancing something the melee camp has been trying to get away from and encouraging buff-botting even more).

The inventory issue was very important when the trends and public image of RDM were being set in stone. You were expected to be super geared and capping INT and MND just to land enfeebles reliably on the IT++ crap people loved to kill. That style of partying died and went away, but the image issues have lingered to some degree. There's other issues that go hand in hand with this, mostly job mechanics and party dynamics.

Either way, we should probably move on to what we consider solutions. I've already stated what I as an individual feel we need. Some have already stated theirs, but we need to move further in that direction. Hell, we might be able to come up with a suggestion or a change we can all agree in.

[Supersun]

Hybrid gear doesn't have to be weaker if it's just different. For example a mage piece might contain +10 Mnd and +10 Int while the hybrid piece instead has something like +10 Macc, +10 Acc, +5% Haste, Enspell+5.

Now neither piece is exactly weaker then the other, they are each situational. Not only that the mage stats are used in such a way on the hybrid piece that they enhance the melee (in this case, the +Macc is making the enspells more accurate).

Now obviously this example shouldn't be the set in stone end all be all example considering there are some obvious flaws like anything that you would actually want to melee on you would probably want to be casting in the first set defeating the purpose of the hybrid set here, but I think you get my example that a hybrid set doesn't have to be just a weaker specialized piece as long as it's adequately different where each one has it's pros and cons depending on the situation and the mage piece tends to be better suited for tougher things while the hybrid piece tends to be better for trashier mobs that are suitable for us to melee on and not get raped by AoEs.

[Seriha]

qq

No, it's more like your definition of hybrid is "the worst of both worlds" when it comes to gear and performance. Meanwhile, you've offered no counter to why it's fair a WAR might only have to get a set of pants for TP and WS while the RDM would have to get the same on top of ones for nuking, enfeebling, and other "situational" stuff you're so quick to dismiss because you're content with perpetuating the half-assed paradigm. Melee RDMs get a bad rap because, according to others, they don't do their magey stuff well on top of other physical deficiencies myself and others have noted throughout this thread and RDM history. Surprise of frickin' surprises, you're attempting to to promote that gimpness while proposing nothing to help our situation.

So, let's stop pretending I'm asking for +50 all stats on everything or that a given melee piece should beat the snot out a SAM's for any specific purpose. I'm saying RDM needs to get what RDM needs to step away from the bad reputation, poor numbers, and into overall acceptability that's not just some group's last resort. Gear is a part of that issue whether you like it or not.

[Greatguardian]

Gimps with 1 pair of pants can be Gimps with 1 pair of pants no matter what job they're on, WAR or RDM or PUP. The fact of the matter is that you only need one pair of specialized pants on at any given time. You have 240 total Field slots to work with, and 80 in your active inventory. As demonstrated already, that's more than enough for a competent "Jack of all trades" build. However, even then, it's a lot more efficient to simply store sets you aren't using and then change your Inventory when you need to change roles.

Melee'ing while Buffing/sub-healing with heavy DDs in the group? Put your staves, PDT, Nuke gear, and HMP gear away. Healing/Buffing a group with heavy DDs? Put your Weapons, TP, and WS gear away. Kiting something? Put your Melee gear away and take out your full PDT and MDT sets.

RDM takes a lot of work to do well. It takes even more work to do well while melee'ing. Melee RDMs don't get a bad rap because their inventories are too small (which becomes a player issue, just manage your sets). They get a bad rap because it's extremely rare to find a Melee RDM who doesn't suck at RDM. It's perfectly acceptable in theory. The hard part is pulling it off with any degree of competence.

[Trangnai]

The Biggest problem with the job at its current stand point is this.
- We are for most gear behind about 2-3 steps to a specialized job. Most of this gear is harder to obtain for multiple reasons. Even without Hybrid gear we lack for most roles we should be able to do.
- Our Job lacks luster is not only outclassed in every role by a specialized job but is always replaced by them in the current game. We arn't even seen as a viable option due to lack of triggers or something else. Even our Highest Skills, Enfeebling and Enhancing our out classed due to our lack of spells in the feild. The Only spell that currently stands out is Refresh II. It's also not needed in Abyssea, nice but not needed.
- For the melee role this is twice as bad. Even assuming Hybrid gear has to be weaker, our current melee gear is probably behind even the hybrid gear that SE would give us at our current level.

Our job should stand out in the fact that it should be the goto job for a role thats needed. And even the ones were currently know for our moot in 99% of the situations in the current endgame. I love how SE and this games players constantly talk about job and game balance, when Abyssea is clearly an example of the exact opposite. Am I saying we can't furfill a role? no not at all, but if you or anyone else has another job, there gonna want you on that, not rdm.

[SnapperTrx]

My input:

1. RDM needs to have it's Parry skill greatly enhanced. If the focus on RDM is 'fencing' (ie, Fencers Earring, Fencers Ring, Fencing Degen, Estoqueur's gear) then we need to have at least a B in parry. I can understand the low shield skill, but Parry is a must.

2. RDM must have the 'Fencer' trait. To not have this trait on a job who's relic armor is obviously based on fencing (Duelists gear, Estoqueur's gear, anything with 'Fencer' in the name) is really just dumb. Sound harsh? Well it is! The equivalent would be giving WHM 'Berserker' and not giving it to WAR!

3. Fencer V. RDM exclusive, make it high level, 80 or 90. Leave the critical hit rate and TP bonus from Fencer IV and instead add 'Occasionally attacks twice' (sword only) and 'Occasionally counter-attacks after parrying'. This would give RDM's a good increase in damage output in a party, but also help out a little (just a little) during solo play.

[Greatguardian]

My input:

1. RDM needs to have it's Parry skill greatly enhanced. If the focus on RDM is 'fencing' (ie, Fencers Earring, Fencers Ring, Fencing Degen, Estoqueur's gear) then we need to have at least a B in parry. I can understand the low shield skill, but Parry is a must.

2. RDM must have the 'Fencer' trait. To not have this trait on a job who's relic armor is obviously based on fencing (Duelists gear, Estoqueur's gear, anything with 'Fencer' in the name) is really just dumb. Sound harsh? Well it is! The equivalent would be giving WHM 'Berserker' and not giving it to WAR!

3. Fencer V. RDM exclusive, make it high level, 80 or 90. Leave the critical hit rate and TP bonus from Fencer IV and instead add 'Occasionally attacks twice' (sword only) and 'Occasionally counter-attacks after parrying'. This would give RDM's a good increase in damage output in a party, but also help out a little (just a little) during solo play.

That's all semantics. It doesn't particularly matter if some names share a similar theme or not.

That said, I don't see any benefit in giving RDM fencer when they are best off subbing NIN and dualwielding if they want to Melee at all.

[SnapperTrx]

That's all semantics. It doesn't particularly matter if some names share a similar theme or not.

That said, I don't see any benefit in giving RDM fencer when they are best off subbing NIN and dualwielding if they want to Melee at all.

Point taken. Of course, I forget that there are a few weapon skills that I dont yet have, that would benefit greatly from dual wielding. Though I stand on point 1, I wish to retract points 2 and 3. I keep forgetting that I dont have any of the great weapon skills (Chant du Cygne, Death blossom).

[Supersun]

I can think of a few uses for a native fencer trait.

[Carth]

As a RDM who doesn't whore himself to /NIN wherever he goes, a native fencer trait is welcomed.

[Duelle]

As a RDM who doesn't whore himself to /NIN wherever he goes, a native fencer trait is welcomed./DNC has its uses. Also, doesn't /WAR and /BLU lose in overall DPS versus Dual Wield?

[Greatguardian]

/DNC has its uses. Also, doesn't /WAR and /BLU lose in overall DPS versus Dual Wield?

They do, by a landslide. Why would using Nin sub be considered "Whoring"? It's far and away the strongest melee sub RDM has.

[Supersun]

If Rdm had native fencer it would give them a viable way to melee when being forced to use a non DW sub, ESPECIALLY Sch.

With fencer I could see meleeing with /sch pretty powerful for a mage sub and still give you the ability to nuke and support very effectively.

This goes double if jobs ever get to the point where they learn the empyrean WS natively like Mythic WSs where then subbing /war and using CDC with an OaX sword becomes very powerful.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

That's all semantics. It doesn't particularly matter if some names share a similar theme or not.

That said, I don't see any benefit in giving RDM fencer when they are best off subbing NIN and dualwielding if they want to Melee at all.

Semantics or not it's still absurd that what was supposed to be a fencer/duelist has such rubbish parrying and doesn't even gain the trait of the same name.

[Carth]

They do, by a landslide. Why would using Nin sub be considered "Whoring"? It's far and away the strongest melee sub RDM has.
Because sometimes, I'm not just there to be a DD.

I duo -very- frequently with my best friend who is a SAM as well as a BLU. He is very much a glass cannon on SAM, while at the same time he tries to do as much damage as possible on his BLU. In these circumstances, I am the healer, tank, and DD, and after various experimentation with /NIN I learned there are many benefits from other subjobs when the situation calls for it. My go-to subjob is actually /PLD due to Shield Mastery (pre-update), Auto-Refresh, and the very strong hate tools. Sentinel has also saved my tushie many times. I go /BLU for supertank methods. /WAR and /DRK are used when the plan is to zerg a mob down and I have a very strong Sanguine Blade build for that. Did I mention Sanguine Blade is -fucking awesome- for tanking?

My /NIN build also isn't all that strong, admittedly. I'm still working on getting Khanda and Almace, and I don't have Death Blossom yet. If I did I probably would be using /NIN more. It's mainly the lack of Death Blossom that keeps me away from it.

[Seriha]

The whole Fencer thing leads to old thoughts on how shields could better improve offense. Some think the answer lies in just throwing out shields with good stats. Not unreasonable, but inevitably we'd cookie cutter into "the best" for most given situations. On the other hand, I actually think Shield Mastery should be further expanded in some manner. It could be as simple as randomly covering people behind you with a shield block or just simply having the shield on could grant something like -delay or an insane amount of STP that both RDMs and PLDs could benefit from in the long run.

I think I called it "En Garde" or whatever, but a more specialized dual-wield limited to sword main-hand with dagger off-hand allowing access to both WS at once would be rather nice even if, at best, the -delay matched DW2. We could then sub the EX WS jobs for sword for their varying degrees of utility and getting a mix of the best of both worlds.

[AyinDygra]

This is my take on how to make Red Mage desirable on the front lines. Some of my ideas are very similar to those I've seen proposed by others, and no idea is intended as a single fix to the issue. Taken as a group, I think the combination of traits, abilities and spells would open up new possibilities.

I added vague math-y details and durations and recasts and MP costs, etc, just trying to put forward the ideas. And before anyone goes saying Rdm would be overpowered; Getting all of my suggestions at one time, without other jobs getting updates would certainly be overpowering, but we're all going up to 99 (and merits beyond) together, so there's room to grow.

I'd also like to echo the suggestions to add merited spells to the normal list learned from scrolls, and have the merits adjust those spells in some way. As well as changing En-spells II to not check enhancing skill on each strike. And the change to Accession to work with Haste and Refresh II at least.

I liked Duelle's idea of "Escrime" for the Sword main + dagger offhand trait + sword/dagger ws's.


On to the ideas!

Existing abilities given to Red Mage:
Add Sanguine Blade to Rdm's native weaponskill list.
Add Job Trait: Occult Acumen, tiers gained at the same levels as Dark Knight, or earlier.
Do NOT add Job Trait "Fencer" (read next idea)

---

Job Trait: Magic Fencer
While an En-spell is active, increases En-spell damage and the Rdm's Elemental Affinity with the currently active En-spell.
Tiers: (cumulative trait results, not additive)
20 (Base En-spell Damage+2, Elemental Affinity+2%)
40 (Base En-spell Damage+4, Elemental Affinity+4%)
60 (Base En-spell Damage+6, Elemental Affinity+6%)
80 (Base En-spell Damage+8, Elemental Affinity+8%)
99 (Base En-spell Damage+10, Elemental Affinity+10%)
(Edit: removed CritRate+2-10%, replaced with Elemental Affinity, Supersun's suggestion)

---

Adjust En-spells II
Calculate damage based on the initial cast, not on-hit. That alone would probably be enough to make them great.

Edit: Removed my proposed "status-hit" addition to the En-spell 2's, replaced by a change to calculating of damage based on the initial casting, not on-hit.

---

En-spells III
Make En-Spell III's that cause En-spell 1 range of "additional damage" and replace critical hits with the free, near-instant cast of the related tier 2 elemental spell. (Combined with the "Magic Fencer" trait, this could be signifigant)

---

Job Ability: Tactical Casting
Level 25 Red Mage
Duration: 5min Recast: 5min
In this mode, spells cost TP instead of MP.
* Cannot cast spells for MP while this is in effect.
* MP cost for any spell is capped at 100TP.
* Can be canceled at any time.

Too much like Dancer? I really don't think so, and I really don't think it would be that bad anyway. (We have many different melee and mages performing the same roles in similar ways already.)

Red Mages could still fulfill their casting duties and as long as they're engaged with the enemy they'll have unlimited MP without resting or the danger of converting to restore MP.

Use of this Job Ability would also allow "Convert" to be used to fulfill its inverse function: restoring HP on the front lines, instead of MP on the backlines. (Refresh could still be used to refill their MP for this function)

---

Job Ability: Runic Blade
Duration: 1 min or until any spell is cast on a target within range. (from any source: friend or enemy)
Recast: 1min
While wielding a blade, a Red Mage can stop attacking/casting and intercept any spell cast on a target within range of the effect. Intercepted spells have their effects canceled and the MP cost of the spell is absorbed by the Red Mage.
* Allowed "blades" would include Swords and Daggers (and "any job" Katanas, Great Katanas, and Great Swords for fun)
* Some spells would bypass Runic Blade entirely, such as Meteor, just like in FF6.

Used at the right time, the Red Mage could stop a potentially disasterous spell from damaging the group, and get a nice boost to their MP. They will have to be mindful of staying out of range of the other mages in the party, and good communication will be necessary with hybrid DD/Mages in melee range.

---

Job Ability: En Garde (a popular name for a popular idea we probably all came up with independently, here's my spin)
* Raises Combat skills for Sword and Dagger to A-
* Unlocks all sword and dagger weaponskills that are not quested.
* Adds Job Trait: Riposte - This allows counterattacks when wielding a sword. Riposte-Counter ignores defense.
* Increases all magics' MP cost by 50%

---

Job Ability: Invoke Burst
Target: 1 enemy
Duration: 1 minute/30seconds (see explanation)
Recast: 3 minutes
The next weaponskill used on the target allows the next spell cast on the target to magic burst based on the weaponskill's primary element.

* This would work similarly to how Dancers can create a skillchain with only one wild flourish and a weaponskill.
(Chainbound = Etherbound)
Example: Melee uses Shoulder Tackle on the Etherbound enemy. Someone casts thunder for (Impaction-based) Magic burst.
* Magic Bursts can be caused within 30 seconds after the weaponskill hits during the first 1minute duration of the effect. (The window of opportunity mages usually have to magic burst is extended by this ability.)

(The Elemental resist-down effect of en-spells would synchronize well with this ability, to make the most of bursts.)

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Spell: Reflect
Reflect one single target spell back at caster. (does not reflect -ga spells, but -ga spells do not remove the reflect status when they hit.)

This doesn't have to be Paladin exclusive, but it's a tactical tool that existed in past FF games, and covers one weak spot in the Paladin's defense. This may best be given to Whm, Rdm (especially Rdm) and Sch, then only much later if added to Pld.

---

Spell: Brave (based on the FFT spell)
Single-party member target. (Level 50 Paladin, and later to 75 Rdm?)
* Increases attack +1 per level (max of 99)

---

And a few fencing based-spells from FF1 to round things out and keep Red Mage unique in the support realm as well :)

Spell: Quicken
Target: Self-target only
Increases double attack rate for the duration of the effect.
* About 5%? (I'd rather not do the math) <--- This is why I don't like adding in numbers... they used it, and it was pitiful at this strength!
* Spell casting speed penalty of 5%

---

Spell: Quicken II
Target: Entire party
Increases double attack, triple attack, and kick attack rates.
* Not as powerful as Quicken 1 (3%?), but adds to all 3 rates, so it could work out?
* Spell casting speed penalty of 5%

---

Spell: Lock
Target: 1 enemy
Reduces enemy's evasion.

---

One more thought: my post on Sword Spells further in this thread. (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/294-On-Red-Mage-melee...?p=89399&viewfull=1#post89399)

There we go, some melee RDM suggestions that encourage melee RDM to move up to the front lines, without overpowering mage RDM.

[Seriha]

I'm of 2 minds with a Quick spell. The first being that if it's only DA, it should be like 10%. On the other hand, if it's a rolled up ball of DA/TA/QA, then you can put numbers like 5% for each. In the case of the former, you'd be at 20% with /WAR, and things like Brutal and Atheling can bump you up to 28%. Since both weapons could DA, we stand a better chance of finally antiquating Joyeuse for other weapons. Any other sub, you'll be 13/5/5. I may be mathing wrong, but for every 100 attack rounds single-wielding, that'd be 138 potential attacks while the more DA-minded route would be 128. You'd have some WS carry-over, but the big boys should still better in the long run.

[Supersun]

I actually thought of an interesting idea today, and if implemented right could, solve the Rdm healing issue, add support to RDM melee, and more then justify a reason for Rdm to melee in most settings. Sounds too good to be true, right, well it probably is since this idea sounds like a ***** to actually code, but basically I thought what would happen if we combine the Aura buff idea with Seriha's Enspell damage bonus. Basically you can get a buff like Stoneskin Aura.

Stoneskin Aura works similar to the aura concept where Red Mage has become so proficient at casting spells on himself his spells actually have so much power they can radiate to fellow players around him (like an avatar's favor). Now the exact mechanics of the Stoneskin might have to vary with that the dev team can actually program, but my idea at least is that everyone receives the same stoneskin affect, that is to say any damage that the Rdm's party members take to their stoneskin received from the Rdm's aura are automatically deducted from the Red Mages's Stoneskin. In essence the Red Mage holds a "Super Stoneskin" that the entire party shares. Now what makes this Stoneskin special is that your enspell damage that you inflict to the mob is then ADDED to the "HP" of that stoneskin. In essence your enspell damage directly makes the stoneskin you share with the party stronger and able to absorb more damage. Now obviously the initial starting value of the Stoneskin Aura, how much extra damage resistance your enspells add, and how much said stoneskin should cap at are all up in the air, but I think if the concept is balanced right it could be very powerful.

And why stop there, why not add a "Haste Aura" where your haste is spread to the entire party and the more damage you inflict to the mob the stronger your haste becomes. As long as the final value is at least marginally stronger then the original haste even if the initial value is slightly lower and it doesn't take like a year to reach the cap I could see this VERY easily fixing a lot of Rdms problems. You could even do this with other buffs as well. I myself would love to see a TP Bonus version especially if you add a strong Elemental WS to Rdm. This could synergize especially well if elemental WS damage can also add to the auras power in addition to enspells.

Now people might be leaping out of their chairs screaming that this is broken, well if Rdm is allowed to go overboard with this it easily could be. That's why I also propose a drastic drawback, these buffs while active drain your MP. Now I'm not talking about something like -50 MP/tick, but maybe -1 or -2 MP/tick per buff on the Red Mage (depending on the power of the buff of course, Haste being more expensive then a TP Bonus). This should prevent Rdm from loading up every one of these imaginable and instead limit them to 1 or 2 that the party needs. This in conjunction with Rdms already large variety of tools should allow Rdm to support the party however he needs to. Now this may receive some objections, especially from the people who leveled Rdm to be a pure mage, but really, if you already haven't leveled another mage job because of abyssea you should really look into Whm, Blm, or Sch since they will all be what you want of Rdm and more especially by 99.

[Seriha]

I've dabbled in the buff aura idea before and came to a similar conclusion about requiring perpetuation. However, my biggest hurdle at the time was integrating melee into it, as otherwise it just changes where the RDM stands in a battle and nothing more.

As is, an aura should be enticing to the RDM when you have 3 or more people to buff. Thus, in the case of Haste, you start looking at 120 MP over 180 seconds. However, you made that perpetuation 3 MP every tick, by the time 180 seconds have past you've spent the MP of 4.5 Hastes. Not exactly economical to the RDM. 2 MP would even it out, but we then hit an issue where you start adding other non-variable buffs (Phalanx, Barspells, Enspells, Refresh) in that their MP costs also vary, and demanding something like 10 MP every 3 seconds would drain the RDM fairly quickly if they're also throwing out the occasional nuke or cure.

Instead, I'd rather SE adopt a perpetuation model using more of the timing from Helix spells, also bumping each buff cost down to 1 per. So, for every 10 seconds, you could be charged for maintaining Haste, Refresh, Phalanx, an Enspell, a Spike, a Barspell, a Bar-resist, and a Gain spell. That's 8 MP every 10 seconds if you wanted one spell from all of those. In 9 of those seconds, you will have regained 9-24 MP depending on the Refresh tier. This gives you some more freedom with your MP, and as a bonus, when paired with Composure, we gain a lot more swing time.

The downside is, as mentioned before, is this doesn't quite solve the problem of melee inclusion. Now, our base strikes could be given a "Daze" that builds with subsequent blows, expanding the range of our "aura" from a default 5 to maybe 20, but having this constantly reset from mob to mob will also be inefficient. Thus, it might be better to consider it a non-cast buff on the RDM themselves that is perpetuated by landing successful strikes and maybe decaying every 10 seconds. I guess from here it's a matter of tiering the ranges, like 5/7.5/10/12.5/15/17.5/20. That would be 7 levels of proficiency, maybe going down 1 for every 10s you don't hit. However, since we need to account cast times or delays between pulls, it might be better to make the decay more like 30s. On the other hand, simply making it a hit per level doesn't quite seem right, either. This could be random between 2-4, or maybe we could tie some Enspell factor into it where you need to do like 50 damage per level. I dunno.

It's just brainstorming at this point, and I really wish we could get some insight from SE on their purpose for RDM, as otherwise doing all this could be a giant waste of time.

[macbain]

Sorry if this was mentioned but i haven't been able to read the whole thread yet.

I really like the idea of using enspells to increase our melee capability.

What I would be most interested in seeing is an enspell that absorbs the mobs TP.

Its like one spell that encompasses all of the job.
- a reason to melee
- enhances tp for the rdm to increase WS dmg
- it's a new kind of enfeeble
- and reduces the damage output of the mob (healing aspect?)

I think it would be a very simple solution to the problem that really doesn't have to effect anything else already in existence.

[Supersun]

However, my biggest hurdle at the time was integrating melee into it, as otherwise it just changes where the RDM stands in a battle and nothing more.

How did you like the idea of Enspells affecting the potency of the buffs (especially the stoneskin aura one)? I did write that late at night and might not have properly have thought out all the cons, but at least from what i can think of it woud make an interesting healing mechanic that uses our melee that doesn't step on Dnc.

[Seriha]

I can't say I'd ever see SE being okay with a perpetually renewable Stoneskin without giving it a worthlessly low cap or limiting the conversion rate from Enspell damage. In general, they've seemingly been a bit fickle with Stoneskingas in Earthen Ward and Diamondhide being meh in the player's hands. Accession and Stoneskin is a later exception to this, but one might argue the stratagem cost and increased MP/recast was also part of their balancing. The fact items that enhance it don't carry over to the non-caster also seems like a nod toward their dislike of physical invulnerability that isn't a 2 hour or limited to a rare temp consumable.

You're also asking for a bit of a code nightmare since not only will the mob need to store enspell damage done, but then document how it's been applied to other players. One-handers will strike more often, thus you could see them getting 20 here, 20 there, etc.. Two-handers, however, might wind up getting 40 per whack. Without making this consideration, you wind up making the ability better for one-handers, and I'm not really game for prompting segregation amongst the classes.

The above is also why I didn't include Stoneskin, Blink, or Aquaveil in my talk about a perpetuating aura, as these are not fixed effects and vary as you take damage or absorb a hit. I also realize I forgot to include Regen in the category of buffs that would work.

More toward Enspells in general and popular ideas I've seen over time, giving them additional enfeebles is not something I'm totally against, but at times it seems redundant, worthless, or too good NOT to use like if applying Stun to Enthunder, thus making every other Enspell choice a bad one. I've been leaning more to the pool/level/sublimation mechanic ever since those and WHM's Solace came around, but honestly, how SE would decide to convert it is up in the air. I know with my old Elemental Feedback idea, the offensive side was more like a Saboteur on a 10s timer for debuffs (though it favored durations more than potency). The defensive was more like SCH's Perpetuance stratagem, though also offering potency boosts.

...which is all reminding me of how ideas for RDM have come and gone, often finding their ways too other jobs. Bleh.

[Duelle]

More toward Enspells in general and popular ideas I've seen over time, giving them additional enfeebles is not something I'm totally against, but at times it seems redundant, worthless, or too good NOT to use like if applying Stun to Enthunder, thus making every other Enspell choice a bad one. I've been leaning more to the pool/level/sublimation mechanic ever since those and WHM's Solace came around, but honestly, how SE would decide to convert it is up in the air.Personally, enspells with added effects aren't that great an idea because of the way it can be lopsided in one particular way. I do feel that if you want to do something in the style of solace it'd have to be a bit more direct and a little more passive. I'd be all for some sort of proc while melee'ing that made cures shorter to cast (or instant) to play along with our supposed "support" role, but I don't think the buff system in FFXI would really work with something like that.

[AyinDygra]

Just brainstorming here:

My proposed "status-hit" addition to the En-spell 2's could be removed and simply be a change to calculating of damage based on the initial casting, not on-hit. (I agree the status effects may be more of a deciding factor than elemental damage type)

More importantly,
What if my proposed "Magic Fencer" Job Trait had the additional effect:
While an En-spell is active, and the Red Mage is engaged with a target in melee range:
Grants "Quick Magic" (same effect granted by the Atma of Apocalypse) with an activation rate of 2/4/6/8/10% rising by tier.

[Duelle]

More importantly,
What if my proposed "Magic Fencer" Job Trait had the additional effect:
While an En-spell is active, and the Red Mage is engaged with a target in melee range:
Grants "Quick Magic" (same effect granted by the Atma of Apocalypse) with an activation rate of 2/4/6/8/10% rising by tier.I'd prefer a proc that can be "saved" and used within a time limit, not something that can just proc whenever it wants and happens to do so when you least need it.

[Supersun]

I like the +Enspell part of magic fencer, but I'm not sure the +critical damage fits it well. Especially given the fact that if we then sub warrior the original fencer will stack on top of it and give us +15% crit rate at 99...that's a lot of +crit%. I was going to suggest TP Bonus but then stopped for the same reason above lol.

One creative idea I can think of is granting "Elemental Affinity +10% of the element that matches our corresponding Enspell. That would additionally enhance our Enspells even more by increasing their damage by +10% AND if SE decides to be awesome and give us an elemental WS that has its element vary depending on the enspell it would also increase that by +10%. And considering this is a fencer trait it would not work with staves which would eliminate the majority of the broken argument against that while at the same time relieving our "dependence" on them since we would also receive a +10% Magic accuracy increase for one element as well. It would also give us more incentive to nuke while meleeing since there's not as much need to switch into a staff since it will only increase your damage by an additional +5% (for an HQ staff).

[AyinDygra]

I like Supersun's ideas on the adjustments to "Magic Fencer." I had not considered the stacking of Fencer and Magic Fencer.

Perhaps another idea:

Sword Spells: While related to en-spells, these are more for spike damage, than damage over time. This new line of spells would have accuracy based on the main equipped weapon. These would cost MP and TP to use.

Tier 1-4 Sword Spells: They require the same MP needed to cast the related spell plus 50TP.
A normal physical attack accompanied by the instant cast of the related Tier 1-4 spell. (maybe only up to tier 3? A good candidate for testing on the announced-to-be-opened test server)
Blazing Sword I-IV
Frozen Sword I-IV
Thunder Sword I-IV
Wind Sword I-IV
Stone Sword I-IV
Water Sword I-IV

Other Low Tier Sword Spells:
Envenomed Sword (poison), Bio Sword, Silencing Sword, Slowing Sword, Gravity Sword

Tier 5 Sword Spells: They require the same MP needed to cast the related spell plus 100TP.
A normal physical attack with a chance to critical, accompanied by the instant cast of the related ancient magic.
Flare Blade, Freeze Blade, Burst Blade, Tornado Blade, Quake Blade, Flood Blade

Other High Tier Sword Spells:
Viral Blade (Virus), Addler Blade, Break Blade, Paralyzing Blade, Dispelling Blade, Stunning Blade, Plague Blade

Some notes:
* The physical hit MUST land for the related sword spell to cast.
* Sword Spells would have a longer recast than the related spells that are cast along with the physical attack (add normal casting time to normal recasting time = sword spell recast) to offset the very quick normal casting time (very fast, like physical blue magic.)
* Sword spells cannot be used to magic burst (and they do not interrupt magic bursting conditions either).

[Duelle]

Ayn's idea reminds me of an idea I once had.

Job Abilities
Spellblade (1 minute cooldown): Allows the Red Mage to infuse their weapon with one elemental magic spell, allowing it to take effect instantly. Magic cast through Spellblade counts as if it had been normally casted, thus allowing it to act as a magic burst if used after a skillchain. Requires Sword or Dagger equipped in the main hand slot.

Job Traits
Magic Fencer: Grants TP bonus to spells cast through Spellblade.

* The idea is designed to serve as burst, but meant to also evolve and change at higher levels, where Spellblade would become on-demand burst once Magic Fencer enters the picture instead of being solely used to land a quick MB if needed.
* Spellblade's accuracy is derived from melee accuracy.
* The elemental feedback idea could be tied to spellblade, if deemed appropriate and adjusted accordingly.
* Aside from having a 1-minute cooldown, the actual spell cast through this JA would be put on its own cooldown as well.
* It is also part of a much bigger set of changes.

[Supersun]

Sword Spells

Seems...not necessary. I mean it costs what the normal spell costs +50 TP? Why not just cast normal spell instead.
It also does seem to step on Blue Mages toes as they do tend to specialize in Spike spells. Sure, our damage is magical and theirs is physical, but I'd almost just prefer they buffed Blus magical side if it's not strong enough.

[AyinDygra]

Seems...not necessary. I mean it costs what the normal spell costs +50 TP? Why not just cast normal spell instead.

I guess I should have included more of my reasoning in the notes:

This also grants RDMs access to spells they normally don't have (Ancient Magic, and new enfeebles) given the additional requirement of costing TP as well as MP, so they're not just new spells added to the normal spell list -- this requires the RDM to be on the dangerous front lines to get access to their "full" spell list. RDM can still be useful on the back lines, but this encourages front line participation. (Since this topic is about how to improve RDM melee, I haven't addressed the mage side very much at all, aside from my first idea post with new spells, but I doubt SE would normally just give RDM access to Ancient Magic, etc)

Secondly, as to why not just cast the normal spell instead? They have their own separate recast timers so the same spell can be cast almost instantly, as long as the RDM has TP. (something similar to dual casting or simultaneous casting that has been suggested in the past and was rejected by SE as being "impossible.")

And in reply to the BLU thing... I think BLU stepped on RDM's toes first. >.> ) It's not like there isn't already Black Mage, White Mage, and Scholar casting magic the same as Red Mage... and Dark Knight and Blue Mage casting magic accompanied by their melee... The theme of BLU's spells are completely different from normal mages anyway.

Red Mage has mixed both the Red Mage and Magic Knight of past FF games, similar to FF1's Red Mage, being able to melee respectably, and cast low levels of White and Black Magic for utility. The dual-school casting aspect of the job has really been given to Scholar, while Red Mage has taken on a majority of the aspects of the "Magic Knight" from past FF games. They focus on spell casting on their swords as their unique thing, and the en-spells were a good start. This is the real meat of the job, in my opinion... and it's been lacking due to their magical prowess and the role they have taken on in FFXI society with a lack of WHM's, and the need for refresh in this game's combat system... both pulling RDM away from their focus.

Edit: One more reason to use the Sword Spell: Instant cast of the spell, for the cost of TP. This combines the casting time with the old recast, to make a really long recast timer for the spells instead. This alone would make the sword spells useful for front line casting while meleeing.

[Supersun]

I wasn't referring to the aesthetical factor of stepping on blue mages toes. Sure there are other jobs that are on the front lines casting magic. I was more referring how this essentially mimics the role Blue plays on a more technical level. That being, jobs on the front like casting spells for spike damage.

I certainly believe there's room on the front lines for another type of mage/melee hybrid, but in a sense your idea is more or less mimicking Blue Mage because if you remove the damage types between the 2, magical and physical, it's essentially the exact same thing. Jobs doing spike damage with their spells and only gaining access to all their spells if they are in range...except ours cost TP

I'm not saying there's a way this couldn't work, but as it stands right now that idea just sounds like Blue Mage -1.

I mean there's a variety of different ways to assist on the front lines. We don't need something that is so similar to blue.
(that and the simpler and easier the idea the better chance it has of being added. The dev team can't spend ALL their time on Rdm :P)

[Seriha]

Anyone that thinks a BLU's magical side sucks now hasn't seen a good BLU. Water nukes are probably the most universally potent set with Corrosive Ooze, Regurgitation, and Acrid Stream as front-runners in proper builds. Meanwhile, you get things like a pimped out Charged Whisker allowing them solo AoE burn without facing diminishing damage like BLM's -agas. Thermal Pulse isn't bad as a fire nuke and Everyone's Grudge can be decent if you build toward that, too. I do agree their old magical spells blow and could use a looking over in both potency and MP costs, but that's a matter for the BLU board.

Either way, I just want to advise against clogging suggestions into simple En-effects. As is, the category is basically limited to one, otherwise we could benefit from Sambas or not run into conflicts with weapons with their own innate effects. Even with just six Enspells, we tend to stick to Enblizzard since most also have Ice merits to help with MACC. Suggesting a RDM just spell spam to cycle them between swings would be, in turn, quite silly since they could just cast the normal versions unless the En-whatevers are way, way better. Of course, you're not at all helping our casting burden or addressing how useless enfeebles tend to be on fodder mobs or detrimental to counter tanks who don't want their NMs slowed/para'd so they can kill more quickly.

Overall, multi-purpose debuffs would be good. Cutting down on our need to cycle would be another step. When we get the freedom of time, we're given a greater luxury to actually be versatile and not focused on one thing. And no, Double Cast will not help this no matter how many times someone inanely suggests it.

[Doombringer]

i'd like to see a spell that has slow para blind addle and a def/att down effect all rolled into one. make it lvl 99 rdm only.. call it.. "cripple" or something. if a mob is immune to any particular aspect of cripple, the other effects still land.

each individual effect would be at around the potency of the unmerited spells... so slow1, para1, blind1, dia2 and bio2. (not literally dia2 and bio2, i know they don't gel.. but that much def/att down, maybe no dot at all)

give it a quick cast/recast time, and you've just freed up a lot of time for the rdm to actually swing his weapon. instead of spending so much time enfeebling every mob, it's dead by the time the last spell lands, you just cripple it.

it's not op since it's all effects you can apply to the mob anyway, slightly weaker. (given that some effects use int to determine potency, and others mnd, and they are all by nature weaker than there merit equivalents) it just lets you do it in one fifth the time.

this could be a helpful utility spell for mid tier mobs, whereas when you move to tougher mobs or nm's an rdm may still choose to use the individual spells, optimized through gear.



it's not a DIRECT melee buff, but it frees us up to actually swing while still doing rdm things, and hopefully bringing back a bit of what has been lost to the job recently.

[Duelle]

i'd like to see a spell that has slow para blind addle and a def/att down effect all rolled into one. make it lvl 99 rdm only.. call it.. "cripple" or something. if a mob is immune to any particular aspect of cripple, the other effects still land.That would go hand in hand with something else I once came up with.

Job Abilities
Readiness (3 minute cooldown): Allows the Red Mage to cast up to four enhancing magic spells on themselves at the same time. The Red Mage can set these four spells through the Readiness interface. Each spell is put on its own cooldown, and the casting time of Readiness is the average casting time of all four spells before Fast Cast is factored.

To me this is basically Refresh, Haste, Enspell and Phalanx in one shot. Granted, I originally thought of this as part of a melee stance that by nature has longer buff durations (and does away with composure as we know it), but the JA alone would fit what you seem to be looking for.

On the topic of copying mechanics from BLU, let me just say that it is less about copying and more on playing off concepts that make our melee actually relevant to the rest of the things we can do. Directly relevant, at that (you can't have a magic fencer without mixing melee and magic together, and enspells are a step in that direction but not the entire thing). Also do keep in mind that BLU as it is came about because the devs refused to fix RDM at the time and were hoping the melee crowd would jump off RDM to play BLU instead.

[Seriha]

Also do keep in mind that BLU as it is came about because the devs refused to fix RDM at the time and were hoping the melee crowd would jump off RDM to play BLU instead.

Until a dev comes out and says that, it's pretty much player assumption... and popular fodder for the anti-melee crowd. Rather, I see them designing BLU with some of RDM's shortcomings in mind, skirting the staff issue in part by tying physical spell accuracy to your main-hand, keeping their ranges relatively short so they're in melee range anyway, and basically making them quick casting and MP efficient so they can swing more. The general lack of party buffs didn't hurt that last one, either.

[Doombringer]

That would go hand in hand with something else I once came up with.

Job Abilities
Readiness (3 minute cooldown): Allows the Red Mage to cast up to four enhancing magic spells on themselves at the same time. The Red Mage can set these four spells through the Readiness interface. Each spell is put on its own cooldown, and the casting time of Readiness is the average casting time of all four spells before Fast Cast is factored.

To me this is basically Refresh, Haste, Enspell and Phalanx in one shot. Granted, I originally thought of this as part of a melee stance that by nature has longer buff durations (and does away with composure as we know it), but the JA alone would fit what you seem to be looking for.

agreed, it's sorta the other side of the same coin, and would be equally helpful for the same reasons.

[Merton9999]

What of you combined the Spellblade concept with the ever-popular suggestion:

Runic
One minute cooldown
Absorbs the next elemental magic spell cast by the mob, or the Red Mage or another party member, provided the spell was cast on or by the opponent to which the Red mage is engaged, and provided the element of the spell matches the current enspell element in effect on the Red Mage. The MP cost of the spell is used in conjunction with the weapon's attack power (and possibly other modifiers) to enhance the enspell damage for the remaining duration of the enspell.

The goal with the damage calculation would be ideally to double the damage possible through just the straight nuke damage, as enmity free enspell DOT. To reach this, you'd have to gear for accuracy and haste, your weapon attack power would matter, and you'd need to minimize cycle spells.

I agree with Seriha that minimizing cycling is an ideal way to bring RDMs to the front, but with the current direction of multi-purpose jobs the idea has been to require a stance to be chosen so that you can't be great at multiple things at once. BLU can be a good main healer but not if they're a great DD. Same with SCH. Good players can toggle well, but that would be the challenge here too.

Or, you could go the route mentioned above of making the next successful hit a spike damage loaded with the damage of the absorbed spell, modified by TP and other factors so the ideal again is spell damage x1.5-2 depending on your gear and skills.

Or! Let's say the default behavior of Runic is to enhance the enspell damage per strike for no extra enmity. But you could get an additional JA a couple levels later, "Runic Seal" that allowed you to channel the remaining power of the absorbed spell into additional weapon skill damage. That way if you reached a point where you need to stop meleeing to cure, enhance, enfeeble, you could still make use of the rest of the nuking power and your TP and gain enmity by using a magic infused WS. Ideally this would do less damage than if you were able to melee out the rest of the absorbed spell duration.

One neat thing about this would be the potential for another member to offer more damage to Runic. For example, through higher tier nukes or AM from BLM, SCH, SMN. The RDM could of course use Runic when soloing to enhance their own enspell via Tier IV's.

I also like that this could be used as a pseudo stun, but only for a single element family of spells you'd have to plan for in advance. It also minimizes the use of Runic as both a stun and melee damage enhancer because chances are you won't be meleeing against a mob with an enspell matching the element they like to cast.

My favorite thing is it would be awesome to randomly steal another party member's spell for my own damage by throwing up Runic while they're casting :)

[Duelle]

What of you combined the Spellblade concept with the ever-popular suggestion:

Runic
One minute cooldown
Absorbs the next elemental magic spell cast by the mob, or the Red Mage or another party member, provided the spell was cast on or by the opponent to which the Red mage is engaged, and provided the element of the spell matches the current enspell element in effect on the Red Mage. The MP cost of the spell is used in conjunction with the weapon's attack power (and possibly other modifiers) to enhance the enspell damage for the remaining duration of the enspell.

The goal with the damage calculation would be ideally to double the damage possible through just the straight nuke damage, as enmity free enspell DOT. To reach this, you'd have to gear for accuracy and haste, your weapon attack power would matter, and you'd need to minimize cycle spells.Whoa, that's what, three birds in one stone? I like it!

I agree with Seriha that minimizing cycling is an ideal way to bring RDMs to the front, but with the current direction of multi-purpose jobs the idea has been to require a stance to be chosen so that you can't be great at multiple things at once. BLU can be a good main healer but not if they're a great DD. Same with SCH. Good players can toggle well, but that would be the challenge here too.Another one of my crazy ideas:

Fencer's Oath: The melee-oriented stance. Encouraging skill with weapons and mixing magic power with swordmanship to create a frontline fighter capable of dealing some damage and having access to useful enfeebling magic, while keeping some semblance of support through back-up cures. The stance obviously focuses on standing in the front lines, while allowing the RDM to cripple their enemies in a way that is beneficial to those in the front line. While in this mode, Magic Attack Bonus does not affect any elemental spells. Grants access to Vorpal Blade and Sanguine Blade. Buff durations on self are quadrupled (Reraise and Utsusemi are unnaffected by this). Casting range is cut down to 10 yalms.

Sage's Vow: The caster-oriented stance. Placing greater emphasis on magic of all types, and thus granting access to a larger array of spells. This stance somewhat mirrors how RDM is currently played; it focuses on pure spell-casting while giving the RDM its known kiting tools to use where necessary. It also has access to powerful support magic for use in groups and increased buff duration for all party members as a baseline bonus.

A rough idea of how I would do it. I know you mentioned switching being a good thing, but in fear of being told "do your damage thing then get the hell in the back and start healing and casting refresh", I'd put a 1-minute debuff attached to switching stances. And yes, Readiness and Spellblade were conceived with these stances in mind. There are a couple of of additional mods per stance, such as traits, additional abilities and spells available, too.

[Supersun]

I really don't like the idea of stances myself. I feel the conflict with the nature of Red Mage. Gaining something at the loss of something else isn't what Red Mage has represented in the past. Not to mention that stances are hardly necessary at this point. I mean for your melee stance why not just give us those WS natively? That sure isn't going to break the job and that's already the majority of that stance besides the 4x buff thing (which between composure and EAF cape + feet doesn't really need to be increased that much more for just our self).

I think the real bread winner is going to be an idea that enhances both the back line and the front line in a simple yet effective way. I randomly came up with an idea yesterday from the synthesis of a pieces of other suggestions put together. Once again this tends to play with the idea of an elemental WS, but could be just as easily modified to work for a physical was well.

JA - Spirit Release - 0:15 cooldown
Releases energy stored from a portion of your MP spent.

The general idea is that there have always been complaints that time spent casting is not time spent meleeing. Ideas such as swinging while you are casting have been proposed, but I was thinking if there were any other ways to make up melee from your casting. Then I realized that Occult Acumen was somewhat of an attempt at this, but imo it's too restrictive working only for elemental and dark magic and having the MP spent converted to TP isn't necessarily the best use. SO I came up with this idea instead.

The MP you spend is added to an invisible "Sublimation like pool" and whenever you use the JA above it spends that pool to enhance your next WS, nuke, or cure. Not 1:1 obviously, but I was thinking that it enhances your WS/spell by +20% of the "MP pool spent." So for example if you spend 100 MP and you used the JA it would enhance your next WS, nuke, or cure by +5%. This would obviously need some sort of cap and I was thinking about 1000 MP in the pool or +50% WS/nuke/cure potential. Of course the numbers are arbitrary if used would likely be changed, but the concept is the important thing.

Obviously there are some issues with this and this change alone won't really do all that much unless accompanied by other things (such as non 75 melee gear), but this might be one way that the front line as well as the back line might receive an added boost.

[Duelle]

I really don't like the idea of stances myself. I feel the conflict with the nature of Red Mage. Gaining something at the loss of something else isn't what Red Mage has represented in the past. Not to mention that stances are hardly necessary at this point. I mean for your melee stance why not just give us those WS natively? That sure isn't going to break the job and that's already the majority of that stance besides the 4x buff thing (which between composure and EAF cape + feet doesn't really need to be increased that much more for just our self).From experience, buff duration is still a bit on the short side. That and I'm nowhere near AF3 cape and feet to benefit from that. Admittedly, I do think from the baseline point of view, but that's largely because I've never believed in fixes or notable changes in class mechanics through gear.

Aside from that, the reason why I proposed a melee stance is because (this being just opinion) even with weapon skills the shadow of "support" still lingers over you. Not to mention that my idea also had Job traits available only in that stance, mainly Accuracy Bonus, Crippler (enfeebling accuracy is derived from melee accuracy), Arcane Combat (elemental magic accuracy for nukes and Spellblade is derived from melee accuracy), and Magic Fencer (TP Bonus for spells cast through Spellblade, and I'm considering adding that suggestion to give it a damage bonus to enspells). Also, I'd toss in enfeebles that are fitting for close-quarter combat.

On the caster side, I was thinking of additional tiers of MAB and MDB, Cure V or my own spin on helping RDM heals, the job trait Triage (which adds 25-50% bonus heal to Cure spells over 15 seconds). A couple of extra enfeebles that fit the theme of a ranged caster as well.

I guess my mindset here is that you wouldn't be able to give RDM all that without some mechanic to keep both sides separate. Under normal game design gear could be the segregating factor, but gear-swapping mid-combat is possible in FFXI.

[Seriha]

I'll just reiterate I'm not keen on penalizing stances, either. We saw it with Hasso/Seigan because, let's face it, SE didn't SAM/NINs rocking the world. SCH's are a bit more sensible, since it is what lets them better encroach on BLM while at the same time not being as potent as WHM and so on the other way around. WHM's stances carry no penalty at all. I just feel one style should favor offense, both physically and magically (better debuffs and nukes), while the other would emphasize defense (better buffs, cures, etc.). Keeping yourself backline wouldn't reap the direct benefits of those, but being in the back also arguably brings more safety. Those who put themselves at risk of a mob's AoE's and Auras deserve to get more out of the deal.

[Supersun]

Stances aren't necessarily a bad idea in of themselves since like sch the drawback of one stance is usually enough to justify the near specialist power of that stance. I just don't feel that is "Red Mage" though. I more feel we should be generalists with a niche. (and by niche I don't mean a specialized role. I more mean specialized benefits that synergize well with others that along with our generalist abilities justify a spot. Dia III is a niche. It's a powerful def down effect that synergizes well with mostly everyone (if only attack mattered for heavy DDs now >.>))

[Duelle]

Stances aren't necessarily a bad idea in of themselves since like sch the drawback of one stance is usually enough to justify the near specialist power of that stance. I just don't feel that is "Red Mage" though. I more feel we should be generalists with a niche. (and by niche I don't mean a specialized role. I more mean specialized benefits that synergize well with others that along with our generalist abilities justify a spot. Dia III is a niche. It's a powerful def down effect that synergizes well with mostly everyone (if only attack mattered for heavy DDs now >.>))The only other way I can think of creating some semblance of balance is through gear, but as I've mentioned, that approach is moot in a game where gear-swapping is the norm. Gear is usually a decent factor for this sort of thing, but alas it simply would not work here.

The lack of restrictions is what feeds the "RDM shouldn't get A or B because they're overpowered and can already out-survive everything" sentiments. I'd love to be able to shut them up once and for all. Then again, so long as the class is adept at the sword and has access to white and black magic, it doesn't stop being a Red Mage to me.

[Supersun]

Those sentiments are wrong. I mean we are at a point where our soloability primarily comes from terrain abuse. You can't blame a job for being able to solo a lot JUST because it abuses the terrain and other then that it's really only Utsusemi + Fast Cast (and slow if applicable) that makes us durable past that. If our survivability is really an issue (which it's not since we can't hold hate worth **** anyway) wouldn't the next logical step then be to wean us off a /nin for DD? Certainly they can make something else more viable without overpowering the job.

[Duelle]

Those sentiments are wrong. I mean we are at a point where our soloability primarily comes from terrain abuse. You can't blame a job for being able to solo a lot JUST because it abuses the terrain and other then that it's really only Utsusemi + Fast Cast (and slow if applicable) that makes us durable past that.The thing is that we have people that still claim we're broken and want to be Superman. This is partly because of the community, but also partly because the developers did not handle RDM properly from the start. If it had been me in charge, I would have nerfed Bind, Gravity, Utsusemi (by making Ninjutsu not be affected by Fast Cast) AND fixed the terrain errors not even within an hour after the first Avesta solo video came out. It's just common sense. Leaving crap like that slide is what created the generally negative image we have. So people's rationale is "you can solo Genbu and Ash Dragon, so it's ok for you to be my refresh whore when joining my party". It would be akin to the devs leaving Reckoning Bomb in WoW alone instead of nerfing it within hours of it being discovered.

wouldn't the next logical step then be to wean us off a /nin for DD?This is where I can only say that a melee RDM single wielding would have to match the DPS of any member of the /NIN club to be acceptable. And it requires changes that are basically a crap shoot. That still does not remove our perceived "support" aspects from the equation when front-lining, either.

[Supersun]

The thing is that we have people that still claim we're broken and want to be Superman.

There are also people that claim that Puppetmaster is lol. Doesn't make them right. And wouldn't it be silly to not buff something just because some players with no real experience with the job and are either blind or jealous say it's broken? I guarantee you there are plenty of career white mages out there that would rather see the job rot for all they care because they seem to think that we personally were the ones that made Red Mage the way it was in ToA. The point is that why does a flawed perception matter? People have already tried to debate it but they all fail when asked "Name something that you would bring a Red Mage over any other job."



This is where I can only say that a melee RDM single wielding would have to match the DPS of any member of the /NIN club to be acceptable. And it requires changes that are basically a crap shoot.

Though /nin is daunting with it's ~40% melee (and enspell) DoT increase, +10% increase in WS frequency, and +20% WS damage increase it certainly isn't impossible to make something more powerful in a practical matter. Here are just some random ideas off the top of my head.

1) Give us Greatsword. It certainly isn't unprecedented and GS is horribly underused as it is. I'm not actually sure whether it would be more powerful then DW Swords or not, but Rdm/Sam with a GS would certainly have some level of power (though the recast penalty would suck XD)

2) Give us some form of native Dual Wield. Something else that isn't necessarily unprecedented. If we innately have that +20% WS damage from the offhand then /war becomes a lot more viable especially since /war then also adds the EX WS as well. /nin would still win in the DOT aspect but /war would do a bit more WS damage.

3) A strong elemental WS + Fencer/Magic Fencer. Already talked a bit about this one, but it's a similar solution as the previous one. Since elemental WSs aren't affected by additional hits the +20% WS damage doesn't matter and /war closes the gap quite a bit between the rest of /nin.

4) Give shields some offensive potential. I mean it wasn't uncommon for shields to be used to strike an enemy yet in XI all we have that reflect this is Shield Bash. There are certainly ways they could improve shields whether it's just shields with better offensive stats or some JAs/JTs that allow the shield to do additional damage like kick attacks or something.

I mean when Thf got DW 1 before the lvl 90 cap Thf/War actually did more damage then /nin. It really wasn't until 90 that nin pulled ahead again, and I'll admit that+~40% DoT increase certainly is quite a bit, but if SE fixed 2h weapons (albeit in a stupid way imo) they can certainly do it again if needed. I mean if needed they could just make fencer a stupidly powerful JT.

[Doombringer]

just got my almace to 85 recently and i can say that if they just made CdC questable (so you didn't NEED to go through all that emp crap) it would go a long way to helping rdm melee.

as is right now, i can keep up with most NON emp holding jobs dmg-wise, (just going by my limited experience of course)and i can even compete with the emp holding thf in our ls. (course that's just a thf, but i'm just a red mage, so...) all that with my melee set still far from optimized.

of course my damage suffers against anything SERIOUS, casting burden and all, but i think that's about where i "should" be as an rdm. if anything i'm a little op now in pt play.. all i have to do is stop casting to become a "real" dd, and it's not like i haven't been gear swapping everything but weapons ANYWAY since qufim, so it's not like my spells have suffered much at all. (but again.. i had to get an emp weapon to get here. so maybe it's justified if i'm a little op)

obviously i can't estimate how much dmg i'd be doing using CdC with my old shamshir+2 or something, but the ws itself is a pretty significant buff compared to death blossom. if it were practical to attain it would be a big deal, and might get rdm to about where it belongs.

as sun has been saying... if, instead of cdc, they added a powerful elemental ws NATIVE to rdm, that would mainly fill the same role, and even "gimp" /nin a little bit.

[Seriha]

CDC's one of the better Emp WS, no doubt, but coaxing people to endure Guku's Aery and such for a melee RDM will definitely be an uphill battle. It'd be around this point where I'd suggest people also level PLD and BLU to get the most out of the sword, but PLD suffers its own popularity issues (though arguably being the best for CDC use with their gear options) while a lot of people just look to BLU as the niche grellow whore. I have BLU and RDM leveled, myself, and just getting aid for the Briareus stage has been rough as well as SE hating on me with single drop kills. I'm sure tempting people with +2 items would make the Sobek phase easier, but still, Guku's a cockblock for everyone and, at best, 5 min kill/15 min pop, spawns 72 times a day to satisfy every single person on a server looking for a Kannagi or Almace. That might complete 2 a day with enough double drops from Sobek, but if you figure 30 kills in actuality, that's 10 hours of Guku alone. Probably more spread over 2-3 hours per session with varying competition along the way.

WoE would be more tolerable if it wasn't a total clusterfeck of suck and random.

[Duelle]

There are also people that claim that Puppetmaster is lol. Doesn't make them right. And wouldn't it be silly to not buff something just because some players with no real experience with the job and are either blind or jealous say it's broken? I guarantee you there are plenty of career white mages out there that would rather see the job rot for all they care because they seem to think that we personally were the ones that made Red Mage the way it was in ToA. The point is that why does a flawed perception matter? People have already tried to debate it but they all fail when asked "Name something that you would bring a Red Mage over any other job."It doesn't stop the negativity thrown our way, for one. PUP was also not the one that was (stupidly) making videos of itself soloing what was considered endgame content. That alone will take us along time to live down.

As erred as others' perception of RDM may be, the fact that they're the ones making parties and they're the ones choosing our roles for us says quite a bit. And at this point in the game, our melee needs to turn heads.

The reason why I am so adamant about removing refresh and haste from the equation for us is because as long as those two spells remain castable on others, in the minds of others we're still more "beneficial" spamming those and letting the "real" DDs stand in the front. People won't ask for things you obviously don't have. You can then justify damage increases and other buffs to melee (not to mention you would need them, seeing that you would not be covering the hated "refresher" spot in a party).

Believe me, under any other game ruleset, RDM would be fine and would not need changes. The class itself seems to be built around gear and subjob deciding your role. That entire angle got borked and nuked to hell when the devs created monsters that require you to stack stats in order to reliably land anything and died horribly when gear-swapping became the norm.

Give shields some offensive potential. I mean it wasn't uncommon for shields to be used to strike an enemy yet in XI all we have that reflect this is Shield Bash. There are certainly ways they could improve shields whether it's just shields with better offensive stats or some JAs/JTs that allow the shield to do additional damage like kick attacks or something.This has the potential of rolling over on to WHM and PLD. PLD would not concern me, but WHM kind of would.

[SnapperTrx]

Given the tons of ideas I see in this thread, Im going to rehash mine. The reason? They could be implemented before Monday's update because they would require little to no additional programming and would benefit RDM's right a way. They were as follows (slightly modified to make more sense):

1. RDM needs to have it's Parry skill greatly enhanced. If the focus on RDM is 'fencing' (ie, Fencers Earring, Fencers Ring, Fencing Degen, Estoqueur's gear) then we need to have at least a B in parry. I can understand the low shield skill, but Parry is a must.

2. RDM must have the 'Fencer' trait. To not have this trait on a job who's relic armor is obviously based on fencing (Duelists gear, Estoqueur's gear, anything with 'Fencer' in the name) is really just dumb. Sound harsh? Well it is! The equivalent would be having a skill called 'Warriors Rage' and not giving it to WAR!

3. Fencer V: RDM exclusive, make it high level, 80 or 90. Leave the critical hit rate and TP bonus from Fencer IV and instead add 'Occasionally attacks twice' (sword only) and 'Occasionally counter-attacks after parrying' (sword only). This would give RDM's a good increase in damage output in a party, but also help out a little (just a little) during solo play.

It would be simple for Square to toss this into the upcoming update, and the benefits for solo'ing RDM's or those that don't often use /NIN would be great! (I myself have taken to /DRK). The added 'Double Attack' would make us more relevent in parties as we could increase damage output and pull of weaponskills more often, and the 'Counter attack' would help greatly during solo runs, as RDMs dont have a great damage output anyhow, and every little bit counts. And I still stick to my guns that because many items related to RDM contains the word Fencer, we need to have our parry skill moved to an B (or mabe even an A).

[Doombringer]

CDC's one of the better Emp WS, no doubt, but coaxing people to endure Guku's Aery and such for a melee RDM will definitely be an uphill battle. It'd be around this point where I'd suggest people also level PLD and BLU to get the most out of the sword, but PLD suffers its own popularity issues (though arguably being the best for CDC use with their gear options) while a lot of people just look to BLU as the niche grellow whore. I have BLU and RDM leveled, myself, and just getting aid for the Briareus stage has been rough as well as SE hating on me with single drop kills. I'm sure tempting people with +2 items would make the Sobek phase easier, but still, Guku's a cockblock for everyone and, at best, 5 min kill/15 min pop, spawns 72 times a day to satisfy every single person on a server looking for a Kannagi or Almace. That might complete 2 a day with enough double drops from Sobek, but if you figure 30 kills in actuality, that's 10 hours of Guku alone. Probably more spread over 2-3 hours per session with varying competition along the way.

WoE would be more tolerable if it wasn't a total clusterfeck of suck and random.

agreed.. that's why i'm saying it needs to be easier to get. it's kind of bs that you need an emp weapon just to play the job as it's advertised.

i'm just throwing it out there cuz it seems like an easy fix, though admittedly not ideal.. CdC already exists.. give it to rdms without an emp (or emp-1) weapon. if need be, do this for all emp ws's and there respective jobs. then just buff the actual emp weapons accordingly to make up for the loss of there "unique" ws.

they did it with the mythic ws's? (except then they forgot to buff the actual mythic weapons <.<)

[Supersun]

The only thing is that there's no way in hell they will give JUST Rdm a way to get CDC natively. They would open that up to every job and from there it's hardly a fix since everyone has an emp WS. Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind being able to learn an Emp WS natively. I mean I don't want to exactly be tied to the same weapon all the way to 99 that I have now. TBH CDC is mostly crack like in abyssea. While it certainly is better then most of our options outside of abyssea it's not quite the unsurpassable WS that it is inside of abyssea. I wouldn't be surprised if we got 1-2 new WS on the way to 99 (and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those are job specific WSs). The best fix imo is just to make a good sword WS that Rdm can also natively get. I mean sword is kind of in need of one. Vorpal isn't really that great.

[Seriha]

There was a thread asking for Emp WS to be permanently learned a bit back in the main forum. Some were for the idea, others were raging hard against it. I'm personally for it, with the WoE version being a step in the process or at least acquiring the 85 version of the Emp. WoE still needs some help, though.

[Thelron]

Fencer would indeed be great. More dual-wield would not, however... /NIN and now /DNC should be a boost to individual survivability... that /NIN especially gives such a damage boost to 1-handers has always been a problem, really, and sword + buckler is already pretty well established as part of our image. Better shield/parry skill would always be appreciated to reinforce that, of course (maybe extend Fencer for us to give an added benefit for the shield, and if they're going to leave shield mastery in it should have a better chance of doing something, especially at the idiotic level they jammed it in at (I guess they couldn't think up anything better to do?).

WS on the other hand I think we're actually pretty good for- the fact that we *can* get just about every sword/dagger skill by subbing for them should be fine, or at least would be if /NIN didn't give such an idiotic dps increase compared even to /WAR. Binging in WSs seems like it'd move a bit far from "customizable" towards "all-in-one" (the subjob system has been marginalized enough as it is, if any job should continue to use it RDM should).

Really, though, I think the biggest problem with "RDM melee" is that right now (and for a long time) the dominant method for XPing is based on doing large amounts of purely-melee or purely-magic (depending on if you're a melee or a mage) damage, neither of which RDM is or should be able to do particularly well. So, even with more sensible traits and access to some decent gear you're not going to see RDMs putting out upper-tier damage unless you really do break the job (at which point you may as well make our nukes as effective as a BLM's while we're at it). Without a reason to get SCs back in the everyday routine fixing the recent "mistakes" with our melee options doesn't really get us much if they don't go insanely overboard.

[Duelle]

Fencer would indeed be great. More dual-wield would not, however... /NIN and now /DNC should be a boost to individual survivability... that /NIN especially gives such a damage boost to 1-handers has always been a problem, reallyIt's a two-fold problem. Dual wield tiers, and the fact that most jobs have access to a multi-hit weapon of some sort to put in the offhand that is solely used to boost TP gain.

Then again, if we're talking about development errors, I would focus more on Utsusemi and much less on Dual Wield.

Really, though, I think the biggest problem with "RDM melee" is that right now (and for a long time) the dominant method for XPing is based on doing large amounts of purely-melee or purely-magic (depending on if you're a melee or a mage) damage, neither of which RDM is or should be able to do particularly well.You can't really leave a class underperforming due to being hybrid. We already know what the result of that is.

I'd like SE to develop magic melee in order for RDM to play on the concepts it was founded on (swordsmanship and magic). As I said before, enspells are a start, but are not the whole enchilada. Magic WS are part of that as well, but we're missing Red Lotus Blade, Seraph Blade and Sanguine Blade. We'd still not be done even if we had those, because that dark shadow of support still lingers over anyone that wants to stand in the front lines.

Without a reason to get SCs back in the everyday routine fixing the recent "mistakes" with our melee options doesn't really get us much if they don't go insanely overboard.Skillchains should never have and should never be the focus of class design. That's as bad as designing and balancing a class around "hateless" damage.

[Thelron]

You can't really leave a class underperforming due to being hybrid. We already know what the result of that is.

...

Skillchains should never have and should never be the focus of class design. That's as bad as designing and balancing a class around "hateless" damage.

In reverse, but...

SAM, and to a lesser extent WAR, both suggest otherwise. The whole battle system was designed around skillchains, they was the key to efficiency in killing something (faster kills, BLMs not burning up a whole MP bar on one mob, etc.), and they were the big, "This is why we're not Dark Age of Ultima Quest," selling point (well, along with the job system). So, unless they really have decided not to care anymore you can't really balance a job *without* considering the implications of SCs, otherwise you end up with another SAM-bandwagon problem. If they *have* decided they want to just ditch the whole mechanic then that gives a lot more room to legitimately pump up the base capabilities of the job, but if they ever focus on that again you make it just plain broken.

Alternatively, you can just ditch offensive magic entirely (rip out our MAB and maybe even Clear Mind, give folks a refund on the elemental IV's and rip them out, seriously cut down on +MAB and +elemental skill available to us from gear, or at least planned gear, maybe even drop us to a 'D' skill) and then have a lot more room to go full-tilt on just the melee-oriented side of things (bigger en-spells, etc.) but then we're basically DRKs with 1-handers.

As for the job "underperforming," that has nothing to do with it being a hybrid, and more to do with it not being supposed to hit things for 100%+ of a "hit things" job. I've always been a proponent of actually using the job for all the roles it can fill (which is just about all of them, at least until recently) but not by way of breaking the job, just by using what's available. We *have* plenty of magic WSs available (all the ones you listed, in fact, and we can indeed do quite well with them), and the "dark shadow of support" only lingers if you're trying to do something you're not in the party for (which is where a good bit of the knee-jerk anti-melee crap started in the first place). If you're in a support slot and can have some fun hitting things in the meantime you don't *need* all the offensive toys, and if you're in a DD or tank slot you shouldn't miss the support toys from the likes of /WHM and nor should your party. Yes, it can be hard to convince people building parties to put you in a non-support slot but that's a problem to be solved via "public outreach" rather than trying to re-shape the class from the ground up.

[Seriha]

Yes, it can be hard to convince people building parties to put you in a non-support slot but that's a problem to be solved via "public outreach" rather than trying to re-shape the class from the ground up.

Sorry, but the time for diplomacy has come and gone, and the community has roughly spoken through their criticisms and lack of acceptance. If SE has any intention of maintaining the themeliness of the job, they need to tweak something, be it a bunch of subtle things or one really big thing. Good faith has gotten us nowhere and nobody sane will think 80% is as good as 100% if all you need is a DD.

[Thelron]

True, and the outreach would need to be more on SE's side (making content that actually rewards players for using all of the game's mechanics again and then clubbing people over the head with a clue-stick insofar as RDM and a few other jobs are concerned) anyway, something I don't hold out all that much hope for. At the same time though I just don't like the idea of re-working a job's theme so heavily as to give us truly respectable DD capabilities without having to get our offensive magic involved any more (just having an en-spell up shouldn't cut it... they just (should) catch us up with the heavier weapons we can't use, much like phalanx takes the place of chain and plate armors). Maybe if we had a B/B+ elemental skill or something you could ignore the lack of SCs and such without being at the point where we could *just* nuke but I'd rather they not mess with the *job* any more than they have to to keep it in line with growth it's so far missed out on and that they get the gameplay back to its roots so a whole host of problems can be cleared up, including this 80%/100% crap- plenty of primarily-DD jobs struggle to clear 80% at any given point depending on what "everyone" is focused on at the time (case in point, where have all the bandwagon SAMs gone? Haven't seen all *that* many wyverns flying around lately either). Again, that's more a sign of something wrong with the underlying design, not that the suddenly out-of-favor jobs need major changes.

Granted, I'd *love* to be able to run out and show up a bunch of MNKs or what have you, but it'd be pretty hollow if it was just a matter of "buff and go" and didn't really involve what the rest of the group was doing.

[Seriha]

While vacuum states don't happen as number crunchers would want us to believe, there is still some validity in comparisons. Back when we were 75 and sitting at 250 skill, other DDs had their 269 or 276 in their primary weapons. That's 17.1 to 23.4 more ACC, or 8.5-11.5% more hit-rate, give or take some rounding and DEX. We also had less ATK as a result, nor really adding the eventual change to two-handers that improved the benefits of STR/DEX. Factoring merits is a bit of a wash since they can just merit their own weapons. Nowadays, we're 19 sword points behind BLU, which is basically the same gap as the old days. Composure helps our ACC some, sure, but a good BLU will also likely have the ACC trait via Disseverment and another spell like Vanity Dive or Frenetic Rip. Further consider that their melee gear has grown while ours largely hasn't, and the numbers just continue to pile against us before we even start considering our nukes to their spells, and so on. As is, our best martial sets could never achieve a good balance of the holy trinity of ATK/ACC/Haste. It's usually just one at the expense of others while other jobs are now adding more DA/TA, Crit Bonuses, etc..

Now, the real grief in assumption is that you could be the pimpest of RDMs with Almace, capped Haste, and basically the best we have to offer right now. Yet, when it comes time to LFG, that random party leader will no doubt take the full perle WAR over the RDM because "RDMs aren't a DD," "You're red MAGE," "You feed too much TP," or whatever other argument they'll dig for. We may very well be 180% of that gimpy WAR, but that's not a risk people are willing to take, nor am I of the belief that we should have an Almace and other top-end gear to even enter consideration. Number-wise, though, pit the best a WAR can offer to the best RDM and it's no contest, the WAR eats us for breakfast, craps us out, then asks for more. As it should be? Well, reasonable RDMs aren't looking to out-DD them, but since the highest offense in the shortest period of time tends to be FFXI's most winningest strategy, we're SOL physically.

[Duelle]

Maybe if we had a B/B+ elemental skill or something you could ignore the lack of SCs and such without being at the point where we could *just* nuke but I'd rather they not mess with the *job* any more than they have to to keep it in line with growth it's so far missed out on and that they get the gameplay back to its roots so a whole host of problems can be cleared up, including this 80%/100% crap- plenty of primarilyThe *job* has been built on a bad foundation since the beginning. It's been band-aid fix after band-aid fix since then, not including our image with groups taking a hit when the likes of Avesta started soloing gods.

So, unless they really have decided not to care anymore you can't really balance a job *without* considering the implications of SCs, otherwise you end up with another SAM-bandwagon problem. If they *have* decided they want to just ditch the whole mechanic then that gives a lot more room to legitimately pump up the base capabilities of the job, but if they ever focus on that again you make it just plain broken.They've tried everything short of saying "here's free 30,000 exp for every time you skillchain in a party" to get people to skillchain. It hasn't work and does not work at the moment.

We *have* plenty of magic WSs available (all the ones you listed, in fact, and we can indeed do quite well with them), and the "dark shadow of support" only lingers if you're trying to do something you're not in the party for (which is where a good bit of the knee-jerk anti-melee crap started in the first place).Those will matter the day we can get dual wield to offhand Joyeuse/Khanda/random multi-hitter just like everyone else who is glued to one-handed weapons so we can attempt to keep up. What I mean by the dark shadow of support is that as long as you have those "desired" support spells, you're going to keep being asked for them one way or another.

Nobody invites a Red Mage to melee. People "knew" that DRG was gimp, people "knew" that NIN was better than PLD, and people "know" Red Mage is not a DD, much less front-liner. And yes, the time for words and discourse with the playerbase is over. A couple of brave souls went down that route several years ago. On Allakhazam, we had NinjaWarrior, who posted parses upon parses as a melee RDM and people either nuked him with lolmelee or simply disregarded his words. Things are they are will not change that. We need something bigger.

The 80% thing does not work. I can think of an example that could help illustrate the point, too.

[Supersun]

(case in point, where have all the bandwagon SAMs gone? Haven't seen all *that* many wyverns flying around lately either). Again, that's more a sign of something wrong with the underlying design, not that the suddenly out-of-favor jobs need major changes.

It's not as much of the underlying design as it is with the current proc system that some jobs are miles better at procing then others.

[EricBiggs]

I tend to agree, Red Mage should have more ability in Melee. With the less then flashy En- II spells not working with any multi-hit item or ability, the sheer lack of attack boosts of any kind, and with several other jobs (SAM,BLU,PUP) being able to self skill-chain, what is the point in wielding a sword that has no point? Our enfeebles should have greater range of mobs that are affected then most(if not all) other magic. Perhaps higher parry, or faster single-handed strikes with rapier class weapons, something to make this a more desirable job for melee.

[Luces]

While vacuum states don't happen as number crunchers would want us to believe, there is still some validity in comparisons. Back when we were 75 and sitting at 250 skill, other DDs had their 269 or 276 in their primary weapons. That's 17.1 to 23.4 more ACC, or 8.5-11.5% more hit-rate, give or take some rounding and DEX. We also had less ATK as a result, nor really adding the eventual change to two-handers that improved the benefits of STR/DEX. Factoring merits is a bit of a wash since they can just merit their own weapons. Nowadays, we're 19 sword points behind BLU, which is basically the same gap as the old days. Composure helps our ACC some, sure, but a good BLU will also likely have the ACC trait via Disseverment and another spell like Vanity Dive or Frenetic Rip. Further consider that their melee gear has grown while ours largely hasn't, and the numbers just continue to pile against us before we even start considering our nukes to their spells, and so on. As is, our best martial sets could never achieve a good balance of the holy trinity of ATK/ACC/Haste. It's usually just one at the expense of others while other jobs are now adding more DA/TA, Crit Bonuses, etc..

Now, the real grief in assumption is that you could be the pimpest of RDMs with Almace, capped Haste, and basically the best we have to offer right now. Yet, when it comes time to LFG, that random party leader will no doubt take the full perle WAR over the RDM because "RDMs aren't a DD," "You're red MAGE," "You feed too much TP," or whatever other argument they'll dig for. We may very well be 180% of that gimpy WAR, but that's not a risk people are willing to take, nor am I of the belief that we should have an Almace and other top-end gear to even enter consideration. Number-wise, though, pit the best a WAR can offer to the best RDM and it's no contest, the WAR eats us for breakfast, craps us out, then asks for more. As it should be? Well, reasonable RDMs aren't looking to out-DD them, but since the highest offense in the shortest period of time tends to be FFXI's most winningest strategy, we're SOL physically.

Not true I go all the time and DD sometimes I'll haste/refresh 2(2/5+2 gear hands and legs, 5//6 on head, 3/9 on body, 0/6 on feet), but I say DD main, I will not main heal, dd atmas, emergency cure only.
You will still out perform 70% of the other people who come out to abyssea shout partys, and be on par with about like 12% more.

I'm an Almace rdm finished my 85 about a month ago, so far 3/14 nyzul armor dropping on 80 runs all 3 askar. As far as ws peice goes I'm only missing Antares harness, MKDE head, and Snow Gorget(which I'll get this week). Haste I'm missing Zelus tiara, dusk gloves, or feet, +1(just need one of them I'll have it soon as well), ASA legs(haste +3% pdt -4%) and the new haste da/ta Chalmecec trousers or whatever they are called. Still missing some pdt gear as well, but improving as fast as I can. The ws is sweet it's amazing in abyssea with the right atmas I can average 4k on regular mobs and 3k on nm's, using red curry bun on /nin or /war(/war usually averages about 200 damage higher). Which is great for a rdm and my crit damage is off the chart inside abyssea. Outside the lack of the "perfect" rdm gear being so far behind everyone and everything else rdm takes a hurt to this. The new war ja Blood Rage helps, but you can't always have that or have it up. Red curry buns, and red curry buns +1 are both extremely expensive and sometimes you may have to use pizza like in the new vwnm's so you loose a lot of power. On the plus side It's great to make skillchain's and MB with. That being said my drg can average the same damage per ws, and do more ws's, it can also do crit's with out the aftermath for the same that my rdm can do with the aftermath. Also depending on the situation drg can do more damage and not keep hate(super jump it away). Now once I finish haste set I'll tell you what it's more like. You have to be dedicated purely for this stuff and your still ages behind every other job.

[ManaKing]

Take a look at the Brisk Mask for your head. It doesnt have better haste, but it does have other things that are desirable and not easy to acquire on RDM gear.

[Seriha]

Which is, sadly, taking one step back to take a couple shuffles forward in other areas. BLUs, from their perspective, went from the Turban with 5% Haste to their +1 Kuvuk with 5% Haste, 8 ACC, and 5 Sword skill. +2 bumps up to 6%, 12 ACC, and 7 Sword with the CA boost. Unless you consider the HP/MP a sacrifice, they've not had to make a concession and other jobs got similar perks to their Emp heads.



(Plus I'd like to wear something that's not fugly for a change)

[Supersun]

And unlike Whm our gear selection doesn't actually have enough haste so they can actually pick and choose a few pieces such as using the new 4% haste 4STP head.
(not that they would since dropping the Goliard for an augmented ACP body is a better choice for them)

They can still cap haste even when using that head.

We cannot

Our only choice is to cap with Goading belt, Speed Belt, or Swift belt depending on other slots if they are HQ or not.

[Seyrena]

As a longtime Red Mage before I quit back in '09, I can say I have no problem dishing out some heals, refresh, and haste while I melee. The trick is to stay ahead of the game, keep on your toes.

The best part is, many parties didn't give half a rat's behind if I melee'd as long as I kept the buffs on.

[Eeek]

As a longtime Red Mage before I quit back in '09, I can say I have no problem dishing out some heals, refresh, and haste while I melee. The trick is to stay ahead of the game, keep on your toes.

The best part is, many parties didn't give half a rat's behind if I melee'd as long as I kept the buffs on.

As a LS leader, DD, and BRD, I very much did care if my RDMs meleed instead of used their staves and used proper gear to land strong debuffs and proper-potency cures. If I wanted a DD in that spot, I'd have asked someone to gear up an actual DD job.

I don't mind RDM meleeing when it comes to soloing, duoing, or during little ventures that don't matter. I encourage my WHM and RDM friends to melee all the time when it's fine to do so. While farming KIs last night, I was perfectly fine with my BLM friend spending time meleeing and capping off his staff skill.

[ManaKing]

It's the inequality of /DNC and /NIN that annoys me most. You get dual wield and subtle blow. Both of which are desirable to the current state of RDM because that means you can look at haste gear as a viable alternative to your class actually having real melee damage. You use Enspell I if you have a bunch of enhancing damage gear that you can macro in. You might use enspell 2 if you are /DNC and you want your haste samba or /NIN and use an off hand like the Twilight Dagger.

Either way your objective is to attack as fast as your can. Essentially you are trying to keep up with the rest of the DPS in the game by playing the same game they do. You look at BLU mage and you say, they are a fighter mage and they can keep up, why can't I? BLU uses physical nukes that scale off physical stats. You have magical nukes that scale off magic stats and enspells that scale off almost nothing substantial for late game purposes. On top of that since /NIN and /DNC don't contribute anything to your WS selection, you feel like BLU took all your cool Sword WSs. You still have most of the Dagger WSs in the game, and to be honest Eviseration and Aeolian Edge are both above average WSs. You won't ever get all the good WS in the game because you decided to play like a DPS THF or MNK instead of a Mage or a Fighter. You will deal more DPS, but you won't get the same overall damage as another melee class because you don't get any JAs or WSs that will put you in the same class as them.

Now look at WAR, DRK, PLD, and BLU. They give you the WSs you want, but you don't see anything else that you really want compared to Dual Wield and Subtle Blow. PLD offers almost nothing since you won't be able to tank now, which i personally can't care about since we don't get Scale Mail anymore. RDM/BLU is nice for solo because phallanx + cocoon just really isn't fair, but it's still not something I would play in a serious party. WAR actually looks good on paper, but it fails in execution because it never gets you the same DPS and double attack doesn't work with Enspell 2s. Fencer is nice, but it still doesn't make up for not having dual wield, nor does it answer the question, "Why does the Fencer Class not get the Fencer Job Trait?" DRK is what i personally play and it still isn't as good as /NIN. It is a lot more fun. You get a lot of useful magic, WSs, and JAs. But it still doesn't deal more melee DPS than /NIN.

RDM doesn't currently have any tools that allow it to keep up with other melee. Our best option is to play a generic DD, with no defining class characteristic, that looks nothing like the Iconic RDM that we all know and love. Who can seriously DD in their AF 3+2? No one. The majority of the new gear we have been given is mostly mage gear which does nothing for our melee side. We haven't gotten Scale Mail since Crimson Scale Mail and we have been excluded from almost every new melee set as well. Our new growth from 75+ is a joke, our Enspells don't deal enough damage or have a desired effect, and our importance is poorly defined. The class is not what it was when we started out and I hope that makes everyone else that are on these forums angry as well.

The thing that makes it worse is that they gave us the Almace. The Almace looks amazing, has an amazing WS, gives you +15 to DEX, and hits like a truck. If they had given us another Murgleis type sword then we could have been somewhat content to use our melee presence as a way to enhance our magical damage and assist other mages in the party. But they didn't; they just rolled us in with the other sword users and gave us a toy we just have to go play with.

Since 75, we have been treated only as a mage. We are an inferior mage to every mage in the game and especially now that SCH is in the game. Our job mostly functions as a way for other Jobs to get Convert and Refresh by subbing us. We have 9 more levels till 99. We don't know what is coming. If it is more of the same treatment that we have received since 75, then we are screwed.

[ManaKing]

As a LS leader, DD, and BRD, I very much did care if my RDMs meleed instead of used their staves and used proper gear to land strong debuffs and proper-potency cures. If I wanted a DD in that spot, I'd have asked someone to gear up an actual DD job.

I don't mind RDM meleeing when it comes to soloing, duoing, or during little ventures that don't matter. I encourage my WHM and RDM friends to melee all the time when it's fine to do so. While farming KIs last night, I was perfectly fine with my BLM friend spending time meleeing and capping off his staff skill.

Wow, so generous.

[Eeek]

Wow, so generous.

Hey, I'm not going to undermine LS events and LS goals for some halfwit who doesn't know when to put away their sword or club and get down to business. This is doubly true in somewhat-lowman to actually-lowman settings.

Most reasonable RDMs and WHMs know when it is and isn't appropriate to melee.

[Duelle]

As a longtime Red Mage before I quit back in '09, I can say I have no problem dishing out some heals, refresh, and haste while I melee. The trick is to stay ahead of the game, keep on your toes.

The best part is, many parties didn't give half a rat's behind if I melee'd as long as I kept the buffs on.The problem is that the buffs shouldn't be what we are valued for in a party. Hence the suggestions to put more emphasis on melee. Not to mention we need to deal with potential redundancy when having more than one RDM in the party.

[ManaKing]

Hey, I'm not going to undermine LS events and LS goals for some halfwit who doesn't know when to put away their sword or club and get down to business. This is doubly true in somewhat-lowman to actually-lowman settings.

Most reasonable RDMs and WHMs know when it is and isn't appropriate to melee.

I'm glad your LS events are more important than my class getting a fair share of the fun of this game.

Please just keep using us for what is useful to you. We certainly didn't want to enjoy this game too.

[Eeek]

I'm glad your LS events are more important than my class getting a fair share of the fun of this game.

Please just keep using us for what is useful to you. We certainly didn't want to enjoy this game too.

You're free to do what you want solo or with your friends.

Also, your 'I'm going to do only what's fun without regard to anyone else!' attitude won't fly in the real world. ;)

EDIT: You gotta face facts at some point: RDM is a strong mage but truly terrible melee DD. Only SCH and BLM are worse at meleeing. It could be worse though - RDM could be in the same boat of relative uselessness as SCH.

[Neisan_Quetz]

*SCH, BLM, and SMN are worse at meleeing minimum.

[Supersun]

*SCH, BLM, and SMN are worse at meleeing minimum.

Depends if you count the avatar's PBs or not.

Because Garuda's Claws are scary lol

[Neisan_Quetz]

I find shiva more of a threat if they have beyond, and depends if the Rdm is getting marches it should be no contest (inside or outside).

[ManaKing]

You're free to do what you want solo or with your friends.

Also, your 'I'm going to do only what's fun without regard to anyone else!' attitude won't fly in the real world. ;)

EDIT: You gotta face facts at some point: RDM is a strong mage but truly terrible melee DD. Only SCH and BLM are worse at meleeing. It could be worse though - RDM could be in the same boat of relative uselessness as SCH.

You're right, it won't fly in the real world. BUT it will fly in a fantasy world that is designed to be fun to play. I'm not sure if you are aware of this but FFXI isn't the real world.

SCH can support a full alliance easier than a RDM. As a mage, they actually are desirable and their job was designed to be a pure caster. Why are you comparing 2 things that aren't the same?

[Eeek]

You're right, it won't fly in the real world. BUT it will fly in a fantasy world that is designed to be fun to play. I'm not sure if you are aware of this but FFXI isn't the real world.

SCH can support a full alliance easier than a RDM. As a mage, they actually are desirable and their job was designed to be a pure caster. Why are you comparing 2 things that aren't the same?

Nothing about SCH makes it more desirable than WHM, RDM, or BLM. Its only use is to fill a gap in the back line when a more useful mage job is not available. And no one invites SCH except as a last resort. They're no longer the best healer, nuker, or enfeebler. They're second-tier across the board with most their AoE tricks available via subjob.

"I'm not sure if you are aware of this but FFXI isn't the real world."

Your melee RDM is about as useful to me as a screwdriver in the real world when I need to change a tire. Wrong tool for the task.

[ManaKing]

Nothing about SCH makes it more desirable than WHM, RDM, or BLM. Its only use is to fill a gap in the back line when a more useful mage job is not available. And no one invites SCH except as a last resort. They're no longer the best healer, nuker, or enfeebler. They're second-tier across the board with most their AoE tricks available via subjob.

"I'm not sure if you are aware of this but FFXI isn't the real world."

Your melee RDM is about as useful to me as a screwdriver in the real world when I need to change a tire. Wrong tool for the task.

Sorry you don't know how useful strategems are? Tier V nukes are still Tier V nukes. I guess you just don't value classes that aren't the best at something so that you can fit it into your minimalist LS designs.

Once again, not the real would, your analogy is crap. Please realize you are playing a game and that people play them to have fun, not do what you think they should. Your mentality is unattractive at best.

[Doombringer]

the bottom line is, if we are unhappy with the job, we will stop playing it..

if that makes us unhappy with the game, we will stop playing it.

it's not real life, because we can very easily just stop playing it.

to the bandwagoners that's obviously no problem, for every "real" rdm that quit merit pts after toa, (for example) there were 15 bandwagoners that just jumped on the job for easy merits. who cares if they're wearing full af full time, and have no gear OTHER Than an ah-able max mp set and a light staff. so long as there not meleeing right? course they wouldn't know which end of the sword to put in the mob anyway... and they'd probably find a way to get dia resisted, assuming they ever cast anything that wasn't refresh haste or cure. but hey, at least they don't wanna melee right? they just shut there mouths and stand in the corner, like good little boys and girls.


but for those of us that actually picked this job back in 2003, the current state of it is unnaceptable. and since whm is the "hot" mage right now, we're no longer the vast minority.

[Duelle]

to the bandwagoners that's obviously no problem, for every "real" rdm that quit merit pts after toa, (for example) there were 15 bandwagoners that just jumped on the job for easy merits. who cares if they're wearing full af full time, and have no gear OTHER Than an ah-able max mp set and a light staff. so long as there not meleeing right? course they wouldn't know which end of the sword to put in the mob anyway... and they'd probably find a way to get dia resisted, assuming they ever cast anything that wasn't refresh haste or cure. but hey, at least they don't wanna melee right? they just shut there mouths and stand in the corner, like good little boys and girls.

but for those of us that actually picked this job back in 2003, the current state of it is unnaceptable. and since whm is the "hot" mage right now, we're no longer the vast minority.Well said.

As far as wrong tool for the job, we've been the wrong tool for everything given how our class was put together. It is balanced around restrictions that don't exist and clearly against the overly efficiency-obsessed playerbase, and instead of actually doling something about it, the creators of this mess have sat on their hands while the melee camp has been asking for changes, buffs or (in the case of some of us) a full re-design.

This thread has seen a ton of decent ideas on how to make it work. It's not like we don't want anything to change. And the JP players seem to feel the same way seeing how they have their own melee RDM thread.

[ManaKing]

Hey here's a stat that works in the real world, 25. That's the number of pages that are in this thread.
245. That is the amount of posts for this thread.

The only other thread that has more than 200 posts is in the NIN forums and it is on the importance of throwing skills that they feel are getting neglected. Throwing skills are a part of ninjas iconic heritage and the die hard ninjas don't want it getting phased out for more dual wield buffs that cater towards being bland DPS.

This isn't a trifle to swept under the rug in favor of efficiency gaming. It is a legitimate grievance that a portion of the player base feels strongly about. The cap is finally getting raised and we don't want to be misrepresented by people that will abandon this class the second that it isn't the best at something they deem desirable. We are diehard RDMs and we don't want to be your party's buff bitch or heal whore. We want to wear scale mail, melee proficiently, and cast spells. We want to be our own class instead of being the class that everyone else wants to pigeon hole us into. We want our class identity back so we can go back to having fun playing our class in real parties.

[Seriha]

Meh, if we're gonna play the RL card, I'd say the guys on Wall Street are certainly playing by their own rules at our expense, and we can't exactly kick them from our party. Yes, we know some seek entertainment in efficiency, but if you think about it, we're attempting to improve RDM's efficiency in a manner that doesn't exist yet. To assume the game would be better off without it is narrow-minded folly. However, we also know SE can't half-ass it, tweak one or two things, and then be like, "All fixed!"

[Seyrena]

but if you think about it, we're attempting to improve RDM's efficiency in a manner that doesn't exist yet. To assume the game would be better off without it is narrow-minded folly. However, we also know SE can't half-ass it, tweak one or two things, and then be like, "All fixed!" I think the first step would be to rework Enspell II and add a few more levels of Fencer. That can't be all that hard, can it?

From the first page:

It's not so much the job, so much as the player base that makes it impossible. Of course some adjustments would help, but i don't think it needs anything major.

[Seriha]

It's a start, but it certainly wouldn't be enough. As is, the T2s need to be as potent as T1s hitting twice, minimum, without the silly build-up time. Their -resists are practically unneeded and/or useless and I've never been a fan of the cross-relation they share in that the element you're using isn't the one weakened since enspells already risk resist rates on harder prey.

More specific to additional effects, the fact enspells don't really play nice with Sambas or special weapons is also something that needs looking into. This hurts RDMs and SCHs if they happen to be partied with a DNC since you can't Accession an Enspell for some added damage to your DDs. This would be like Chaos Roll and Minuets and not stacking if you wanted to relate BRD and COR.