On Red Mage melee...

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Originally Posted by Supersun

I don't think he literally meant he would use the badelaire over the almace because it looks better...

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If I were given an Almace, I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

Otherwise, I don't think I could be bothered going through the effort of forging that broad eyesore, even as easy as some people claim it to be.

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Originally Posted by Supersun

I don't think he literally meant he would use the badelaire over the almace because it looks better...

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Really, that sword is so gaudy that if I must get a Swan Song weapon, I'd purposefully forgo the Almace in favor of the Badelaire +2.

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You might be right but it REALLY sounded serious.

Though I do have a habit of looking too far into things. I can write it off as a misunderstanding.

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Originally Posted by Tamarsamar

If I were given an Almace, I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

Otherwise, I don't think I could be bothered going through the effort of forging that broad eyesore, even as easy as some people claim it to be.

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I actually think the WoE Version is harder to get lol.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

I don't think so, Both cases you willingly gimp yourself.

Knowing which is better and purposefully choosing the worse of the two i think is actually worse than not knowing which is the worse of the two >.<

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This is where your opinion and my own go in completely opposite directions.

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Originally Posted by Tamarsamar

This is where your opinion and my own go in completely opposite directions.

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mmm, thats the wonderful thing about opinions! Everyones is different! I would like to hear more about yours really.

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I actually think the WoE Version is harder to get lol.

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WoE isn't hard, people just fret about death and failure too much to repeat WoE for 30 coins. Which, honestly, they're not hard to obtain.

That said, I plan on getting both Badelaire +2 and Almace. Collecting swords is my hobby in this game. Part of the reason why I've considered leveling PLD and BLU.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

WoE isn't hard, people just fret about death and failure too much to repeat WoE for 30 coins. Which, honestly, they're not hard to obtain.

That said, I plan on getting both Badelaire +2 and Almace. Collecting swords is my hobby in this game. Part of the reason why I've considered leveling PLD and BLU.

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Actually, I was talking in regards to Walk of Echoes that anyone can enter lot and steal your items at just about any time...

Its not that the event is hard, Its the randomness, For instance when you kill Briarius, You get helms, where as in WoE your coin isnt always going to be the one you get/drops.

Its all easier i just felt the real emp's were easier at this point. But its all semantics really as it doesn't matter :X

What is it that matters here, then?

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Originally Posted by Tamarsamar

This is the truth.



This couldn't be any further from the truth. Unless you're like one of those FFVII fanboys who think that the bigger a sword is, the better it looks.

Really, that sword is so gaudy that if I must get a Swan Song weapon, I'd purposefully forgo the Almace in favor of the Badelaire +2.

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Ramza Dual Wields Great Swords like a boss. Anything that is anywhere close to that is as cool as it gets. I personally like Murgleis better, but the difference is whether i like purple or green better. They are both winners, but purple is always going to win.

Actually, I was talking in regards to Walk of Echoes that anyone can enter lot and steal your items at just about any time...

No such thing as stealing YOUR items if its not in Your sack its not YOURS

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Originally Posted by katz

Actually, I was talking in regards to Walk of Echoes that anyone can enter lot and steal your items at just about any time...

No such thing as stealing YOUR items if its not in Your sack its not YOURS

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You know what i meant. I just used bad wording.

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Actually, I was talking in regards to Walk of Echoes that anyone can enter lot and steal your items at just about any time...

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There's not enough activity in WoE, at least on my server, to really worry about that issue anymore. As far as the chances of Coins drop, that's a valid concern. Though, one has to wonder what takes more time when it comes to gathering the pop items, farming for time, killing the NM, etc.

I guess it all boils down to luck I suppose. I do tend to find Walk of Echos to be enjoyably chaotic fun though.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

There's not enough activity in WoE, at least on my server, to really worry about that issue anymore. As far as the chances of Coins drop, that's a valid concern. Though, one has to wonder what takes more time when it comes to gathering the pop items, farming for time, killing the NM, etc.

I guess it all boils down to luck I suppose. I do tend to find Walk of Echos to be enjoyably chaotic fun though.

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I just recall reading so many horror stories on WoE. For instance there are people who /sea-camp the zone and go when people show up just to leech coins/etc. (Used to be anyway).

just thought you could likely burn through a stage 85 Empyrean quicker than a 85 Gimpyrean. But as you said, It comes down to luck...

woe sucks.. drops get poached, and the droprate are less reliable than in aby. (sure, it can be time consuming to get 50 helms/skins, but at least when you kill sobek you get sobek skins.. in woe you could go all day and not get any of the RIGHT coins) woe is just to reliant on luck.

then if you have proper atmas and all/most abyssites of merit/furtherance... most emp nms are no harder than clearing a woe zone. honestly, sobek and briarius are duoable. and i'm sure somebody somewhere has soloed them. and gukumatz's KI can be goldboxed now..

AND they added more +2 items to sobek, and even a couple to briarius. so you could prolly get STRANGERS to help you out.

i would say, unless you can solo woe, well... it's not worth it. because as soon as you step up to a trio or even a duo, you now have the manpower to build a real almace. it's not hard, it's just time consuming. the real problem with the fake emps is that they can end up just as time consuming if not worse due to the random nature of WoE.

honestly i don't think we do woe "right". seems to me like it was supposed to be the new campaign. something strangers do together, with one happening near constantly, and the chips fall where they may. but since abyssea is so much more popular, woe is a dead event, and you're not getting any coins without a significant effort. a significant efort put towards a weaker weapon.


that being said, don't let me be the party shitter. if you can get a badelaire easily, do it. CdC is a huge buff, no matter where you get it from.

What idea to reduce 10-15% dmg? RDM shouldn't be meleeing in the tank pt when they have multiple DDs to cure, come on really lol? Raise the subtle blow cap JUST for rdm? That's ridiculous. It's not crying when i have seen it hundreds of times, RDMs meleeing, not hasting, not curing, not refreshing anyone but themselves.

The same can be said for tanks that dont pull hate off the mages even though its expected of them. When the majority of the DD classes see RDMs roles is to support DDs rather than act like a DD themselves its an up hill struggle to change attitudes. Why dont you see the same complaints about Dancers not healing DDs, because people dont see it as the primary function of the job. How do we change peoples opinion that RDM is also not the primary function of a healers role and they are fine DDing and curing themselves without taking the healer role away from the WHM and making the RDM back to being a primary DD role with secondary healing abilities. There is nothing wrong with the RDM self healing and supporting with debuffs while attacking just needs to lower the tp feeding and its fine. Im not saying I wouldnt throw out the odd cures to the others but why should it be the primary role.

Ah, a newbie to the conversation, welcome.

I'm working on an FAQ at this point so we can keep people on the same page of conversation. It might take a while because I'm going to have to summerise the arguments and the problems we'd like to see addressed.

Would anyone be opposed to me attempting to write up a credo as far as the general idea of what we agree on, just to have something to unite behind while we're sharing ideas?

I think redmages should be able to use all weapons.
LIKE UKONVASARA! That'll be the best. Someone make a thread and make sure to put [TO THE DEVS] in the title or else they won't look at it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

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Originally Posted by Yarly

I think redmages should be able to use all weapons.
LIKE UKONVASARA! That'll be the best. Someone make a thread and make sure to put [TO THE DEVS] in the title or else they won't look at it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

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Fail troll attempt, bravo!

1/10 - NOTE: Try harder!

I doubt that was a troll, that was prolly their normal intelligence level.

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Originally Posted by Winrie

I doubt that was a troll, that was prolly their normal intelligence level.

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The overuse of the exclamation points suggests troll, so I'll side with daniel on this one.

By the way, Hyrist, that's fine. Post it here, I'll paste it into the OP and we can continue about our day.

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Originally Posted by katz

Not sure if this counts as off topic I apologise if it is but to me it makes sense to remove the spells bought by merits and use the 2nd category to boost RDMs other abilities like the RDM are asking for. More merits for melee, damage,evasion, etc to define the RDM role of non healer better and give them the opportunity to boost their other aspects of the job. This would then free up the magic scrolls for other jobs if people wanted them allocating say to BLM or WHM. I know its a bit late in the Role for this change but maybe something could be written to give RDM merits back for reallocation and automatically add the merited spells to the magic list.

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Apologise for the dual post of the above but as the RDM community I would like you discuss my proposal. It is posted under BIO 3 for drk thread in the discussions forum.

All merit spells and abilities being level progressed as opposed to merits is something myself and others have been for for a long time. Hell, converting RDM's is easy since Slow II can just become a generic Slow potency that applies to all tiers, maybe even allowing Slow III somewhere between 91-99 if Slow II was somewhere between 60-75. Granted, it would still suck if we're left with too many choices where it's all in or not at all, but the merit situation pretty much reflects our general melee shortcomings with an overwhelming lack of physical perks.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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I agree our melee could use some work. Part of the problem is SE is very stingy with weapon skills for Red Mage. We should without a doubt get Sanguine Blade without having to sub certain jobs.

Among many other things, Dale.

EX weaponskills do not sight right by me. It never has. Most of them consist of enhances Magical Weaponskills we'd benefit the most from having. Having access to these weapon skills and being able to Dual Wield should not be mutually exclusive.

There are only 3 logical Sword Classes in the game, and only 2 have access to EX Sword skills. If any class should have to speciify a subjob for access to the skills, it probably should be Dark Knight. But I'm in favor of abolishing the Ex system entirely.

Agree with EX Weapon Skills being crap. RDM should natively have access to most of them, but I think we're giving SE too much credit here. The game designers don't actually play the game and thus have no idea what's practical. They draw it on a piece of paper and if the concept seems legit to go with it. Heck Abyssea armor and weapons was them going out on a limb.

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Originally Posted by saevel

Agree with EX Weapon Skills being crap. RDM should natively have access to most of them, but I think we're giving SE too much credit here. The game designers don't actually play the game and thus have no idea what's practical. They draw it on a piece of paper and if the concept seems legit to go with it. Heck Abyssea armor and weapons was them going out on a limb.

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It's pretty ignorant to state any gaming company, especially Square-Enix, implements concepts to the game without testing them at all, no matter how much you dislike SE's sense of balance.

They did actually back in 2001, but SE for the most part tests things based on how the playerbase as a whole plays these jobs now. Since society pretty much pigeonholed RDM into the backline position SE decided to focus on the mage part of RDM. Unfortunately even if SE did make RDM into a comparable DD with the moderate/heavy melee classes, I still doubt many would give RDM half a chance to try meleeing.

well, whm is a bandwagon job now, so at least some of the pressure should be off as far as players being DESPERATE for healers.

there's at least MORE leeway now than there used to be.. how much that is however is debatable

Aye, it's the mindset of the people as a whole. Many still see RDM as a backline job partily due to the lack of any real support from SE and how people have always seen RDM played rather than how it was conceptualized.

Granted, the lack of power RDM has compared too all the upgrades most jobs have been given, has landed us in the "useless" category where it could work in our favor if SE plays their cards right. RDM no longer being seen as demi-gods gives SE the opportunity to actually get creative with less risk and fear of overpowering the job.

I can't say I dig the concept of deliberate stagnation for the sake of eventual revitalization. There's way, way, way too much good faith there given what we've seen, what we expect to see, and how we've overall been treated over the years.

As is, the other night I finished off babbling with someone who's under the impression RDM melee is in a good spot and will only get better as the cap rises. Their reason? CDC. One only needs to look to the census to see how many CDC-capable swords are out there, and then guesstimate the odds of bumping into a RDM at any given moment with the weapon (let alone people willing to help a lolmeleerdm without something being in it for them). I argued the zero to hero status reflective of performance between those who have CDC and those who don't is not a good sign of balance, nor is the RDM of back then or now at all welcome on mobs of legitimate difficulty.

Who knows, maybe we will get a new WS at 95 that bridges the gap, or could quest another at 99 that does similar. All I know is acceptance shouldn't begin at endgame, and only after you've endured endgame long enough to earn your piece. When other jobs have gotten yet better gear and more traits while we're still largely using the same, and were shunned with said same, no... I can't buy it. If SE's setting us up to head in any particular direction that isn't down, they're doing a poor job of cluing us in.

Cure's were doing 99999 damage to undead, so no I think we can all agree that SE doesn't actually test things. Not only that, but many of the current game mechanics were made by the same people who created the masterpiece known as FFXIV.

Now the current dev's are much better, unfortunately they have to be very careful about changing or re-balancing old stuff created by the previous guys. In east Asian culture it's a pretty big insult to change things set by your older / more senior predecessors. It would give the impression that the previous guys were "wrong", and you can't do that without upsetting people. So they have to create new stuff and do new things that aren't related to the previous guys, and from the looks of things it seems there is contention inside the design team on what exactly RDM should be doing. Avesta didn't do us any favors.

EDIT: Better explained in Update thread.

saevel... there is so much wrong with that statement I don't even think I can say anything.

It's the honest truth. One of those quirks of I've learned to live with out here even though it goes against my "western" mindset. You never want to make your superiors look bad, or do / say something that directly contradicts them. Instead you go the round about method and make all sorts of excuse's. Instead of being "wrong" they just were "misunderstood" or that something else changed which would require that we move in a different direction. Look at the old lead guy for FFXIV, he screwed up that entire project, cost his company millions in development cost then ten's of millions in lost subscription fee's and lost sales. And instead of firing him, they simple allow him to "move on" to "greater things" and positions of more "responsibility". In actuality he'll be stuck behind a desk for the rest of his career and never given creative control of another project, ever. Not once did anyone on his staff, neither his seniors nor any of this juniors say a single negative word or put any blame on him, even though as the lead manager the success / failure is his responsibility.

That is just how things are done. RDM is screwed up, it's been screwed up since JP PS2 release before it had refresh / gravity / phalanx. Some of it's core design is flawed, and while SE has done amazing things with many other jobs, they seem reluctant to go back and change anything on RDM, even when it makes sense (Sang Blade, RLB / Seraph Blade). This speaks volumes that somehow RDM is a sore issue amongst the dev's.

That's really kind of ignoring the vastness of what RDM could do.

At 75, RDM melee was in fairly good shape, aside from a utility that would allow it's presence in the front lines to work against things harder than your normal fodder. The proof was in the parse that we were doing upwards of 80% of a dedicated damage dealer with comparable gear (meaning high end gear RDM was hitting 80% of high end gear Samurai.)

The main issues have always been on the player base side of not wanting to jump the hurtles to improve, and the Zero to Hero issue SE put in MUCH of our performance except for curing. (This includes nuking gear, set ups, etc.)

As far as 'going back and fixing stuff' back then it made sense to restrict RDM to melee subjobs to have emphasis on meleeing. Dagger was as viable for RDM as Sword so dagger usage dual weilding made more sense, and we got Evisceration for it.

But now as Sword makes itself more and more prominent, and the idea of other jobs such as DRK and WAR using 1h swords is further and further from being likely, it really does not make as much sense. Now, this can change if trends continue and the spell 'brave1' in the dats works like I think it does, and bestows Double/Tripple Attack. That would make /war the most popular (oh hai Fencer and EX Weaponskills) and paired with us being able to control Gain Dex and Gain Str choices between gear and weapon skills, it'll settle a lot of our current gear juggling problems.

You can try to excuse it on the differences in culture (which seems slightly racist, to be honest). However, I am more along the lines that they were too cautious to push RDM's performance in the front lines back when we were so popular in the back lines as a healer. So they took that away, pinned it on WHM, used our AF3 + Saboteur to pin our casting back to the buffing/debuffing roles and are now seeming to turn our attention, albeit far too slowly, back to our Melee again.

I'm still skeptical, but the dats show 2 new possible spells (one looks like a funky enspell), and 1 definite new job ability for RDM down the pipeline.

Hyrist, you can't attack saevel's post by saying "there is so much wrong with that statement I don't even think I can say anything" and then immediately follow it with paragraph after paragraph of absolute nonsense like that found in the above post.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

That's really kind of ignoring the vastness of what RDM could do.

At 75, RDM melee was in fairly good shape, aside from a utility that would allow it's presence in the front lines to work against things harder than your normal fodder. The proof was in the parse that we were doing upwards of 80% of a dedicated damage dealer with comparable gear (meaning high end gear RDM was hitting 80% of high end gear Samurai.)

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You must have played with some really terrible sams because there is no way a RDM will out dmg a sam by 80%.

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The main issues have always been on the player base side of not wanting to jump the hurtles to improve, and the Zero to Hero issue SE put in MUCH of our performance except for curing. (This includes nuking gear, set ups, etc.)

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lol? I'm not sure you realize that we want actual improvements on rdm, not melee crap that wont do jack for helping at events.

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As far as 'going back and fixing stuff' back then it made sense to restrict RDM to melee subjobs to have emphasis on meleeing. Dagger was as viable for RDM as Sword so dagger usage dual weilding made more sense, and we got Evisceration for it.

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Joytoy would like to have a word with you....

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But now as Sword makes itself more and more prominent, and the idea of other jobs such as DRK and WAR using 1h swords is further and further from being likely, it really does not make as much sense. Now, this can change if trends continue and the spell 'brave1' in the dats works like I think it does, and bestows Double/Tripple Attack. That would make /war the most popular (oh hai Fencer and EX Weaponskills) and paired with us being able to control Gain Dex and Gain Str choices between gear and weapon skills, it'll settle a lot of our current gear juggling problems.

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What the....? Gain DEX...Gain STR....? wouldn't help rdm dmg at all...lol....

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You can try to excuse it on the differences in culture (which seems slightly racist, to be honest). However, I am more along the lines that they were too cautious to push RDM's performance in the front lines back when we were so popular in the back lines as a healer. So they took that away, pinned it on WHM, used our AF3 + Saboteur to pin our casting back to the buffing/debuffing roles and are now seeming to turn our attention, albeit far too slowly, back to our Melee again.

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Culture? Saboteur was meant to make spells last longer, not for you to cast spells with it then melee with your pitiful weapons.

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I'm still skeptical, but the dats show 2 new possible spells (one looks like a funky enspell), and 1 definite new job ability for RDM down the pipeline.

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And neither of them will help rdm melee unless SE decides to cater to this crap, lol.

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Originally Posted by Aurara

You must have played with some really terrible sams because there is no way a RDM will out dmg a sam by 80%.

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He didn't say the RDM out DD'd the SAM, he said the RDM was able to output damage up too 80% of what the SAM had done. IE: If the SAM did 1000 damage the RDM was doing 800.

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Originally Posted by Aurara

Culture? Saboteur was meant to make spells last longer, not for you to cast spells with it then melee with your pitiful weapons.

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Actually, spellcasting is one of the biggest burdens to RDM, any old school RDM like myself knows your constantly casting debuffs, cures, buffs and reapplying as necessary is almost non-stop in a battle. Truthfully that's also one of the biggest blockaids to a RDM meleeing, because casting effects your overall DoT and TP gain for WS's in battle.

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Originally Posted by Aurara

And neither of them will help rdm melee unless SE decides to cater to this crap, lol.

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Hey it worked for SAM's when they bitched and moaned about being second tier DD's prior to all the boosts they got.

Changes nothing, if a RDM is doing 80% of a SAM's dmg that SAM is crap, stop comparing yourself to crap players and find a properly geared SAM or whatever DD you're going to say a RDM can do 80% of the dmg of, lol.

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Originally Posted by Aurara

Changes nothing, if a RDM is doing 80% of a SAM's dmg that SAM is crap, stop comparing yourself to crap players and find a properly geared SAM or whatever DD you're going to say a RDM can do 80% of the dmg of, lol.

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Alright, I'll ask you this. Would you believe me, Hyrist, or anyone else if they had compared a fully decked out seasoned SAM to a well equipped seasoned RDM that still output 80% of the SAM's damage comparitively, even IF they put out screenshots, pharser results, and anything else they could think of?

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Originally Posted by Swords

Alright, I'll ask you this. Would you believe me, Hyrist, or anyone else if they had compared a fully decked out seasoned SAM to a well equipped seasoned RDM that still output 80% of the SAM's damage comparitively, even IF they put out screenshots, pharser results, and anything else they could think of?

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No, because that won't happen unless the sam sucks.

Edit: SAM is an actual DD, RDM is not that is why they got DD buffs and RDM did not.