On the Topic of RDM Magics

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Originally Posted by Rayik

Really? Nobody has brought up bagging on buff cycles in weeks. Is Shiyo just trying to start a fight out of thin air?

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Probably.

Less cat-fighting, more brainstorming for enfeebly goodness.

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I think that ought to be our goal even if it's realistically unachievable due to the need to keep the game balanced. The whole point of enfeebling ought to be disabling the foe to the point where it's significantly less of a threat, and I don't feel Red Mage really accomplishes that.

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I agree. Though I do think we can all agree that TP moves are the root cause of this problem when we take away the issue of 'Spell Immunities'.

This, and 'Auras' which seem to be a nice trend in Abyssea (Does Voidwatch have these?)

So a Debuff that would lock down Sphere effects and prevent them from taking effect would be a good idea for a new debuff, if this idea of Auras are going to be a new mechanic.

But getting back into the idea of attacking TP moves. There's only a set number of ways of doing it.

Stun prevents it (enemy keeps TP).

We have TP reducer moves (Straight TP , or DOT)

TP Gain suppression (Between Subdle blow and other BLU enfeebles.)

Max TP down is a new debuff we've seen.

Then we have "Delay increase." Alla Addle.

Alternatively, perhaps a more advanced, alternate version of stun that 'prevents' a TP attack on a timer, and causes a TP reset, would be an incredible boon for fighting TP moves.

Other Debuff categories we haven't touched?

Magic Defense reduction.

A debuff that enhances Skillchain/Burst damage.

A debuff that causes the monster to deal damage to itself rather than the party. (Could be incorporated into that "TP Killer Stun.")

I think those are enough to chew on for a while.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

This, and 'Auras' which seem to be a nice trend in Abyssea (Does Voidwatch have these?)

So a Debuff that would lock down Sphere effects and prevent them from taking effect would be a good idea for a new debuff, if this idea of Auras are going to be a new mechanic.

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See, to me that just sounds like a silly workaround to the root problem: stuff getting buffs that are basically immune to Dispel, which brings us back to square one of "we need things to not be immune, dammit". The whole point of dispel is to get rid of a foe's buffs, but now we're just seeing foes that have permanent buffs so Dispel becomes pointless.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

A debuff that enhances Skillchain/Burst damage.

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If they'd give skillchains an overhaul that brought them back into modern play this could be pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, Skillchains are pretty much dead at the moment aside from the classes who can self-skillchain.

For TP moves, I feel like all the ideas we've come up with trend towards simply making the TP move not happen. I think instead we might want to start gunning for something a little different. Addle reduces magic accuracy right? Why not extend that aspect to TP moves. Add something that severely reduces the potency of the TP move. They'll still be going off and TP feed is always going to be a concern, but instead of one-shotting that Tarutaru in the crossfire it'll instead knock his health in half. Just some sort of Damage Dealt -X% effect, or something along those lines.

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See, to me that just sounds like a silly workaround to the root problem: stuff getting buffs that are basically immune to Dispel, which brings us back to square one of "we need things to not be immune, dammit". The whole point of dispel is to get rid of a foe's buffs, but now we're just seeing foes that have permanent buffs so Dispel becomes pointless.

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Well these buffs don't work along the same lines as dispel. As you said "Buffs that are always on." Perhaps in this case the lockdown spell can serve like a Dispel II that works for this category of ability, or even prevents the monster from receiving further bonus effects when they use an ability.

So dispel removes buffs currently on the mob, and Lockdown prevents buffs more from being placed on the mob for a certain duration.

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For TP moves, I feel like all the ideas we've come up with trend towards simply making the TP move not happen. I think instead we might want to start gunning for something a little different. Addle reduces magic accuracy right? Why not extend that aspect to TP moves. Add something that severely reduces the potency of the TP move. They'll still be going off and TP feed is always going to be a concern, but instead of one-shotting that Tarutaru in the crossfire it'll instead knock his health in half. Just some sort of Damage Dealt -X% effect, or something along those lines.

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Addle also delays the casting of spells, so why not extend that to delaying the use of TP moves? More time to stun, more time to get that sudden Cureskin on your tank. Gives your Melee an opportunity to get out of range, etc. I'm on board with the secondary effects as well but just giving players more time to react to incoming TP moves would be incredible.

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Originally Posted by cidbahamut

For TP moves, I feel like all the ideas we've come up with trend towards simply making the TP move not happen. I think instead we might want to start gunning for something a little different. Addle reduces magic accuracy right? Why not extend that aspect to TP moves. Add something that severely reduces the potency of the TP move. They'll still be going off and TP feed is always going to be a concern, but instead of one-shotting that Tarutaru in the crossfire it'll instead knock his health in half. Just some sort of Damage Dealt -X% effect, or something along those lines.

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Could perhaps go with something along the lines of a "-TP bonus" cid. Something that wouldn't prevent TP gain or useage, but when it comes around to actually using a TP move the fTP modifiers would go down a tier. It would be ineffective for moves that have a floored fTP rate like 100% = 3.0, 200% = 3.0, 300% = 3.0, but TP moves that grow like 100% = 2.5, 200% = 3.5, 300% = 5.0 could be severely hampered.

I'm not saying they all have to be separate spells or anything, I'm just throwing out more ideas for us to pick through. I just don't want our only response to TP moves to end up being "don't let them happen in the first place". Heck, a spell that just outright reduced Damage Dealt by X% would be freaking amazing. I'd kill for that kind of power. And before anyone mentions Bio, I'm going to ask whether your entire alliance is subbing BLU for Cocoon. Also: all damage dealt, not just physical.

Damage Mitigation spells we have a plenty of, though again, anything that helps reduce the effectiveness of TP attacks a little I'm all in for.

TP is the biggest crux of pain in the game and it's constantly a fear of players getting hit by these massive attacks and destructive status effects.

If there were ways to mitigate it, people might not be so paranoid in the fights themselves, and they could STILL be difficult in other ways.

You know, I just thought about something... for a WHM. A buff that prevents the next attack incoming from being lethal. (Leaves you at 1 HP instead of dieing.) That would be an awesome buff. Heck, RDM could share it.

Put it on those DDs that dive in for WSes or are afraid of heavy AoEs that could kill them.

Or a Debuff on the mob that works to the same effect. Though that won't help the massive AoE enfeebles. I'd love to hamper the mobs ability to do that Enmasse, though I suspect Addle and Barspells are supposed to try to work like that.

I just thought up an idea, i could see a rdm, and a brd equivolent, and perhaps share it to sch, but im not sure if that would apply, but i have an idea for a fun debuff, could be balanced by duration, recast, or effect.

Parochialism - Forces special moves by target to only activate upon the target with the highest enmity.

Now this could be used for a single tp move, then wear off, or be a set duration (before resists) and have a longer recast so this cant be done all the time, though this wouldnt affect aoe spells. This could also (maybe?) prevent some shadow whiping tp moves not dispel the tank's shadows, and this is a substantially powerful party and endgame (HNM?) related enhancement.

I'm not sure I quite follow you CS. TP moves already target the person who has hate, or do you mean AoE TP moves would instead only hit the tank while -aga spells still hit everyone? I could see that being useful in some situations but Murphy's Law would ensure that most of the time it gets eaten up by TP moves that are already single-target.

Oh, oh, new idea!

Enfeeble that inhibits the foe's ability to inflict status ailments. Something that removes the pesky status effects that are tacked onto a bunch of TP moves. No more paralysis/doom/petrification/encumbrance/etc on top of that heavy AoE damage.

Why not just ask for a Paralyze of sorts that would occasionally interrupt a TP move and still consume the TP.

I think an anti-TP-move spell would need to be similar to Addle, a combination of several small factors rather than one large factor, in order to not to be stupidly strong against certain monsters. Imagine how strong Addle would be if it were a huge magic accuracy penalty, or a huge casting time penalty, compared to how it is now.

Something like "-50 TP 'Anti-Bonus' and increased ready time" or "-1 TP gain and -10~25% damage dealt by TP moves" seems more likely to see the light of day than a spell that had a huge effect on just one thing.

There definitely, definitely needs to be some kind of enfeeble that affects TP move potency and frequency in some way. Currently there are tons of buffing options to deal with nasty TP moves, particularly Earthen Armor and Sentinel's Scherzo, but no enfeebling magic.

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Originally Posted by Swords

Why not just ask for a Paralyze of sorts that would occasionally interrupt a TP move and still consume the TP.

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You could simply adjust paralyze to work on TP moves in that case.

But, would you guys be ok that WSes would suddenly become subject to being paralyzed?

I mean, I'd be for the adjustment but SE probably has already thought about it.

I'd favor a more constant effect over random luck. With a WS paralyze, you'd probably still want to keep Stuns handy just to be safe, and they'd probably start casting as it started only for the stun to basically be wasted.

Mainly for increasing the ready time of TP moves (making stunning easier) while affecting their damage potential, be it some FTP manipulation or just straight damage reduction. Not sure how I'd feel about the pseudo-Convergence, since knowing SE, it might turn any AoE TP move into instant death for the single target.

As for additional effects on TP moves, there's probably some element of resisting and MACC in play, just that the mobs probably have stupid high MACC to guarantee they land most of the time. Addle may help here some, but a more potent, pure MACC debuff could do more alongside an appropriate barspell, carol(s), and gear. I'd just hate to see a point where tanks will need to start investing in resist sets for all 8 elements.

Assuming the actual spell list isn't doomed to some limit, maybe a Null-Slow and such could be added. Cast it on the target, and any time it uses that enfeeble in some capacity (Spell, WS, triggered by Aura), the "debuff" is eaten and the enfeeble doesn't happen, requiring you to cast it again to block the next one. I'd see something like this building resists akin to Grav and Stun, though, so it might be something saved for later in a mob's life with the ability to only keep one up at a time.

The problem I see with that is, it would format a lot better as the default Null-Status and be a spell cast in target or AoE form by a whm. (Whm would probably get the AoE, we'd get the self target most likely)

Now, I can picture something like a stun-quick debuff that severely limits the damage of a TP move as it's being used, or say, reduces it's TP modifier to 0 or something along that line. But no sort of debuff to address the enemy being able to release nasty status effects on the party.

I have a feeling that sort of thing would be left to WHMs.

An inhibit TP spell would be nice. It could be a long lasting weak effect but I'd prefer a moderately long recast(60 seconds) with a huge potency and declining effect similar to Flash. It could be a 100% TP inhibit for a few seconds and decline over time. The inhibit could also counter Regain effects comparable to the effect % at the time. So after it's worn to 50% TP inhibit after a few sec it inhibits 50% of their autoregain if they have. Another could be a plague which DoTs their MP/TP which could be sweet. The MP part is meh since mobs have THOUSANDS of MP, but the TP decay would be great!

I'd like to see more severely potent enfeebles that are short acting but extremely devastating to the mob instead of debuffs that you're unsure if the effects are even making a difference. These debuffs wouldn't be very rarely resisted and would be extremely potent i.e DiaIII/BioIII/Flash/Stun type spells. Make Gravity 2 short lasting but have extremely potent evasion down. Keep grav1 for movement speed(not like its difficult to keep grav1 up with haste/fastcast gear, the recast is fine)

Ive been reading several posts here and I too dont like that RDM is getting the shaft as of late in updates... Yay Temper... But I wonder if its because SE is being cautious on what to give us, I mean before Abyssea, we were pretty much the most powerful job in the game if anyone remembers. Soloing NMs and some HNMs that were meant to be taken in a full allience such as Charybdis, and Cactrot Rapido although it took 2 hours to do it, we were the only ones that could. And then there was RDM tanking which was probably a sin to begin with but we completely folded any tanking class at CE speed making us just retarded at gaining hate and with RDM's fast cast, could hold shadows better than NINs at the time.

And RDM Melee (sorry to slightly derail, just wanted to say it) isnt actually that bad, IF you have a LOT of money... I have witnessed a RDM with Almace and Kraken Club wreck house in Abyssea. Its still bad that you need a Super-Weapon and one of the most expensive items in the game just to get down on RDM but the potential is there. I think SE might be afraid of us...

Lets look at the old DD burns, when WHMs couldnt get invites, they trumped us in Curing spells but RDM MP conservation was so much higher that it was more Ideal to have a RDM curing than a WHM. As such, the likely reason we have not gotten Cure 5 is because SE might be worried that RDM would outdo WHMs again, outside of Abyssea. Dont get me wrong, I think its silly/retarded that we havent been properly updated on our spells just trying to imagine whats going on with those Developers is all...

Break/Breakga is an Enfeebling spell and should not be in the hands of a BLM, there I said it and I stand by it. Giving RDM Addle, which i dont care who you are, this spell is nice. Im an oldschool Potency RDM, so with a large stack of MND, this drastically slows down enemy spells and thats nice because these days, the number of people who know how to stun are dropping quickly. With Addle, I can do all the stunning myself (actually we RDMs always do the stunning ourselves dont we...) and since most NMs have always been Immune to Silence, I like this spell. What I DONT like is how we get this wonderful spell, after the blasphemy of BLM getting Break..., they turn right back around and hand it to WHM... What the piss? Hell, I dont care if they dont give us a new enfeebling spell, take Addle away from WHM right now, lol and Ill be happy. Im a Steamfitter with Union Local 602, and all this crap about giving jobs spells and abilities that have been with RDM since the start of the game is wrong, and its taking work away from our job, plain and simple. Its just like in the real world where we have to constantly fight for our jobs.

Im all for diversity but SCH is the single greatest insult I have ever seen to RDM, BLM, WHM, and SMN what is SE doing? lol

Well thats enough of my ranting... One thing I would like to see done to actually help our Enhancing Magic situation is to FIX Composure. When composure was released I was elated, I thought SE finally did something to end our "Robot Mode" in parties with this JA that trippled our Enhancing Magic Duration... And.. Then I learned it only works for the RDM that uses it... It comes with a hefty penalty too on your recast times but... Still only works for the RDM... So it is a JA that I NEVER use unless I'm soloing :( good job SE, doing about as well as President Bush atm, I'm proud of you. And before someone comes along saying the +2 set helps with Composure, Ill firmly say to kiss my ass lol cuz its only 1/2 the effect with the full set. I'm a RDM main, I keep an Enfeebling set, Potency Set, a Fast Cast set, and various macros for staffs for Spell Accuracy and Nuking when Kiting needs to be done, I never use a full RDM set because it never has the stuff I care about in the entire set, only bits and pieces so who's gonna have a macro to put on the full +2 for buffing? I cycle my buffs by casting Refresh on myself and then proceeding with the rest of the buffs the party needs, when my Refresh wears off, I know to start over. I believe this is how all/most RDMs also handle their buffs too so even with +2 set, Composure still does nothing but throw me off. Blah ended up ranting again when I didn't want to rant lol I guess I'm just frustrated like everyone else.

But yes, one fix I would like to see that is within the means of reality, and poses 0 threat to anyone's job/game balance/sandy crotch would be to FIX Composure. Make it so the x3 Duration applies to all Enhancing we do and not just ourselves wtf SE, you guys are retarded for that one, seriously lol. And just make the +2 set bonus Occasionally Double the Potency at 5% full set or keep the +50% Duration thing, I dont care.

Thats my 2 cents on it, thanks for taking the time to read it.

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Do you guys like the idea of having a way to skill Enhancing Magic faster? Like say getting skillups with En-Spell damage or something? I don't know if I am the only one that feels this way, but skilling up via bar-spell spam or soloing (cuz we cast alot of buffs when soloing) is very tedious and takes a very long time :( Any thoughts?

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Soloing NMs and some HNMs that were meant to be taken in a full allience such as Charybdis,

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This is a horrible example of a mob that takes an "alliance" to kill.

I've considered the TP enfeeble issue and it falls in line with another thought I've had about the classic FF enfeeble/buff status (Berserk) that I've re-named for clarification to: "Enraged" (so as not to be confused with the warrior JA Berserk) which would be a combination of four effects: Attack up (stronger than JA berserk), Defense down (stronger than JA berserk), Mute & Amnesia. The duration should last long enough to make the attack up effect on normal attacks become a dangerous trade-off, and long enough for the defense down effect to be taken advantage of.

This restores the tactical advantage that the "Berserk" status had in past FF games: Enraged enemies would only attack with the "fight" command, but they'd be stronger. Enraged would be useful on enemies that cannot be stunned or silenced or have powerful AoE attacks. (Certainly some enemies would be immune, such as Iron Giants whose normal attacks are all special abilities, so it would have no auto-attacks to fall back on. However, immunities should be very rare. I'd rather see lower durations than outright immunities.)

This could also be used as an enhancing spell on party members, especially if the friendly effect can be turned off manually. (There would probably need to be two versions of the status from the same spell, depending on target: Friendly and Enemy) I could see this being very useful against Imps and other enemies with Amnesia attacks and auras where your party wouldn't be able to use their special attacks anyway.

Anyway, just a thought.

Wasn't Berserk in classic FF's a character buff and not a monster enfeeble?

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Originally Posted by Swords

Wasn't Berserk in classic FF's a character buff and not a monster enfeeble?

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I'm pretty sure it could be cast on both party and enemy.

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Originally Posted by Daniel_Hatcher

I'm pretty sure it could be cast on both party and enemy.

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It was a great enfeeble if you could land it on a mob that mostly casts spells, since they stop casting and be forced attack. I always had a hell of a time landing it though. It was useful as a buff with characters who couldn't cast spells(or just crappy ones) in the first place(FF4 melees, Umaro from 6, etc), but you lost the ability to do anything else with them.

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Originally Posted by Shiyo

This is a horrible example of a mob that takes an "alliance" to kill.

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Charybdis a bad example? Not really, I will grant that at 75 you only needed 3 people to kill it but it was not intended to be killed alone. I just used Charybdis as an example because its one of those fights that good ol' Avesta was famous for is all. The point is RDM was, for the longest time before updates made certain jobs more flexible, the only job that could Solo larger NMs and it simply wasn't supposed to or I don't think SE intended us to at least