What would you want out of rdm melee gear?

Lot's of discussion on what ppl would like to see out of rdm melee. JT, JA, spell's but nothing on gear. So I thought I'd throw this thread up and see what ppl thought. And maybe give the Dev's some idea's to what the passionate rdm melee'r was looking for.

Personally I'd like to see some more feather in the hat, swash buckler type style's brought to the table. Buffs on the gear to enspell's, spikes, phalnax, stone skin, etc along with str, dex , att, acc mods.

But hey there's lot's of styles and and gear type's out there rdm can get away with.

Honestly, we've been seeing a lot of Accuracy + Haste Gear, but there are a couple things about these pieces that don't exactly sit well with me.

First and foremost, the currently prominent complaint I hear is that "RDM's don't do enough damage to justify the TP feed (on mobs that 'matter')"

Considering that the bulk of that problem actually lies more with the issue of Sword damage and Weapon Skills (not including CDC) there's not much we can do gear wise in this department.

The Red Mage specific problems (ignoring the typical inventory issues) lie primarily with the lack of Subtle Blow and Attack paired together on available gear.

I'd rather see more Haste + Subtle Blow/Attack paired together than Haste + Accuracy, as we have +15 on Composure, as well as a wide array of accuracy enhancing accessories if needs be. So, keeping haste values about the same, I'd like to see those stats more.

Again, this is ignoring the requests for more Hybrid orientated gear, which still stands as pretty prominent.

Something like calm trousers without the -acc and something like mextli harness, new haste head with some combination of haste (at least +7) and acc/atk/SB.

Hybrid gear wouldn't be so bad to be honest IF they wouldn't half-ass the stats. I mean Morrigan's Robe was perhaps the best attempt at it by giving us a good combination of mage and melee stats, however it still fell short because of the average to low stats in each category. Sadly with space limitations, hybrid gear would likely be our best bet but it would have to be some spectacular gear to offset some of the core pieces we currently use.

While I support getting hybrid gear to help giving people a choice what to pic gradually, I may not use much of it.

Approaching melee appropriately should take effort, and should require enough gear to make you hesitate before going out to do it, making you wonder "Am I going to sit back and maximize my nuking game today, or should I pack on the melee gear and help out in the front."

There's really no feasible way to carry it all in your active inventory without taking a substantial bite somewhere, but with Mog Satchel and Mog Sack, we should be ok managing in and out of that, as I do so pretty frequently.

I'd rather not half-strength on ALL stats, but having the option to pick and choose where I draw the line and go with Hybrid pieces would be ok.

The idea of this gear wouldn't to be so much is to put us on the front line's with war, drk, sam, etc but to give us more or less the option and the ability to do decent damage when we melee. Like when farming or small party situation. When in full party's or alliance I have to agree the best place for us is our mage position's, not on the front lines. RDM can really save the day in that role, when things go bad.

Think of it this way, when your out meleeing in what ever fashion. What would make it more enjoyable to have. Bonuses to dual wield from /nin, more enspell damage from gear, More points towards stoneskin to keep it up longer?

Nothing short of full strength gear will do, honestly.

'Farming' Now equates to going into Dynamis or Limbus for currency to sell. You can melee killing weak mobs outside these stages in Mage gear for all that it matters then.

Equipment wise, if you're going to Melee with any level of seriousness on RDM, then you need to take some time to get TP and WS set.

Which is why I lean a bit more towards gear that would serve multiple mage roles, and gear that would serve multiple melee roles.

For instance, pairing together Cure Potency and Magic Attack bonus together so it covers both nuking and curing roles. Some of our WS sets already use pieces we could normally TP in so that helps on that department, but our mage side seems a good bit more fragmented.

In order to make RDM good with Swords other than Almace, SE would need to do nothing short of Either:

* Enhance Death Blossom to make it a decently powered WS
* Grant us Access to Vorpal Blade (not likely to happen)
* Grant us Access to Hecatomb Gear (Also not likely to happen.. Wish you could Augment a Job onto it...)

We can still do decently well with Evisceration but with our lack of DD gear we have to focus primarily on Attack before we can even worry about Critical Hit Rate (Outside Abby) or Anything else about Evisceration.

RDM gets a great deal of Ranged Accuracy/Attack gear which makes Sidewinder a very solid WS for us but there are two severe drawbacks:
* Our bows havent been updated since Failnaught
* Kraken Club is required for best results

Alot of people are quick to shun RDM meleeing but the truth is, the capability for us to do real world damage is there. The problem is that We need an Almace to be Decent, and we need an Almace + Kraken Club to excel... That is a very steep requirement but if you want to be a comparable melee with RDM, that's your only option lol. For that much work? I'd rather just use my WAR lol.

And lets face it, even if we were only using a Twilight Knife + Joyeuse and doing 2k Eviscerations in Abyssea at best, that's borderline *Decent Damage*, were still better than 1/2 the DDs that somehow make it into the parties anyway xD I mean honestly, its SAD seeing this huge wash of wasted souls that keep getting invited. I'm surprised RDMs haven't started lashing out at them, we all have a DD job or 2 (or 4) leveled, could simply replace the weaklings and do the Meleeing ourselves, hell that way, no one would have to heal us, we can do it ourselves (or more than likely never even get hit)

I look to these as a good start on hybrid gear, and feel SE should mirror similar for RDM. They're not a TP piece by any means, but work well as a nuking and WS piece. Meanwhile, the TP phase gear should emphasize Haste, ACC, MND, and perhaps some finer attention toward Enspell damage or augmentations (Subtle Blow possibly being among them). In effect, the possibility of going from 20 visible equipment slots if attempting to truly hybrid to 10 would be a godsend. We've seen some mixed accessories, too, but they're presently falling behind their dedicated counterparts for no reason other than SE feels they should.

There are a lot of things you can do for melee mage gear in general, but I'm going to suggest just one for now. Now, there should be other pieces of gear, as this suggestion promotes a very unique playstyle Red Mages have used before, but since it is so very different from other playstyles, it not only isn't for everyone, but it isn't the only thing melee oriented mages should get.

Something that converts the weapon's damage done into enspell damage, or reduces attack incredibly in return for a moderate boost to enspell damage. The idea here is to get zero damage from actual melee hits and get all the damage from enspell sources - which eliminates TP feed.

You used to somewhat be able to do this via the Beestinger and Hornetneedle, but there isn't a lot of gear that specifically is made for this. Gear that gives a large plus to accuracy and haste and large minuses to attack would work with this well.

If there is a uniquely Red Mage melee style, I would think it would be related to this.