Front Line Utilities (Brainstorming ideas and Discussions)

As the current Melee thread is highly general as to the discussion of Red Mage's melee role. This is an attempt to create a clearer brain storming and discussion field as to the creation an implementation (balancing) of a front line utility for Red Mage

While it is often mentioned as a necessity for encouraging acceptance in Red Mages engaging in monsters regularly. More often than not, specifics in what sort of utilities would be acceptable, or useful, for Red Mage as a job are not really panned out and explored.

All job players are welcome, but please keep in mind this is an idea field, not a debate on 'should Red Mage melee'.

To start off, I'll ask some basic question to any who would care to answer it.

1. What sort of utility do you believe Red Mage would have to receive in order to be accepted in the front lines?

2. What would be the balance factors (Level, Cost, Timers, Conflicts with other abilities, etc.) would you implement to keep this ability/spell from becoming unbalanced? (Keep soloing in mind.)

3. What would be the ideal situations for this utility, in your view?

4. How would this ability/spell work well with our current gear/spell, ability set?

5. What current or future gear would you have enhance this ability?

Again, everyone's welcome to submit their ideas for discussion, and please feel free to comment on others' ideas or contribute your own. Let's hope that SE takes a close look at the thread and weighs in on what gets brought up.

I would like to point you to the thread I just started, lest I repeat myself overmuch. Check this idea out.

1. I think RDM would need some ability to either do better damage over time, or some special niche to follow. If it was something where skillchains were needed, RDM has rather good dagger and sword skills, and with haste spell/haste gear/sub Ninja, gains TP rather fast. (My melee set has capped haste and store TP as I can find it) But we don't do enough damage to be accepted for much else at the moment. I use my RDM to solo all the lights as needed for Abyssea events, or solo, because it seems to me RDM has no real place. Maybe a job ability that optimises melee abilities while cutting nuking or healing capabilities, with +str +att +HP, -mnd -int -MP?
2. Well, as I said above, a "trade off" sort of ability that optimises either melee or magic (sort of like a SCH can optimise either Light magic or Dark magic). The ability would have +attack, +strength, +hp/defence in return for -mind, -intelligence, and -MP. Maybe make it so we can only access Refresh tier one while we are meleeing or low tier nukes?
3. Any low-man operation or soloing would easily benefit from this. There are times when it feels like I'm sitting on my hands on RDM because there's nothing to do. *Cast spells, watch TV, repeat*
4. We are on a lot of melee-oriented gear, and enmity-oriented gears. I think that we could easily incorporate it, although maybe it would require separate gearing.
5. In the future, I would put RDM on more melee-enhanced gear, and the AF4 would have "enhances *job ability*" that would add to the +stats or lessen the amount of the -stat.

RDM's need better DPS and a few tweaks. This isn't that hard honestly as we have 90% of what we need arleady, its just poorly implemented. First and foremost we NEED better gear, this isn't optional anymore. Every other hydrid melee job got juiced in the melee gear department, we're still stuck with Dusk era stuff. We have solid Sword / Dagger choices, a good Dagger WS but are severely lacking in the sword WS section. DB should of been more like Swift Blade (three hit 1.5 fTP) and its resistance down effect should of been much stronger. In its current form its ~meh~ and both damage and utility.

Enspells need fixing badly. The Tier II's are useless due to how their accuracy and damage are calculated. My 420 enhancing magic macro is utterly useless on tier II's and is the prime reason I stick with Tier 1s. The fact that Tier 1's scale so poorly with level and gear yet still do better then tier II's just goes to show how SE screwed up. Problem with tier II's resistance down is that you have to use the WRONG element of enspell. To lower a water mobs resistant to lightening you'd have to use ... enwater and thus guarantee single digit damage if you don't outright heal it. The spells should be lowering resistant to the element they are, enthunder II should lower resistance to thunder and so forth. Adjust the damage formula for skill over 300, it shouldn't take 20 skill to raise it 1 point of damage, make it 5 skill and things start to look better.

Once those are taken care of, we can toss in some sort of self-buff "sphere" effect that SE seems to be experimenting with. Make it a series of buffs that effect everyone around the RDM. Fire = +attack, Ice = +MAB, Earth = -PDT, Water = -MDT, Thunder = +crit, Wind = +evd. This would do wonders for the "melee" side of RDM, be easy to implement, not be overpowered, and provide for an actual reason to have a RDM hitting a monster. Lowering its resistance to a specific element, while dealing damage of that element and enhancing the combat abilities of the party members around the RDM.