Enspells overwrite Haste Samba

I don't think any Red Mage can deny that Enspells are fun. However, if the Red Mage happens to be in a party with a Dancer (or even using /DNC), then our job-specific "Sword enhancement spells" start to direly inhibit our front-line performance, since we would then not be receiving the benefits of Samba Haste. Given the way the increasing returns of Haste work (as everybody knows), this is a ridiculously disproportionate tradeoff, and a wise person would forgo the Enspell and take the Haste every time.

The only exception that would make Enspells at all passable is if the Red Mage in question is Dual Wielding (as opposed to using an EX Sword Weaponskill support job) and using an Enspell II with a Dancer in the party.

Must our own abilities conflict so much with a Dancer's that they become nigh-unusable in their presence? Isn't there something else that can be done to solve this conundrum?

Yeah it sucks. We would all like for them to be able to stack as well.

A lot of people on these forums have started talking about RDM having some kind of additional haste effect associated with Composure or Enspells as a quick fix for the problem with /DNC.

For Dual Weilding, having Enspell IIs, as laughable as they are in their current state, does help for a happy medium between enjoying sambas, and having strong enspells.

ps2 limitations.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

For Dual Weilding, having Enspell IIs, as laughable as they are in their current state, does help for a happy medium between enjoying sambas, and having strong enspells.

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I've already acknowledged this, and I'm saying that it's not very cool that it's the only possible way we could get a Samba benefit while using Enspells.

I'm sorry if my tone is worse than usual. Work is putting me in a very very bad mood.

So long as Enspell II's were fixed or Enspell III's were done properly, I wouldn't care if they only focused on the first hit, and we get sambas on the offhand. Them's the breaks. I don't find it worth anything to have to completely reporgram how on-hit buffs function (Which we all know how they don't like reworking the code) so someone can go abuse K-Club to death again. I mean... we really NEVER got the ability to function weapon effects while our enspells were up. I don't see why haste samba should be an exception to this rule just because haste is so powerful. Make a choice.

The only other solution would likely to be make Enspells reduce Weapon Delay itself, but I most certainly don't want them applied to Tier 1s. Then Scholar would abuse the AoE of it.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

I'm sorry if my tone is worse than usual. Work is putting me in a very very bad mood.

So long as Enspell II's were fixed or Enspell III's were done properly, I wouldn't care if they only focused on the first hit, and we get sambas on the offhand. Them's the breaks. I don't find it worth anything to have to completely reporgram how on-hit buffs function (Which we all know how they don't like reworking the code) so someone can go abuse K-Club to death again. I mean... we really NEVER got the ability to function weapon effects while our enspells were up. I don't see why haste samba should be an exception to this rule just because haste is so powerful. Make a choice.

The only other solution would likely to be make Enspells reduce Weapon Delay itself, but I most certainly don't want them applied to Tier 1s. Then Scholar would abuse the AoE of it.

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This is why making it a trait would be better, do the tier one at 50 then work upwards so no subjob gets it, or as said before do it in Composure.

Both these ways would lock it to the job who enspells belong too.

Giving 10% JA Haste (doesn't include magic recast) to a trait or composure wouldn't be overpowered but would allow RDM to work with it's native enspells better.

But there's a problem there.

Increasing values of haste means the more JA haste we have, the more valuable other haste becomes. As JA haste is 25% at cap, We'd be utter morons to pass up Haste Samba for our enspells, even having other JA haste. There's just no way the magical damage can compare.

In the end, first-hit of combat round is the best, realistic choice. As bitter that pill is to swallow. I don't see them re-writing how additional effects work.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

But there's a problem there.

Increasing values of haste means the more JA haste we have, the more valuable other haste becomes. As JA haste is 25% at cap, We'd be utter morons to pass up Haste Samba for our enspells, even having other JA haste. There's just no way the magical damage can compare.

In the end, first-hit of combat round is the best, realistic choice. As bitter that pill is to swallow. I don't see them re-writing how additional effects work.

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True enough, though if it was a trait while under the effect of enspells it meant with or without enspells we could only get the 10% haste, so we'd gain bonus damage from enspells without actually losing out on haste samba.

Eitherway this wont happen as SE would deem it over-powered regardless.

Then I say MAKE it conflict.

Tie it to a tier 3 of enspells that deal damage on every hit, and give the 10% physical delay reduction. This way we get the bounus, but cannot get Haste Samba. The presence of a dancer is irrelevant to our performance increase. We want drain or aspir samba, we've got a choke down a Enspell II.

If We're /Dnc, the effect of haste samba will still go to the party, so I'm not worried there.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Then I say MAKE it conflict.

Tie it to a tier 3 of enspells that deal damage on every hit, and give the 10% physical delay reduction. This way we get the bounus, but cannot get Haste Samba. The presence of a dancer is irrelevant to our performance increase. We want drain or aspir samba, we've got a choke down a Enspell II.

If We're /Dnc, the effect of haste samba will still go to the party, so I'm not worried there.

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Pretty much. Giving RDM choices that aren't bad and worse would be appreciated. As you said, Enspell 2s still have a function.

I still think we should be able to abuse the hell out of the KC. Honestly, it's not easy to get. It's not cheap. I think most jobs get completely out of hand with the right gear. I don't see why RDM shouldn't join them. If you've taken a look at the sword trials, you should already know we get a 2-4 attacks sword if we put in the time to get it. I think it is BS that the most effective enspell to use on the Khanda +2 is Enspell 1.

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Originally Posted by ManaKing

If you've taken a look at the sword trials, you should already know we get a 2-4 attacks sword

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421 Wamoura and counting...

I'm sitting on a 2-4x Khanda +2 and a DA Khanda +1 hoping the next trial path leads to different names. Will suck if I wind up having to ditch the 2-4x in the future, but the DA one certainly gets more mileage out of BLU with their own DA Trait and a few more gear options.

Honestly instead of adding a JA or modifying existing enspells I think this issue would be best solved by just adding a T3 line of enspells that addresses all of our existing concerns with T1 and T2 enspells.

First off is the issue of how to get around the whole samba/enspell interaction where Rdms are forced to choose either one or the other with T1s. Out of all the different ways to solve this issue I really can't think of a simpler solution then what the T2 enspells did where the enspell applies to the first hit only leaving all additional hits to activate sambas.

Sure, adding a +10% delay reduction to our enspells is nice, but that's still not addressing the Red Mage-Dancer interaction with sambas and enspells where the rest of the party receives a buff and the Red Mage remains the same. Adding a +10% delay reduction to enspells really is just a Red Mage buff and if Red Mage were to receive melee buffs I'd prefer they were something more "creative and unique" then just tacking on a -10% delay reduction to enspells.

The other related issue is that weapon additional effects and enspells can't interact with each other either. I know I would like to actually be able to use the Sagasinger's additional effect without having to drop my enspell (if I were to ever get one :P). I think this issue as well is just as easily solved the way sambas did it where the additional effect from a weapon will overwrite the samba for that one swing. Weapon effects tend to be rareish anyway and usually worth losing one swings worth of enspells to gain that benefit (obviously excluding a small handful of weapons).

From here we have the issue of damage. T2s never really took off because T1s always remained a better option for dual wielding and the damage would have to be turned up freakishly high which would pretty much crap on Ceremonial Dagger solos and other similar antics.

This stems from the fact that enspells have a static damage that only vary from the Red mages enhancing magic skill. What if instead we added another variable in there like sambas did, what if we added a function of delay where faster weapons inherently produce less enspell damage then slower weapons. If done right this also fixes the issue of dual wield completely stomping one handed weapons with enspells because these enspells automatically adjust their damage to match modified delay of dual weilding (since only one hand activates per attack round dual wielding will actually produce a higher number enspell, but less frequent then sword and board).

I'd NOT reduce the damage of enspells based on the delay reduction from haste though since that will skew the ratio of enspell damage/melee damage/WS damage even less in favor of enspell damage. Personally I would go with the general rule of thumb of if it reduced TP then it'll reduce the enspells damage, but that's more of a personal nitpick then an actual issue.

From here I'd think this is a good time to introduce some actual utility to the enspell line that is...more useful then a '+5% spell hit rate for one element that the monster is generally weak to anyway '. Seriha suggested that enspells depending on the element should buff the Red mage with the following
Earth: -DT%
Water: +MACC
Wind: +Subtle Blow
Fire: +ATK
Ice: +MATK
Thunder: +Crit

What if we take this one step further. What if instead of giving the Red Mage a buff with the appropriate enspell hitting the monster with the enspell would inflict the appropriate enfeeble.

Earth: Critical Hit Evasion -%
Water: Damage Given -%
Wind: Defense Down -%
Fire: Magic Defense Down -%
Ice: Inhibit
Thunder: Resistance to all elements -% (chose this over Lowers Magic Evasion so that it can stack with Death Blossom)

This does lose some utility for casting the enspell just to receive a buff, but in trade off the entire alliance receives a benefit and let's be honest, some of those effects are pretty bad *** and unless the enfeebling effect was negligible like -1% then it'll be worthwhile.

Can I be a greedy twit and ask for the buff to the RDM and the debuff on the mob? :P

I would also say remove the +ATK as it exists on enDark already. Though what you could give it I don't know.

Honestly I'm a bit talked out on this topic. What I want more than anything is feedback from SE. They said they'd be releacing job planning info 'soon' and soon was weeks ago.

I would like to see the job adjustment plan before the next patch, please.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Honestly I'm a bit talked out on this topic. What I want more than anything is feedback from SE. They said they'd be releacing job planning info 'soon' and soon was weeks ago.

I would like to see the job adjustment plan before the next patch, please.

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Yeah, I'm in the same boat, actually. We could talk this out all day....which we have....but what I'm pretty sure we all came here to do was to express our opinions on what we would like to see on future Enspells so that SE could at least have the possibility of looking at it.

By all means keep posting new ideas that you like, because everyone else has already done it. But I think what we would all really like to see is what SE actually has planned for us.

If I had control over the course of the job, there'd be a laundry list of things I would change:

A Phalanx that provides a %damage taken down on top of it's (low) flat rate.

Up Enhancing Skill calculations and caps on virtually all our enhancing spells, including Stoneskin (we should be able to reach 500 HP stoneskin before gear, not 450 after nearly a full set of it.)

We've gone over enspells.

Paralyze should work on TP moves if we're not going to get a debuff that works on it directly.

Haste gear that includes copious amounts of Dexterity.

Magic Attack+ Cure Potency gear as pairs. Which would allow us to piecemeal with the INT/MND + Gear we already have plenty of.

Hastega and Refreshga (I don't even care if it's the tier 1 refresh potency)

Seriha's Crit = Enemy TP down JT.

Thunder Elemental Debuff, I seriously don't care what, but Magic Defence/Magic Evasion down would be a good start.

And I think that's a good summary.

How about instead of tier III enspells of usual variety, we received status effect enspells such as en-poison, -blind, -slow, -bind, -aspir, -enpetra, -dia, -bio, -gravity, -amnesia? Just to name a few. The trick to these new spells is that we won't need an actual spell to cast(next tiered) spell and the resistance to these status effect would drop the more we strike.

For example, we won't need dia IV, bio IV, poison III, bind II, gravity II, etc. These enspells would be of such strength as to by pass the need to straight nuke, especially in the case of poison III. Each swing would in essence increase the potency of the effect till mob is dead. What I mean is the /tic effects. Once a redmage starts swinging, sooner or later a mob resistance to individual effect will drop low enough to not only be affect, but from that point on the effect will then be worst to a maximum value of X%. Sword swings will eliminate the whole "duration" arguement as a redmage will continually be swinging to keep resistance and effect on. While we won't see a big damage modifier (RDM does 75 plus 40 fire damage). Imagine instead affect a mob with a "poison 3" effect that overwrites itself continually to be a "max value".

This eliminates a redmage continually recasting bio III, dia III, and other regular casting. This also keeps a redmage "melee'n" rather than a simple haste argument. Having a blind III, poison III, dia IV, or slow III effect will have a significant effect , while bringing a Enspell-Mage more to the front.

To make this even interesting perhaps, a redmage can have 2 enspells up. One elemental and one debuff...similar to having a barcode and bar petrify up? If this was the case, we could even pull back on the potency levels since now we have 2 effects per swing eliminating cast times. Or, perhaps only while dual-wielding can 2 enspells be "on" one per weapon. I can easily see redmages giving up haste samba for this?