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.

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Originally Posted by Yandaime

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)

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Yeah, I hate it when people below level 90 try to get stronger too.

thats my fault, Mirage I failed to Clarify. I meant Lv.90 DDs that seemed to not even have Raised Ruins or basic Atmas, wearing not even Perle sets but random stuff from Auction House. Saw a SAM the other day with a Hagun and I still respect Hagun but.. he was wearing 1 AGI ring and a Tiger Ring... I wouldn't pick on a lower level DD, that's just silly, Just wish some of these guys would try harder is all, put on some Perle Armor or something lol cuz I hate it when out of the whole alliance, only 4 or 6 people are doing any actual work and when those guys get the merits they want and leave, the whole party falls out.

But its situations like these that allow a RDM to start DDing if he wanted to, given the circumstances, I dont think many people would object if they saw you doing decent damage. :p

I wanna see a cheap/easy to acquire set with similar stats to Perle that focuses on +Att +Acc and +Haste with each giving a cumulative set effect of enhancing enspell damage. So each piece adds 2-3 dmg to enspells. It wouldn't be better than individual pieces (Zelus/Goliard Sao/Tumbler Trunks) but as a set it would be better than average like Perle(Which as a set isn't half bad compared to pre 80 gear like Homam/Askar/Aurum)

Giving RDM a self-cast spell that makes their attacks have 100% subtle blow, and another self-cast buff that gives them 80%+ PDT/MDT is the only way to make RDM melee useful(by useful I mean pretend to be useful and not hurt your entire alliance by meleeing things) outside of solo.

So..

I want the devs to not spend time on melee gear and instead focus on aspects that will make the job desirable and useful outside of solo situations.

Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

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.

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I like this idea, a magic base subtle blow threw decrease weapon damage and increased enspell damage. Would it work well on gear, or a JT. Or maybe both?

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Originally Posted by Shiyo

Giving RDM a self-cast spell that makes their attacks have 100% subtle blow, and another self-cast buff that gives them 80%+ PDT/MDT is the only way to make RDM melee useful(by useful I mean pretend to be useful and not hurt your entire alliance by meleeing things) outside of solo.

So..

I want the devs to not spend time on melee gear and instead focus on aspects that will make the job desirable and useful outside of solo situations.

Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

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Ok, there's going to be a reality check here.

A good deal (if not everything) you said there is outright false.

First off, RDM's front line practice on endgame level mobs is currently in practice. If you want to refer to someone who actually does it, speak to savelle, to see hows and whens to his contributions there, I'll stick to things I can address personally.

In my opinion, the only thing RDM ability/spell wise RDM needs to offset the 'Yer feeding the mob TPz!" argument (which is BS in zergs and in any situation in which your group's curing power could be considered overkill.) Is a native spell that either lessens TP gain, prevents tp moves from happening, or dampens the effect of TP attacks so they are not as brutally dangerous. It's gaping hole in our native spell list that we currently use stun to substitute for. Once it's there, literally no one has a valid argument why there shouldn't be more melee on the monsters in general.

In regards to the Damage the Red Mage itself receives, it being weak is a complete misnomer. Red Mage is capable of capping both PDT -% with the right combination of gear, as well as a decent amount of -MDT % as well. Top this off with the Native Magic Defense Bonus, Native Phalanx, Barspells, Stoneskin, and Cures; Red Mage, in fact, is more resilient than Dancer and Ninja when it comes to situations in which they have no choice but to take damage.

It was one of the first two jobs to sucessfully solo Divine Might for that reason. Also remember, Red Mages tanking HNMs as well as certain bosses (Limbus in particular) was a reality before Magic Enmity was nerfed.


But more upsetting then any of these is this false creation of an imperative that Red Mage is in a desperate need to be more useful in endgame for fear of loosing invites.

For no other reasons than an enhanced duration Haste, Refresh II, and the CURRENT state of our Tier II enfeebles on the monsters, our slot in anything outside Abyssea is secure. The full package of what we offer, right now often makes us a boon if not an outright necessity for Voidwatch alone (even if it is in mule form on the weaker ones). And we are still useful in any event outside Abyssea even with the annoyance of enemy immunities to our status effects.

Additionally, the concept of being 'invited' alone is both aged and flawed logic. Given the state of the game as it exists 'blind invites' to endgame events is something more or less done for Abyssea alone. Anything outside it is done among friends or within linkshell. And situations in which you are not accepted into said linkshells or asked on a different job with friends is not due to the lack of usefulness of Red Mage outside of Abyssea, but most likely due to the fact that the role for the job is already filled (likely by one or more other Red Mages.)

The fact that Red Mages are not the prima donna of invites into random groups is not indicative of the job's loss of usefulness so much as the change in the game's very group dynamic. The only thing SE would need to do to secure RDM's invite in abyssea is to make our Merit Spells and/or Death Blossom proc.

I am more than supportive of further developments and changes to Red Mage to make it's Enfeebeling and Enhancing Magic more useful to the group. But this attitude that assisting it's martial aspects are somehow impeding the development of its magical aspects to the point of being harmful to the job as a whole is just a false front to try to enforce an ideal on players who enjoy differing aspects of the job.

Furthermore it has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is to discuss desires for those who do want additional martial support in gear.

So really the only thing of actual substance to the discussion you said was:

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Or they can just slap RDM onto gear that thf/dnc/blu/cor/etc can use, easy fix.

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I personally would not mind being slapped on some pink gear and have a wider library of strictly melee gear for us to use, so I'd be in support of this 'easy fix' so long as the gear was substantially helpful (Working for multiple roles rather than one specific task.)

However, for those who are discussing more Mage/Melee hybrid pieces, rather than more general Melee/WS use pieces. I'd like to see more of a line of a Scale Mail set built for RDM/DRK/BLU that runs the same lines as what Seriha is describing. I think gear more along that vein might be more realistic to actually being implemented as it pulls out three jobs that share a currently underused armor type and would benefit from both melee and mage stats on one set of gear.

But citing AF3+2 as a good "Start" might set unrealistic expectations unless you are aiming for this gear to drop from Voidwatch or some other high endgame event, which would kind of set some conflicts there on whether the pieces were 'worthwhile', compared to the typical min/max forte that players of that sort of game type would be drawn to.

That said I'd have no problem it being a battlefield or Seal/Crest NM battle drop.

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Originally Posted by tyrantsyn

I like this idea, a magic base subtle blow threw decrease weapon damage and increased enspell damage. Would it work well on gear, or a JT. Or maybe both?

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I don't see SE giving Red Mage a job trait for this, but it would be an interesting spell or job trait if it reduced attack greatly in return for a boost to enspell damage.

That said, gear would fit this well, but it would take a lot of work to get a perfect set - if you are doing even one point of damage with the weapon itself, you just fed the mob TP - which defeats the entire purpose.

The easiest way to do this is to use very low damage weapons along side gear that reduces attack, but as a Red Mage's base STR and attack get higher, it gets harder to pull this off even with a weapon that does low damage.

I personally would like to see some higher ws mod based gear to come, now with heavy and light DD jobs pushing +10 or higher str, and attack climbing into the 25-30 range, it is a must have for more slots for us.

Hyrist don't bother, he's trolling you. Just add him to your ignore list and you never gotta worry about him again. He's just another Cid / Shiyo.

Gear wise we just need to be added on everything that has BLU/DNC/NIN on it period, end of story. We should of been on Aura and teal (BLU was for crying out loud). We should of been on Alcides, Mexel, and other assorted gears. We should of been on that +crit / +DEX harness from Turil. Instead we shafted and stuck on gear that is weaker then what we already have, or within 1%. The other day I was looking over my set for ways to stack more attack and you know what jumped out ... the AJ. That's right the fcking AJ from WAY WAY WAY back turns out to be one of our better pieces due to us not getting much better. That dusk is still our "best" TP gears is sad, we finally get "haste" legs and they turn up with -8 accuracy, thought thankfully +small DA/TA. That DEX+6 is the best WS piece I can find is incredibly sad.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

I don't see SE giving Red Mage a job trait for this, but it would be an interesting spell or job trait if it reduced attack greatly in return for a boost to enspell damage.

That said, gear would fit this well, but it would take a lot of work to get a perfect set - if you are doing even one point of damage with the weapon itself, you just fed the mob TP - which defeats the entire purpose.

The easiest way to do this is to use very low damage weapons along side gear that reduces attack, but as a Red Mage's base STR and attack get higher, it gets harder to pull this off even with a weapon that does low damage.

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Perhaps take the physical damage out completely and make it all enspell damage? Additional piece's of armor could upgrade the damage, or maybe perhaps have it occ do enspells damage only. I wouldn't mind having to make a build that required me to seek out different piece's of gear to increase the proc rate or the damage. That's half the fun.

Super Spellblade
Sword
DMG 54
Enspell damage +250%
Enhancing magic +15
Latent effect: Attack -80% (Active when under the effect of enspell, not including weaponskills)
RDM90

Would something like this be worth using? I have no idea, i'm no RDM, just throwing out ideas. Hopefully, the attack penalty would lower damage to 0 most of the time (excluding the occasional crit, I guess) on most things that are strong enough for tp feed to be an issue, while the enspell damage would still get through.

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Originally Posted by tyrantsyn

Perhaps take the physical damage out completely and make it all enspell damage?

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Ultimately, a big issue with it is that SE considers subtle blow effects to be very powerful. But since the Red Mage doesn't get to weapon skill either, perhaps this will be okay? I really don't know - SE might not have intended the play style in the first place, and it isn't one I've seen very often at all, just one that is very interesting in my opinion.

Considering that this is Red Mage and not Dancer, I hope that if SE does this in a non-gear form, they make it a spell.

SE could make it very easy if they wanted to, and release a dagger that has a zero damage rating and a buff to enspell damage, alongside 150 delay and perhaps even double attack rate plus. Ultimately, super low delay is going to be one of the major selling points of making a build to match this style, along side Haste and Enhancing Magic.

Of course, a good Red Mage melee set should have Haste capped with as much Enhancing Magic stacked as possible for enspells, assuming you aren't ignoring them. I think that even if you don't go all out enspell, focusing on enspells to make up for any damage gap between Red Mage and another job (that you don't make up for with Dia and nukes) will be key.

While mages in general that enjoy melee (none of us should be held back) would benefit in a set that helps melee stats at a higher level then 70-75, Red Mage would benefit from a set that gives both Haste and Enhancing, so perhaps Enhancing Magic gains on pieces with Haste could be part of a mythical all mage set, for assisting Red Mages in particular?

Again, this is an incredibly alternate playstyle vs. what happens most of the time, so anything with this should be taken with a grain of Rock Salt. It is by no means the only suggestion, nor should it be the only style a Red Mage uses, but I would definitely like to see it as an option.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Super Spellblade
Sword
DMG 54
Enspell damage +250%
Enhancing magic +15
Latent effect: Attack -80% (Active when under the effect of enspell, not including weaponskills)
RDM90

Would something like this be worth using? I have no idea, i'm no RDM, just throwing out ideas. Hopefully, the attack penalty would lower damage to 0 most of the time (excluding the occasional crit, I guess) on most things that are strong enough for tp feed to be an issue, while the enspell damage would still get through.

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The damage rating on the sword is probably too high to get a low enough mark, and you have no mention to delay, but considering the huge buff to damage, perhaps this is intentional. Assuming about 400 Enhancing Magic skill with a tier 2 enspell (which for some stupid reason don't work on multihit) can go up to 50 damage, and with a buff of 250% enspell damage, 125 damage (tier ones get about half this). Swords, while generally the thing many melee Red Mages cling to (I disagree, I think Sword and Dagger should be used equally), generally have a higher delay then a dagger, which is a huge factor if you are only relying on enspell damage.

Would the attack minus be applied before or after other gear? If it was applied afterwords, assuming you had something like 400 attack before the reduction, that would take you to about 80. Taking that further, you could probably knock off 60 or so points from it, if the percentage is applied first. I'm not sure if this would overcome the damage rating of the weapon though.

Something else I forgot to point out is that enspell damage does not cause any enmity to my knowledge, another powerful factor which may cause SE's ire.

See my thought is that physical damage would be converted straight into enspell damage, meaning no tp gain. As this could be very broken on the fact that no tp would be gain either from the attacks for the player. For instance:

Tyrantsyn hit's "insertmobhere" for 120 fire damage

I know there's a lot of math that goes into hit calculations here. But maybe this would be a great way to change the math around. For instance maybe with this type of system we could base it off our mnd and int instead of our str, att? Kind of like the Oracle job was in FF tactic's, where it's att was base of it magical att stat. Could turn a lot of gear we already have into melee gold?

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Originally Posted by Economizer

Stuff

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Sorry, my bad, I forgot to add a delay. Anyway, I didn't really think about when this attack penalty would come into effect, and I am of course also open to changes to my idea, I did not make it with the intention to be set in stone, considering I am not 100% knowledgeable about all the game mechanics.

The intention with the weapon is in either case for it to be possible, if you really tried, to get your regular melee attacks to hit for 0 "pretty often", perhaps not all the time, to reduce TP feed by a lot. Of course, this would also lead to your own tp gain being pretty slow. I gave the weapon a reasonable dmg rating for it to be viable to actually do a WS whenever you managed to get 100 TP. I'm sure it would be fine to lower the DMG to like something in the 40s.

Now that I think about it, an interesting side effect of this very slow tp gain, and therefore very low percentage of damage coming from WSes, is that the RDM wouldn't mind having to swap to a staff in the middle of battle in order to cast certain spells. They would lose some tp each time they did it, sure, but it wouldn't matter as much as it does if you get a very large amount of your damage from WSes.

As for delay, I don't know, let's make it 220-240ish?

I'd suggest it best to avoid trying to convert physical damage to magical. I wasn't a fan of the Ceremonial Dagger exploit from back in the day, and giving an "always on" equivalent just recreates that 0 TP feed environment that I doubt SE would be keen on. Additionally, us giving 0 TP means we would get 0 TP, and therefore no WS or /DNC thingies if that's your sub.

So, while I'm for fighting the TP feed issue, that just isn't the solution. Meanwhile, if you really want to give Enspells a bump, aside from the obvious issue with T2s, is to somehow include the weapon's damage rating into the additional effect. So, if SE finally did fix T2s and you could creep up to like +45 a swing, a D57 sword could add another 57 to that. Step outside of Abyssea where our ATK deficiencies and such are more of a reality on harder prey, and suddenly a +102 is a bit more of an equalizer. Our general WS will still be comparatively weaker, but on mobs of higher physical DEF, we might actually be situationally appropriate if resists aren't an issue.

Mirage, I definitely like your thoughts about it, don't worry about the examples you put forth being perfect.

I understand the idea that sometimes you'd hit for a non-zero amount of damage, and I like your thoughts behind making that possible, for various balance reasons.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Now that I think about it, an interesting side effect of this very slow tp gain, and therefore very low percentage of damage coming from WSes, is that the RDM wouldn't mind having to swap to a staff in the middle of battle in order to cast certain spells. They would lose some tp each time they did it, sure, but it wouldn't matter as much as it does if you get a very large amount of your damage from WSes.

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This is yet another factor to add in addition to enmity less, TP feed free attacks. You have very little reason not to switch to another weapon if you need to enfeeble or nuke. That itself is a very powerful force. While I still have hopes that SE will make some sort of elemental shields that mimic the elemental staves in some way, being able to switch to a straight up staff is very enticing.

This play style definitely fits Red Mage very, very well, and is very unique. Even if it doesn't output a ton of damage, you could definitely use it to augment the damage of someone else smacking a mob.

For anyone who might not like this play style, I just want it to be an option, not the only solution. Giving Red Mage better access to subtle blow abilities and armor would be an important factor too, as would making it so you could deal more damage hitting with a weapon in general so you can justify TP feed.

If anything I'd like to see gear that would improve RDMs specifically to a point where meleeing an easy prey target doesn't take 20x longer that the RDM has to rely on nuking all their mana away and barely get away from a battle. Some ideas would include enspells ignore a certain % of magic resistance unless the target is completely immune to magic, and either a weapon or a peice or armor that inflicts a mini-auspice effect on the mob so that RDMs aren't constantly TP-feeding while they're fighting hard to bring it down. Standard boosts such as accuracy, spell interruption down, haste, attack, dagger/sword skill, and enspell enhancement boosts are also not to be snorted at.

While not gear-related I'd like also to see boosts in RDM weapon skills. We're hardly a "jack of all trades" when our own weapon skills are super weak that even a WHM can massively out-damage an RDM with their unique club weapon skills.

I'm sorry, but if you're taking 20x longer to melee down an EP target over nuking, you need some better gear. Nuking is probably the absolute worst way to kill individual EPs, especially outside of Abyssea.

Seriously agreed with Seriha. I can do as much damage as my best nukes with 2 procs of double and/or triple attack in Abyssea. I can nuke something for maybe 1k-ish damage, or swing 5 times dual-wielding for 150-250 damage each in a few seconds, with WS's doing well over twice what a nuke would do(Evisc, etc). Even outside Abyssea, I only nuke to pull the mob if I just want a little extra damage. To each their own though, my nuking ain't that great.

If your melee'ing takes 20x longer than your nuking, then you're not even trying to gear for melee in the first place. Setting yourself up to fail will yield expected results.

That's... pretty bad nukes if you mean inside... But yea you shouldn't take -that- long to melee something down compared to nuking.

As for the topic at hand, I've seen that we're getting some new Haste pieces, so getting to Haste cap(or at least really close) is a lot more attainable. I'd like to see some Subtle Blow so that our TP feed isn't so severe, otherwise some decent melee stats, something like a newer high level version of Dusk, since Dusk gloves give Haste and Attack+. More gear that enhances RDM specific stuff would be nice, like Enhancing enspell damage, enhances buff duration(besides AF3), etc.

In my opinion, making any decent hybrid gear is asking a lot, too much even(Ogre Ledelsens anyone?). I've had greater success in this game gearing specifically for what I'm doing, and swapping accordingly, rather than try to have some kind of catch-all fulltime gear. If you're melee'ing, get some melee gear on.

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Originally Posted by Neisan_Quetz

That's... pretty bad nukes if you mean inside... But yea you shouldn't take -that- long to melee something down compared to nuking.

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I'm gimp, I have nothing to hide. I've never really had a reason to nuke; I've spent most of my time in game with my wife, who is a good BLM and nukes the pants off of anything we're fighting. I'm usually on RDM for support. I got my Elemental Magic up to 290-ish, but my nukes still pale to my melee. I posted my lulzy nuking set in one of these 10 melee threads around here somewhere.

Might've been iceday but 3k on Blizz 4 shouldn't be hard on fodder trash, but going from 4-3 then waiting on recast, it's better to just melee, yes.

That's just one of the things I love about being a RDM though; we have the variety to choose which works better for our preference. For my play style, I like beating the mob down and buffing while my wife nukes it from orbit. It's worked out well for us and we enjoy it. Others can do the opposite and see good results(I wouldn't tank with the BLM though, lol).

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Originally Posted by geekgirl101

If anything I'd like to see gear that would improve RDMs specifically to a point where meleeing an easy prey target doesn't take 20x longer that the RDM has to rely on nuking all their mana away and barely get away from a battle.

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I understand what your saying here, even well gear out, some melee fights really feel they draw out longer than they should. RDM could really value from a peice of gear with STR and ATT stats on it. And a native weapon skill that can actual output damage. Tho with a good nuke set and /war /pld /drk sanguine blade outputs good damage. And i've hit decent to easy prey mobs for close to 1k out side of abyssea.

I've gotten Savage Blade over 1k many times outside of Abyssea, but it was definitely the exception, and not the rule. Usually hovers around 400-700 dmg.

With the mods on it the way they are, I really feel like it should do a lot more damage than it does. RDM has access to lots of MND gear(Ogre Leds. +1; 12 ATT and 5 MND) and a good amount of STR(Alky's bracer's are great) for it, but it just does crap for damage no matter how I gear it.

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Originally Posted by Rayik

I've gotten Savage Blade over 1k many times outside of Abyssea, but it was definitely the exception, and not the rule. Usually hovers around 400-700 dmg.

With the mods on it the way they are, I really feel like it should do a lot more damage than it does. RDM has access to lots of MND gear(Ogre Leds. +1; 12 ATT and 5 MND) and a good amount of STR(Alky's bracer's are great) for it, but it just does crap for damage no matter how I gear it.

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Same here, and the thing is most of the gear you mention is old school vintage and makes us look like crap. Be nice to have a set that look's rdm'ish and gives us the stats we desire. Something we could share between us and blu would be great.

Warriors autoattack for 400-700 outside abyssea.

I also blizz4 for 2.8k-3k inside while not needing to have a completely worthless sub, so you're doing something horribly wrong(which was pretty obvious just by saying you were playing RDM inside abyssea but w/e)

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Originally Posted by Shiyo

Warriors autoattack for 400-700 outside abyssea.

I also blizz4 for 2.8k-3k inside while not needing to have a completely worthless sub, so you're doing something horribly wrong(which was pretty obvious just by saying you were playing RDM inside abyssea but w/e)

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Well war's crit hit for about that much, and it sounds like you have some fine gear and atma hitting those numbers. Not quite sure what that has to do with the subject but thanx for sharing.