On Red Mage melee...

[Duelle]

But what confuses me here is how everyone wants to say "Red Mage's support elements should not be a primary to the job." When what we're clamoring for is a Front Line Utility.

There's a difference between having utility in the front lines and it being the focus of the job. The reason I argue for more damage (through an increase to our Sword and Dagger rating, native access to more WS, and a buff to enspells) are because at the end of the day utility does not justify you having less DPS than the "real" damage dealers. I've been there before and it fell on its face until a very finely tuned boss showed up that required you to stack all buffs and debuffs you could on him. Which meant you and your melee build did not matter until that point alone.

If it's being in the front and melee with the rest of them is all we want to do, a simple, but significant, attack boost is all that's really needed. (This is including better gear, mind you.)

But if we're going for an actual utility, then we ARE talking support elements, unless the utility specifically applies to us as Red Mages.

As I've argued, front-line should be limited to cures alone. Your buffs are for you because you can and should be keeping yourself up when front-lining.

However I'm more in favor of a single Enspell that increases the potency for all existing debuffs on the monster. Sort of a Melee-saboteur effect. But to do that, we'd also need a debuff that does something about TP moves, to cover the one aspect of monster offense that's been biting us in the butz (and also destroying TP feeding arguments that STILL rear their heads in casual conversation.)

Alternatively, we could have the enspell simply inflict a minor portion of various corresponding debuffs (at once), that has a short duration, and stacks (first strike only to not conflict with Sambas). Essentially, an EN-step effect, that functions for para, slow, blind, addle, and a TP version of Addle in minor degrees that stacks to a limit per strike. This would solve our issue in landing debuffs on mobs in rapid succession. If you have it be its own status effect, it can even stack with existing debuffs doing the same as the previous ability above.

This should be more a trait attached to Enspells rather than a completely separate spell. Provided enfeebles get a facelift, you could have an enspell slightly increase potency of enfeebles cast by the RDM already on the target and renew their duration per hit. Once you hit the extra potency cap, you're basically renewing the duration of enfeebling effects on the target.

Rather than lessen TP gain, I'd like to see something that "breaks" or destroys some of the TP on the mob. Something like:

Froissement: Weak attack that reduces the TP accumulated by the enemy.

* Affected by main-hand accuracy.
* Requires Sword or Dagger in main-hand slot.
* I'd suggest it be derived from weapon damage x 1.5 or something like that, but the devs might want something a little more complex