Why are we advertized as fighter-mages when White Mages can out-do us?

[Hyrist]

Doesn't help there is not enough inventory space for a properly, fully geared RDM.

Utter hogwash if I've ever heard of it...

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

In fact, with Emperyian gear, most of your gear sets end up making use of the same items. There really should be no reason why you're having gear toubles. Let go of the placebo pieces you're holding onto. You don't need +50 Enfeebeling magic, +40 Elemental, 8 elemental staves etc, if you're showing up with any intent to melee at all.

As I said, gear for what you do. Some of the worst, idiotic concepts people have is that you need to have a full set for every action you make.

[cidbahamut]

This really needed another thread?

[Ketaru]

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree. It makes no sense, and indeed needs to be fixed.

The situation is the Final Fantasy XI people don't want to upset people that want updates that make us better mages, but they don't want to let go of their image of a magical swordsman. The whole situation reeks of indecisiveness.

First and foremost, they don't want to upset the people who have held the position for years that any update to make RDM a better fighter will break game balance. That was back when RDM held a monopoly on EXP parties, so in my opinion, that boat has sailed.

That and others call for more updates that make RDM a better enfeebler or enhancer. And I can see where this is coming from if you go after the upper tier mobs in the game. Depending on your linkshell, you aren't allowed to melee mobs even if you were a standard melee job like a DRK or DRG. That's the way our linkshell is. The only people allowed to melee tougher enemies are jobs that can double as tanks like PLD, NIN, or MNK. The targets are just easier to manage that way and less annoying people that need healing. You got a mage job? You're coming mage. You don't got a mage job? You're going to act as mage-like as your job would allow, like Stunning on DRK.

EDIT: Oh wait, and THF too...but only until they've finished Treasure Hunter-ing the mob.

The best melee update for us would likely go underused so why ask for one? The game culture, as it exists now, simply doesn't support it.

If you want the game culture to change in a way that redeems the image of RDM as a hybrid, you really don't have to look too far into the past for inspiration. People had all their gripes about Campaign. But fact is, prior to Abyssea, it was a very popular event that had plenty of people coming back to it day after day. It was one of the few times in a game when having a variety of skills was advantageous. Campaign enjoyed quite a heyday. And this was despite the fact it was not the optimal source of EXP at the moment. Remember, when it really did seem like they were going to make a genuine push to give RDM more frontline utility, that was during the Campaign era.

Saying "Bring back Campaign!" as a solution to the hybrid image problem is oversimplifying it. But I'm just getting at the fact that, really, it's the game's culture that needs to expand. Instead, it shrank. And for all the things I love about Abyssea, that is the one thing I find fault in it for.

They might as well re-name the job, while they're at it! How about something like Scholar?

Lol i say the same thing. I dont know why people back line as RDM when they could be playing SCH. That being said, if you find RDM more comfortable/fun than SCH, then so be it.

Oh you. You had to go there. All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can. The extremes, of course are harder to meet, since SCH is a much better main healer or main nuker. They don't have the same cycled spells and SCH's are arguably less useful. SCH also has a much tougher time getting nuking gear when nuking is actually built right into RDM's Empyrean gear. Most of SCH's Empyrean gear amounts to simply macro pieces.

There's a lot of give and take that balances the two jobs and to say the two are similar because they both cast White and Black Magic is like simplifying something like RNG and saying all the job does is shoot arrows.

This really needed another thread?

To be fair, this is a different take on the issue. To me, the development team is playing both sides of the fence on this and people have a right to be frustrated by such indecisiveness. The job may be backline in reality. But the players really are owed an explanation about why they keep promoting the job the way that they do. And until they give a proper explanation, some people are forever going to hold onto the hope the job will get a frontline update.

I gave up waiting for it a long time ago.

[Raxiaz]

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

If you're not carrying all of those, why the hell are you on RDM?

[Swords]

Honestly, the devs need to start taking Red Mages in a more solid direction. Do they want us to use Swords just like in the promotional videos? If so, then they need to start backing it up more seriously: physical Job Traits (SUCH AS FENCER HINT HINT), more frequent access to good front line equipment (like they currently do with Blue Mages), the whole nine yards!

You know, it's kind of misleading to compare RDM to BLU. Besides BLU having a smaller MP pool and limited spell selection, their melee skill/acc and/or magic skill/acc effects their spells utilizing both mage and melee sides together, which makes it easier for SE to create hybrid gear that BLU can use effectively.

RDM mechanics however make a huge rift between a mage and melee sides save when it comes to utilizing Elemental WS or En-spells. Most of the hybrid gear created specifically for RDM has lower stats under dedicated mage or melee gear, but the underlying problem is during melee your NOT using the mage stats, and during casting your NOT using the melee stats so you cannot optimally perform in either situation without swapping ridiculous amounts of gear.

The few grey areas where SE has tried to merge the mage side and melee side together such as enspells, you run into a big problem. This is where that mage and melee rift starts to show, because you have to either sacrafice power into your enspells or sacrafice melee gear letting one side or the other suffer.

[Tamarsamar]

Oh you. You had to go there. All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can. The extremes, of course are harder to meet, since SCH is a much better main healer or main nuker. They don't have the same cycled spells and SCH's are arguably less useful. SCH also has a much tougher time getting nuking gear when nuking is actually built right into RDM's Empyrean gear. Most of SCH's Empyrean gear amounts to simply macro pieces.

Also, that whole Sword thing, but hey, not like that's important or anything . . .

And I laugh when you say that RDM's AF3 is better than SCH's because SCH's "amounts to simply macro pieces." I know you play the close-combat Red Mage from time to time, so you of all people should know how painfully situational the Estoqueur's set is. Now please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't jobs like BST almost full-time some of their AF3 pieces?

There's a lot of give and take that balances the two jobs and to say the two are similar because they both cast White and Black Magic is like simplifying something like RNG and saying all the job does is shoot arrows.

This analogy is flawed. The sort of "oversimplification" you see in play here is more like saying that BRD and COR are similar because they both give AoE buffs, totally ignoring COR's Marksmanship ability, among several other things, natch.

[Duelle]

The situation is the Final Fantasy XI people don't want to upset people that want people that want updates that make us better mages, but they don't want to let go of their image of a magical swordsman. The whole situation reeks of indecisiveness.

The ideal solution would have been the developers stepping in to say "this is what we want the job to do. Now STFU and play our game" early on, rather than leaving things be for years on end.

First and foremost, they don't want to upset the people who have held the position for years that any update to make RDM a better fighter will break game balance.

The thing is that it wouldn't hurt much once the changes actually go through. At the risk of annoying the WoW haters, what you're mentioning are the exact same arguments I used to see on the WoW boards whenever someone mentioned Retribution (AKA melee) Paladins and their then-lacking melee. The first argument that came out of the nay-sayers' mouths was "omg no pallyz r foar heelz!! melee pally = OP and no1 wuld playz neting elz!1!!", subsequently followed by "uz good pallyz that heelz luk bda becuz of u lolmelee pallyzz!".

The big bad update that fixed retribution came and went and....everyone still played their normal characters. You had a bunch of people that finally decided to roll a paladin after seeing your endgame fate did not HAVE to be healing in raids, but aside from that not much changed. So yeah, I can't help but roll my eyes when people start crying about the hybrid apocalypse.

Depending on your linkshell, you aren't allowed to melee mobs even if you were a standard melee job like a DRK or DRG. That's the way our linkshell is. The only people allowed to melee tougher enemies are jobs that can double as tanks like PLD, NIN, or MNK. The targets are just easier to manage that way and less annoying people that need healing. You got a mage job? You're coming mage. You don't got a mage job? You're going to act as mage-like as your job would allow, like Stunning on DRK.

This is more testimony to XI's crappy encounter design than anything else.

Aside from that, I don't think I'd be the only melee enthusiast here that would be alright with abiding by the rules the melee classes follow when it comes to that sort of thing.

The best melee update for us would likely go underused so why ask for one? The game culture, as it exists now, simply doesn't support it.

As I've constantly argued, a big enough change would have an effect on how people do things.

Saying "Bring back Campaign!" as a solution to the hybrid image problem is oversimplifying it. But I'm just getting at the fact that, really, it's the game's culture that needs to expand. Instead, it shrank. And for all the things I love about Abyssea, that is the one thing I find fault in it for.

No offense, but I don't see what this has to do with anything, outside of hint "save melee for when you're in campaign".

All I'm going to say is a lot of people look at RDM and SCH and immediately assume they are similar, as if they looked at Cliffnotes descriptions of each job when they truth is they really don't play the same at all. In fact, to this end, RDM is a lot more flexible and transitions roles much more seamlessly than SCH can.

SCH happens to have a stance mechanic built-in. I would venture to say SCH is better at switching roles than RDM seeing that the switching of roles is built into the job rather than implied through spread-thin stats and profficiencies like RDM.

The other requires inventory space and doesn't have built-in mechanics that support its roles. It is one of the reasons I'm in favor of RDM getting stances to help the front and back liners stand apart from one another rather than leave the job a compilation of "what if"s that get in the way of the job's development.

To be fair, this is a different take on the issue. To me, the development team is playing both sides of the fence on this and people have a right to be frustrated by such indecisiveness. The job may be backline in reality. But the players really are owed an explanation about why they keep promoting the job the way that they do. And until they give a proper explanation, some people are forever going to hold onto the hope the job will get a frontline update.

I agree 100% here.

[Ketaru]

Also, that whole Sword thing, but hey, not like that's important or anything . . .

And I laugh when you say that RDM's AF3 is better than SCH's because SCH's "amounts to simply macro pieces." I know you play the close-combat Red Mage from time to time, so you of all people should know how painfully situational the Estoqueur's set is. Now I'm simply making conjecture here, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't jobs like BST almost full-time some of their AF3 pieces?

The fact you're getting offended over me not mentioning "that whole Sword thing" reflects more on you than it does on me because we were talking about casting spells here.

But to answer your question, no, I do not full-time my Ferine gear. In fact, I don't use it as much as I would like. My body piece and my head piece are not really designed for full emphasis on the pet. Not when I'm trying to solo things. In place of the head, I use Spurrer Beret (I could be using the AMK head piece, but eh, if I don't have it, I don't have it) and for the body I use the ACP body piece with Pet Acc/Pet DA. I hardly join EXP parties because I simply don't care for them anymore (and nobody else cares about them for that matter, I'll get to that later). This means, whenever I'm using my BST, it's to fight NMs I want to solo. And most of the time, those NMs have frightening strong Area attacks. I can't even full-time the hands and feet because those are key Reward pieces: Ogre Gloves+1 and Beast Gaiters+1 (apologies, I don't have Monster Gaiters). Plus all that MND crud. The legs are the only thing I come close to full-timing, and even those I swap out when it's time for the pet to do a weaponskill. I switch to Herder's Subligar cause, you know, missing is kind of a drag. I don't know what other jobs you have. But gearing BST isn't as easy as you think it is.

As for the comments about our Estoqueur set, obviously you're looking at this from a melee standpoint because, as far as casting is concerned, the set has a wide range of applicability to it. I don't melee in it.

The ideal solution would have been the developers stepping in to say "this is what we want the job to do. Now STFU and play our game" early on, rather than leaving things be for years on end

No, that would've been a useless situation. Even now, that's what the developers are saying with every bit of promotional material they have about RDM right down to their promises about what kind of updates the job will get. They could shout until they're breathless and people are not going to listen if, for the purpose of the game, it just doesn't work.

The big bad update that fixed retribution came and went and....everyone still played their normal characters. You had a bunch of people that finally decided to roll a paladin after seeing your endgame fate did not HAVE to be healing in raids, but aside from that not much changed. So yeah, I can't help but roll my eyes when people start crying about the hybrid apocalypse.

Yeah, I kind of agreed with you on that. But you forgot to quote me where I said: "That was back when RDM held a monopoly on EXP parties, so in my opinion, that boat has sailed." You can melee in EXP parties now. But more out of the playerbase's indifference because it simply just don't care really. You'll probably even outdamage some people because, once again, people just don't care.

This is more testimony to XI's crappy encounter design than anything else.

Aside from that, I don't think I'd be the only melee enthusiast here that would be alright with abiding by the rules the melee classes follow when it comes to that sort of thing.

...

As I've constantly argued, a big enough change would have an effect on how people do things.

And that is the design we have to work with right now. Then you should really get why backline people want a job update that is designed for backline purposes.

No offense, but I don't see what this has to do with anything, outside of hint "save melee for when you're in campaign".

Hey, if you didn't like Campaign, that's fine by me. The fact it used to be high in participation, despite the fact Colibri parties were getting 25K+ EXP per hour while your best hopes were maybe 10K EXP per hour, speaks for itself. And a lot of the people you saw out there weren't seeking for EXP parties. Don't try to belittle or downplay it as if it were nothing. It was a huge part of this game's history. As I pointed out earlier, this was also the time period where they actually did make somewhat of a push to give RDM frontline abilities. Because Campaign was what was "in". It was what people talked about. It was what people whined about. It was what people expressed their ideas of what they think it should be like. And despite being popular, it was never the only activity available to the playerbase.

If you ask me, around the time it was popular was when Final Fantasy XI truly felt like it was at its biggest. There was a variety of content for everybody to choose from. That feeling of variety is not the game as it is now. There is a feeling of malaise that it has been reduced to Abyssea. And as long as Abyssea is the "in" thing to do right now, it will be the benchmark with which everything will be measured. And if you don't do it, you will fall behind your peers drastically.

I'm all for players having options for doing things, not indoctrinating people to think one or the other. If suddenly they announced that anybody who takes place in successfully defeating the Yagudo Liturgists and earned at least 1000 Allied Notes gets a Card of Ardor, I'll be the first person to sign up. And I will be good at it because I believe in using all my skills in Campaign (and I wasn't one of those turds who didn't put mobs to Sleep or heal others). Even if I could get them faster by spamming Alfard. Right now, I've been getting them by helping somebody defeat Sobek after Sobek. Am I somehow more skilled for my ability to spam Sobek than win Campaign?

I want them to update the game in a way that will make everybody feel like they play this game on their own terms, and they won't be damned to failure for doing so.

SCH happens to have a stance mechanic built-in. I would venture to say SCH is better at switching roles than RDM seeing that the switching of roles is built into the job rather than implied through spread-thin stats and profficiencies like RDM.

The other requires inventory space and doesn't have built-in mechanics that support its roles. It is one of the reasons I'm in favor of RDM getting stances to help the front and back liners stand apart from one another rather than leave the job a compilation of "what if"s that get in the way of the job's development.

You know, as somebody who actually plays SCH and RDM, I am disappointed I somehow can't convince you guys otherwise of this. I already tried to hammer across in the other thread that playing SCH requires some foresight and a lot of "setting up" to do the things that it does well and the two jobs still play on different strengths. Even now, RDM's strengths are more valuable to the playerbase than SCH's and, if you can't see that, than I'm afraid nothing I say will convince you otherwise that the two jobs are different.

Prior to the cap increase, everybody was up in arms that SCH was going to take over RDM's role. Where are you guys now?

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Maybe I've been spoiled by games where you don't need to switch entire sets of gear to be able to do anything, but the above quote is a clear sign that RDM is in dire need of streamlining in some way, shape or form.

@OP: Your sig makes sense. I would probably play off the fact that the bonus is really useful but has a rather ridiculous condition to trigger the effect.

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree. It makes no sense, and indeed needs to be fixed.

The fault was in SE allowing Armour and so on to be changed before hand and gain the buffs, so if you don't do that, you'd be told you're a bad RDM.

Utter hogwash if I've ever heard of it...

Unless you're carrying a full set of elemental staves, hMP gear, Full nuking gear, etc. You should have more than enough room to fit in melee equipment and Dex WS gear.

In fact, with Emperyian gear, most of your gear sets end up making use of the same items. There really should be no reason why you're having gear toubles. Let go of the placebo pieces you're holding onto. You don't need +50 Enfeebeling magic, +40 Elemental, 8 elemental staves etc, if you're showing up with any intent to melee at all.

As I said, gear for what you do. Some of the worst, idiotic concepts people have is that you need to have a full set for every action you make.

A RDM is capable of curing, nuking, enfeebling and meleeing, you need all this equipment, it also helps to have a -MDT and -PDT build.

Do you need it all in your inventory at all time? not always, but sometimes you jump between mobs you can melee on, and others where they only want enfeebles or nuking and this change between mobs is far too quick to allow you taking and replacing your equipment every minute. So yes, there is NOT enough space even with 80 slots.

[GlobalVariable]

I don't usually admit I do this, but I'm braving a rdm melee thread anyway so I may as well...

I sometimes use dagger when I melee. I think its sad that SE wants to steer rdm into swords yet I can outdo that whm if I use dagger and gear for dex on my ws set. *ducks and covers* pls dun lynch me. >.>

Gnadgott (dmg 42 o.o but way over priced ;.; ) and Twilight look like the only really good daggers we got in a long time. Even with a pretty gimp dagger I was outdamaging my sword build (non emp..yeah yeah I know) by a fair margin. I think because it was just easier to gear for and my sword setup was simply gimped. Pre abyssea I was doing evisceration when I solo'ed stuff, and post abyssea I love aeolian edge since a lot of my mage gear actually helps it allowing me to carry less gear around. Hopefully somewhere 91-99 we get a nice solid magic ws for sword that doesn't require a melee sub.