On Red Mage melee...

[Greatguardian]

My point was simply that I have not, in either population, seen hardly anyone who claims that RDM melee is viable in its current state aside from Doom stand up and actually present himself to parse. Personally I'd be willing to parse against anyone on Cerberus as a non-RDM in a similar situation, if there was a melee Rdm there who wanted to go.

I have a lot more sympathy for people who know that Rdm melee is borderline useless on a relative scale (as in, anyone can beat up some crappy gimps, but comparing good player to good player, etc), and simply want it to be better. I simply don't see the point, personally, as I have no vested interest in the "concept" of magical swordsman.

[Seriha]

Which is fine. I know myself and others take offense when that lack of interest should be considered the norm, though, and to want otherwise makes us... less desirable elements, in more polite terms. Was the same at 75, same at 90, and will no doubt continue to be so unless SE gets off their duff.

[Doombringer]

My point was simply that I have not, in either population, seen hardly anyone who claims that RDM melee is viable in its current state aside from Doom stand up and actually present himself to parse.

actually, even I think it needs buffing. i think I did OK (JUST "ok")... but i have an almace. if i'd gone out there with evisceration or death blossom i probably would have embarrassed myself. granted gokku also has an emp, but if he didn't, he'd still have asuran fists, with whatever the next best H2H weapon is.

i DON'T think rdm melee is ok, i just did this because i was curious as to how not ok it was. and i didn't like the idea of certain people representing "me"... i wasn't out to prove anything.

as for them trying to stack the deck against me to point at the lolmeleerdm and laugh... so? everything was disclosed.

sure i didn't know i'd be fighting kindred, but whats it matter? it was openly disclosed that we were fighting kindred. so people can take that into consideration. if you don't think the magic def is fair, double my enspell number (or whatever you think is fair) for a ballpark.

i didn't know i'd be parsing against a mnk, and sure counter ups his dmg.. but we can see that in the parse. if you don't feel that counter is fair you can look at that and remove that amount from his total for a ballpark.

as for the enspell vs who'se running the parse, i don't see anybody else dealing significant "additional effect" damage. so it's at LEAST close. i'm not looking to play lawyerball :\


i WILL say this though, gokus acc isn't capped either, (93.87%, it's close but it's not capped, so it proves madrigal had to be helping him.) so to say that dropping the madrigal would hurt me but NOT him is a little unfair. just sayin'

[geekgirl101]

rdm melee damage is pretty weak to begin with. It would be nice if we had a damage increase, say a combat ability that weakened our magic but increased our combat stats. I know we got composure but it aint enough for our survivability by melee alone and I still have to stick in nukes to do some considerable damage. Even with rotating nukes and smacking a mob with enspell 2 it takes me 8x longer to kill things that a proper melee class can do. I'd like to see that get changed.

[Supersun]

1. I have almost as many posts here as i do on bg B. it was to show that a rdm couldnt do 80% of the damage of a GOOD dd

I don't think anyone was arguing that at lvl 90 outside of abyssea.

[Duelle]

My point was simply that I have not, in either population, seen hardly anyone who claims that RDM melee is viable in its current state aside from Doom stand up and actually present himself to parse. Personally I'd be willing to parse against anyone on Cerberus as a non-RDM in a similar situation, if there was a melee Rdm there who wanted to go.

What would be the point outside of stroking others' e-peens and simply reinforcing the melee camp's desire to have front line play buffed? Or are we trying to determine by how much melee should be buffed/altered?

With that said, one can only assume that there are at least a couple well-geared RDMelees around on forums when so many people seem to be into it.

Yet I rarely see people actually talk about their personal RDMelee set, or come out to see how it stands up against another melee without backpedaling and giving excuses.

Translation: You're trying to lure people in so you can play the "lol ur bad" card.

It happens, though, and I know Duelle has at least had some peeks at the JP side of things to see they've had similar gripes as us.

This is true. The debates aren't as heated as they tend to get here, though. Mostly "RDM melee is weak. Please don't forget about our swordsman part. <insert suggestions ranging from buffed enspells to more WS access>". Some mention Rainemard. Nothing too complicated, and at least I haven't seen anyone trying to troll the JP threads with stuff like lolmelee. Granted, the JP also made this, so I'm sure there're some naysayers that haven't shown themselves yet.

[Greatguardian]

The point is simply that there still seem to be posters who feel that RDM melee, in its current and past incarnations, is not completely useless and overly weak. These people believe that they are able to contribute a meaningful amount to the group right now, and that their damage increase more than makes up for the loss of casting functionality.

This is not true and I'd be more than happy to prove my case in practice. Even Doom's parse assumed that he did almost zero casting at all. Increasing the casting burden in order to actually play RDM as a hybrid class and not purely as a DD will only lower their effectiveness even further.

If certain people have issues with Demons, I will simply find another VT monster family to poke at (or whoever else wants to parse next, as I do not see many Cerberusians here). Any suggestions on Pierce/Blunt/Slash-Neutral mobs that can be found in abundance at VT to 90 level?

[Supersun]

I think the new beetles and bats in garliage citadel ate VT to a lvl 90.

[Greatguardian]

Eh. I'd really rather use Weapon-Neutral mobs. I appreciate parsing on bats about as much as Rdms appreciate parsing on Magic Pots. If it's possible to only snag beetles without getting bats on us, that would work.

[Supersun]

Certainly it would be better if we could find a camp with mostly neutral mobs, but at the same time it's more important to not pick something with some stupid quirky TP attack that will offset what the DoT between the 2 jobs are.

Basically, any monster that is notorious for exping on are generally the best candidates for testing DoT as they aren't overly difficult and are easy to survive against. Unfortunately 90% of those mobs are also piercing weak.

I mean common exp monsters off the top of my head exuding crabs for obvious reasons are Crawlers, Bats, Worms, Birds, Beetles, ect...

There are certainly enough beetles to never run out since they spawn on a 5 min timer now, but good luck dodging the bats and only pulling beetles. I still don't think you are going to find a better spot even if it involves the occasional bat since every other spot I can think of is even worse with their piercing weaknesses or use stupid TP attacks. Worse comes to worse you can just exclude all the bat data (pretty sure you can do this can't you?).