[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] RDM

[Hyrist]

I love how you can just dismiss Dia3, slow2 and Paralyze2 like that. The only other job that can cast a Slow effect stronger than ours is Brd, and guess what? they stack. We have the most potent paralyze. Guess what else? Dia3 is 15% Defence down that is up all the time, and that stacks with JA defence-down effects like Angon. No other job can do these. They are significant spells, and the fact that you just dismissed them so easilly without even acknowlegeing them as "a few merit spells" is completely idiotic.

Awww, sorry you're so offended.

But let me put it flatly for you.

Is Warrior Defined by Warrior's Charge?

Is Dancer Defined by Saber Dance?

Or lets go over to the Mage Side...

Burst II, Freeze II?

Martyr?

No. These are not job defining traits, merely accents, bonuses to what they already preform. For a Red Mage, they're our bread and butter, piratically a necessity to be considered worth ANYTHING outside what someone else could do by simply equipping Red Mage as a subjob.

That's why they're dismissible. You're basically requiring the class to go through an additional 3 levels of work PER SPELL to contribute anything unique to an event. That's Post 75, only IF your spells land land reliably (on monsters with ridiculous levels of resistance, mind you), and only IF you're stacked to hell on dMND for everything but Dia and Bio, and guess what, you can only be fully adequate at two of those spells, and that's not even thinking of Phalanx 2.

If you're not insulted by this, I say you should be. Again, using merits as an excuse for being a definition for a job is a poor excuse to justify a broken design.

So yes, I dismiss the merits on the grounds that these spells rightly should be scrolls instead of merits. You can't depend on a Red Mage to have these spells to the appropriate merit levels, or have them at all in some cases, where with a Black Mage, they don't have to pick and choose what Tier V scrolls to get. Our Merits have turned from crutch to a liability to the development of our job class and if you don't see that, you're flat out blind.

Which is ironic because your typical Red Mage won't even have Blind II merited.

[Defiledsickness]

have you ever heard of gear swapping? its not that hard i even did it in a lazy way.

i just made 3 macro's to cover my entire gear and based each set of 3 on a function i need to perform. i have a set for healing, a set for enfeebling, i tweaked mnd-based enfeebling, a set for enhancing, a tweaked mnd-based enhancing, and a nuking set.

nuking and curing are my primary sets, then when i get a resist i just change to enfeebling. of course you should change for enhancing but if i know im not going to get hit then i only cast prot/shell anyways.

-yanno blind doesnt land on every mob right? same with paralyze. the base spells can be pushed far enough that you dont need to 5/5 any of them. i unlocked everything for Viodwatch triggers, except phalanx2. just /sch and phalanx1 or let your pld phalanx himself.

[cidbahamut]

Why would you merit Phalanx II? Are you doing Salvage runs or something?

[Economizer]

Martyr?

No. These are not job defining traits, merely accents, bonuses to what they already preform. For a Red Mage, they're our bread and butter, piratically a necessity to be considered worth ANYTHING outside what someone else could do by simply equipping Red Mage as a subjob.

If you are going to choose the bad merits (I don't know about the others, but I don't know a White Mage that fully merits Martyr, and only a handful that merit it once) that don't define a class for some of these examples, you point won't be proven well. A White Mage is defined by having Shellra V fully merited. I don't respect White Mages that have had time to merit that don't choose to merit Shellra V 5/5.

Sure, some merits are debatable in how much they contribute to what a job is, but how many Dancers do you know that don't merit Reverse Flourish to full? Certain merits are part of what a job is, and saying that a job doesn't need its merits (which are easy to get anyways) to function at peak efficiency is a bit of a joke.

Maybe Red Mages don't merit everything the same way, but I'd kill for just one of Dia III, Paralyze II, or Slow II as a White Mage. But those are not spells White Mage gets to even have a shot at, because Red Mage is the proper enfeebler.

-

On Red Mage melee, I've seen Red Mages melee things in ways that spit on the image this thread keeps trying to push toward the devs. Red Mage's biggest strength is survivability, and whittling down opponents, but these days Red Mage is also pushing out bigger and bigger damage numbers too. But even then, there is a lot of buffing/debuffing done to make fights go smoothly. I'm sorry if you can't just melee a mob and expect it to auto-attack and win like a WAR or a MNK fighting something, but this is the nature of what Red Mage is. You have to use all your job's roles to the fullest in order to solo, especially if you want to solo things that shouldn't be solo'd, like mythical Red Mages in the days of yore.

There are legit complains about Red Mage melee, but given some of the comments (like saying Red Mage hasn't been given a magical WS) suggest to me that many Red Mages in here might expect to equip their nuking gear, a sword, and be able to outdamage a Warrior. It takes a lot of work and specialized gear to be a proper melee if you are a Red Mage. There is some good news for Red Mage however, as it has some very nice toys available for this purpose, like an Atheling Mantle.

[Duelle]

Red Mage's biggest strength is survivability, and whittling down opponents, but these days Red Mage is also pushing out bigger and bigger damage numbers too. But even then, there is a lot of buffing/debuffing done to make fights go smoothly. I'm sorry if you can't just melee a mob and expect it to auto-attack and win like a WAR or a MNK fighting something, but this is the nature of what Red Mage is. You have to use all your job's roles to the fullest in order to solo, especially if you want to solo things that shouldn't be solo'd, like mythical Red Mages in the days of yore.

You're speaking of solo play, whereas the melee camp's gripes are in the context of party play and the lack of acceptance due to factors already covered in several other threads.

There are legit complains about Red Mage melee, but given some of the comments (like saying Red Mage hasn't been given a magical WS) suggest to me that many Red Mages in here might expect to equip their nuking gear, a sword, and be able to outdamage a Warrior.

Why would you present a false premise like that? You wear melee gear to front-line. It's pretty obvious. The melee gear isn't enough, though. This has also been discussed.

[Supersun]

Maybe Red Mages don't merit everything the same way, but I'd kill for just one of Dia III, Paralyze II, or Slow II as a White Mage. But those are not spells White Mage gets to even have a shot at, because Red Mage is the proper enfeebler.

Would you trade Cure 5 for them though? You'd be silly if you would considering that they are only marginally better then the T1 enfeebles (10% at best) and Cure 5 is well...Cure 5. It's pretty hard to debate inviting a Rdm JUST for their enfeebles when that's essentially the trade you are making by not inviting another Whm...not like that many things at the moment need more then one Whm anyway.

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Why are people assuming that Enspell damage related merits would be in our group 2 merits. They seem like something that would be added to the group 1 merits which besides convert recast isn't exactly the most stellar category in the world.

---

Also, looks like we may be pushed down the Refresh tier list yet again as the Corsair job post made today pretty much inferred that Evokers roll was going to get a boost. Unless we are in for some major buffing Cor/Rdm just joined the ranks of buffing supermen that are looking to completely blow Rdm out of the water by 99.

[Economizer]

Would you trade Cure 5 for them though? You'd be silly if you would considering that they are only marginally better then the T1 enfeebles (10% at best) and Cure 5 is well...Cure 5. It's pretty hard to debate inviting a Rdm JUST for their enfeebles when that's essentially the trade you are making by not inviting another Whm...not like that many things at the moment need more then one Whm anyway.

You don't ever just invite a Red Mage just for enfeebles. You also invite it for the buffs they use, and depending on how good the Red Mage is at handling these, extra magical and melee damage.

Would I trade Cure V for these enfeebles as a White Mage? No, I wouldn't, because if White Mage didn't have Cure V, there would be very little reason to have one. If either SCH or RDM were to get it, they'd pretty much dominate WHM in most aspects because they have superior MP longevity and they perform other roles like crowd control and buffs better.

Both camps act as if they aren't useful at all without the spell, but they ignore the problem that currently plagues the White Mage class, the prospect that at any moment, the masses will have their way, and White Mage will be useless outside of being needed for certain procs in Abyssea.

Anyone who says that superior cure potency gear or Cure VI would prevent any job with a better mana pool from being a better healer really doesn't understand how White Mage functions. They also could use a history lesson in FFXI, namely the ToAU era.

Maybe there is something seriously wrong with White Mage being the only job with Cure V, but at this point in time, White Mage doesn't have much else going for it. A bit of a metaphor, I'd still invite a Red Mage to a party even if the job couldn't cure at all. I couldn't say the same for White Mage.

[SpankWustler]

True enough, Doom. The joke kind of died half-way through my post, but I wasn't done making my point so I opted to drag it's rotting carcass along with me. Maybe that wasn't the soundest decision.

I still think "SpankWustler" is a perfectly goofy word, though. "The SpankWustler" sounds like a Doctor Seuss book about an awkward, fuzzy, little creature with one tremendous hand.

Would I trade Cure V for these enfeebles as a White Mage? No, I wouldn't, because if White Mage didn't have Cure V, there would be very little reason to have one. If either SCH or RDM were to get it, they'd pretty much dominate WHM in most aspects because they have superior MP longevity and they perform other roles like crowd control and buffs better.

Assuming you play White Mage completely naked and with no job abilities; this is a serious concern. Otherwise, it's more of an irrational fear born of a time when people fought pink birds and White Mage had a little over half the resources it has currently.

A 35% Cure-Skin with a cap of 400 is extremely helpful against challenging monsters, and a properly be-pantsed White Mage's cures are extremely MP efficient compared to any other job.

As for MP longevity, unless you need or want Stun you're probably subbing SpankWustler or Scholar. So White Mage generally has some form of MP restoration along with it's far, far more efficient cures.

Yeah, giving more jobs access to cure V might inspire a few folks to bring along a Spankwustler mule to heal themselves on easy content instead of a White Mage mule, but I don't see it affecting White Mage much otherwise. Particularly not on things like Voidwatch that actually offer vaguely hard monsters.

As somebody who is on White Mage 90% of the time, I could care less about having a iron-fisted monopoly on healing. It would make my rolls of fat undulate with joy if a buddy who so desired could heal in Abyssea on SpankWustler or Scholar, so I could at least find out if my new macros for Blue Mage or Corsair even work.

Although, maybe the disparity will sort itself out once Abyssea is just another event instead of the primary event. Our HP outside isn't that much higher now, and it won't be that much higher at 99.

Too-Long-Did-Not-Read-Version: No, other jobs getting Cure V wouldn't have a meaningful, negative impact on White Mage. It's a far more fleshed-out job now than it was five years ago.

In other news, I'd choke a kitten to cast Dia III. While it's only a 5% increase over Dia II, it's a 15% increase over some butt-brained Black Mage's Bio II. I know that's not a good reason, but overwriting that dreadful spell would feel so good.

Not that Spankwustler's merits, Category I and II, aren't a little lackluster otherwise. That's the case with a lot of jobs. Fortunately, that sounds like something the current development team really wants to work on.

[Neisan_Quetz]

In other news, I'd choke a kitten to cast Dia III. While it's only a 5% increase over Dia II, it's a 15% increase over some butt-brained Black Mage's Bio II. I know that's not a good reason, but overwriting that dreadful spell would feel so good.

Not that Spankwustler's merits, Category I and II, aren't a little lackluster otherwise. That's the case with a lot of jobs. Fortunately, that sounds like something the current development team really wants to work on.

I never get tired of overwriting Bio 2 - and then rage as another Rdm casts Bio 3 over me.


As for the Cor argument - I have no problem with Cor being considered more viable (because Cor really needs the buffs) as long as SE delivers. Come on SE, deliver.

[SpankWustler]

I never get tired of overwriting Bio 2 - and then rage as another Rdm casts Bio 3 over me.


As for the Cor argument - I have no problem with Cor being considered more viable (because Cor really needs the buffs) as long as SE delivers. Come on SE, deliver.

Bio III - Strong enough to use while spending 2 hours soloing an NM because you have no idea how to cast Elemental Magic, but subtle enough to enrage countless melee and one other caster in just 1.5 seconds. The perfect spell.

Corsair definitely could use...something. Most of it's unique buffs from rolls (which never held a candle to a decent March for a competent melee) are all over equipment now, and the relatively new "Haste" roll is too weird to be universally useful. Between that and stacks of Oberon's Bullets existing only in the hearts and minds of dreaming children, I'm barely on the job at all.

It seems like the last job anyone should worry about taking their favorite job's role, as things stand.