Red Mage Melee Ideas

[Sunrider]

What RDM could benefit from is a mechanic that augments our magic with swords, like Blue Magic and sword damage ratings.

A sword with magical stats will never get any play unless En-spells are adjusted and improved such that it would be more beneficial to gear for magic rather than melee, which would be rather nice, considering our magical equipment outnumber the melee by almost 3-1.

[Sp1cyryan]

Hello once more, today is a busy day with this being my 3rd post today alone! Well the subject of Redmage melee has been debated for a long long time. You always get two groups that say the same things. Group A says "RDM iz mage, u cast rfrsh nao". Group B says "I can swing a sword! Lemme at em!" In my eyes, both sides are right.

So where does that leave us? Split in the middle. But thats the thing, redmage makes quite the useful job! The problem is the skills and spell available to them dont work well with each other. And thats why im about to propose the following...............

New job abilities (because you know, RDM only still has about 4, including two hour)

First off, Fencer. Yeah thats right, RDM SHOULD NATURALLY HAVE FENCER. But not just 1 rank of it, no no no no........ they need at least 3 ranks of it. Maybe more. Critical attacks are just that important to making a redmage more than a lolswordsman.

Next would be a jobtrait that works with En-spells. I would figure casting an En-spell on self would create a DMG bonus to the RDM based on enhancing magic skill. Yeah thats right, instead of just getting that smidge of damage from magic, this should be a physical bonus to the weapon in your main hand. En-2 spells should have a GROWING damage bonus based on how far along the elemental damage bonus is. This would add some pep to damage.

Finally i would think a set of job abilities that actually have to deal with swinging your sword and casting are in order. Something along the lines of formless strikes. But for weapon skills. Like so.

A: Job ability: Piercing Blows: Next weapon skill performed by the user deals non-elemental damage instead of physical damage (only works with physical weapon skills, sorry sanguine blade) Recast: 2 minutes
B: Job Ability: Arcanic Assault: For duration, increase users attack by reducing users magic attack bonus completely. Recast: 5 minutes Duration: 1 minute (maybe 2, idea is like berserk)

So far thats about it. There are probably more ideas I am thinking, but these would have direct impact on Red Mages and would make them considerable damage dealers. Somewhere.

~Chuk

Or they could just remake the job from the ground up.



Balance means not everyone gets to count because that throw off the balance. Didn'tcha know?

[Demon6324236]

Of all your gear there are three slots that you can not change out while meleeing. They are Main, Sub and Ranged.

What ranged? I use ammo, Impatiens, Demonry Core, White Tathlum, and Flame Sachet.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Changing the range slot specifically will cause you to lose TP. Not sure why ammo was mentioned though.

[Demon6324236]

Changing the range slot specifically will cause you to lose TP. Not sure why ammo was mentioned though.

I was just saying I'm not sure why a RDM would be using Ranged, or any job really. Only time you should really be using ranged gear is if you are a ranged attacking job, anything else Ammo slots have STP, Attack, Acc, PDT, many more useful things than a ranged weapon. Though I will say I must have taken it out of context because my response does seem a bit out of place, stating a fact on how a mechanic works rather than a limitation RDM must deal with due to gear options.

[Mathieu]

why so many pl say RDM is THE ENFEEBLING JOB?

BRD have much higher slow, have dot
NIN have more or lesser the same
BLU have so many more, death,magdef down,plague,and and and
the most jobs have enfeeling on ws or jas

..... rly rdm and -the enfeebling job- is not more true

Because those are really superficial comparison.

Bard enfeebling is awful outside a couple highly specific situations. They also lack pretty much every enfeebling option. Also, they don't have a higher Slow, they have a non-scaling slow. At lower levels it is higher, but the actual cap of Slow is higher than the Bard version. This is also completely ignoring Slow II. Foe Requiem VII does more damage than Poison II, but, yeah, Poison II is 30 levels lower and the difference isn't much. On top of that, Red Mages can stack DoTs, Bard can't. Bard has a couple solid enfeebles, but Red Mage has them, as well, along with a whole lot more.

Ninja is in the same boat. They have a couple solid enfeebles, but they don't have as many as Red Mage and some of the ones they are missing are huge.

Blue Mage also can't have all their spells at the same time, get their traits based on their spell selection, and they have other roles to perform. A Blue Mage entirely dedicated to enfeebling can be comparable to a Red Mage with the right spell selection, but a Red Mage doesn't have to sacrifice the ability to do everything else to get their enfeebles. So, yeah, a Blue Mage can enfeeble as well as a Red Mage, as long as they are willing to be useless for everything else.

As for weapon skills, blowing 100+% TP to get a generally less effective enfeeble, who's access is dependent to weapon selection, and can outright miss just isn't comparable to a Red Mage.

I think you are confusing the fact people prioritize enemies based on the minimal amount of effort for actual effectiveness at enfeebling. None of those jobs can enfeeble as well as Red Mage, but if you are fighting an enemy that only needs two enfeebles to mostly gimp it, then you don't need a great enfeebler. It's the same reason why Red Mage and Summoner/White Mage spent years as preferred healers over White Mage. In theory, White Mage was the best healer, but Red Mage and Summoner/White Mage could do more than enough at most levels to fill the needs and the added benefits they brought trumped what White Mage did.

[ManaKing]

I dont understand why there are no trial swords like there are the trial staves for magic damage... Super disappointing for RDM ;\

It's just the way it is. I feel you though.

[Demon6324236]

I dont understand why there are no trial swords like there are the trial staves for magic damage... Super disappointing for RDM ;\

I hate to say it but... Balance. Not completely, they would likely change the stats quite a bit, but depending on how much, could still be to much for them to bother with it. Think of a RDM/NIN DWing 2 Thunder Affinity Swords, 4 Affinity each. Thats a total of 8 Affinity, by how they scale so far that means about a +45% damage bonus on spells, it would also probably be -10% cast time each, so that with our natural fast cast would become -50% before FC gear. Not that I like this, but I can admit in a way I see why SE wouldn't. It is a nice thought though, I would suggest cure swords as well but we already have 2 of those so not much need I suppose.

[Lilia]

Blue Mage also can't have all their spells at the same time, get their traits based on their spell selection, and they have other roles to perform. A Blue Mage entirely dedicated to enfeebling can be comparable to a Red Mage with the right spell selection, but a Red Mage doesn't have to sacrifice the ability to do everything else to get their enfeebles. So, yeah, a Blue Mage can enfeeble as well as a Red Mage, as long as they are willing to be useless for everything else.

Thats not true- i can have a good setup with dmgspells,jtraitspells AND enfeebling spells- and im not useless.
The same you can say blu is not a healer- he can heal rly good, but many blu only want play DD.

....and they have other roles to perform......lol

BLU can 100% do the same things what rdm can do.
the only reason why not, is the blus not so stupid to go the same way rdm go the last years

[saevel]

What ranged? I use ammo, Impatiens, Demonry Core, White Tathlum, and Flame Sachet.

Ammo is a different slot then ranged and you can change ammo without losing TP. Ranged is bows / chakrams / ect..