[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] RDM

[Economizer]

I regularly sub Scholar, so I'm aware of the timing that is involved with Arts/Strats. It punishes you if you aren't aware of what's going on in a fight, and destroys you if you get caught with the wrong arts out if you get hit with Amnesia. But I think the timing is manageable even if you want to throw down a nuke while main curing (Impact under Dark Arts on a White Mage? lololol). That said, I'd rather have a Red Mage on Stun duty then any other job, reflexes are certainly part of the job's strengths.

Scholar and Red Mage are on pretty even keel as far as healing goes, with Scholar's only palpable advantage being native status cures rather than status cures from a support job. If that's even an advantage.

Penury, Celerity, Accession, Rapture. Mainly Rapture, 50-60% more potency every minute or so (assuming your not burning strats on other stuff)? B+ Healing Magic, more of a factor if SE actually makes Healing Magic useful. If you sub Red Mage you can also Phalanx your party without a single merit.

A better argument would have been to argue that Blue Mage is a better healer then Scholar, but even then they'll be subbing Scholar for peak efficiency, if they a dedicated healer.

[Raksha]

Penury, Celerity, Accession, Rapture. Mainly Rapture, 50-60% more potency every minute or so (assuming your not burning strats on other stuff)? B+ Healing Magic, more of a factor if SE actually makes Healing Magic useful. If you sub Red Mage you can also Phalanx your party without a single merit.

Do you use Divine seal every 10 minutes? If so, do you use it for cures or for status effects?

Using stratagems for rapture isn't the best way to main heal. If you're spam healing a single tank chances are your stratagems aren't going to last long enough. If you are healing an entire party with accession, you're going to run out of mp (or if you stack penury you'll run out of charges). Dark Arts stratagems are generally a lot more useful than light arts strats. Light arts strats are nice, but they aren't game-breaking.

[Economizer]

Do you use Divine seal every 10 minutes? If so, do you use it for cures or for status effects?

Honestly, since Divine Seal is on a ten minute timer, I avoid using it outside of Campaign Battle Accession cures. Actually, this statement isn't exactly true, since I use Devotion as often as possible. Divine Seal isn't exactly something reliable to depend on.

Using stratagems for rapture isn't the best way to main heal. If you're spam healing a single tank chances are your stratagems aren't going to last long enough. If you are healing an entire party with accession, you're going to run out of mp (or if you stack penury you'll run out of charges). Dark Arts stratagems are generally a lot more useful than light arts strats. Light arts strats are nice, but they aren't game-breaking.

They certainly aren't game breaking, and they aren't something you should be relying on all the time, but they do give Scholar the edge over other non-WHM healers. I'm not trying to say otherwise.

I definitely notice that when Black Mages talk about Scholars, they definitely mention stratagems often, notably the ones you can't just sub for. I don't hear the discussion about Light Arts strats as often. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the way the player base sometimes utilizes nukes, as some players heavily rely on spike damage tier V spells over all else, whereas healers often are expected to constantly spam heals.

In my opinion, constantly having to spam heals often comes down from poor damage mitigation, non-tank jobs taking hate, and other factors that usually indicate a poor group makeup that the devs didn't necessarily design healing jobs around (opinions are subject to change with more information, and are not valid in the state of Maryland). But much of the healing in this game these days seems to spamming heals, which certainly favors a play-style that can't rely occasional on job ability boosts.

Again, perhaps there are issues with stuff like not giving certain jobs certain spells or abilities, but balance is a hard job, especially when dealing with balancing multiple classes performing multiple roles vs. so called specialist classes. Further, how much of this is Abyssea rewarding those specialists and how much of this is actual game issues?

Last, as a few questions, how satisfied are you with Scholar in relation to Black Mage? To Red Mage? And to Red Mages, how satisfied are you in relation to these two classes? If Scholars are happy with their position compared to Black Mage, what lessons about balance can we learn from that? And if they aren't, what would make them happy? And so on, with other classes?

[Raksha]

Last, as a few questions, how satisfied are you with Scholar in relation to Black Mage? To Red Mage? And to Red Mages, how satisfied are you in relation to these two classes? If Scholars are happy with their position compared to Black Mage, what lessons about balance can we learn from that? And if they aren't, what would make them happy? And so on, with other classes?

I'm quite satisfied with Dart Arts as it is. Being able to sub convert has opened it up dramatically. They only downside is lack of procs, but that is to be expected. I can't say that I've ever compared SCH to RDM, because all of the RDMs in my LS rarely nuke or heal, they are usually crowd control/buffers. I much prefer letting RDM fill that role since AoE'ing sleeps/break can tax your stratagems pretty heavily.

[Ketaru]

Last, as a few questions, how satisfied are you with Scholar in relation to Black Mage? To Red Mage? And to Red Mages, how satisfied are you in relation to these two classes? If Scholars are happy with their position compared to Black Mage, what lessons about balance can we learn from that? And if they aren't, what would make them happy? And so on, with other classes?

I know I'm somewhat ignoring your real question, but as somebody who has both RDM and SCH leveled as main jobs, I really grow tired of the use and abuse of SCH as a scapegoat for what backline RDM should be on this forum. It's as if people look at a Cliff Notes description of SCH, see that it casts both White and Black magic, and immediately assume the jobs are the same (I anticipate a certain poster is going to bring up "that whole swords thing" to differentiate the two jobs, to which I'll say sure, go ahead and include it if you are serious enough to gear for it).

It's just more "Dey tewk our jerbs" hysteria that BLMs, then WHMs, were showing ever since SCH was introduced. RDM is just the latest to hop on board the wagon.

Anybody else that actually plays the two jobs know that they play fundamentally different, even as they sub each other. SCH is being pushed towards its own brand of support further away from the other mage jobs: weather, -helix, enmity manipulation and measuring, Regain. Unfortunately, as things are now, they are not support spells that are seen as of value by the playerbase. Mostly because a job that is designed to supplement the other mages really has no business in a game that has moved from Alliance fights to one of how to take as few people as possible

[SpankWustler]

I definitely notice that when Black Mages talk about Scholars, they definitely mention stratagems often, notably the ones you can't just sub for. I don't hear the discussion about Light Arts strats as often. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the way the player base sometimes utilizes nukes, as some players heavily rely on spike damage tier V spells over all else, whereas healers often are expected to constantly spam heals.

Giving up a second or so to gain more power or efficiency is definitely a good deal for most Black Magic. Using Rapture before a cure, on the other hand, makes that cure come out far more slowly. Too slowly, in many cases. That's a big part of what I was getting at when I mentioned the time required to use a stratagem. Yeah, it's another choice, but rarely the right choice.

Using stratagems for AoE status cures is more useful, but that's also something Red Mage or White Mage can do through Scholar sub. Which is a good thing, since it really improved the tedious part of playing White Mage and I assume it does the same for Red Mage.

To be really brief, the main thing Scholar and Red Mage have in common is that most people who play either job would be happy to see more unique and useful spells. The former needs something a bit more potent than 1 TP a tick regain and mediocre Helix damage, and the latter hasn't gotten anything new in forever and a day because it's generally so good at filling it's niche.