[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] RDM

[cidbahamut]

You made it pretty clear you thought an enhancing set did more for melee than for mage work. I'd say it's about even, so saying enhancing skill gear is there specifically to help your melee capabilities is kind of silly.

[Supersun]

You made it pretty clear you thought an enhancing set did more for melee than for mage work. I'd say it's about even, so saying enhancing skill gear is there specifically to help your melee capabilities is kind of silly.

Except that it helps melee more?

If you are backlining all your enhancing set is going to help you with is Phalanx, Barspells, and Gain-Spells. It's certainly nice to be able to bump up your spells power up a bit, but if you were to leave your enhancing set in your MH no one's going to really care.

Forgetting your enhancing set when meleeing as Rdm on the other hand is about as bad as a DD forgetting his WS set. You are going to lose 10% to 20% dps from the lack of potency on those enspells and more importantly accuracy.

and besides... you said

Wow...really? You don't make use of an enhancing set except for enspells? Are you for real?

I didn't say anything even remotely close to that. All I said is that enhancing magic does more for melee then magic, but apparently everyone who talks about Rdm melee is automatically a gimp noob that melees in errant and casts in DD gear.

You say that SE should work on a jobs strengths, but isn't Rdm's strength being a well rounded generalist able to fill any hole necessary with a minor niche in enfeebling?

Doesn't it make sense that we rally for some form of a melee buff to enhance our weakness to amplify our greatest strength of being a generalist?

Of course at the same time it's not that any of these things are mutually exclusive. Enhancing both Red Mage's melee and enhancing their enfeebling isn't going to create some overpowered job.

The problem is that you aren't actually listening to what we say. If you are still saying stuff like...

For meleeing on Red Mage to be viable in the metagame

then either you are taking Duelle's opinion to reflect that of us all or you just aren't paying attention.

Really, the greatest danger to Red Mage isn't a melee buff or a mage buff. It's people that say that Red Mage is fine and doesn't need anything. Abyssea has shown us what Red Mage looks like if the game continues on its power curve (albeit abyssea is slightly exaggerated vision). If people continue to preach that Red Mage will be fine other jobs are going to continue zooming past us on the way to 99 until Red Mage becomes even more lulworthy then when the job was first released.

I can't think of any other job that has received less than Red Mage with the break of the level cap so far. Rdm's nuking has improved, has gain spells, and refresh II. If this is only what's in store for us for the rest of the game then I think many people will be surprised at what Red Mage will be delegated to at 99.

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Edit:

I would like “Ni” and “San” upgrades added to enfeebling ninjutsu.

If we are to add upgrades to ninjutsu, we would like them to be learned as merit points similar to red mage, so we will look into this during our adjustment of merit points.

[Ketaru]

If things had gone in a different direction long ago and crippling the monster was as beneficial as enhancing other players, I think pet jobs would be in a much better place right now.

Things are what things are, though, and I can't imagine that even happening for anybody to react to it.

"Things are what things are, though" is pretty recurring theme of this thread, and while it is arguably appropriate to use here for RDM, it is that kind of mindset that I think got my other job into such a mess in the first place.

For years and years, BSTs told themselves that the job is fine so long as it can solo things. And looking at some of the comments over on that forum:

If you are adding onto what a bst can bring to a party then this is fine with me.
BUT if you are considering taking away a bst's ability to solo, I am against this new direction. And the majority of the bst community will be as well.

It looks like some of them are still perfectly happy with being the job that mindlessly throws NPCs at mobs, even as the rest of the playerbase can see the gaping holes and shortcomings of it. It got a pretty big boost with the introduction of Abyssea, but in the end, the boost only makes it so even the most undergeared player can do modest damage.

Our pets don't receive buffs from other players aside from COR (which has all kinds of limitations on its own that spellcasters don't have). And we have a lot of potential flexibility that goes wasted by an ability system that takes all the worst points of PUP and SMN with none of the advantages. It has no interactivity with other jobs aside from being a low maintenance damage dealer. But at least we can solo Cerberus in exchange for a Fort Knox worth of fodder and food. And that's all that matters, right?!

Everything some of you have said about how the spells I would like need to be casted on the master itself and it'll work on the pet through that. But unfortunately, as you said, it's unlikely we'll ever see such an update. And the latest Dev Q & A in that forum just makes me all the more disappointed by how mum they stay on the subject of just how they want to actually want to integrate the job into the group setting.

All well, at least my idea for new RDM spells has been put out there. I really think that, coupled with competent updates to the target jobs themselves, they could be potential game changers as well as add a type of support to the game that is under-served and unexplored.

[Duelle]

Doesn't it make sense that we rally for some form of a melee buff to enhance our weakness to amplify our greatest strength of being a generalist?

Except we go back to the point where generalist design doesn't work in MMORPGs. Multi-classing (AKA the subjob system) and gear were supposed to help alleviate that, but it's not been enough due to many reasons already covered.

It looks like some of them are still perfectly happy with being the job that mindlessly throws NPCs at mobs, even as the rest of the playerbase can see the gaping holes and shortcomings of it. It got a pretty big boost with the introduction of Abyssea, but in the end, the boost only makes it so even the most undergeared player can do modest damage.

Our pets don't receive buffs from other players aside from COR (which has all kinds of limitations on its own that spellcasters don't have). And we have a lot of potential flexibility that goes wasted by an ability system that takes all the worst points of PUP and SMN with none of the advantages. It has no interactivity with other jobs aside from being a low maintenance damage dealer. But at least we can solo Cerberus in exchange for a Fort Knox worth of fodder and food. And that's all that matters, right?!

So I guess complacency and fear of change is not unique to the RDM forums. Color me surprised. Not kidding, either.

[Supersun]

Except we go back to the point where generalist design doesn't work in MMORPGs.

Generalists work when in numbers they put the specialist to shame, but actually striking a balance between a generalist and a specialist is a near impossible task that realistically has to rely more on how content is developed then how the jobs are balanced themselves.

[Duelle]

Generalists work when in numbers they put the specialist to shame, but actually striking a balance between a generalist and a specialist is a near impossible task that realistically has to rely more on how content is developed then how the jobs are balanced themselves.

There's a reason I mentioned multi-classing and gear. The generalist is very dependent on mechanics within and outside the class to work properly (if it is possible at all). Yes, this includes the TP system, how job abilities are assign/designed, how multi-hitters affect that part of the game, relative strength of mobs, general expected tactics, and encounter mechanics and so on.

[Ketaru]

And buffing BST pets ... wtfo. That's for the BST discussion not the RDM one, take it over there.

If the people in charge want to think the job will become overpowered if they give it a lot of buffs that makes them even more independent than they are now, fine, I'll let them think that.

That's why I suggested, in the interest of job balance, that maybe some enhancements can come in the form of enhancements provided by other jobs, to encourage cooperation between players. RDM seems like as good a choice as any for this.

But I suppose that is to be expected from you, since all you think Enhancing magic ought to be good for is melee.

[SpankWustler]

"Things are what things are, though" is pretty recurring theme of this thread, and while it is arguably appropriate to use here for RDM, it is that kind of mindset that I think got my other job into such a mess in the first place.

For years and years, BSTs told themselves that the job is fine so long as it can solo things. And looking at some of the comments over on that forum...

I don't really see it as the same argument, even though it's the same statement. To make Red Mage as viable a melee as it is a spell-caster, multiple elements of the job would require radical additions and even then it would be swimming against the current of FFXI's battle system. That kind of goal just doesn't seem reachable, in a big part because it goes beyond the job itself.

The changes to Beast Master would be as simple as job abilities that forfeit pet and master survivability for offense, but the anti-social elements in the Beast Master community would never ask for something that's actually useful. I swear, for people who like to be alone they sure talk a lot. Which bugs me as well to be honest, since I like the aesthetics of the job so much that I leveled it.

Of course, if the goal is just "stuff better than current en-spells by a large margin", I'm sure nobody would complain about Red Mage gaining a few more self-buffs for the purpose of hitting things with things. Well, I probably would complain if they did that instead of adding new enfeebling magic, but the new team seems to at least WANT to add stuff so I guess they would do both.