[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] RDM Suggestions

[Kristal]

New trait:
Magic Penetration
RDM 50,70,90,99
Enfeeblings spells have a chance of partially ignoring all magic evasion and immunities. (Potency might still be affected.)

Changes to existing spells and abilities:
Saboteur
* Enfeebling spells affected by Saboteur have 100% Magic Penetration. (Ignores magic evasion and immunity)
* Enfeebling spells affected by Saboteur ignore stacking rules. (Casting Paralyze II on an existing Paralyze II will overwrite the existing Paralyze II, rather then give No Effect on the Saboteur'd Paralyze II.)

Gravity
* Gravity consists of two enfeebling effects: Movement Speed Reduction and Evasion Down. If the target is immune to Movement Speed changes, treat the spell as Evasion Down instead.

Dia series
* Change it so that the Dia series of spells uses Enfeebling Magic Skill to determine the slip damage effect and Divine Magic Skill to determine the initial damage. Both skills can receive skillups.

Bio series
* Change it so that the Bio series of spells uses Enfeebling Magic Skill to determine the slip damage effect and Dark Magic Skill to determine the initial damage. Both skills can receive skillups.

Phalanx II
* Add a small Slip Damage Reduction to the spell. Each tier lowers slip damage by 1, but never to 0. Effect is applied to each seperate slip damage effect.

Merit group 2
It's currently not realistically possible to get all merit spells unlocked. Dia III, Bio III, Phalanx II all require 5 tiers to be more effective then their lower tier version, and with 6 spells to unlock, you'd need 18 upgrades total to get minimal improvements where only 10 are allowed. Please change the ranks so that each merit spell is slightly better at rank 1 then their lower tier version, and allow players to choose where to put the remaining 4 upgrades. This is the scenario for all the other jobs, only RDM seems to be different.

[wildsprite]

how about adding improvements to the melee of RDM as well, I'm sorry but RDM's 2 main weapons are sword and dagger,their club skill is garbage, they have no staff skill, they should be able to hit better, even if they were to change how the en spells worked to give more damage it would be better, just adding spells nerfs the RDM even farther than it is already, and honestly people need to stop suggesting it

[Greatguardian]

There are a million threads on RDM Melee. There's no need to crap this one up with the same rehashes.

As for the suggestions, they look neat. What do you mean exactly by slip damage reduction on Phalanx 2? Do you just mean the equivalent of a Regen effect that only applies when taking any sort of DoT damage?

I also believe SE has stated that they will be adjusting the relative potency of Group 2 merits across the board, so that each point will do more for you. At the moment I just have 2/5 Dia 3 for a 60 second dia, 5/5 Slow 2, and 3/5 Para 2. I wouldn't mind access to Phalanx 2, but I haven't found it worth it to give up my T2 Enfeebles for it since I'm always the DD for cleaves, and am typically /SCH when playing support RDM anyways which can simply Phalanxga.

[Hyrist]

You're going to have to deal with it, guardian. Player's want it, they're going to scream about it until they get thrown a bone.

That said, I'd rather discuss the suggestions already made and keep newer ideas more along the lines of 'spin offs' to the current idea set.

Magic Penetration

Accuracy without potency is worthless. If we land a Slow II that ends up landing only 3% Slow due to immunity penetration, it still wouldn't be worth the multiple times attempting to proc it naturally, or the waste on Saboteur to force it. The root problem with enfeebles is the fact that SE pulls monsters into immunity categories on our best enfeebles with little to show for it otherwise. Cut the immunities, add new enfeebles. They've already listed both of them as adjustments.

Saboteur

I like the guaranteed land idea, though that treads a little on Elemental Seal's territory. The ability to use Saboteur to re-apply over other stacks is also a nice idea here.

Gravity

Hmm. I like but I'm not sure on the implementation. Just don't expect it to work say on wind elemental monsters and it should be ok. But really, when are people really worried about monster evasion nowadays anyways? I could see this being implemented in a stronger version of Gravity, with a more powerful evasion down on say, incredibly evasive HNMs, but then again, that's when you bring in the nuking team.

Bio/Dia changes

Kinda... pointless. Bio is our only native Dark Magic skill and Dia was once Divine. The problem with changing Bio in the way you described is that it effects not only our job, but others as well.

If we're going to claim 'ownership' of these debuffs due to the merits surrounding them, you might as well just slip Bio into the enfeebling category and have both slip and initial damage be based off of enfeebeling skill.

Otherwise just throw up Dark Arts for Bio spells. Dia isn't about slip damage anyways.

Phalanx II

Ignoring pending merit adjustments and my desire for this to be a simple scroll spell. Phalanx as a status effect itself is slipping behind in usefulness. While deducting from slip damage would be a great effect to add. I'll love for Phalanx to gain an additional effect of % damage down. When a monster is already hitting you for high amounts a set amount capped in your 20s isn't going to be all that much of a life saver.


As far as merit adjustments for our job, I'd like nothing short of an overhaul. Changing our category 1 merits completely.

Enfeebling Magic Duration
Enhancing Magic Duration
Enspell Damage Bonus
Magic Accuracy Bonus
'Quick Cast' Recast Time

This sort of category set up is far more in line with the other jobs' category 1 merits.

As far as category 2 merits go. Sack the merit requirement for having these spells. And turn them into Potency buffs for the whole line, then give us the root spells in their base form (which opens up room for even higher tiers.)

Though, you could always just add a "Enfeeble Potency" merit into Catagory I and actually give us, you know, NEW abilities/spells for the Category twos. Honestly I always thought that the RDM was among the jobs that got shafted comparably when it came to merits.

[Greatguardian]

You should log in and do that parse, brah.

And no, I'm not going to have to deal with it. GMs have already closed topics in this forum because people are bringing RDMelee everywhere when it already has numerous threads. This thread is about Magical buffing.

[Hyrist]

You should log in and do that parse, brah.

Person who challenged me at the parse told me not to bother till I had a 'decent' WS set, bro. And 'decent' in their definition is 90% best gear pieces available to their job. So that's gonna be a while, especially when I play maybe 2-3 hours a day max and I've more important pieces/jobs to work on.

You wanna help that parse come along quicker, volunteer to help me get the gear. Otherwise, you're just as much at the mercy of my playability as I am.

And this conversation is about the Adjustments Manifesto, in general. Bringing up buffs to melee is an eventually. Remember, any spell that helps physically enhance another member of the party, by rights should also benefit us. Any debuffs that effect the damage the monster receives, will likely enhance ours as well. That's a balance factor SE has to keep in check if they're wanting to aid or inhibit a Red Mage from taking the front lines in ANY situation.

Personally, I'm hoping they don't hesitate in that respect. Calling us a godly buffer when a WHM bests us in that department was an insult, at best. If we're going to be put on the same pedestal as Bards and Corsairs, we need to have more there.

[Ritsuka]

I'm not here realy to win your ya's or nah's but I'd realy like to see rdm get some teir 5 spells. And maybe a good weapon skill that does some damage. Death Blossum is cool and all but come on.... Alot of ppl like to go rdm/nin would be nice to see a decen weapon skill.

[Kristal]

Accuracy without potency is worthless. If we land a Slow II that ends up landing only 3% Slow due to immunity penetration, it still wouldn't be worth the multiple times attempting to proc it naturally, or the waste on Saboteur to force it. The root problem with enfeebles is the fact that SE pulls monsters into immunity categories on our best enfeebles with little to show for it otherwise. Cut the immunities, add new enfeebles. They've already listed both of them as adjustments.

Immunity evasion wouldn't cause the potency decrease, but natural resistances. You could cast Slow II on an Earth Elemental, but it would still have a high resistance (-potency, -duration) against it, rather then outright immunity.

I like the guaranteed land idea, though that treads a little on Elemental Seal's territory. The ability to use Saboteur to re-apply over other stacks is also a nice idea here.

Saboteur is an RDM only ability that ONLY affects Enfeebling spells, and it still wouldn't guarantee landing. Elemental Seal is available to any job/BLM that affects any spell (Elemental and Enfeebling in particular, but NIN/BRD/BLU as well) to ensure it'll land. But even Elemental Seal+Saboteur is currently unable to land an enfeebling effect on a level 1 elemental if SE coded it to be absolutely immune, even if it wouldn't be gamebreaking if it did. (Paralyze on an Ice Elemental, Slow on Earth Elemental, Gravity on Wind Elemental, etc)

ES+S could be used to Silence a big caster NM shortly, but it would be akin to a yellow !! without the seals/+2 drops...

[Rosina]

I agree. I like to see a rdm melee boost. get rdm up front where it belongs.

[Coops]

all RDM needs is Cure V. Give it Cure V please!