On the Topic of RDM Magics

[SpankWustler]

I guess I'll toss out a few enhancing ideas, since that was also mentioned in the manifesto.

I suspect these concepts have been mentioned by somebody already, since they are far from inventive.

Wall - White Magic - Enhancing Magic: Would provide 10%-25% -Physical Damage Taken depending on skill level.

Barrier - White Magic - Enhancing Magic: Would provide 10%-25% -Magical Damage Taken depending on skill level.

Single target, immune to the scholarly wiles of Ascension, one would overwrite the other. Going right past the -50% cap would be pretty nuts, so maybe it could be a separate value so a bro or bro-ette with -50% Damage Taken would end up with rounabouts 37.5% damage taken. Or they could just work towards the current cap and not overwrite one another.

Modifying -% Damage Taken is a pretty big deal, so I'm not really sure what would make this sort of ability balanced.

Blink II, Stoneskin II - Able to be cast on others something something. Higher caps than the tier I spells something something. Not less potent than the tier I spells like Phalanx II was when it was first introduced something something.

Not very inventive, but giving someone 4 Blink images or 500+ HP of Stoneskin would be helpful. Well, not so much the four Blink images, but I won't rob SE of the pleasure of adding a useless spell here and again. Currently, one of the strongest Stoneskin effects in the game comes from Cure V or VI with a Orison Bliaud +2 equipped, and that just strikes me as weird.

As for enfeebles, just making the current set actually work on the majority of Notorious Monsters would go a long way. Even if the effect of a good dMND value was halved on said Notorious Monsters or something, that would be far better than just making lots of stuff flat-out immune.

Failing that, more enfeebles with subtle effects like Addle that actually work on even the most notorious of Notorious Monsters would be okay. Something like:

Old/Age/Cripple/Fatten/Clinical Depression due to Reading the Official Forums/I am Not Good at Naming Things - White Magic - Enfeebling: Lowers the target's STR, DEX, VIT, and AGI.

Muddle/Befuddle/Bamboozle/Mental Disorder and Disarray due to Posting on the Official Forums/I am Still Not Good at Naming Things - White Magic - Enfeebling: Lower's the target's INT, MND, and CHR.

Even if the effect of both of these could go up to -30 or even -50 for the monster for all aforementioned stats, they wouldn't drastically change a fight the way a high Slow value or Silence potentially could. The monster would just do less damage and take more damage.

Or just let good enfeebles work almost normally on Notorious Monsters, the same way everything else worthwhile does. I fear that's too much to ask for, though.

Also...

En-Not-Horrible: Provides an Accuracy and Attack bonus based on enhancing magic skill ON CAST and deals a percentage of damage dealt by melee hits as an additional effect. Maybe 50%. I don't know. My goal is to envision En-Not-Horrible, not En-Really-Good, so I can't say I've ruminated on it greatly.

[Supersun]

Another random idea.

Encure -Additional effect: heals the target you are attacking

"This isn't anything new. Encure has been suggested many times before and it would be nearly impossible to impliment because they would have to adjust the auto-attack feature to work on players"

Who said that this spell goes on players. Why not make this enfeebling magic that you cast on the monster so that whoever the monster is attacking they cure with an additional effect as well.

Now I'll admit this spell isn't exactly the most practical thing in the world since you aren't going to be getting hit by anything significant worth fighting, but the idea was just too priceless not to post :P

[Ketaru]

I thought I'd see who would entertain this idea after casually mentioning it one of the melee threads. But would anybody care to see spells that enhance player pets? I'm not going to lie and say I don't have a vested interest in such a thing happening, since one of my main jobs is a pet job, and one that most power players view as inefficient at that (BST).

But SE did say they are pushing to give all jobs endgame relevance. What better way to start than to end this nonsense of how pet jobs don't get the full benefits of enhancers? And what better way to push RDM in the Enhancer direction than to start making it so the job can work together with all types of jobs?

Maybe spells that grant -PDT% to pets? Or increase pet MAB? Or heaven forbid. Cure pets. Finally give some weight to the idea of sending disposable NPCs rather than living breathing players to their deaths that they can come back virtually unweakened from.

EDIT: Thought I'd throw out some ideas I thought about while trying to get some sleep. In general, I'm not a fan of posting concrete ideas because the only consistent thing about updates is that they're never as good or as bad as you think they are. But here goes:

Animist
Decreases the amount of damage taken by a target player's pet and enhances all restorative effects on their pet.

Ogre's Command
Increase's the Attack and attack speed of a target player's pet.

Medium
Confers Stoneskin and Blink effects unto a player's pet and increases the pet's Magic Attack Bonus.

[Economizer]

Lots of good ideas here, but I'd like to reply to something I noticed.

Ha, 19% Haste may be a biiiit broken (and simultaneously gimp every other mage in the game). I'd definitely take 10% Duration per upgrade, though. That seems to be the direction the Devs are leaning as far as reducing support casting burden goes. I doubt anyone would complain about casting Haste less often.

Perhaps adding these as job traits would be good, or perhaps not (would 4% extra Haste be broken?), but the Red Mage AF3+2 set, and the AF3 cape already augment duration, and while they aren't as amazing as the 3x duration bonus Composure does on self, it does all add up to a 1.65x duration on people you cast on.

I'd really just appreciate an increase to maximum debuff potency at this point, though. It's a problem a lot of jobs are facing, really. Potency caps were built around level 75, where hitting cap was actually decently difficult on some/most things and for some/most people. A steady increase in player stats and available gear without an increase to maximum dMND is odd. SE already addressed some of this with their tweaks to maximum buff potency, so I'd imagine that a tweak to maximum debuff potency is forthcoming.

Again, maybe this would be a good change, particularly with Mind caps being increased, but between Saboteur and AF3+2 set effects, you get a straight 10% buff to enfeebling effects in general, and an additional 20% to duration and effect if you use Saboteur.

-

All that said, Blink II, Stoneskin II and Haste II would all be welcome additions, but SE should give them to both Red Mage and White Mage, and to emphasize that Red Mage is the better Enhancer, make these spells rely heavily on Enhancing Magic skill, including Haste. (I admit, I have a bit of an agenda here, part of it being to punish people who burn a White Mage mule and bring it to events then complain when it gets all their drops.) Having undercapped skill would ideally make Haste II about as effective as Haste. Even more ideally, the recast on the spell won't be 20 years, especially if you don't have Fast Cast or you have Composure up.

While we're at it, perhaps Red Mage should get a boost to Enhancing Magic Skill ranking from B+ to A- or higher. Having Scholars be able to Light Arts their way to equal skill is never something enjoyable. Alternatively, give Red Mage a job trait that boosts Enhancing Magic by a set number.

[georgcantor316]

One way to address the dilemma of not being able to stick enfeebles on Higher NMs that I'd like to see that wouldn't break the balance is to have an 'uber' enfeeble spell castable only under two-hour like SCH's soon to be Brave spell. An enfeeble with multiple and strong effects that last for a significant amount of time that would have high magic acc.. This would allow RDM to enfeeble the NM while restricting other jobs from being able to and at the same time it doesn't allow the RDM to get all uber enfeebler due to the limitation of a 2hour recast.

[Seriha]

While I'm okay with pet buffs or a Stoneskin II we could cast on others and such, for the love of all that's holy, DO NOT let their base durations be 3 minutes or less. Anything less than 5 would just be aggravating, 10 more of an ideal before you start introducing set bonuses. Heck, I'd be happy with a Haste equivalent that costs 80 MP and starts at 6m.

[Crimson_Slasher]

You know, i been thinking some lately, and i have an interesting idea for increasing our cure and enhancing potency in one bundle, and making the other curing jobs feel a bit more love. Im thinking taking a page from blu, and doing it one better, sorta. Personally i love to melee on rdm, but if i am forced to be heal support the worst thing to do is ride cure IV/III timers, even fastcast stacked, can be a bit tedius and unpleasant, anyway onto my thought process and idea.

Elemental cures.
Why? Well white magic is notoriously bland (in a element scheme) Of most the good white magic being light element, black mage on the other hand has 6 elements to cycle, and atop that has multiple tiers and still some great other spells to cast. Now what im thinking would be sorta one spell for each of the classes that has cure IV, heck we could even add one to blm (not required but im on a roll so dont kill my buzz just yet!) Anyway what i did was looked at Affalatus Solace, and Plenilune embrace, both offer cures with a specialized buff, so why not make a line of cures that do something similar? Lets see what i can come up with... Im not gonna bother adding names and this is kinda for all jobs but i thought of it thinking as a rdm and for rdm.

Earth-Cure: Lets say 30-60 seconds of physical damage taken -5% or -10%.
Water-Cure: Lets go with status removal, similar to erase, seems like a prime RDM candidate.
Wind-Cure: Hows about a 5% haste effect? A single blink image? An Eva boost? Not too sure yet.
Lightning-Cure: Since so many people link crit rate/dmg to this, that could work, again, short durations like 30-45 seconds
Ice-Cure: Hows about some short duration ice-spikes? Or maybe MDT-%?
Fire-Cure: Perhaps a ws damage bonus or multi-attack effect for the duration?
Dark-Cure: Grant maybe some sorta weak dreadspikes with ultra-short (20 second) duration?

How are these practical? More cures, separate timers, and offering blm/drk an emergency (self target perhaps for them?) only cure, it can be based on dark magic skill if anyone cares. Also it adds some unique (possibly battle swaying) effects to make healing dynamic, now i dont expect any job to have all/most/any of these, im thinking 1 per job.
Perhaps whm gets earth, rdm gets fire or water, sch gets wind or lightning, pld could get earth or ice possibly too if someone minds, and so-forth, it would be too powerful to grant all to any one job, however another idea i had going with typing this would be to turn it another way, making it a cure IV equivolent (more mp cost was implied before but keeps with this idea) which grants a bonus effect based on the game day, similar to what i listed. Could twist it again and make weather take over for it too but if sch got it then, with storm surge they could have some pretty simple aoe power-buffing... Just a musing i came up with.

[Supersun]

Elemental cures are actually an interesting concept.

If I were to add them I would likely give them all to one job (Rdm since that's the only job that can cast black and white magic at any time at a decent level of proficiency) then have them cure around as much as Cure 4 does now and give them like 3x the recast.

That should already triple our HPS ability without treading onto whms ability. I might change the buffs on them slightly so we aren't expected to be curing someone every time the cures are up even though someone may be at full HP, probably more defensive buffs in nature.

There's a lot of different ways you could toy with this concept. It's an interesting idea.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

All that said, Blink II, Stoneskin II and Haste II would all be welcome additions, but SE should give them to both Red Mage and White Mage.

I disagree, Every job has it's own spells to capitalise on the jobs strengths. SE keep saying RDM is the Enhancer when it has less Enhancing spells than most other jobs, and they're always self-target only.

Blink II, Stoneskin II and Haste II if added should be RDM alone. If they're into giving WHM anything since they've decided to give them AoE give them Hastega and that's it.

While we're at it, perhaps Red Mage should get a boost to Enhancing Magic Skill ranking from B+ to A- or higher. Having Scholars be able to Light Arts their way to equal skill is never something enjoyable. Alternatively, give Red Mage a job trait that boosts Enhancing Magic by a set number.

I think an addition as said on this forum before via Merits would be good and still allow people to customise their RDM..

Enhancing Magic effect -- 1->5
Enhancing Magic duration -- 1->5 (Each rank increases duration by 10%)

I agree about the A- rank

[Supersun]

Haste II is just bad for the game in general lol.