What would you want out of rdm melee gear?

[Swords]

Depends on the zone, certain ones are hard to get around even at 90 with just a handful of people. Two examples that come to mind is the zone that has different types of melee/magic immunity on different floors, and another that has 3 gigas NM's have a similar setting.

[Hyrist]

Depends on the zone, certain ones are hard to get around even at 90 with just a handful of people. Two examples that come to mind is the zone that has different types of melee/magic immunity on different floors, and another that has 3 gigas NM's have a similar setting.

Got past that particular one with a RDM and a DNC no problem. Enspells are fun.

[Shiyo]

Depends on the zone, certain ones are hard to get around even at 90 with just a handful of people. Two examples that come to mind is the zone that has different types of melee/magic immunity on different floors, and another that has 3 gigas NM's have a similar setting.

Duo + dual boxed omega/ultima and all zones to get the pop sets. No problems at all....

[Doombringer]

you can't use aby numbers as a benchmark for new gear anyway. performance in aby is more about atma than anything. you can do 4k bliz4, or you can do 4k cdc, but you can't do both, since you can't wear 6 atmas.

i'd almost bet you could nuke harder NAKED with atmas, than you could ws fully clothed with no atmas.

but back on topic, i dunno that rdm even needs it's own new melee gear, just put us back on the sets we used to be able to wear. doublets, pink gear. it's not great but it's an easily attainable starting point. harnes', alcides. at least some of the +1 pieces would make solid cdc gear. stuff like that. there's a lot of gear already in game that would help, and you could make a solid argument for giving it to us. even the add on expansion pieces. why can't rdm wear the midweight pieces? like blu dnc and cor..?

then.. if i'm really reaching.. lokis body? twilight sash? (why NOT twilight sash?)


of course, if they wanted to add a respectable rdm melee jse set, and make it look like blood mail, that'd be awesome. i'd be more interested in physical stats than enspell at the expense of physical damage. the way i look at it, the old ceremonial dagger trick was uselessly weak in any group, and an overpowering exploit solo. it's good for nothing but being abused. even if you supercharge it, the loss of ws dmg would need you to CRAZY supercharge it. so it ends up normal in pts and laughably op solo.

EDIT: also, if you wanna hit for zero RELIABLY it has to be done on the damage side of the equation. the attack function has a random +0 to +.5 added to it AFTER it factors in your attack vs the mobs def, you could be hundreds of att under the floor and you'd still hit for SOME dmg sometimes unless your damage function hits 0. (and hitting for even 1 point gives the mob full tp so... yah) the damage function has no random factor, so if you hit for 0 because of that, you will always hit for 0. (this is only possible with 1 dmg weapons, because of the way the str function floors relative to weapon class.)

[Economizer]

then.. if i'm really reaching.. lokis body? twilight sash? (why NOT twilight sash?)

I'm guessing the reason for this is because Red Mage gets put on the same haste belts as Paladin gets put on. It is pretty stupid, but at least next update Red Mage is getting access to another solid haste belt.

if you wanna hit for zero RELIABLY

Maybe the solution to this is that Red Mages shouldn't be hitting for zero too reliably if they want to do this, so there still is the risk of some, but greatly reduced, TP feed. It is hard to say, but who knows what we will see if we do get a positive in-game response to this suggestion? On the bright side, if there is TP feed with a Dagger, Aeolian Edge is barely, if at all, changed by a high or low damage dagger in the main hand.

[CapriciousOne]

Super Spellblade
Sword
DMG 54
Enspell damage +250%
Enhancing magic +15
Latent effect: Attack -80% (Active when under the effect of enspell, not including weaponskills)
RDM90

Would something like this be worth using? I have no idea, i'm no RDM, just throwing out ideas. Hopefully, the attack penalty would lower damage to 0 most of the time (excluding the occasional crit, I guess) on most things that are strong enough for tp feed to be an issue, while the enspell damage would still get through.

I really dont understand what all the crying about tp is for because when you weigh the dps it all averages out about the same with only a slight difference because of the delays. From the looks of it the added enspell damage would only bring the enspell damage up to the original base damage of the sword before the 80% attack reduction takes effect.

This would have no use for me and I wouldnt buy it myself but to each his own I suppose. Here I thought the thread was gear that improves melee ability but this would effectively have you dealing 0 physical damage when attack is reduced and compared to the mobs defense which would defeat the whole purpose of meleeing I always use tier 1 enspells to ADD to the base damage of both swords since i use /dnc and use the tp gain to throw out an extra heal by waltzes. I often cycle cure 3 and 4 with curing waltz 2 and 3 so tp build helps alot but still not as effective as the curaga series of spells but helps immensely. Then again I am from the school of hit hard + hit often = fast kill and anybody with a weapon and the appropriate skill /job level should be attacking period so I'm sure plenty of people have a lot to say otherwise.

[CapriciousOne]

If anything I'd like to see gear that would improve RDMs specifically to a point where meleeing an easy prey target doesn't take 20x longer that the RDM has to rely on nuking all their mana away and barely get away from a battle. Some ideas would include enspells ignore a certain % of magic resistance unless the target is completely immune to magic, and either a weapon or a peice or armor that inflicts a mini-auspice effect on the mob so that RDMs aren't constantly TP-feeding while they're fighting hard to bring it down. Standard boosts such as accuracy, spell interruption down, haste, attack, dagger/sword skill, and enspell enhancement boosts are also not to be snorted at.

Well the questions that come to mind here are as follows:
1. If u want to kill mobs by nuke only why the hell are you RDM anyway when BLM gets all the magic attack damage boosting elemental spell damage in the first place?
2. What is your current combat skill level with your current weapon? If you are using a club or staff to primarily damage mobs physically then here in is you problem because both of those are significantly lower than sword or dagger combat skill and skill level with said weapon is major factor in calculation melee accuracy. (so is the mobs evasion as well)
3. Are you enfeebling the mobs at all? (silence, paralyze, slow, dia, bio, blind, etc) or only nuking?
4. Are you even buffed with the highest level of spells possible (PROTECT/SHELL 4/5, PHALANX 1/2 at least)?
5. What kind of armor are you using like Bronze Armor?

I ask all these because unless dealing with a nm nuking always felt longer than meleeing to me because of casting animations, recast, mp pool limitations and waiting on refresh ii/drain samba to heal my mp pool.

[CapriciousOne]

As far as physical armor I would love to see pieces of armor that:

1. Higher baseline DEF values on each pieces of generic armor and doesnt need to be obtained via dynamis/abyssea/or any of that new bs. At level 90+ total armor defense should have been past like 225 by now and at or well past 250 by level 99 (This is the total defense of the 5 base peices of an armor set (head, body, hands, feet, and legs only)

2. Increase the duration and magnitude of phalanx 1 and 2 even further.

3. Higher level hand piece that increases enspell damage by using a higher percentage of enhancing skill in the formula. For instance I think only like 10% of your enhancing skill is used at current. Would love to see that percentage increase to like 20 and even 30 % of your enhancing magic. So for an enhancing skill of say 300 your enspells I would do about 15 dmg per sword or enspell II would do 30. With these enhancements a boost to 20% of enhancing magic skill would deal about 30/sword for enspell I or 60 dmg for enspell II or a boost to 30% would do 45dmg for enspell I and 90 for Enspell II respectively if it landed. That should quiet all the crybabies about feeding tp/dmg bs and give me what I and others want as well.

4. Woud like to see the same enhancements made for the barspells as well, boosting the resistance to elements across the board. I would even be content to let whm share in on the fun but of course they wouldn't get the most powerful ones. This would basically help me the RDM against BLM NM that have all the magic attack bonuses and nuke me to hell because shell V still kind of blows when BLM has like tier V spells and all the magic attack traits that basically doubles the damage of all elemental spells when added.

5. Since it isnt effected by Composure in the least bit but would be nice if a body piece or two doubled the duration of all protects/shells. Like one body piece of one set would increase the duration or duration and potency by 50% and the second tier by a full +100% which would basically be double.

6 Head pieces that increase the proc rate and duration of enfeebles even further since I love my Paralyze 2/Blind 2 macro and merits are so limited so I cant merit them to max along with my phalanx 2.

I dont mind duking it out blow for blow with any monster but running around like a chump, sleep nuking resting annoys the hell out of me being the "Jack of all Trades, but master of none". Switching to staff and losing all my hard earn tp is complete bull too since I like to use "Spirits Within" and often use my finishing moves from dancer to regive me more tp soon after using it. Yes I am aware of the other WS that may do more damage but not really into being bothered with all that right now and the RDM bs that goes on in game these days. I may be reaching but you never know unless you ask for it but I doubt I ever see this or any of it. These are just things I always thought would be cool since RDM is my primary job. With the exception of teh first one

[saevel]

For instance I think only like 10% of your enhancing skill is used at current.

Huh this doesn't make any sense.

Like all things in FFXI, there are math formula's they use to determine rate.

ROUNDDOWN(Enhancing Skill * 5 / 100) + 5

So for 421 enhancing skill you get,
(421 * 5)/100 = 21.05 +5 = 26.05, floored to 26 damage per swing.

Enspell II is just enspell 1 forumula x 2 for max. Unfortunately Enspell II recalculated each time you swing, thus you end up with a max equal to your enhancing magic during swing not cast, which for most of us tends to be far below our enhancing magic macro.

[tyrantsyn]

2. Increase the duration and magnitude of phalanx 1 and 2 even further.

I don't know about duration, between current gear and composer Phalanx has a pretty mean duration as it is. Tho I wouldn't mind getting a added buff to the current damage reduction. Kind of like all the gear with enhanced stoneskin buff's.