RDM's support role

[saevel]

sometime i feel like SE view on rdm is "whelp, it was overpowered for years so... now it will be worthless for years! " :/ but honestly, if we are supposed to be focused on single target buffs, fine. BUT let us single target OTHER people x.x its like we are built to only play by ourselves now, and kill mobs ourselves... very... slowly... i don't care if we don't get cure V, i'm just pissed that SE said rdms will be changed more into the master of debuffs and single target buffs. so they give us 2 more debuffs, one of which they give to whm as well, the other can't land on most worthwhile mobs like every other enfeeb (which makes no sense, if we can only land debuffs on weak mobs then we don't NEED to debuff those mobs). and their answer to our buffing mastery, give us new buffs that we can only use on ourselves, and give whm the same buffs that they can AoE... essentially giving us dumbed down leftovers...

bah, ok /rageoff. just getting frustrated that my favorite job for 7+ years is now the most looked down on job out there x.x

Spoken as someone on the receiving end. You do ~not~ want this. Single target "other" people turns our days into this

Haste
Buff 1
Buff 2
Haste
Buff 1
Buff 2
Haste
Buff 1
Buff 2
Haste

And you keep doing it until the sun explodes or you become mentally exhausted.

I can't imagine anyone who's ever done cycles would ever want that again. It was the single greatest issue with RDM, the the most hated and what drove the majority of career RDM's to find other jobs. We don't mind supporting other party members, we're team players and all. It's the way SE implements it that makes it a disaster in the waiting. If we're going to buff players then it NEEDS to be aoe or effect a large group simultaneously.

It took us the better part of seven years to get away from buff cycles, and only through SE's utter incompetence. Under no circumstance do you want to be the RDM responsible for dispensing those "buffs", its one of the absolute worst things you can do to someone. The only thing worse is to force a SMN/WHM to main heal with Cure III.

[Patrik]

yea i'll admit to that being... annoying. of course i've had more parties than i can remember of spamming refresh and haste for hours. i guess what just mainly bothered me was the fact that SE gave us a direction they wanted to push us towards, and now its like they just gave up/don't care about what they said anymore. though i care about having real debuffs more than anything...

[saevel]

yea i'll admit to that being... annoying. of course i've had more parties than i can remember of spamming refresh and haste for hours. i guess what just mainly bothered me was the fact that SE gave us a direction they wanted to push us towards, and now its like they just gave up/don't care about what they said anymore. though i care about having real debuffs more than anything...

SE never gave us a "direction" for single target buff cycles, that was 100% purely the player community. It's an old story that not may newer players know about.

Back in 2002 prior to Zilart and the NA release. RDM didn't have refresh, gravity, phalanx or dispel. Dia was also divine magic, this is why we have divine magic skill yet no spells. RDM was pretty much WAR + WHM with a sprinkling of BLM tossed in. The JP players really thought the job sucked and no one knew what to do with it. SE eventually steped in and changed Dia to Enfeebling magic, raise RDM's enfeebling from B to A+, created Dispel / Gravity, added Phalanx and then added Refresh. They were wanting to make RDM a self buffing enfeebling specialist. The player community looked at it sideways but then say that refresh was 3mp/tick. Back then parties lived on MP, ~EVERYTHING~ was about how long your MP supply could last. So RDM getting a 3mp/tick MP buff meant they could keep the healer's MP and Black mages MP going longer and thus RDM competed with the BRD for the "refresher" slot. This was before we discovered the awesomeness of Haste and TP spam. Then Zilart happened with NA's being introduced to the game (the JP's were pissed) and the rest is history. RDM's were invited to cast refresh on the healer and black mage, and maybe even the paladin or second black mage. This earned RDM's the "refresh whore" nickname, and refresh spell became known as "mage crack". This continued until shortly before ToAU when "Spampage" parties started becoming more common and Haste was discovered to scale exponentially, and so RDM went from "Refresh whore" to "Haste whore". If the melee's all had /NIN and we had a BRD for additional refresh, it was found that a single RDM could get enough refresh that they could spam Cure IV on the four WAR's (later four melees) and not run out of MP. And thus is born the dreaded "support role" of RDM.

It was purely created from the player base finding out how to best abuse a RDM's unique combination of buffs and healing magic coupled with Convert. It never had anything to do with enfeebles, nor some special RDM magic. Only brute spamming of cures on a bunch of WAR/NIN's as they killed deco's in sky. And later on a bunch of melee's against little pink birds in ToAU.

Frankly I ~NEVER~ want to go back to that time. I pretty much gave up on RDM and went back to my first love (SAM) back then, as did every other RDM I knew of. What you ended up with was a bunch of people who leveled RDM for the sole purpose of getting merits and "end game" gear.

[ManaKing]

RDM isn't a support. That would imply it was anything. Anyone who plays RDM can tell you what an incomplete job it is.

SE has some real work ahead of it if it wants to make RDM anything but generally inferior. They won't do it. They just though that Gravity II and Requiescat were appropriate to get RDM from 95-99. Where is all the enfeebling magic re-balances we were told were coming? I guess that got lost in all the actual 'balance' they are doing. Since RDM isn't an actual job it won't be included until way past the point that it will be useful, if at all ever.

Look at the track record of RDM improvements. They are massively behind the rest of the game. I don't know if SE hates RDM, the JPs hate RDM, or who it is, but someone hates RDM, and because of that, you, a RDM get to wait.....forever.....for nothing to happen.

Any response to the future of RDM we have gotten on the RDM forums was given grudgingly (after we post 100s of pages of fighting on the forums as a way to quiet the bickering that ensues) or was posted in SCH forums and they didn't even include a post about things we have blatantly been taking about for as long as the forums have been open. We have never gotten anything except, no RDM won't ever get to do anything new and we have no intention of telling you what we are doing.....because they aren't going to do anything.

[saevel]

There is a functional role for RDM now, it requires an insane amount of gear and concentration, and honestly it's usefulness is doubtful, but it does exist.

SE seriously needs to add more stuff to RDM. First and foremost is more enfeebles, and not gimmicky ones like Break / Gravity / Bind / Silence that will just be nerfed into uselessness. Real enfeebles that reduce the monsters stats in some way, our 2nd best enfeeble (possibly best depending) shouldn't be coming from an "any mage" body piece. Inflicting minus's to various monster stats is a must.

Also need native access to all the sword WS and more self buffs that alter our own stats. The Gain line was a good start, that it wasn't boost was sad but ohh well. Next is for stuff that adds MAB / FC / Cure Pot / Attack / Accuracy / Magic Accuracy and so forth. We should be capable of altering our stats to fit the situation as needed.