To the devs!

[saevel]

Potency VS Duration. Potency wins every time. When you are stuck below an acceptable line of performance but you can maintain it all day, that doesn't make it an improvement. Just a distraction.


Mage you don't need to post anymore since you haven't brought up anything new that has been posted before. Have a cookie for not understanding how bad enfeebling is.

This is the entire reason our Emp set bonus is mediocre. It's only useful for Haste / Refresh cycles, it ~would~ be useful on Regens but SE only gives us tier II. Everything else is self cast only and doesn't get the bonus effect. And assuming SE swept in overnight and made our self cast bonus's "other" cast-able, you would be stuck using max potency and only getting the feet / cape bonus / head bonus.

Head: Pimp Hat +1 (FC effect)
Neck: Enf Torque (+7 skill)
Ear1: Augmenting Ear (+3 skill)
Ear2: Loq Ear (FC effect)
Body: Relic +2 (+15 skill)
Hands: Relic (+15 skill)
Ring1: doesn't matter
Ring2: doesn't matter
Back: Emp cape (+6 skill)
Waist: Olympus Sash (+5 skill)
Legs: Potent Pants (+15 skill)
Feet: Emp Feet (+15 skill)
+81 in Skill
+30% Duration Bonus
8/8 Enh Merits = +16 skill

Total: 501 (Capped potency)

Not much room there to swap in body / hands / legs for Emperian set bonus without majorly gimping your buffs.

[Mageoholic]

Its a good thing that all of our buffs we cast on ourselves are triple in duration with Composure then otherwise it would really suck to sacrifice potency for a duration bonus we get natively. Seriously dude our set bonus rocks, it is one of the better ones out there. You probably just don't like it because it doesn't have melee stats, yet indirectly gives a 40% increase to melee up time.

Even in your "shitty" use of EMP+2, you have a 30% increase to spell durations, drop the head for fast cast and get a 15% increase to durations, for a total of 45% duration increase. You lose 10% fast cast but can get 2% of that back from a Proflix Ring for a net gain of about 3% time gained for doing other shit. This is a 3% increase to nuking damage, a 3% increase to melee damage and a 3% increase to healing output.

And still about a 25% increase from what we had before.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I still stand by rdm getting boost spells over gain spells, and getting aoe bar spells. It wont make the game rip apart at the seams, and it will cut waste from the overall game. Id be for all buffs, except maybe something insanely powerful, being granted aoe. I mean it isnt like the vast majority of nms these days dont break the old rules of the game, and i think streamlining things is a must. Not to mention, for that new event coming up (the name eludes me) where killspeed is very important, spending time casting 4-6x the spells would waste too much time for me, when i could just simply say "you wanting gain dex, get over here, gain str over there....Okay buffs up, go!". Just my 2 cents, get to cutting waste and streamlining everything! Any and all jobs!

[Mageoholic]

No but it reduces the usefulness of gain spells being single target. A WAR might benefit from STR where a COR would benefit AGI, a BLM INT a WHM MND. so on and so forth. Our gain spells should be single target, not self target. It is an additional benefit to everyone, players are not going to individually crowd the WHM for Boost XXX and a WHM shouldn't be expected to run around giving Boost XXX to those that want the differing variations.

A single target spell accomplishes this (see BRDs issues and resulting Pianissimo.)

as for bar spells. Fuck em, a WHM can already to them better, and have to merit for them to be great (one of the few good WHM merits). If AoE barspells are that big of a must you are likely coming as /WHM or /SCH anyway, so either provide them then at the same potency as our single target, (aoe WHM) or burn a charge to make RDM native spell AoE (.SCH).

Barspells and Gain spells should be single target castable however.

The only 2 spells that should be AoE'd are haste and refresh, only because SCH can access them now through their primary sub RDM (and Haste /WHM), and AoEing them requires RDM or WHM to /SCH. As Tanaka would say BALANCE!!!.

As for time wasted, even if we gained temper and gain spells, and even bar spells single target, we are looking at still a solid increase to time spent doing secondary actions. As I outlined above.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I dont totally disagree with you that single target gains have merit, but in all the voidwatch ive been in, on any job, ive always been in fairly limited party, with either DDs, or mages. Im not expected to give boost spells as whm either, but if the nm is procced, i can run forward for 10 seconds to boost str, and the DDs seem to appreciate it. Ive yet to have a Thf, or a Nin, Or a Rng for that matter in any of those go "No dont give me strength, i want agi/dex!" because most of the time they wont get any of those gains/boosts as is, its just a nice bonus i can provide, and if im in the mage party (once i get it) i can pass around INT, as im less likely to be with other whms. If i were on rdm, it would be even easier, because the whm and the melee would likely be separate most the fight (to avoid things like MPK when hate is pulled) so i dont personally see much chance to actually need a particular single buff.

Also hate to nitpick it but your last statement made me scratch my head. I mean, i know what you are tryin to say, but the way its read is "Casting more buffs gives you more time to do other things than cast those buffs!" which doesnt even make sense to me. How can spending more time casting more buffs give me more time to not be buffing? Like i said, i get what you mean, that with our set bonus we wouldnt need to cast them as often, but still needing to cast them more than one time creates wasted time in my book. Theres few (if any!) situation where me casting just a single buff one time to affect most/all of my party would take more time than casting the same buff 3+ times across the whole party.

I see what you're looking at, but i respectfully dissagree, and being able to cast buffs on more people will always create more "downtime" to perform other tasks. Id rather not have both a cluttered enfeebling, and enhancing schedule at the same time for example, so being able to get my buffs down, and focus enfeebling, heals, nukes, and melee as well as reapply debuffs as needed means less micromanagement on an already busy schedule!

And most of all, it wouldnt really hurt the solo functions i do either. If theres nobody else to get casted on, then the spells are as good as single target anyway!

[ManaKing]

The key word being "all" kind of generalize the comment to everyone reading. And was just a poor choice in word's.

Can't really disagree with you there. I can apologize to you if you want tyrantsyn. I didn't mean to specifically offend you.

I just don't need to hear about how amazing a worthless set bonus is again. It was all things they could have just put on the job and used our set bonus for something useful.

They make tweaks and changes all the time. Is it really so hard to comprehend that just changing Composure to do that naturally wouldn't be unbalanced at all?

'Oh well shield bash and weapon bash are more interesting when you can use them more often. Lets just code that in really quick. Making composure apply to other targets normal? Well where could we possibly find the code to do that so we could do it quick? *Looks at set bonus for AF3*'

[saevel]

Can't really disagree with you there. I can apologize to you if you want tyrantsyn. I didn't mean to specifically offend you.

I just don't need to hear about how amazing a worthless set bonus is again. It was all things they could have just put on the job and used our set bonus for something useful.

They make tweaks and changes all the time. Is it really so hard to comprehend that just changing Composure to do that naturally wouldn't be unbalanced at all?

'Oh well shield bash and weapon bash are more interesting when you can use them more often. Lets just code that in really quick. Making composure apply to other targets normal? Well where could we possibly find the code to do that so we could do it quick? *Looks at set bonus for AF3*'

Well this is SE's attitude towards RDM in general. They really hate the job and have no plans for it, they only throw us a bone every now and then to keep up appearances. To make RDM functional would require PUP level reworks, and right now SE doesn't have the development staff. They don't want to make minor changes without first making the major changes, they can't make major changes while their creating new VWNM and other content. So instead of a steadily improving situation, we're stuck with a dead broken job. Gravity II being a cut & paste of Gravity I pretty much proves this.

[cidbahamut]

I just don't need to hear about how amazing a worthless set bonus is again. It was all things they could have just put on the job and used our set bonus for something useful.

They make tweaks and changes all the time. Is it really so hard to comprehend that just changing Composure to do that naturally wouldn't be unbalanced at all?

Of course they should have made Composure extend duration on others naturally. That doesn't change the fact that our set bonus is useful though, that just means SE makes terrible design choices.

[Mageoholic]

To make RDM functional would require PUP level reworks, and right now SE doesn't have the development staff.

Hardly to make RDM useful all SE needs to do is allow our spells to work (enfeebles actually being of use, and buffs actually being able to be cast), and make RDM the best at casting these spells (by allowing magic skills to determine potency AND MACC for enfeebles, and potency and duration on all enhancing spells.)

Bang RDM has a niche, and is useful to a group, and is better at doing those particular jobs then any other job. That doesn't take much effort at all, copy and paste the skill potency shit from BRD to enfeebling and enhancing, and for enhancing change MACC to duration. Uncheck the little box that says immune to gravity, and check the little box that says paralyze can affect TP moves. (ex. a DNC losing TP because he is to paralyzed to use a dance move, yet can hit that 3K Rudra's regardless.)

Done. could be done in a very short amount of time, likely with one hand. This gives SE time to focus on a job that actually has issues, and is trash like SMN.

[Seriha]

Not sure what you're trying to accomplish by championing enfeebling skill much. WHM, BLM, and SCH aren't THAT far behind, especially with Arts bonuses in play. It's like trying to say a BLM's Thunder IV should spank RDM's just because they have higher skill, which all it really accomplishes is more accuracy. No, BLM's Thunder V spanks RDM's Thunder IV because it's a better ability tailored toward the job's strengths. We can't quite say the same about the differences between Slow and Slow II. Plus there's still the glaring issue of, if RDMs are the "enfeebling masters" then why they don't get spells like Sleepga I and II.

No, I'd rather have spells and abilities that meant something, not some out there idea that believes just because we can hit the highest skill level, it should translate to like 15% longer sleeps than the next closest job or some realistically marginal advantage. Sorry, but that changes nothing. Doubly so for those hoping for melee integration.

And while single-target Gains and Temper may be good for others, it's still not good for the RDM. It's not good because you're adding a possible 10 spells to cycle, for basically an added minute of additional casting and waiting on the GCD before even factoring actual recast timers. It's not good because you need to weigh the benefits of duration over potency, possibly meaning even more macro space sucked up for two iterations of a spell (No, not everyone uses spellcast). It's not good because dispel happy mobs will make your life hell as people expect buffs up the moment they're gone. A single Stat+25 doesn't really turn people into gods, either.

Call me selfish if it makes you feel better, but I want the RDM itself to shine, not some "team player" BRD wannabe iteration that'll be no fun to play in a group because you're juggling so many buffs while keeping an eye on debuffs wearing and probably curing and helping with stuns depending on sub. Yeah, I know, some love the job because it can be a busy one. However, there's a difference between busy work and meaningful work. The latter is what I'm after with emphasis on making the job unique, and not yet more of the -1 of others.