Practical Soultions to Issues with RDM.

[Mageoholic]

Since you seemed to like my solution to the healing issue I posted a while back in terms of adjusting the caps of spells based on healing magic skill, to provide separation from main and sub job healing, as well as giving SCH and RDM more oomph to their heals. I have a list of suggestions reflecting our other casting sides.

Enfeebling.

This one is really messed up, and their is a way to ease the issue with it essentially being all or nothing. Currently enfeebling skill is what determines our accuracy, that is it. This skill should also be tied to increasing the potency of spells in a similar way that healing magic is meant to increase cure potency. It should also increase the MACC at the same time. Using MND as a secondary mod to increase potency instead of the only mod.

A comparison would be Weapon skill, skills in Swords and Daggers for example increase both Attack power (potency) and Accuracy (accuracy).

What this achieves:
Sets RDM apart from other casting classes who share enfeebles, mainly BLM and WHM.
Allows a RDM to gear for both MACC and Potency instead of one or the other.

On top of this change I personally would like to see Paralyze able to prevent mob TP attacks, if this means that players must see the same thing then so be it. It always makes me chuckle when my arm is so paralyzed that I can't swing my sword, but it magically disappears when I swing my sword to Weapon skill.

Enhancing.

In a similar vein to Enfeebling, this potency increase should cover all enhancing magic spells not just a select few. All enhancing magic spells should see some form of scaling based on skill levels.

Examples of this in game are BRD buffs, everyone of their buffs scales with their skill level of combined singing and wind/string.

What this does
Demonstrates RDM's highest ranked enhancing skill by allowing it to buff better then a WHM or SCH on buffs they share (such as haste)

What I would like to see in addition to this, allowing us to use our buffs on other people, Bar Spells Gain spells and Temper primarily.

Nuking
Again a similar vein as the previous two.

Allow for elemental magic skill to increase potency on nukes as well as MACC.

examples in game would be again combat skills, but also summoning magic.


These changes would ease up a lot of gearing restrictions RDM deals with, as well as make our spells slightly more useful in the sense they are not static all or nothing type spells.

On top of the perks to RDM, these buffs will also work on other jobs who can benefit, which is WHM BLM SCH. The key difference is that RDM (and SCH) will be the standouts in 2 areas where WHM and BLM will each have their own unique niche.

WHM = Healing Divine
BLM = Elemental Dark
RDM = Enhancing Enfeebling
SCH = Enhancing + Healing or Elemental + Dark, and Enfeebling (though it has no native enfeebling spells BALANCE!!!!)

There is your building block on how to fix the issues with RDM casting, now you just need to make our group 2 merits scrolls, give us the T3/4 versions, allow our debuffs to actually land on NM's.

In addition to that if you have an issue with the movement speed on gravity remove it. Get it off the spell. Call the spell Demi and slap a damage modifier on it.

Demi I - T1ish nuke DMG + Eva down
Demi 2- T3ish nuke DMG + Eva down (increase MP cost to reflect T3 nukes)

and to make it even more RDM like base the potency and macc on enfeebling.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Not a bad list but id like to insert something just because it would streamline things. If we are truely to enhance others, then do away with some spells all together.

The following spells i would like to see removed and replaced;
Barfire > Barfira
Barwater > Barwatera
Barthunder > Barthundra
Barstone > Barstonera
Baraero > Baraera
Barblizzard > Barblizzara
Barsleep > Barsleepra
Barblind > Barblindra
Barparalyze > Barparalyzra
Barpetrify > Barpetra
Barpoison > Barpoisonra
Barsilence > Barsilencera
Barvirus > Barvira
Baramnesia > Baramnesra
Gain-STR > Boost-STR
Gain-DEX > Boost-DEX
Gain-VIT > Boost-VIT
Gain-AGI > Boost-AGI
Gain-INT > Boost-INT
Gain-MND > Boost-MND
Gain-CHR > Boost-CHR

As all of these spells behave the same as one another, i see no reason to create separate spells (That are unable to take effect concurently on a single character) other than to deliberately hinder redmage's party support abilities. Making this conversion in redmage's spell library will actually remove 21 spells from the game, giving room for a different 21 spells to be placed in the game in their places.

I however am aware there are some downsides to such a change, primarily a doubling of mp costs for the Barspells, however with their instant cast and mp costs of less than even a cure IV, it would be a negligible loss. I do realize however that would cause some other undesired side-effects, such as less utility for scholar's Accession ability, it would still have merit for use with still a great number of spells, those of note being phalanx, refresh, stoneskin, enspells, blink, aquaveil, and all of scholar's job-specific enhancing spells.

Ultimately this would limit the spells that need to be cycled to multiple members to Phalanx II, (If the redmage is so inclined to merit it) Refresh I/II, and Haste. This would however NOT prevent the redmage from needing to apply Protect and Shell to each individual party member. Having a spell a redmage only needs to cast once already upon himself, changed to that of a party effect wouldnt put much more strain on the red mage itself, but instead may offer less subjob dependancy for certain situations. If anyone would like to add, or expland, or debate this idea though, please feel free to do so.

[Ophannus]

I just don't get how SE can say WHM is the healing specialist but then they also get better enhancing magic spells than us(namely AoE's).

It should be that WHM is a 6/10 enhancing 6/10 enfeebling and 10/10 at healing , RDM should be 10/10 enhancing and 10/10 Enfeebling and 6/10 healing.

Instead WHM's are currently a 8/10 enfeebling, 9/10 enhancing and 10/10 healing, RDMs are 10/10 enfeebling 3/10 enhancing(now that anyone can sub RDM and haste) and 4/10 healing. WHM almost eclipses us on enfeebling but the only enfeebles we get over a WHM are our merit spells really, yet Cure V and Cure VI aren't merit spells. Why aren't SCH PLD and RDM almost as strong as a WHM's cures save for their merit spells but BLM/RDM and WHM/RDM can cast almost all of our enfeebles except for our merit spells?

We have very few unique enfeebnling spells that only RDM can cast but BLM surely has dozens of elemental spells RDM can't cast and WHM has dozens of healing and enhancing spells that we cannot cast.


WHM specializes in healing so let them keep AoE healing.
BLM specializes in elemental so let them keep AoE elemental.
RDM specializes in enhancing/enfeebling so why can't we use AoE enhancing and enfeebling?

[saevel]

SE already said we're not getting aoe enhancement spells. Their vision is RDM as a self buffer and WHM as a party buffer. Scroll down a bit and you can see my thread where they flatly told us no.

[ManaKing]

Yeah if you check all the Dev response threads, it looks pretty poorly for us.

Can we get any mage love? NO RDM is supposed to suck at pretty much everything and be bad in a party.
Will you ever fix enfeebles? OF COURSE......EVENTUALLY.
Any chance we might get some synergy for our mage and melee sides? NO YOU HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING EACH OTHER TILL WE SHUT THE SERVERS DOWN.

I haven't seen anything positive out of any representative from SE. They are doing a very poor job of reassuring RDMs. Zero Transparency and even less progress.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Yeah if you check all the Dev response threads, it looks pretty poorly for us.

Can we get any mage love? NO RDM is supposed to suck at pretty much everything and be bad in a party.
Will you ever fix enfeebles? OF COURSE......EVENTUALLY.
Any chance we might get some synergy for our mage and melee sides? NO YOU HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING EACH OTHER TILL WE SHUT THE SERVERS DOWN.

I haven't seen anything positive out of any representative from SE. They are doing a very poor job of reassuring RDMs. Zero Transparency and even less progress.

This "fix" will benefit WHM and BLM more than RDM anyway. They aren't removing immunity, just making it easier to land enfeebles that do land.

The basic jist of the Dev posts is: Don't play as RDM.

[Mageoholic]

This was mentioned in another thread (Paraphrasing some what)

Red Mage

A mage first and everything else second.

But what kind of mage? Both our healing and elemental skills are less than our skills in Melee combat, if skill set defines ones role how is it that we are a mage first when half our casting skills are weaker then our melee skills.

It is the truth we are a mage first. A support mage, the job is designed around getting buffs and enfeebles out and then providing additional group support through our variety of secondary skills (healing, nuking, melee). Some are quick to judge based on our inherent mage like abilities defining us as a mage only job.

This is half true. Consider the following.

Fast Cast.
Increases the speed at which we can distribute spells, opening time to use other abilities. Often this is seen as a way to increase time spent healing (the primary role a RDM used to perform). It also increases time spent nuking (a secondary role a RDM performs) it also increases time spent meleeing on a mob. In each instance getting our primary spells out faster increase our time performing our secondary roles.

Composure
Increased buff duration, ACC without a doubt the most obvious trait that supports our multiple roles.

Emp Armor
Increased buff duration, this allows us to extend composure effects to allies, which in turn reduces our time spent casting support spells and more time performing our situational secondary actions (healing/nuking/melee)

These things affect every aspect of our secondary skills greatly, by reducing our time spent performing our support mage duties it increases our time and effectiveness at doing other duties (healing/nuking/melee)

So yes it is true that we are a mage first, but we are a support mage first, we apply buffs and debuffs, then we perform a role that is situational, healing needs help then it heals, nukeing damage is low it nukes, melee needs more it melees. It doesn't need to be the best over even close to par with the jobs that perform these tasks, it only needs to be around 80% effective. The other 20% is made up threw our buffs increasing damage output, healing output, damage intake, and our enfeebles increasing damage output, and reducing damage coming in.

These are the staples of a RDM, these schools of magic allow us the ability to perform other duties. Being able to reduce incoming melee attacks by 1/3 means our Cure IV (if SE increases the cap on cure 4 to about the same as a cap of C5) would stand up in a lot of situations. Being able to negate attacks completely with paralyze saves us from having to burn a heal at all. Gravity on a mob allows most every DD to eat meat, a 10% Hit rate increase, that is a large boost to melee output. The fact that our enfeebles are essentially ineffective (due to various reasons is absurd).

In the enhancing vein we have Haste, Refresh II and that is really it unless you merit Phalanx II. The trouble here is that SE has limited RDM at that, we have a few very nice buffs that can not be cast on others. Temper for one, Gain Spells, Barspells. While at the same time giving several jobs the ability to provide haste/refresh and Cure IV at similar levels as RDM, and then their own unique abilities on top of that (BRD, SMN for example).

The above changes I listed to how skill effects the spells involved (potency increase) to diversify RDM from other jobs with similar spells (WHM, BLM, SCH). Allowing RDM to have higher overall buff scaling and debuff scaling through its native A+/B+ skills demonstrating the superior ability to provide magical support to its allies.

Everything from the job stems from the ability for a RDM to weaken a monster and strengthen teammates, and currently RDM is not accomplishing these task.

This is a serious situation that has been evolving over quite a period of time. In addition to the above changes to skill affecting the potency of spells:

Enfeebling:
Make these spells land, all of them if certain ones seem to strong adjust them.

Gravity is a huge buff 10% Hit rate is a large buff, yet it is restricted due to the movement speed effect. (Get rid of the movement speed effect).

Slow is ineffective due to the rate at which mobs gain TP, give us an enfeeble that restricts mobs TP gain so slow can be noticeable in effect, other jobs can do this.

Paralyze needs to work on TP moves, you have BLU a job with an incredible amount of stuns that can be spammed near indefinitely. Why can paralyze not stop a WS too?

Blind this spell is actually probably the only one that isn't entirely useless now, since it affects both melee and physical TP moves. It is the only tool a RDM has that is actually beneficial in combat. Too bad NIN has Kuryami (lvl 44) which is the same as our meritable Blind II spell (@5 merits). This needs to change, as a meritable spell this should be more powerful then one learned at lvl 44.

Enhancing:
Let us use all of our buffs.

Why are we limited to Haste/Refresh/RefreshII essentially our only native Enhancing buff left is Refresh II, everything else is available as JOB/RDM, We have Phalanx 2 I guess, but SCH can AOE Phalanx 1 for as much as Phalanx 2's potency.

Temper, allow us to cast this on others it is a great benefit to the people in our groups, you give COR has it, SMN has it, so it is not an issue of it being to strong, and considering the other unique buffs those two jobs have it benefits diversity by having a RDM cast double attack buffs, and have COR do TP roll, or SMN provide critical hit rate aura.

Haste, let this spell scale like BRD's let it rise based on Skill level from 15% to 20%, this is not game breaking, especially since you put 15% on a dagger so now any job on that particular item has a pocket haste (literally my DNC loves this btw). It separates RDM from the other buffers and /RDM or /WHM buffers as well.

Barspells ..... really. WHM can AoE these, why can't we single target them
Gain spells : See Bar spells.


These adjusments to our buffing debuffing side. The structure of the entire job depends on its ability to play situational tide turner, it is meant to weaken foes, and strengthen allies and fill in gaps in healing or in nuking or in melee, as needed.



On a curious note, are our buffs limited because you are running out of space to keep track of the buffs a player has?

[Mageoholic]

because I am feeling particularly ranty.

To elaborate on why you need to allow us to cast better enfeebles and enhancements based on skill.

BLM/RDM
WHM/RDM
BLM/WHM
WHM/BLM
SCH/RDM
NIN

can all land enfeebles of similar effect as RDM. RDM's only trick in the sleeve is the T2 versions, the fact that mobs are immune or unaffected by these spells is also an issue. But looking at the T1 versions they are all identical all these jobs have a similar chance to land and cause a similar level of potency. This is why you added the T2 versions in the first place, to set a distinct line that RDM was the enfeebling job.

Which leads me to point number 2.

Even if you do make these spells land without allowing changes to certain ones and increasing their effects based on skill, the mobs you have given us are zerg fests. Instead of just increasing the HP of the mob to compensate for our increased power you have given these monsters 1 shot abilities, instant deaths, dooms, zombie aura's. A pile of crap that didn't need to be introduced.

We used to fight for long periods of times killing monsters who had crazy HP but normal abilities. Sky Gods for example and land kings, where buffs and debuffs were crucial. In todays endgame it is Atma's, Atmacites, and Temp Items. You need to abandon this crap shoot. Make the challenge actually killing a mob as a team before it kills you. This makes enfeebling and enhancing all the more needed. Which is why jobs like BRD COR and RDM experienced decent representation at endgame events. You needed these jobs because they actually turned the tide of battle in your favor.

You have let the zerg mentality steer you to do things that alienate jobs that don't have high tier damage or healing, which has limited your game to several jobs that people see relevant. (Because they are the only ones who can really accomplish the task.) Yes Zerging will happen but the game should not be designed around a zerg, it should be designed around 18 people getting together on any job and being able to clear content and recieve rewards. The current meta game discourages even bringing a RDM, and many other jobs to boot. This is wrong.

At least in ToAU jobs that weren't welcome in EXP were still welcome at endgame, now anyone can EXP but if you aren't WAR, SAM, DRK, DRG, THF, BLM, WHM, MNK you aren't really needed.

[NeoLionheart]

If paralyze starts effecting tp attacks for enemies, then it will affect player's too. If your idea gets implemented may god have mercy on your soul.

[Aleste]

Magic spells were split so that red mages focused on single-target magic, while white mages excelled in AoE magic.

I don't see any harm in having bar/gain/temper spells being single-party/alliance targetable, and with that said, AOE buffs should stay under WHM forte.

inb4: We don't want any more buffs that we'll have to cycle around players.