Practical Soultions to Issues with RDM.

[Neisan_Quetz]

The item itself has a large variety of different stats that aren't overpowered when you put them together because they don't mult each other but it still allows you to have a lot of what you want. I'm not giving up my 'cac Trousers just because they make me look like an indian, much less how awesome they are.

And yes I did say waste a slot on only haste, when you could cap haste with other equipment and get more stats, like STR, DEX, atk, acc, or Store TP.

RDM is already missing good equipment. No reason to waste even more equipment that you do have because you are wasting a slot on something you could have had more stats on.

I use Dual wield ACP body that's probably why. You won't cap haste with it without Ephemeron/NQ sword but you can get close, but I've stopped counting how often I've not gotten phasmida belt from Kaggen. Might just end up looking for a N Sash/find that JP trying to sell Speed Belt.

[ShadowViper]

My whole issue with the mage aspect of RDM is we really are only there for refresh and to help haste. Yes back in the day we could main heal but at the cost of taking away from the role of a WHM. Magic skill wise we should be the definetive answer for enhancing and enfeebling but that really doesn't show again past 2 spells. Like its been said many times all our enfeebles can be done by multiple other jobs and most our enahcning is self cast only. So the problem is how to balance RDM against the other mages, personally I think its a simple solution for balancing the 4 main mage jobs but leads to some reworking on older thinking.

First lets look at the starting mages and what their focus in a party should be:

WHM- This job seems pretty straight forward its main skill is healing with its secondary mage skill in divine. We already see that this job has the best Cure spells available and the only job that natively gets ga version of those spells for healing. We also see that it gets a variety of divine spells that some are only a pld shares naturally get. WHM's are always invited for healing, removals, and with procs now even for the use of their divine nukes (which should be fixed to be more useful past just this).

BLM- Agains straight forward for its main skill - elemental - this is the nuking go to job. There is a wide variety of AOE versions of various nuke spells and its the only job that gets this naturally. Its secondary skill is dark magic which has a few more useful spells than divine but lacks the amount of spells available as divine.

RDM- Main skill is enfeebling, secondary is enchancing. As for our main skill ALL enfeebs except merit spells are available to other jobs. The only AOE version we get naturally is diaga (which should be divine to balance with bio). As for enhancing most of our enhancing spells are self casted only giving them no benifit to a party situation.

What i find interesting is that when you need buffs from the above jobs we don't go to the highest rated enhancing skill job we go to whms since they offer AOE versions of enhancing magic too. As for crowd control, which is usually an enfeeblers job in general MMO sense, we usually look for a BLM with its sleepga spells and now breakga.

So yes ofcourse RDMs when they found a niche at being solid healers were going to take that path back in the day because we really didn't stand out for what our natural skills say we should be doing because of the imbalance of where the spells went.

So the proposed changes to fix this would be:
Enfeebles- First and foremost fix resistance/potency, Give AOE versions including breakga/sleepga to RDM exclusively this would give us a defined main role in a party. (FIX DIA to be divine giving whm first go and the higher tiers/aoe versions for balance continuity) (give BLM AOE STUN)

Some may argue with RDM having aoe enfeebles would make it too strong as a soloer, but I argue how is a RDM with it any worst than a Job that can crowd control then NUKE that whole crowd. Personally I think BLM with AOE sleep/break and AOE nukes is overpowered always have (yes im a blm).

Enhancing- Again move all AOE enahcing spells to be RDM exclusive and allow more of our self target spells to be party/alliance castable (not outside group to prevent us from being the 19th member in an alliance casting from outside - kirin burns sigh). Bar spells on WHM should be single target only not self.

This would again help us have a reason to be in parties and as for balance with brds and cors our buffs are different than those that they can provide.

The above would give clearly set the roles of the basic mages regardless of subjob choice-
WHM - Healer + status removal + divine nuker
BLM - Elemental or Dark based Nuker + Elemental enfeebler (would love to see more of these)
RDM- Crowd control Enfeebler and group buffer

So where does this put the fourth mage job SCH
As it is now this is the best DOT mage job with helix, regain and the new REGEN reform but also SCH is the second closest replacement for any of the above jobs above but can't do any of the above main roles as good as the mains and would even have to set specific subs to fill in some of the roles. It can do various AOE versions but only with the use of an ability and is limited to what spells it can AOE.

And in a worst case situation where the main roles can't be covered by the jobs mentioned above and there is no sch to cover each of those jobs have the ability to help cover but not nearly as effeciently whm could do single target buffs, and some single target enfeebs, blm can cast some single target enfeebs, and rdm can help cure or help nuke. So each of these jobs have methods to help support the others but they can't completely take over on a constant basis.