The Melee Mage

[Economizer]

I really hate discussions like these that crop up whenever someone tries to talk about stuff like improving melee mage options, and they often just seem to shutdown the discussion by making people upset or take the time away from discussing constructive changes by instead arguing over philosophy.

I'd much prefer to discuss ways jobs like Red Mage and White Mage can have useful melee options then squabble over whether or not mages should actually have useful options.

If you still want to read a rebuttal to your points, I won't take that away with a false high ground, but if you aren't reading to understand but to argue, don't waste my time by reading it.

No, they really don't.

Yes, they do. Bloody Bolts, Drain, Drain II, Dread Spikes, Absorb-TP, Absorb-STR, other spells, job abilities, traits, and weapons. They're not the best, which I never claimed, but they are amazing. Again, I would support expanding Dark Knight's ability to use magic to support themselves, in addition to other means, however if you want to discuss at length about how you'd like to buff Dark Knight, please find another more appropriate thread.

Samurai can do a whole lot with Dancer subbed.

Dark Knight can do a whole lot with Red Mage or Scholar subbed.

but a Dark Knight going full out

This wasn't about going full out, this was about trading the ability to do some roles as well as for others.

The trade off is much, much easier for Dark Knight than White Mage. All you have to do to mess up Dark Knight damage is force their weapon option to something they have poor skill and equipment access.

Still doing damage. I'd ask you to name one resource used to heal in this game that can't also be used to deal damage, but there literally aren't any. HP allows you to do damage, TP is primarily used to do damage, MP is used to do damage, Items are used to do damage. It would take far more work to accomplish "no damage" then it would be to nullify the White Mage's healing ability down to job abilities that take longer then ten minutes to cooldown.

If it wasn't meant as an absolute tradeoff, then White Mage already has to cut their healing quite a bit to do damage.

With White Mage, there really isn't anything to nerf, in the grand scheme of things skills and Mind don't make a whole lot of difference

I'm going to tell you to learn about the way something in the game functions. This isn't intended as an insult, but when one party clearly doesn't understand how something functions by saying something that is the opposite of how it works, the only way to rebut is to explain how something works or to assume the other person isn't taking the debate seriously. BGwiki is a better teacher in this case.

Learn how the cure spell formula currently functions.

If the cure spell formula worked in the way you describe, then Cure IV, which is sufficiently enough to heal in most situations for main job healers would be sufficient enough for any job /RDM or /WHM, and thus every job would have a significant amount of healing power like Red Mage does.

Outside, "You can never, ever cast healing spells" there is nothing that can be done to prevent White Mage from being at least a solid healer.

Learn how playing a healer works. Also refer to the cure spell formula again.

Even small things like having no gear that boost cures makes a significant amount of change.

But yes, if you wanted to make a complete trade of White Mage's healing ability for absolute damage, you'd probably have some sort of silence-like effect in conjunction with increased damage ability, or have the extra damage they do hurt their MP pool or healing ability.

Dark Knights really can't "tank" outside situations consisting of "every melee class can tank by subbing Warrior for Provoke."

Learn how enmity currently functions. Learn how tanking currently functions.

Additionally, it would help to find better healers for the Dark Knight. If the Dark Knight cannot keep aggro off of the healer for some reason without subbing Warrior, consider finding a better Dark Knight too.

It goes both ways. A bad damage dealer isn't usually a huge drain on a party compared to a bad healer that gets people killed.

Learn how TP currently functions.

They have a weak spot at early levels due to the better types of clubs not having lower level versions, but beyond that, they have much better melee abilities then people give them credit for because the standard people seem to go by is trying to whack enemies with wands in mage gear. They aren't on true DD level, but in terms of what they can do by themselves when played properly, they are pretty good.

Do any of the melee WHM in this thread look like the kind to use a wand and then cry about their damage?

I was criticizing your idea that there should ever be a circumstance where White Mage can do something that would allow them to directly compete with actual DD classes in terms of damage, giving up something or not.

Kneejerk reaction without sufficient rational thought. The example you give isn't an absolute trade. The best argument you gave for any of your thoughts were when you were talking about the trade offs not being possible, but those weren't sufficient reasoning, since they attack the possibility of the tradeoff rather then it happening.

Even assuming a complete tradeoff is impossibility, that doesn't eliminate the concept, just the amount that it can be executed.

[Mirage]

Well as far as I'm concerned, there is no harm in making any mage decent at meleeing versus non-high level NMs. Who cares if a whm can bash exp mobs' faces in at 98% the speed of a ninja? As long as a whm can't do the same against a legion or VW NM, it doesn't matter.

And considering WHM's lack of A skill in club, low DD stats and limited access to physically strong subjobs (can't get DW without losing Berserk, for example), I don't think that would ever be a problem. Even if you gave whm access to 50% of all the best real DD gear, it'd fall significantly behind on content that is actually hard.

Soo, just give that to us already!

-edit-
As for giving up healing power in favor of damage, what would make more sense than revamping the Banish and Holy spells to actually deal enough damage for it to be worth the MP it costs? Using strong light elemental nukes would eat up the same MP pool that lets us heal. If I just spent 8-900 MP on nukes, there's no way the party can rely on me for cures anymore when fighting significantly tough mobs (unless I'm in abyssea, but who cares about balance in abyssea?). For even more balance, require Afflatus Misery to be in effect for these to be strong enough to almost compete with a blm or sch.

[Asymptotic]

I do just fine.

[Mirage]

But would you mind doing even finer?

[Asymptotic]

But would you mind doing even finer?

Of course not. I'm always hoping that WHM will get better melee options.
That aside, it actually has pretty fantastic melee gear available as it stands.

It really doesn't get access to Double / Triple attack gear, but it also doesn't have a lot of use for it outside of Mystic Boon.

[Dekar]

I'm all for mages getting more armors to play around with in the front lines!

[Nawesemo]

Ewe.... And splatter mob guttzzz alll over my staves.... No beuno.

[wildsprite]

you know, I'll never understand why there always has to be someone against mages having good melee gear, those of us who actually know the jobs know they weren't built for full time melee, other than RDM which was a really good tank before SE nerfed it.....

[Demon6324236]

you know, I'll never understand why there always has to be someone against mages having good melee gear, those of us who actually know the jobs know they weren't built for full time melee, other than RDM which was a really good tank before SE nerfed it.....

Not sure that someone here has said much of anything pointing to that, but I think when people do its because they think that somehow it would be threatening to their style of play, the same way as I think RDM getting staff skill would be threatening to my style of playing my RDM with an Almace (and soon to be Excalibur) in my hands 90% of the time.

[Nawesemo]

You mean like how a war is crucified for using a one hander and a shield..... Maybe because of things like that.