The Unoffical "Let's Fix Red mage" Thread

[Demon6324236]

Admittedly as it has been pointed out to me before, its unlikely we will be getting any JAs or Traits that effect our melee, we seem to get spells that do that, and well. I mean for instance we didn't get Double Attack as a trait, we got Temper which is far better, originally its only 5%, an average RDM might have it at around 10%, however if you have a really good Enhancing Magic build, it can hit 20%. If we had something very similar, or even the same, for Attack/Accuracy, you could see RDMs on the front lines today. The main thing past that which holds RDM back would be gear, I constantly point out how RDM gets the mage side of gear, and is left out of the melee sets like Thaumas & Athos, which would really flush out our melee alot more thanks to the increased options & stats we would have.



In my opinion these are the 3 things RDM needs to fix the job.

A) Add Brave & Faith.

Brave & Faith should scale with Enhancing Magic, however they should not stack & should have a fairly long cast time, such as a cast time of 15 or so seconds(11ish seconds after lv99 Fast Cast trait). They should scale as Temper does, starting at 5% with low skill, and reaching 20% at 500 skill. Brave should increase Attack/Accuracy, where as Faith should increase Magic Attack/Magic Accuracy. Doing this allows RDM to be fairly potent in both forms of combat, however not at the same time. Neither spell should have negative effects, and neither spell should be able to be cast on others. The only real problem with this I see is that the Magic Attack Bonus from Faith, may cause worry in SCH & BLM. However RDM is limited to T4 spells, and I doubt BLM's better Magic Attack with T5 Nukes, or SCH's weather bonus with T5 Nukes, would be threated by RDM, even with the maximum effect.

B) Add more gear options.

RDM currently is restricted to mainly mage gear, however we do occasionally get melee gear as well. The magic gear for RDM is great, and grows alot, however when you take a look at other jobs, RDM can feel as though its physical power is forgotten. Emp gear gave many jobs massive boosts to many stats, including but not limited to, Haste, Attack, Accuracy, and skill of their main, or secondary weapons. RDM did not get this, RDM had the same treatment as WHM, BLM, and SCH, a set of JSE gear that focused completely on nothing but magic. The Estoqueur gear is by no means bad, but it is only for magic, being stacked with MND, INT, Magic Accuracy, and Magic Attack, along with magic skills. When looking at what other jobs got, this leaves me feeling as though our melee was forgotten, and even with more recent gear giving RDM some melee options, there are still massive shortages in gear we do need, such as WS gear like Athos, or TP gear, like Thaumas. Events which are actually great for gear on RDM, often are not for other jobs, such as Arch-Limbus, and Meeble Burrows, which offer some good gear for RDM's melee side, but little for other jobs, making it hard to get help with these things, especially as a job that is often left out of events, and has to solo things itself.

C) Increase Skill levels, and make current skill levels more meaningful.

We all know RDM has the highest rating in Enfeebling Magic, the highest skill in Enhancing Magic(excluding SCH during Light Arts), and decent skills in dagger & sword. However the use of Enfeebling has died out, there has been little reason to enfeeble anything in sometime, making this feature of RDM, nearly worthless. Enhancing Magic is ok, however its very limited to RDM, SCH has much better buffs for their party members, WHM has AoE spells, and much more powerful Barspells, Protectra/Shellra V, and Boost Spells that effect the party, rather than RDM's self only Gain Spells. All of this leaves RDM's enhancing far behind, and the only unique Enhancement RDM finds itself with that it can cast on others, is Phalanx, which loses its use on higher leveled, harder hitting content due to how it works. Sword & Dagger skill levels are good, however this plays into RDM's problem as well a bit, as its melee loses some accuracy & attack, which is much harder to make up for with gear than it is for many other jobs. In the end, our skills are nice, but without much to use them on, making them fairly meaningless. Bumping up Sword & Dagger to a B+, or A-, while adding new potent, and exclusive Enfeebling Magic & Enhancing Magic, should help RDM become useful again both as a melee, and a mage.



These are the 3 things I think RDM needs to be fixed. With these, we would get new spells, to make our Enhancing & Enfeebling more important, we would get new gear access, so that not only would we be potent mages, but potent fighters as well, and we would have the ability to fill a role better by using a buff to improve our position, while not overrunning jobs that currently hold those very same positions. I think this, would help make RDM the versatile hybrid job it was meant to be, and has fallen away from in recent times.

[Emitremmus]

Nicely worded Demon.

I like the ideas behind Brave and Faith, and allowing them to be RDM exclusive keeps it from getting out of hand. Gear is also a very valid point. Hell...BLU has access to several of the good job traits through just merely setting spells...RDM should have a self-enhancing only spell for traits too. The trait Fencer in a spell makes sense. Why not spells for Tactical Parry, Critical Hit Bonus, etc.? While we're at it...how about a Dual Wield spell, and Gilfinder, and Treasure Hunter, and Kick Attacks, and....okay I'm kidding about these. But I think my point is made.

As for the gear... The way gear is divided between Heavy Armor - Light Armor - Mage Armor is kind of silly anymore. It's like it's a template they follow with gear. For example: BST can use both Toci's and Mekira, PUP can use both Toci's and Heka's, but that seems to be it as far as options go. It's like they've been following the reward scheme from the 3 mini-add ons since they came out. I thought it was cool when you see a piece of armor that STRANGELY has a job you wouldn't think would be able to use it.

It seems like any armor RDM hopes to get that is a big deal in the future is going to be mage aligned. This argument can go along with some of the melee jobs that are on the Mekira piece too, as they don't necessarily capitalize on the defensive nature of Mekira all the time. But they have a lot better options at their disposal.

I don't think they neglect RDM as much as we think. They've made such other drastic changes to the other jobs that needed new stuff that RDM falling behind was kind of a side-effect. RDM was perfect back at the 75 cap. Now they just need to find that new niche that it falls in to...which I hope will be a melee based caster like a DRK, but with more emphasis on self-enhancement than attack.

[Thelona]

Brave should increase Attack/Accuracy, where as Faith should increase Magic Attack/Magic Accuracy. Doing this allows RDM to be fairly potent in both forms of combat, however not at the same time. Neither spell should have negative effects, and neither spell should be able to be cast on others.

How much do you want that party slot?

[Demon6324236]

If Brave or Faith were castable on others they could never have a 20% max bonus, or have no penalties. Think of how much Attack/Acc you would have on DRK, WAR, SAM, DRG, and other jobs, it would just become unbalanced, same as Faith would be with BLM & SCH, 20% Magic Attack Bonus would throw their nuke damage through the roof, especially since with all of the Magic Acc you could easily brush off resists. The main reason for Brave would be so RDM could have a good amount of Attack/Acc on things endgame, making it melee worthy, and with Faith, it would give RDM a massive lead in Magic Acc to land debuffs, while also making Nukes more worth while.

I think the only way we can have buffs that truly benefit RDM, is for it to be self-target only, otherwise it becomes overpowered, and has to be weakened, I believe this is the reason for Temper being self targeted, I admit, WAR having 32% Double Attack before gear, and actually 37 if you count merits, is overpowered easily, meaning Temper would have been weakened fast.

[Trangnai]

Ohlookitsthisthreadagain.jpg

But seriously, the deal with RDM is that it is a job that does a little bit of everything pretty well. The problem is that when you can level a job from 1-99 in a few days, nobody wants a job that that can do something "pretty well"... they only want a job that is the best at something, or at the very least can do the job better than RDM - which is pretty much all of them.

Need nukes? Get a BLM or SCH.
Need healing? Get a WHM or SCH.
Need enhancing? Get a BRD.
Need crowd control? Get a BLM or BRD.
Need refresh? Not with atmas, temps, JA's, RDM sub, etc.
Need enfeebling? Lol, what's that?
Need melee? Don't get me started.

Let's face it, the only thing RDM is the best at is enfeebling and unless SE makes it so that more than a handful of enfeebling spells can even land on NM's, RDM will continue to linger in this "pretty good" limbo that nobody wants. I will say that as misguided as they are on RDM, at least they made some effort. The Immunobreak system had some potential, but... well, we all know how that turned out. I really don't expect another attempt until after they figure out how to add more spells into the game and even then I won't hold my breath.

That is not entirely true, Look at alot of the classes you mentioned, SCH for one is a hybrid class. why get a sch when you can get whm or blm? etc etc.

The fact is that rdm needs something to make it stand out. In the past this was refresh. to help with that staple, the game of its performance vs other classes was not as wide as it is currently. Enhancing was useless even before Abyssea (except in maybe sky and Dynamis) but it wasent that that made rdm stand out, with the staple of refresh as well as a decent enough healing ability/nuking ability/crowd control ability (depedning on your role) it was used in almost every EG event.

The fact that it was able to fill multiple roles at once was one of its big key uses, thought most people only payed attention to the fact that they got one buff every 3 minutes. They don't notice that cure for 400 that allowed them to take one extra hit or the nuke only doing 900 dmg but ticking the mob a little closer to being dead, or the sleep that stopped the aggro you got from K.O.ing you, this list goes on.

The reasons a RDM is a waste of a slot right now is due to the fact that the gap is much much larger then it was at 75. Refresh is no longer required due to being able to be subbed, atmas, temps etc. Players who have invested time into rdm want a reason to play it. its sad having 25 jobs, 24 useable, 5 that should be being used if your look on things is how the game should work. There is no reason we shouldn't be allowed to play a job we have invested so much time in.

And Solo? Well... rdm is outdated in that department too.

@Emitermmus I was just stating my Opinion on your suggestions. I enjoyed your post and wanted to respond with my thoughts on them, is all.

[Thelona]

I don't see why they couldn't tag Brave/Faith to the new 2 hour, rdm could then be there to clean up the mess that will be PD/Embrava nerf

[Demon6324236]

But it would still be overpowered, the same reason they are nerfing PD/Embrava in the 1st place.

[Thelona]

Based on your proposed numbers it would be comparable to zerk/agg for Brave and for Faith a mab blm can do in their sleep. Not really that overpowered.

[Shadax]

That is not entirely true, Look at alot of the classes you mentioned, SCH for one is a hybrid class. why get a sch when you can get whm or blm? etc etc.

Re-read what I said. SCH can do those jobs better than RDM can. My point was, RDM is at the bottom of the list for just about every function it can perform. As for the rest of what you said, yeah, I pretty much agree.

Trust me, I put a lot of time into my RDM and I'm just as frustrated as everyone else that it's nothing but a novelty at this point. I'm just saying don't put a lot of faith into RDM being fixed anytime soon because, well, honestly, I don't think the devs have any idea what to do with it anymore, but there's also the technical limitations, like not being able to add new spells or abilities that don't share a timer with something else, that won't be addressed for a while.

[Trangnai]

Re-read what I said. SCH can do those jobs better than RDM can. My point was, RDM is at the bottom of the list for just about every function it can perform. As for the rest of what you said, yeah, I pretty much agree.

Trust me, I put a lot of time into my RDM and I'm just as frustrated as everyone else that it's nothing but a novelty at this point. I'm just saying don't put a lot of faith into RDM being fixed anytime soon because, well, honestly, I don't think the devs have any idea what to do with it anymore, but there's also the technical limitations, like not being able to add new spells or abilities that don't share a timer with something else, that won't be addressed for a while.

Oh, I have no doubt, but if were only choosing the best for everything why not just have another blm or whm? There are alot of different ways they can address technical issues the problem is there reluctance to keep the game from evolving due to a small player base. That aside.

The point is, we know SCH outclasses rdm in those roles, but it also has unquie spells, traits and abilities that may make it a worthwhile replacement. If it were nothing more then a slightly weaker version that could do both, noone would use it.

RDM requires those type of abilities to be able to establish a role again, due to the changes in the game, its former roles are no longer needed.

Most people in the thread want to solve the issue via new spells but SE has already declined such an offer stating "Limitations" regardless of how true there statements are, we must take them as fact, and while in the past they have stated no trait or ability boosts, that have to realize that other then possibly removing spells from the game to make slots for new spells, they will have to give us some type of trait or ability that will allow us to assume a role, roles, or change play style. As the current one is too dated to mater in End Game content.