On Red Mage melee...

[Hyrist]

What would you give RDM to make it unique/powerful enough to be streamline DD?

I'm going to be general and speak in goals rather than specific updates. I'm also going to focus on utility aspects instead of raw performance buffs to Red Mage's martial aspects, which, I do believe they should get (at least a small bonus) in addition to this, which can be done in the form of new physical performance spells.

There are three primary routes to utility through melee that can be offered.

1. Enhancements to treasure, as we see with Treasure Hunter traits and Bounty shot. I do not believe Red Mage should receive anything in this category.

2. The ability to enhance the party damage output.

3. The ability to lower or recover party damage.

All 3 utility tools in the game break down to these basic concepts.

For the concept of the areas I believe Red Mage should be allowed to melee, I lean more to the idea of an ability that helps increase damage output, but giving Red Mage tools in both categories would not be game breaking, if Red Mage is forced to choose between them for the situation.

As far as what stats would be powerful enough to be included in the front lines, the possibilities are broad. But I would like to see something that favors the lighter DDs who lag behind your typical dominating 2h DDs. Things like critical chance, critical damage, attack increase/defense down effects are all good things that favor faster strikes and multi-hit crit based weapon skills more. But if we're going for a more general approach, that can expand easily to things as simple as skillchain damage increases, raw damage-per hit increase (like a debuff that works along the lines of soul-eater in adding to base damage rather than as an additional effect, so as it doesn't conflict with sambas). Or some sort of buff that increases WS output in general for everyone across the board.

On the defensive side, enemy accuracy reduction, enemy attack reduction, something to regard TP moves, these can all be added onto an effect based on melee swings, in combination, that would not only offset the risk of enemy WS, but make Red Mage's damage contribution a low-to-no-risk addition to everyone but himself by virtue of being in AoE range.

As far as "Go out and do it." When I am on, and on Red Mage, that's what I do. I go for Procs, I open for skillchains, I close the ones I see were free, and I do this on top of other support functions. I focus on using my melee to enhance damage of those around me and function as a utility, rather than go "whee I can be a melee DD too!"


But Red Mage who do front line widely differ on what they want to regard RDMs front lines, but are fairly united in wanting to see a greater purpose for it. The ultimate decision of course lies with SE and I'd love to see some actual feedback from them on what they think on the matter.

[Hyrist]

I'd rather just not the buff conflict, honestly. Additional elemental damage shouldn't come at the cost of JA haste. Ever since Dancer came out there's always been that enspell conflict. And I hated it.

Initial strike is the only way around it currently, and that only works dependably dual wielding, and EnIIs are still broken.

[Supersun]

Not gonna lie this is one of the most pointless ideas I've ever thought of

...but I want it anyway.


T3 enspells should give a sagasinger aura like effect on our sword with a color that matches the enspells element

...just because it would be awesome lol.

[Doombringer]

Not gonna lie this is one of the most pointless ideas I've ever thought of

...but I want it anyway.


T3 enspells should give a sagasinger aura like effect on our sword with a color that matches the enspells element

...just because it would be awesome lol.

that WOULD be awesome.... while we're on the topic of awesome and unlikely.. how about an enspell that absorbs tp... if strong enough that would be a MASSIVE dmg buff for the rdm (all that free tp, even if you're stuck with death blossom/evisceration, is gonna add up) while at the same time giving the ability to severely mitigate the mobs tp moves. of course this requires that it drain more tp than the rdm feeds... wich is like... crazy overpowered.. but if it does any less then the rdm is still "adding" tp to the mob, so ppl could still complain..

alternately, what about an enspell that just destroys mob tp at some ratio of dmg dealt. so it deals non elemental dmg at whatever the normal enhancing calculation would be, then deals... half that much. to the mobs tp. (or a third or a quarter or whatever) in the end though.. for it to really change minds it still needs to destroy more tp than the rdm feeds.. wich would still leave it overpowered for solo play.

would be crazy useful though, even if it was just added on it's OWN and not part of a larger update.

[Supersun]

I've actually thought about an enspell that absorbs TP.

It certainly would address the issue of a Rdm TP feeding and also boost their damage in the process.

It wouldn't even necessarily need to absorb more then the Red Mage deals. I mean other jobs feed some level of TP. This spell could just help lower Red Mage to more their level since Red Mage really does feed a ridiculous amount of TP.

There's a few issues with that though.

1) It would severely limit any kind of TP altering enfeeble in the future as this stacked with that would practically destroy the possibility of monsters TPing with the right set-up

2) It would be very difficult to balance. The spell would either give a very small amount of TP back or would virtually let Rdm melee solo stupidly difficult things from never feeding them TP. The spell can't ever pass 25% of your base TP since any more then that and 50% SB and +50 agility pretty much means you don't feed TP. The only way for it to pass 25% would be for it to factor in AFTER SB and Agi and well...if you are subbing /nin this spell will get destroyed since the TP will already be reduced quite a bit after SB and Agi. It would be VERY difficult for this spell to surpass the damage our current enspells can do while still keeping it balanced unless it did some form of damage itself.

[Hyrist]

A TP damaging Melee skill, like all the other utilities, would have to function much like Sambas, in that it's more reliant on the players around us than us. A small portion of damage dealt by the party would deal damage to the enemy's TP.

The problem is, it would work identicle to subtle blow.

An Enspell that Drains TP would be superior to Absorb TP which they probably woulden't want to happen either.

And that's really the crux of it. Put bluntly, Dancer ruined enspells, and any idea of a melee utility will instantly bring up the idea of dancer itself. If there is going to be a frontline utility, it's going to have to bite the bullet and realize it's going to step on Dancers' toes a tad.

BUT, they have plenty. AND we were the origonal 'Additional Effect' job. So I'm not all that worried. It's the developers ya gotta convince... and they can get shy on that side.

[Supersun]

Not necessarily.

Dancer only generally receives offensive melee utility (sometimes it receives some other types but are they very few and generally vastly unused).

Very few jobs receive defensive and magic utility connected to melee.

It's hard to connect magic utility to the front line because it doesn't actually do anything to enhance the melee it's connected too unless it's designed really well, and most situations where you would want that magic related utility are generally monsters that aren't safe to melee on. Not to mention there are a LOT of situations where anything you want magic related utility for you don't want people meleeing.

Defensive utility connected to melee is a pretty niche position. For non HNM monsters it's generally not that helpful as it doesn't really do anything to help kill the monster faster which is the only thing that matters in most non HNM situations. It's actually quite useful on HNMs if designed properly where the job meleeing for the utility is mitigating more risk then he's giving. The only issue is that this would be the exact opposite of what most people want Red Mage melle to be since this would be magic fodder, melee bosses.

For Non-HNM mobs not much else beats offensive utility. Yes, it does tend to be dancers territory, but at the same time jobs never 100% own any one role. There are always other jobs that have buffs of some sort that the primary job is lacking and a T3 of enspells could easily fill this spot. I mean it's not entirely unprecedented for enspells to receive some form of utility. It'd just be nice if that utility doesn't suck and is weaker and doesn't stack with a 1 sec cast from a spell from your /nin.

Though like I've mentioned they could easily move our melee to have a more magic related offensive and defensive utility if our damage became more magic based like giving us a powerful elemental WS and possibly making enspell T3s be heavily modified from mage stats and attributes (You'd still equip melee/haste armor, but you might opt for some more mage related buffs especially from Cor).

[Greatguardian]

There are plenty of other things you can be doing to benefit the group and keep yourself busy. It is not like your only two options are melee and Heal/Haste/Refresh/AFK. That's a dichotomy introduced by really, really crappy Red Mages that only know how to Heal, Haste, and Refresh and want an excuse to be worthless.

Eg: "Ugh guys, I wouldn't be such an absolute waste of oxygen if you just let me melee. Since you won't let me melee, I'll just sit here and afk while occasionally attempting to perform rudimentary tasks that you could train a chimp to do instead of actually playing the game because I'm spoiled and if I don't get what I want I'll just suck so bad that you'll be better off just letting me have my way no matter how terrible my melee is." - If you think I don't see this every single day, you're crazy. I have dealt with dozens of these people, and every single time I have determined that they simply are not worth my time.

I have zero sympathy for people who claim to be bored, or cite monotony with Red Mage. It is one of the most intense and involved jobs in the entire game, next to a properly played HNM-class Paladin. If you can't find anything to do but heal, haste, and refresh, I challenge you to find something to do. There will always be something. You will never be bored with it if you do it right. Kindly ignore the really crappy posters in here who talk about Haste-botting like its the only other alternative to melee'ing. They only come off as extremely incompetent Red Mages.

[Supersun]

What do you expect? Half of those Rdms you know probably only leveled it as a ToaU meriting gravy train for pink birds where there pretty much was nothing else to do besides Heal, Haste, and Refresh with the occasional Dia III if your party didn't ***** at you because everything else you were going to do was going to be reflected back by those pink little birds.

[Greatguardian]

If you want me to be perfectly honest, most of them leveled Red Mage just to melee as a magic swordsman because they liked the lore or somesuch. Then they were told that meleeing in full AF is absolutely not acceptable in any realm of possibility and proceeded to intentionally suck so bad at everything else that people will, they hope, stop caring and let them do what they want. All of the absolute worst Red (and white) Mages I have ever met have had a raging hard-on for Melee'ing.

I'm not going to make broad generalizations, though. I know they were individuals, correlation does not imply causation, etc. I was simply saying that the dichotomy drawn by Duelle and many others here between Haste-botting and Melee'ing is complete and utter hogwash, and that there are plenty of other (more efficient) ways to occupy oneself than melee'ing.

Straight up, any Red Mage that only Hastes, Refreshes, and Cures is a Monster Trucking horrible Red Mage.