On Red Mage melee...

[Duelle]

I can't see SE doing a 180 on the Empyrean set. I held out for some modest hope that the Composure set augment would've meant Haste and other melee perks, but so far it just seems like it's the duration bonus to others. Yay, but at the same time, boo.

If they somehow came to this design choice seeing how RDMs play, then it's unfortunate they've overlooked the whys of how that playstyle came to be, and instead all I can do is point them back to my earlier long posts about the cumulative issues against RDM melee.

The only other thing I could see happening is them making a second set for the less common job roles. Melee RDM, DD PLD, melee WHM, that sort of thing. Would have been ideal if they had done that with the empyreal sets, though.

[Ordoric]

be nice if they had variants of sword fighting style. you cant weild a bastad swords same as a bilbo. so some minor tweeks to unique weapon skills might be interesting to separate rdm from pld from blu

[Kensagaku]

I skimmed through the majority of this thread, and there are a lot of valid points. Honestly I was expecting a lolRDMmelee thread, but this one actually seemed a lot more reasonable than most. >.>

Personally, I don't have a melee RDM. I haven't put the effort into a melee set when my nuking, enfeebling, healing, fast cast, resting, enhancing, PDT- and dark magic sets put me at about 70/80 inventory. That's not to say I couldn't use a sword and my PDT gear for a melee set if I offhand a Genbu's Shield as well for 36~41 PDT- (Cheviot Cape causes the variability), but that's more of a tanking setup rather than a full melee setup for a party.

The problem is twofold:

1) SE has seen how players take a job, and adjust accordingly. Take NIN for example; it was not released to be a tank. It was meant to be a durable DD, using shadows to survive while dealing a high rate of attacks and crits for damage. However, players implemented those shadows as a tanking boost, and as a result gear started to be tailored towards tanking. Emnity+ gear, PDT gear, etc. Because most RDMs tend to stick to a mage role due to their higher versatility (which Abyssea has unfortunately gimped by removing the need for Refresh and Cure IV being our best cure), SE has built around the popular use.

2) With such a versatile role, it's hard to have a melee RDM that hasn't gimped itself in another slot. As I mentioned with my above sets, I hit about 70/80 slots with all of my gear. If I were to toss in DD gear (Turban, lol Swift Belt, Dusk Gloves, Goliard Saio, weapon/shield or 2x weapon, etc etc) I would either run out of inventory or be at bursting to full, which would provide other difficulties. Need more inventory space for all the stuff we use. x_x;

Pretty much, the majority of RDMs (at least that I've seen on Valefor) play a mage role and not a melee one. SE sees this and tries to adjust to such, though they do recognize the melee aspect. For example, Chimeric Fleuret + OA2-4 Khanda+2 could be a reasonable weapon setup using tier 1 Enspells. +7 Sword enhancement damage, 4% DA rate increase under enspells, and fast, rapid attacks to do more damage with the enspell in a shorter period of time all would be useful. It's not that SE is ignoring the RDM's melee aspect, but they're trying to tailor the game more towards the majority's playstyle, in my opinion.

[Supersun]

But with the case of Rdm and Nin I'd debate it's not more that the player base WANTED to play the jobs like that but that they NEEDED the jobs to play like that. With ninja for example especially in that period of the games life span there was always a dire need for more tanks and with player experimentation they discovered that ninja could use its shadows to tank effectively adding another job that you could invite to be a tank. From there it started to really only be used as a tank since the demand was so high and people started leveling it as a job to tank on.

Similar case with Rdm, there has always been a high demand for healers, and with the release of refresh and convert people discovered that Red Mage can in fact main heal a party. They began getting invited for that role because the demand was so high and then people started leveling Red Mage for the role.

The difference is that while ninja received abilities and armor to fulfill its new tanking role it never really lost its ability to compete in its original role as a damage dealer and continues to receive new gear and armor to assist with it. In fact for a large majority of the games lifespan Ninja has in fact been one of the BEST DDs as well. (2h jobs for a while definitely eclisped ninja for a bit but that was due to other issues).

Red Mage on the other hand has virtually been completely neglected from the ability to supply melee damage which is part of its advertised versatility. Sure, they throw us a nifty weapon from time to time that is a nice alternative if we don't have like an 8 year old sword, but when you get down to it our gear selection is atrocious. In fact do you know what was one of the biggest buffs that Red Mage has received? The 3 add-on expansions armors.... It wasn't even SE releasing suitable melee gear for Red Mage as opposed to them just releasing some universal augments and we could just happen to put on some mage armor. In fact pretty much post CoP every advancement in Red Mage melee has pretty much included the tag "All Jobs" on it. In addition we have actually been LOSING armor sets as time has gone on. We have been getting more and more isolated to ONLY mage armors and while some might say that makes sense since we are a mage there is no reason we can't be on multiple sets like some of the other hybrid jobs such as blu.

It just seems laughable that a job that was advertised as the "Jack of all Trades" has about as much melee prowess as a Bard.

[Glamdring]

let the poor rdms melee! let all the mages melee! as long as you are still getting your role in party build accomplished swing away (that's why you're carrying that stick you know). Of course, if you die I will point and laugh; if I die because my healer did already I will point and growl.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

let the poor rdms melee! let all the mages melee! as long as you are still getting your role in party build accomplished swing away (that's why you're carrying that stick you know). Of course, if you die I will point and laugh; if I die because my healer did already I will point and growl.

Why so foolish?

RDM is a Melee mage, not a healer, nuker or otherwise. They are able, but not the best.

WHM is a Healer, BLM a Nuker, so they therefore stay out of the midst of battles to do such jobs, Simple enough.

[Glamdring]

I was actually being serious, I melee on all my mage jobs unless I find I can't keep up and still heal or whatever (not to mention the occasional Spirit Taker is SWEET!). I agree rdm is not a healer mage, the enspells sure say "melee" to me. However, I don't build alot of parties, which is why you guys get hired for main healing (along with almost everything else).
I'm a 90 bard, i'm expected to pull, sleep, buff, debuff, and backup heal in 30 second repeat cycles, I know about work and you guys don't really have it any better (at least I can point at my whopping 186 MP at 90 and say "really? I'm healing? you guys must be desparate"). How dare you refresh that dark knight, the monk just lost 1.7 seconds of haste!

So draw your pointy stabby things and do your worst to the bad and evil stuff!

END THE OPPRESSION! DOWN WITH ARBITRARY PARTY RULES! RISE UP AND TAKE DOWN YOUR LEADERS! VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

i forgot to use my inside voice again, didn't i?

[Trangnai]

Lets take into consideration the many points already talked about. Red Mage was envisioned as the premier Hybrid job of the game. It was ment to be able to undertake any role when needed. While at the same time, not being able to preform the roles as well as a trade off. Thought the higher level rdm becomes the less melee gear it has available to it. These new levels are no different. But pushing that aside for the moment.

Red Mage suffers from a lack of weaponry, but to make matters worse, it also suffers from a lack of weapon skills, while its actual proficiency in its weapons is average. It still lacks the skills that most wielders of the same weapon posses. At low levels this isnt as much of an issue, but in later levels people expect a melee role to be able to deal damage while its still possible it fars much more behind then any other job that can play a melee role and even under mage jobs like white mage.

Simply put rdm like most of this game simply suffers a lack of balance. this game has been unbalanced sense it was released, but anyone can say that it was more balanced then then it is today. There are alot of examples that can be put into place.

- Most of this game (barring abyssea for the time being) the monsters are so powerful that heavy tanking is required for them, even in standard situations like exp you require a large amount of damage reduction to the point that Warrior can't even tank most exp mobs in the game (once again barring abyssea for the time being).

- Most hybrid jobs are stuck into one role rather then being seen for all the ones they can do. SE responded by enhancing these roles rather then even out other roles. Which may have been the biggest mistake.

* Red Mage - Backline Support, Healing, Nuker

* Bard - Support

* Blue Mage- DD due to its high damage quick casting spells. This job however can fill any role entirely on how it sets its spells.

* Ninja - Tank due to high evasion

* Dancer - DD with some Support and Healing

The current game isnt so much as a lack of ability as it is a lack of need, most hybrids got there roles demolished by Atmas. SE rather then making the mobs easier to handle and adding more of what jobs lacked added these insane temporary powerups (temporary being that they are lost when outside of Abyssea) that Strengthens players to the point where 2 players are all that is needed in cases where 18 should be needed. These items in some cases even take jobs that did have roles well placed for them into limbo where no player needs there role.

[Duelle]

Pretty much, the majority of RDMs (at least that I've seen on Valefor) play a mage role and not a melee one. SE sees this and tries to adjust to such, though they do recognize the melee aspect. For example, Chimeric Fleuret + OA2-4 Khanda+2 could be a reasonable weapon setup using tier 1 Enspells. +7 Sword enhancement damage, 4% DA rate increase under enspells, and fast, rapid attacks to do more damage with the enspell in a shorter period of time all would be useful. It's not that SE is ignoring the RDM's melee aspect, but they're trying to tailor the game more towards the majority's playstyle, in my opinion.

We go as we are generally needed. Even with all the hubbub about RDM healing being lesser compared to everyone else, I still get called in to spam heals.

You brought up an interesting point in inventory space. If anything, it kind of supports my belief that the ability to swap gear hurts (or at least inconveniences) hybrids way more than the one or two-trick pony jobs. Of course, you could call that balance if all roles available to a hybrid were on par with one another so that the player could definitely choose what they want to do based on the gear they carry. Sadly, that's not the case as so well put by Trangnai; to add to his point, our healing was far too valuable in a game that, at the time, had only one real healing class.

Of course, correcting the problem is a monumental task in and of itself. I'm more for streamlining the class so that you need less spread-out stats (and thus less gear) to do the job. Others I've seen want an approach similar to how the Arcane Warrior plays in Dragon Age (where their equivalent to INT doubled as their STR stat as well without having to raise STR in any way).

RDM and NIN are in a way representatives of what seems to have been Team Tanaka's design philosophy for classes pre-TAU: throw a bunch of mechanics together and see what comes out.

[Carth]

I skimmed through the majority of this thread, and there are a lot of valid points. Honestly I was expecting a lolRDMmelee thread, but this one actually seemed a lot more reasonable than most. >.>

We wore people out.

Seriously though, it's mainly because people don't care anymore. RDM Melee has been talked about ever since the game came to NA, and really got an enlightenment at ToAU due to finding out that Enspells are pretty awesome. Colibri being weak to piercing helped too. Back when Allakazham's Job forums were strong (I see the majority of RDMs there either quit or moved to here), pretty much every thread posted there was about enhancing our melee capabilities. We were pretty much the drama-llama forum but it was pretty secluded compared to the rest of the community.

It's actually well-known that RDMs can melee, and has been like this at the beginning. However, it takes more effort and skill to do so due to a harder gear selection and reliance on enhancing skill. Compared to RDM Mage, which is just there for cures most of these days, RDM Melee takes a considerable amount of knowledge and heavy effort just to be comparable to DDs. And if you do it, kudos to you.

The problem is, however, that RDM Melee has, and always will be, inferior to a good DD. This wasn't the case during the ToAU era where a decked-out RDM could actually be even with most DD jobs except SAM, WAR, and MNK, but now it's just inferior, period. RDM is also inferior to WHM and SCH in terms of healing and enhancing, but as it stands now there's far too many DD jobs compared to Mage jobs for it to really matter from that standpoint, so RDM healing is currently the niche.

Allow me to make this point however: Just upping the overall damage of our DPS or even gaining super-duper-awesome weaponskills wouldn't be enough if you want to make RDM Melee a standard option. For it to become standard you need utility, and really RDM has all the utility in the world, but it's largely dependent on what you fight and how you fight it.

The reason why we have piss-poor WS is because we can magic burst skillchains. It doesn't truly matter but this is what we're suppose to use to make up for our poor WS. The reason why we don't have extreme melee-heavy gear is because we have our spells to make up for it (Dia, Gravity, Enspells and eventually the rest of the Gain spells). The only problem with this is SE failed to make this scale appropriately as the levels got higher. Pre-FOV/ToAU, the main problem was MP management and the overall community fighting IT++ mobs.

To be fair, if you're ambitious enough you can quite easily get a static or a linkshell that welcomes melee enthusiasts as long as you realize there's a time and place for everything (pretty much anything Boss-worthy), but RDM Melee becoming an open standard to the community is left at the hands of SE to open everyone's eyes, and with SE giving RDM Shield Mastery I wouldn't hold my breath on that.