On Red Mage melee...

[SpankWustler]

When a Thief or Dancer or such engages rather than not engaging, there's another person getting hit by stuff but you lose nothing. Even if they die, they go from sitting on their hands to sitting on their hands while having less maximum HP.

When a job formerly playing a support role engages and focuses on melee, you trade one person who was dealing with HP loss and/or status ailments for a person who is losing HP and likely being afflicted with status ailments.

The reason Red Mage loses out by engaging isn't because it's not so hot at hitting things with things, it's because Red Mage has so much to gain by not hitting things with things. That, and Blizzard IV works just fine from outside the average AoE's range so your options aren't as limited as those of a Warrior or Monk.

Obviously this doesn't apply to everything (such as a VoidWatch NM that is terrorized), but it's a pretty good general statement. Most of the new NMs, including the new ones in Dynamis, are pretty hard.

[Rayik]

The whole Voidwatch/Dynamis argument is short-sighted and temporary anyway. We want fixes for the long term, not just to make one job better at the flavor-of-the-month event currently happening, just so everything can become invalidated and turned on it's head 6 months later when the next new event is announced.

All we're asking for is a buff to one already existing aspect of our job, is that so wrong? Nobody is taking your mage-only playstyle away from any of you. Nobody is shoving a sword in your hand. Mage-only RDM's can continue on their merry way, ignoring aspects of the job they supposedly care so much for.

[cidbahamut]

The whole Voidwatch/Dynamis argument is short-sighted and temporary anyway. We want fixes for the long term, not just to make one job better at the flavor-of-the-month event currently happening, just so everything can become invalidated and turned on it's head 6 months later when the next new event is announced.

But that is how online gaming has always functioned. There's always going to be the optimal approach that gains popularity because it's distinctly more effective than the alternatives. Go look at any online game that receives patches and updates that do anything beyond fixing bugs and you will see over time there are shifts in what gets used. It's the nature of the beast.

All we're asking for is a buff to one already existing aspect of our job, is that so wrong? Nobody is taking your mage-only playstyle away from any of you. Nobody is shoving a sword in your hand. Mage-only RDM's can continue on their merry way, ignoring aspects of the job they supposedly care so much for.

The problem is that said aspect of the job has never been of much use outside of soloing or mobs which Scholars could be hitting with Great Axes. Those situations comprise a relatively small portion of the game's content, and trivially easy content is not what you focus your game design around. Red Mage has never been given the tools to truly support its melee aspect and at this point it's really too late to develop it in any serious capacity that would allow it to be incorporated into the metagame.

Right now Red Mage is a mage job, not a hybrid. It has been a mage job for years, not a hybrid. It's not a magical swordsman, it's a mage that happens to be able to equip swords. To get Red Mage on the front lines as the standard operating procedure would require changes that effectively recreate the job into something it has never been before. Anything less than that will leave us in the position we're currently in already: We've got a melee bit there, but we're still a mage and can function as a mage therefore we will be called upon to be a mage because we're more useful as a mage.

Red Mage melee really isn't as bad off as people like to make it out to be. It's just that it's an overly specialized tool in a toolbox filled with a bunch of other tools that are all much more general purpose. The only problem is that some carpenters are unhappy because there just aren't that many projects that allow them to make use of that overly specialized tool.

[Rayik]

But that is how online gaming has always functioned. There's always going to be the optimal approach that gains popularity because it's distinctly more effective than the alternatives. Go look at any online game that receives patches and updates that do anything beyond fixing bugs and you will see over time there are shifts in what gets used. It's the nature of the beast.


The problem is that said aspect of the job has never been of much use outside of soloing or mobs which Scholars could be hitting with Great Axes. Those situations comprise a relatively small portion of the game's content, and trivially easy content is not what you focus your game design around. Red Mage has never been given the tools to truly support its melee aspect and at this point it's really too late to develop it in any serious capacity that would allow it to be incorporated into the metagame.

Right now Red Mage is a mage job, not a hybrid. It has been a mage job for years, not a hybrid. It's not a magical swordsman, it's a mage that happens to be able to equip swords. To get Red Mage on the front lines as the standard operating procedure would require changes that effectively recreate the job into something it has never been before. Anything less than that will leave us in the position we're currently in already: We've got a melee bit there, but we're still a mage and can function as a mage therefore we will be called upon to be a mage because we're more useful as a mage.

Red Mage melee really isn't as bad off as people like to make it out to be. It's just that it's an overly specialized tool in a toolbox filled with a bunch of other tools that are all much more general purpose. The only problem is that some carpenters are unhappy because there just aren't that many projects that allow them to make use of that overly specialized tool.

Everything in your post is correct, and exactly the grounds to which RDM melee's like myself have been asking for a fix. To reprise the "peg-hole" metaphor from one of the earlier threads(this one? I lost track). RDM is really more like a round peg that got hammered into a square hole and got stuck.

Pigeon-holing a versatile job with so much potential into one strict role is an injustice.

[SpankWustler]

My post was meant to be explicative rather than to imply an opinion one way or the other. Blue Mage is sometimes better off chilling out in the back and doing whatever they can from there, too, and people tend to think of it as a melee.

I'm not at all opposed to more melee stuff for Red Mage, but it's best to be realistic about game mechanics. A change to Red Mage's melee capabilities would have to be huge to do anything other than to make engaging weak monsters more beneficial.

[Rayik]

My post was meant to be explicative rather than to imply an opinion one way or the other. Blue Mage is sometimes better off chilling out in the back and doing whatever they can from there, too, and people tend to think of it as a melee.

I'm not at all opposed to more melee stuff for Red Mage, but it's best to be realistic about game mechanics. A change to Red Mage's melee capabilities would have to be huge to do anything other than to make engaging weak monsters more beneficial.

I agree with this as well. Something big does need to change. The job got shoved into the backline by the community, and is hard pressed to dig itself out. As it stands, melee'ing in a group setting is absolutely counter-productive. IF it were a boon, we wouldn't have 5 threads arguing over it.

As long as SE continues to release melee buffs and gear, I will not relent in my stance that our melee side needs to be recognized and a means of making it more party-friendly is attained.

[SpankWustler]

As long as SE continues to release melee buffs and gear, I will not relent in my stance that our melee side needs to be recognized and a means of making it more party-friendly is attained.

This part is strange to me as well. It's as if SE's message is "We want to give Red Mage tools to melee. But...not to melee well. Tools to melee rather poorly, actually. Oh, and no new and useful enfeebling or enhancing magic. Never that."

You'd think they would either make the melee additions worthwhile or just focus on Red Mage as a casting/back-line presence. My God, what if someone at SE likes reading threads like this one?!

[Rayik]

This part is strange to me as well. It's as if SE's message is "We want to give Red Mage tools to melee. But...not to melee well. Tools to melee rather poorly, actually. Oh, and no new and useful enfeebling or enhancing magic. Never that."

You'd think they would either make the melee additions worthwhile or just focus on Red Mage as a casting/back-line presence. My God, what if someone at SE likes reading threads like this one?!

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

[saevel]

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

Certain RDM's running around soloing HNM's had alot to do with this. From a developers perspective seeing someone do that, in a way that was never designed for and potentially breaking the game, will wreck havoc on any game balance if your not careful. Thus SE has been over protective of it's game balance, to the point of nearly destroying RDM.

[Duelle]

I really get the feeling like they are scared of what potential would be unleashed by RDM if they got really creative with it. It feels like they're handling RDM with hazmat suits, while they just toss whatever overpowered trick and ability at other jobs without a care. It just feels like every little thing we get is like a sample-sized bite, while other jobs get entire 3 course meals.

This is one of those issues that I believe stems from the fact the job has access to everything out of the box. This by itself is not much of a problem provided proper balancing mechanics are in place, but is made much worse by the fact that you can *improve* potency of whatever you do because you can swap gear mid-combat. Being in melee gear hitting things, tossing out a Cure with baseline potency and tossing out nukes at baseline potency is very different from being in melee gear, switching to a cure potency set whenever you cast cure, switch to an ele staff and MAB gear if you cast a nuke, change to FC set to get your buffs off, switching to your stoneskin set for max stoneskin potency, etc.