On Red Mage melee...

[Seriha]

Perhaps for your own sanity, Sty, I'd propose a greater consideration on whether or not you wish to further the current conversation.

It's no secret both sides are sick of each other, and it's hard to perceive any genuine civility when indirect insults get thrown around in hopes of avoiding moderation. Yeah, some of us "stupid melee RDMs" notice those things. And while I won't agree with Due on all things, GG's attempt to vilify him is but another example of the perpetual rancor.

At its simplest, the presentation hinged on how Blizzard attempted to handle similar hybrid issues in WoW, namely how Paladins were often stuck healing and supporting in raids instead of being a more traditionally viewed tank class or holy damage dealer of sorts. While conceptual problems can be shared between the two games, both are built on different foundations. To that end, one thing that worked there might be outright impossible here. Blizzard also arguably has the means to totally revamp a class should they so choose, too.

Naturally, honing in on range variance and possible spell library restrictions would set off giant, buzzing alarms for those content with the now, but ultimately they'd rather froth at the proposition instead of understanding an interest in balance depending on how the finalized styles came to be. Conceptually, that level of detail was never reached, but the vaguest of suppositions certainly left their negative mark. He and I have had conversations of the notion in private, and while I urged him not to suggest what inevitably was, namely for this very reason, I can at least respect trying to bring something to the table other than, "Fixing RDM melee is impossible so SE shouldn't try!"

Nowadays, some might liken the idea to SCH's Arts and Addenda then bemoan how a loss of "access to everything" would utterly destroy the class, but it's just a blanket fear of change. Done right, I have no doubt a revamp could work, but I can't expect it, nor would I champion it over building upon what's currently present in the game and SE's track record of sluggishness. Given the list of points I brought up very early in the thread, I'd hope it would support that claim. And while it's fun to theorycraft on new things from time to time, there is no pursuit of God Mode from the people genuinely interested in solving this problem. Maybe a joke here and there to ruffle the opposition's feathers, but that God Mode notion is pretty much more mudslinging to sully the cause, too.

Regardless, you won't be changing their minds just as they can't change mine or others for melee improvements. It's all in SE's court after we've screamed in their back yard. Temper aside, I can't quite say they're listening to us yet. The big picture still needs to unravel with possible skill and WS adjustments, then whatever they have in mind for enfeebles and resistance issues.

[Rayik]

Here are the facts:
3) Red Mage has never come close to performing as well as a dedicated DD in the melee department at the level cap. We are talking less than half the power of a "real" DD job, even with practically no casting being done.

Didn't Doom already disprove this? With hard numbers? The rest of your "facts" are spot on though.

This is a fallacy that I see on these forums a lot. Devs aren't magic. They don't, and probably straight up can't, rewrite or modify the engine that the game is running on right now and the developer toolkit that they are using to mold it. The developers work within the confines of the game as it is right now, not just because they want to, but because they have to. They cannot simply flip a switch and allow players to fly. They can't just make Red Mages gods, either.

What tools do they have to work with? Combat skills, Job Abilities, Job Traits, Weapon Skills, and Spells. What combination of any of these would make Melee *more prominent than casting* on anything HNM-level? None, save turning Red Mage into Primeval Brew.

Why does it always go back to HNM's? Aren't these the same NM's that not even actual DD's are even melee'ing on due to tp feed? There's a bigger game out there than just HNM's, and by being a versatile hybrid we can use magic in situations where melee is not viable. We're not asking for RDM's to be "gods", we're not asking to melee 100% of the time, on 100% of the game's content. If that's what you really think, you have seriously misread a majority of the debate. We're not all Duelle. I like Duelle, but I don't agree with his approach. I think you are unfairly exaggerating this entire topic.

Can they buff melee? Sure. Can they ever realistically buff it to the point where it is favorable over casting on hard targets? No. Why? Because the intrinsic benefits of back-line magery are vastly superior to whatever DPS Red Mage Melee can bring to the table.

Missing the point of RDM melee entirely. Not sure of you realize this, but by auto-attacking a mob, you don't have to actively attack something in lieu of spellcasting; the attacks come on their own, in between spells. Fast Cast, a native trait that RDM excels in even without gear, does wonders for this. Unless you are running some script/app whatever that has you absolutely casting a spells every single millisecond of the game. RDM melee damage is supplemental; it's like an extra DoT, that just happens to feed mad tp to the mob. This is not practical in the current phase of the game, and we are all aware.

The anti-melee side seems to think that we magically stop casting spells the moment we step up and swing. Casting spells does slow down the rate of our melee attacks, but they're still there. A clever rdm can even time their spells to coincide with their attacks better. Mindblowing concept, I know.

You're missing the point. It's not about wanting to field suggestions for magical buffs. It's simply a note that every time the Devs spend time sitting around and tweaking swords, that's time they're not spending working on fixes to Red Mage's magical aspect. Do any of us mind a melee buff here or there? Naw. But do we think this needs to be the Developers focus for the next 9 levels? Hell no. Red Mage is a solid job but it could definitely use some tweaking, and frankly we will never consider Melee as anything but a toy. Does it bother me if you like your toy and think it's fun? Nah, go play with it, I don't mind. But I would definitely be upset if the Devs spent all their time tweaking that toy and none on the aspect of Red Mage that people actually use in serious play. Does that make sense?

Speaking of fallacies... The Devs are already working on the mage-side of RDM. They have been for a long time, and when 99 rolls around, RDM will be an even more powerful mage than before. What is OMG SO TERRIBLE about that fact that the Dev's are FINALLY paying some attention to a broken, unbalanced piece of the game? RDM melee has been there since day 1. It's been mistreated and ignored for a long, long time, maybe they're trying to set the record straight? Is it really so impossible to imagine that the Dev's could possible be looking into multiple aspects of a job simultaneously? They've already said they are working on enfeebles and enhancements. There are still several levels to go. Seriously, let us have our melee update for once, for crying out loud. It's not like the job is finished after this update; the game will continue to get updates even after lvl 99 is reached. Chill.

This thread will just be remade if it's locked. It already has a billion iterations everywhere considering no one bothers posting in this subforum unless it's about melee. That's not to say the majority of forum-goers like melee. It's just that quite a few people are turned off by what more typical/moderate Red Mages would consider fanaticism. Most magical Red Mages just don't have the patience to deal with the melee crowd. They don't exactly have a sterling reputation.

I've said before, I respect your skills and knowledge on the job. But really, you have been one of the loudest, most arrogant and condescending anti-melee voices on this entire forum. Whenever someone even mentioned how to possibly make melee viable, you came in on your high horse stomping and shouting down anyone who disagreed with you. If another thread gets made, you'd likely run in and crap all over it too. You have had a very heavy hand in turning this thread into a warzone, instead of simply letting those "few" of us who enjoy melee, ya know, actually have a discussion about melee. The fact that even SE sees a need to at least make some kind of adjustment in melee's favor just isn't even enough for you. You have to have the job your way or else. It seems impossible to you that you are somehow not a doctrined, deputized official SE authority on the job, and that other people may play the job differently than you.

I honestly think RDM melee could have been more viable before now, if players were allowed to actually discuss the obstacles we face, without getting shouted down and suppressed every time we bring it up. If we could find the reasons exactly why it doesn't work without having to defend ourselves from getting trolled every other post, we probably could have found a better resolution to the entire situation a long time ago.

[Karbuncle]

i think the only thing Doom proved was a Great Geared Empyrean RDM can out DD Full AF1 pick up noobs.

He didn't even scratch the potential of the real DD in the party.

[Rayik]

i think the only thing Doom proved was a Great Geared Empyrean RDM can out DD Full AF1 pick up noobs.

He didn't even scratch the potential of the real DD in the party.

Is that so terrible, though? I think had he successfully out-damaged a true DD, there would have been more of an issue. He still dished out pretty nice numbers, and in the long run, it was more damage than he would have done sitting on the backline. RDM melee isn't about replacing any specialist DD, it's to add extra support damage, at least in my opinion.

[Crimson_Slasher]

To the person who said rdm cant be made to do heavy damage through JA/JT/Stat/Spell methods, i can just spell out an idea based upon my rdm to show thats a load of crap, ill even post a reasonable one.

Ethreal Charged (Ether is the potion for MP, this is a JA, with a 3-5 min duration, and recast)
-Upon strike, adds % of current MP to Enspell damage.

Now lets look at my melee rdm, im rocking nearly 700MP in my tp build and ws build, at 1% i gain 7% enspell damage, at 5% 35 enspell damage, at 10% 70 enspell damage, at 15% 105 enspell damage. And this doesnt contribute to the base enspell damage. Now what makes this balanced? Any casting while slowing our swings takes away from our damage overheads, but thankfully our refresh spell makes up for this by ticking back that mp rather proficiently, and you can bet, that percent based damage is right up square's alley. It still doesnt even touch drk's soul eater for damage, but conversely can be kept up longer. And if there were gear to add percentages to this (preferably in the neck, ring, or earing slots) we start to see some sharp numbers, even at 20% where we are adding a bonus 140 damage before the native 20ish enspell damage, then tack on whatever damage you hit atop that. Get a +2 Khanda 2-4 hitter, and either a joytoy, or a 2-3 Khanda +1 and you now have a 2-7 hitting rdm landing 163 damage overhead per strike, and my rdm has 24% haste gear, goading or a v-belt would push that more. So with one JA, set to 10%-20%, my attack rounds land...lets say 15 base damage, 21 enspell damage, and we will use the 15%'s 105 damage, so per attack im landing 141 damage x2-7, at the low end, 282, at the upper end, 987 per attack round. And a delay of... 163.68 with dual wield III, suppa, 24% haste, and haste spell, which means that with haste samba (merited) id be 1%~ from haste cap (though that wouldnt work upon reflection as enspells do not stack with sambas...), and my damage overtime would be crazy, and seeing as they can use the soul eater code as a base, removing the hp(mp) consumption, and making it check current mp, it can simplify how quickly this ability could be developed.

Edit: I forgot to add this MP is based roughly on mine outside of abyssea. So this would scale sharply in abyssea, especially with a refresh atma, or MP*+% atmas.

[Karbuncle]

Is that so terrible, though? I think had he successfully out-damaged a true DD, there would have been more of an issue. He still dished out pretty nice numbers, and in the long run, it was more damage than he would have done sitting on the backline. RDM melee isn't about replacing any specialist DD, it's to add extra support damage, at least in my opinion.

Not saying it was terrible, Just saying it really proved nothing that we didn't already know, RDM is a competently mediocre DD who with the right gear can outperform absolutely terrible players.

I don't mind the whole RDM melee debate personally, and while i wont recite my entire feelings (dig em up!), I feel the discussion isn't too horrible.

[saevel]

i think the only thing Doom proved was a Great Geared Empyrean RDM can out DD Full AF1 pick up noobs.

He didn't even scratch the potential of the real DD in the party.

Considering I was part of that debate and I pointed out some VERY inconsistent numbers (600 average CDC is BS) I feel pretty qualified in saying that the WAR in that PT wasn't a crappy DD. The MNK who was in the thread even corrected me when I told him (on purpose) that they had picked out some lol AH WAR to play the part of the dudd. That WAR was well geared, he just wasn't super geared like the MNK was. Also I believe from looking over the numbers that the MNK was ridding CS full time and doing everything possible to full time tank, this inflated his numbers to unrealistic portions. Throwing another identical MNK into that group would not of yielded such large amounts of DPS.

Doom did about right considering he was playing a worst case scenario (high def / VIT monsters with heavy magic resistance and -mdt). He kept up with the non-emp but well geared / played WAR, and the BLU was just afk constantly. Give the WAR an Ukon and he would of pulled ahead by a good chunk, but that's to be expected considering WAR is a pure DD class.

At 75 it was 80% of a "Pure DD", this was me vs myself (SAM / WAR vs RDM) at the same camp over a period of time, I'm an extremely aggressive DD and keep on-top of all my JA's and gear swaps. Since then the "Pure DDs" have gotten a ton of new gear and buffs, their Emp armor is awesome, RDM has gotten shafted in melee gear, thankfully our Emp armor is made of win but not really for melee. If we had Sang Blade natively our Emp armor would make a perfect WS macro set. Due to all this, "Pure DDs" have pulled ahead even further, we're possibly 50~70% of a "Pure DD" now, with the situation heavily depending on weapon selection. SE just needs to add us on all the DNC/THF/NIN/BLU type gear they keep making, thankfully next update it looks like we're on much of it. Give us Sword EX weapon skills and it would even things out for the non-Emp crowd (CDC really is a zero to hero type of change).

[Rayik]

Not saying it was terrible, Just saying it really proved nothing that we didn't already know, RDM is a competently mediocre DD who with the right gear can outperform absolutely terrible players.

I don't mind the whole RDM melee debate personally, and while i wont recite my entire feelings (dig em up!), I feel the discussion isn't too horrible.

Right on, but I'm just saying given all our spells and abilities we have at our disposal, even while melee'ing, we shouldn't be dealing top tier damage. That'd be beyond broken. We have other spells beside the obvious melee buffs that help us in melee as well, and happen to help the rest of the party; our basic enfeebles such as Paralyze, Blind, etc are just more tools in the toolkit that make the mob easier to kill. Period. I'm perfectly fine doing mediocre damage if I can effectively cripple the mob simultaneously. That's what separates us from standard DD's like WAR and SAM. That's why we'll never(and should never) be dealing damage on par with those jobs.

[Neisan_Quetz]

That War was terrible or at least playing the part of a terrible one.

[saevel]

That War was terrible or at least playing the part of a terrible one.

And by what logic do you use to base this conclusion on? That he was dealing similar damage to an Emp RDM?

I've already gone over their parse data with a fine toothed comb, the WAR wasn't terrible, merely not an Emp WAR.

I smelled something wasn't quite right, I don't trust parses done by of RDM's who are not themselves a RDM, they usually have ulterior motives and tend to set the RDM up to fail. I played along and dealt out the whole "WAR must of been terrible" argument, the MNK took the bait and responded. The WAR wasn't terrible it turns out, the BLU was. The MNK was an outstandingly geared Emp monk who was CS tanking and also was parsing himself. He also pulled the dirty trick of "turned off the parse when someone (most likely him) died".

So really that parse was crap from the get out and the reason I tell people to ignore the "percent of total damage done" part of parses, it's meaningless. Instead look at the min / max / average damage per hit, average WS damage, melee accuracy, cure amount, damage taken and so forth.