On Red Mage melee...

[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.

[Seriha]

Being even with other melee jobs in the ToAU era is a pretty out there claim (we largely sat on an ATK deficiency with Enspells resisting on harder prey), as well as "easily" finding people willing to tolerate melee right out of the box. Otherwise, I've been saying for years that SE needs to do something pretty drastic to shake up the perception of the job. Their whole baby step angle hasn't done jack and I dare say the only reason we got CDC was because we happened to be on sword trials with BLU and PLD.

[Carth]

Long time no see Seriha. 8)

I largely based my "even" claim on the data from Alla, mainly from Starfox and Savell.

The only reason why the baby step angle hasn't worked is because SE failed to follow up with anything after Composure and the Enspell II line. Everything after that has either been mage-based or a general toss-out towards everyone (Khanda for example) which pretty much gives me the sign SE simply gave out Composure and Enspell II just to give us a slice of cake, only to take away the rest of it when they essentially killed off RDM tanking, rather thoroughly at that.

[Seriha]

Eh, you'll never win me over with that "80% of a true DD" crap that old stuff tried to boast. Aside from no guarantee those parses weren't done with gimps, AFKers, and idiots in the group, when the best you can do is 80%, why not go for the 100% of another job when they don't have to jump through as many hoops? "But you can cure!" doesn't help when the role is already covered and a bit why I've also believed RDM's improved melee prowess should hinge largely on MP to keep all the people afraid of the next Superman in check. Of course, that's only if we're looking purely at damage as an improvement.

[Supersun]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

[Trangnai]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

If wern't using a piercing weapon weapon on Colibri something is wrong. Rdm or not, any other weapons didn't really make the cut unless your job couldn't use piercing. But war, sam and drg owned the ToAU era as DDs thought most jobs like blu that could easily deal as much dmg due to there spells were overlooked.

My issue isn't as much as dealing damage as it is making front lining a valuable choice. A job that was designed to be a hybrid should be able to fill all roles, while never being able to equal a master of that role. This means that we should be the goto guy of any role if that role cannot be filled. we don't do the best job but were workable. The problem is our efficiency is TOO low. The lack of gear available to use doesn't help the fact. Even more so the fact of the high need to swap gear in this game requiring us to be able to get gear sets for every role we wish to play. And considering this game has one of the worst inv systems i've ever seen... you can expect that to fill up quickly. Our lack of new gear for curtain roles like meleeing is another issue.

[Duelle]

My issue isn't as much as dealing damage as it is making front lining a valuable choice. A job that was designed to be a hybrid should be able to fill all roles, while never being able to equal a master of that role. This means that we should be the goto guy of any role if that role cannot be filled. we don't do the best job but were workable. The problem is our efficiency is TOO low.

The name of the game for front-lining hybrids has always been a numbers game. There have to be insane extenuating circumstances to allow a hybrid to take a non-optimal front-line position when the group is better off having that hybrid heal and/or support. Even utility takes a backseat to damage at the end of the day.

Even more so the fact of the high need to swap gear in this game requiring us to be able to get gear sets for every role we wish to play. And considering this game has one of the worst inv systems i've ever seen... you can expect that to fill up quickly. Our lack of new gear for curtain roles like meleeing is another issue.

Glad to see I'm not the only that takes issue to overt gear-swapping.

[Trangnai]

The name of the game for front-lining hybrids has always been a numbers game. There have to be insane extenuating circumstances to allow a hybrid to take a non-optimal front-line position when the group is better off having that hybrid heal and/or support. Even utility takes a backseat to damage at the end of the day.Glad to see I'm not the only that takes issue to overt gear-swapping.

Its not as much the swaping as it is the inventory system, if you really want to play a rdm or any cast job correctly (this also includes rdm as a front line role) you need alot of sets of gear. Playing the front line role as a rdm i use 60 of my slots just in gear. This includes TP setup, WS setup, Enfeebling, and Enhancing Sets, as well as a dark magic set for Bio III. This also dosent inculde the ammount of gear sotred in my mog house/safe that i may need to use for the roles on occasion or when using curtian sub-jobs or my back line gear.

Jobs like nin also suffer due to needing tools ontop of casting/WS/enmity etc.

Curtian fixes could be obviosuly making sets that we won't need to swap (Hybrid gear etc.) or making it so we can swap gear for other invs we have available to use via macros (like Mog Sack/Satchel).

Most jobs got decent full time gear via AF3 but rdm still lacks a decent full-time set. and jobs like blu got there gear split 60/40. Red Mage got a Ghetto blm setup or something unless your using AF3+2 you don't even get most of the buffs to what a rdm is primarly used for. In fact exculding anything +2 the only pieces i personally find useful for rdm for me is the feet and cape.

[Duelle]

Its not as much the swaping as it is the inventory system, if you really want to play a rdm or any cast job correctly (this also includes rdm as a front line role) you need alot of sets of gear. Playing the front line role as a rdm i use 60 of my slots just in gear. This includes TP setup, WS setup, Enfeebling, and Enhancing Sets, as well as a dark magic set for Bio III. This also doesn't include the amount of gear stored in my mog house/safe that i may need to use for the roles on occasion or when using certain sub-jobs or my back line gear.

This makes me go back to my comment about streamlining certain aspects of the job. I can understand swaps for WS from TP (I do have melee jobs leveled, after all), but I've taken issue to the fact that some mages need individual sets per spell they cast.

Certain fixes could be obviosuly making sets that we won't need to swap (Hybrid gear etc.) or making it so we can swap gear for other invs we have available to use via macros (like Mog Sack/Satchel).

I'd rather make it baseline and native to the class. I've never been a fan of fixing things through gear. Not to mention that things like Corselet have been tossed at me when discussing hybrid gear, and I cringe both because of the price and the fact that the hybrid in question would still be stuck waiting to hit the level reqs for such a piece of gear.

[saevel]

TBH only reaching 80% of a true DDs damage with a +25% piercing bonus speaks volumes of how far RDM is ACTUALLY behind.

*Cough*
The numbers were not done vs colibri, they were mostly done vs mamool. Calibri while being weak to piercing have annoying magic resistance, it took ~LOTS~ of enhancing skill to get reliable full land rates on Enblizzard.

That being said, RDM melee in ToAU was "ok", it needed "super gear" more than anything, our best stuff was basically AH level gear. A RDM in our best "AH Level" gear could compete with other melee's in their "AH Level" gear, of course they got MUCH better "end game" gear later, we got ... Nashira. BRD got better "end game" melee gear then RDM, eventually even PUP was given better "end game" gear.

As a job RDM is pretty well balanced in all aspects, our not getting Sang Blade naively yet getting Aero Edge while being on the Magian swords but not on the Daggers is a huge ~WTF~, it still has me scratching my head over what the devs must of been thinking. Composure is pretty amazing, especially once you got some yummy +2 emp armor and 420 enhancing magic, Enspell 1 is starting to lack in the damage category and the 2's are still broke. We're getting stat based self buffs, and while SE is obviously being stingy and making us wait for the STR/DEX/INT versions, they are coming. Spell wise we're pretty well set.

So what it comes down to is gear, we ~NEED~ better melee gear. We need stuff like what BLU and DNC got. Haste / attack / accuracy all wrapped up together in a warm yummy bundle. We need access to better Sword WS without needing an Emp Weapon, native S.blade would be perfect for RDM's style. Other then that the job is balanced.

As for the 80% concept, its simply. If RDM could equal a MNK / WAR / DRK / BLU / DRG, while still having all our tools, then there would be no reason for the other jobs. You could just have RDM RDM RDM RDM, ect.. on everything and not want for damage. It is the exact same as giving a WAR a MP pool, Cure IV, sleep, dispel, slow, dia, convert, haste, refresh, phalanx, stoneskin and tier IV nukes. Just imagine the nightmare beast that would create.

And its Saevel, not Savall