On Red Mage melee...

[Neisan_Quetz]

What is best in slot can easily change depending on mob and other gear, although not as widely as it would for say Thf.

[saevel]

Honestly absolute "best" is pretty straight forward for RDM, if only because we don't have that many options. Your going to want 25% gear haste, 500 Enhancing magic, and either a DEX build for CDC or a MND for Req (or both). Honestly most RDM's will find the MND build far easier to make due to us using that for enfeebles anyway.

[Crimson_Slasher]

What is best in slot can easily change depending on mob and other gear, although not as widely as it would for say Thf.

See that isnt what im saying at all. Im not looking for a penultimate or ultimate option of "THIS IS IT!"

What im more talking about is...Okay well let me give a few examples.

Antares Harness.
This piece is great for those red mages using CDC, having the most DEX of any body availible to red mage. On a second note it also has a fair dose of accuracy and evasion making you hit more often while getting hit less often! Lastly the AGI this has also means less TP fed to mobs, and with 2 less AGI than the highest +AGI body this piece can also be used effectively for Extentiator!
Rating; **** (Four stars, which would be voteable)

Brego Gloves.
Here are some great gloves for reaching the haste cap. While the 4 haste is a nice bonus on its own, the 9 accuracy helps make certain you wont be missing as often. Sadly the STR and AGI are nice, but arent particularly high and dont offer too much for the TP phase and with better options for weaponskills, it seems the STR/AGI+5 are just an afterthought. Despite that, this is a great piece that has satisfied my expectations for a haste piece.
Rating; *****

Heafoc Mitts.
Hmm, hard to say clearly on this piece. It offers the most STR of any hands availible to Red Mage, but with penalties to DEX and Accuracy, it really hurts the score of these piece. All in all its still a great piece but its hard to balance at times, use em if you can, but dont stress it if you dont.
Rating; **

See thats the kind of thing i mean, it doesnt say "best for CDC when fighting X" and while it lists some obvious things, it also lists something less commonly talked about by new players (Being that agi affects TP feed).

Thats the sort of thing i am refering to. Like i said, it doesnt need to be just for rdm and not just melee. But thats what im getting at.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Well pre update, Antares pretty much was 'it' for CDC body, the next best option being Assault Jerkin, anything after that wasn't worth mentioning. The first piece that's come close/surpassing it in damage is the new kudzu body. For Haste Hands, Brego are a step up from Dusk+1 (barely if you don't need the accuracy and a large one if you do). Discounting +str during TP phase... idk what to say...

Heafoc were only good for Vorpal Blade/Death Blossom, neither of which are either viable most of the time, or have been replaced by meritable weaponskills.

It's probably far easier to check with various forums with Rdm melee threads and ask there for ideal/fairly easy to acquire sets. If you know where to look, ask Motenten about his DPS sheets, he has several made for several jobs and it will give you a good idea of example pieces to use for tp/ws once you get used to reading it.

[Crimson_Slasher]

For people who do this regularly like us, there isnt much need for this, i know what gear i want to aim for, and the only doubts i ever have are when two pieces of gear are close and need to be measured. Its true that these newbie rdms and all jobs for that matter, should be on the boards asking about this stuff, but some people get embarassed, or are too shy. And still others dont/cant understand spreadsheets. Say what you will, i still think a catalogue of sorts is the way to go. Thought it really feels like you are taking me saying this as more of me personally saying "I dont know what to wear!" Im already working on ruby pants (Wish people shouted for Kalasutrax on my server more than 1x a week...)

All im saying is those visual learners can do better with a graphical representation, and too many resources now dont even have a mid-range of gear options. That player without an assault jerkin, a morri body, and antares harness (and Kudzu now) would just look at the list and go "What do i use until i can get one of those?" and unlike nearly every other job sans sch, smn, whm, and blm, they dont have pink or white gear to hobble along with. /endrant. All im saying is if i had a place to put it up that wouldnt look shabby and allowed some sorta voting/comments/Reviews functions, id do it myself. I just lack the resourced to make such a website that wouldnt look cheezy, and doing it on the wiki i feel would take up more space than id be allowed. Would be a nice community project though, just i dont think this (the rdm community) is the one to spearhead it. But a guy can dream. The resources are out there, theyre just scattered wide, or have big gaps in them i guess.

[Duelle]

All im saying is those visual learners can do better with a graphical representation, and too many resources now dont even have a mid-range of gear options. That player without an assault jerkin, a morri body, and antares harness (and Kudzu now) would just look at the list and go "What do i use until i can get one of those?" and unlike nearly every other job sans sch, smn, whm, and blm, they dont have pink or white gear to hobble along with. /endrant.

We realize this, but this goes back to a point I made in the OP: RDM melee gear is lacking. Unlike the other jobs with melee capabilities, we don't have much in terms of hold-over gear. This is made worse by my other point, in that non-linear gear progression compounds the problem when your options are either mediocre or non-existant.

That was largely why I went trough the trouble of coming up with a revision for Evoliths in General Discussion, just so that our job could have something that could hold us over in some capacity, specially taking into account that the devs aren't going to directly help us in that regard. By comparison, BLUs got melee hold-overs (and then some) on a silver platter, and believe me when I say it annoys me to no end.

All im saying is if i had a place to put it up that wouldnt look shabby and allowed some sorta voting/comments/Reviews functions, id do it myself. I just lack the resourced to make such a website that wouldnt look cheezy, and doing it on the wiki i feel would take up more space than id be allowed. Would be a nice community project though, just i dont think this (the rdm community) is the one to spearhead it. But a guy can dream. The resources are out there, theyre just scattered wide, or have big gaps in them i guess.

The infighting seems to have died down between the two RDM camps, but with such a small playerbase I don't see anyone leading an effort with lasting results. The websites I mentioned earlier exist solely because you have a ton of dedicated individuals theorycrafting left and right, creating spreadsheets and sites like Elitist Jerks largely contributing to that. Even now that WoW's population has taken the hit due to cataclysm, there are still numerous individuals providing parses and results and allocating DPS/HPS/Effective Health values to gear. In all honesty, we'd need to have like 20 Motentens to start catching up to that kind of momentum. With their own websites. On top of a large community of people looking into things in connection to the three roles in a group (I focused on DPS sites, but you also have sites like restodruid.com for people who play healers). Without the devs trying to throw curveballs to keep things "mysterious"; seriously, the biggest contribution to theorycrafting during Wrath of the Lich King was made by Ghostcrawler himself, where he actually explained how the stat Armor Penetration worked in detail, down to numbers, formulas and everything. We don't see Ito or Tanaka stepping into threads to contribute to that degree.

[Demon6324236]

Im already working on ruby pants (Wish people shouted for Kalasutrax on my server more than 1x a week...)

I feel your pain.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Like i said, if i had the means, id spearhead it myself, i have coding experience but not on webpages. Webdesign is largely foreign to me. I could see a large ls, elitist or not doing something like this, sadly, my social ls feels sometimes like everyone is too busy to skill/gear/etc on most jobs. If they cant have time to do that, then i dont want to distract them more for what is largely a side project. Especially with so many roles, functions, jobs, specialized ws and spells, its no small undertaking. Im sure when we stop getting pelted/flooded with updates it might get easier for it to be done.

[Demon6324236]

Honestly Im happy they keep updating though, it means 2 things. 1 we might see this game live on & grow some still even after 14 is redone. 2 is we might also see RDM get fixed up a bit, which is always a happy thought.

[Karbuncle]

also, I was discussing with Saeval i think earlier about Ephemeron as a weapon. Haste+3, TP Drain. Well

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/18904/ephemeron

Looking at accounts here, the TP Drain is incredibly significant. 59~ "Almost 100% TP" drained. Proc rate I didnt get too, BUt it drains an absurd amount of TP. So i think i can safely say this kills just about any other offhand depending on the mob you're fighting and if it would resist. (Still impossible to obtain, and no i dont care if you already sicussed it)