On Red Mage melee...

[tyrantsyn]

i'm not on odin, but i still feel pretty comfortable saying.. no.. there isn't.

rdm as a melee, even the THEORY of rdm as a melee, is generally unpopular. i don't LIKE it, but that is how it is.

on a personal note, as a bit of advice.. at this point in ffxi... melee RDM should not be your first job. (rdm in general prolly shouldn't be your first job) to even get to a point where people are willing to yell at you about how wrong you are, as opposed to just completely dismiss you, you need a lot of gear.

a proper redmage needs gearsets similar to what a whm, a blm, AND a war would carry. obviously not identical gear, but sets with similar intents: cure, nuke (maybe 2 nuke sets for varying resist rate mobs), buff, pdt, mdt, mnd based enfeeb, int based enfeeb (and variants on these sets for, resist rate, and the specific enfeeb. no such thing as silence potency) then to be a melee red mage, add on tp and ws sets.

you can't really half-ass any aspect of the job, ESPECIALLY if you claim to be a melee-rdm. people will grasp onto that and use it as ammo against not only you, but me, and anybody else who happens to fall on the pro-melee side of this great 162 page chasm.

for what it's worth though, a proper rdm can put out respectable numbers. but there will always be the catch 22 in that to DD, you have to not cast... every spell you cast, lowers your DPS. but if you don't cast at all, you might as well just be a warrior. dungeon crawls are rare nowadays, and they're really the only situation i can think of where the idea of rdm would be legitimately useful. having a melee that can switch over to being a mage at a moments notice is useless when you spam the same single monster fight all night and you KNOW exactly how many mages and melees you're gonna need. (and even that is assuming you are legitimately GOOD as a melee and a mage. some will argue that rdm is neither right now but.... meh..)


so yah, sorry for this soul crusher of a post, i REALLY wish rdm melee was more useful.. i have argued for it, i have done my best to represent it in a positive light, and i will continue doing it whenever possible just because that's how i want to play... but the cold hard reality is that "whenever possible" is fairly uncommon.

@Doombringer I couldn't have said this any better. /bow

[Runalin]

i'm not on odin, but i still feel pretty comfortable saying.. no.. there isn't.

rdm as a melee, even the THEORY of rdm as a melee, is generally unpopular. i don't LIKE it, but that is how it is.

on a personal note, as a bit of advice.. at this point in ffxi... melee RDM should not be your first job. (rdm in general prolly shouldn't be your first job) to even get to a point where people are willing to yell at you about how wrong you are, as opposed to just completely dismiss you, you need a lot of gear.

a proper redmage needs gearsets similar to what a whm, a blm, AND a war would carry. obviously not identical gear, but sets with similar intents: cure, nuke (maybe 2 nuke sets for varying resist rate mobs), buff, pdt, mdt, mnd based enfeeb, int based enfeeb (and variants on these sets for, resist rate, and the specific enfeeb. no such thing as silence potency) then to be a melee red mage, add on tp and ws sets.

you can't really half-ass any aspect of the job, ESPECIALLY if you claim to be a melee-rdm. people will grasp onto that and use it as ammo against not only you, but me, and anybody else who happens to fall on the pro-melee side of this great 162 page chasm.

for what it's worth though, a proper rdm can put out respectable numbers. but there will always be the catch 22 in that to DD, you have to not cast... every spell you cast, lowers your DPS. but if you don't cast at all, you might as well just be a warrior. dungeon crawls are rare nowadays, and they're really the only situation i can think of where the idea of rdm would be legitimately useful. having a melee that can switch over to being a mage at a moments notice is useless when you spam the same single monster fight all night and you KNOW exactly how many mages and melees you're gonna need. (and even that is assuming you are legitimately GOOD as a melee and a mage. some will argue that rdm is neither right now but.... meh..)


so yah, sorry for this soul crusher of a post, i REALLY wish rdm melee was more useful.. i have argued for it, i have done my best to represent it in a positive light, and i will continue doing it whenever possible just because that's how i want to play... but the cold hard reality is that "whenever possible" is fairly uncommon.

I actually know a couple melee rdm on Bismarck that would've invited me to their LS if I'd been on that server, so I thought it'd be worth asking here. Disappointing to see my favorite class has degraded to this, though.

Will say though, I don't plan on class-switching regardless. I haven't been able to play often, but I started up my rdm about three years ago, and I'm not stopping now just because it's not easy to play.

[Doombringer]

Disappointing to see my favorite class has degraded to this, though.

yah.. it's a fuckin shame dude.. i've been an rdm for like.. i don't even know at this point.. i got ffxi the day it was released for ps2 so, what, 7 years? 8?

i hate to be the party shitter i just figured i'd be honest with yah.

Will say though, I don't plan on class-switching regardless. I haven't been able to play often, but I started up my rdm about three years ago, and I'm not stopping now just because it's not easy to play.

if you insist on toughing it out, good luck. i'm with you in spirit.

i only suggest you level something else first because it will make rdm life SO much easier. a whm could show up to abyssea or voidwatch naked and still "get by" with the right atmas or temps. find a small aby group that needs a whm, and see if it's allright with them if you also take the rdm stuff. most people have multiple jobs nowadays anyway so this wouldn't be an outlandish or greedy thing to ask.

if your group really takes off you'll eventually start making an emp or 2 for each other. nobody will expect you to make your emp for your whm.. and almace is pretty damn cool.. makes rdm infinitely more fun.. but i only got mine because my aby group needed a war and i happened to also be one. sadly i've done very little aby on rdm.



and before anybody jumps down my throat, i understand there is a HUGE difference between a solid career whm and a cure mule, i recently burned whm myself and just having it skilled up and being payed attention to was like night and day compared to my friends whm mules. so i cannot fathom how much better it would be were my whm geared properly or if i knew what i was doing. but that fact of the matter remains people USE whm mules so it's got a low bar for "acceptable"

[Economizer]

and before anybody jumps down my throat, i understand there is a HUGE difference between a solid career whm and a cure mule, i recently burned whm myself and just having it skilled up and being payed attention to was like night and day compared to my friends whm mules. so i cannot fathom how much better it would be were my whm geared properly or if i knew what i was doing. but that fact of the matter remains people USE whm mules so it's got a low bar for "acceptable"

Or when they invite people's gimpy WHM they bring instead of actually gearing a job, and often will fill WHM slots in a Voidwatch over career White Mages, but will only accept damage dealers with super weapons.

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.

Scholars just do it better though, which is one of the reasons Red Mages don't get into many events, since anything where you don't need a White Mage's curaga/shellra/barelementra spells (pretty much the only benefits now since good White Mages only rarely dip into Cure V, and Scholar can match this) is better served with a Scholar. Some creative players might come up with something, but based on current trends it would be reasonable not just to expect Red Mages to stay in the invite light category but to see White Mages start to veer towards the same category once the metagame starts getting unstuck unless something changes.

[cidbahamut]

I think leveling White Mage is pretty much the worst advice you could give someone who wants to spend time playing Red Mage. Level a useful job, sure, but once they know you have White Mage there will be very few situations in which you'll be able to come Red Mage instead. White Mage is just that ridiculously powerful and overshadows Red Mage's utility in so many group activities.

I can't even begin to count how many times people have asked me if I had White Mage leveled.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Just pretend you didn't level it even if you did.

[Demon6324236]

Problem is say I goto a party, and its for instance a seal party, I take WHM over RDM simply for light procs because its coming up, now I join a VW party with one of the same people from that seal party and they point out I have used it with them before. Has happened to me, even if not common :x

[Llana_Virren]

That's when you just say "I'm going WHM" and stick around... there are very few people that DON'T have RDM levelled, and those that complain can just go level it themselves if they think it will make-or-break the dynamic of the group.

[scaevola]

On Red Mage for Abyssea stuff, as long as you have some decent cure potency gear (Light Staff does not cut it, the magian trial staff isn't hard), and you sub Scholar to cover gimpy Healing Magic skill (or skill it up I suppose), you can actually do pretty good. I'd imagine it would be a pretty solid choice for duoing inside Abyssea as well if you're well geared.

It's worth mentioning that if you're a RDM duoing in Abyssea and your potential target is so dangerous that even your tricked-out RDM is incapable of healing it, your melee partner is not without options to cover the slack, so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous considering they knew they were playing with a RDM.

At this point, IMO the biggest thing overshadowing RDM duoing in Abyssea is not WHM, but rather SCH with Embrava and SSL chests.

[Economizer]

so it's probably reasonable to call him/her out for not setting something like Mounted Champion or Future Fabulous

I get Future Fabulous since it has Magic Defense Bonus, but I don't get Mounted Champion. How is 20HP/tic going to save someone when you're healing for well over 400 on Cure III and 800 on Cure IV? I know you lose a bit of a safety net going Red Mage but there are few things in Abyssea that will be so dangerous a well equipped Red Mage won't be able to handle it, assuming the duo partner isn't a mushpot for brains.

And I don't think it is just Abyssea where Scholars are overshadowing Red Mages and White Mages.