On Red Mage melee...

[SnapperTrx]

Given the tons of ideas I see in this thread, Im going to rehash mine. The reason? They could be implemented before Monday's update because they would require little to no additional programming and would benefit RDM's right a way. They were as follows (slightly modified to make more sense):

1. RDM needs to have it's Parry skill greatly enhanced. If the focus on RDM is 'fencing' (ie, Fencers Earring, Fencers Ring, Fencing Degen, Estoqueur's gear) then we need to have at least a B in parry. I can understand the low shield skill, but Parry is a must.

2. RDM must have the 'Fencer' trait. To not have this trait on a job who's relic armor is obviously based on fencing (Duelists gear, Estoqueur's gear, anything with 'Fencer' in the name) is really just dumb. Sound harsh? Well it is! The equivalent would be having a skill called 'Warriors Rage' and not giving it to WAR!

3. Fencer V: RDM exclusive, make it high level, 80 or 90. Leave the critical hit rate and TP bonus from Fencer IV and instead add 'Occasionally attacks twice' (sword only) and 'Occasionally counter-attacks after parrying' (sword only). This would give RDM's a good increase in damage output in a party, but also help out a little (just a little) during solo play.

It would be simple for Square to toss this into the upcoming update, and the benefits for solo'ing RDM's or those that don't often use /NIN would be great! (I myself have taken to /DRK). The added 'Double Attack' would make us more relevent in parties as we could increase damage output and pull of weaponskills more often, and the 'Counter attack' would help greatly during solo runs, as RDMs dont have a great damage output anyhow, and every little bit counts. And I still stick to my guns that because many items related to RDM contains the word Fencer, we need to have our parry skill moved to an B (or mabe even an A).

[Doombringer]

just got my almace to 85 recently and i can say that if they just made CdC questable (so you didn't NEED to go through all that emp crap) it would go a long way to helping rdm melee.

as is right now, i can keep up with most NON emp holding jobs dmg-wise, (just going by my limited experience of course)and i can even compete with the emp holding thf in our ls. (course that's just a thf, but i'm just a red mage, so...) all that with my melee set still far from optimized.

of course my damage suffers against anything SERIOUS, casting burden and all, but i think that's about where i "should" be as an rdm. if anything i'm a little op now in pt play.. all i have to do is stop casting to become a "real" dd, and it's not like i haven't been gear swapping everything but weapons ANYWAY since qufim, so it's not like my spells have suffered much at all. (but again.. i had to get an emp weapon to get here. so maybe it's justified if i'm a little op)

obviously i can't estimate how much dmg i'd be doing using CdC with my old shamshir+2 or something, but the ws itself is a pretty significant buff compared to death blossom. if it were practical to attain it would be a big deal, and might get rdm to about where it belongs.

as sun has been saying... if, instead of cdc, they added a powerful elemental ws NATIVE to rdm, that would mainly fill the same role, and even "gimp" /nin a little bit.

[Seriha]

CDC's one of the better Emp WS, no doubt, but coaxing people to endure Guku's Aery and such for a melee RDM will definitely be an uphill battle. It'd be around this point where I'd suggest people also level PLD and BLU to get the most out of the sword, but PLD suffers its own popularity issues (though arguably being the best for CDC use with their gear options) while a lot of people just look to BLU as the niche grellow whore. I have BLU and RDM leveled, myself, and just getting aid for the Briareus stage has been rough as well as SE hating on me with single drop kills. I'm sure tempting people with +2 items would make the Sobek phase easier, but still, Guku's a cockblock for everyone and, at best, 5 min kill/15 min pop, spawns 72 times a day to satisfy every single person on a server looking for a Kannagi or Almace. That might complete 2 a day with enough double drops from Sobek, but if you figure 30 kills in actuality, that's 10 hours of Guku alone. Probably more spread over 2-3 hours per session with varying competition along the way.

WoE would be more tolerable if it wasn't a total clusterfeck of suck and random.

[Doombringer]

CDC's one of the better Emp WS, no doubt, but coaxing people to endure Guku's Aery and such for a melee RDM will definitely be an uphill battle. It'd be around this point where I'd suggest people also level PLD and BLU to get the most out of the sword, but PLD suffers its own popularity issues (though arguably being the best for CDC use with their gear options) while a lot of people just look to BLU as the niche grellow whore. I have BLU and RDM leveled, myself, and just getting aid for the Briareus stage has been rough as well as SE hating on me with single drop kills. I'm sure tempting people with +2 items would make the Sobek phase easier, but still, Guku's a cockblock for everyone and, at best, 5 min kill/15 min pop, spawns 72 times a day to satisfy every single person on a server looking for a Kannagi or Almace. That might complete 2 a day with enough double drops from Sobek, but if you figure 30 kills in actuality, that's 10 hours of Guku alone. Probably more spread over 2-3 hours per session with varying competition along the way.

WoE would be more tolerable if it wasn't a total clusterfeck of suck and random.

agreed.. that's why i'm saying it needs to be easier to get. it's kind of bs that you need an emp weapon just to play the job as it's advertised.

i'm just throwing it out there cuz it seems like an easy fix, though admittedly not ideal.. CdC already exists.. give it to rdms without an emp (or emp-1) weapon. if need be, do this for all emp ws's and there respective jobs. then just buff the actual emp weapons accordingly to make up for the loss of there "unique" ws.

they did it with the mythic ws's? (except then they forgot to buff the actual mythic weapons <.<)

[Supersun]

The only thing is that there's no way in hell they will give JUST Rdm a way to get CDC natively. They would open that up to every job and from there it's hardly a fix since everyone has an emp WS. Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind being able to learn an Emp WS natively. I mean I don't want to exactly be tied to the same weapon all the way to 99 that I have now. TBH CDC is mostly crack like in abyssea. While it certainly is better then most of our options outside of abyssea it's not quite the unsurpassable WS that it is inside of abyssea. I wouldn't be surprised if we got 1-2 new WS on the way to 99 (and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those are job specific WSs). The best fix imo is just to make a good sword WS that Rdm can also natively get. I mean sword is kind of in need of one. Vorpal isn't really that great.

[Seriha]

There was a thread asking for Emp WS to be permanently learned a bit back in the main forum. Some were for the idea, others were raging hard against it. I'm personally for it, with the WoE version being a step in the process or at least acquiring the 85 version of the Emp. WoE still needs some help, though.

[Thelron]

Fencer would indeed be great. More dual-wield would not, however... /NIN and now /DNC should be a boost to individual survivability... that /NIN especially gives such a damage boost to 1-handers has always been a problem, really, and sword + buckler is already pretty well established as part of our image. Better shield/parry skill would always be appreciated to reinforce that, of course (maybe extend Fencer for us to give an added benefit for the shield, and if they're going to leave shield mastery in it should have a better chance of doing something, especially at the idiotic level they jammed it in at (I guess they couldn't think up anything better to do?).

WS on the other hand I think we're actually pretty good for- the fact that we *can* get just about every sword/dagger skill by subbing for them should be fine, or at least would be if /NIN didn't give such an idiotic dps increase compared even to /WAR. Binging in WSs seems like it'd move a bit far from "customizable" towards "all-in-one" (the subjob system has been marginalized enough as it is, if any job should continue to use it RDM should).

Really, though, I think the biggest problem with "RDM melee" is that right now (and for a long time) the dominant method for XPing is based on doing large amounts of purely-melee or purely-magic (depending on if you're a melee or a mage) damage, neither of which RDM is or should be able to do particularly well. So, even with more sensible traits and access to some decent gear you're not going to see RDMs putting out upper-tier damage unless you really do break the job (at which point you may as well make our nukes as effective as a BLM's while we're at it). Without a reason to get SCs back in the everyday routine fixing the recent "mistakes" with our melee options doesn't really get us much if they don't go insanely overboard.

[Duelle]

Fencer would indeed be great. More dual-wield would not, however... /NIN and now /DNC should be a boost to individual survivability... that /NIN especially gives such a damage boost to 1-handers has always been a problem, really

It's a two-fold problem. Dual wield tiers, and the fact that most jobs have access to a multi-hit weapon of some sort to put in the offhand that is solely used to boost TP gain.

Then again, if we're talking about development errors, I would focus more on Utsusemi and much less on Dual Wield.

Really, though, I think the biggest problem with "RDM melee" is that right now (and for a long time) the dominant method for XPing is based on doing large amounts of purely-melee or purely-magic (depending on if you're a melee or a mage) damage, neither of which RDM is or should be able to do particularly well.

You can't really leave a class underperforming due to being hybrid. We already know what the result of that is.

I'd like SE to develop magic melee in order for RDM to play on the concepts it was founded on (swordsmanship and magic). As I said before, enspells are a start, but are not the whole enchilada. Magic WS are part of that as well, but we're missing Red Lotus Blade, Seraph Blade and Sanguine Blade. We'd still not be done even if we had those, because that dark shadow of support still lingers over anyone that wants to stand in the front lines.

Without a reason to get SCs back in the everyday routine fixing the recent "mistakes" with our melee options doesn't really get us much if they don't go insanely overboard.

Skillchains should never have and should never be the focus of class design. That's as bad as designing and balancing a class around "hateless" damage.

[Thelron]

You can't really leave a class underperforming due to being hybrid. We already know what the result of that is.

...

Skillchains should never have and should never be the focus of class design. That's as bad as designing and balancing a class around "hateless" damage.

In reverse, but...

SAM, and to a lesser extent WAR, both suggest otherwise. The whole battle system was designed around skillchains, they was the key to efficiency in killing something (faster kills, BLMs not burning up a whole MP bar on one mob, etc.), and they were the big, "This is why we're not Dark Age of Ultima Quest," selling point (well, along with the job system). So, unless they really have decided not to care anymore you can't really balance a job *without* considering the implications of SCs, otherwise you end up with another SAM-bandwagon problem. If they *have* decided they want to just ditch the whole mechanic then that gives a lot more room to legitimately pump up the base capabilities of the job, but if they ever focus on that again you make it just plain broken.

Alternatively, you can just ditch offensive magic entirely (rip out our MAB and maybe even Clear Mind, give folks a refund on the elemental IV's and rip them out, seriously cut down on +MAB and +elemental skill available to us from gear, or at least planned gear, maybe even drop us to a 'D' skill) and then have a lot more room to go full-tilt on just the melee-oriented side of things (bigger en-spells, etc.) but then we're basically DRKs with 1-handers.

As for the job "underperforming," that has nothing to do with it being a hybrid, and more to do with it not being supposed to hit things for 100%+ of a "hit things" job. I've always been a proponent of actually using the job for all the roles it can fill (which is just about all of them, at least until recently) but not by way of breaking the job, just by using what's available. We *have* plenty of magic WSs available (all the ones you listed, in fact, and we can indeed do quite well with them), and the "dark shadow of support" only lingers if you're trying to do something you're not in the party for (which is where a good bit of the knee-jerk anti-melee crap started in the first place). If you're in a support slot and can have some fun hitting things in the meantime you don't *need* all the offensive toys, and if you're in a DD or tank slot you shouldn't miss the support toys from the likes of /WHM and nor should your party. Yes, it can be hard to convince people building parties to put you in a non-support slot but that's a problem to be solved via "public outreach" rather than trying to re-shape the class from the ground up.

[Seriha]

Yes, it can be hard to convince people building parties to put you in a non-support slot but that's a problem to be solved via "public outreach" rather than trying to re-shape the class from the ground up.

Sorry, but the time for diplomacy has come and gone, and the community has roughly spoken through their criticisms and lack of acceptance. If SE has any intention of maintaining the themeliness of the job, they need to tweak something, be it a bunch of subtle things or one really big thing. Good faith has gotten us nowhere and nobody sane will think 80% is as good as 100% if all you need is a DD.