On Red Mage melee...

[HFX7686]

I don't think improving RDM melee would do much for RDM. Any amount of improvement to melee to put it on par with the regular melee jobs would vastly overpower the job to a point of ridiculousness. So there's no real point in improving it a little bit, since it won't ever come close to regular melee anyway.

Personally, I'd like to see improvements in RDM magic done, to make them useful in Abyssea. There was a time when the RDM was king in terms of healing, enhancing, enfeebling, and crowd control. Now a WHM can cover that quite easily in Abyssea, plus has a much larger curing arsenal available. There's pretty much no point in taking a RDM to Abyssea events now, which is a real shame.

[ManaKing]

I don't think improving RDM melee would do much for RDM. Any amount of improvement to melee to put it on par with the regular melee jobs would vastly overpower the job to a point of ridiculousness. So there's no real point in improving it a little bit, since it won't ever come close to regular melee anyway.

Personally, I'd like to see improvements in RDM magic done, to make them useful in Abyssea. There was a time when the RDM was king in terms of healing, enhancing, enfeebling, and crowd control. Now a WHM can cover that quite easily in Abyssea, plus has a much larger curing arsenal available. There's pretty much no point in taking a RDM to Abyssea events now, which is a real shame.

You mean if RDMs could do anything actually desirable? Yeah, that's why we are here as well.

You want magic, we want melee.

Compare RDM to BLU, which one is overpowered and accepted? Which one is underpowered and neglected? This isn't a PvP game, overpowered classes don't break the game mold. So long as everyone is useful, everything is good. I don't want BLU or any other class nerfed. I just want RDM to be desirable in a party environment because that is what is important in this game.

If you can find some way for RDM to be desirable in a party that doesn't involve putting BLM or WHM out of a job, we are all ears. I know melee RDM are very diehard and hot headed, but that is because we want RDM to be its own class. We don't want to take anybody else's class away from them because we all know what that feels like. We just want to play in the sandbox with the rest of the kids and have just as much fun as they do.

[HFX7686]

You mean if RDMs could do anything actually desirable? Yeah, that's why we are here as well.

You want magic, we want melee.

Compare RDM to BLU, which one is overpowered and accepted? Which one is underpowered and neglected? This isn't a PvP game, overpowered classes don't break the game mold. So long as everyone is useful, everything is good. I don't want BLU or any other class nerfed. I just want RDM to be desirable in a party environment because that is what is important in this game.

If you can find some way for RDM to be desirable in a party that doesn't involve putting BLM or WHM out of a job, we are all ears. I know melee RDM are very diehard and hot headed, but that is because we want RDM to be its own class. We don't want to take anybody else's class away from them because we all know what that feels like. We just want to play in the sandbox with the rest of the kids and have just as much fun as they do.

RDM won't become a desired job if they get buffed in melee because they'll never match traditional melee for damage output. If they did, the overpowering wouldn't be because of PvP but because they'd just solo everything and everything (much faster than before and therefore become a bandwagon job). Soloing everything and everything hardly improves party/alliance standing.

BLU are strong because of their magic, not because of their straight melee damage (although I'd hate to see super weak melee from a BLU). I always, however, invite BLUs along for their special spells: stunning, back up curing, skillchains, magic damage, and their ability to proc multiple staggers.

Personally, I'd like to see RDM enfeebling and crowd control get the buff, not the melee. I always found enfeebling fascinating and it's a shame what SE did to enfeebling magic over the years.

[Seriha]

Said buffs can happen involving melee, though. Really, RDMs aren't asking to match the other DDs (more damage helps as an immediate eye opener, sure), just a purpose to swing that doesn't involve playing alone or getting everyone else around you angry. Otherwise, there's no point in the job having Sword, Dagger, or Club skills and it doesn't exactly address the looming homogenization with SCH who, martially, would be Club, Staff, and Dagger.

[HFX7686]

Said buffs can happen involving melee, though. Really, RDMs aren't asking to match the other DDs (more damage helps as an immediate eye opener, sure), just a purpose to swing that doesn't involve playing alone or getting everyone else around you angry. Otherwise, there's no point in the job having Sword, Dagger, or Club skills and it doesn't exactly address the looming homogenization with SCH who, martially, would be Club, Staff, and Dagger.

Well, then you'll have the traditional issue of giving mobs TP, which can still sometimes cause problems, especially when you're trying to stagger in Abyssea.

There's no real point for BLMs to have staff and club skill , and yet they do.

I personally see meleeing RDMs as a homogenization towards the melee. Melee gear with melee stats looking like all the other melee but not putting out anything approaching similar damage.

[Seriha]

And if all you'll be doing is judging by damage, then sure, it'll forever fail. Yet, if every subsequent Enstone hit boosted Slow potency? RDM crits actually reduced a mob's TP? My biggest gripe over time with people who believe melee updates should never happen come from those who ultimately refuse to consider possibilities to make it work. Nothing should ever be considered set in stone, especially with the game in its transition state from 75 to 99.

Meanwhile, the RDM of yesteryear wasn't really its own entity given the healing preference people lobbied upon it. People damning the job's future for that or solos SE could easily squish if they wished are among my follow-up gripes about the job. It's possible for RDM to be unique still, with or without melee. Obviously, some of us would favor the "with" aspect, but the without could be good if SE does it right.

[Supersun]

There can be more to melee then just damage.

I mean look at dancer. You sure as hell don't invite them for their warrior crushing DPS.

Now I'm not saying copy what dancers have, but support from melee isn't anything new on Rdm.

Look at our Enspell T2s. They support by lowering enemy resistance.
(ignoring the fact that -10 resistance is pretty pathetic overall especially when ninjitsu reduces it by -30)
(and the flood of other issues with T2 enspells)

The problem with only focusing on our magic side is that there's really only one way to grow without invading into other jobs space - Enfeebling.

Even then Enfeebling by nature is not a full time job. Imo the best direction to focus on with Rdm is Enfeebles that actually do a damn and are more then just 5% better then a Whms and Melee when all the enfeebles are on.

Basically what imo Ninja was supposed to be before it became a Tank/DD.
Certainly that role has opened up.

[HFX7686]

There can be more to melee then just damage.

I mean look at dancer. You sure as hell don't invite them for their warrior crushing DPS.

Now I'm not saying copy what dancers have, but support from melee isn't anything new on Rdm.

Look at our Enspell T2s. They support by lowering enemy resistance.
(ignoring the fact that -10 resistance is pretty pathetic overall especially when ninjitsu reduces it by -30)
(and the flood of other issues with T2 enspells)

The problem with only focusing on our magic side is that there's really only one way to grow without invading into other jobs space - Enfeebling.

Even then Enfeebling by nature is not a full time job. Imo the best direction to focus on with Rdm is Enfeebles that actually do a damn and are more then just 5% better then a Whms and Melee when all the enfeebles are on.

Basically what imo Ninja was supposed to be before it became a Tank/DD.
Certainly that role has opened up.

I just don't invite dancers. Right now my party make up is: WHM BRD MNK MNK THF BLU, and in a second party all by himself: BLM. The MNKs and THF sometimes rearrange jobs to WAR, NIN, THF. Where am I going to fit a melee RDM in that?

I don't think there's a way to buff en-spells enough to make it worth RDMs meleeing. Either the melee and damage mages don't have problems or you don't want the RDM in close range of the mob or giving it TP.

I still think enfeebling, especially crowd control, should be the focus. It takes skill and knowledge for a single rdm to be able to handle a large group of mobs without a blm back-up sleepgaing. I think a rdm keeping a bunch of mobs in hand would be much more stylish than meleeing.

[Supersun]

Right now my party make up is: WHM BRD MNK MNK THF BLU, and in a second party all by himself: BLM.

...

If that's your set-up the only way Rdm would ever be useful to you is if he could proc well.

And given that SE has said they have no immediate plans to add more abyssea related content and that the procing systems in newer endgame content is different then abyssea people may start to realize that the current mentality of what's a powerful job is pretty much soley hinged on how well it can proc.

In fact, in dynamis at least, hybrid jobs are MUCH more valuable then specialist jobs when trying to farm currency and NM pops.

People have already started finding out that trying to approach newer content like you would abyssea content where you have a Mnk tank and a Whm curebomb just doesn't work.

SO yeah, when discussing future balance you are going to have to remove your notions of what's useful in abyssea and look at the merits of the job itself as opposed to how well it can proc or TH.

[Seriha]

Considering actual crowd situations are fairly rare for common play, doubly so now with Dynamis being different, forcing RDMs to rely on a spell from a subjob just to be useful seems kind of, I dunno, wrong? There's nothing particularly elegant about using Sleepga, and having a BLM around for Sleepga II is obviously more beneficial for overlapping purposes without mobs having that brief period of waking and all the risks that entails if it's just a RDM using Sleepga. Sure, you might get a resist now and then and stragglers would get slept with the single-targets, but calling that difficult or elegant just seems... off. And compared to BLU, who has AoE slow, blind, gravity, some conal paralyze, and other goodies, they seem much more like the control go-to guys for diversity, with SCH being runner up with Manifestation Grav/Bind/Stun.