On Red Mage melee...

[Neisan_Quetz]

If all you was using a Rdm for was haste/cures/status removal/buff/sleepga/stun, you clearly should have invited a second Whm subbing blm.

Rdm can't do all of those at the same time anyway, so I guess that makes the Whm even more useful than it already is.

[Aleste]

I'd rather have a bard actually.

[Supersun]

I'd rather have a bard actually.

Is anyone else a little concerned what Brd/Rdm is going to be able to bring to the table at 99?

I mean one job alone will be able to provide
+35% haste
+12 MP/tick Refresh
Cure 4 + Convert + that 12 MP/tick Refresh (+ whatever gear they have)
+50% Slow - (+80% Slow)

I mean people want to discuss about Rdms awesome buffing abilities but at 99 unless they do something drastic it won't even hold a candle to that.

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Also I don't think it's a matter of front line utility > Back line utility to determine which jobs are allowed to frontline against the risk of danger, but if the reward of the extra contribution that job brings to the front line outweighs the risk of death.

In your example of the dragoon, clearly the reward of him being worth the risk of him on the front line was worth it in your scenario simply because if it wasn't you probably wouldn't have invited him. Similarly with Blue Mage, they are a LOT more useful on the front lines but when the fight gets difficult enough the extra benefit the bring to the front outweighs the risk of them there and they get relegated to the back to cannonball spam. Similarly in the past with Mnks and Chi Blast spam.

It's not just a matter of Front line > Back line to determine who's allowed on the front because when things get dangerous enough virtually no one is allowed on the front lines, and from there unless you can contribute some minimum level of contributions from the back line you just aren't invited period.

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Also, these forums aren't necessarily a place to debate whether something CAN work because let's be honest if SE really wanted to they could design it where you want your Blms on the front line and Wars in the back. These forums are more for finding ideas to accomplish this without it looking so silly as to revamp the entire identity of the job like above. This is why when people come here and just say "Rdm on the front line sucks, it's impossible" we don't reply as courteously because nothing is impossible to balance. The point of these forums are for identifying the obstacles that need to be overcome and brainstorming solutions for them (and then for SE to steal those ideas and add them to other jobs/gear).

(Also, watch your quotes, you quoted me, then attributed Duelle's idea to me.)

[Aleste]

Apologies with the incorrect quoting~ however, I don't believe I've ever once said that its 'impossible' for a RDM to melee.

Rather I find meleeing on ANY MAGE it to be incredibly inefficient and as it stands, is far too risky in the games current design.

And I'll easily admit it because I've spent so long trying to get whitemage to be viable under misery.

[ManaKing]

I lvl'd rdm because of the utility the job brings, and now its my absolute favorite job to solo on. The only thing that I've wanted is cure5. T4's was such a boon to the job and I can't wait for thunder4.

Different play styles, different opinions as always. I see rdm as completely fullfilling its "jack of all trades" title, and as Ipreviously mentioned with wanting cure5 would again make it viable in party set up. I love the job and get great use out of it as it is.

Sure its lost some of the things that only rdm could bring to the table (vert, refresh just to name two). But speaking for me personally. A boost to our melee phase would not make the job any more enjoyable for me.

sorry to hear that, It would for me. Better enspells would make this job everything I want. I'm not looking to beat a WAR at the physical game. I just want to be able to channel my jack of all trades into melee magic damage that is significant because I have all the tools to do it.

I like Tier IV as well and didn't expect to get them. That being said, I don't want to be a BLM.

I don't mind back up healing and nuking, but when that is what I am good for, and people still say, "I'd rather have a WHM or a BLM" I don't feel like I'm really playing my job.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Apologies with the incorrect quoting~ however, I don't believe I've ever once said that its 'impossible' for a RDM to melee.

Rather I find meleeing on ANY MAGE it to be incredibly inefficient and as it stands, is far too risky in the games current design.

And I'll easily admit it because I've spent so long trying to get whitemage to be viable under misery.

Well to be fair WHM shouldn't be a front line mage, RDM was supposed to be before SE decided it would have been too powerful a soloist if they did them any good at it, or whatever reason they decided to change it from "melee mage" to just a mage.

[Duelle]

I had a long post typed up but the forums ate it. I may sound short in this, but that's more for expediency's sake than anything else.

Hasting all DD's
Throwing emergency potent cures
Removing ailments
Weakening the mobs accuracy/attack/attack speed
Additional re-application of buffs (for those spammy mobs)
A large amount of utility spells
Additional sleepga/stuns for crowd control and NM lockdown

The short answer is you can't expect a front liner to do all that. It simply is not plausible with the other things front line play involve.

Unless of course, you're not doing any of those things. In which case, why invite someone with below-par melee?

Which therefore means RDM does need melee buffs.

I've seen you reference "had I not seen it work before" twice now. Care to give an example, or two?

This was the meat of my post that got eaten. I'll try to type from memory with some extra edits.

RDM is not the only class that was defiled for the sake of convenience. There was another class at around the time Refresh and Haste entered the picture that ran into the same discrimination, the same insults, the same resistance and had the exact same problems Red Mage had (and continues to have).

Rather than a magic fencer, this class was a knight-in-shining-armor archetype that was designed with weak melee, which forced it into the role of healer and buff bot, much to the chagrin of the people who rolled the class to be the knight-in-shining-armor only to find themselves healing and buffing others if they wanted to see the content that mattered. After much ire expressed by the melee camp, the developers started looking for ways to make the front-line aspects of this class work.

They first went with Seriha's suggested approach by introducing hybrid gear with STR, INT and Auto-Refresh and front-line abilities that were leaning more to the side of supplemental melee (auras that increased group damage, attacks that reset the duration of certain debuffs). Problem was that the hybrid gear had such spread out stats that from raw stats alone the class was still way behind the other front-liners. Their supplemental melee proved worthless because they still could not measure up to what was expected of a front-liner, leading to them still being used a cure bots and buff bots.

The developers eventually bit the bullet and made a couple of changes. First they placed the melee aspect of the class and balanced it around being in melee gear. This means you don't wear caster or hybrid gear to front-line. Then they changed abilities to scale with attack power and melee accuracy for those who chose to be in the front lines. Then they tossed in stat conversions for the certain abilities of this class that scaled from spell power that you could no longer gear for because you were wearing melee gear (the short of it being that X% of attack power also acted as spell power for those abilities).

Then they added melee mechanics to seal the deal. My favorite of those was a proc from critical hits that made the weaker of your two healing spells or your nuke-type spell instant cast while consuming the proc.

The result of all this is the "lolmelee", "shut up and heal" and "lol ur not dd" arguments died after those changes went through. You could suddenly stand in the front lines, be as equally valuable as the other front-liners, while still keeping parts of your utility and identity without being this broken overpowered thing that dwarfed all other melee. The guys that liked to heal and support got to continue doing that, while the melee enthusiasts got their wish. The world (of warcraft) was suddenly a better place.

I think the above can be applied to RDM. While I understand that XI's game engine might not support certain parts of the above, the basic idea is there. Create melee emphasis, balance it around melee gear, separate it from how the class is currently played and then touch up and leave to dry. You'd make both camps happy and even kill the redundancy that exists when you have more than one RDM in the group.

All in all, I would kick a whitemage out of the party if they refused to do their job. Same as I would kick a tank for not tanking. You have those spells for a reason, they make other jobs better; ignoring, or failing to cast them is NOT DOING YOUR JOB.

The guy with a sword in one hand and magic glowing out of the other should be swinging that sword and going Seifer on mobs by releasing spells at point-blank range. The refresh/haste/cure bot model has been nothing short of a violation of the Red Mage concept and everything the class has stood for...at the cost of our class identity for the convenience of others. Enough is enough, really.

For the other parts of your post, all I can say is that mechanics and limitations can be put in place to keep things under control.

I rather liked your idea to combat the difference in stave potency via:

Job Traits:
- Arcane Combat: Your magic accuracy is increased by your main-hand weapon accuracy while under the effects of composure.

However, given SE's way of doing things, you'd probably have to balance it out a little.

Thanks. Admittedly, this was taken from my "Red Mage redesigned with stances" proposal, but modified to fit the class as it currently plays. I do understand the risk involved, however, as RDM would merit sword or dagger, equip that to boost accuracy for spells and then stack MAB gear.

The original version of Arcane Combat is available only while in melee mode, which has a bunch of other restrictions to focus on front-line play. These include reduced casting range for nukes to 5 yalms (AKA melee range), MAB not affecting nukes while in melee mode and instead scaling from a portion of attack power or STR (haven't made my mind up on this one), elemental resistance debuffs from enspells playing a bigger role (and make them same-element instead of opposite element like enspells II), emphasis on enfeebles, limited support ("nerfed" versions of our current spells such a Haste, Refresh, Enspells and Phalanx lasting a lot longer but being self-cast only, longer cast times for cures and possibly higher MP costs), and so on.

I just brought that up because I wanted to show it is possible to make one side (melee) benefit the other (mage), not to mention it is well within Red Mage's theme as the guy that stands between the melee and magic paths.

[Supersun]

I don't believe I've ever once said that its 'impossible' for a RDM to melee.

Wasn't really referring to you as much as other people that have barged into the thread.

(also, were half of those puns in your post intentional Duelle?)

[Dart]

edit: not worth it

[Duelle]

(also, were half of those puns in your post intentional Duelle?)

Unfortunately, I haven't the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

I did write this on little sleep and no food in my Taru belly, though. >.>;;