On Red Mage melee...

[Duelle]

That would require random front line Red Mages to sotp meleeing in full AF/relic even in this day and age. If it isn't a detriment to other duties I'm not gonna knock it but almost every one I see trying to be frontline mage does it badly.

That approach doesn't really work, hence why I keep saying front line and back line play need to be different from each other for a hybrid like Red Mage.

[Tamarsamar]

That approach doesn't really work, hence why I keep saying front line and back line play need to be different from each other for a hybrid like Red Mage.

In the sense of gear, yes, as that's the limitation of a game that so heavily demands min-maxing.

In the sense of practice, if you ever try to do nothing but swing your sword with maybe the occasional cure or self-buff, you're doing it horribly wrong. (Unfortunately you can't say the same thing for doing nothing but spellcasting, but then, that's why this topic exists, no?)

[Duelle]

In the sense of practice, if you ever try to do nothing but swing your sword with maybe the occasional cure or self-buff, you're doing it horribly wrong. (Unfortunately you can't say the same thing for doing nothing but spellcasting, but then, that's why this topic exists, no?)

With the current design and what is currently on our plate, yes. After a number of changes that kills redundancy and opens up magic combat, no.

A red mage in the front shouldn't be worrying about buff cycles and main healing. The problem is that we don't have the numbers (as in DPS) to back that choice up at the moment. The shift in mentality would be completely possible were it not for that.

[Seriha]

A few falacies in there Seriha

Hardly. Giving us more of the same, as indicative of tier ups or not giving us new "golden update"ish things will not change where we are. Cure V would just put us back toward pink magery. Procs aside, if people wanted nukes, they'll be going for BLMs and SCHs first and there's no way we'll be getting T5s unless maybe the cap goes to 115 some day or something. I simply cannot see T3 Slow/Para/Blind/Bio/Dia happening because the T2s are merits, so enfeebles are pretty much left to new idea territory. Without a "golden update", you've more or less doomed us to mediocrity before even considering equipment issues.

And Quick Cast is still bad if random. Most of my spells begin by swapping into my fast cast gear (I don't bother with barspells) and switch to potency gear within the cast. You're basically telling me to give up at least 20% FC for something that, at present, maybe goes off 5-10% of the time with the right gear or atma. No thanks. I know casting burden is a problem for our melee, but whatever we get has to be constant and not situationally niche.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Hardly. Giving us more of the same, as indicative of tier ups or not giving us new "golden update"ish things will not change where we are. Cure V would just put us back toward pink magery. Procs aside, if people wanted nukes, they'll be going for BLMs and SCHs first and there's no way we'll be getting T5s unless maybe the cap goes to 115 some day or something. I simply cannot see T3 Slow/Para/Blind/Bio/Dia happening because the T2s are merits, so enfeebles are pretty much left to new idea territory. Without a "golden update", you've more or less doomed us to mediocrity before even considering equipment issues.

And Quick Cast is still bad if random. Most of my spells begin by swapping into my fast cast gear (I don't bother with barspells) and switch to potency gear within the cast. You're basically telling me to give up at least 20% FC for something that, at present, maybe goes off 5-10% of the time with the right gear or atma. No thanks. I know casting burden is a problem for our melee, but whatever we get has to be constant and not situationally niche.

The draw to quickcast is the instant casting, and reset recast timer.

Whether the spell goes of it fast cast or not you can recast it instantly again straight after.

[Hyrist]

Hardly. Giving us more of the same, as indicative of tier ups or not giving us new "golden update"ish things will not change where we are. Cure V would just put us back toward pink magery. Procs aside, if people wanted nukes, they'll be going for BLMs and SCHs first and there's no way we'll be getting T5s unless maybe the cap goes to 115 some day or something. I simply cannot see T3 Slow/Para/Blind/Bio/Dia happening because the T2s are merits, so enfeebles are pretty much left to new idea territory. Without a "golden update", you've more or less doomed us to mediocrity before even considering equipment issues.

And Quick Cast is still bad if random. Most of my spells begin by swapping into my fast cast gear (I don't bother with barspells) and switch to potency gear within the cast. You're basically telling me to give up at least 20% FC for something that, at present, maybe goes off 5-10% of the time with the right gear or atma. No thanks. I know casting burden is a problem for our melee, but whatever we get has to be constant and not situationally niche.

See, now I know you're not even reading.

The one inevitable tier up I mentioned in my entire debate, was Enspells, one that I beleive we need. My one wish is that they would function line more powerful Enspell I's that don't confict with a Dancer's Samba effect. Otherwise it would have to be pretty steller and/or possibly "First Hit" activation only. Because 5%-10% attack delay is a hard act to follow.

As far as the randomness of Quick cast. You're looking at it in the worst possible light. As far as it upsetting your cycle. That actually is bad skill on your part. If you can't simply say "Hey, cool, it proced!" and enjoy your free time while it comes time for your next member on the cycle, then you deserved to be called "Bad". Though, if people are crying over a matter of a few seconds, you're hanging with the wrong crowd to begin with. There's 0 reason to put up with that sort of attitude in today's game.

The Recast benefit of Quick cast would be best used for things like cures and nukes if you the need and can afford the quick MP drain.

But all of this would be moot if quick cast worked on a JA timer. I agree that it's a better tool to be able to do this manually, and I prefer it that way. However, having it on a trait woulden't be nearly the nightmare you're playing it out to be.

As far as increasing the Red Mage's healing ability, I'd favor Regen III over Cure V, however consitering White Mage has merits AND another tier to cover regen Cure V is likely what is going to happen. If so I'd like to see it implmented at a truncated potency compared to the White Mage version. But as far as completely avoiding pink magery, again, that's a naive prospect, unless we gain absoutely nothing more in the healing department.

Seeming there's an entire grouping of Red Mages that are in arms about not having Cure V as it is, what right do we have to tread on their playstyle of the job when we've been clammoring for years to have more respect for ours? Pot callking kettle black.

Instead, what needs to happen is to better enable front lining. If you create a frontline update with some awesome utility that is going make everyone to want Red Mages in the front line, you're going to trample on those who've adapted and enjoy the back line methods as they get told suddenly they need that melee gear to perform that golden utility you're asking for.


Put plainly, choosing whether to melee, or not to melee, needs to NOT matter, in the eyes of the playerbase. Rather to be some important thing to argue one way or another over, it can be a 'do what you want, you can go either way.' Set up. And while for most of the events now being laughable in difficulty or lowmanned, this has done well for that approach in many aspects of the game.

However, for it to be a global opinion two things need to happen.

1. Our base melee preformance need to be brought up to par. (WS Damage, Gear availability.)
2. Our casting aspects need to be streamlined for ease of use in the faster paced gaming envrioment.

This is just referring to aiding in a unalateral improvement to Red Mage to improve melee.

As far as inproving the 'direction of the job', RDM's direction has always been variable, functioning as a catalyst. This may be consitered a redundancy and unneded, but that is more a matter of tastes. (You're not obligated to have a Red Mage in FFI, but you can.) There are those who are obsessed with the statistical 'best' and Red Mage, by it's very nature, clashes with this. You're never going to reconcile these opposites.

( Just a note: For all the humm and hawing on how Red Mage is the Melee caster, people tend to forget, that all of Red Mage's abilities in the previous games were centered around casting[both in FFI and FFV]. Best thing RDM had in melee department, was default attack with well chosen weapons, enhanced magic effects. I don't see that changing.)

As far as 'new' spells an utilities for Red Mage. We're still missing a unique Enfeebeling Magic spell of the Thunder Element. I'd like to see this filled in by the time we hit 99, and can be a wide variety of possiblities. However, giving the choice, I would prefer it be something that can hamper TP attacks: The one department we do not have an enfeeble for and are feeling rather cheated on right now.

[Duelle]

As far as the randomness of Quick cast. You're looking at it in the worst possible light. As far as it upsetting your cycle. That actually is bad skill on your part. If you can't simply say "Hey, cool, it proced!" and enjoy your free time while it comes time for your next member on the cycle, then you deserved to be called "Bad". Though, if people are crying over a matter of a few seconds, you're hanging with the wrong crowd to begin with. There's 0 reason to put up with that sort of attitude in today's game.

You're forgetting how focused on efficacy the playerbase still is. Abyssea hasn't done anything to kill that mentality. If only put it to sleep for the moment because buff cycling during the entirety of abyssea was not necessary, hence all the complaining about how RDM had no purpose.

Seeming there's an entire grouping of Red Mages that are in arms about not having Cure V as it is, what right do we have to tread on their playstyle of the job when we've been clammoring for years to have more respect for ours? Pot callking kettle black.

They've had more than their fill and they can still heal? We, on the other hand have been tread on since the Refresh changed the game for us and it hasn't changed since then.

Put plainly, choosing whether to melee, or not to melee, needs to NOT matter, in the eyes of the playerbase. Rather to be some important thing to argue one way or another over, it can be a 'do what you want, you can go either way.' Set up. And while for most of the events now being laughable in difficulty or lowmanned, this has done well for that approach in many aspects of the game.

That leaves redundancy. It'd be better to simply let the meleers bring one thing to the party and the back liners bring something else. Hence why I mention front lining should not involve buff cycles.

However, for it to be a global option two things need to happen.

1. Our base melee preformance need to be brought up to par. (WS Damage, Gear availability.)
2. Our casting aspects need to be streamlined for ease of use in the faster paced gaming envrioment.

This is just referring to aiding in a unalateral improvement to Red Mage to improve melee.

This I'm fine with.

As far as inproving the 'direction of the job', RDM's direction has always been variable, functioning as a catalyst. This may be consitered a redundancy and unneded, but that is more a matter of tastes. (You're not obligated to have a Red Mage in FFI, but you can.) There are those who are obsessed with the statistical 'best' and Red Mage, by it's very nature, clashes with this. You're never going to reconcile these opposites.

If you sacrifice class functionality just to keep the class as a generalist, this is true. The problem is, the generalist design doesn't work and has been abandoned in modern game design for MMOs for good reason. Because at the end of the day, you get stuck with mezzing, healing, or "support" as in this game, no matter what your intentions with the class' hybrid nature were when you rolled the class.

It works in single player RPGs where no one cares about being overpowered or lacking in DPS, but MMOs are a complete different ballgame, and is something the original dev team for XI never concidered when bringing RDM over.

For all the humm and hawing on how Red Mage is the Melee caster, people tend to forget, that all of Red Mage's abilities in the previous games were centered around casting[both in FFI and FFV]. Best thing RDM had in melee department, was default attack with well chosen weapons, enhanced magic effects. I don't see that changing.

It's called helping adapt something that would otherwise not fit into the context of MMOs. Again, generalists are not a detriment to play in single player RPGs. The idea does not translate well into MMOs. Never has, and never will. Take it from someone who has been there before, been told to shut up and heal until those major updates that made my class go from zero to acceptable in the melee department. It'd also kill the word game SE loves to play with us, naming our gear with combat-related things yet the class as it is has little to do with front-line combat.

If people still complain because a buff isn't up in less than 10 seconds from running off they need to get a life outside of this game.

We've been conditioned to feel that way due to how long that mentality prevailed. Specially so for those of us who've been around since pre-CoP. It's not a bad thing. Just a sign of how a playerbase can damage the members within it.

[Seriha]

Then you throw off your cycles when the next time you get to the guy you proc'd on it doesn't, then the following goes without for 10s+ and starts bitching about how you're a bad RDM.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Now you're just nit-picking.

If people still complain because a buff isn't up in less than 10 seconds from running off they need to get a life outside of this game.

[Seriha]

I don't mind our healing improving, but not with Cure V. It's the lazy and uninspired way out. I have zero sympathy for heal-only RDMs, though. They're playing the wrong job. As is, backlining offers its own benefits in safety and slightly lesser distraction. Those looking to be up front not only need justification, but a strong benefit to it, and that will not be achieved solely through T3 enspells (Let's try fixing our T2s first), Cure V, or our T4 nuke line fleshing out. Baby steps might've worked at 75, but we're past that phase with other jobs now being leaps and bounds ahead.

Uncontrolled Quick Magic will still be bad no matter how you try to justify it, though, and if you're relying on such for dire cures, you're probably gonna have a dead tank after enough time, anyway.

Just look around at all the other melee naysayers. They have our "role" decided for us already. You best hasting, refreshing, curing, and possibly crowd controlling. Some might profess they don't care what you're doing after, but let's face it, those suck up time and sabotages melee performance from the start in both swapping out of your gear and just not being able to swing as often as the dedicated DD. I ask, quite simply, what is wrong with RDM receiving the means to physically DD exclusively in an acceptable manner? "Because you can do everything else!"? I'm sorry, but I must've missed the infinite MP memo for life outside Abyssea. Someone get back to me when this proverbial super RDM is main healing, nuking, enfeebling, buffing, and meleeing for a DD's keep without breaking a sweat, because even in Abyssea, doing one of those comes at the potential expense of another.