On Red Mage melee...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

For those that think RDM shouldn't Melee anyway, look at all the topics SE release on the main page, including the video of the new Sword.

I'll give a clue, they almost all feature a RDM melee'ing. So the question lies, even SE think RDM should Melee, so why shouldn't they make it acceptable for RDM to do so with gear, buffs or even enhancing magic (our supposed second speciality outside of enfeebling.)

[ManaKing]

I'm personally against Quick magic being part of RDM. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose except for me to use my finite MP pool, unwisely. Quick magic is Rapidshot for mages, but mages and ranged DPS aren't the same. Rapidshot is a great idea for ranged attack because you shouldn't run out of ammo as a RNG or a COR and all it does is increase your DPS.

I'm also against Cure V. We aren't healing specialists, we don't need to be stepping on people's toes. What we need is our own toes to stand on.

We could really use some RDM only utility, because everything that is good about RDM has been taken by other mages at this point and all we are left with is being told NO.

What we lack is gear consideration, job abilities, and spells that are functional and up to date in the current climate. That way we could be our own job.

Speaking truthfully, the two roles between front and back line Red Mage are different, in practice. Instead of becoming the primary responsibility for said roles, you are instead filling the gaps, or lightening the burden of your healer and support, as well as teaming up to assist your damage dealers and CC usage. Its a variable job that functions more on improvisation than a set duty, and that's the benefit and curse of it.

I would love to believe you, and mind you i feel that's how it should be as well, but that is not how it is. People don't want you for anything but Haste and Phallanx, maybe refresh, but probably not. If you have difficulty seeing RDM in the worst possible light, than i don't think you really have played RDM for very long. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but that is what I have to be to defend my favorite Job. We can share this job, but I'm not letting it slip into further mediocrity. Unless we get the 'golden update' that we are looking for, we are going to be playing the most mediocre class in the game.

Hyrist, you can say whatever you want on these forums, as can everyone. I'm just going to point out that a wall of text is a poor way to communicate. A lot of what you have posted has been gone over before which is why Seriha and Duelle take up such hard counter-stances. If you aren't going to read the 35+ pages of post on this topic thus far, you have to realize you don't care about anyone opinion but your own.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

'm also against Cure V. We aren't healing specialists, we don't need to be stepping on people's toes. What we need is our own toes to stand on.

It isn't about being healing specialists, we should never have the same highest tier spell as any other job subbing /whm and soon /rdm. We got Tier IV nukes as DRK was getting Tier III, we got Refresh II as Refresh one was made available subjob level, so it's a joke not to have a higher tier Cure.

We could really use some RDM only utility, because everything that is good about RDM has been taken by other mages at this point and all we are left with is being told NO.

What we lack is gear consideration, job abilities, and spells that are functional and up to date in the current climate. That way we could be our own job.

I don't disagree with this.

[ManaKing]

It isn't about being healing specialists, we should never have the same highest tier spell as any other job subbing /whm and soon /rdm. We got Tier IV nukes as DRK was getting Tier III, we got Refresh II as Refresh one was made available subjob level, so it's a joke not to have a higher tier Cure.

So long as Red Knight is available, i don't really care if Pink mage is as well.

But they need to come out at the same time. We don't need anymore precedent tell us how to play our job.

[Hyrist]

Forgive me if I cluster some of these statements together as you guys seem to be parroting each other.

Cure V...

Is likely inevitable. You can call it lazy, uninspired, dangerous, or every other insult you wish, but the only argument against this spell is the fear of Red Mage being pigeon-holed into the healer role. A fear I share. However, if streamlines and updates to Red Mage are done properly, the fact that we have Cure V won't matter.

Those who have played Red Mages on the front lines for years, have done so spiting the so called 'common wisdom' of players. It was simply the only way to prove that it was viable. This truth will be neigh impossible to change without breaking the job entirely, or both reasserting and streamlining our initial contributions to a party, ON TOP of some sort of additional utility (or further emphasis on what we have).

Generalist vs Specalist

There is two facts that need to be acknowledged about Red Mage.

1. It is a Generalist, period. There is no changing this without cutting out half of it's spell library and abilities. This is both the blessing and the curse of the job. However...

2. It HAS a Specialist Function 2 actually.: Enfeebling and Enhancing. But they both have problems right now.

Enfeebling:
In the rapid increase in melee performance that has done nothing but climb over the years, enfeebling has become less and less of a prominent role. This is a flaw in the game's design, not with the design of Red Mage as a class. If we are going to be important, for a large group role, there needs to be a reason why enfeebles are useful.

This means:

- Monsters need to endure long enough for applications of enfeebles to be useful
and/or
- We need to have the ability to apply multiple debuffs upon a monster instantaneously or through a very short time period.

Additionally
- Boss Monsters need to be more vulnerable to enfeebles in general.


Right now as it stands, procs have supplanted our reason for being in the enfeebling department.


Enhancing:

Enhancing, should be our secondary role, but has become our primary due to how efficiently monsters are slain. However, as it stands, what we offer as enhancers is outdone by every other existing support class out there. As much as Seriha comments about Red Mages not having infinite MP pools outside of Abyssea, this is in complete ignorance of the fact that evey other MP pool of every other mage class nearly doubled when Convert became available via subjob. Additionally, Refresh is such a readily available commodity with the advent of Refresh being subable , and Red Mage gaining Refresh II, that a Red Mage's own 'support' role has become unneeded.

Before we even touch the Melee aspect, this issue needs to be regarded. NOT by simply adjusting Red Mage, though some issues can be addressed this way (debuff-ga spells would solve debuffing multiple cannon-fodder issue. This should not be tied to a particular subjob either). The large group gameplay mechanic needs to change.

Front Line Utility

This needs it's own topic, as 'Melee' is a hornet's nest of issues. I may start a new topic myself to focus this topic and allow us to break it down further. But I'll touch the basics here.

Whatever 'Utility' we have in front line, it will break down into these basics.

Abilities that inflict new/increase existing enfeebeling effects on the monster.
Abilities that create new or increase existing enhancing effects on the party.
Abilities that inflict greater damage.
Abilities that recover the party.

That's the fundamental roots for every ability in this game, and the majority of them are covered. Keep in mind, that we're also balancing against our already superb soloing ability.

Front Line and Back Line Roles

As much as people believe the common wisdom that Red Mage should cycle in the front line. It's simply not how it operates in practice. Ask members that have doing it for getting close to a decade now such as myself, Zafire, Starfox, and a plethora of others who have been doggedly sticking to this sort of function on Red Mage since our first days in Vana'Diel. As Seriha has been so keen to point out, our own MP pools are not limited, and casting time HARMS our general output. But if there is to be any encouragement made to Red Mage front lines, it MUST be done on the premise that doing so limits our other functions of support. Or else any change is going to fall flat under the argument "You' still need to refresh!"

There are two methods that I can see working to enforce this:

1. A short duration, stacking enfeeble related directly to our melee. (Read: A stacking en-debuff.)
2. A stance that further hampers our repeat casting as Composure did in extending our recast timers.

Personally I would prefer the first. However, to accomplish that, what buffs we do spread around, like haste and Refresh II, would have to be extended in duration, THUS I mentioned first post I ever made on these boards, that Composure needs to function on party targets natively, even if it is just a reduced effectiveness. That way at least we're able to provide some support to parties while adding this utility. Put plainly, I don't' believe our front line utility should supplant the job as a whole.

Quick-Cast

Some form of Double Cast should have been a root part of Red Mage well before this point, and I'm not just talking our 2 hour ability. Right now, we suffer from a casting load problem, be it front line or back. Fast Cast simply does not meet the demands when cycling, and while a Composure increase could regard this partially, a controlled quick cast would increase our overall functionality considerably in every department. In the situation in which you would have say, 2 other people to refresh besides yourself, this ability would the 'cycle' concept neatly.

As far as increasing your MP drain with it, that would be a balance factor to the ability, and would keep Nuke-Spamming with it in check. But it still would assist our utility in say, taking advantage of an accidental Skillchain to burst on. (Or double bursting on a planned one.)

In the end, it's an accessory. One that would further assist in the streamlining of the job's current functions. As we're seeing a passive form being put to use in game mechanics already, it shouldn't be a stretch for SE to finally give Red Mage this ability (preferably as a JA).

Anyways, there's quite a bit of work that would need to be done to Red Mage to make it viable. My point is you can't simply tack on a new mechanic to an existing base without fixing the broken base, and a lot of it has to do with the surrounding gameplay, not just Red Mage itself.


As a personal note to ManaKing.

As Seriha can attest to this, I've been playing Red Mage a very, very long time. It is my only passion in FFXI and truly the only job I'll ever invest in. (I'll put it this way. FFXIV won't hold a candle with me until they implement the job in there, I'm that attached/obsessed.)

As far as the long posts, you're going to have to get used to them. A 35 page argument on Red Mage front line is nothing compared to the years of debate and analysis that has been done on this subject. The condition of the job as it is now is just re-stirring a very old pot.

That said, breaking apart the subject matter into separate threads would be helpful keeping my post size smaller.