On Red Mage melee...

[Supersun]

While DA, TA, crits, ect... may add occasional spikes to physical WS you have to realize that there are other factors that can just as easily cause a physical WS to spike lower then normal such as missing, getting unlucky on RNG for pDif, ect...

The thing about elemental WSs is that they are VERY consistent. The only thing that can really hamper their damage is a resist, and even then if it's a WS that can change its element by your current enspell then resists are kept at a minimum.

Even if we ever go against a magical resistant monster we can always just switch back to our physical WS, but at the same time this is a luxury most melee won't have that when fighting a physical resistant monster we have our elemental WSs.

Really, while DA and TA can increase the damage of a physical WS by a large amount a small amount of the time, MAB on a magical WS increases the damage by a large amount 100% of the time.

And the most important thing is that with an elemental WS we will actually get updated gear. Physical WS gear is rare for Rdm. Nuking gear is a dime a dozen.

I mean it really wouldn't be that hard to balance a good Elemental WS for Rdm due to their consistency. It would be real easy for them to test a damage they find reasonable for Rdm and then bump it up a bit from the chance of resist and Physicals possibilities to spike.

We could make a balanced elemental WS for for us much better then nearly any physical WS could.

Like I mentioned before I did 1.1k with AW earlier on /sch and the thing is I'm missing some really important pieces for my WS set. I'm missing about ~15 MAB and +TP bonus +25.

And really the only thing that make it nonviable atm is you have to use a martial knife which eats your DoT which this issue disappears if we get a seord WS due to the fact we get TotM swords.

Adding some form of native Rdm dual wield or *gasp* fencer will only make the prospect of an elemental WS and the ability to use /sch even better.

[ManaKing]

Here is the next step for making our mage gear into something useful.

JOB TRAIT

lvl 50+

When RDM has an Enspell active, they gain Equipment Haste = 1/2* of their Fast Cast value. *adjustable*

------

If you want to gear for /NIN or /DNC there is a huge chunk of equipment haste you don't have to track down. You can gear for damage now.

If you want to gear for /WAR, DRK, PLD, BLU you get access to Sanguine blade and you can stack Mage stats to get the most out of both your enspells, sanguine blade, and Seriha's new enspell dependant WS.

If you want to /MAGE you just got even more recast from that equipment haste. You will be able to spam more spells, so long as your MP holds out.

There are benefits across the board. Every kind of RDM can benefit.

Adding some form of native Rdm dual wield or *gasp* fencer will only make the prospect of an elemental WS and the ability to use /sch even better.

EXACTLY. If we could get some kind of innate TP bonus, such as Fencer, we could be elemental WS specialist. Sword and Sorcery.


Lol, I could get some use out of my Murgleis and we would still use an Almace when we need Physical damage.

[Neisan_Quetz]

JA haste makes more sense imo, tying it to equip haste is unnecessary. Seriha's idea of JA haste attached to Composure is the one I favor the most, even if SE never does it.

I don't see Elemental WS being a solution, unless something has a ridiculous amount of PDT/defense physical weaponskills are usually the better option. Of course SE's idea of 'balance' is to give the elemental dagger WS with no magian daggers and magian swords without the elemental sword WS...

[ManaKing]

JA haste makes more sense imo, tying it to equip haste is unnecessary. Seriha's idea of JA haste attached to Composure is the one I favor the most, even if SE never does it.

I don't see Elemental WS being a solution, unless something has a ridiculous amount of PDT/defense physical weaponskills are usually the better option. Of course SE's idea of 'balance' is to give the elemental dagger WS with no magian daggers and magian swords without the elemental sword WS...

Only reason I say Equipment Haste is so that you can don't have to concern yourself equipment haste. But if your Equipment haste was already taken care of, you would have more free options for equips. In fact, you wouldn't be looking for haste gear, because you already have most of it taken care of.

I get that JA haste is better. BUT I don't think it would be balanced. I'm not a balance monger because this game isn't PvP. So my idea of balance is that everyone should be a little bit ridiculous at least, so they can have a good time.



I apologize if I'm not conveying my full idea about adding MAB to Enspells and making mage stats desirable for a melee RDM. The point is that I am looking for a drastic improvement in the overall damage of Enspell by changing it by:

1. Adding INT and MND as stat modifiers to you enspells base damage. With top gear you could expect to double the amount of base damage that your enspells have.

2. Including MAB as a modifier.

For Enspells 2s specifically:

1. Calculate enspell base damage when you cast the spell to match enspell 1s mechanics.

2. Allow Enspell 2s to continue to only work on your main hand, but work on additional attacks from weapons and gear such as a Joyeus, Twilight Dagger, or Calmecac Trousers.

3. Make the elemental resistance lowering match the element of the enspell. Enfire 2 would deal fire damage and lower fire resistence.

4. The amount of elemental resistance lowered would be increased to help with our new elemental WS damage.

Melee DPS has haste gear, we have Fast cast gear that gets converted to equipment haste.

They have Crit, we have enspells that consistently put out solid numbers.

We both use additional attacks.

If we get our Enspell WSs then we have consistent, high damage WSs that can exploit elemental weaknesses.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Only reason I say Equipment Haste is so that you can don't have to concern yourself equipment haste. But if your Equipment haste was already taken care of, you would have more free options for equips. In fact, you wouldn't be looking for haste gear, because you already have most of it taken care of.

While it's an OK idea, 90% of jobs can cap equipment haste even WHM can do so, JA Haste on the other hand is much harder, with only 3 jobs getting any kind of spell to do so.

DRK - 25% (capped)
DNC - ~10%
SAM - 10%

Both /sam and /dnc gains the abilities to use the JA Haste, so asking for it on other jobs wouldn't ruin any of the supposed "balance" SE go on about which in reality doesn't exist (Hi! BLU, MNK and WAR)

Composure was supposed to help with the melee aspect of RDM only the Accuracy isn't a RDM's only issue and in most cases it isn't an issue at all, our DOT is. They have many ways they could implement a haste system in it, either merits (2~3% per level upto 10~15%) or even just add it onto composure as a default option maybe in increments of 10 (lvl. 50 3% - lvl.60 6% - lvl. 70 9% - lvl. 80 12% and lvl. 90 15%) and then if enspells were needed to be upgraded add as has been said before a trait or even double enspell damage while under composure.

PS. Obviously Composure haste would only work on Melee not magical spells.

[Hyrist]

I could get behind the idea of Composure haste, honestly.

The only thing I can see is SE's fear of giving us "Too much" haste. Between Spell, Gear Haste, and your version of Composure Haste, we'd be sitting pretty on 55% Haste just on our own, not including Dual Weild benefits if we're going for it.

Consitering how haste scales... that's a bit crazy.

Perhaps just a flat 5% true haste at all levels would be a bit more resonable.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

To be honest whether it comes in haste form or not, I just want SE to actually make Composure the melee stance (so to speak) like it was meant to be.

[Seriha]

I'd have no issue with CDC beating a theoretical elemental WS, as it should be the reward for chasing those particular weapons. Rather, the desire for an easily accessed, capable WS is part of what's arguably needed to shift some the stigma away from melee being lulzy. Some have been all over Evisceration, past and present, but we know our dagger selection has been kind of spotty and its a WS that drops off hard once you remove atma (To the point most THFs and DNCs use DE instead). Main problem with Vorpal is losing an off-hand hit, which jobs like BLU and PLD can gain without really losing anything (and BLUs aren't shackled to /NIN or /DNC for DW anymore). Standalone, Sanguine Blade is an okay WS, better with a specific atma build, but not enough to really turn heads without it. 2.5k-3k in Abyssea with a proper build isn't asking for too much, really. WHMs can do better with Hexa and even Evisc could top that with enough crits and extra hits, but it's more about consistency and the added utility on mobs where defense may actually be a concern. In a way, it reminds me of the old "Build TP to open for Spirits Within" opener people did in sky and such (Which the variable element properties would basically make this a SW+# with no enspell present).

And parentheses. x.x

[ManaKing]

^ Would have been nice, right?

[Hyrist]

As interesting as it would be to have that, I just cant shake the feeling you're being over-imaginative on this one.

As you said, the problem with good old Vorpal Blade is the extra hit we loose not being able to dual wield with it, and outside abysea, Dancers and Thiefs use Dancing Edge.

Without the EX restrictions on weapons, these Weapon Skills become available, and would flatly settle our WS issues without having to go into major reprogramming of how Weapon Skills read stats. (Currently there is no Weapon Skill formula that reads current element of X buff, it merely calculates current stats including stat increase totals).

And if SE really wants to try to make sure we don't have these weaponskills without tieing ourselves to melee. They can tie access to them into a 'stance' JA that also gives us some other physical buff that comes at a magic penalty. (Or tie it into Composure as it already has one.)