On Red Mage melee...

[Karbuncle]

What if your enspell damage was affected by your MAB?

If you knew what mobs you were hunting, you could use elemental MAB ATMAs to boost your enspell damage (DPS) and your WS damage (Burst).

You get to melee and you get to do it like a Mage instead of like a THF. So you equip Mage Atmas and get to Melee with them too.

I personally want this to be the direction that RDM goes. Your magic makes up the difference in melee combat, not your brute strength or your lack of weapon proficiency. You still aren't going to out DPS a DD or out Burst a BLM, but you might get close enough that people would take you seriously.

Sorry for the late reply, But even if Enspell damage was effected by MAB, stacking MAB would not make up for lose of general DPS from an Atma combo like, RR/GH/Apoc. Not only would a heavy MAB make you lose nearly 70% Critical hit Rate, 30% Critical hit Damage, and 15% Triple Attack, It would only effect your enspells slightly.

Even if say, Your enspells did 50 dmg a hit. +30MAB would add i think just 15 more Damage, +30IceMAB would add about the same. +50MAB would add like 25 damage to that (Ultimate). So if anything, with 50dmg Enspells, and Full Magic Atmas, Your enspell damage would be hitting about 105 dmg.

Right now no enspells for RDM hit 50 (I think maybe Teir IIs but they just suck to the point of not worth using). an additional 105 a hit would not make up for the lose of Critical hit Rate, Damage, and Triple Attack.

Basically, what i was trying to say in that post is, If you're going to try and melee on RDM, Dont half ass it. You can't expect to full up on Mage atmas and not get people going "you're doing gimp dmg wtf are you doing". You need to actually be a Melee RDM if you're going to try and Be. RR/GH/Apoc and pump the Eviscerations/Chants/Vorps.

While, MAB Effecting Enspells would give them a boost, It would simply not make up for the lose of using real DD Atmas. Unfortunately if you wanted to be Magey after Meleeing you'd want to consider switching Atmas :P do both to their fullest.

(I wont speak for Outside Abyssea)

Edit: And as far as "Gearing" for MAB if enspells got that boost, I dont think that would be wise. You'd lose out on a lot of Melee Stats. Even just using Earrings for MAB, You lose out on Suppa and Brutal, If you just use Cape for MAB you lose out on Atheling, Belt is obvious, and Main slots offer too much haste to be worth replacing.

One of my suggestions a few pages back was giving a JA that while active, amongst other things, gives Enspells effected by MAB, But it was more a bonus that can take advantage of RDms natural job Traits.

Edit2: Again on the Topic of Elemental WSs. Outside Abyssea this will likely be a better choice if it was strong enough, Inside We'd be better off with Chant, Vorp, or Evisc. Unless it was insanely powerful to the point it was wildfire level. but we can't expect that.

Also, when it comes to haste, SE is picky in giving it to people in form of JA haste, I can't expect a job Trait that gives us basically capped Gear haste instantly. Its asking a little too much :X

It would be nice but slightly unrealistic

[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.)

[Karbuncle]

and outside abysea, Dancers and Thiefs use Dancing Edge.

Just on this. No we don't :X.

Evisceration >>>>>>>>>> Dancing Edge outside of Abyssea these days, because of all the Critical hit Rate/Damage gear/traits we have now.

DNC has natural Trait, so does THF, one has Charis Feather, the other Loki's, Basically Evisceration wins outside. Back at 75 Dancing Edge was simply more reliable, Evisceration was close on its heels. (X's Knife even leveled it toward Evisceration too).

Can continue the rest of the conversation as normal D:

[Supersun]

This is more of an idea if they include more weapon skills into the game which isn't the craziest thing by 99. Certainly if they include more job specific weaponskills the idea to get out there is nice.

Though making an elemental WS that changes elements really wouldn't be that hard to program. I mean if Starburst and Sunburst can change their elements depending on if they open or close a WS it's entirely possible to check if a player has "X" buff applied to himself and give the weaponskill "Y" elemental damage.

Removing the EX restrictions (and adding us to the elemental and TP related trial daggers for TotM) would certainly improve Red Mage's crappy weaponskill selection by a bit though. I mean I'm not sure what they are so worried about. Even with the restrictions removed we are never going to hit a vorpal anywhere near a Pld or Blu simply because they have so much better armor for it.

I do feel that they will be more reluctant to remove the WS restrictions on Red Mage as opposed to just giving us a new weaponskill though.

Either way it's nice to get multiple options out there. While one way will likely fix a large part of Red Mages melee issues it never hurts to think of a plan B.