On Red Mage melee...

[Seriha]

I'm not really knowledgeable on RDM melee, But i think Evisceration would be the better WS than Sanguine Blade for pure damage. Not including survivability. I'm working on the Assumption the RDM is trying to do his fair share of Damage.

While going the physical route will probably lead to Evisceration's favor, it's possible to gear and atma yourself to allow SB to break 2.5k consistently. As a job that evades like a brick, SB's utility aspect of self-curing might be more beneficial in the long term since you can eliminate the need to cast shadows, stoneskins, and even cures when you're soaking up 1k+ HP per WS. Such is pretty much how I handled the lizard phase of my WS% sword for brewing purposes.

Either way, the downside of the SB build is your crit rate goes down, and obviously we're giving up /NIN. Downside of Evisc is even with RR and such, you could still get some stinker WS that'd barely break 1k, but you could also get lucky and break 3k. Better gear and such will steer you toward the latter, but if you're not in a situation where someone else can watch your back while you focus on damage, again, SB might be the better bet.

Outside, hitting around 1k with SB should be doable. Evisc could spike higher, but this is also where our juggling act in ATK/ACC/STR and such in the WS phase can catch up with us without cruor buffs picking up the slack.

[Supersun]

Well who knows. They said there are weapon skill adjustments coming. It really wouldn't surprise me if that was one of them because let's be honest. Getting AE with crap dagger selection while NOT getting Sanguine natively is BS lol

[Seriha]

We can only hope, but I'm looking at that about as optimistically as I am new enfeebles. Until SE tells us more, it's hard to get excited.

[wish12oz]

I do not sub ninja on war, ever.
I also dual box my own WHM, and die a lot, but that would happen if I was subbing NIN too, so it doesn't matter.

[Greatguardian]

So this thread ended nicely after people were unable to budge on the arguments they presented and lost.

Then it starts all over because someone decides to completely ignore the lost argument and bring up a new one?

What you're saying boils down to "Any DD contribution is better than no DD contribution as long as it does not negatively affect my casting role", is this correct? Unfortunately, that statement is not true, especially outside Abyssea. Landing Enfeebles is not the same as landing strong Enfeebles. Staves are not, and have never been, the end-all-be-all weapon for casting spells because, as far as Enfeebles are concerned, they simply add Accuracy. And you're right, if your accuracy is capped, you aren't benefiting from staves. Except Surya's. Surya's is awesome and if you are healing at all ever, the loss of that staff is a huge deal.

But you know what you would be benefiting from? Wands. You can add 17 MND in your main/sub slot in place of your swords, which drastically affects the potency of your dMND based enfeebles. The argument that "Any slow is good enough as long as people don't die" is honestly folly, especially when you take multipliers into account like Saboteur.

Idling in TP gear also prevents you from idling in Refresh gear. Outside Abyssea, the loss in MP adds up significantly over time. Not only are you losing MP recovery (1 earring, 2 body, 1 head, 1 legs, 1 hands/feet, 6/tick, or 1,000 MP per Convert assuming maxed merits), but you're spending more MP by taking damage and curing yourself.

If you need all of that MP on content harder than Abyssea, you should never be melee'ing. If you don't need all that MP on content harder than Abyssea, you should be burning the excess off in Nukes and doing more damage, more safely, than if you were melee'ing while still maintaining full casting potency on all of your other spells.

You can come in here and complain all you want about how "You know RDM Melee sucks", but the fact of the matter is that people here are claiming that it does not right now. Do not dare to call us trolls when we are simply debating point of fact with people who, frankly, made the ridiculous claims first.

[Rayik]

But you know what you would be benefiting from? Wands. You can add 17 MND in your main/sub slot in place of your swords, which drastically affects the potency of your dMND based enfeebles. The argument that "Any slow is good enough as long as people don't die" is honestly folly, especially when you take multipliers into account like Saboteur.

If that's the case, we can get +18 MND from magian swords, so thanks for the idea!

Idling in TP gear also prevents you from idling in Refresh gear. Outside Abyssea, the loss in MP adds up significantly over time. Not only are you losing MP recovery (1 earring, 2 body, 1 head, 1 legs, 1 hands/feet, 6/tick, or 1,000 MP per Convert assuming maxed merits), but you're spending more MP by taking damage and curing yourself.

If you need all of that MP on content harder than Abyssea, you should never be melee'ing. If you don't need all that MP on content harder than Abyssea, you should be burning the excess off in Nukes and doing more damage, more safely, than if you were melee'ing while still maintaining full casting potency on all of your other spells.

Good thing we have this handy-dandy spell that gives us 6mp/tic regardless of gear. Refresh gear just adds even more mp. And if we're idling anyway, a simple gear swap to refresh gear solves the "Idle in TP gear" problem you pose. Seriously, if we're just idling, why would we idle in tp gear? Did you mean "tp phase" and not "idle"?

Lastly, my ws's do similar damage as my nukes, more most of the time even. The extra damage during tp phase in addition to WS damage is a fair bit more DoT than just sitting back nuking, blowing through all my mp(that could've been used to cure and buff).

[Greatguardian]

So basically this:

No it doesn't rdm shouldn't be meleeing anything except trash exp mobs(and even then those die in like 1 WS so whats the point?)

I dare say everyone is in agreement then. Except for the people who very specifically are talking about RDM on stronger NMs and HNMs. Which is the point.

Also, dMND is not that easy to cap. On things we're 15 levels higher than they were designed for? Sure. In Abyssea? Sure. In level 90+ content? No way in hell. Honestly, Voidwatch is the only content worth comparing anything on because it's the only non-Abyssea content that's actually fit for our level.

[Supersun]

It's really not.

To cap slow II you need a dMnd of 75.

Most monsters don't really have much more mnd then your own base stats. Monsters have never had particularly high base stats with a few exceptions like Kirin and his like 120 Int.

I mean from there if even my gimpy mnd set can give me +100 Mnd it really shouldn't be that difficult to cap.

I mean you mention abyssea, but I wouldn't be surprised if I could cap most of my enfeebles naked in there.

[Neisan_Quetz]

... Don't nuke in MAB swords. Not even Blus bother with Macc swords because they're just that much of a waste. Nice experiment, but you wasted your effort.

[Rayik]

... Don't nuke in MAB swords. Not even Blus bother with Macc swords because they're just that much of a waste. Nice experiment, but you wasted your effort.

Says you. Would be nice if we had a magic/elemental ws though...