On Red Mage melee...

[Supersun]

The thing is that we have people that still claim we're broken and want to be Superman.

There are also people that claim that Puppetmaster is lol. Doesn't make them right. And wouldn't it be silly to not buff something just because some players with no real experience with the job and are either blind or jealous say it's broken? I guarantee you there are plenty of career white mages out there that would rather see the job rot for all they care because they seem to think that we personally were the ones that made Red Mage the way it was in ToA. The point is that why does a flawed perception matter? People have already tried to debate it but they all fail when asked "Name something that you would bring a Red Mage over any other job."

This is where I can only say that a melee RDM single wielding would have to match the DPS of any member of the /NIN club to be acceptable. And it requires changes that are basically a crap shoot.

Though /nin is daunting with it's ~40% melee (and enspell) DoT increase, +10% increase in WS frequency, and +20% WS damage increase it certainly isn't impossible to make something more powerful in a practical matter. Here are just some random ideas off the top of my head.

1) Give us Greatsword. It certainly isn't unprecedented and GS is horribly underused as it is. I'm not actually sure whether it would be more powerful then DW Swords or not, but Rdm/Sam with a GS would certainly have some level of power (though the recast penalty would suck XD)

2) Give us some form of native Dual Wield. Something else that isn't necessarily unprecedented. If we innately have that +20% WS damage from the offhand then /war becomes a lot more viable especially since /war then also adds the EX WS as well. /nin would still win in the DOT aspect but /war would do a bit more WS damage.

3) A strong elemental WS + Fencer/Magic Fencer. Already talked a bit about this one, but it's a similar solution as the previous one. Since elemental WSs aren't affected by additional hits the +20% WS damage doesn't matter and /war closes the gap quite a bit between the rest of /nin.

4) Give shields some offensive potential. I mean it wasn't uncommon for shields to be used to strike an enemy yet in XI all we have that reflect this is Shield Bash. There are certainly ways they could improve shields whether it's just shields with better offensive stats or some JAs/JTs that allow the shield to do additional damage like kick attacks or something.

I mean when Thf got DW 1 before the lvl 90 cap Thf/War actually did more damage then /nin. It really wasn't until 90 that nin pulled ahead again, and I'll admit that+~40% DoT increase certainly is quite a bit, but if SE fixed 2h weapons (albeit in a stupid way imo) they can certainly do it again if needed. I mean if needed they could just make fencer a stupidly powerful JT.

[Duelle]

There are also people that claim that Puppetmaster is lol. Doesn't make them right. And wouldn't it be silly to not buff something just because some players with no real experience with the job and are either blind or jealous say it's broken? I guarantee you there are plenty of career white mages out there that would rather see the job rot for all they care because they seem to think that we personally were the ones that made Red Mage the way it was in ToA. The point is that why does a flawed perception matter? People have already tried to debate it but they all fail when asked "Name something that you would bring a Red Mage over any other job."

It doesn't stop the negativity thrown our way, for one. PUP was also not the one that was (stupidly) making videos of itself soloing what was considered endgame content. That alone will take us along time to live down.

As erred as others' perception of RDM may be, the fact that they're the ones making parties and they're the ones choosing our roles for us says quite a bit. And at this point in the game, our melee needs to turn heads.

The reason why I am so adamant about removing refresh and haste from the equation for us is because as long as those two spells remain castable on others, in the minds of others we're still more "beneficial" spamming those and letting the "real" DDs stand in the front. People won't ask for things you obviously don't have. You can then justify damage increases and other buffs to melee (not to mention you would need them, seeing that you would not be covering the hated "refresher" spot in a party).

Believe me, under any other game ruleset, RDM would be fine and would not need changes. The class itself seems to be built around gear and subjob deciding your role. That entire angle got borked and nuked to hell when the devs created monsters that require you to stack stats in order to reliably land anything and died horribly when gear-swapping became the norm.

Give shields some offensive potential. I mean it wasn't uncommon for shields to be used to strike an enemy yet in XI all we have that reflect this is Shield Bash. There are certainly ways they could improve shields whether it's just shields with better offensive stats or some JAs/JTs that allow the shield to do additional damage like kick attacks or something.

This has the potential of rolling over on to WHM and PLD. PLD would not concern me, but WHM kind of would.

[SnapperTrx]

Given the tons of ideas I see in this thread, Im going to rehash mine. The reason? They could be implemented before Monday's update because they would require little to no additional programming and would benefit RDM's right a way. They were as follows (slightly modified to make more sense):

1. RDM needs to have it's Parry skill greatly enhanced. If the focus on RDM is 'fencing' (ie, Fencers Earring, Fencers Ring, Fencing Degen, Estoqueur's gear) then we need to have at least a B in parry. I can understand the low shield skill, but Parry is a must.

2. RDM must have the 'Fencer' trait. To not have this trait on a job who's relic armor is obviously based on fencing (Duelists gear, Estoqueur's gear, anything with 'Fencer' in the name) is really just dumb. Sound harsh? Well it is! The equivalent would be having a skill called 'Warriors Rage' and not giving it to WAR!

3. Fencer V: RDM exclusive, make it high level, 80 or 90. Leave the critical hit rate and TP bonus from Fencer IV and instead add 'Occasionally attacks twice' (sword only) and 'Occasionally counter-attacks after parrying' (sword only). This would give RDM's a good increase in damage output in a party, but also help out a little (just a little) during solo play.

It would be simple for Square to toss this into the upcoming update, and the benefits for solo'ing RDM's or those that don't often use /NIN would be great! (I myself have taken to /DRK). The added 'Double Attack' would make us more relevent in parties as we could increase damage output and pull of weaponskills more often, and the 'Counter attack' would help greatly during solo runs, as RDMs dont have a great damage output anyhow, and every little bit counts. And I still stick to my guns that because many items related to RDM contains the word Fencer, we need to have our parry skill moved to an B (or mabe even an A).