On Red Mage melee...

[Trangnai]

Minor thing here; Chant du Cygne is very powerful even on RDM but obviously that's not something most people will have.

Yes, but a job that should be able to melee shouldn't need an Empyrean Weapon to be allowed to consider doing it. post 75 and even before that, we have more swords available then daggers. We should have the skills to utilize those weapons natively, and not require a very time consuming weapon to be completed to do so, this is anything but a minor issue as lack of these things have been an issue with rdm for years. It's been mentioned several times that CDC should be a boost to a jobs ability, not what makes it.

[Silvers]

I agree with a lot of what is being said about making RDM more balance, and distinctive at the same time. I also question the thought of how SE tags RDM as a fencer/duelist (a sword specialist), yet it is so limited in sword weapon skills. I also question the sword cap with it's fencer label. I think composure should mod weapon skill ratings instead of accuracy. Maybe it also should allow the use all WS's you could only access by WAR, PLD, BLU, DRK sub as well. To revamp and melee with en-spells, maybe add a job ability or trait that allows them to have another added effect such as poison, stun, slow, silence, paralyze, & addle (each associated to it's rightful element). Can have the effects increase in potency with subsequential hits, and have them also boost spells that landed of the same name. Just a couple ideas, but I think they are interesting concepts worth exploring.

[Supersun]

First off before I start let me state that Rdm melee is the best it has ever been maybe with the exception of lvl 30; Certainly there are other jobs that are in need of melee buff more then Rdm that doesn't mean we should ignore other jobs. Keep in mind as well that CDC solves a lot of these issues I'm about to bring up but with that being said here is the Ironies of Red Mage Melee.

1) Our gear is much harder to get and weaker then jobs that have no business outmeleeing a Rdm, namely Brd and Whm.

Before abyssea the only thing holding back Whm was their lack of accuracy. Now with Razed Ruin though any job that wants to melee more or less now does not have to worry about accuracy any more; With their accuracy issues gone now with Hexa Strike and Blessed gear Whms actually out DD Rdm without CDC by a decent margin.

Brd actually has a lot of the same TP gear Rdm has with the exception of kitty pants (why brd is on these...). It's their WS sets that are better then ours and considering we more or less use the same WSs...yeah.... THe fact that they can use Hetacomb (why they ever got that...) makes their WSs hit quite a bit harder. Not to mention Fencer which is already a slap to the rapier masters. Now before abyssea this was solved because whatever difference a brd would beat us in damage we would more then make back with our enspells. Which brings up another point...

2) Our Weaponskill and Weapon seletion, for swords we aren't that bad in our weapon selection, the only problem is unless you have CDC or are using sanguine there isn't any reason that you should be using a sword over a dagger in the main hand because our sword WS are terrible. Even if Death Blossom was a crit WS Eviceration has nearly double the hits and fTP. Well just use a dagger then, the only problem is that while we have excellent dagger WSs we haven't received a new decent dagger since the Blau Dolch besides the Twilight Knife. It's doesn't make sense, we have good swords but bad sword WS, but we have good dagger WSs but no good daggers. No other job has this problem, Whm had good clubs and hexa strike, bard has good daggers and can still use their WSs. Yeah, the twilight knife is nice but that also brings up another issue...

3)Enspells and Additional effects hate each other. The twilight knife's additional effect overwrites our enspells and while that might be a good thing considering that the twilight knife does have a beastly additional effect it doesn't change the fact that we have to "lose" something to get it while no other job is in that situation (like Brd). In addition the additional effects that I personally would want to overwrite our enspells, the TotM swords because they have potent debuffs and are infrequent enough that losing our enspells for one swing would be well worth it, in fact can't activate with our enspells on yet they CAN overwrite sanbas...(At least it was this way last I checked, they could of ninjaed it in at some point, I know the lvl 90 swords can block certain status effects that the lvl 80s could not). It just doesn't make sense that the supposed master of enfeebling has to sacrifice the most to use some of the best enfeebling based weapons (that and when dual wielding having the actication rate be the same as when single wielding would be nice too). Speaking of enspells

4) Our enspells, which besides composure, are the only thing Rdms have going for them in melee have scaled terribly in the face of atma, new gear, and higher damage weapons. The rate at which our enhancing skill increases our enspells just can't keep up compared to how fast everything else is rising. I remember a recent Rdm parse that had his enspells at 7% of his damage. I've seen wyverns that do more then that and those are pretty pathetic compared to Drgs now days. Either we need a new tier of enspells or they need to be able to scale up with our damage in some way so atma doesn't leave our enspells in the dust. I don't need to mention the problem with T2 enspells that have already been mentioned. It seems that the biggest complaints arise from things that don't scale up in abyssea compared to everything else like our healing.

5) Which brings up another point, since we are more or less using lvl 75 mage armor when meleeing our defense is way lower then it should be. I understand if it's lower to some extent, but it shouldn't feel like if the monster uses a physical AoE that I'm taking like double damage compared to everyone else because the monster has capped pDIF against me, and this is only going to get worse on the way to 99 (not to mention the odd fact that Warlock actually has like the 3rd highest defense out of all the AF1 sets while Estoquers has less defense then some of my 75 gear >.>)

6) Back on the topic of armor, the new synergy system sounds nice as long as it isn't too restrictive because now we can take some of our rare/ex pieces and add augments to them. Only problem is that some of our most important pieces already contain augments like our legs. You have 2 leg options, Nashira which aren't terrible and the ASA legs. Yeah...I'm predicting that we can't add augments to the ASA legs can we. On the other hand Brds with their Kitty pants will be enjoying brand new augments on an already superior piece of gear. Not to mention I only see this working with certain pieces which I'd be surprised if Rdm can use any of them (well ones that were melee orientated in the first place). If it's limited to certain pieces I can see Nashira legs, Goliard body, and the Morgan's set. Brd will probably be able to augment their Kitties and their Hetacomb. Yeah, those are upgrades, but it's another case that while we gain a small buff everyone else gains a much larger one.

I guess the biggest point I'm trying to conclude is that no other job has to jump through as many hoops as Rdm just to reach a basic level of performance.
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Fixing all this wouldn't even be that hard. It doesn't require reinventing the wheel, just using what you have already given us.

1) When life gives you ton of MAB gear use elemental WSs. Really a lot of our pre-CDC sword WS problems would be solved if you gave us a strong native elemental WS. Like mentioned before it would be even more interesting if you let the element of the WS match our current enspell. We can already do some pretty decent numbers with Sanguine and Aeolian Edge (with a martial knife), just create a slightly stronger version of one of those and let all the gear you've already created do the rest.

2) Create a basic mage "perle" set that Rdm, Whm, Brd, Sch, Smn, and Blm can use. Now by "perle" I don't mean literally perle, but create a basic hybrid set like mentioned before that is easy enough to get and can adequately allow the user to melee. One of the biggest barriers from melee acceptance is simply all those gimps out there meleeing in their convert set. At least this way they have no excuse. There's no need really for a WS set if you create that elemental WS for Rdm. Most jobs can already gear fairly easily for their primary WS.

3) Create a new tier of enspells that don't exactly mimic the concept of Enlight and Endark. Rdms in general swing WAY too fast for that concept to work. It would only increase our casting burden more since for all intents and purposes that spell would pretty much ignore composure and our increases enhancing magic duration. The if you do that I'd just touch the enhancing skill issue with the T2s and maybe the gradually increasing damage part and those would be pretty good. I kinda like the fact that they only activate on the main hand. If anything instead of adding those hits to your additional hits just add even more to the initial swing. I like having the option of using a Sanba with an enspell up.

4) Continue to lighten our casting load. Estoquier's was a good idea, only problem is expecting someone to have a full set just to melee is kind of ridiculous. Now this issue might be solved as the set becomes easier to get, but there should be other ways that we can cast and melee without one or the other affecting the other one so much. I mean what's the point of Rdms versatility if we can't do everything simultaneously (imo this should be the difference between Blu and Rdm, Blus should be great at a lot of stuff but have to pick one or two things, Rdm should be good at everything and be able to use everything. Not saying that each job can't have their niche for specialization obviously).

5) Create new ways of enfeebling, whether it's just new enfeebles like confuse (you know you want too and it wouldn't be that hard. Just have the monster have a low chance to be countered by whoever he attacks which should simulate the effect), or making our new tier of enspells apply an additional effect.

[Duelle]

1) When life gives you ton of MAB gear use elemental WSs. Really a lot of our pre-CDC sword WS problems would be solved if you gave us a strong native elemental WS. Like mentioned before it would be even more interesting if you let the element of the WS match our current enspell. We can already do some pretty decent numbers with Sanguine and Aeolian Edge (with a martial knife), just create a slightly stronger version of one of those and let all the gear you've already created do the rest.

I can't really see this happening unless the weapon skill in question is added to our skill gain progression. It'd need to show up at around the time other melee get their bread and butter WS to be worthwhile, if not earlier. Could use that as a placeholder WS until Sanguine (which would have to be made native to RDM), which itself would cover for CDC.

2) Create a basic mage "perle" set that Rdm, Whm, Brd, Sch, Smn, and Blm can use. Now by "perle" I don't mean literally perle, but create a basic hybrid set like mentioned before that is easy enough to get and can adequately allow the user to melee. One of the biggest barriers from melee acceptance is simply all those gimps out there meleeing in their convert set. At least this way they have no excuse. There's no need really for a WS set if you create that elemental WS for Rdm. Most jobs can already gear fairly easily for their primary WS.

I don't agree with hybrid gear for one reason and one reason alone: item budgets. An actually workable hybrid set has a chance of being stupidly over-budget, and the alternative to that is having a bunch of gear with a lot of stats spread out.

4) Continue to lighten our casting load. Estoquier's was a good idea, only problem is expecting someone to have a full set just to melee is kind of ridiculous. Now this issue might be solved as the set becomes easier to get, but there should be other ways that we can cast and melee without one or the other affecting the other one so much. I mean what's the point of Rdms versatility if we can't do everything simultaneously (imo this should be the difference between Blu and Rdm, Blus should be great at a lot of stuff but have to pick one or two things, Rdm should be good at everything and be able to use everything. Not saying that each job can't have their niche for specialization obviously).

Estoqueur's set did not really get rid of cycling, which is what needs to dissapear to improve front-line quality of life. The only two things I can think of is some way to AoE Haste and Refresh and overall longer durations when playing RDM as the main job. 10-minute AoE buffs would be a god send for the melee enthusiasts.

The alternative would be to change things in a way that haste and refresh are removed from the equation when front-lining and make up for that elsewhere.

[Supersun]

I don't agree with hybrid gear for one reason and one reason alone: item budgets. An actually workable hybrid set has a chance of being stupidly over-budget, and the alternative to that is having a bunch of gear with a lot of stats spread out.

All depends where you get it.

[Duelle]

All depends where you get it.

Which often lends itself to being way out of reach or something that doesn't reward other people for helping you get it. Like the Chimeric fleuret.

[Supersun]

Which often lends itself to being way out of reach or something that doesn't reward other people for helping you get it. Like the Chimeric fleuret.

Or it could be just as easy to get as Perle. Once again, it's situational with how you get it.

[Xikeroth]

Well all that's being said is well and good, let us not forget that Abyssea will soon be over, the level cap is planned to be raised to level 99 and content for that will come out eventually. Which means we may not always have atma so you can't always count on those buffs.

I do have one thought that would get rid of the elemental staff question... what if we had some job traits that gave us massive magic accuracy bonuses with sword or daggers equipped but didn't work with staves equipped would help solve this problem. This would allow us to work more with swords and get rid of the thought people have that a RDM without elemental staves or magian staves are useless. (again I talk for when we no longer have abyssea buffs.)

Another thought is raising our sword skills to an A to rival Blue mage and give us access to all the same weapon skills. We can NOT be expected to have relic, mythic or even Almace to have a decent selection of WS to chose from in order to melee properly, nor should we have to sub WAR BLU PLD or DRK to have access to said WSs.

Dancer can heal quite well, support the party in their way AND do respectable damage, so whats wrong with us being able to do the same in melee? That's the real question.

Perhaps even add enfeebling effects to our enspells... for example make Enaero lower VIT(by a good amount so its not ignored like Choke is)

There is no reason we should be looked at as nothing but healers, both inside and outside of abyssea. In that respect we have two other jobs that can fill the role just as well, WHM and SCH.

[rog]

Well all that's being said is well and good, let us not forget that Abyssea will soon be over

Did your crystal ball tell you that?

[Xikeroth]

Did your crystal ball tell you that?

No, but it is simple common sense.

What you really expect it to be the final event everyone will do? Look at other more successful MMOs they constantly add new content making older content obsolete. If SE wants people to keep playing FFXI they will have to add content beyond abyssea.

Its no "crystal ball" thing Its called common sense. If it was so many people are basically almost done with their gearsets they will lose the want to do it anymore and just stop playing.

Does SE want this? No they want our money.