General complaint thread

[Zekander]

I don't understand this. What does RUN and GEO have to do with the fact Blue Mage is a fighter/mage and an excellent job choice for someone who wants to play as a mage who melees?

RUN is an elemental tank. GEO, from all I have seen (which I admit isn't much) seems like a support-style black mage with aura-like abilities. So I don't see either of these as replacing Blue Mage as the ideal fighter/mage.

I mentioned RUN because we were talking about replacements for melee RDM, and RUN takes all of RDMs best melee capabilities (Enspells, Phalanx, Stoneskin, elemental resistance and barspells, even Fast Cast) and adds on an A+ rank in a DD weapon. So if you want to play RDM melee, RUN was specifically designed for you.

Yeah I just threw GEO in there for no real reason, but you could argue that GEO overshadows RDM support/nuking capabilities.

Mostly I don't play BLU out of personal preference, I don't like it's style and the monstrosity of it. I do like RDMs style of a spell wielding noble fencer, and I would like to see that style come through in the gameplay.

[Demonjustin]

RDM is the mash up Jack-of-all-Trades, many jobs can primarily be seen as a simple combo of two of it's aspects.

RDM's meleeing + RDM's buffing = BLU
RDM's meleeing + RDM's nuking = DRK
RDM's meleeing + RDM's tanking = RUN
RDM's healing + RDM's tanking = PLD
RDM's healing + RDM's nuking = SCH
RDM's buffing + RDM's enfeebling = GEO

I admit it's a rather simple way of looking at things, but I think it's fairly accurate. The three brought up right now are BLU, GEO, and RUN, each of which admittedly are viable alternatives to RDM provided you're ok with limiting yourself to such roles. If you primarily like RDM's meleeing power you're likely to find BLU and RUN interesting as they focus on that sort of melee power as well as one other massive aspect, and a few minor ones. For instance, a BLU can enfeeble or a RUN can buff, they just don't do it very well. I personally like RDM more than any of these alternatives.

[Protey]

I agree with demonjustin's request to raise RDM shield skill to C-. It's not a ridiculous request, it won't break anything. It will only allow us to have a somewhat decent rate of blocking on fodder mobs (except Woh gates... those guys are too high level). On NMs we still won't block anything.

It's kind of shameful that a whm has higher shield skill than we do.

[Malthar]

Same; I've always found RDM's shield skill kind off off-pudding. However, it should be raised more than a C-1, as Protey suggests, to at minimum a B-, and perhaps have a RDM specific shield that has an increased block rate.

[Selindrile]

To answer your statements:

winds of promyvion (erasega) - other jobs have to either use stratagems or be a mythic whm

Must be within melee range unlike using strategems, whm empy+2 hat also gives 10% chance of AoEing without mythic, and of course divine seal also, however, Winds is quite nice.

barrier tusk - allows them to go 15% past the PDT cap.... hmmm where have i heard that before, o PLD and RUN mythics

Barrier tusk doesn't break PDT cap, didn't last long enough to be useful before this patch, I haven't set in years, though they're increasing duration the duration this patch, doubt it'll be enough to fit it into my spells.

Subduction - gives aoe potent gravity, recast of 5 seconds, and does quite a bit of damage... RDM gravity 2 is single target, recast of 75 seconds, and does no damage

Subduction is useful only for cleaving, I don't set it for endgame content, Gravity 2 isn't terribly useful either, with the evasion component removed for most content, rarely useful in incursion, but not really.

Occultation - gives shadows based on blu skill... up to what, 10 shadows?
Occultation costs a whopping 138 MP, unless you have a tizona or are in abyssea, you're not using this spell effectively.

Cocoon - 50% defense boost. nearest anything comes to this is defender from WAR
Good spell admittedly, subbable, and I do occasionally Pld/Blu when supertanking, hardly end-all-beat-all.

Stun with very low recast time. - Doesn't work on NMs, useful for trash.
Incredibly long lasting terror. - 5 Minute recast, doesn't last long on most NMs, but a few are susceptible.
AoE Sleep. - Useful, but don't usually find room to put this in endgame sets.
AoE Haste 2 - Not much of a place for it, situationally useful but in both delve and incursion you get haste wiped on quite a few mobs, and Blu can't reapply, Rdms then have to, but it's a nice self buff.

The limitation is the crux of the argument, Blu can't be a reasonably effective DD without devoting the vast majority of their 70 set points (which few Blus have, though I do have all 70) to DDing. Utility is nice, but generally it's not enough to get an invite.

This is the heart of the matter is, do you see shouts for Blu? The last time I did was VW era, and that was because of procs.
If Blu was OP it would be one of the core jobs that is actually be shouted for, actively invited and used for content. It's one of the many middle-accepted jobs that people will allow you to go if they know you don't suck at it, much like War or Drk.

I'm not saying Rdm couldn't stand some buffs in some areas, but Blu comes short of Rdm in endgame desirability overall, hands down, being OP is more than just raw damage, but at the end of the day, if people don't desire the job, it's clearly not OP, because people desire OP jobs.

[Protey]

To answer your statements:

winds of promyvion (erasega) - other jobs have to either use stratagems or be a mythic whm

Must be within melee range unlike using strategems, whm empy+2 hat also gives 10% chance of AoEing without mythic, and of course divine seal also, however, Winds is quite nice.

barrier tusk - allows them to go 15% past the PDT cap.... hmmm where have i heard that before, o PLD and RUN mythics

Barrier tusk doesn't break PDT cap, didn't last long enough to be useful before this patch, I haven't set in years, though they're increasing duration the duration this patch, doubt it'll be enough to fit it into my spells.

Subduction - gives aoe potent gravity, recast of 5 seconds, and does quite a bit of damage... RDM gravity 2 is single target, recast of 75 seconds, and does no damage

Subduction is useful only for cleaving, I don't set it for endgame content, Gravity 2 isn't terribly useful either, with the evasion component removed for most content, rarely useful in incursion, but not really.

Occultation - gives shadows based on blu skill... up to what, 10 shadows?
Occultation costs a whopping 138 MP, unless you have a tizona or are in abyssea, you're not using this spell effectively.

Cocoon - 50% defense boost. nearest anything comes to this is defender from WAR
Good spell admittedly, subbable, and I do occasionally Pld/Blu when supertanking, hardly end-all-beat-all.

Stun with very low recast time. - Doesn't work on NMs, useful for trash.
Incredibly long lasting terror. - 5 Minute recast, doesn't last long on most NMs, but a few are susceptible.
AoE Sleep. - Useful, but don't usually find room to put this in endgame sets.
AoE Haste 2 - Not much of a place for it, situationally useful but in both delve and incursion you get haste wiped on quite a few mobs, and Blu can't reapply, Rdms then have to, but it's a nice self buff.

The limitation is the crux of the argument, Blu can't be a reasonably effective DD without devoting the vast majority of their 70 set points (which few Blus have, though I do have all 70) to DDing. Utility is nice, but generally it's not enough to get an invite.

This is the heart of the matter is, do you see shouts for Blu? The last time I did was VW era, and that was because of procs.
If Blu was OP it would be one of the core jobs that is actually be shouted for, actively invited and used for content. It's one of the many middle-accepted jobs that people will allow you to go if they know you don't suck at it, much like War or Drk.

I'm not saying Rdm couldn't stand some buffs in some areas, but Blu comes short of Rdm in endgame desirability overall, hands down, being OP is more than just raw damage, but at the end of the day, if people don't desire the job, it's clearly not OP, because people desire OP jobs.

I've never seen a BLU not in range to cast winds of promy.
Barrier tusk is a 15% reduction on top of 50% PDT cap. for a total of 65% reduction.
subduction is good for kiting a ton of mobs at once.
occultation: sorry used to playing with a BLU that has tizona and limitless MP.

I keep on seeing this argument about shouts for BLU. I do everything with my LS or solo rather than PUG... cuz PUG suck. The people who shout are usually gimps who don't even know much about the game, can't get a LS, but want to do things and so don't even recognize the utility of BLU. Any time I take a risk and join a PUG I am always mortified at how bad people are and the event almost always ends in failure. That's why I don't see shouts for BLU vs RDM as a viable argument.

[Selindrile]

I've never seen a BLU not in range to cast winds of promy.
Barrier tusk is a 15% reduction on top of 50% PDT cap. for a total of 65% reduction.
subduction is good for kiting a ton of mobs at once.
occultation: sorry used to playing with a BLU that has tizona and limitless MP.

I keep on seeing this argument about shouts for BLU. I do everything with my LS or solo rather than PUG... cuz PUG suck. The people who shout are usually gimps who don't even know much about the game, can't get a LS, but want to do things and so don't even recognize the utility of BLU. Any time I take a risk and join a PUG I am always mortified at how bad people are and the event almost always ends in failure. That's why I don't see shouts for BLU vs RDM as a viable argument.

Yes blu is in range, but point was, when hit with disables Blu may or may not be able to cast winds of promy to remove whatever, just pointing out a limitation.

I was under the impression, perhaps mistaken that Barrier Tusk didn't bypass PDT cap will have to look again to see if it does.

I'm envious of the Tizona, but that's not the case for most of us.

I'm also in a LS, but I never get to come Blu to anything though it's my best geared job, I always have to come Rdm ironically (for Incursion/Delve), or Whm, or Sam for anything else.

I PUG difficults and Incursion frequently, there are plenty of bads out there, but there's plenty of successful events too... shouts are just an indicator of overall demand, which is completely a valid argument.

[mattkoko]

ok here we go again... you are forgetting about relic feet: 5/5 merits = 25%, add feet, that's another 25%. so you're looking at 7.5 minutes. I put about 8 with a question mark because I knew it was somewhere around there. Sometimes I wonder if you play BLU as much as you say you do. Or maybe you just don't play it properly/gimped. You say I have a pattern of over exaggerating. where? that's right, I don't. I also question the things you say because you lumped a BLU in the PLD party. And you seem to think PLD needs haste. All events that a PLD is brought to is because there are RNGs. Decoy Shot says hi. Any other fights you don't bring PLDs because it is a waste. Sure, giving the PLD haste will benefit, but it's not as big of a deal as you make it out to be. Maybe you play with a group of people in a non-standard way where you put BLUs in with PLDs, more power to you. The rest of us don't.

The reason I say those things about BLU is I've seen 2 BLUs in delve keep an NM terrorized for almost the entire duration of its life. I've seen a BLU be able to heavy gravity a ton of mobs and kite them in pinch situations or just spam that spell and kill them all at once. I've seen BLU erasega and fully heal the party as if it was a WHM. I've seen BLU with like 3000 defense (though I think he might have had a minne or two), my PLD doesn't come even close to that. I've seen mythic BLU with unlimited MP. I've seen BLU outparsing MNKs. The list goes on.

You state RDM is seen as a support job. This is your own bias. RDM is a jack-of-all trades; whether it be DD, support, tank, healer... I've done them all.

As to your comment regarding how I fared against that MNK, keep in mind that I am not anywhere near the average RDM. I have put massive amounts of time and effort into it and have pretty much the best gear in all aspects. You also need to keep in mind that the SAMs were doing over double the damage of the MNK. Now SAMs are waaaaaay OP.

So I know I said I would not add anymore to the blu vs red mage portion of this thread but considering more and more jobs seem to be getting involved I figured it wouldn't hurt lol

So I stand corrected again. And again admit I am wrong. But it's alright. Hey, in order to learn, ya gotta get hit in the head a couple times. In this case I facepalmed myself twice. As for your comment about me possibly being gimped, I honestly did not really look toward relic for blu yet mainly because my my main job is drk and been so focused on decking that out (full 119 and filling in some gear swap slots to boost utility type stuff). I took about a year break and came back on the day they increased Ilevel to 119. Blu is my second main. Is it gimped now? I wouldn't say that, but I would say it would be about average as I have played it a bit and made improvements (blu has helped me a great deal with soloing some of the battle fields for chapters 1-5 so having at least a 119 weapon with some 119 pieces I felt was necessary). As far as me bringing blu and pld in the same party, it is something I have done, but I was not talking about that specifically. I was talking about haste in general. Coming back I quickly realized I had to level whm to get into anything because it was either 119 or gtfo unless your a whm or brd. And no matter what job I came to an event in, if there was a pld the main thing every pld asked for was haste (along with pretty much every DD other then rng). Your argument, was talking about aoe buffs, and my main argument back is, if people want buffs, they are not going to look to a blu that can aoe buffs every 10 minutes. They are going to look to a job that can keep those buffs up full time rather then only 80% of the time. It is Utility at best.

As far as me being bias to rdm, keep in mind, I have always seen rdm as a jack of all trades as well. However, it seems like SE is making them into a support class because jack of all trades is nice solo, and in some strategic party situations, but master of non doesn't get you into groups unless you established yourself well enough to others (which it seems like you have since you completely decked out your rdm). To counter this, SEs last rdm updated introduced spells in the support department in the way of debuffs. Which is why I link them in the support department considering that seems to be the direction they are taking. The same goes for blu though in a different way. I have used blu to tank, heal, buff, debuff etc. However, this does not get you into groups as i said before. If they want a healer, they are going to get the best possible healer (whm although I have seen some pretty amazing Sch fill this role as well). If they want a buffer or a support, they are going to get a brd. Next in line is usually cor, geo and rdm if they cannot find a brd (though from what I have seen, geo is getting better and I have also been with some rdms filling the support role). To counter this for blu though, they gave a pretty decent boost to their physical spells, to put them more in the DD category. Now with all of this said, I do not disagree with you. I certainly don't think increased enspells or giving them sword A or A+ will break the job in anyway. But it seems all of the job adjustment updates have been to get more jobs in group content, rather then solo content.

I do apologize for getting a little snippy. I sensed some attitude toward blu from you and I jumped to the defensive. As far as your pattern of exaggerating comment, you made every single spell that you listed seem way more glorified then they actually are. The only spell you listed that was not blown up too much was cocoon and AT (again, considering AT for a while is all we were wanted for and still in some cases that is the only reason we are able to participate). However in your previous posts, your examples were much more realistic. However, I still wouldn't say they are over powered just because you still have to sacrifice to be able to do any of the rolls effectively due to spell set points, where rdm can adapt in a pinch. I do agree with you that mythic blu is beyond OP. But you can say the same about many of the mythic wielders. Now back in the abyssea era, if you came in and said blu was op, I would not disagree with you in the slightest. Blu was beyond over powered in abyssea with the right gear and atmas.

[Metaking]

dont wanna get draged into this but one thing barrier tusk's effect is applied after pdt so if you are at 50% pdt its effect only goes past cap by 7.5%, and cocoon is a little op, i mean full pdt wars getting one shoted by merciless mauling but blus with coccon and 50% pdt barely dropping to yellow.

Ps. a blu inside incursion should never have mp problems ever before hitting 129 level

[Dale]

I believe you're thinking of someone else. That said, I'll still address this since it does apply to me in some respect. All VT/IT are not equal. On RDM I am capable of beating down basically any mob in Dho Gates with fair amounts of ease, they are for all intents and purposes classified as IT mobs. I require no Trusts nor do I require Distract for me to cap accuracy on these mobs. That said, Woh Gates is quite the opposite. They have high enough EVA that I require Accuracy Songs at very least on top of Food in order to cap Accuracy, and I think I need more than that still. Mind you I'm running what used to be the best possible Accuracy set for a RDM and I'm not likely to be far off still so these mobs are quite the issue.

All of that said, this is also assuming normal mobs are the extent of what you wish to fight. With songs I am capable of capping Accuracy on Gessho, the second most evasive NM of the MPNMs so far as I'm aware. That is on Difficult however, put me on Very Difficult and even in my high Accuracy set with full buffs and constantly keeping up Distract II and you'd see my Accuracy still quite a bit away from cap. Put me against AAMR and you'd see it get even worse, as generally I don't cap Accuracy on her even on Difficult in my Accuracy gear. So, it truly depends on the extent of what you wish to fight. If the mobs of Dho Gates are your only interest then RDM has no deep Accuracy issues and as such is fine as is. If you wish to push the limits and fight the hardest, most evasive mobs in the game, using gear sets built specifically to excel at such... you're going to be disapointed, and a large source of our missing Accuracy comes in the form of gear(specifically legs, for which we have no good Accuracy piece...) and our skill rating being only a B, rather than B+~A.

Though I admittedly only read this after my last part of my reply, I believe my previous bit of this reply addresses this as well.

I believe you misunderstand. I am not saying we should have great shield skill, but rather, we should have skill to use a shield. For simplicity sake, I'll use a graph to show what I mean.



This graph shows the skill at level 99 for every skill level and how it scales. As you can see, D, E, and F, are all far behind the others. The slope is insane at those levels, if you're in one of those 3 categories your skill is so far behind that to some extent you might as well not even have the skill at all. RDM is a F rank Shield user, our skill is literally 103 behind C-, which is the first reasonable amount of skill on the chart. I'm not asking for us to have A+ or even B, just C- alone would allow us to make use of our shield. Currently even with a Beatific Shield +1 which is our best option for shields, we have only 372 skill, just under a C rank level 99's skill. That's a 119 shield's skill added to our natural, that's to say at level 119 a RDM should be just barely able to block a good deal of attacks from level 99 targets. See what I mean about how bad that is? At least if we had a C- skill rank we'd end up with 475 skill with this shield, which would be far behind that of most jobs still, but enough we could at least use our 119 Shield on level 99(~105?) targets with some effect.

While this is true, the main thing I take issue with is our capability to fill a melee role. The one and only time you truly go into an event asking for someone to be ready to switch it up on notice is when you've never done said event before. It's extremely rare for me to go into an event as a supporter via healing, buffing, and enfeebling, and during said event be asked to change to a frontline fighter Hasting, healing, and keeping up basic enfeebles. Ignoring the fact I use completely different subjobs for each of these roles and the fact no subjob can fit both well at once, it's simply not common to need such things.

I accept and admit our role in combat even on the frontlines largely includes support. That said, I don't think that is an excuse to rip away power from the job that it needs in order to close the gap between it and other jobs. As I said before, if we had even 80% of the damage of other jobs in equal gear then that'd be one thing. The fact of the matter is that it's not really the case, and the gap we do have isn't one that Haste II & Distract II can make up for alone. They are our only true support aspects we can keep up easily on the frontlines without drastically hindering our damage to the point of making us even less powerful/desirable.

Wow what a post, complete with graphs and all. So since you took so much effort to write it I'll read it word for word and try to comment.

You admit you can cap your accuracy against even some of the highest evasive monsters in the entire game. So I don't see a real issue with Red Mage and our accuracy. Chances are if we are having trouble hitting something when we are decked out in accuracy gear other Melee are as well. Some monsters are just hard to hit.

If you want to give us a C in shield I got no real issues with that. Long as it stays far beneath the Paladin.

Where we disagree is you don't think a Red Mage can fill a melee role. And I do. Under normal situations I feel I compare quite well with the other melee in the group when I'm in full Melee mode. Yes, they will pull ahead of me when they self-chain and do massive burst damage or round up a lot of monsters and sweep them with a massive AoE weapon skill. But in normal situations Red Mage does just fine.

From what I read of your post - what you want to be able to do is 80% of the best damage in the game while still being able to play support and enhance your party and enfeeble your enemy. And I retain - as I have since the beginning of this debate - that would simply be too powerful. If you want to support your group - especially to the effective extent that a Red Mage can - you need to pay a heavy price in terms of your damage. Else actual melee damage dealing classes would become too weak by comparison. Because why bring a melee DPS if you can bring a Red mage who does only 20% less damage yet can heal, enfeeble and enhance the group so effectively?

I really do feel Red Mages who are dissatisfied with their melee damage should go try a Blue Mage out. That is a melee/mage job with an actual focus on offense. Because Red Mage is not designed to be an offensive job. They are a mixed bag of many different jobs and designed for players who want to do a little bit of everything. You are never going to be a pillar of offense. Nor should they be.