RDM Enhancing magic needs a boost

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Haste, one of the most important enhancing magic spells, has always been shared with WHM who even gets it 8 levels earlier. With the recent increases in the level cap, any /WHM can haste, and soon every /RDM will be able to haste as well. On top of that, SMNs now have a practically useful hastega.

Haste is and always has been a WHM spell. RDM is after the fact.

And nearly everything in your OP is WHM for that matter, I understand the title, but you're confusing what the job is supposed to do. It sounds like a complainer RDM complaining.

[Duelle]

De-buffing mobs makes a tanks job so much easier & on some mobs took them from challenging to easily manageable

MNKs, Counter and higher overall tank survivability make this moot.

enhancing was also always a big part of my job at events allowing our melee or mages to pump out more damage while I also helped to keep them healthy

See my point about Heals, Refresh, Haste.

[Swords]

Guess I was the only one who thought it was kinda lame that 300-437 Enhancing gives less potency to enhancing spells thatn 200-300 did. Prior to cap raise Phalanx equation was (Enhancing magic skill / 10) - 2, now it is similar to Phalanx II equation past the 300 mark. This can also be seen on barspells. Haven't been on rdm enough to see if Enspell equations were unaffected...but it just seems like capping enhancing was more a waste of my time only to see minimal gain out of it ;;

Spells that are directly affected by enhancing skill like Enspells and stoneskin are still limited to their old Caps so your still only going to max 21/42 damage from Tier I/II enspells and Stoneskin is still only gonna absorb up to 350 dmg, excluding gear that increases these through other means of course.

[Eth]

"Support specialists who excel at transforming their allies from mere mortals into demigods with their enhancements."

Very first sentence of SE's official vision of what the RDM job is or should be.

So.. Rog, Wildsprite, Duelle, you are all welcome to your personal opinions. But I hope we can now lay this silly notion to rest that enhancing is not one of RDM's primary intended functions.

[Seriha]

I'll believe it when we actually get some unique spells we can cast on others.

Not sure what's worse, the manifesto line or "RDMs are powerful, so we have to be careful" (Also known as, "We don't know what to do!")

[Supersun]

Still haven't gotten another one of these "transformative demigod" spells since lvl 48.

[Duelle]

So.. Rog, Wildsprite, Duelle, you are all welcome to your personal opinions. But I hope we can now lay this silly notion to rest that enhancing is not one of RDM's primary intended functions.

Oh, how sweet. I got namedropped. I'll reserve judgment until I see implementation, as was wisely noted in the General thread about the visions, they may not go all the way with anything they wrote there. Still, AyinDygra succinctly summed up my reaction to the RDM part of the manifesto:

Red Mage
"We've decided to rename Red Mage: Oracle (From FFT). Forget the whole white and black magic thing and the magic fencing with swords... they're mainly enhancers and enfeeblers now. We're giving their dual magic side to Scholar and melee side to a new job that we're not talking about yet (Mystic Knight.)" That's what I read. "Red Mage" doesn't exist anymore.

Still haven't gotten another one of these "transformative demigod" spells since lvl 48.

There's this, too. Demi-god buffs would be something like +Max HP, +Max MP, crazy insane regeneration, huge damage mitigation for a couple of seconds, +crit rate, +crit damage...hell, if you want to see the full list, google Lineage 2 Prophet or Heirophant. and look at their spell list. Granted, they're only good for acting as buff bots for two-boxers, but I'm not the one wanting to go in that direction. >.>;

[Hyrist]

Green Mage is more like it.

Not that I mind being a buffer. But seriously, SE make claims to our buffing skills that are just not there, at all.

Protect
Shell
Phalanx II
Haste
Refresh

These are the only enhancing spell lines we can share with party members without /sch being MANDATORY. and 3 of them are accessable from whm, 2 of those 3 have a better version available to WHM. WHM also has AoE versions of some of our own other enhancing spells. They also have other buff magic we dont. (Auspice.)

Put bluntly. White Mages are better buffers than we are.

SE has to make some absolutely drastic changes to Red Mage to get that 'Vision' to be adaquate. And so far, they've got nothing to show for progress on it. Adding more debuffs does not add to that image, nor does Quick Cast.

[saevel]

I would dearly like more enhancing magic, just not more fckign cycles. Although honestly I think "cycles" are dead, haven't seen them used in months now. Emp armor really helps out with reducing the load though.

What I've always said is that RDM's should do things through their enhancing magic, both mage mode and melee mode. We should have self-cast spells that make us better at either. I would love a special super Regen that healed based on enhancing magic skill, or enspells that actually work (Tier 1's getting long in the tooth). Give us a JT that enhances duration / effect of enhancing magic based on our enhancing skill.

And I lol'd at the "Oracle / Green mage" reference. Both those jobs were theme jobs and pretty useless. I only leveled Oracle to get access to pray-faith and that spell that raise's brave. I spammed them to get all my melee char's at 97 brave.

[AyinDygra]

Two thoughts seem to stand out to me on the "Enhancer" role for Red Mage:
1: Most of Red Mage's enhancing spells are self-target.
2: Red Mages don't need any more cycles.

One possible solution to both:
Job Ability: All for One and One for All (maybe too long of a name...)
As long as the Red Mage is hitting a target with their weapon, they produce an aura that copies all buffs on themselves to other party members around them.
(potential sub-feature... Red Mage may gain the benefit of self-target buffs of other party members, such as when a Monk uses Focus/Dodge, the Red Mage would gain accuracy/evasion too. Berserk when Warriors use berserk, etc ... and when coupled with the Red Mage's buffs copying to the others... anybody's self-buff now becomes a party buff! Demi-gods anyone? Would need to look at all the potential combinations to see the real potential)

Now, all their self-buffs become "AoE", there are no cycles (except Refresh for the mages who aren't in the aura range), and they get to melee monsters as a bonus.

~*~

They could obviously use new enhancing and enfeebling spells, if they're going to live up to the definition provided by SE in that vision, but it's a good start with what they already have. And yes, I tied it in to the Melee side of Red Mage (without breaking with their vision!)