Again, the normal rotation would not change. You do the same thing as before. You only have the option to use your melee attacks instead of EReprise when in melee range. Thats it. End of story.
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But I believe that's what all of us are saying, the melee moves are usable when in range, they are just not as efficient as your spells or their enchanted upgrades. Try hitting a striking dummy with your melee combo. You'll see it still deals decent damage. As for the gauge usage if it's not at a full 80/80, that more or less depends on your playstyle. Because if you were close to the 80/80 mark anyway, waiting is the better option, and inversely if you weren't close at all, the gauge isn't an issue.
We just need separate melee magical job. RDM is absolutely fine the way it is.
if RDM all melee attack skill is now enchanted by default, how about changing the usage of balance gauge? instead of making the gauge to use the enchanted version, now it require certain amount to pull verholy/verflare and the scorch.
so 40 for the verholy/flare and another 40 for the scorch, so if your gauge is 56 for example, you only able to pull the verholy/flare but not the scorch because you lack the mana to do it, essentially its still the same, you are still require to have at least 80 mana to pull the usual RDM full combo, and maybe twist it a little bit? for scorch skill the minimum is 40 but if you pull it off when you have 60 mana left (so 100 in total), it will give you extra potency.
but RDM can just be lazy and spam the enchanted 1-2-3 combo all the time then, well... how about a short cooldown? something like 20-25 seconds, and the melee attack obviously will not generate mana for the gauge. RDM playstyle is all about filling the gauge to use scorch combo, giving it a short cooldown for the melee attack should be fine, you need at least 40 second-ish to fill both mana to 100, without manafication so 25 seconds cooldown for the melee attack seems fair for me
these enemy is at death door but i dont want to use cast time, my fleche and contre is on cd, so does my melee, what then? thats what the reprise for
this is just fun "what if" from me though, pls dont take it seriously
While I would've preferred the class to have a better melee option, I'd say XI's version of the job is closer to pulling it off than XIV's. That said, I'm not against the notion of stances that could empower select abilities and reduce/disable others, but you're still going to have the issue of player bias and meta influence which XI's RDM also muddied through over the years.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the unknown DPS job would be Mystic Knight as it could fill that magic swordsman niche in its own way.
I think a melee stance would be nice for flavor. It could temporarily convert our verspells into elemental melee spells for a temporary dps increase with the downside of putting you in melee range for 8~16 secs basically a cooldown secondary version of our burst (melee) phase but locked behind a cooldown rather than our job resource. Here is an example:
Ability: Spellblade
Cooldown: 90~180
Effect: Convert Verthunder, aero, fire, stone into Enthunder, aero, fire, stone, increasing the potency of the spells by X% for X seconds or until enchanted melee combo is used.
Of course if mystic knight is coming magical attacks would fit them better.
i have something similar in my mind actually, but instead of new ability, its a replacement for Lucid dreaming. it always irk me that all magic class has the same way to refill their mana which is lucid dreaming, each class should have their own way to replenish their mana, basically...
Ability: let just call it the "Spellblade" too, its a cool name
received: level 40 or 50ish (replace Lucid dreaming with this Spellblade)
Effect: same as Lucid dreaming but, all your melee attack will become enchanted version and every successful melee attack also net you XX amount of mana
and maybe increase the mp cost for all RDM magic by 100 to balance this skill, if iam not wrong lucid dreaming fill up roughly 1/4 to 1/2 of RDM mana and with non stop enchanted combo, it could literally fill your mana to full
I don't know bout you guys, but i feel it takes way too long to build mana before going in for the melee rotation. Especially with how RDM is being portrayed by NPCs, they corps-a-corps so quickly after casting a couple spells. The whole appeal and core identity of a Red Mage is having to balance black/white mana while weaving dashing into melee and jumping out, If i'm gonna be standing back and casting spells for majority of the time, i'd might as well play a Black Mage or Summoner. They should add a melee finisher as well