Red Mage has been shafted all expansion and "but Verraise" doesn't cut it

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Originally Posted by Arguscbf

SMN would still be on a very good spot for what the job has to offer.

Everyone says BLM is much harder to play due to optimization, that has a high skill ceiling, which i agree cause i used to main BLM a few tiers ago but if you look only to BLM rotation you'll see its pretty easy and straight forward to understand, what i don't understand is why most people only look to RDM rotation and not its optimization as well. And last but not least, we have SMN that has both rotation and optimization easy peasy.

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RDM optimization with the ways of minimizing all of their drifts is pretty hard, I think. Requires a ton of precision.

The bad part is that this optimization doesn't really reward the extra dps it should, which should be what could put RDM above SMN.

RDM should be doing more than SMN by far in terms of aDPS. Requires so much more effort and finessing, while smn is legit just a physR

Another (minor) point, but still one nonetheless: encounters this expansion are explicitly designed to have mechanics often line up with the dreaded two minute meta. Mechanics vomit is where mistakes tend to happen. People die when they make mistakes. You need a fast raise in these scenarios, especially during Bodycheckwalker.

Fourth (soft) tax on Verraise: its usefulness window just so happens to interrupt your burst, further taking a chunk out of the most important part of your damage contribution.

Honestly, I just wish we had a combat Phoenix Down consumable, and usable by anybody. Perhaps with a 4min cooldown.

This way, they could finally end this whole situation of the "raise tax", becasue for RDM and SMN it would become just a job QoL perk (of a better raise that you don't need to stock or having a cooldown) rather than an identity defining staple that justifies some balancing decisions.

Job difficulty should never correlate to job DPS though, only DPS buffing

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Job difficulty should never correlate to job DPS though, only DPS buffing

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Should or shouldn't, Yoshi-P stated that it does. And then the balancing team went on to make several decisions this expansion that contradict his statement (making melees easier and easier while also increasing their damage, making SMN a free mobility job you could macro to one button but stronger than RDM). I'd like to know what internal stats they're using that gives some enormous "screw RDM" weight to their balancing, because leaving RDM's damage output dumpstered despite objections to the point where WAR is sneaking up on it by 6.41 just seems purposeful.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Honestly, I just wish we had a combat Phoenix Down consumable

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While I'm all for having a duty action that refreshes after each wipe, a consumable would be terrible and pf would be super toxic about using it. Anyone remember when food buff was lost after each pull?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Should or shouldn't, Yoshi-P stated that it does. And then the balancing team went on to make several decisions this expansion that contradict his statement (making melees easier and easier while also increasing their damage, making SMN a free mobility job you could macro to one button but stronger than RDM). I'd like to know what internal stats they're using that gives some enormous "screw RDM" weight to their balancing, because leaving RDM's damage output dumpstered despite objections to the point where WAR is sneaking up on it by 6.41 just seems purposeful.

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Yoshi-P is wrong. I should be able to play what I enjoy, and just because a job is "easier" should be not a hindrance.

Haste isn't a skill people should be wanting on RDM unless it's a personal buff.
Party-wide Hastes have been in FFXIV before and they have had their fair share of problems. Unless we're talking about Haste being a Peloton like what SCH's have, then that would be alright. Haste as in "Increasing Skill/Spell Speed for everyone" isn't a good idea. Some jobs benefit from this while others would suffer clipping issues in their rotations. You'd almost need to learn an entirely separate rotation and opener based on wither or not a haste user was in the party. And pray and hope they use it at the right buff windows. SCH and AST both had abilities that increased skill/spell speed and certain melee jobs like DRG hated them for it.

I'm getting hot flashes from Royal Road single target AST The Arrow on SB MCH. Please stop this, I have ptsd.

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Originally Posted by keeper_of_moon

While I'm all for having a duty action that refreshes after each wipe, a consumable would be terrible and pf would be super toxic about using it. Anyone remember when food buff was lost after each pull?

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It's a Final Fantasy game, put them on vendors for 500gil each and make them stackable.

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Originally Posted by vetch

It's a Final Fantasy game, put them on vendors for 500gil each and make them stackable.

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Pretty much this I had in mind. Toxicity would probably stems from people joining without being bothered of even buying them, but at the same time you see people joining without melds, or even food sometimes (which can drastically put them in danger).

Having a duty action that refreshes every wipe doesn't really relief the "raise tax" from RDM's shoulders, since you can still get progress with multiple wipes.

I think the only real issue I have with Red is the mobility issue in the form of attacks, and its not that big of one. Red doesnt have an instant spell like Scathe, something with a small potency that can be lobbed out on the go. Honestly IMO, if they were to give Red a instant, that is 100 potency and doesnt proc dual cast, it might balance out the feel of the class. Of course it could definitely use a personal mitigation but in all honesty, not having that isnt as big of a negative to me because those personal mitigations rarely protect from death, if your hp is low, it would be better to dual cast vercure and pop a potion, or if your at a higher amount of health, something that would take you out probably wont be stopped by a personal mitigation. of course there are always exceptions to this but just from my observation. I believe Red is in a decent place, without looking at Parse, and there are jobs that are in much more need of fixing, like smn & mch

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Originally Posted by WiccaP

I think the only real issue I have with Red is the mobility issue in the form of attacks, and its not that big of one. Red doesnt have an instant spell like Scathe, something with a small potency that can be lobbed out on the go. Honestly IMO, if they were to give Red a instant, that is 100 potency and doesnt proc dual cast, it might balance out the feel of the class.

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Well, RDM does have Enchanted Reprise, which is a ranged instant you can throw out on the move. It's just that you want to avoid using it as much as possible, because of the gauge cost.

Giving RDM that but with no gauge cost and lower potency could be nice, but personally I don't really see the need.

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Originally Posted by Jade_Tyrant

Well, RDM does have Enchanted Reprise, which is a ranged instant you can throw out on the move. It's just that you want to avoid using it as much as possible, because of the gauge cost.

Giving RDM that but with no gauge cost and lower potency could be nice, but personally I don't really see the need.

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Fair. I will admit I didn't know Enchanted Reprise had that much range, because Reprise doesnt and moulinet's range only increase to 8 yalms. Also Reprise and Moulinet, regular or enchanted, are not abilities I regularly use in my rotations. I should use Enchanted Moulinet more often with mobs but oh well.

Enchanted Reprise got major nerfs this expansion and is unusable.

I just really want more RDM utility/DPS buffs.

I think my favorite thing about red mage this expansion was being locked out of PF groups for P8S.

During the dog stomps red mage would basically just die first, people had to throw you extra heals. Meanwhile SMN is coming out of phoenix every time and can give itself rekindle and use both radiant aegis stacks.

But don't worry since they made the damage checks on P9-12S so low they can just use that as a reason to not balance their game.

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Originally Posted by Geckooooo

I think my favorite thing about red mage this expansion was being locked out of PF groups for P8S.

During the dog stomps red mage would basically just die first, people had to throw you extra heals. Meanwhile SMN is coming out of phoenix every time and can give itself rekindle and use both radiant aegis stacks.

But don't worry since they made the damage checks on P9-12S so low they can just use that as a reason to not balance their game.

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Oh but don't worry, they made sure there was at least one physical raidwide in the tier. Can't have those uppity red mages thinking they have any sort of advantage.

RDM should be doing similar damage to a Dancer imo.

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Originally Posted by NightHour

RDM should be doing similar damage to a Dancer imo.

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Why? Not only is Dancer the most mobile job in the game with three En Avants but it has zero problems moving for mechanics, brings a beefy party-wide damage buff, a free AOE heal, a free typeless damage reduction, crit and direct hit buffs for its dance partner, always-on flat damage buffs for their dance partner, the ability to regen and shield during downtime....

I'd be down for RDM doing the pathetic amount of damage it puts out now if it had WAY more actual utility than it does, especially considering the extra mobility concern DNC doesn't have.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Why? Not only is Dancer the most mobile job in the game with three En Avants but it has zero problems moving for mechanics, brings a beefy party-wide damage buff, a free AOE heal, a free typeless damage reduction, crit and direct hit buffs for its dance partner, always-on flat damage buffs for their dance partner, the ability to regen and shield during downtime....

I'd be down for RDM doing the pathetic amount of damage it puts out now if it had WAY more actual utility than it does, especially considering the extra mobility concern DNC doesn't have.

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And it's funny that Dancer doesn't even need En Avant. Given that you are always moving, it turns out to be just a situational 'what if I mess up' action. Not that I don't enjoy it - I really like how it feels to move with - but they gave that kind of movement action to the job that needs it the least (even when DNC had to jump into near-melee range in ShB for Flourish), lol.

En avant used to have some value for the melee burst back in ShB. Not saying that your reasoning is wrong actually, I do agree with it. But it has lost the very little value it used to have.

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Originally Posted by Picker

I agree casters have been ignored this xpac, but blm needed this buff to sit comfortably ahead of the melee. It was preposterous that you’d play really well as a blm and do the same damage as ninja or dragoon. Rdm should do as much dps as the melee. The encounter design is hostile to casters and hand-holdy for the melee.

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Assuming there is no DNC in the group; if you ever did less DPS than a NIN or DRG as BLM, i don't think the problem is potencies somehow. The buff just means BLMs that know how to play now shoot way ahead of everything else, the buff SHOULD have gone to RDM, they just objectively need a buff, BLM was absolutely fine.

Just, transpose idk.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I'd be down for RDM doing the pathetic amount of damage it puts out now if it had WAY more actual utility than it does, especially considering the extra mobility concern DNC doesn't have.

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Exactly. Give RDM "actual utility" instead of more damage. You don't play RDM to be known for damage. You play RDM to be a party buffer. That's its job identity since FF1.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

And it's funny that Dancer doesn't even need En Avant

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NO IT NEEDS THAT!!!! How else am i going to move fast in cities???

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Exactly. Give RDM "actual utility" instead of more damage. You don't play RDM to be known for damage. You play RDM to be a party buffer. That's its job identity since FF1.

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What kind of utility? Mitigation/healing, or damage utility?

What would you guys think about RDM getting Ver-Esuna?

the resurrection is way too taxed for both the red mage and the summoner, vercure should not be considered an efficient utility, the red mage also needs to have help in his mobility they could modify the spell effect:
acceleration leaving 2 stacks but each stack effect are 2 stack of instant cast,and increases the spell cooldown from 55s to 60s in return,
it would allow the red mage to have a very little more mobility.

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Originally Posted by BRVV

What would you guys think about RDM getting Ver-Esuna?

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Neat for solo content like deep dungeons and thematic reasons but virtually worthless in the vast majority of cases because healers already lose less from using Esuna than RDM would. You could skirt around that by making the RDM variant is an ogcd cooldown instead, but that still doesn't stop it from being extremely niche. I'm not opposed to RDM getting more niche utility but SE needs to scrap the utility tax than RDM has been saddled with because it first.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Exactly. Give RDM "actual utility" instead of more damage. You don't play RDM to be known for damage. You play RDM to be a party buffer. That's its job identity since FF1.

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Hasteaga while reworking combat so that Haste is a strict DPS buff on every job.

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Originally Posted by BRVV

NO IT NEEDS THAT!!!! How else am i going to move fast in cities???

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.... ....... By swapping to SCH and using Expedient, of course!

On the topic, maybe a good way to address RDM's niche was to make it way more support oriented like DNC and BRD, but maintaining a damage debuff on the boss instead of buffing the party. But then, it was almost Ninja's role with the previous iteration of Trick Attack... unless they somehow revert the 2min meta.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Hasteaga while reworking combat so that Haste is a strict DPS buff on every job.

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While we're in the realm of ground-up reworks of the very bones of the combat system, add a fourth "Synergist" role, dump BRD, NIN and DNC in there, give them between dps and tank level damage and instead give them abilities to facilitate better damage like expedient/feint+addle/haste/embolden/healing up/support healing/etc.

Or better, redesign rdm ground up to be a healer. People gush over verraise anyway, and healers are better positioned to be supports in XIV anyway. Not to mention XIV healers *do* dabble in a little of both damage and healing.

Short of that, the class fantasy of jack of all trades, master of none, surely sucks worse than a master of one doesn't work in XIV and instead they should just accept that it is a dps and, like every other dps in the game, should be known for "doing a lot of damage."

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Short of that, the class fantasy of jack of all trades, master of none, surely sucks worse than a master of one doesn't work in XIV and instead they should just accept that it is a dps and, like every other dps in the game, should be known for "doing a lot of damage."

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The sad part is that this is true - as much as the idea of an actual support role looks attractive for some people (I'm personally really drawn to it in other RPGs), there's no way it could work with XIV as it is.

They would have to redesign a lot of what they do for combat to accomodate it as a true meaningful role and they would have to work back on 5 old content packs (counting ARR) to make sure the game isn't a retroactive mess because of future changes. For that reason alone, I have little faith that it would happen, or heck, even something more urgent as to change damage profiles to make healers more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

The sad part is that this is true - as much as the idea of an actual support role looks attractive for some people (I'm personally really drawn to it in other RPGs), there's no way it could work with XIV as it is.

They would have to redesign a lot of what they do for combat to accomodate it as a true meaningful role and they would have to work back on 5 old content packs (counting ARR) to make sure the game isn't a retroactive mess because of future changes. For that reason alone, I have little faith that it would happen, or heck, even something more urgent as to change damage profiles to make healers more interesting.

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1) ARR and HW were designed when the game had support skills.

2) They don't redesign old content unless it's literally uncompleteable, in which case they go in and make the minimum required effort. Nor do they usually need to, with how much the potencies on base combos have been crept upwards.

ARR/HW raids were left largely untouched despite the huge shift in job kits except where a skill that was outright required for a mechanic was removed, despite those raids wanting different behaviors and skillsets from later raids (more tank positioning, different mitigation patterns, constant GCD healing). It's left as a challenge to the players to adapt to the different content styles, rather than put upon the developers to make sure all expansions play the same. Going back to a 'ShB/EW-style raid' after a new design shift would be no different.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Exactly. Give RDM "actual utility" instead of more damage. You don't play RDM to be known for damage. You play RDM to be a party buffer. That's its job identity since FF1.

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That depends on how much combat design is willing to change. Because as things currently stand, I'd definitely take what, say, Monk has: basically as much utility as RDM has minus Verraise with the Meleewalker damage boost on top of it.

"Don't play RDM to be known for damage" yeah, sure, that works in a game where non-damage utility has more than the faintest of effects on combat, whereas FFXIV only cares about damage.

The melees+BLM doing way more damage than everyone else needs to be addressed.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

That depends on how much combat design is willing to change. Because as things currently stand, I'd definitely take what, say, Monk has: basically as much utility as RDM has minus Verraise with the Meleewalker damage boost on top of it.

"Don't play RDM to be known for damage" yeah, sure, that works in a game where non-damage utility has more than the faintest of effects on combat, whereas FFXIV only cares about damage.

The melees+BLM doing way more damage than everyone else needs to be addressed.

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Well every job should be within 1% rDPS of each other within their roles, but you play RDM to do low aDPS and make up for with DPS buffs instead. A BLM should have the highest aDPS while a DNC have the lowest aDPS, but both should have ~1% difference in rDPS so clear time/speeds are the same regardless of what you play, so long as you play it well. Buffing RDM aDPS instead of giving them more DPS buffing abilities is not the job's identity or fantasy.

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Originally Posted by Alex1337

Assuming there is no DNC in the group; if you ever did less DPS than a NIN or DRG as BLM, i don't think the problem is potencies somehow. The buff just means BLMs that know how to play now shoot way ahead of everything else, the buff SHOULD have gone to RDM, they just objectively need a buff, BLM was absolutely fine.

Just, transpose idk.

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No, Black Mage needed the buff. The class was, and probably still is, hemorrhaging players. The devs just have this idea in their head that, if the class isn't being played, it probably needs more damage. And in the CDPS role, BLM is well behind RDM and especially SMN, in actual play count.

Don't take this as RDM shouldn't get buffs -- it absolutely should. But the problem is that neither is especially fun to play in Endwalker fight design, and it sucks having to suffer just to play your class, while also suffering with inexcusably low damage. BLM needs more attention as far as the devs might be concerned, but RDM also needs attention.

Past two weeks across all of savage, fflogs shows ~32k RDM and ~26k BLM parses compared to ~55k SMN parses. Between BLM and RDM is MNK at 30k and below BLM is BRD at 22k(!). Looking at the available data, a range of 6,000 is not abnormal between jobs and is actually on the lower end discounting BRD being 14k (!!) below MCH and SMN nearly outdoing RDM *and* BLM combined.

This isn't even a recent trend; RDM and BLM saw similar proportions of usage numbers in TOP.

BLM is behind RDM but I wouldn't say it's "well" behind RDM, they have similar numbers because they face similar movement issues (note: I am not advocating for removal of movement issues or abundance of movement tools, keep casters casting it's what makes it fun). Both need attention but Red Mage has no actual niche anymore. Its not the prog mage: summoner beats it in every metric, even "rez spam" past what a summoner can do is useless, especially when most raises end up being needed during rdm's 2m burst thanks to jank fight design. Even BLM sees more early kills of fights than RDM despite the latter supposedly being "for prog."

All that said: poor BRD, ho-lee.

BRD makes no fucking sense to me besides that it's harder to optimize and pull off than the two other mindless rphys, perhaps. But there isn't even uptime excuses to be had unlike RDM/BLM.

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Originally Posted by Valence

What kind of utility? Mitigation/healing, or damage utility?

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It would need to be damage utility to bring the rDPS up.

The following tweaks to Embolden are my ideas:
1. Increase % from 5 to whatever the math needs e.g. 7%
2. Actually last the length of a double melee window
To maximize the RDM damage you need to be able hit Verflare, Scorch, and Resolution twice in an Embolden window. This means trying fit 9 gcds in that window.
At 20 seconds, you can only fit 8 on 2.5 GCD, only BLM wants SpS. So, I would recommend 24 seconds

To help with RDM movement, remove the Black/White cost from Reprise.
Or, as others have suggested; increase Black/White mana gain so you will have more available for the movement requirements.

Another option is to lower embolden time to 12 seconds and significantly increase % damage.
Or, split the difference, 24 seconds length on self with 20 seconds for the party.