Was BLM not enough?

I hope 7.45 will remove the cast times from Iaijutsu and Communio next. Maybe remove the forced movement from Dragonfire Dive, too.

People were saying that RDM would be next on the chopping block. Turns out they were correct...
After BLM timers, another form of skill expression is deleted.

Honestly, regarding job design the team has to be reigned in again.
I am extremely annoyed that every damn job gets neutered just for the sake of raiding.
No fun allowed nowadays because it might collide with their important job balance and fight design but only savage upwards of course, can't allow the peasants to have fun (*cough* M6N compared to M6S).

The job design team get's a straight F from me this expansion.
The writing team at least learned from it's mistakes but these changes here shatter basically all the little hope I had for the 8.0 changes.
Absolutely worst performing team nowadays.

What a pathetic joke...

Edit:
I think this quote from the Adjustment Overview outright says that they have learned nothing from the BLM criticism and tbh I have now lost my final hope for the 8.0 jobs as well.

"Furthermore, we have removed Manafication's magical damage increase effect to prevent potential stress resulting from entering burst phases with Manafication still on cooldown."

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Originally Posted by Cidel

I don't have a dog in this race due to not playing either GNB or RDM, but I'm reading in reddit's FFXIV discussion that this RDM change may have originated from actual JP complaints about having to get into melee range at all on RDM?

If that's the case, that would certainly explain a lot.

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Certain Raid fights were problematic for Red Mages due to the punishment of being in melee in the burst phase.
However, its still a bit of a shaky argument to tune it all for only a few fights.

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Originally Posted by SyferU

So you now have the flexibility to have ONE of your melee combos being at ranged allowing you to play around mechanics that have you position outside without cucking your 2min. What exactly is less challenging?

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It's not just one combo, its every single target melee GCD during the entirety of manafication. So you can have 30s of full mobility with no melee restriction.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

Certain Raid fights were problematic for Red Mages due to the punishment of being in melee in the burst phase.
However, its still a bit of a shaky argument to tune it all for only a few fights.

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I feel that they might be doing this to give the fight designer less to think about. They don't have to go "oops, we made M7S a royal pain for RDM and force parties to adapt strats to let the RDM do melee combo". Now, RDM can just decide to become fully ranged for 30s. Who cares if that interfere with what some players found fun to optimize.

RDM doesn't need to be lobotomized, but that flash-bang LB sure as s**t does.

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Originally Posted by Shinku_Tachi

RDM doesn't need to be lobotomized, but that flash-bang LB sure as s**t does.

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Do not take away my ver-flashbang, it's all I've got, it's all we have left.

How is removing components integral to specific job strategy an improvement to the game. Turning manafication into a brain off here's 6 instant casts is a terrible decision no RDM asked for. I savage raid and don't want things to be easier, what's the point?

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Originally Posted by WawaMaxHeightLala

How is removing components integral to specific job strategy an improvement to the game. Turning manafication into a brain off here's 6 instant casts is a terrible decision no RDM asked for. I savage raid and don't want things to be easier, what's the point?

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Right there with you. I've been raiding as RDM since ShB and part of why I liked RDM so much was because I had to play around the melee restriction to access my burst and mobility tools.

M7S did push the envelope a bit too much IMO because it required other people to adjust to me being RDM (having a healer grab my tether in the 2nd phase, needing ton of mit to do my melee combo during Debris Deathmatch), but I never thought "wow I wish they'd just make RDM's melee combo ranged.

I dunno, maybe I'm in the minority, but to me what makes learning a job fun is learning to play around its fail states and points of frictions, but all they've been doing for the past few expac is sand down any friction in job design.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

There have been complaints dungeons are too hard so they need to dumb things down a bit more.

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People complain about dungeons too hard, the devs dumb down jobs. Makes perfect sense to me.

The reality is that this is designed expressly with savage fights in mind, that get absolute priority over anything else.

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Originally Posted by Valence

People complain about dungeons too hard, the devs dumb down jobs. Makes perfect sense to me.

The reality is that this is designed expressly with savage fights in mind, that get absolute priority over anything else.

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Naturally, just making a joke towards the person I replied to.

Also since manafication's generally best used on cooldown anyways it's going to drift out of buffs in longer fights, so it's not even a good approach for what they wanted to do.

If they absolutely had to do the extension it should've come with some dps loss so you still want to get close but it exists as a backup plan to avoid drifting cooldowns/overflowing gauge

Can we simply talk about the fact that from the perspective of how this *looks* and *feels*, it sucks more to be able to execute these melee combos when there is a literal SLASHING SOUND EFFECT playing when you execute the combos? What's the point of the animation playing of the slash when you are far away and your weapon isn't actually slashing anything/anyone and instead its just casting magic at your enemy?

I have complained so many times about changes like these that they've done to the jobs. Astrologian is a huge one for me - A job all about tarot, and the whole POINT of tarot had always been that you know, you don't get to pick and choose which cards you play. You leave it up to fate, and all that. And that's how the job used to function. Yes it was a bit wonky in fights, and I understand people complained, but we've been talking about job identity for years now and how it feels like those things are being lost - To me, these are integral things to how a job feels to play. Dark Knight losing its plunge is also another big one, at the top of my head, or how scholar for some reason gained angel wings. I don't play every job, so I am not sure how many similar stories people have of other jobs, but frankly this kind of stuff is just making me feel less inclined to trust the dev team's vision on how a job "should" look and feel like to play.

All of this being said, I feel ridiculous using the "melee" combo from far away and hearing the sfx. Tinkering with these designs with seemingly little care is becoming rather aggravating.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Also since manafication's generally best used on cooldown anyways it's going to drift out of buffs in longer fights, so it's not even a good approach for what they wanted to do.

If they absolutely had to do the extension it should've come with some dps loss so you still want to get close but it exists as a backup plan to avoid drifting cooldowns/overflowing gauge

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This is actually what bothers me most, same as with BLM.
Why not give options?

A ranged choice that is safer and easier but also weaker and a melee choice that is more difficult to execute but stronger.
Flarestar as well. Using it at max but stronger and with cast time or beforehand but weaker and faster.

Skill expression would still be there while at the same time giving an easier method.
The problem is less that the devs choose to do these things but that they always have to go full nuclear in only one direction as if the word nuance doesn't exist in japanese (it's actually ニュアンス btw).

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Also since manafication's generally best used on cooldown anyways it's going to drift out of buffs in longer fights, so it's not even a good approach for what they wanted to do.

If they absolutely had to do the extension it should've come with some dps loss so you still want to get close but it exists as a backup plan to avoid drifting cooldowns/overflowing gauge

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Since they removed the damage buff from manafication, the only damage gain tied to manafication at this point is prefulgence (which you get the moment you press manafication now) and the flexibility of the melee combos being made ranged. Even in the last tier, there might have only been 1 melee combo you would have wanted to be ranged. Unless every fight this tier has RDM standing way outside for melee range for burst, you might be able to use manafication as uptime tool even if you need to sacrifice buffed prefulgence for it. Gaining an extra prefulgence by rushing might be a gain from keeping it lined up for burst.

Making some sort of "magic slash/tear" VFX that originates from your rapier and moves to the target rapidly would be a relatively decent solution for the visual disconnect happening. Kind of like this (I pulled these from Google):
https://unityunreal.com/uploads/post...-wave-vfx.webphttps://unityassetcollection.com/wp-...-slash-VFX.jpghttps://assetstorev1-prd-cdn.unity3d...038_scaled.jpg
Doesn't one of the sword characters in Smash have a similar move? Was it Marth?

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Originally Posted by Sarantserel

Since they removed the damage buff from manafication, the only damage gain tied to manafication at this point is prefulgence (which you get the moment you press manafication now) and the flexibility of the melee combos being made ranged. Even in the last tier, there might have only been 1 melee combo you would have wanted to be ranged. Unless every fight this tier has RDM standing way outside for melee range for burst, you might be able to use manafication as uptime tool even if you need to sacrifice buffed prefulgence for it. Gaining an extra prefulgence by rushing might be a gain from keeping it lined up for burst.

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actually forgot about the change to Prefulgence, them activating it with Manafication means it'll fall off buffs sooner than before now. Not sure if that makes it not worth using it on cooldown unless you know you lose a use otherwise, but I guess it was always an attempt to force players to use it the way they intended, like Flare Star was

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

actually forgot about the change to Prefulgence, them activating it with Manafication means it'll fall off buffs sooner than before now. Not sure if that makes it not worth using it on cooldown unless you know you lose a use otherwise, but I guess it was always an attempt to force players to use it the way they intended, like Flare Star was

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It feels like they are trying to force 1 way to play each class which sucks. This change is definitely trying to force manafication to be used during burst only. Game is just turning into DDR easy mode with changes like this, why compromise what made jobs challenging and fun.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

actually forgot about the change to Prefulgence, them activating it with Manafication means it'll fall off buffs sooner than before now. Not sure if that makes it not worth using it on cooldown unless you know you lose a use otherwise, but I guess it was always an attempt to force players to use it the way they intended, like Flare Star was

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Considering you gain 4730 potency from the extra combo and prefulgence, I think rushing manafication is always worth it if your group has a kill time that allows it. Now the thing that will weigh is whether or not you NEED manafication to handle forced disconnect during burst. In which case, then keeping Manafication aligned with Embolden will be required.

The shredding of job complexity will continue until morale revenue improves. /s

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Also since manafication's generally best used on cooldown anyways it's going to drift out of buffs in longer fights, so it's not even a good approach for what they wanted to do.

If they absolutely had to do the extension it should've come with some dps loss so you still want to get close but it exists as a backup plan to avoid drifting cooldowns/overflowing gauge

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They need something like an overcharge for non-stack abilities.
Activates after the first usage of an ability.
So for Manafication, it's a 120 cooldown, but if you don't use it right as it's available, it overcharges up to a max amount of seconds. When you use the ability, the overcharge is used to reduce the cooldown.
If you let Manafication overcharge go to nine seconds and use it, it will have a cooldown of 111 seconds.

A pretty good change imo.
It is still very situational, depending if a mechanic forces you out of range. Overall for more stable damage output to ensure you get off an entire combo.
The manafication change is also great imo. Now you can hold it for the 2min buff window and dont need to use it on cd because it doesnt increase damage anymore.
Having prefulgence instantly is also very nice.

The homogenization will continue until morale improves.

Using Manafication on cooldown is probably still generally better. I doubt it's worth holding over potentially losing a use in most cases and it isn't like we couldn't get two sword combos in without it either.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

A pretty good change imo.
It is still very situational, depending if a mechanic forces you out of range. Overall for more stable damage output to ensure you get off an entire combo.
The manafication change is also great imo. Now you can hold it for the 2min buff window and dont need to use it on cd because it doesnt increase damage anymore.
Having prefulgence instantly is also very nice.

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With all respect, no this is a terrible change. Turning into a physical ranged for 12 seconds with no room for skill expression is bad design.

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Originally Posted by DarkOmegaGod

Gunbreaker got ruined too. This game is so miserable. And every time this happens you get these people talking down to you about how the game being made less fun for you is actually a good thing.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I'm 100% more upset over the GNB changes personally, though I might be bias due to being a tank main.

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You're not looking at the bigger picture. The WAR mains need to feel like they're playing WAR, even when they choose to play something that isn't WAR, or they get upset /s

On a serious note, the massive potency hits to everything, to make room for pressing 3 Fell Cleaves Lionheart every 60s instead of 120s, make me concerned for lower level content where we don't have Lionheart. Is TOP or DSR suddenly going to feel awful as a GNB because all of your potency is locked to a skill you don't have the level for due to the sync?

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Originally Posted by Shistar

Making some sort of "magic slash/tear" VFX that originates from your rapier and moves to the target rapidly would be a relatively decent solution for the visual disconnect happening. Kind of like this (I pulled these from Google)

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Can't tell for all 3 melee moves (wasn't really paying attention), but I did see the Z from Zwerchau flies towards the enemy. Might be that the other two also have a slightly adjusted VFX too

The hell are you talking about? The only thing that changed is that your melee combo now is ranged every 2 min. The reason they did this is cause there are many scenarios where you are forced to completely stay out of melee for a buff window as a caster in a raid. And in that case there was 0 skill expression. You could not delay it as that meant drifting your biggest burst out of buff windows which ruins your damage. "Oh no, Square Enix has fixed an issue that was forcing the player to mess up their entire rotation with no counterplay in certain situations", get lost mate this literally changes nothing in the difficulty of the job

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Originally Posted by IzanamiNoMikotoo

The hell are you talking about? The only thing that changed is that your melee combo now is ranged every 2 min. The reason they did this is cause there are many scenarios where you are forced to completely stay out of melee for a buff window as a caster in a raid. And in that case there was 0 skill expression. You could not delay it as that meant drifting your biggest burst out of buff windows which ruins your damage. "Oh no, Square Enix has fixed an issue that was forcing the player to mess up their entire rotation with no counterplay in certain situations", get lost mate this literally changes nothing in the difficulty of the job

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100% agree with this. There were too many scenarios where you just got punished for getting forced into melee range, now 1 of the potential 2 combos you can fit into burst are guaranteed to hit rather than going out of range and waiting, delaying or even breaking combo. That just felt dumb

Why are mechanics being designed that are so unbelievably rigid that you are forced to make changes to the jobs like this

If your solution is so rigid you cannot allow the RDM in melee range then you’ve made a bad mechanic

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Originally Posted by IzanamiNoMikotoo

The hell are you talking about? The only thing that changed is that your melee combo now is ranged every 2 min. The reason they did this is cause there are many scenarios where you are forced to completely stay out of melee for a buff window as a caster in a raid. And in that case there was 0 skill expression. You could not delay it as that meant drifting your biggest burst out of buff windows which ruins your damage. "Oh no, Square Enix has fixed an issue that was forcing the player to mess up their entire rotation with no counterplay in certain situations", get lost mate this literally changes nothing in the difficulty of the job

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Respectfully, what I'm talking about is planning my mana gauge and thus melee combo around fights and maintaining optimization, needing very precise movement, timing, and at times displacement. Examples of the tightest movements I've seen were p8sp2, p12sp1, m4s, and most recently the 6.3 EX. Managing that movement within manafication uses is now not necessary. Additionally manafication is 110 second cooldown so would drift out if buffs anyway and this doesnt "fix" melee combos to be ranged during such burst phases. Admittedly I healed last tier but otherwise have ran RDM 2 whole expansions now and never failed to get melee combos off, do mechanics, and maintain uptime without overcapping or letting cool downs sit.

Lastly you can not tell me in good faith that removing the melee range requirement has no effect on skill expression, tanks and melees strive for this to the highest degree that raid strats are built around it. They literally addressed between EW and DT they wanted to have less wall bosses because it was taking away from that skill expression.

Fine with you having an opinion on it, I just firmly disagree as someone that plays rdm 95% of the time. I'm posting here since its where devs supposedly get most feedback from rather than socials, so seeking to firmly and respectfully state how this waters down the class immensely.

What exactly got easier? It just looks like it has better stats at lower levels

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

What exactly got easier? It just looks like it has better stats at lower levels

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Manafication removes melee range requirement for melee combo (expanded to 25y). Does next to no change for casual players, range expanded under a buff that may for most part go unnoticed. For savage it removes planning to be in melee range when manafication is ready allowing rdm to have 6 GCDs of being a phys ranged as opposed to a melee for 3 of the first GCDs

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Originally Posted by WawaMaxHeightLala

Manafication removes melee range requirement for melee combo (expanded to 25y). Does next to no change for casual players, range expanded under a buff that may for most part go unnoticed. For savage it removes planning to be in melee range when manafication is ready allowing rdm to have 6 GCDs of being a phys ranged as opposed to a melee for 3 of the first GCDs

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WAIT WTF I can full range me MELEE combo now?! XD Yoshida I love you. Remember stormblood when a basic melee combo was considered op mobility in conjuction with dual cast on a caster? Not any kupo ing more wow thats crazy.

I think the change is okay, but I feel the main thing is that they should have added some new animations for actions by manafication. Right now, the enhanced melee combos feel very weird when executing, as if your character is swinging in the air and somehow they are magically hitting a target that is far away. If they change those animations, it might be better.

And here I thought they'd at least wait until 8.0 to lobotomize my main job, but it seems they just couldn't help themselves and started early.

Although personally, I think this move comes more from a place of "we completely forgot RDM existed when we designed the last savage tier (M7S in particular, if you aren't in a melee spot during phase 2 the burst is a nightmare) so now we have to cover our asses" than anything else.

Also, though I doubt this will be noticed in a post halfway through the 8th page - a lot of people are misunderstanding one of the changes. You don't get *one* melee combo for free - when you activate Manafic, you get a 30s buff that makes all of your enchanted melee 123 25y for the entire duration. If the distance buff was tied to the 3 swordplay stacks, that would have been...still not great, but certainly better than this.

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Originally Posted by Kishin12345

100% agree with this. There were too many scenarios where you just got punished for getting forced into melee range, now 1 of the potential 2 combos you can fit into burst are guaranteed to hit rather than going out of range and waiting, delaying or even breaking combo. That just felt dumb

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I've been raiding as a RDM since the last tier of ShB, have done most savage encounters and 4 ultimates on the job. Literally the only mechanic where it was completely impossible to find a work around was the lava phase in M6S, which only causes overcapping between burst phase. Even M7S, my static and I found strat tweaks that let me get my uptime in burst. And outside of those, DPS doesn't really matter and mechanics aren't usually so stringent as to require the 4 ranged to be way outside melee range for a significant amount of time during burst timing.

And IMO, Lava phase and the tethers in M7S weren't great mechanics. I'd rather have kept the puzzle that was figuring melee timing to keep uptime in burst than sacrifice that element of engagement with job mechanic for the sake of mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Jaltaer

And here I thought they'd at least wait until 8.0 to lobotomize my main job, but it seems they just couldn't help themselves and started early.

Although personally, I think this move comes more from a place of "we completely forgot RDM existed when we designed the last savage tier (M7S in particular, if you aren't in a melee spot during phase 2 the burst is a nightmare) so now we have to cover our asses" than anything else.

Also, though I doubt this will be noticed in a post halfway through the 8th page - a lot of people are misunderstanding one of the changes. You don't get *one* melee combo for free - when you activate Manafic, you get a 30s buff that makes all of your enchanted melee 123 25y for the entire duration. If the distance buff was tied to the 3 swordplay stacks, that would have been...still not great, but certainly better than this.

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It's really funny to me how red mage feels the most punished for moving now. It was easily the most comfortable caster in stormblood and it barely changed compared to other jobs up to today. My girlfriend been a bard and red mage main since stormblood and I remember her crashing out about how hard it is to deal with the movement of modern encounter design back in rubicante normal mode

I guess thats just what happens when you're the only true caster job left ������

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Originally Posted by Sarantserel

I've been raiding as a RDM since the last tier of ShB, have done most savage encounters and 4 ultimates on the job. Literally the only mechanic where it was completely impossible to find a work around was the lava phase in M6S, which only causes overcapping between burst phase. Even M7S, my static and I found strat tweaks that let me get my uptime in burst. And outside of those, DPS doesn't really matter and mechanics aren't usually so stringent as to require the 4 ranged to be way outside melee range for a significant amount of time during burst timing.

And IMO, Lava phase and the tethers in M7S weren't great mechanics. I'd rather have kept the puzzle that was figuring melee timing to keep uptime in burst than sacrifice that element of engagement with job mechanic for the sake of mechanics.

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Pretty much the same for me, too. I was maining rdm since its release, cleared 5/6 ultimates with it, all savage fights, besides last tier. M7s was not very rdm friendly and standard pfs dont look for ways that everyone can have uptime unfortunately. After more extensive testing i say it looks goofy and is still quite situational. Most of the times you want to fit corps a corps and engagement into burst, so you are in melee range anyway. If there are burst windows where you are forced to be out of range for a long time then you can get your burst still. Some skill expression got taken away but in cases where there is no chance to get a melee out because of whatever reason you cant express skill by looking for a melee in the first place. My guess is that this savage tier will have mechanics that forces the party to be split and in set spots quite a lot, so i overall appreciate the change. Also up until now i thought only 1 melee combo was range but its all potential 3 combos!!! I thought manafication gave stacks but it lasts 30s, so for 30s all melee is ranged.

The only way to find this justifiable is if there's a big amount of mechanics happening during 2min burst windows that would require a RDM to be in a ranged spot to resolve something.

There are? Because if so, there's no planning around that could save the lost dps by delaying it.

So it seems like a clash of 'ideals' between two different kinds of people. Those who see 'pain points' as something that allows for skill expression, and those who see 'pain points' as a nuisance that gets in the way of skill expression.

Not sure how you can reconcile that tbh, and it seems like the devs are siding with 'pain points bad', so the first group are losing out.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

So it seems like a clash of 'ideals' between two different kinds of people. Those who see 'pain points' as something that allows for skill expression, and those who see 'pain points' as a nuisance that gets in the way of skill expression.

Not sure how you can reconcile that tbh, and it seems like the devs are siding with 'pain points bad', so the first group are losing out.

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It’s almost like we have 21 jobs and not every job has to follow exactly the same philosophy

If you don’t like a “pain points are skill optimisation” job then play a different job.

Somehow of all the roles healer manages to figure this out at least partially as SCH is mostly left alone in its whack design that has a cult following