Proposed changes for underperforming jobs

Honestly since EW, I hated RDM until I got it to 90 because it felt soooo slow with resource management after its rework. But 90 really changes the job entirely because Resolution makes your damage skyrocket (especially in dungeons) as well as giving 4 mana back makes it flow so, so much better. Get it to 90, do a few 90 extreme trials so you get actually proficient at it, and you might find it's a job you absolutely love. You do get a lot of mobility with much more frequent and longer melee combos. It's not nearly as immobile as BLM was in the past, even just the last two expansions they were the "mobile caster" due to Dualcast.

RPR is fine. Don't let the stress of "they're the lowest melee right now" bother you. 1. Balance changes here often, 2. They're still very good, 3. They can clear all content week 1 prog no problem.

Only way to get better at healer is to play it! I love WHM and SGE. I tolerate AST but I miss its old cards from HW/SB, making me enjoy it less now by proxy.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

You're pretty spot on with both observations.

SAM is generally considered one of the easiest jobs to play in the game and has been since SB. However, there are still some nuances to it for optimization at high-end play, but unfortunately removing Kaiten only made it that much easier.

RDM does feel very off at levels below 90 now because they redesigned it for Resolution (level 90 skill) in mind. Before Endwalker, RDM would do melee combo at 80 mana, and you generated mana MUCH faster than you do now. Which means you were meleeing a lot more often than you are right now because Resolution gives another 4 mana. If you're doing sub-80, then you're noticing it even more without Scorch which gives an additional 4 mana. So after every combo at 90, you get 8 mana back on top of the Verflare/holy mana. This lets you do 2-3 melee combos at once during your 2 minute Embolden or at the very least helps speed up the next melee combo again. And yes, RDM is now currently the least mobile of the casters. You'll get a "a little" more mobility at 90 since Scorch and Resolution are both instant cast, but they don't really compare to BLM's 60s double Triplecast, Aetherial Manipulation and Leylines teleport.

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I'm gonna disagree with this assessment and say RDM is now more mobile than ever. Your mana gen to melee combo ratio is ROUGHLY the same--you gen less but it costs less, so roughly speaking its still ~40s to generate a melee combo. What this also means is you can bank your melee combo for longer than ever before. In StB / ShB, you had 2 to 4 gcds after becoming melee combo ready where you would begin overcapping, so it wasa very small window of being able to decide when to start the combo.

Also a typical mistake I see in new rdms these days is burning every melee combo you've got in the 2 minute. The 2 minute burst is over by the time you finish your second combo--even your own embo--so no point in burning that final melee so quick, might as well hold for when mobility is needed.

Sure they destroyed E. Reprise for some reason but they made Accel into the best thing I never knew I wanted.

All this to say: I don't want RDM to get even more mobility than it has. It's good as is--it's FUN as is. Resource management on rdm is better than its ever been and its honestly super enjoyable even in tiers like Abyssos that make me wanna scream due to mechanics like Purgation.

I just wanna feel like I'm not griefing my party by playing a job I have fun with.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I'm gonna disagree with this assessment and say RDM is now more mobile than ever.

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Oh, it is more mobile than ever, even if Enchanted Reprise is nerfed. Two Accelerations, too. But it's still the least mobile mage now thanks to BLM and SMN changes. I feel more mobile on BLM for Barb ex than RDM.

Yeah, RPR is actually my favorite melee; cleared the entirety of Shb with it, and I'm having a fun time prepping for the Nier raids. I just don't know whether or not it's going to be my main job for everything; certainly for much of the near-future raids and such, given the versatility and entertainment value.

I admit, I haven't quite done much content with the healers in general; I haven't been able to touch Scholar yet, I got Conjuror unlocked but wasn't really able to get into it - though I am considering doing more with it - completed the introduction missions for Astrologian but found the card mechanics a bit confusing - again, going to be taking another look - and Sage... let's just say it didn't go well. I will be dipping into healing a bit more in the future, just not quite yet.

Actually, I've been thinking about giving some of the Ranged options a try; more specifically, Bard and Dancer. Dancer in particular looks like a fun one, as it seems quite simple at higher levels, but capable of still providing good buffs to allies. Slightly nervous about Bard, admittedly; just about everyone I talked to on here makes it sound like the most complicated job in the game, relying heavily on RNG and constantly keeping your songs playing non-stop for your allies. I do want to give it a shot, nonetheless.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Oh, it is more mobile than ever, even if Enchanted Reprise is nerfed. Two Accelerations, too. But it's still the least mobile mage now thanks to BLM and SMN changes. I feel more mobile on BLM for Barb ex than RDM.

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Yeah for sure, it's been harshly outpaced by its peers (SMN in particular).

I'm just out here stuck between RDM needing a buff and not wanting SE to come near RDM with a 10 foot pole after seeing them butcher SAM and SMN.

DNC is very easy to pick up and play, and honestly I find it pretty satisfying at 90 with Starfall Dance, very similar to RDM Resolution. It's beginner friendly, and no one's ever gonna' complain about getting Standard Step. You can even be snarky and give it to healers!

BRD I do find to be the second hardest job in the game to play currently. I've always struggled with BRD personally, but know many that love it and are amazing with it. It's just one of those jobs that doesn't click for me. It's great, brings a lot of constant party raid buffs (Crit, Direct Hit and raw damage increases) with additional buffs with Battle Voice and Radiant Finale. They can do some pretty good personal damage too when procs are happening frequently, and using Blast Arrow properly is satisfying. I just hate Mage's Ballad and my eyes constantly shifting from mechanics, dots, job UI, positioning and cooldowns. It's just not the play style I like.

Try every job, level them all to 90, and see what works best for you! That's one of the best things about XIV: you only need one character for every job, and you can switch as often and whenever you feel like it. I rarely stick to one or even two jobs. I main PLD/DRK, and spend a lot of time with them in Savage raids, but I play WAR, GNB, WHM, BLM, NIN, RDM and MCH all very frequently too. I play the rest of the jobs fairly often, and rarely play RPR, BRD or SCH because those jobs just don't click for me, but I have them all at 90 and am fairly proficient with them all.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I'm gonna disagree with this assessment and say RDM is now more mobile than ever.

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RDM is not more mobile than ever. RDM does more melee combos than they used to but that's not mean it's more mobile. Melee combo limits their mobility having to get near boss while doing mechs while being ranged. I know we have Accelleration but it's not as good as Triplecast, it's cd is pretty high imo(45s should be good enough) and sometimes we use it to get a proc for some extra 20 potency spells(Verfire/Verstone). Enchanted Reprise is not good at all imo due to loss of black/white mana, it's not even in my castbar. BLM and SMN have a better mobility toolkit. BLM having triplecast, aetherial manipulation, leylines, return to leylines and SMN, TONS of insta casts. I'm progging P8S and it's a nightmare for RDM!

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Originally Posted by Arguscbf

RDM is not more mobile than ever. RDM does more melee combos than they used to but that's not mean it's more mobile. Melee combo limits their mobility having to get near boss while doing mechs while being ranged. I know we have Accelleration but it's not as good as Triplecast, it's cd is pretty high imo(45s should be good enough) and sometimes we use it to get a proc for some extra 20 potency spells(Verfire/Verstone). Enchanted Reprise is not good at all imo due to loss of black/white mana, it's not even in my castbar. BLM and SMN have a better mobility toolkit. BLM having triplecast, aetherial manipulation, leylines, return to leylines and SMN, TONS of insta casts. I'm progging P8S and it's a nightmare for RDM!

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I agree, it is a nightmare on Red Mage. For reference, so you know I'm not speaking out of turn when I make my statement, I have quite a bit of experience in that fight on Red Mage.

You are preaching to the choir about Red Mage's mobility, trust me. But what you do need to understand is that yes, Red Mage is more mobile compared to its Shadowbringers and Stormblood implementation. Where I think you're trying to get at, and a point I agree with you on and I believe I even stated it myself in this thread, its mobility is either outpaced by or matched by its competition.

Red Mage does not generate combos quicker, you're right and I even stated that. The ability to bank a combo is worth so very much when it comes to moving at will however; in Stormblood and Shadowbringers, once you hit the threshold to start your combo, you had the breathing room of 2 to 4 GCDs before you had to spend that combo or you'd be overcapped. In Endwalker, Red Mage can and frequently does hold that mana for a much longer period of time--at the very most, another 40 seconds. Don't get me wrong, that is very good; it adds a layer of depth to the job because now you need to decide when, where, and how to do that melee combo outside of the buff window. You are still gated in for the 2 minute burst, just as always, and some mechanics make being in melee when the dev's pre-decided 4 melee slots are all closed up for uptime, though.

Acceleration is a great second swiftcast and acts alongside actual swift as a great way to course correct when weave windows have been misaligned or some short term movement is needed. That you have two charges of it means you can hold a charge for a while too; again, a layer of choice for when a tool is needed that wasn't there before. E. Reprise was, of course, butchered and that's always sad to see however.

So my statement, "Red Mage is more mobile than ever before" stands true. It is; it has a lot of great tools that can be used to handle situations when thought is put in. Its peers being as or more mobile than it does not affect that statement in the slightest, and the purpose of my original comment was to argue the idea that

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Before Endwalker, RDM would do melee combo at 80 mana, and you generated mana MUCH faster than you do now. Which means you were meleeing a lot more often than you are right now

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because that is patently untrue.

An addendum, I don't want RDM to be given any more mobility than it has. I don't want a "rework to address its mobility" or even a rework at all. As far as the actual gameplay loop, the job is perfectly fine, give it and SMN some potency buffs so they can be in the same zip code as BLM.

Red Mage is more mobile but their mobility is still underwhelming in comparison to freeroam SMN and Ultra Instinct BLM.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Red Mage is more mobile but their mobility is still underwhelming in comparison to freeroam SMN and Ultra Instinct BLM.

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And I have to agree with SaberMaxwell here that I don't really want RDM to have more mobility outside generating mana a little faster because I hate seeing Jolt only give 2 mana. And as someone who plays BLM as my main DPS, I don't really want BLM to have two charges of 60s Triple Cast, either. I want to be less mobile on BLM. As for SMN, I think Titan should have hard casts. I think SMN overall needs a few more hard cast spells for job identity overall. Casters should inherently be less mobile as a whole, and I think RDM having the most mobility is part of their identity as a caster who needs to melee sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Oh, it is more mobile than ever, even if Enchanted Reprise is nerfed. Two Accelerations, too. But it's still the least mobile mage now thanks to BLM and SMN changes. I feel more mobile on BLM for Barb ex than RDM.

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That's true. They did gain mobility and it really sucks for Enchanted Reprise that it's a "last resort button". In general, you can get away from any situation on RDM. There's a few factors to take into.
- BLM did receive nice mobility tools and it is literally on demand so BLMs will use as little as possible to keep everything in their buff window.
- SMN is quite frankly a ranged physical that has 4 casts per minute.
- RDM mobility is slapped on their melee combos, acceleration stacks & swiftcast. All of that mobility can be used to maximize damage.

In a world where RDM currently struggles to do high damage, any RDM player will keep everything for DPS. Acceleration rolling on CD all the time. Using Acceleration/Swiftcast when you have no proc and you don't want to Jolt II. Maybe Fleche or Contre Sixte has 2s left on it's CD and you don't want your oGCD to drift? Need a faster instant cast than dual cast.

The worst imho is the feeling that you absolutely need to saved 3 melee combos for your pot. RDM suffers the exact same curse than RPRs. 2m/8m buff windows. Unless a fight is too short (more than half the fights of this tier) where you'd 0m/6m pot window and the 0 minute pot window feels awful. It's one thing to not have a triple melee combo with your pot. It's another to burn a pot only for 1 melee combo. Death is incredibly more punishing on RDM than SMN/BLM because dying before a big rebuff window means you've lost all those resources you kept for melee combos. You can curse yourself when it's your own fault but it's really frustrating if a team mate caused you to die or a domino effect caused you to die. Imho, that's not very healthy for the job but that's a personal opinion.

Oh, fun fact mainly for melees who don't play casters and RDM in this case, did y'all know every time a RDM is out of instant cast proc and fails to get a proc and must cast Jolt II he loses a bit of black/white mana and 20 potency per cast? That awfully sounds like when a melee is out of TN stacks and may lose 1 positional :) I like it when melee purists use the positional excuse when some job was RNG they can't do much about.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

That's true. They did gain mobility and it really sucks for Enchanted Reprise that it's a "last resort button". In general, you can get away from any situation on RDM. There's a few factors to take into.
- BLM did receive nice mobility tools and it is literally on demand so BLMs will use as little as possible to keep everything in their buff window.
- SMN is quite frankly a ranged physical that has 4 casts per minute.
- RDM mobility is slapped on their melee combos, acceleration stacks & swiftcast. All of that mobility can be used to maximize damage.

In a world where RDM currently struggles to do high damage, any RDM player will keep everything for DPS. Acceleration rolling on CD all the time. Using Acceleration/Swiftcast when you have no proc and you don't want to Jolt II. Maybe Fleche or Contre Sixte has 2s left on it's CD and you don't want your oGCD to drift? Need a faster instant cast than dual cast.

The worst imho is the feeling that you absolutely need to saved 3 melee combos for your pot. RDM suffers the exact same curse than RPRs. 2m/8m buff windows. Unless a fight is too short (more than half the fights of this tier) where you'd 0m/6m pot window and the 0 minute pot window feels awful. It's one thing to not have a triple melee combo with your pot. It's another to burn a pot only for 1 melee combo. Death is incredibly more punishing on RDM than SMN/BLM because dying before a big rebuff window means you've lost all those resources you kept for melee combos. You can curse yourself when it's your own fault but it's really frustrating if a team mate caused you to die or a domino effect caused you to die. Imho, that's not very healthy for the job but that's a personal opinion.

Oh, fun fact mainly for melees who don't play casters and RDM in this case, did y'all know every time a RDM is out of instant cast proc and fails to get a proc and must cast Jolt II he loses a bit of black/white mana and 20 potency per cast? That awfully sounds like when a melee is out of TN stacks and may lose 1 positional :) I like it when melee purists use the positional excuse when some job was RNG they can't do much about.

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The only mechanic this tier that puts substantial strain on True North is Fourfold Fires in P8S P1. The only damage gap that melee should have relating to positionals are the ones that aren't given out for free, "free" including spaced out mechanics where True North is readily and easily available.

No, melee don't deserve extra damage for walking to the side when literally nothing is going on.

You could INTENTIONALLY miss every positional and crush ranged, so that's a bad argument anyways

We need less party buffs in the game, not more. Just buff their base damage and make them a true selfish dps or give them mitigation based utility. As this tier has shown mitigation is very important and MCH doing high damage while reducing some more damage on the party could be useful.

Also I’ll make the same suggestion I made in another threads in regards to reducing the potency of the party buff window:

-Brotherhood is reduced to a 3% buff to make it like RPR’s arcane circle since both are high damage jobs. Or just remove it and keep the chakra effect.

-Embolden: make it only a personal buff for RDM and buff their damage and white utility in return.

-Battle Litany: make it a buff for your dragon sight partner only. Dragoon already has a clunky amount of buffs to use which I’m sure will be addressed in the rework

-Divination: remove it. It’s a remnant of ShB AST. Instead buff cards which spreads the buffs over the fight.

-etc and jobs like DNC should keep their party buffs since it’s central to their identity

Honestly i think the biggest problem with red mage is it's utility rather than damage. This is what i propose:

Vercure now adds 2 white mana and veraise gives 6 white mana. Why? RDM is one of (if not the) jobe that relys in gcds the most, since the combo is the very core of REM gameplay. This way you don't feel like you are shooting yourself in the foot when you uses this skills.

Next i woud add two new skills: one that adds %damage to a player next attack (2.5s cd and gives 2 black mana) and one with 5s cd that gives 6 mana that i still don't know what would do but should be about giving players damage. this way RDM could ACTUALY be a suppot caster instead of having a cure that pretty much means the pull is over, a good raise that's situational at best and one of the worst mitigation abillities in the game

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Originally Posted by Foinhas

Honestly i think the biggest problem with red mage is it's utility rather than damage. This is what i propose:

Vercure now adds 2 white mana and veraise gives 6 white mana. Why? RDM is one of (if not the) jobe that relys in gcds the most, since the combo is the very core of REM gameplay. This way you don't feel like you are shooting yourself in the foot when you uses this skills.

Next i woud add two new skills: one that adds %damage to a player next attack (2.5s cd and gives 2 black mana) and one with 5s cd that gives 6 mana that i still don't know what would do but should be about giving players damage. this way RDM could ACTUALY be a suppot caster instead of having a cure that pretty much means the pull is over, a good raise that's situational at best and one of the worst mitigation abillities in the game

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I'd rather have Verraise with 2 charges(150s cooldown) and more potency buffs!

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Originally Posted by Arguscbf

I'd rather have Verraise with 2 charges(150s cooldown) and more potency buffs!

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Why not just get potency buffs while keeping Verraise as it is? Why should RDM do less damage simply because of Verraise when Verraise should never be used in optimal scenarios? Verraise already takes away a GCD, MP and mana thus DPS loss.

There are no fights in the game where a particular job's non-raid damage buffing utility/mitigation is required. Why should there be a DPS tax for it, then? Especially in the following weeks when the fight becomes easier to farm, it's ridiculous to tax skills you never need to use.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Oh, fun fact mainly for melees who don't play casters and RDM in this case, did y'all know every time a RDM is out of instant cast proc and fails to get a proc and must cast Jolt II he loses a bit of black/white mana and 20 potency per cast? That awfully sounds like when a melee is out of TN stacks and may lose 1 positional :) I like it when melee purists use the positional excuse when some job was RNG they can't do much about.

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THIS!!!
Acceleration should be 45s cooldown and have another additional effect by giving extra 20 potency to the next Verthunder/Veraero to compensate the "no proc" situation.

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Originally Posted by Ghostwk

MCH prio number one at this point.
I think a good starting place would be a flat 5% damage buff, in the form of giving the vulnerability down back, or a personal vuln down like NIN's current Trick Attack. This would be unique enough as a raid buff that it would be good for speed kills, and make it interchangeable with NIN otherwise. If you want to keep the job "selfish", then a personal vuln down buff would still be unique and achieve the same thing. The Mishit window is around 5-8%, so a flat buff would bring it in line and slightly under similarly performing jobs i think.

RPR i dont know why arcane circle is 3%, when it should have always been 5%. In addition, it is a very resource heavy job with a funky 124 loop that also somehow made it through testing. With that said, generating resources in down time is probably also needed. Casting Soul Sow could achieve this, as well as possibly give some when harvest moon is used.

RDMa harder hitting melee combo to start, and some form of faster resource generation. After some thought, I think 90s Manification may achieve that. Some other very slight potency values may be needed as well, but I think the melee combo and manification are a good starting point.

These seem to be the main 3 in the most need. I know other jobs could use some slight changes as well, but the ones that need it most should be a priority, and then proceed from there.

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90 second manafication is an terrible idea.
you want to pair manafication with embolden whenever possible since embolden will amp up your attacks while manafication does the same, you want to pair these as much as possible, having it on 90 seconds would just mean you wouldn't use manafication till embolden comes up, which means it'll be around 20 seconds off cooldown.

Honestly overal just more damage in our general kit would be nice, maybe add something to something else, like finishing an melee combo adds more damage to your 2 finishers since you can get your 2 finishers without completing the full melee combo.
or it gives you 1 dual cast for 45 seconds, something to that effect, but lowering manafication just adds clunkyness to the job since you want to use manafication as much as you can, but you also want to pair it with embolden (since that's at the party burst) but if you have manafication at 90 seconds you'll have manafication at 1:30, 3:00, 4:30, 5:00, 6:30, 8:00, 9:30 and then 11:00 (assuming you haven't killed the encounter yet)
so assuming this you would either hold manafication or use it on cooldown, using it on cooldown only has 2 aligned manafication through the fight since either you're 30 seconds too early, or 1 minute too late, or the other way around.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I'm gonna disagree with this assessment and say RDM is now more mobile than ever. Your mana gen to melee combo ratio is ROUGHLY the same--you gen less but it costs less, so roughly speaking its still ~40s to generate a melee combo. What this also means is you can bank your melee combo for longer than ever before. In StB / ShB, you had 2 to 4 gcds after becoming melee combo ready where you would begin overcapping, so it wasa very small window of being able to decide when to start the combo.

Also a typical mistake I see in new rdms these days is burning every melee combo you've got in the 2 minute. The 2 minute burst is over by the time you finish your second combo--even your own embo--so no point in burning that final melee so quick, might as well hold for when mobility is needed.

Sure they destroyed E. Reprise for some reason but they made Accel into the best thing I never knew I wanted.

All this to say: I don't want RDM to get even more mobility than it has. It's good as is--it's FUN as is. Resource management on rdm is better than its ever been and its honestly super enjoyable even in tiers like Abyssos that make me wanna scream due to mechanics like Purgation.

I just wanna feel like I'm not griefing my party by playing a job I have fun with.

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you're literally contradicting yourself with that purgation comment.
you enter your pot window right before purgation, if you pooled correctly you can actually keep an melee combo for the 1st purgation movement (assuming sleepo strat)
you use your melee combo to move from 1 side to the other (enough time) then start casting normally again, then use your accel/swiftcasts for the next movement, you can get to the next platform before having to hardcast again, which you have plenty of time for to get into your next position since your hardcast into slidecast into dualcast gives you plenty of time to get into place for the next hit.
then use another melee combo for the 3rd movement.
then use sprint+slide casting/dual casts to get to the other side for the 4th movement.
then just slidecast to the last side which takes even longer to go off, i never really had an issue with purgation as an RDM and i keep full uptime.

you're contradicting yourself with stating that an typical mistake is to burn both your melee combo's, but then say purgation makes you scream.

I'm...contradicting myself? Are you just trying to use combative words to place yourself in a position above me or seem somehow correct? Trying to flex how you managed to pool and bank resources for an objectively difficult mechanic for casters correctly when to do it you're doing some suboptimal 0/6 minute pot stuff?

I'm not seeing how I "contradicted" myself at all, especially because you even apparently misread what I said was a common mistake. What point am I contradicting myself on? That RDM is more mobile than ever, which was the claim and thesis of my post? Are you saying ShB and StB RDM could handle Purgation or (I guess when you get there) Cthonic Vents? Or am I contradicting myself by saying I like RDM's current limitations of mobility, of which you needed to detail an entire paragraph to how a RDM should approach Purgation?

Though I do appreciate your play by play of your steps and might appreciate a clip of you managing all that without dropping so much as a single GCD. I think I managed to do a pretty good job of not dropping anything this week of reclears personally, and might even go grab a clip to post here myself.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Caster's identity needs a revamp.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he feels raise has high value in prog. He is right. He is saying RDM would always be behind both SMN and BLM because it's high raise on demand and raise support isn't to save a run and clear. It's to help see further mechanics and practice to get a clear faster. He is also right about it. For Red Mage to do more DPS and be on par with Summoner, they'd need to take down Raise and leave it as a role action for all caster DPS with some sort of CD. That would work but it would require an overhaul of the caster balance. RDM and SMN would need to deal comparative DPS to BLM.

So I don't think we'll get much of a DPS increase from RDM. If they do get a buff. So will SMN. If they buff BLM because Yoshidad's job is behind melees. They should buff other casters. But that won't solve the problem itself. Unfortunately I do not believe we'll see any major change for caster until 7.0.

That isn't a super major spoiler but seeing how MSQ is going, there's a very high change that Krile will be having a new job and it would be a caster DPS. I can't see them giving her a 5th healer job after SAG just came out. With a 4th Caster role, they will have to rework casters.

Take it with a grain of salt because it's pure speculations here but they could split casters like they did with healers. Pure DPS Casters with higher damage and Raise casters. I do not believe this is the right choice. That would kill identity imho and with only 8 spots to fill and with 19 jobs to raid with, you'll have "bad" jobs like Machinist.

I personally feel Raise needs to be gone from SMN and RDM kit and a role action is created for them. Like Tactician needs to be a role action. I expect casters to be more and more mobile which will suck for RDM because RDM is about dualcast. But I 100% know the 4th caster job will be about SMN brain power judging from how RPR and SAG are easy to play.

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Ideally, Square will stop with this idiotic "support tax" they saddle jobs with. There is absolutely no reason to cut Red Mage's damage just because they have constant raise. Its a stupid, idiotic system that should have been gotten rid of a long time ago. And if getting rid of the support tax is too damn hard, they need to redo Raise like how a Battle Rez works in World of Warcraft: One per fight and then that's it, once its used up its gone. Of course for FF14's case, it'd probably need to be something like only three Raises allowed per fight.

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Originally Posted by Memoranda

Ideally, Square will stop with this idiotic "support tax" they saddle jobs with. There is absolutely no reason to cut Red Mage's damage just because they have constant raise. Its a stupid, idiotic system that should have been gotten rid of a long time ago. And if getting rid of the support tax is too damn hard, they need to redo Raise like how a Battle Rez works in World of Warcraft: One per fight and then that's it, once its used up its gone. Of course for FF14's case, it'd probably need to be something like only three Raises allowed per fight.

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It could also be that they let us have a kind of combat phoenix down consumable with a 5min recast timer... This way, RDM and SMN rezzes would actually be a nice job perk (of a "better" phoenix down) instead of a identity-defining staple.

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Originally Posted by Ghostwk

RDMa harder hitting melee combo to start, and some form of faster resource generation. After some thought, I think 90s Manification may achieve that. Some other very slight potency values may be needed as well, but I think the melee combo and manification are a good starting point.

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As as RDM main, I've been saying this since the magnification change. IMO, change manafication back to just being 15 seconds, that way it lasts the entire melee/mage combo duration plus a gcd for wiggleroom, maybe 20 seconds (and put it back on a 2 minute cooldown) if you want to be nice. OR buff melee combo to 310/380/490 potency.
Right now my biggest complaint is that melee combo isn't worth using under manafication, which forces you to meleecombo, then manafication, mage combo, then burn your last 3 stacks on a ver combo+acceleration. If it were a duration like it used to be, it wouldn't matter to use melee combo under it because its not stealing a stack that a higher potency ver spell could be using, or if it at least has the potency of your standard vercombo, it wouldn't matter that its taking a stack.

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

Right now my biggest complaint is that melee combo isn't worth using under manafication

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The math states otherwise. This is like RDM 101

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Originally Posted by FireMage

The math states otherwise. This is like RDM 101

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Care to explain?
Melee combo is 980 potency, or 1,029 under manafication. Vercombo+acceleration is 1090, or 1145 under manafication. Even ver combo into another vercombo is better use of the 3 mana stacks (1040/1092) than using them on melee combo.
Unless you're confusing mage combo with vercombo.

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

Care to explain?
Melee combo is 980 potency, or 1,029 under manafication. Vercombo+acceleration is 1090, or 1145 under manafication. Even ver combo into another vercombo is better use of the 3 mana stacks (1040/1092) than using them on melee combo.
Unless you're confusing mage combo with vercombo.

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980/5.2 is 188.46

1090/7.5 is 145.33

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

As as RDM main, I've been saying this since the magnification change. IMO, change manafication back to just being 15 seconds, that way it lasts the entire melee/mage combo duration plus a gcd for wiggleroom, maybe 20 seconds (and put it back on a 2 minute cooldown) if you want to be nice. OR buff melee combo to 310/380/490 potency.
Right now my biggest complaint is that melee combo isn't worth using under manafication, which forces you to meleecombo, then manafication, mage combo, then burn your last 3 stacks on a ver combo+acceleration. If it were a duration like it used to be, it wouldn't matter to use melee combo under it because its not stealing a stack that a higher potency ver spell could be using, or if it at least has the potency of your standard vercombo, it wouldn't matter that its taking a stack.

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I wouldn't say it "forces" anything. I did a little mathing it out on an excel spreadsheet I have and the difference between interrupting or not was minimal, in favor of just sucking it up and doing melee combo normally:
Doing it normal: 8566

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...440&height=667

Interrupting for "vercombo": 8518

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...440&height=659

In both of these I kept the sequence running into ~37.68seconds, when the action count equals out, because embolden (which does remain a timed buff) gets more out of ramming as many actions into it as possible, and the speed of melee combo allows for one more action to fit under embo than otherwise.

As far as the main point of the request, I'm not against it in the least. I just found that statement curious and wanted to check it for myself because hey, who knows where new opti could be found?

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Originally Posted by FireMage

980/5.2 is 188.46

1090/7.5 is 145.33

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They're talking about the potency per GCD because manafication spends by GCD, so the melee combo's speed doesn't really come into the discussion for manafication specifically. Though as I stated above, manafication being used with embo means you'll probably want to run the melee combo anyway.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I wouldn't say it "forces" anything. I did a little mathing it out on an excel spreadsheet I have and the difference between interrupting or not was minimal, in favor of just sucking it up and doing melee combo normally:

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I'm no math wizard. I'm only going by what the balance recommends . Unless I'm reading it wrong, they said to do what I posted so long as you don't overcap your mana. Which allows you to "save" the melee combo for the next buff phase is while maximizing the increase out of manafication when it doesn't line up.

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

I'm no math wizard. I'm only going by what the balance recommends . Unless I'm reading it wrong, they said to do what I posted so long as you don't overcap your mana. Which allows you to "save" the melee combo for the next buff phase is while maximizing the increase out of manafication when it doesn't line up.

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Maybe you are reading it right (you even wrote it) but you are not understanding it correctly. The difference between three melee hits and three spells under Manafication is 1-8 potency. This is literally less than an auto attack. A complete non-factor.

The point of Manafication after Redoublement is (as you say) to carry the mana forward to have a melee under buffs or have more finishers under buffs. Nothing about melee hits potency will change this.

I think at that point, my understanding is correct, or at least close to it. I'm just putting too much emphasis on the minor potency gain from the ver spells vs the weaker melee combo hits. I suppose saying that it's "not worth using" it's a gross overstatement.

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

I think at that point, my understanding is correct, or at least close to it. I'm just putting too much emphasis on the minor potency gain from the ver spells vs the weaker melee combo hits. I suppose saying that it's "not worth using" it's a gross overstatement.

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I think the issue here is if you sacrifice the last three stacks of Manafication to the potency-weaker melee combo, you can fit a second Verholy/flare+Scorch+Resolution under Embolden, which closes the gap due to the spell combo being higher potency.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I think the issue here is if you sacrifice the last three stacks of Manafication to the potency-weaker melee combo, you can fit a second Verholy/flare+Scorch+Resolution under Embolden, which closes the gap due to the spell combo being higher potency.

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You should still be able to do today because of the alignment of mama/embolden I think?

The embo buff lasts 20 seconds. One melee combo takes 12.7 seconds to finish, or 25.4 seconds to do both; its already a tight fit to get two resos under one embo, let alone if you break the flow to maximize potential for manafication stacks.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your statement.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

The embo buff lasts 20 seconds. One melee combo takes 12.7 seconds to finish, or 25.4 seconds to do both; its already a tight fit to get two resos under one embo, let alone if you break the flow to maximize potential for manafication stacks.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your statement.

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Why would balance mention using mana that way then? Is it relying on old information?

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

Why would balance mention using mana that way then? Is it relying on old information?

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If you could link where specifically the Balance talks about this so I could take a specific look I'd appreciate it. When I opened the Balance back up to check, the first guide I saw was of course the beginner's guide, wherein the section talking about manafication specifically states:

"Another important characteristic of Manafication is the ability to use it between Enchanted Redoublement and Verholy/Verflare. Manafication explicitly breaks any existing combo, which means you cannot use it between melee weaponskills or finishers. However, as mentioned previously, our melee weaponskills and finishers are considered two separate combo chains by the game, so using Manafication after Enchanted Redoublement will not cause us to lose Verholy/Verflare from combo breakage.

The main benefit of using Manafication in this fashion is to get it on cooldown faster without significantly overcapping on mana in situations where you have high mana with Manafication off cooldown. When doing this, your first three Manafication stacks will be used on your finishers, while the last three can be used on the first three hits of an immediate second combo, effectively buffing the same GCDs as using Manafication before your combo."

A lot of stuff on the Balance, when it comes to optimization, is in near theoreticals. For instance, in the same guide it talks about popping manafication on cooldown, which in THEORY makes sense when killtime is unknown, but the number of fights where you get an extra manafication by popping it on cooldown is so low I can't even think of one. Maybe during prog it's not a bad idea, or even in a situation where you know you're going to be forced to hold on the 2 minute anyway. Point is, in theory I agree but in practice I don't see a lot of places it comes into play.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

If you could link where specifically the Balance talks about this so I could take a specific look I'd appreciate it. When I opened the Balance back up to check, the first guide I saw was of course the beginner's guide, wherein the section talking about manafication specifically states:

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De-syncing Manafication, normal combos and buff alignment

A common misconception among newer players is that misaligning Manafication with Embolden means we do not use melee combo under buffs. This is not the case. We can simply build up Mana above 50|50 and spend it when buffs come, as long as we don’t overcap by going beyond 100|100. The 5% self-buff from Manafication is decent, but only amounts to ~150 potency when applied to all six melee combo hits.

In practice, outside of our buff windows, we accomplish this by using Manafication after Enchanted Redoublement, using our three finishers, then going back to Dualcast after. What this does is keep our Manafication cooldown running early, while “carrying over” our Mana prior to using Manafication.

This allows us to continuously build up enough Mana to do two normal melee combos under buffs later, as shown below. Note the Manafication timing and “Gauges” tab showing Mana values at the top, and how much Mana there is for a double combo later:

alt_text

This also means Manafication will buff three normal spellcasting GCDs after the finishers. In terms of potency, three finishers + three normal casts is marginally higher than our melee hits (~1-8 potency difference for single target spells, depending which ones casted). However, three spells also take longer to use than our melee hits. Due to Manafication’s 15 second buff timer, you should either late weave Manafication here, or have your third spell be an instant cast to avoid the 5% damage buff from dropping off on our last cast.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

De-syncing Manafication, normal combos and buff alignment

A common misconception among newer players is that misaligning Manafication with Embolden means we do not use melee combo under buffs. This is not the case. We can simply build up Mana above 50|50 and spend it when buffs come, as long as we don’t overcap by going beyond 100|100. The 5% self-buff from Manafication is decent, but only amounts to ~150 potency when applied to all six melee combo hits.

In practice, outside of our buff windows, we accomplish this by using Manafication after Enchanted Redoublement, using our three finishers, then going back to Dualcast after. What this does is keep our Manafication cooldown running early, while “carrying over” our Mana prior to using Manafication.

This allows us to continuously build up enough Mana to do two normal melee combos under buffs later, as shown below. Note the Manafication timing and “Gauges” tab showing Mana values at the top, and how much Mana there is for a double combo later:

alt_text

This also means Manafication will buff three normal spellcasting GCDs after the finishers. In terms of potency, three finishers + three normal casts is marginally higher than our melee hits (~1-8 potency difference for single target spells, depending which ones casted). However, three spells also take longer to use than our melee hits. Due to Manafication’s 15 second buff timer, you should either late weave Manafication here, or have your third spell be an instant cast to avoid the 5% damage buff from dropping off on our last cast.

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I see the misconception. This is specifically in the case that your manafy is desynched from buff windows, which if you're using off CD will happen. Bolded also is where the guide says this is marginal at best potency-wise. The big gain is getting more mana for more melee combos throughout the fight of course, so in the above situation you're simply going to pick up some extra potency while maintaining the mana needed for your eventual burst combo.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

I see the misconception. This is specifically in the case that your manafy is desynched from buff windows, which if you're using off CD will happen. Bolded also is where the guide says this is marginal at best potency-wise. The big gain is getting more mana for more melee combos throughout the fight of course, so in the above situation you're simply going to pick up some extra potency while maintaining the mana needed for your eventual burst combo.

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If we're using mana on CD with no drift, that will naturally occur anyway, right?

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Originally Posted by Lanvaldear

If we're using mana on CD with no drift, that will naturally occur anyway, right?

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If, and yes that will. Like I said though, in theory mana on CD is better but in practice very few fights come close to seeing that being a gain over just comboing it with Embo. What needs to be considered is it's not just embo that's getting stacked with manafy, but everyone's buff windows becaue of this dreadful, destructive, annoying lovely two minute burst cycle the devs gifted most every job with. So casually dumping manafy outside of it is really hard to justify, at least imo, because it's so rare you'll get an extra use of it from doing that. Most fights that are long enough for that to happen already have enough downtime to force drift everything in wonky ways anyway.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

If, and yes that will. Like I said though, in theory mana on CD is better but in practice very few fights come close to seeing that being a gain over just comboing it with Embo. What needs to be considered is it's not just embo that's getting stacked with manafy, but everyone's buff windows becaue of this dreadful, destructive, annoying lovely two minute burst cycle the devs gifted most every job with. So casually dumping manafy outside of it is really hard to justify, at least imo, because it's so rare you'll get an extra use of it from doing that. Most fights that are long enough for that to happen already have enough downtime to force drift everything in wonky ways anyway.

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Wonderful. When I first started playing RDM years ago, mana and embo we're both the same CD, then I dropped it for a while and came back to them desynced and balanced said to use it on CD, which I never liked. I'll adjust my playstyle and give it a go.