FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Will Red Mage be just like astrologian? A fusion between SMN & Blm.

Definitely a dps with utility. Too much identity lost fitting into healer or tank roles. I'd build them on INT, using their own gear types (high mdef, mid pdef) with the option to use caster gear, with melee limit break. Weapon is a rapier. I want them to have a small shield, but that extra defensiveness is kind of unfair to other dps. Then again, they can be squishy when using caster gear and might need the protection of a shield.


They'd be a mix of a lot of existing jobs, but primarily blm and whm. All their white magic would be from cross class skills, and Cure would be moderately effective, about 5x better than a blm/smn's physick, but still weaker than healers cures, Their raise would work in combat. I'd prefer this healing prowess come from traits, but a sort of reverse cleric's stance could work too.

Their black magic would be analogous to Fire I, II, Thunder II, and Blizzard I, II, and one additional DoT spell. They get untraited sleep, and a combo enfeeble somewhat like lethargy. They would use Astral fire and umbral ice up to level II. This makes their offensive magic pretty weak, however they mainly use it to close combo's where it gets potency bonuses anyway. They also double and chain cast with cooldowns (doublecast is like duality for spells with a lower timer), while Chainspell is for openers. Rather than transpose, they can get full Astral conversion at the start of a fire combo (melee part), and have an ice/casting stance that does umbral conversion.

Combos are melee > melee > spell. Fire combo forks after the 1st hit and can either be single target or aoe. Thunder combo is single target. Cycle is basically a Thunder combo and 2 fire combosme then fire spells to use up mp, then ice/casting stance for a bit to recover resources and renew DoTs, repeat. Much like a blm's element cycle, just modified to be use melee combos that close with a spell. Rdm will need short cooldown jump into and out of melee range moves.


I'd work their enspells like aetherflow mixed with NIN poisons and call it spellblade. Each combo can change the spellblade element. All elements give a melee damage boost. Fire gives temper status (more damage boost). Thunder combo recharges a stack. Stacks are used for special attacks/spells. Some of these change their effect based on which spellblade element the RDM is using.

I call the casting stance Cold-Blooded. It switches to umbral ice and also switches spellblade element to ice, which gives Fast Cast status (cast speed boost). Magic damage is boosted 30% like mch/BRD caster stances, and auto attacks are disabled. The caveat is it only lasts as long as umbral ice is maintained, which means no fire spells and no melee combos. You can only cast ice, thumder, and utility/healing spells or you lose the stance. Even with damage and speed boosts, the damage is low spamming a Blizzard I equivalent, so most of the time you would go back to comboing fire and Thunder as soon as your resources are recovered


Rdm would have a lot of utility and some self defenses. This would included inflicting vulnerabilities on a target to increase party damage (similar to BRD and MCH), single target mp recovery, special damage shields that are weak but don't get used up until their duration ends (phalanx), and a sword drain skill/cure III equivalent (long cooldown, off gcd) for healing the front line.

What I would like to see is Red Mage ending up being a DPS that doesn't have any rotation bonuses. I want each of it's skills to be stand-alone and have decent individual potency and maybe some utility (bind, heavy, enfeeble, sleep/stun, bleed, poison, etc). That way it could be entirely freeform without having to sacrifice top DPS (i.e. even if the player was just throwing spells/skills at random, they would never hit rock bottom DPS, but they could also never be in the top tier). There would obviously be a "best way" as per usual, but it wouldn't have to worry about throwing its entire skill set off by dodging the fire or getting stunned/interrupted. Throw in raid utility buffs/debuffs and a rez, and I think that's really the only way for us to have the traditional jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none RDM while still conforming to this game's meta.

If we get red mage I really want it to be a melee class with a single rapier, there aren't enough games with a character using a single one handed weapon with no offhand of any kind, the single weapon fighting style should get some love. As far as abilities go, I keep leaning towards adding the En- spells from FFXI but doing it in a way that makes the choice more interesting and forces you to change depending on the situation. For example, En-fire applying a DoT effect for single target dps, En-lightning adding a chain lightning effect for AoE, etc. The potencies tuned in such a way to not make the effects too powerful while not making them useless either. Give them some elemental themed buffs and debuffs to cast on allies and enemies respectively, then I believe it would be a fun class to play.

some really good ideas here, a lot of them I can agree with, I would probably be more on the side of melee dps, with aoe casting offensive, a mild kit for healing on the spot(cnj full cross class?, might be a bit much+maybe make its base stat int where clerics even with the penalty would still be a couple times better than a smn or blm physik, really want to see a mp refresh version of goad, it might need a means to restore tp and mp, obviously these could be put in some sort of 2 or 3 part combo, maybe doublecast for some burst damage or healing, but not so often it encroaches on healers or caster dps, i would probably go for the spell Mute, instead of sleep for variety sake. Ive seen some good healer suggestions but i really feel itd be out of place as a red mage, still could happen though, i have to agree the simplest and purest way to do it is a dps with some offensive and restorative spells, maybe put its damage near ninjas if played well, and enough raid utility to be wanted(maybe the use of magic damage and physical damage at any given time) this is really all id ask for in a RDM eithout completely pushing it into a specialty role which it really never was a true master of. Not to mention all arounders like myself would find a job with multiple gameplay aspects would really make this a fun job to play, esp given the fact that you might be able to aid a struggling healer, or enhance a fellow dps, or maybe help support the tank depending on what they decide to give the rdm kit.

Red Mage makes no sense as a healer.

In every FF title that had a Red Mage, they were never very good at being a dedicated healer. They were always most proficient as a damage dealer that could abuse enemies with elemental weaknesses, and fall back on basic attacks when they couldn't.

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Originally Posted by Destous

Red Mage makes no sense as a healer.

In every FF title that had a Red Mage, they were never very good at being a dedicated healer. They were always most proficient as a damage dealer that could abuse enemies with elemental weaknesses, and fall back on basic attacks when they couldn't.

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I agree the only time their cures were great like in ff5 was when you double casted them to be ok enough....i was thinking an int based dps that had access to cleric stance....thm/cnj would make sense with that set up to me...untrait raise and hope pld isnt too op(i doubt combat raise without swiftcast would make them op or grant the need to use it unless imminent catastrophe[raid probably gonna wipe anyway
])

Hello.

I just discovered this forum and all the juicy speculation within. I did a writeup on Red Mage a loooong time ago back toward the end of 1.0 that I think might be relevant here.

You can find that thread here

Be warned, its hugely long and when I wrote it I was also working on a Master's thesis in English so it reads like an academic work.

I tried to balance the nostalgia of the ff11 players and and needs of a modern mmo as best I could. The basic idea was that the Red Mage was a damage class with strong support abilities. It would "change rows" between being a front line and back line fighter and manage a melee and magic rotation that worked synergistically with each other.

I was always very proud of it but it didn't get much attention due to timing and my own lack of forum presence.

My favourite thing that ever happened with Red Mage was Bravely Default. I gave the skills Magic Critical and Epic Group-Cast, put reflect up on the entire party, gave myself a M.atk and crit buffs from invocation, and then spammed group wide attack spells on my party to bounce them off reflect.

Why did I have a Red Mage in the party? Because I needed a single target dispel for the Eternian Jobmaster gauntlet, and my spiritmaster needed the group-cast all.

So what made Red Mage good for me was that it provided a bit of extra utility, and worked with the group composition so that it didn't become a liability. Maybe that could be something to base it on here? Give it a bit less damage than other DPS classes, but give it a lot of interesting utilities, like damage debuffs, damage resist debuffs, maybe a cleanse like the healing classes (goodness knows the bomb guildhest needs it).

But that's just my personal take. Doesn't mean I know how to design an MMO class.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

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hmm like having deployment tactics like bane debuffs like trick attack onto other targets and such? seems interesting

Im convinced that he RDM is going to fulfill a tank role. Why?
So it mostly depends on what the other two classes are that follow with it. Samurai has been the heat of talk and i really think this will be a DPS class, mainly because we already have a two handed sword wielding tank and having two that do the same thing seems pretty meh in my opinion.

We already have caster DPS and i think a caster/magic tank would fill a niche in the market, as mentioned in previous posts as well it sits well with the Black magic being used for aggro and DPS abilities and then the White magic for cool downs and buffs etc.
If anything i would just like to see something from a tank perspective and maybe thats clouding my thoughts, but id like to see something new for tanks that breaks the mold a little. Another DPS with support abilities while nice has been done twice to pretty good success in both instances..

Again this all boils down to what the other 2 classes are and i am assuming they'll bring out one of each to keep the balance while these jobs are leveling up. For all we know they could bring out 3 dps classes and stump us all XD. Screw dem queue's though if it is!!