Suggestion for: RDM improvements

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

The suggested tweak would basically delete Jolt 2 from the kit lol

Actually not even basically, there'd be no reason to ever use Jolt 2. You precast a 5s spell, and every downtime where procs could fall off you use vercure to proc a dualcast to use a 5s spell with. Though if they did this, and reduced the proc time to 5s or 10s or something, it could create its own "enochian" style mechanic where you want to keep Verfire and Verstone Ready up almost the whole fight at pain of needing to use the inferior Jolt 2...

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Exactly this. Rdm would need to take care that their rotation didn't drop or they would suffer a DPS penalty - exactly like BLM. In addition, the increase in dps would also increase the penalty in using Raise or any other non-dps spell.

Its simple and its a win win. The only question is do others agree?

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Originally Posted by Havelocke

Exactly this. Rdm would need to take care that their rotation didn't drop or they would suffer a DPS penalty - exactly like BLM. In addition, the increase in dps would also increase the penalty in using Raise or any other non-dps spell.

Its simple and its a win win. The only question is do others agree?

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Please no, this would kill any and all rotational tension with proc/mana management and make RDM truly a class with barely any optimization like some people seem to believe. The functionality of RDM is more than fine as it is right now, it literally just needs numbers.

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Originally Posted by Leidiriv

Please no, this would kill any and all rotational tension with proc/mana management and make RDM truly a class with barely any optimization like some people seem to believe. The functionality of RDM is more than fine as it is right now, it literally just needs numbers.

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This is a fair criticism of the idea; it would be trading out RNG and proc management for a much more BLM-esque playstyle revolving around short timers, and people who want that do already have BLM to play.

I feel like Engagement, Corps and Displacement need to be a shared charge system, with normalized potency between them. One to get out, one to get in, one to use while strafing. Something like

Swordplay: Corps-A-Corps
Ability
Recast: 20s
Range: 25y
Effect: Rushes the target and delivers an attack with 200 potency. Shares recast with other Swordplay abilities.

Swordplay: Engagement
Ability
Recast: 20s
Range: 3y
Effect: Deliver an attack with 200 potency. Shares recast with other Swordplay abilities.

Swordplay: Displacement
Ability
Recast: 20s
Range: 3y
Effect: Deliver an attack with 200 potency and backstep 15y. Shares recast with other Swordplay abilities.

Improved Swordplay
Trait
Effect: Swordplay abilities gain charges, to a maximum of 2. The next Weaponskill used after Corps-A-Corps gain 150 potency.

Improved Swordplay II
Trait
Effect: Swordplay charge maximum increased to 3. The next spell used after Displacement gains 150 potency.

Improved Swordplay III
Trait
Effect: Swordplay charge maximum increased to 4. The next weaponskill or spell used after Engagement gains 150 potency.

Manafication: Grants 2 charges of Swordplay instead of refreshing current cooldown.

Improved Manafication: Grants 3 charges of Swordplay in addition to its other effects.

Perhaps I'm not completely "qualified" to speak up here, as i stopped raiding on RDM in ShB, but my core issue with RDM at the moment is that SE gave us new tools to adress old problems that they effectively removed. Every new skill we got to our kit, barring Scorch, is just 4.0 Shake it off. All of them.

Overcapping mana due to Impact's contribution to ramping our mana gain?
Here's reprise- Oh by the way, Impact was effectively removed, so you'll never overcap anyway. Have fun with no reliable mana acceleration. It was only Jolt 3 anyway. Jolt is great, isnt it?

Those pesky circular arenas with holes, walls and cliffs making your oGCD useless/dangerous?
here's a weaker alternative to displacement where you wont suicide. Oh, btw, we have much more considerate arenas that rarely if ever actually punish displacement anymore.


RDM coming from SB feels nerfed. Hollow. All of the abilities we got would have been great if they hadnt gutted what we had from then. What I would personally like to see is something akin to our old impact. RDM wasnt exactly the most complicated thing in the world in SB, but clever/proper use of Impact allowed RDM to bypass jolt, gave a safety net for Ready procs, accelerated our mana (and gave us more melee combos per minute....actually having melee combos per minute), and just generally gave us a skill ceiling that wasnt on the floor.

I just want to see a spell or ability that gives RDM that aspect back; Something that rewards us with extra mana, a reliable way to fish for procs, and an actual way to optimize. You know. A better player being one that is rewarded. Instead of hoping a group lets you tag along and get a shinier stat stick to compete.

If we truly cannot have our old impact or a full on new spell to replace it, then the only thing I can even think to do is either lower the cooldown of, or give charges to Accelerate. Or to give an accelerate type effect to something that is effectively useless to us as is...... like engagement. movement+potency vs not needing/wanting to move+proc. I dont know.


extra potencies would be nice, of course. not being laughed out of PF because our low output would of course be welcome. but my scorch having 1500 potency isnt going to make it any more "fun". RDM wouldnt be "better" for it. I just want the ability to improve as the job I choose to play and RDM doesnt allow for that anymore.

I'm not going to argue for complex mechanics, because I'm pretty casual and not in the raiding scene. I'm sure plenty of other people more qualified have already shared their piece. What I'll speak about is based on my experience playing and liking RDM in Stormblood and my feeling on it after playing at endgame enough to get i450 gear:

A theme I've felt with jobs the Devs have worked on Shadowbringers is removing abilities and then rewarding them back to us with a new coat of paint. As a WHM main, that's what our capstone ability Temperance feels like: a slightly more powerful Largesse... which is a role-action that was removed. But they gave it back to us as a capstone. Aren't they nice? >_>

RDM feels like was one of the least touched job in that respect. It mostly feels the same, but it's accrued very little over the expansion. Scorch is really the only new thing I really notice. The rest? Trait improvements for the most part. The look and feel is mostly the same.

Except for one thing that irks me enormously: the Red Mage's new AoE spells VerAero 2 and VerThunder 2, followed by either Scatter or Impact. Gone is Scatter+Scatter. Now it's VerAero 2+Impact or VerThunder 2+Impact.

...And it annoys me to no end. I get how they tried to implement something similar to the single-target process... but I appreciated how simple (how braindead) spamming Scatter+Scatter was.

I would have loved Scatter+Scatter to become Scatter+Impact (Scatter was augmented on second cast, so, that would have been cool).

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Originally Posted by Zoberraz

...And it annoys me to no end. I get how they tried to implement something similar to the single-target process... but I appreciated how simple (how braindead) spamming Scatter+Scatter was.

I would have loved Scatter+Scatter to become Scatter+Impact (Scatter was augmented on second cast, so, that would have been cool).

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I thin it would have been better if Scatter just got a trait that made the next single target spell following it hit all targets in the area. Same end result without the feeling that you got cheated this expansion.

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Originally Posted by Zoberraz

Except for one thing that irks me enormously: the Red Mage's new AoE spells VerAero 2 and VerThunder 2, followed by either Scatter or Impact. Gone is Scatter+Scatter. Now it's VerAero 2+Impact or VerThunder 2+Impact.

...And it annoys me to no end. I get how they tried to implement something similar to the single-target process... but I appreciated how simple (how braindead) spamming Scatter+Scatter was.

I would have loved Scatter+Scatter to become Scatter+Impact (Scatter was augmented on second cast, so, that would have been cool).

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I thin it would have been better if Scatter just got a trait that made the next single target spell following it hit all targets in the area. Same end result without the feeling that you got cheated this expansion.

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The problem I have when I keep seeing this argument, is that the "basic" nature of the AoE rotation in the first place was that it provided room to be built and expanded upon. They did that, and I expect will continue to in the future. Even if they hadn't expanded anything, we'd be practically begging them to next expansion, since we'd be behind the AoE changes to other damage/tanking jobs every expansion.

If the complaint is we didn't gain a means to just toggle existing spells into AoEs to save bar space then, well, you could make exactly the same complaint about literally every other DPS job. It seems irrational to single RDM out in this case when you could do the same for, say, BLM, or any number of melee.

I'm also not sure how one could feel "cheated" about that when it didn't even come at the loss of any of our upgrades, since it was all added retroactively. I get that it's the most impactful (hah) thing they changed about RDM this expansion, but that's not mutually exclusive with our actual 72-80 upgrades being mostly underwhelming, particularly when the sum total of our changes was less than just the impact of upgrades given to several other jobs.

Mmm. I wouldn't say that I feel overly cheated. More that the irony kind of smacks me in the face.

Seems like they thought that they had a winning chemistry with Red Mage. So, they went for more or the same; with the only true improvement being - as I alluded in my previous post - the addition of Scorch and the breadcrumb QoL we got with the traits.

It's more that I felt Scatter+Scatter wasn't something that was broken, so, why fix it? The fix, so far as I'm concerned, lessens the Red Mage experience rather than enhance it. I get that the addition of Aero 2 and Thunder 2 means that there's a choice to make for the Red Mage's player to choose what mana color to raise... but did that really need to happen? If Holy Spamming is fine, why wasn't Scatter spamming fine?

Though, more to the point, there's also extra shelf space being taken and I'm not fond of the contorsions required on the keyboard to simply cast the things (It was one thing to mash Ctrl+0 in Stormblood, but now I have to dance between Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3 and Ctrl-4 a whole lot and my left hand really resents going through those contorsions).

Where single target is concerned, the Red Mage feels snappy, powerful and overall rewarding. But the AoE current setup?

Not a fan.

I'm not going to be flipping desks over it, nor to I expect it to change during Shadowbringers' patches, but my tiny hope is that if I make my voice heard, maybe it'll get streamlined by the next expansion. In the meantime, I'll be grateful to any tank that isn't inclined to double-pull since I won't feel like AoEing while playing Red Mage. Maybe I can find a positive spin to this by reviewing my keybinds in order to make the AoE experience less of a chore to execute ad nauseum.

After all, I'm posting here because I want to like the Red Mage. :)

"RDM- Potency Increases. RDM Acceleration has 3 stacks, increased recast time."
not sure acceleration needed to have that many stacks but ok