Feelings on RDM

This is my first post here, ever, but: hi, I'm Turing, I do theorycrafting and optimization calculations for Red Mage.

Since picking up the game some time after Stormblood's launch, I made an early switch to Red Mage and quickly came to love it, soon after making it my first level 70 class, and soon after that I took it into raiding. I worked hard to play at the top of my game, looked up guides, everything, and the class only got more fun to play as I explored the depth of optimizations it offers. When 4.3 came out, and some changes to RDM with it, I even did some of the math myself and contributed back to the community!

With 5.x approaching, I doubled down. I got excited about the changes we saw in the trailer and the live letter, I jumped at the opportunity to update my math, and took it further into working on authoring a guide and acting as one of the main RDM theorycrafters for a large community. Its been a ton of fun, and Red Mages have been among some of the most excited in the community for the new expansion. What we're getting isn't as dramatic as a rework, but it seemed tailored to what we needed. As someone who has become intimately familiar with not only playing RDM, but the math behind it, it really felt like the team that designed the changes to the class knew almost exactly what the class needed.

Of course, the reason I'm trying to communicate all this excitement, is to say that a lot of us feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us, with this morning's release of the job guides. Reprise was the only change, yet it carried a lot of weight in our excitement. It had so many possibilities as a tool for adjusting our mana, delaying our rotation, improving our flexibility, and movement... Now, at 220 potency, Reprise is worse than casting, and it drains our gauge. It is now an active detriment to use Reprise, bad enough in some cases that it would be better to move without casting at all rather than use Reprise and waste the gauge. It feels like we've lost a new skill before we even gained it.

I've done a lot of math for RDM, and I could tell you a lot of things about what I would change. I could go on for several posts about what the potency of Reprise could be, or other changes I would have liked to see instead. But for the purposes of this post I will leave you with this: for all the few changes Red Mages got, many agreed Reprise was the most exiting thing to happen to the class. This is effectively gone now, and I sincerely hope that the FFXIV team realizes this loss to the potential for engaging gameplay, and walks back this decision.

In a class that is designed so intricately, it is surprising the effect a change to one skill can have.

Finally, this: the change to Reprise is going to mean optimizing Red Mage may involve using single target Moulinet. Please don't make us use single target Moulinet.

Thank you so much for voicing my thoughts so well.

well im happy that now we have a RDM aoe rotation :D with impact noneless (love the spell effect!) + moulinet 20 mana cost ? yay! , and SE changed Verflare and verholy into verthunder and verstone , and jolt becomes scorch ,feels a bit like "autorotation" but still fun.

but yeah u are right on your comment , hope SE notices ! reprisal could have been an awesome addition :( , but with that potency ...

Thank you for voicing this concerns, hopefully they'll look at it and adjust accordingly

After looking through the maths behind it myself, I honestly think this is the most bizarre change imaginable. To put it into context, E. Reprise currently grants -20 Mana, takes 2.2 seconds to cast, and deals 220 potency, so 100 potency/second. Jolt grants +6 mana, takes 2.5 seconds* to cast, and deals 250 potency, so 100 potency/second at bare minimum SpS. The second you stray above 2.5s GCD, so for instance at 2.48s GCD like Alphascape gear, Jolt is 100.8 potency/second and mana positive, allowing you to get more melee combos, even with overcapping. And on top of that, you're 26 mana better for using Jolt over E. Reprise

I don't want to get too into the maths however to prevent our mana from overcapping before going into Manafication with the new 110s CD (or 120s rotation for raid buffs), it's actually better to use a Single Target moulinet providing you're at close to, if not over 70|70 as it's more potency/second (133.33) than E. Reprise.

On top of this, as Yue has said, it's sometimes better to not cast at all for extended periods of movement because those E. Reprises you used could've cost you a full use of the 2270 potency melee combo.

I am also one of the many RDMs disappointed about the Enchanted Reprise change. The job overall has improved, mind you. We've not been nerfed. BUT, and this is a big one... It's going to feel pretty much exactly the same as what we've been doing in SB. Since E. Reprise is so niche now, there's going to be many fights in which we don't even use it at all. So, going from the most game-changing tool of our arsenal, the one that would make us make meaningful decisions mid-fight (or at least, when planning a fight), to something that we might not even use in days, is rather disappointing.

I wish they realize that part of the fun of a new expansion is figuring out how to incorporate the new toys into our gameplay. I don't want E. Reprise to be DPS competitive with the melee combo. That would be dumb. I want it to be just worse enough that using it in isolation would be bad, but using it in key moments would improve our DPS.

As someone who is passionate about Red Mage, I was really looking forward to what Enchanted Reprise brought our job in terms of alignment potential, and how it could be used to easily prevent mana overcap when we use Manafication. Please Square, make Reprise worth using.

You hit it right on the head, Turing. My only hope is that E. Reprise's new potency is a typo and it's actually supposed to be 320. The fact that Moulinet's going to be one of our main tools for aligning the 120s rotation is depressing as all hell, and I hope Square notices this and fixes it so RDM can be the best class it can be.

I completely agree with your post. If we did get other interesting additions, this change wouldn't feel so bad but considering enchanted reprise was the only interesting new skill we got (which is sad enough) it feels like a kick in the belly.Two of our three new 70-80 spells are skills we will almost never use. So we basically just got a single new single skill for our single target rotation, while we lost another one (impact). The expansion should excite us but I just feel sad as a Rdm main. I have every job leveled to 70 so it shouldn't be a big deal to me, as I could just try out other jobs like summoner who got a completely rework which looks awesome. But Red Mage is the by far most fun job for me and while I didn't have many wishes for RDM I hoped we would get at least something interesting for our rotation and not just 2 years of the same + a new finisher.

It is just crazy that our best new skills for this expansion is:

Moulinet. Its the only thing that spread its wings for situational utility.

Ideally you would use Reprise when you need to delay your mana from overcapping for 5 seconds, but with how bad the potency is, its always better to just let yourself overcap.

Moulinet though, If you need to stall by 10 seconds you can now use it. 133 PPS vs 100 PPS from Reprise [also having to use it twice to keep the delay] VS 102 PPS from just overcapping with Stone/Aero.


Casters all lost our single target OGCD support skills and didn't gain anything for it. SMN got a 600-700 POtency AOE heal. Not a heal for emergencies by any means, but still something EXTREMELY Flavorful and powerful, if only as a SMNs "Hey, SCH here's a Fey Union on me, keep DPSing." Sustain over Emergency healing.

So much changed for BLM in a positive way that it would be allot to type. They are in amazing spot.

We are still forced into Physical DPS comps from physical locked Embolden, where SMN/BLM might replace a melee in a comp together, BLM benefiting from Devotion along with the healers.

Our identity comes down to "He who raises the best, at the highest personal DPS cost." It does not feel good.