Basic rotation for new RDM lvl 30?

Trying to find an updated video that is quick and to the point but no luck-- can anyone just summarize the basic newbie RDM opener/rotation so I can practice it?

Thanks in advance!

If we're not getting into savage openers and all that stuff, your basics are as follows.

Single target:
Jolt -> Verthunder -> Jolt -> Veraero (or swapped if you want, doesn't matter). If you get a Verfire or Verstone ready proc, cast one of those instead of Jolt. They do more damage and give you more total black/white mana than Jolt does, plus they have the same cast time. Your basic goal is to avoid casting Jolt as much as possible. If you have Accelerate up, it acts as a combo Swiftcast and proc guarantee for Verthunder and Veraero.

Ideally, you want to be rotating in one of two ways given perfect proc luck: Verstone -> Veraero -> Verfire -> Verthunder, or Verstone -> Verthunder -> Verfire -> Veraero. This sounds confusing at first, but if you arrange your hotbar so that the proc spells are situated just above the slow spells that trigger them, you'll see it looks like this:

1 3
2 4

or
1 3
4 2


Which one of these patterns you end up following will mostly depend on how your procs are lined up. Your secondary goal (after trying to never cast Jolt if you can help it) is not wasting procs. If you're casting Verfire, and you see you already have a Verstone ready, then your next spell should be Verthunder. This probably sounds like a lot of information, but just remember- this is all in service of making sure you cast Jolt as few times as possible. The best thing you can do is try to keep both procs lit as often as you can. When you get to at least 50/50 black and white mana, you can do your Riposte -> Zwerchau -> Redoublement combo, since they're fast GCDs and end up doing more damage than your spells in their enchanted form. As you level up, this melee combo will gain more finishers after it, and these finishers will auto-replace abilities on your hotbar so you don't even need to worry about managing them.

For AOE:
Much easier. You want to go back and forth with Verthunder 2 -> Scatter -> Veraero 2 -> Scatter. Scatter later upgrades to Impact just in case you see someone refer to the spell as "Impact", but the rotation remains the same. When you get to 60/60 black/white mana, you can use Moulinet three times for the same flow as your single-target finisher. Something to note is that your two target rotation is where things get a little wonky. Technically the highest potency on two targets is Jolt -> Scatter, because Jolt does more total potency than Verthunder/aero 2 do to two targets. Nobody is going to fault you for just using the base rotation, but that's something to keep in mind for later.

Other notes:

Keep Fleche and Contre Sixte on cooldown. They're free damage, and it's basically never a gain to hold onto them, single target or AOE. Other abilities you get later on are situational party assistance skills or upgrades to your basic flow. Manafication and Embolden should be used together as often as you can, but nobody's going to care if you mess those up. As you get used to the back and forth white/black flow of your basic spells, you can start doing things like weaving Swiftcast to try to force a proc instead of casting Jolt, or using Accelerate/Swiftcast for movement.

Dualcast
The basic pattern to learn is the Dualcast mechanic, which basically gives all your hardcast spells "Additional effect: grants Swiftcast". Note that the Dualcast mechanic doesn't mean you can cast two spells in one GCD, a somewhat common misunderstanding among people who don't RDM; the next spell still consumes a GCD but it only takes 2.5s instead of whatever its cast time would have been.

Fast spell > Slow spell [oGCD][oGCD]

The fast spells (2.5s cast time) are Jolt, Verstone, Verfire, Veraero II, Verthunder II. The slow spells (5.0s cast time) are Veraero I/III, Verthunder I/III, Scatter/Impact. Don't hard cast the slow spells; they are not worth the doubled cast time. The exception is opening a fight with a countdown or while waiting for someone to catch up, in which case you can start casting 5s before the fight starts, opening with Veraero-Verthunder or Verthunder-Veraero.

After you learn Vercure, you can use it as a Swiftcast when you have no targets to attack, so that you can cast a bigger spell immediately when the boss returns.


Mana
Keep your black and white meters close, but not exactly equal. At lower levels inequality doesn't matter, but you don't want to develop a habit of keeping them exactly equal because you will need to break that habit later when you learn Verflare and Verholy, which work best when your meters are uneven.

In general this means you will want to alternate colors; however, there is one special case to get used to early. If your meters are only different by 1 point, don't alternate because your meters will equalize if you start with the wrong color.

For example:
(starting) [44|45] > Verfire [44|50] > Veraero [50|50]

Instead, use the same color twice to avoid equalizing or start with the lower color:
(starting) [44|45] > Verfire [44|50] > Verthunder [44|56]
or (starting) [44|45] > Verstone [49|45] > Verthunder [49|51]


Movement
Because of the Dualcast mechanic, you have about 3.2s of mobility out of every 5s. You can move as the hardcast finishes and continue to move through the instant cast and oGCDs. Get used to living in melee range so that you can enter a melee combo without having to change your position and so that you can use Corps-a-corps and Engagement on cooldown. The movement windows from Dualcast and melee attacks will be wide enough to handle most mechanics. If a particular fight requires you to move quickly at specific times, save a charge of Corps-a-corps and/or Displacement for those cases.

Thanks all, I toyed around with it some last night doing FATES and kinda got the hang of the basics. One question I do still have is-- do I continue to wait to use my melee combo until I have around 80 (both dark and light) on my balance gauge? I'm assuming that's mostly for dungeon bosses since trash mobs go down so fast anyway that it doesn't really matter.

If it’s prior to endwalker guides they may have outdated information, you can do your melee combo at 50/50 now (or 60/60 for enchanted moulinet in aoe). At higher levels when you have access to verflare and verholy you’ll want to have the amount skewed slightly (like 54/51 as an example) so that you get the guaranteed proc from the respective flare or holy you follow up with.

Ok, thanks! And yeah most of the info I can find for early RDM is pre-EW stuff--I'll adjust when I use my combo accordingly

Hey! I know the following is for lvl 90 but rdm is pretty straight and the gameplay doesn't change that much.

https://bit.ly/3pn92tQ

If you want to dive deeper into redmage or any other classes go there to the resources channel of your wished class:

https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv [thats an invitelink to a discord server]
There are also https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/ or https://www.akhmorning.com/

The Balance community is really nice and helpful and you can find there a bunch of informations.

Have fun with redmage, it's really nice and flashy :D

Thanks, that simplifies it quite a bit!