Trying to get better as a RDM

Hello, so I am trying to get better as the title suggests, but I really do not know what I am doing wrong. I want to be able to do the required DPS for the raid but I just cant seem to do it. I have a vid here so people can see what I am doing and what I am doing wrong. Thx for anyone willing to take the time to help me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id1CzkF3Dj8

Extra: Tbh, I'm actually thinking of giving up and switching to healer. How hard is it? I haven't already tried because I don't do very well under pressure and I don't want people getting mad because I messed up my heals or healer dps D:

Don't give up! :D Red Mage seems more complicated than it is! Just practice! It is a new job after all haha

For one thing, you shouldn't try to double weave Fleche and Contre Sixte. The animation lock slows down your global cooldown, and that's never good.

I personally don't take Swiftcast at all on my red mage. I take Lucid Dreaming, Diversion, Apocatastasis, Addle and either Mana Shift or Erase depending on the fight. Dualcast is more than enough.

I also only really use Corps-a-corps and Displacement for positioning. The main idea is you get in close (sometimes early to avoid mechanics), use your melee combo and Displacement to both get away and dodge. In Deltascape V1.0 (Savage), though, you want to be really careful with Displacement. You could go flying right off the edge and die.

Manafication is mostly to add another melee burst, which includes Corps-a-corps and Displacement. You don't use it primarily for the recast reset, but for the mana doubling.

I hope these tips help!

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Originally Posted by LadyAveria

Don't give up! :D Red Mage seems more complicated than it is! Just practice! It is a new job after all haha

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Thx :3

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

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I am not for sure what you mean by double weave. Can you explain?

And yeah in learning parties I've derped and flew right off the edge, lel. It is so easy to misjudge your positionign in relation to the edge x_x

Well my reply was eaten due to being too long and my phone being dumb. So I'll just touch on the points:

Clean up your crossbars
Use acceleration more
Manifaction for more melee combos
Double weave (use 2 oGCDs inbetween GCDs) all but displacement if you have lower latency
Don't stack spell speed (1k is more than enough)
Walk into melee > displacement out > corps back in. more autos = 20-30 more dps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

For one thing, you shouldn't try to double weave Fleche and Contre Sixte. The animation lock slows down your global cooldown, and that's never good.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by AphraelAmarantha

I am not for sure what you mean by double weave. Can you explain?

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He means don't use both Fleche and Contre Sixte in the same GCD. Their animations are both long, Fleche a bit more so, and you'll end up delaying your next cast as much as a whole second if you try to do them both. Split them up into separate dualcasts.

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Originally Posted by Trespar

Double weaving can be done with a low ping.

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Fleche with a self buff or movement ability, sure. But the specific combination of Fleche and Contre-sixte is best avoided altogether.



You spend an awful lot of time at range. You should spend most of your time in melee distance so you get auto attacks with each dualcast. Don't Displace unless you can dualcastspells>Corps-a-corps after, or you plan to run back to melee range during a dualcast. Decoupling your melee combo from your movement abilities will allow you to use them more often or use them for mechanically important movements. By being in melee range by default, you'll also have an easier time dealing with many mechanics, and will never be out of range of beneficial party AoEs.

Use Embolden before starting your melee combo. Getting an extra 10% on E.Riposte is better than an extra 1.85% on a Verfinisher and maybe an extra 2% on a Verslowspell/Verfastspell before expiration.

Avoid starting a melee combo with equal mana gauges. For example, at 1m57 you had 82|82. You could have done another dualcast for 91|93 without an overflow. If time-sensitive mechanics are not pressing you to burst, you don't necessarily have to melee combo immediately upon getting your mana high enough; postponing for one dualcast will usually be no worse, especially if you've decoupled your melee combo from your movement abilities anyway, as explained above.

For similar reasons, don't Swiftcast>Verslowspell just so you can melee combo one GCD sooner unless it's a mechanically important burst step.



If you're entertaining the idea of playing heals, it's worth learning at least one of the healer jobs even if you ultimately decide you want to continue RDMing. It might help give you a better idea of distances and effective caster positionings. If you're very nervous, just casually inform your party that it's your first time healing and they'll prolly be understanding.

Double weaving can be done with a low ping.

OP just seems really slow at activating their abilities to do a proper double weave.
Might have something to do with inefficient crossbars. I'm personally not familiar with playing this game with a controller, though.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

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I see, interesting indeed. Thx for the double weave explanation.

Yeah I see mage and I think range casting, not used to a caster class casting spells in melee (then again I guess I'm still used to BLM more than I thought, lel) plus I'm afraid of getting hit by non-telegraphed melee attacks some bosses have (Clamp anyone?).

Also, why do you not want to start a melee combo with your mana bar even? I don't get that one. O.o

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Originally Posted by Trespar

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Yeah, I am slow in activating abilities, I don't really have the dexterity I used to have from ten years ago. Plus my mind always jumbles up where my inputs are so I pause a moment to remember where the next ability is at. x_x

Trespar nailed the primary issue I saw, in that the hotbar configuration didn't seem to allow for the quick priority system Red Mage demands. Several points you lost several GCDs just do to swapping between them to get to what you needed.

As a Keyboard Mouse user, I'm not entirely sure how well Hotbar swapping works for controllers, but I'd argue you should keep your primary spells (Jolt, Impact, Ver-all of them) on one section, the Melee stuff in another along with VerHoly/VerFlare, while putting the CDs and OGCDs where they feel most comfortable, while including a Hotbar you don't interact with somewhere that holds all of them for the purpose of tracking their cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

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Oh, hot bar swapping works by holding R1 and then entering a button or dpad input. There is a total of 8 bars, one for each face button and cardinal direction on the controller input.

Also does anyone know how to set up a separate hotbar so I can track my oGCDs (if it's even possible to do so on a controller setup)? I think that is one of my biggest issue because I cant tell when their timers have refreshed so I can cast them again immediately so I can minimize clipping.

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Originally Posted by Trespar

Double weaving can be done with a low ping.

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In general, yes. Specifically pairing Fleche and Contre Sixte is bad, as Rongway pointed out.

I actually wasn't aware of using auto-attacks and Embolden like that, so I'm glad I followed this thread. Thanks!

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Originally Posted by AphraelAmarantha

Also, why do you not want to start a melee combo with your mana bar even? I don't get that one. O.o

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If your mana is uneven, then using the Verfinisher that matches the lower color will guarantee a proc.

White higher when you start: finish with Verflare, guarantee Verfire Ready
Black higher when you start: finish with Verholy, guarantee Verstone Ready

If they're equal, or you use the one that's already higher, it's only a 20% chance to proc Ready.

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Originally Posted by AphraelAmarantha

Also does anyone know how to set up a separate hotbar so I can track my oGCDs (if it's even possible to do so on a controller setup)? I think that is one of my biggest issue because I cant tell when their timers have refreshed so I can cast them again immediately so I can minimize clipping.

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You can use one of the normal hotbars. Just place it somewhere conspicuous, maybe increase the size if you want, and slot any abilities that you want to track cooldowns or procs for.

/hudlayout will open up the hud organizer. You can enable or disable bars there (not sure of the controller buttons to do things) or in /characterconfig

Some suggestions in regards to the layout of your abilities on your crossbars.

It looks like you have Veraero-Jolt-Verthunder on right hand buttons, but then you have Verstone and Verfire on D-pad buttons, and they're even on directions that are inconsistent with the other buttons. You can reduce the amount of thinking you have to do by being more consistent.

For example, if you do this,

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Vaero  ]  [ Vthndr ]
      [        ]                    [ Impact ]

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on one of your bars,
then on other bars, do this:

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Vstone ]  [ Vfire  ]
      [        ]                    [  Jolt  ]

---

and

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Vholy  ]  [ Vflare ]
      [        ]                    [ Accel. ]

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So that all the white spells are on the same button, and all the black spells are on the same button. Then you control the tier of the spell with your shoulder/trigger buttons.


If that doesn't work, give something like this a shot:

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Vaero  ]  [ Vstone ]
      [        ]                    [ Vholy  ]

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on one of your bars,
then on other bars, do this:

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Vthndr ]  [ Vfire  ]
      [        ]                    [ Vflare ]

---

and

Code:

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      [        ]                    [        ]
[        ]  [        ]        [ Impact ]  [  Jolt  ]
      [        ]                    [ Accel. ]

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In this layout, shoulders/triggers select the color of the spell, and then all the spells of the same tier are on the same button.


Consistency of either sort will reduce the cognitive load of selecting the appropriate spell by a lot, leaving you in a better position to succeed. Once you've decided how to organize the spells so that you can cast them all without thinking about them, you can add on the other buttons. If you have Verholy and Vflare on the same bar, then you might put your melee combo on the dpad for that bar. Maybe you'll find that Corps-a-corps and Displacement go well above and below Verholy and Verflare, while Acceleration goes better somewhere else (maybe with the Verstone and Verfire buttons). However you do it, it's all about arranging the buttons to make sense of themselves, so that you don't have to try to make sense of them when you're in the middle of a fight.

Here's an example of what I currently use (buff/debuff bar is sitting on top of my hp). During a fight you are on #1 90% of the time, swap to 2 for melee, and only touch 3 for sprint.
https://scontent.ftpa1-2.fna.fbcdn.n...b8&oe=5A121B13

I didn't watch the whole video, but it looked like as if you switch your hotbars by holding R1 and then the direction for the specific hotbar (like R1 + O to get to hotbar 2). Personally I think that's really slow and inefficient.
You also neither use expanded hold controls nor the W crossbar, like soooo many other people.
You can use both the expanded hold controls AND the W crossbar OR only one of them.
Personally, I have set it up so that I use the W crossbar only to DISPLAY my second hotbar, which I access with the expanded hold controls.

The W cross hotbar:
After you activate it, you can access it by double tapping R2 (right side) or L2 (left side).
I find it rather clunky, so I don't use it like that anymore but many people like it.
Here is how you display it:
http://i.imgur.com/W7E42aG.png

Here how you set it up:
http://i.imgur.com/ZyYRWf7.png
You can choose which hotbar it accesses, I have cross hotbar 2 left and right because I use it to display my cross hotbar number 2.

On the image you also see how to set up expanded hold controls.
If you hold R2 and then press L2, you can access one half of a hotbar and the other way around.
That's what I use to access my cross hotbar number 2.

For me, the W crossbar is only so I can track what's on crossbar 2, that's why they're the same. But you can also choose to use them for another crossbar. I don't know any class that would have need of yet another hotbar though.

Here's what it looks like for RDM (I changed the position of the W crossbar to under my default crossbar, but where you put it is up to you; the default position is also nice):
http://i.imgur.com/NLVc7pu.png


The last thing is this:
http://i.imgur.com/simqR74.png
When set up like this, when you press R1 once, you switch to hotbar 3 (choose whichever you want). If you press it again, you're back to hotbar 1. I use this for things like potions, limit break, summons or just things that didn't fit on hotbars 1 and 2.

Just try it out. After getting used to it, it's much much easier than manually choosing which hotbars to switch to. You can still switch hotbars like you do now if you need another set for mounts, teleport etc.

Also, I've noticed you use the default HUD. For me, it's much easier if the target and status effect bars are near my cross hotbar. I also have the job gauges near my hotbar, and above of it is the party list. I still have enough space to see mechanics and all important stuff is close to each other.

I'm bad at explaining but I hope it helps.

I personally only use 4 hot bar for my controller. I also use w and expanded crossbar.

So hotbar 1 is my main Attack... then hotbar 2 put enchanted melee, some role skill and centre, displacement. Hotbar 3 is w crossbar double tap lt will go left.. I use this to put limit break role skill or cooldown, Potion, sprint..

Hot bar 4 is where I put mount other shortcut such sheath, sign, way mark, minion... and invigorate... for melee job.

o1s Dummy video

Here's an example of o1s dummy I did on an alt just for your reference. Gear is hovered over at the beginning. ilvl 319 with mostly trash melds, no food, and no pots (just to show you it doesn't matter for o1s).

I knew I was going to finish so I tried to show you a double melee at the end, but I ended up killing it before I could finish. After the first melee, I would use the proc'd ver-spell I had setup before I started the first melee in order to get both colored mana up to 41/40, then would use manafication to hit 82/80, and would start another melee combo that would still finish in the embolden window.

Some have suggested not bringing swift cast, but thats dependent on the fight/group composition imo.
Swift cast can help with DPS depending on the fight, since there are times your dual cast just went off as you need to move for a mechanic.
And even when my Spell Speed was like 1,900, it wasnt enough to get a hard cast in, in time, and get to a safe position.
in most situations where u can get a hard cast in, even with 1,000 Spell Speed, u can make it in time. So yeah, spell speed is pretty sub par.

If you're, lets say, 70 / 80 in mana and you just finished your dual cast, your embolden just highlighted, and your NIN is about to trick attack, its better to swift cast Aero to get those 10 point of mana, and not waste another GCD to dual cast. So you can rev up your melee combo, and embolden between the 1st and 2nd WS. (though its relatively safe to activate it on the 1st WS honestly)

This has mainly been useful for me in O3S, when I have to finish my burst combo before embolden completely wears off, and the boss starts up mechanics. So Swift Cast helps me do my melee combo in time, 50% of the time.

Over all, when im at my worst, and not using swift cast effectively, using embolden 1 GCD too early or late, etc, barely effects my DPS. (It does effect it though)
RDM is pretty forgiving.

So as most people said, organize your hotbars, so you dont have as much trouble figuring out which button you need to press, and thats the biggest step.
Once you do that, all u can do is practice for 2 weeks, so that you no longer have to think about which buttons u need to press, it becomes muscle memory.
(It will feel no different than walking. You wont confuse which foots goes in front of which, and how much distance u need to step. You do it naturally.)

You should always make ur most commonly used/needed abilities on your face buttons, where you dont have to press any extra buttons.
So you have 16 buttons, before needing W/X hotbars.
Vercure is nice, and Verraise is nice, but shouldnt be used commonly, so they go onto a different double press hotbar.
Your AoEs should honestly be put on another hotbar, as you'll only use them in trash pulls usually, and you can get away with not using single targets during trash too much. (Technically its best to rev up a dual cast, using scatter, and dual cast aero/thunder IF there are 3 mobs. If 4 or more, just scatter spam/Moulinet. If 2 or less, single target)
You will use acceleration a lot, and you'll use contrasixe/fleche a lot. (contra/fleche are roughly 10% of your total dmg surprisingly, if i remember correctly, if not 10% it was a high %)
It would be hard to weave them bwteen GCDs if not on face buttons for quick access.

Your melee combo wont happen as often, so it could be safe to place it on another hotbar, but it can make weaving oGCDs in harder, if you dont place them on that hotbar too, but chances of it happening are not too high, but it does happen every fight to me. (Same with flare/holy, as you'll do them right after)
(This is a matter of personal taste of u want to do that or not)
Embolden/manification would probably have to be on both hotbars, as ull want to use it dependent on being mid AoE or mid melee combo.
that "should" be all of the available space you have on your face buttons.

You can also assign the chocobo/mount and other minor out of combat stuff to yoru keyboards num pad or something, to help make things easier. (u can do this with your CDs as well if you want.)

Thank you everyone for your replies and very insightful advice. You have all shown me that there is so much I still don't know about this game. However, I am learning and I appreciate all the advice. Thank you! :D

Others have already explained hotbar setups so I'll just add that I noticed you have sprint and auto attack on your main bar. The first thing I do when unlocking a new class/job is always to remove auto attack completely, because that can just as easily be accessed by simply pressing X on your target a second time (and on many jobs it's automatically activated anyway as soon as you start attacking). Sprint is useful to keep on your bars, but it's not a very high priority ability so I usually put it on my secondary/expanded bar. That will free up two slots so you can, for example, pull Verholy and Verflare out of your potion stash and put them in a more easily accessed place.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

For one thing, you shouldn't try to double weave Fleche and Contre Sixte. The animation lock slows down your global cooldown, and that's never good.

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No, it doesn't
https://youtu.be/dBC-IknFYFc
Not my video

I also have insane lag on non-savage instances - which is what I suspect as to why his GCDs were delayed when he dual weaved Fleche and CS
Swiftcast is useful for extended movement/fishing for procs

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GospelVhae

No, it doesn't
https://youtu.be/dBC-IknFYFc
Not my video

I also have insane lag on non-savage instances - which is what I suspect as to why his GCDs were delayed when he dual weaved Fleche and CS
Swiftcast is useful for extended movement/fishing for procs

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It always slowed mine down. And if this isn't your video, you can't really say what helps this or not, can you?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rongway

...
You spend an awful lot of time at range. You should spend most of your time in melee distance so you get auto attacks with each dualcast.
...

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Really? I've heard a lot of hate for RDM's being in mêlée range.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

For one thing, you shouldn't try to double weave Fleche and Contre Sixte. The animation lock slows down your global cooldown, and that's never good.

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I double weave just fine as well. Try to avoid sps in favor of DH/CRIT/DET.

A few little tips while I sit on break at work:

Role Skills:
Lucid Dreaming, Addle, Swiftcast, Diversion and Manashift. If doing V4s prog, Surecast in place of Manashift.

Why not Apoc or Erase? Although both feel like you're helping to support the party, they dont actually contribute to DPS. Swiftcast is a dps gain. Manashift can extend foes by up to 9 seconds or give healers a couple extra GCDs until Lucid/other mana opportunities. Addle is potent in AoE and single target situations, a flexible instant mitigation worth bringing. Diversion. I was sooo against using it, but its a necessary evil. RDM is just too powerful on openers to leave to a lucid 1 second into the fight (costing you min/max dps delaying ogcd dps skills.)

Opener and proc management:
You can pick either VerThunder or VerAero. Just pick the one that fits your flavor. Im a thunder kinda guy ; 3.

10 second pull macro starts
9 seconds- Acceleration
7 Seconds- Diversion
5 seconds- Hardcast VerThunder [Verfire proc 100%]
0 seconds- Insta-VerAero [Verstone proc 50%]
Ogcd1-Fleche Ogcd2-Contra
Proc System management kicks in


Hardcast Verfire--- If no Verstone proc, Cast VerAero to fish for a Verstone to msintain balance, Cast Verthunder to fish for another fire if you got a VerStone proc already from opener.

If you receive no Procs after your initial accelerated verfire, Swifcast VerAero/Thunder for the one with the lower mana. If again no proc, revert to jolt/Jolt II. Use impact when you have neither a stone or fire proc or if your mana would become imbalanced using stone/fire. Example being: 50W/79B with a fire and impact proc. Impact-> VerAero brings you to 65W/79B with a 50% chance to give you a verstone. Much more balanced mana. If your mana deviates by 30 points from eachother the losing side has its mana gain cut in half.


First lets do some evaluations. What is dps? Damage per second right? So abilities that deal the most damage per cool down time should be prioritized first. Namely, Fleche and Contre. If youre really wanting to improve, write out each abilities potency and divide by its CD. I dont have my little sheet anymore with my calcs but its pretty simple.

1. Fleche
2. Contre
3. Displacement (Very close to corps and although its dps potential IS HIGHER the range limitation makes it worth less than corps on opener priority.
4. Corps (Read above)
5. Swiftcast -> Verthunder/VerAero
6. Manashift the BARD, if no bard, save for healers/SMN.
6. Acceleration (Accel is tough because it enures a 30 potency gain on your next hardcast, but there was a 50% chance it was going to gain that 30, therefre its only 15.

To simplify the opener im just going to call a fodder spell like jolt,impact, stone, fire HARDCAST and Insta VerAero/Thunder INSTA BIG SPELL so I can explain OGCD placement.


Personal DPS OPENER (No Ninja)

10 second pull macro starts
9 seconds- Acceleration
7 Seconds- Diversion
5 seconds- Hardcast VerThunder [Verfire proc 100%]
0 seconds- Insta-VerAero [Verstone proc 50%]
Ogcd1-Fleche Ogcd2-Contra
HARDCAST
INSTACAST BIG SPELL
Ogcd1-Corps
Ogcd2-Manashift Bard
HARDCAST
INSTACAST BIG SPELL
Ogcd1-Displacement
HARDCAST
INSTACAST BIG SPELL
Ogcd1- Manafiction.
Ogcd2-Corps
Riposte
TIGHT Ogcd- embolden
Zer
Redouble
Ogcd- Displacement
Verholy or Flare.

When choosing between the two, if your mana wont shoot past 30 from eachother both are near equal) and you already have the proc of your lowest mana, 20% fish for the other one. Example: 19W/20B with a stone proc. Verflare for a chance of a fireproc, then verstone to demarginalize the mana difference.


Running out of time! Please don't ever open with VerCure for dual cast. You lose 240 potency minimum if you have even 2 seconds to hardcast! You can use vercure during the fight during boss invulns or look aways, since you cant precast their return!

Manashift whenever you can spare the ogcd and mp for your aoe samming healer.

Make an effort to move in between each ogcd weave, inching closer back into healing range, after each displacement.

Be in melee when you can but dont cause extra AoE for the melee.

Also, take these pointers with a grain of salt. Certain fights and comps cause you to change your opener slightly. Just general direction to increase the depth of the class.

Hope this helps someone!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

It always slowed mine down. And if this isn't your video, you can't really say what helps this or not, can you?

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Depends on your ping, you can get away with it easily if its low enough, I can do it pretty safely. If its high, best to just weave in one oGCD.

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Originally Posted by Tizzy_Tormentor

Depends on your ping, you can get away with it easily if its low enough, I can do it pretty safely. If its high, best to just weave in one oGCD.

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That's probably it, then. Thanks.

Not too sure where to ask so I'll just ask here:

After I use Manafication and Embolden for my opener, how should I use it then? Do I hold both until the next 40-50/40-50 mana, or just use it on cooldown where it could cause a non-guaranteed VerHoly/VerFlare proc?

You can also set the hotbars to cycle only ones with stuff slotted in them by tapping the R1 button.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AphraelAmarantha

Also does anyone know how to set up a separate hotbar so I can track my oGCDs (if it's even possible to do so on a controller setup)? I think that is one of my biggest issue because I cant tell when their timers have refreshed so I can cast them again immediately so I can minimize clipping.

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Watch all this
Step1: https://youtu.be/_xsqL68V8CI
Step2: https://youtu.be/gwgCkfjqYNQ
Step3: https://youtu.be/-aT2X5iwocQ