The Black vs. White balance bars for Red Mage is kinda pointless....

Granted I'm only lvl 55 in this class, but so far the white/black bar casting to me feels like needless complication since it all pertains to just dps. The spells are about the same dps-wise, so essentially it can all be reduced to just a 200 pool of resource of either the verthunder or veraero as the nuke. It's all virtually arbitrary since they just take one nuke spell, call the same thing with two different names to spit the white/black magic labels on it.

Not even the cure spell screws up the white bar which I kinda wish it would to make it more challenging to manage the resources.

Going in newb, I thought the system would have been more like: all utility spells such as cure, protect, raise, i.e. -> white mage stuff gives white resource, and all nuke spells/enchant sword with fire stuff i.e. -> black mage stuff gives black resource, and each can be spent on either a black uber spell or white uber spell every once in awhile. With a few special/blended spells here and there that require both (like give an aoe damage and aoe heal all at once that require resource of each).

As of now the white and black magic spells you cast to gain resource have no separate roles in it and kinda a shitty design...

I'm not sure I understand entirely what you're getting at with this. Are you suggesting that the mana gauges have more complicated ways of keeping balance? If so, what purpose would that serve, other than to provide some form of "challenge"?

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

I'm not sure I understand entirely what you're getting at with this. Are you suggesting that the mana gauges have more complicated ways of keeping balance? If so, what purpose would that serve, other than to provide some form of "challenge"?

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Well, my point is it is entirely pointless to have a balance gauge to begin with as they have it now....you might as get rid of veraero, and just call it a black magic bar which increments with verthunder -> it'd equate to the same thing except with less buttons to click....

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Well, my point is it is entirely pointless to have a balance gauge to begin with as they have it now....you might as get rid of veraero, and just call it a black magic bar which increments with verthunder -> it'd equate to the same thing except with less buttons to click....

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Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

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Originally Posted by dejiko_san

Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

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And to add on to this, you really only get Verholy and Verflare at 68/70, I believe.

Early levels are just there to teach you how to weave your spells properly, use Fleche/Contre Sixte on cd, etc.

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Originally Posted by NewAgeDoom

And to add on to this, you really only get Verholy and Verflare at 68/70, I believe.

Early levels are just there to teach you how to weave your spells properly, use Fleche/Contre Sixte on cd, etc.

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It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

EDIT: Just realized you meant level 68/70 not mana levels ;) Yes, those are the correct levels

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Originally Posted by wereotter

It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

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Oh, sorry, I meant the level you get the skills to finish off the combo and start the casting again, not the amount in the Balance gauge.

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Originally Posted by dejiko_san

Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

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Yes to both of these. In short, the balance does matter if you want to get the most out of both your melee combos and Verholy/flare. Furthermore, the job also gives you tools like Acceleration and Manafication to help manage things. You want to try to keep one side only slightly higher than the other to take advantage of the mana boost for your finisher spells, too. The trick isn't so much in keeping balance rather than pushing both sides of the gauge to the appropriate levels as quickly as possible on a continuous basis.

Make all DPS jobs a 1 button spam to be honest. Why apply so much complexity to damage dealing. Maybe two buttons like God of War.

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Originally Posted by NewAgeDoom

And to add on to this, you really only get Verholy and Verflare at 68/70, I believe.

Early levels are just there to teach you how to weave your spells properly, use Fleche/Contre Sixte on cd, etc.

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Ah...okay. It sounds like the mechanics differ a bit at 70 then which makes it all make more sense. I'm only 56 still coming from a lvl 44 black mage. I'm gonna go read those spells and see if my original criticism still hold up ;P

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Make all DPS jobs a 1 button spam to be honest. Why apply so much complexity to damage dealing. Maybe two buttons like God of War.

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Lol, why even have that button, just bot it ;P

I cannot even imagine playing this game on a playstation controller instead of my gamer mouse.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

Yes to both of these. In short, the balance does matter if you want to get the most out of both your melee combos and Verholy/flare. Furthermore, the job also gives you tools like Acceleration and Manafication to help manage things. You want to try to keep one side only slightly higher than the other to take advantage of the mana boost for your finisher spells, too. The trick isn't so much in keeping balance rather than pushing both sides of the gauge to the appropriate levels as quickly as possible on a continuous basis.

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Okay, ya, the purpose of the balance gauge makes a bit better sense to me after reading the last two spells a red mage gets. Where I'm at now there is no reason for you to not keep that gauge perfectly balanced all the time which to me says "you might as well consolidate the two bars into one and call it a red mana bar or something".

.....

Still...I wonder though if a RDM design with a little more freedom would be better no? Take out the necessity of any maintaining balance in that gauge at all and whenever you feel like playing a WHM role you can obtain and use white mana with white spells, and whenever you feel like playing a BLM role you obtain and use black mana with black spells, whenever you feel like playing a melee role (or when you are simply 00M) etc., and just have a mixed "red" spell here and there when you accumulated resource in both magics. You just pick which role as how you feel the environment/situation warrants it.

I know that style flies in the face of how traditional MMO's play in regards to parties. Nonetheless, that's how original FF felt with me with red mage which made that class a lot of fun.

Seriouness in, the RDM's original identity wouldn't fit on XIV's game. The devs did a greate job into implementing Red Mage into Eorzea making it natural to the MMO's system. RDM was not the only job to suffer throught this on its "conversion" to FFXIV. SMN and DRK to some degree also did and people complain about it from launch to this date.

About complexity, the rotation is very very very simple if you remove the mana aspects. Actually if you remove those and the melee attacks it's simply ARR BLM's base design with more instant spells. Isn't that the fun of the DPS jobs though? Complexity and barriers imposed by the job's very own design that once you overcome you deal more damage. The better you are doing that, the better you are dealing damage.

Red Mage seemed more confusing and complicated to me than Black so I made her, tried it out, said NO and she still sits at 50. I like to focus on the fight and not keeping gauges balanced, but that's me.

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Originally Posted by Besame

Red Mage seemed more confusing and complicated to me than Black so I made her, tried it out, said NO and she still sits at 50. I like to focus on the fight and not keeping gauges balanced, but that's me.

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It's not really about keeping it perfectly balanced though, is the thing. You always want to have one a small chunk higher than the other, so you know which of the endgame spells to use at the end of your melee combo.

I understand if it's not for everyone, though. I'm looking at Summoner, and it's start to intimidate me with its opening rotation, even with as far as I've come with it already.

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Originally Posted by Besame

Red Mage seemed more confusing and complicated to me than Black so I made her, tried it out, said NO and she still sits at 50. I like to focus on the fight and not keeping gauges balanced, but that's me.

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RDM is currently the easiest dps job to play. There is a lot of leeway in keeping the gauges balanced, and it comes fairly naturally. E.g. Generally you just cast whichever version of the spell you have less mana in or don't already have a proc in. It flows quite naturally. The numbers on the gauge make it seem like you might have to do some math on the fly, but I can assure you that is not the case. There's also no dot or buff maintenance to worry about at all. In short, it is an incredibly straightforward job that is very forgiving of any mistakes.

...and if you just want to keep the gauge balanced without worrying about your DPS output, once you're lvl 66, just rotate between your oGCDs + jolt II + impact, lazy rotation and works great in Eureka xD
but I get OP, the job quests tell you that you're balancing the white and black magicks but in reality you're just casting damage spells (mostly associated with black magic) while vercure/verraise (white magic supposedly) are not expected to be part of your rotation.
it would be awesome if there are other things happening, like building up your white mana will grant buffs on you/party while black mana debuffs enemy. so balancing is kind of a mini-game to keep the buffs and debuffs up, not just building up the gauge.
however, the current RDM is what we got, and don't get me wrong I do enjoy this job, but I wouldn't mind seeing more from it in the future.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Granted I'm only lvl 55 in this class, but so far the white/black bar casting to me feels like needless complication since it all pertains to just dps. The spells are about the same dps-wise, so essentially it can all be reduced to just a 200 pool of resource of either the verthunder or veraero as the nuke. It's all virtually arbitrary since they just take one nuke spell, call the same thing with two different names to spit the white/black magic labels on it.

Not even the cure spell screws up the white bar which I kinda wish it would to make it more challenging to manage the resources.

Going in newb, I thought the system would have been more like: all utility spells such as cure, protect, raise, i.e. -> white mage stuff gives white resource, and all nuke spells/enchant sword with fire stuff i.e. -> black mage stuff gives black resource, and each can be spent on either a black uber spell or white uber spell every once in awhile. With a few special/blended spells here and there that require both (like give an aoe damage and aoe heal all at once that require resource of each).

As of now the white and black magic spells you cast to gain resource have no separate roles in it and kinda a shitty design...

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Say that again when you're level 70.

If you build only one color of mana, it gets harder to build the other. You need both for your weaponskills to become enchanted. Your combo finisher depends on what mana you have more of (Verholy if you have more black mana than white, Verflare otherwise). It's fine as it is. Besides, too much utility stuff on a DPS would be really bad. You may as well just call it the game's first support job and piss off the bards.

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

Lol, why even have that button, just bot it ;P

I cannot even imagine playing this game on a playstation controller instead of my gamer mouse.

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It’s actually super easy, I play all the time on a ps4 controller lol. Only bad part is the typing

Yeah I don't like what they did to rdm here as well, it seems like a BLM with a one cure and a raise, that's it really. I don't feel like a "jack of all trades" I also don't feel ffxiv rdm is unique. FFXI rdm is able to scratch that itch for me as I started to play it. Im loving RDM here. More healing spells and support spells as well as BLM spells. It truly feels like a RDM.

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Originally Posted by duvvvv

but I get OP, the job quests tell you that you're balancing the white and black magicks but in reality you're just casting damage spells (mostly associated with black magic) while vercure/verraise (white magic supposedly) are not expected to be part of your rotation.
it would be awesome if there are other things happening, like building up your white mana will grant buffs on you/party while black mana debuffs enemy. so balancing is kind of a mini-game to keep the buffs and debuffs up, not just building up the gauge.
however, the current RDM is what we got, and don't get me wrong I do enjoy this job, but I wouldn't mind seeing more from it in the future.

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Ya, I think you explained my point a little more clearly. This "white magic" BS is just an excuse to throw the "white" label on spells that really play a BLM role still. That part itches me the wrong way.

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

If you build only one color of mana, it gets harder to build the other. You need both for your weaponskills to become enchanted. Your combo finisher depends on what mana you have more of (Verholy if you have more black mana than white, Verflare otherwise). Besides, too much utility stuff on a DPS would be really bad. You may as well just call it the game's first support job and piss off the bards.

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I think you kinda missed my point. The other dude just above you explained what I was getting at a little better I think. Veraero and verstone is "white magic" that really plays a dps role no different than your "black magic", and it really shouldn't be doing that to truly feel like a RDM.

So if you want the 2 magics to retain the integrity of their roles, then yes RDM should be the game's first support job IMO, and I would expect a class titled "Bard" to be support as well....and that was honestly what I was expecting when reading the ad....

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

Yeah I don't like what they did to rdm here as well, it seems like a BLM with a one cure and a raise, that's it really. I don't feel like a "jack of all trades" I also don't feel ffxiv rdm is unique. FFXI rdm is able to scratch that itch for me as I started to play it. Im loving RDM here. More healing spells and support spells as well as BLM spells. It truly feels like a RDM.

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Ya FFXI RDM is better designed IMO as well (from what I remember), but FFXI still retained all the painful masochist qualities as the original everquest MMO design did before WoW came along and actually made this genre "fun" lol

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Originally Posted by maestroanth

I think you kinda missed my point. The other dude just above you explained what I was getting at a little better I think. Veraero and verstone is "white magic" that really plays a dps role no different than your "black magic", and it really shouldn't be doing that to truly feel like a RDM.

So if you want the 2 magics to retain the integrity of their roles, then yes RDM should be the game's first support job IMO, and I would expect a class titled "Bard" to be support as well....and that was honestly what I was expecting when reading the ad....

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Well, the game already has tanks, healers, and DPS. Where would a support role fit?

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

Well, the game already has tanks, healers, and DPS. Where would a support role fit?

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It would take some creativity I imagine. Rift and DDO was always so awesome with that. I remember the "life mage" in rift would literally dps by shooting nature puke at the mob and at the same time it would aoe heal the party. Man that game was so awesome before it went all wonky and next to impossible to return to.

However, all in all, I'd be attracted to game that can still have parties, INTERESTING and challenge solo questing, and pvp that simply did away with these "roles" or work towards that in a fun and engaging way.

The problem of the "Support" as a whole is that they'd have to rebuild the DF matchmaking to make it fit. They already said they abandoned the idea so no hybrids will surface. RDM design was well done to fit into the classic style combined with the most current RDM iteration (that have a heavy focus on melee skills and damage) into XIV's systems.

But RED MAGE is a hybrid, its supposed act like one, not just DPS. Ffxi did a great job with it FFXIV, not at all.

This may come as no surprise, but this isn't FFXI.

Snark aside, perhaps if you look at it from a different perspective, one independent of expectations, you might see it fitting a little better. Stone and Aero are white magic; being damaging spells doesn't take away from that. It's all in how they're presented, the lore of the spells.

But, your point is still pretty valid. We can only hope that now that the job is here in a basic form, we can see it evolve in the future to something that may actually utilize an imbalance, developing more mechanics that feel rooted in the respective fields.

I just think they could add more...utility to the procs, because doing nm content, I could definitely ignore Verstone/fire unless I want to build mana faster for melee. Veraero could have additional 5-sec party shield or dmg buff when cast for example. Verthunder could be a 5-sec aoe paralysis like its BLM counterpart. currently, the jack-of-all-trades design for RDM can be experienced in full in Eureka as a "rezz mage"; Vercure to proc dual cast or Vercure+Verraise combo is a normal if not part of an optimal rotation especially if you don't have a healer in the party.

When u have roles put into the mmo that a job has to fill a jack of all trades won't work because it has to fit into a role already making it 1 of 3 roles. 11 could do that because they didn't put in hard roles, jobs fit into roles every mmo has but when u don't require a job to be a role for everything you have a lot of freedom with hybrid jobs. The only sort of hybrid stuff we can get is minor things. That being said I'd like to see rdm pull from more than just white/black magic, give us a time spell/green magic/arcane magic.

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Originally Posted by Pastahnak

That being said I'd like to see rdm pull from more than just white/black magic, give us a time spell/green magic/arcane magic.

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Nah, that stuff is room to create other classes/jobs IMO.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

This may come as no surprise, but this isn't FFXI.

Snark aside, perhaps if you look at it from a different perspective, one independent of expectations, you might see it fitting a little better. Stone and Aero are white magic; being damaging spells doesn't take away from that. It's all in how they're presented, the lore of the spells.

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Ya, they restricted FFXIV too much in my opinion and now this MMO is kinda stuck in that hole. FFXIV is a really gutted, albeit more elegant, version of WoW - which strikes me as not all that great. However, I did pay $60 just to play red mage, and it was only *kinda* worth it, but I don't see myself sticking with this game because sadly enough I even find pokemon revolution online (which is on my little cell phone and only has 16-bit graphics) a much more engaging MMO than this one :'/

I just wish Rift and DDO didn't go to hell, but c'est la vie.

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Originally Posted by duvvvv

Veraero could have additional 5-sec party shield or dmg buff when cast for example. Verthunder could be a 5-sec aoe paralysis like its BLM counterpart.

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I think you're on to something here.....

O.o.

Lookie what I found:
https://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/store/prime/

Screw you guys, I'm going home! Lol. Bye FFXIV