i’m not crazy, right?

my rdm was my first lvl 80, got it to i440, thought “okay the damage i’m doing doesn’t seem to great, not that much better then when i was 70 in SB”. then i started lvling blm and noticed that even at 72 my blm’s spells hit harder than my lvl 80 rdm. am i crazy or did they literally make rdm the weakest dps in the game for shb?

https://xivapi.com/i2/ls/17837.png

BLM is the strongest DPS in the game, but even aside from that, BLM spells are longest to cast while RDM can cast twice percast while running around in a circle and throw out utility. It's really no comparison.

BLM is top of the DPS chain.
RDM is third from bottom, only ahead of NIN and DNC.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

BLM is the strongest DPS in the game, but even aside from that, BLM spells are longest to cast while RDM can cast twice percast while running around in a circle and throw out utility. It's really no comparison.

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Cast twice per cast? What does that even mean? Every cast takes a GCD, casting two spells still takes two GCDs. It's an unfortunately common misconception that the instant cast is the same as an off global cool down. "Throw out utility"? Addle? Or embolden? Or do you mean raise?

1 the whole caster role has access to. 2 is a 2 minute combat utility which, fair. 3 will bankrupt you so hard you might as well be dead if you abuse it (read, use more than once per minute).

Now as far as BLM damage vs RDM, yes, raise and embo are calculated in. BLM is the strongest caster / dps because it brings no damage utility while Red Mage does. BLM is generally considered less mobile too, but basically it's as mobile as it needs to be. Neither caster likes having to move without preparation.

Also, the damage difference between i400 and i440 with a 450 weapon is only about +25% (give or take, might be as high as 40%) with optimal play. And considering BLM spells completely wreck RDM spells on potency per cast, this isn't exactly unexpected. Even at 70, a BLM Fire 4 would be doing about 594 potency per cast. Despair is at ~752.4 ppc, and foul 715 ppc.

Meanwhile, over in RDM land, without any short term buffs, your strongest spell at 80 hits for 700. After that it's 600, and after that it's 310. So outside of Scorch, the only parts of your rotation that realistically should be hitting harder than BLM's typical spells are Verholy and Verflare. Everything else is practically doing half the potency of BLM, and as established the difference in DPS between i400 and i440 gear and 10 levels is only about 25%, so a fire 4 should hit about 50% harder than a Verthunder, even though the BLM is only 70/72. And by the time BLM hits 80, that fire 4 should be coming in swinging for nearly twice the damage.

This is normal, the classes are balanced differently. RDM has more damage tied up in oGCDs than BLM does, and RDM also just naturally has a lower potency per second rate than BLM as part of its balance.

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Originally Posted by Waffles298

my rdm was my first lvl 80, got it to i440, thought “okay the damage i’m doing doesn’t seem to great, not that much better then when i was 70 in SB”. then i started lvling blm and noticed that even at 72 my blm’s spells hit harder than my lvl 80 rdm. am i crazy or did they literally make rdm the weakest dps in the game for shb?

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Dancer does significantly less DPS than RDM, and we can land 120k+ damage hits. It's not about how much individual attacks hit for me, but how all of your kit combines together. BLM is the highest DPS, though, but they also bring 0 utility. Jobs like RDM and DNC that bring raid utility are always going to be lower dps.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Cast twice per cast? What does that even mean? Every cast takes a GCD, casting two spells still takes two GCDs. It's an unfortunately common misconception that the instant cast is the same as an off global cool down. "Throw out utility"? Addle? Or embolden? Or do you mean raise?

1 the whole caster role has access to. 2 is a 2 minute combat utility which, fair. 3 will bankrupt you so hard you might as well be dead if you abuse it (read, use more than once per minute).

Now as far as BLM damage vs RDM, yes, raise and embo are calculated in. BLM is the strongest caster / dps because it brings no damage utility while Red Mage does. BLM is generally considered less mobile too, but basically it's as mobile as it needs to be. Neither caster likes having to move without preparation.

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RDM has more freedom to be mobile, while BLM mobility is more likely to cause a DPS loss and has much longer periods of not being able to insta-cast things. One of their primary combat spells also has a longer cast time than the GCD (Fire IV).

I'm wondering why RDM is the bottom of the caster dps list too. Is RDM raise such a good utility that it's damage must be so low? Do RDM's want more dps or more utility?

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Originally Posted by YanderePrincess

RDM has more freedom to be mobile, while BLM mobility is more likely to cause a DPS loss and has much longer periods of not being able to insta-cast things. One of their primary combat spells also has a longer cast time than the GCD (Fire IV).

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I never said otherwise; my statement was "They're as mobile as they need to be." You can't deny that their mobility suite has taken a huge uptick; Xenoglossy (2/min), Triplecast (3/min), Swiftcast (1/min), 30s Sharpcast (2/min optimally), random procs, BtL, Aetherial Manipulation are all abilities that they have that can, used correctly, facilitate far better positioning and motion than Dualcast alone can.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I'm wondering why RDM is the bottom of the caster dps list too. Is RDM raise such a good utility that it's damage must be so low? Do RDM's want more dps or more utility?

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I'd prefer more utility, personally, but dps utility. Embo fix to affect all damage, perhaps. RDM's raise, much as I hate it, is a good reason for it to do less than BLM; otherwise you're looking at "Why should I take BLM when RDM is comparable and comes with a safety net?"

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I'm wondering why RDM is the bottom of the caster dps list too. Is RDM raise such a good utility that it's damage must be so low? Do RDM's want more dps or more utility?

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RDM raise plus heal plus raid wide physical dps buff. I would like to see Embolden not be limited to buffing physical dps, though. Admittedly, you're not necessarily likely to be pairing them with a blm or smn, but it's still weird that it's only physical, which means it won't affect the dps of a paladin during their spell cycle or the dps of healers or some other possibly non-physical DPS (ninjutsu? dragonfire dive? DRK "spells"? I'm not sure if these are physical or magical damage).

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Originally Posted by YanderePrincess

RDM raise plus heal plus raid wide physical dps buff. I would like to see Embolden not be limited to buffing physical dps, though. Admittedly, you're not necessarily likely to be pairing them with a blm or smn, but it's still weird that it's only physical, which means it won't affect the dps of a paladin during their spell cycle or the dps of healers or some other possibly non-physical DPS (ninjutsu? dragonfire dive? DRK "spells"? I'm not sure if these are physical or magical damage).

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if they change embolden their pDPS pot would probably drain even more... I dont think thats what RDM mains actually want... : /

RDM got his prime time in eureka... like Nin has its prime time in savage with TA.

personally I hate combat res & TA cause they are the reasons why smn/rdm/nin are so hard to balance... if u would put TA on Bard (lore wise even better imo) you would have dancer and brd as only support cls - and thats what it actually should be. give nin faster and stronger atks tho. RDM would still be hard to handle... maybe separate buffs in physical and magic buffs so they can support several situations single target/dps checks or aoes/add phases more felxible... or if rdm buff stays physical only give nin a magic only (de)buff coming out of their Justus... (like switching requiem and TA with brd) idk but TA should belong to a support cls... cause ya its the strongest support skill what so ever... ^^'

The big thing is Embolden is a vastly, vastly better damage buff than Devotion, despite Devotion affecting all damage. It lasts longer, raises damage by more on average, and has a much faster cooldown. For all of these upsides, it only has 2 downsides: It doesn't buff healers or other caster DPS, and most groups only run 1 caster DPS, and the other is that it doesn't give a stable amount of damage over its entire 20s duration. Despite this, the first 12 seconds are flat out better than devotion anyways, and considering devotion is only 15 seconds, the extra 8 seconds are in general more raw damage anyways.

So for a proper meta comp, you don't help healers, but you help everyone else typically, for more damage, faster.

Embolden is why RDM does less damage than SMN and especially BLM. But yes, it should also affect all DPS, not just physical.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I'm wondering why RDM is the bottom of the caster dps list too. Is RDM raise such a good utility that it's damage must be so low? Do RDM's want more dps or more utility?

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I do feel SMN should be ahead of RDM, but not by much. The website that can't be named has a rdps break down of the encounters now. Having healers with low damage output and high damage makes devotion have a pretty variable effect. At high skill group levels it seems to do ~300+ dps and as low as ~180 for generally poor groups. Embolden tends to be 300-400ish dps in good groups. With a BLM in comp devotion would be comparable to embolden in use. Swapping SAM + RDM for BLM + SMN would be a raw gain, if only marginally.

Right now at the highest DPS level RDM is doing around 10, 875 DPS while contributing 400 rdps. [11,275 dps]

SMN at the highest skill dps level is doing around 11, 190 Contributing 200-300 in non BLM rdps comps. 11,390 minimum.

Relative to rdm, SMN dps is about where it should be RDM could even use the smallest push and smn would still have a lead, but Devotion and Embolden effects are pretty similar in different comps and overall close enough that a 100 personal dps is enough to offset the difference.

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Originally Posted by Neela

if they change embolden their pDPS pot would probably drain even more... I dont think thats what RDM mains actually want... : /

RDM got his prime time in eureka... like Nin has its prime time in savage with TA.

personally I hate combat res & TA cause they are the reasons why smn/rdm/nin are so hard to balance... if u would put TA on Bard (lore wise even better imo) you would have dancer and brd as only support cls - and thats what it actually should be. give nin faster and stronger atks tho. RDM would still be hard to handle... maybe separate buffs in physical and magic buffs so they can support several situations single target/dps checks or aoes/add phases more felxible... or if rdm buff stays physical only give nin a magic only (de)buff coming out of their Justus... (like switching requiem and TA with brd) idk but TA should belong to a support cls... cause ya its the strongest support skill what so ever... ^^'

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There's no logical reason for RDM buff to stay physical only, though. Changing it to affect all damage wouldn't even really require much, if any, adjusting to their pDPS. It would just make the buff feel better, and would fit with their trying to make class-to-class synergy less specific. Right now, having a RDM+another caster is inherently a bad choice. With the change, RDM+Another Caster would still not be preferred, but it wouldn't be "gimping" yourself either.

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Originally Posted by YanderePrincess

There's no logical reason for RDM buff to stay physical only, though. Changing it to affect all damage wouldn't even really require much, if any, adjusting to their pDPS. It would just make the buff feel better, and would fit with their trying to make class-to-class synergy less specific. Right now, having a RDM+another caster is inherently a bad choice. With the change, RDM+Another Caster would still not be preferred, but it wouldn't be "gimping" yourself either.

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Hi, I know this might not be the place to ask, but could you expand a bit on why it isn't great to have multiple casters in one party? Is it because you're potentially losing out of various buffs that other jobs can bring, or is there more to it? For instance, you could have MCH and BLM, both "selfish" dps classes; would that be better than, say, BLM and RDM? Thank you!

I am not a RDM player but I do think they should have higher pDPS than they do... and using ressurection should cost them pDPS. This way they can choose to focus on DPS and provide equal value to classes such as DRG and MCH, or sacrifice some pDPS to raise allies.

Since their raise is easier to perform than healers and generally faster, ressurecting actually increases party DPS by reducing the time other DPS spend dead. It also simultaneously removes pressure from healers and allows them to DPS a bit more.

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Originally Posted by osutin

Hi, I know this might not be the place to ask, but could you expand a bit on why it isn't great to have multiple casters in one party? Is it because you're potentially losing out of various buffs that other jobs can bring, or is there more to it? For instance, you could have MCH and BLM, both "selfish" dps classes; would that be better than, say, BLM and RDM? Thank you!

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At the moment there's nothing that the other casters will provide that will compliment each other. The biggest reason is that Contagion no longer exists so Summoners can't be a boon to fellow casters or their healers (or even Paladins). Devotion is up to 5% damage now but it's been extended to 3 mins and is a paltry comparison to the previously 60s contagion.

Beyond just not being able to complement each other's damage anymore, it's also worth mentioning the role action changes because having two sets of caster role actions could have been a very valuable thing in the right circumstance in the past. Casters don't have their Apoc role action anymore which was a huge help for non-DRK tanks to mitigate magical busters. Additionally, Addle is essentially worse than Tactician/Shield Samba/Troubadour by comparison (10% magic damage reduction on the boss for 10s on a 90s CD vs 10% all damage reduction on the party for 15s on a 2 min CD). A big difference between those two being that Addle will severely hamper your Limit Break generation by virtue of lowering the target's outgoing damage. Further along the line of role actions, Mana Shift was very helpful for giving healers extra MP, extending the effect of Bard's Foe's Requiem, and helping any MP user recover from a death.

And finally, even the benefit of having multiple combat raises has taken a huge hit with how strapped for MP RDMs are and how detrimental fitting a swift-cast raise is into a SMN rotation.

Black Mage is Yoshi's pet, that's why it's always been highest dps and probably always will be. This was the same case in World of Warcraft with warlocks, Warlocks were always #1 dps because the person in charge of the balancing always favored warlocks, until they fired and replaced him, and warlocks immediately took a nose dive in dps. So basically, it's unfair but can't do much about it unless they fire Yoshi.

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Originally Posted by Xyr

Black Mage is Yoshi's pet, that's why it's always been highest dps and probably always will be. This was the same case in World of Warcraft with warlocks, Warlocks were always #1 dps because the person in charge of the balancing always favored warlocks, until they fired and replaced him, and warlocks immediately took a nose dive in dps. So basically, it's unfair but can't do much about it unless they fire Yoshi.

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That is a big reason why Black Mage got so many QoL changes this expansion. YoshiP personally plays the job and had them tweak it to play as smoothly as possible.

Personally, I think he favored it too much. Black Mage has too many movement options for the dps they bring. Black Mage is meant to have very high dps in exchange for movement being very punishing but they keep giving it so many instant casts. Right now it's very strong with little drawback for that strength.