Red Mages: How do you feel about the symmetry of Black and White magic?

Overall I think Red Mage is a solid and fun class, but the one thing about it that feels lackluster to me is the perfect symmetry between Black and White, where for every Black spell I have a White spell that is exactly the same, just that it generates white mana instead of black mana. And to me, that's a bit disappointing, as I wish the class defined by taking these two very different schools of magic and wielding them both was able to give each school a distinct personality, rather than simply framing it as Thunder and Fire being the polar opposites of Aero and Stone.

But that's just one player's opinion. How do the Red Mages in the audience feel?

I thought it was fine when it was introduced. The gimmick of the class was more about building to spend the melee combo and fun with dual cast while the balance aspect and proc chances on fire/stone were more just to manage.

As the job has progressed though, especially with Acceleration's EW changes and the slower build if each mana type it's not really the same as it felt before so I feel there could be some room to make it more interesting.

Especially after PVP's take on black and white mana as stances. I don't think there's room for THAT in PvE, but the spells are distinct for more than just a means to the melee combo there. Given SMN's self survivability I don't see why RDM couldn't also heal those close to Verholy's impact or put up a self Stoneskin with Verstone or whatever.

I do indeed feel like that the mage part of Red Mage does feel a little neglected, especially when Dualcast has been a huge draw to the job in previous versions of it in the FF series. It would be cool to see some variety in function for spells.

That's just my personal opinion though of course, because the truth is that XIV RDM is not a """traditional""" Red Mage and probably never will be. The premise of a jack-of-all-trades wizard that uses both White/Black magic does not really work in XIV which has focused its combat on instanced boss encounters with a rigid trinity role system. Not to say that trying to make a balance/middle ground is a futile effort of course, but more so that XIV has made it clear on what it wants its own Red Mage to be, which seems to be a magic musketeer duelist with some support elements.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

because the truth is that XIV RDM is not a """traditional""" Red Mage and probably never will be.

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This is unfortunately true of almost every job in the game with some few exceptions (i.e Black Mage, Dragoon). Sadly, anyone coming to ffxiv expecting ‘traditional’ final fantasy jobs is going to be extremely disappointed.

For Red Mage itself I agree that it feels more like a ‘magic swordsman’ than a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ magic user. The melee combo already feels fun to use, so I’d like to see it using more actual magic (in whatever way that turns out to be lol)

It's funny that the PVP version of RDM actually does have what the OP asks for - two completely distinct functionalities. Not just with RDM, but a lot of the 'job fantasy' is way more realized with other job's respective PVP variations, and that's even in spite of PVP having a fraction of the actions available to the PVE counterparts.

I would say that this speaks volumes on how the cemented and homogenized pve combat system kind of falls flat when it comes to represent a job fantasy both in visuals but also in engaging mechanics.

I love how RDM currently plays, its fun, intutive and a good spread of keys without being 3 actions bars full.
only down side is it feels like the mobile could use a bump..

as far a "uniqueness" in the different magic schools, what do you expect? its a mmorpg, you are limited by what this genera is sadly, everything has to stay in the mold, so you basically get to be direct damage or dot. most they could do is what blm does the black magic can eat mana and white regain it i guess.

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Originally Posted by Mostly_Raxus

as far a "uniqueness" in the different magic schools, what do you expect? its a mmorpg, you are limited by what this genera is sadly, everything has to stay in the mold

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Oh, I certainly don't think that's the case; there's plenty they could do to mix it up, like having Vercure generate white mana or having Fire and Stone have different cast times/damage amounts/mana generation so that, for example, RDM's needed to cast 1.5 x as many White spells for each Black spell. A lack of symmetry would just make White and Black magic not feel exactly the same, as opposed to now where for the most part casting is "left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot".

None of that is to say that the things I mentioned are better, just that there are certainly different things they could do if they chose to.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

It's funny that the PVP version of RDM actually does have what the OP asks for - two completely distinct functionalities. Not just with RDM, but a lot of the 'job fantasy' is way more realized with other job's respective PVP variations, and that's even in spite of PVP having a fraction of the actions available to the PVE counterparts.

I would say that this speaks volumes on how the cemented and homogenized pve combat system kind of falls flat when it comes to represent a job fantasy both in visuals but also in engaging mechanics.

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Absolutely agree with this. Red Mage is one of the best example but I’ve found every job I’ve played in PvP more interesting than anything I can play in PvE lol, despite having so few abilities

To me, as a mechanic the Black/White Mana feels arbitrary and barebone, lackluster, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. It honestly just makes half the main-line spells feel like mere bloat.

I'd like the spells sourcing each to feel different and perhaps also for each to have its own uncombined output as an option, even if used more rarely and situationally than the current balanced expenditure (enchanted combo + follow-up). Then it might actually feel like it's doing something other than doubling up its spells into needless A|B pairs of which both halves function identically.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Oh, I certainly don't think that's the case; there's plenty they could do to mix it up, like having Vercure generate white mana or having Fire and Stone have different cast times/damage amounts/mana generation so that, for example, RDM's needed to cast 1.5 x as many White spells for each Black spell.

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The rhythm and symmetry of RDM spells appeals to me, and it feels awkward and unpleasant when they are out of sync, as they are in early dungeons or the awkward gap in the 60s where you have Flare but not Holy.

Deliberate imbalance would be odd lore-wise, and arbitrary imbalance isn't really any more exciting than arbitrary balance.

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Originally Posted by Mostly_Raxus

I love how RDM currently plays, its fun, intutive and a good spread of keys without being 3 actions bars full.
only down side is it feels like the mobile could use a bump..

as far a "uniqueness" in the different magic schools, what do you expect? its a mmorpg, you are limited by what this genera is sadly, everything has to stay in the mold, so you basically get to be direct damage or dot. most they could do is what blm does the black magic can eat mana and white regain it i guess.

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I mean FFXI is an MMO and Red mage performs as a Red mage should: Has cures up to Cure IV, can nuke, has great enfeebling Magics, can chain spell, can DD, can raise

it's a great all around job unlike XIV red mage which I think is the worst red mage out of the series

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Oh, I certainly don't think that's the case; there's plenty they could do to mix it up…

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When I first started FFXIV, back when post-ShB was current, I was prepared to find out how all the casters with elementally-aspected spells would actually function in practice. As it turns out… elemental affinities are all but non-existent. :(

I'm surprised and happy to find more and more people thinking that pvp toolkits have a ton more flavor than what we have in pve...

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Deliberate imbalance would be odd lore-wise, and arbitrary imbalance isn't really any more exciting than arbitrary balance.

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Yes, yes it is. It's called designing a game/job/system. You conceive a game with rules with which it is played. Everything about a game is arbitrary from that kinda lense. The point is to make the arbitrary part fun.

And concerning the lore, please.
The didn't care about AST in that regard as well. Male Viera are supposed to be rare. White magic is supposed to be only know to like 4 people. I think RDM having more interesting abilities is fine. And besides, balances doesn't necessarily mean mirrored. PvP RDM is also a form of balance.

RDM to me always felt like they had half a job design then implemented the “black and white mana” so they could double the number of skills to make the job feel more complete and while I know it’s part of wider FF lore the idea of trying to introduce white magic utility spells like vercure was never going to go anywhere in a holy trinity MMO outside of something like eureka

The core rotation from SB was a good foundation but the overall focus on just increasing the finisher over and over and the changes to what the finisher costs makes RDM feel like an immobile phys ranged rather than a mobile caster, I think they need to stop touching the finisher (if anything is support them removing the final finisher they added in 6.0) and going back and trying to make the caster element more interesting, rather than 2 identical skills that just differ in what magic they generate what about if they generated different amounts of mana but had different effects, like 1 veraero gave as much mana as 4 verthunder’s but veraero was a short DOT so you don’t want to cast it as often

I also think it’s time to upgrade fire and stone and just in general please buff RDM’s damage

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And concerning the lore, please.
The didn't care about AST in that regard as well. Male Viera are supposed to be rare. White magic is supposed to be only know to like 4 people. I think RDM having more interesting abilities is fine. And besides, balances doesn't necessarily mean mirrored. PvP RDM is also a form of balance.

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AST's lore is fine, and took minimal damage from the mechanic changes. The other two are a disconnect between lore and what other players are doing, whereas a RDM "balance of white and black" not actually being balanced would be a disconnect between lore and what you personally do.

RDM PVP kit is a different beast entirely, certainly, but it's not the same thing as proposing "RDM as it currently is, but the gauges grow at different speeds just because I think symmetry seems boring".

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Originally Posted by Iscah

AST's lore is fine, and took minimal damage from the mechanic changes. The other two are a disconnect between lore and what other players are doing, whereas a RDM "balance of white and black" not actually being balanced would be a disconnect between lore and what you personally do.

RDM PVP kit is a different beast entirely, certainly, but it's not the same thing as proposing "RDM as it currently is, but the gauges grow at different speeds just because I think symmetry seems boring".

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AST’s lore makes zero sense now what are you talking about, the entire SB questline makes zero since they removed nocturnal sect (and the few tiny changes they made to the text to make it fit don’t change that) the lore of the constellations still matches the SB card effects (like you align with bole and she says “people look to this constellation for protection in times of doubt” bole effect 6% damage up on ranged and healers) not to mention the lore still references time magic

If AST was your first class (not that it can be) you would be forgiven for thinking the lore of your skills doesn’t need to have any relevance to what they actually do

I don't mind the gameplay flow of the white and black symmetry. It's a fairly simple and straight forward means of building up to that crescendo of the big melee combo/big boom. A little from column A, a little from column B. Repeat until boom, like an acid/base reaction. It's executed with appropriate style and I dig it.

I would kind of enjoy a forced alternation between Verflare and Verholy, like Summoner switches between Bahamut and Phoenix to force a swap between elements one rotation to the next.

I do take a bit of issue with the disingenuous use of the term "white" in the lore of the job in this game. It's all black magic.. let's be honest here. There's very little white magic to be found. It's just Vercure and Verraise. What we're really talking about here is light and dark... But that's how this game has decided to interpret the blend for practical purposes and I've come to terms with it.

Tbf, XIV lore does classify Holy as white magic, and XIV's white magic and the light elements are almost wholly interconnected (see the Mhachi).

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The rhythm and symmetry of RDM spells appeals to me, and it feels awkward and unpleasant when they are out of sync, as they are in early dungeons or the awkward gap in the 60s where you have Flare but not Holy.

Deliberate imbalance would be odd lore-wise, and arbitrary imbalance isn't really any more exciting than arbitrary balance.

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Agree with this. I like the even back and forth. I think the only thing I might change is making Vercure give Mana (either White Mana or, if they think that's imbalanced somehow, make it like Jolt/Impact where it gives the same amount of both, though that would be weird). [Okay, my one other complaint is why the AOE spells are "backwards" from the single target; Impact should be the quick cast like Jolt, not Aero/Thunder 2 spells...]

I find the even keel of RDM to be pretty chill and it's what makes it so friendly to players picking it up.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Yes, yes it is.

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No, no it's not.

The problem with subjective statements is they aren't factual. It's different from person to person. "My favorite color is blue. I think blue is pretty." "No it isn't. Blue is ugly. And it isn't your favorite color." Deliberate balance is just as or more exciting than deliberate imbalance to a lot of people. A lot of people enjoy RDM and would like it less if it was deliberately imbalanced.

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Though all that said, when they first announced it - recall this was back in HW - I remember thinking it sounded like WHM. A Job that has some healing magic and some damage spells, just also with a bit of melee. I remembered wondering briefly if it could be a new healer Job with the White Magic spells for healing and the Black Magic spells for its damage, so using Fire/Ice/Thunder instead of Stone/Aero/Fluid Aura somehow, along with some melee attacks. Granted, it turned out not to be that at all, but I do remember the possibility being interesting to me. Especially since there aren't THAT many Jobs to draw from other FF games for healer slots, considering most FF games have "White Mage" and make it so good at healing that you just...don't really have anything else other than sometimes having advanced forms of it like Sage or Mystic or the like, with the odd White Mage-adjacent bit healers like Chemist.

(Of course, Sage is normally an advanced version of Red Mage...so we're all kinds of goofy, lol)

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Overall I think Red Mage is a solid and fun class, but the one thing about it that feels lackluster to me is the perfect symmetry between Black and White, where for every Black spell I have a White spell that is exactly the same, just that it generates white mana instead of black mana. And to me, that's a bit disappointing, as I wish the class defined by taking these two very different schools of magic and wielding them both was able to give each school a distinct personality, rather than simply framing it as Thunder and Fire being the polar opposites of Aero and Stone.

But that's just one player's opinion. How do the Red Mages in the audience feel?

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Personally, I don't mind it at all. As a RDM main, I enjoy the equal balance of the white and black spells and how it works in the gameplay. It's a solid fun design for me.

I definitely can see how ideas for more imbalanced black and white magic spells would be interesting and fun in its own right, but I admittedly don't have much interest in them reworking the job to make that happen. I enjoy RDM greatly in its current state, and I don't want to lose a job I love for a job that will play differently that I might, maybe like as much.

The flavor of the two magics working differently would be great, but for me, I don't really want to see the job reworked for the sake of it. I'd rather that, if the flavor is to be added, that it be through actions outside of the main rotation that leave the current rotation alone.

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Originally Posted by Korbei

I do take a bit of issue with the disingenuous use of the term "white" in the lore of the job in this game. It's all black magic.. let's be honest here. There's very little white magic to be found. It's just Vercure and Verraise. What we're really talking about here is light and dark... But that's how this game has decided to interpret the blend for practical purposes and I've come to terms with it.

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I mean, in terms of FF classification, Aero has been White Magic in a number of games. Earth is usually Black Magic, but I believe (not sure) that there's even precedent for it being White Magic in at least one other game.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Oh, I certainly don't think that's the case; there's plenty they could do to mix it up, like having Vercure generate white mana or having Fire and Stone have different cast times/damage amounts/mana generation so that, for example, RDM's needed to cast 1.5 x as many White spells for each Black spell. A lack of symmetry would just make White and Black magic not feel exactly the same, as opposed to now where for the most part casting is "left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot".

None of that is to say that the things I mentioned are better, just that there are certainly different things they could do if they chose to.

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The problem with white magic is that RDM is a dps, if it was a healer there might be a case for having it use both healing and damage dealing magic since healers usually dps aswell as heal. But as a dps, RDM’s focus is on dps and nothing more. If it had white magic that provided healing and support, it would simply never use them… if it had to use them to generate mana for the melee combo? Either the melee combo would have to do absurd dps to make up for them having to spend time healing/buffing, or it would be too weak to be worth using and RDMs would simply never use the melee combo.

Then you have the balancing act of putting that against other jobs, why bring a MCH if a RDM does the same dps but also brings healing and buffs? It would have to have the dreaded “support tax” (which it gets bad enough already with just raise and vercure). At which point you now have to decide why bring a RDM when we are looking for a dps not a mini healer?

In ARR-HW era I could absolutely have seen RDM as a healer, since healers had not been lobotomised yet and still had more than 2 dps buttons. It would have been able to much better toe that line between black and white magic having a more fleshed out arsenal on both sides. But as healers are today? We’d just have the reverse of what RDM is now, having a fully fleshed out healing kit and then 2 legitimate black magic spells.

I think the white magic and black magic aspects are fine and cool.

My only complaint is you dont get a lot of white magic support spells outside of magick barrier and ver raise. (ver cure doesn't count lol). It sort of like it to lean on some small support healing aspects such as what Dancer has.

I think it's important that it would still have very limited support options not to make healers even more useless... unless they somehow make outgoing damage different from what it is right now. With the DPS VS utility "tax" aswell RDM already gets highly punished for ver raise (more then it should).

A tax is essentially pre-payment for resources with value greater than their opportunity costs (making those actions obligatory, at least when usable). If greater their opportunity cost, the lower their chance of being useful (the more situational those skills become), but that also means having to pay less (or even nothing) for their simply existing in that kit.

Clemency, for instance, doesn't appear to cost PLD sustain; because that tool is merely an emergency option (uptime and MP costs), its tuning is done with little to no consideration of Clemency (leaving it typically second only to "OP" Warrior in sustain).

Given what gauge RDM would give up, atop uptime, on healing spells via White Mana spenders, it wouldn't be hard to pick a point of balance where it's situational without feeling overly weak and can avoid "taxation".

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

The problem with white magic is that RDM is a dps, if it was a healer there might be a case for having it use both healing and damage dealing magic since healers usually dps aswell as heal. But as a dps, RDM’s focus is on dps and nothing more. If it had white magic that provided healing and support, it would simply never use them… if it had to use them to generate mana for the melee combo? Either the melee combo would have to do absurd dps to make up for them having to spend time healing/buffing, or it would be too weak to be worth using and RDMs would simply never use the melee combo.

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I think you may have misunderstood what I'm saying, because I wasn't in any way proposing that RDM become more of a healer. Verholy, Verstone, and Veraero are all damage-dealing white spells, and they would be the main thrust of what needed adjustment so that each school felt distinct — rather than Verfire and Verstone literally being the same spell with the lone exception of the type of mana they generate. I just also think it would be neat if Vercure added white mana as well since it's a white spell, and the result would be that in the rare case Vercure was cast, the RDM would then adjust the cadence of Black and White magic afterwards to make up for the offset. It just seems a bit silly that arguably the "whitest" spell RDM has doesn't generate any white mana.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

I think you may have misunderstood what I'm saying, because I wasn't in any way proposing that RDM become more of a healer. Verholy, Verstone, and Veraero are all damage-dealing white spells, and they would be the main thrust of what needed adjustment so that each school felt distinct — rather than Verfire and Verstone literally being the same spell with the lone exception of the type of mana they generate. I just also think it would be neat if Vercure added white mana as well since it's a white spell, and the result would be that in the rare case Vercure was cast, the RDM would then adjust the cadence of Black and White magic afterwards to make up for the offset. It just seems a bit silly that arguably the "whitest" spell RDM has doesn't generate any white mana.

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I’m curious how in depth you’ve actually gotten with RDM, cause to the uninitiated I’m sure it would sound ‘neat’ for vercure to generate white mana. But if you actually know the job you’d know that it could cause horrible imbalances in your mana generation, screw up your rotation and actually deter you from using vercure in the few situations where you’d actually currently use it.

I won’t go into the rotational nightmare that your suggestion of white and black spells having different potencies/mana generation will cause, I’m sure someone out there could give you an entire essay on it. But I assure you it’s not as simple as you think it is to rebalance these tools for what amounts to mere flavour.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A tax is essentially pre-payment for resources with value greater than their opportunity costs (making those actions obligatory, at least when usable). If greater their opportunity cost, the lower their chance of being useful (the more situational those skills become), but that also means having to pay less (or even nothing) for their simply existing in that kit.

Clemency, for instance, doesn't appear to cost PLD sustain; because that tool is merely an emergency option (uptime and MP costs), its tuning is done with little to no consideration of Clemency (leaving it typically second only to "OP" Warrior in sustain).

Given what gauge RDM would give up, atop uptime, on healing spells via White Mana spenders, it wouldn't be hard to pick a point of balance where it's situational without feeling overly weak and can avoid "taxation".

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PLD is very much taxed in dps for its extra utility. It is the lowest damage tank of all of them and the only things it brings over WAR are clemency, shield bash and cover, all extremely niche abilities it hardly ever uses. And that tax is applied in general, it’s not even for USING the abilities (which hurt its dps even further when it does).