Pipe Dreams: Red Mage the melee DPS

[MaethusXion]

Couple suggestions

Make Refresh castable on self-only and probably change the name(Regain maybe?). Every other caster is able to activate their own MP recovery skill(Blizzards, Luminiferous Aether, Aetherflow/Energy Drain, Shroud of Saints), then there's BRD/MCH with their MP recovery abilities, so RDM doesn't need someone to be demanding their MP recovery skill.

Double/Triple: costs 175-200%/250-300% to do 2x/3x damage

More fencing-styled names for the sword skills.

[Duelle]

Make Refresh castable on self-only and probably change the name(Regain maybe?). Every other caster is able to activate their own MP recovery skill(Blizzards, Luminiferous Aether, Aetherflow/Energy Drain, Shroud of Saints), then there's BRD/MCH with their MP recovery abilities, so RDM doesn't need someone to be demanding their MP recovery skill.

While I agree, I added a targetable version of Refresh because I'm anticipating the devs giving RDM that if they were to implement it. Them giving NIN Goad was a surprise, and if anything it makes me think RDM would get the MP equivalent. I guess I could reduce the cooldown and make it self-only. I'd definitely get some catharsis out of that, since I hated to see the job being a refresh bot in FFXI.

Double/Triple: costs 175-200%/250-300% to do 2x/3x damage

make Double do a double potency hit for 150% of the cost of an ability, and Triple do a triple potency hit for 200-250% of an ability's cost

The funny thing about your comments on that is that one of my earlier RDM drafts had Double designed as you guys say. Double damage/potency for double the cost. My reasoning was that it wouldn't be mechanically possible to have spells process multiple times based off of one action. Then the devs went and proved me wrong when they implemented the Nabriales fight (the boss in Chrysalis), where we see that Double and Triple are actually quite possible. This also should somewhat satisfy the people who wanted RDM to have something akin to Double Cast from other FF games.

This is just a general comment, and I will admit that I haven't played many Final Fantasy games so I don't know the intricacies of prior RDMs, but I get the feeling that solely using the Ice/Fire/Lightning template draws too heavily from the Thaumaturge.

Much like THM/BLM, the reason I gave RDM three elements was to mimic how it was in the original Final Fantasy. BLM there had access to Fire, Blizzard and Thunder, and incidentally RDM had access to the same. The main thing RDM draws from WHM is actually stuff like Protect, Cure and so on.

If you ask me, if RDM is traditionally taken from the combination of WHM and BLM, and each has their elemental attunements to three of the six elements, the Red Mage should demonstrate their mastery over all elements and the sword by being able to imbue their rapier to any one of the chosen elements at any one given time (Enaero, Enstone, Enwater, Enfire, Enthunder, Enfrost) and thus having weaponskills that differ based on the imbued element.

Ideally this would be the way to go. The problem is that you're giving up three ability slots out of the 18 required for each job, and you're creating a different type of ability bloat (abilities that do the same thing). Don't get me wrong, because I'd love to be able to let RDMs enchant their swords with whatever element they want, but I was trying to work within the design the devs seem to be using.