Pipe Dreams: Red Mage the melee DPS

[Madrone]

Very similar to a build I've been working on. I use stacks for spellblade that are usable like aetherflow abilities smn use (Doublecast, Aetheric Discharge, and Circle Blade), and have certain skills shift the Spellblade element between ice, fire, and thunder. Traits make each element give the rdm a buff. Spellblade gives a small damage boost. Fire = temper (more damage boost), ice = fast cast (15%), thunder dot ticks proc bonus spellblade stacks with proc chance doubled when spellblade element is thunder. I give it brd-like support by discharging it's spellblade as a 15s party buff. I also combo melee skills and spells, combo bonus being +30% potency for fires and half cast time, and instant/front loaded dot (like thundercloud) for thunder.

There's kind of no way around making it supporty since it has a diverse toolkit, which means limiting its overall dps a little.

I opt for main stat int, since enchanted sword makes that an easy logic leap. It then uses caster accessories and has its own left side armor which is like the reverse of drg, High mdef, medium physical defense. Leveling it uses general DoM gear. I also built refresh like Goad, and its a cooldown so it can't be used frequently. I sacrificed the whm side of things, giving rdm only regen + cnj cross class spells. But I traited it to use int for healing potency (lvl 24) and have battle raise (lvl 48). I was contemplating Triple as a 61+ skill, but it'd apply multiple dots on a 60s cooldown instead of being the triple version of doublecast. Lvl 60 skill is Chainspell which for 10s makes spell GCD be 1s and gives 5 stacks of swiftcast. Ends when all stacks are used or 10s is up.

There's no ice combo. I gave rdm a casting stance (cold-blooded) that let's them spam blizzard like a blm does fire, for about 10% less damage/spell (but they cast faster in spellblade ice anyway). It's their recovery mode (since they also make use of tier II astral/umbral) and disables auto-attack and gives weaponskills a cast time similar to brd/mcn stances. Its basically an option to be a ranged caster instead of melee. Canceled by reuse or any fire skill/spell. And otherwise they have two combos to choose between, single target & supporty thunder combo, or high damage and resource consumption fire combo. Fire combo's 2nd hit is aoe, and can close with fire or fire II, making it viable for single target or aoe rotations.


Skill speed/spell speed is the issue I'm having trouble with. How to unify them as one stat while preventing materia abuse?

Sry for deleted posts below. Tablet browser wouldn't let me edit my posts, and needed to get around 1k char limit when I posted originally.