Red Mage is Range Combat? (Discussion)

[Isala]

Why are we debating what a RDM is? Every RDM is different. Every player uses a RDM differently, based on their own strats, even within the same game. Some use it as a primary healer, others, their primary magic DPS. Some use it for the melee attacks, and backup spells. There are two things that make a RDM a RDM.

1. It can use both magic and swordplay. Whether those are of equal power is of no importance, so long as it CAN do both.
2. It looks fancy while doing it.

Everything else is secondary. Every game brings their own flavor to the RDM. Whether it's the NES FFI version that had so few uses of magic you spent 90% of your time in melee, or the GBA FFI RDM that could spam spells all day. Whether it's the FFIII version that dual wielded everything, and went to town on mobs, or the dual casting version of FFV. They were all RDM. Even the FFXI Refresh spamming RDM was still a RDM. Even the Tactics RDM. STILL a RDM. So our incarnation might be a little spell heavy. So? What's wrong with that, even if it does happen? It can still melee. We've seen that. And it obviously casts spells. And that gear set is sexy as hell. I'd say that pretty much makes it a RDM, right there. Swords? Check. Spells? Check. Sexy? Double check.

[Hyrist]

As said at the presentation it's the other way around. Chain spells building a melee attack or two, then flip back for finish spell, hence their "ranged dps" identifier. Their focus is staying out of melee range and I expect them to spend 75'ish % of their time there.

Actually nothing that specific was mentioned. Only that's classified as Ranged DPS and that it will use Ranged and Melee attacks. Other than that, they stuck pretty tightly to the slides - even went as far as to say that they will reveal more as time goes on.

It was a teaser, nothing more. I'll remind people how 'evasion' was jumped on when Dark Knight was first teased, and illustrate how little that aspect meant anything.

I won't speculate where the damage comes from or what percentage we'll be front/back lining. Honestly this will be a delicate balance no matter how they play it. I'll reiterate that it's good to have the job confirmed finally and bow out before the sour grapes spoil the fun out of the game for me again.

[Duelle]

just because they use skills in this order, doesn't mean it's an actual combo, or that "evasive jump" is part of any combo, or that you only use 1 melee skill before jumping out.

Considering not-flare was instant cast after Million Stab+Repelling Shot, my guess is that there's a proc involved somewhere. Or "melee" hits apply a stacking buff that reduces cast time by 33% per stack. I'm leaning towards a proc because I could have sworn I saw something happen while the RDM was using Million Stab.

This is both true, and not. We have to consider the archetypal deviants that existed in non-job orientated titles. Celes, Terra, towards the beginning of their games and virtually every open ability meld system works closely with the archetype. In reality, the ATB system isn't much different than the MMO's internal timer system always set to 'active' rather than 'wait', and often it is wise to think that way when you think of things like rotations and timers.

The key difference is that turn-based combat doesn't have toggles, OGCD abilities, reactionary abilities and effects that happen as a result of other actions. Those factors make a lot of things that are impossible in turn-based RPGs possible in live action combat when it comes to class design.

Using enspells as an example, they don't work in a console FF because you're wasting a turn for a buff with a set duration that would have to be stupidly powerful to justify its existence. If we transition into live combat, we gain at least two ways to implement enspells without wasting time mid-battle. One would be as a toggle (not unlike Darkside or a stance like Sword Oath), the other would be as a result of something else (cast fire on target, use a certain sword skill on target = your sword is enchanted with fire for X seconds).

Beyond enspells there's also mechanics. One example of such is physical attacks having some effect on the spells in the job's arsenal. Either cooldown resets, cast time removal, empowerment of the next spell and so on. All of these work in live combat but do not in turn-based RPGs because it'd take too many character turns to set things up.

This is why I argue that we have to look at console RPGs and their elements as completely separate animals from MMORPGs and what those games require to have functional classes. To bring it back to what I was saying earlier, in console FFs you get more bang for your buck having a RDM cast spells in part because turn-based combat doesn't allow for hybrid elements to truly shine; per the limits of turn-based combat, you have a someone with less strength than a warrior and mediocre white/black magic. Live action combat changes that entirely because of a lot of possible mechanics that enter the mix, making the notion of spells generating the best results from a RDM outdated and no longer applicable.

I think the demo emphasizes nothing of the sort. Honestly. Whether you cast at a range or up close is irrelevant in this case. The range mainly was shown to give a good showcase and give light to the two positional skills they were highlighting. It shows that these spells CAN be cast at a range, people are simply inferring that they have to.

What I said and what you're saying are both assumptions. Knowing the way the developers implement things, I wouldn't be surprised if the spells can only be cast once you're a certain distance from the mob OR have damage penalties based on how close you are to the mob. I find it likely since they would not have bothered to mention the whole range thing otherwise.

It seems to me that you're taking a bit of flavor footage in isolation to other information we were provided. "Rapid Positioning" was the term used. Which seems to indicate we will be both front and back lining rather frequently.

I ignored the "Rapid Positioning" thing because it sounds like meaningless buzz words due to having no context. It would have been nice to clarify things by saying "this job is highly mobile" instead of alluding to other things. Going in and out of melee for its own sake (instead of to avoid ground-target AoEs and boss mechanics) is basically what I described in my other post; melee being token rather than a core aspect of the job. On top of being a poor gimmick.

This is where we can disagree again. The ability to cast at range was part of what makes Red Mage a versatile machine.

I'm not denying the advantages of having ranged spells. A RDM would benefit from that in encounters where the boss goes out of melee range since it'd be able to help nuke from a distance. The most common caveat for spells with range is that their use outside of combos/procs is inconvenient and very resource intensive, which is supposed to balance out the hybrid having those spells in the first place (since it gives them a clear advantage over the other melee). Of course, we don't know if that's how it'll actually be to play a RDM.

You see, I don't view it mainly as a concession so much as an agreement of vision thus far. I make no mistake that this is 'their' vision of Red mage fitting their idea of how it should work.

When you have to give up or alter parts of a concept, you're making a concession. SE did it with BRD when they decided to drop the non-combat song spam in favor of archery with songs. They did it with DRK when they dropped the self-damage aspects of the job to make it a viable tank. For RDM the concessions included moving away from the generalist label to make it fit into one of the three roles. This is why I wasn't making a big deal about things like "RDM is a jack of all trades so it cant work in this game" or anything along those lines; I knew and understood something would have to be changed to make the job possible.

[VanilleFang]

Some use it as a primary healer, others, their primary magic DPS. Some use it for the melee attacks, and backup spells. There are two things that make a RDM a RDM.

RDM is a jack-of-all-trades. Using it as a primary anything is purposely gimping your party.

[LunaFaye]

more jumps, we needed more jumps and I am all for new jump animations. Why constantly make the drg's feel bad, when by 4.0 they will have a buddy to share the floor with. I am looking forward to it...

[AlphaFox]

RDM is a jack-of-all-trades. Using it as a primary anything is purposely gimping your party.

While true, some just work better that way. Think I ran FF1 with a Warrior, Thief, Blackmage and Redmage, guess who got stuck healing when it was needed? :P

[VanilleFang]

While true, some just work better that way. Think I ran FF1 with a Warrior, Thief, Blackmage and Redmage, guess who got stuck healing when it was needed? :P

That's still gimping your party. You would have even better off using a White Mage. The point I was trying to make is that if you purposely choose a RDM as your primary anything you are not nearly as strong as you would be if you chose a job more focused on that role.

[Leigaon]

I'm loving the idea of the crystal attaching to the sword and making it a staff. Thank you to the person who created the thread explaining the holding the crystal and how it related to the lanterns in history.

My guess would be they will keep it simple, you'll perform your chains that will open up either magical AoE or a melee single damage attack. I'm curious though if the moves that close / create the gaps are part of the move sets or if they're their own actions.

If they are mixed in with the actions, that's less bloat, but less control. I wouldn't want a mob to target me at range and then I go in for my closer, only to have myself jump back to the AoE. I guess a good middle ground would be to split it. Ranged Skill > Ranged Skill (down a melee WS finisher) at that time it brings you in, so you can time your melee WS and jump back if you decide you need to move to the side. So connecting it between and after the spells.

Then I guess the biggest thing would be what do these moves actually do with the limitations we have in terms of combat to give it a wider range of "jack of all trades" feel. The design alone I like though, a lot.

[basketofseals]

That's still gimping your party. You would have even better off using a White Mage. The point I was trying to make is that if you purposely choose a RDM as your primary anything you are not nearly as strong as you would be if you chose a job more focused on that role.

Kind of off topic, but in FF1, there was little to no point of taking WHM or BLM over RDM because the intelligence stat did not work.

[Mimilu]

Kind of off topic, but in FF1, there was little to no point of taking WHM or BLM over RDM because the intelligence stat did not work.

They did fix that in the re-releases though. >w>