How would you make RDM more complex?

[Karshan]

Well, where Taryn sorta have a point, is that it's not like it's a class from the start a lot of people have been playing for years that got oversimplified, and someone is telling you to suck it up and go play something else.

Here it's a new class ; you picked it, doesn't suit your desires in terms of complexity, well... I mean you could feel the simplicity the first half hour.

If you wanted to avoid epidermic reactions, Think you should have made the post : "what changes would you like to see in 5.0 Red Mage ?" With your First post being : I want it more complex.
I think he reacts more to the tone of the first few posts which felt like : "RDM too simple, this has to change, how can it". This doesn't have to. This isn't even wished for by every red mage. That's what he points out. And that's why a lot didn't focus on your actual question that was the "how can it" (what mechanisms would you add to RDM in the future) because it was polluted by the assertion before.

My thoughts on this : I'm not against complexification, but it is the only really simple job (in DPS section) so no more jobs in that niche if they do so. Also, for instance in Shinryu, really helps that with the current kit it doesn't matter what your target is : you just lay your spells on what has priority. Add debuff and dots in there, and you reduce efficiency (and increase frustration) on a "target change" scenario.

So I would avoid dots and debuffs, however self buffs consuming mana might be nice.
And maybe the change on Impact that was proposed : changing depending what you do. Or maybe a change that calls for imbalance. Like go white and impact becomes that really cool skill, but you have to rebalance behind ; you know a kind of benefit/risk thing.
Maybe change Jolt II mana gain so that it becomes a brainer choosing between it or a proc. Like adding more situations where you gain something to use a less potent spell.

I would change things in the melee part. here it's just a burst of three skills every now and then, I'd make it more of a mix. I'd dissociate melee from Verholy and flare (that I would replace by void btw), no more mana cost to melee and make Holy / Void cost 60 of a kind of mana.
Add "enchanted blade - Holy" and "enchanted blade - Void" skills. Kind of requiescat, except to do melee stuff. Every 30 secs, you can use a blade and it allows you to do your enchanted melee combo that grants you only the mana of the kind of blade you used (so that it helps you deal with the unbalance provoked by VerHoly / VerVoid in the casting part). The animation of the combo would differs depending on the blade.
Each blade grants a stack and using the 2 stacks gives you access to a powerful melee oGCD. So basically, you'd have 2 combos per minute and around 15 to 20 seconds spend in melee range every minute.

So to sum up : you provoke unbalance with VerVoid / Holy, you benefit from it with different effects on impact and Jolt II, you rebalance it with dualcasting some spells + an enchanted blade of opposite element and a melee combo. What changes here, is that you have a kind of aetherflow effect : you have windows between melee, so you have to reach a certain level of mana within it, and managing your gauge can become more tricky, not rotation wise, but optimization/buff-window-timing wise. Also in that scenario, Acceleration would not be a proc forcing oGCD but a 15 second timer where mana granted by each spell is augmented.

And you have a warrior kinda playstyle, with a bit more messup romm since the amount of gauge gained are variable from source to source, you will be less likely to screw up than say an IRzerk phase, and worst case scenario difficulty is easily fixed by a play on Finisher cost.