The Black vs. White balance bars for Red Mage is kinda pointless....

[dejiko_san]

Well, my point is it is entirely pointless to have a balance gauge to begin with as they have it now....you might as get rid of veraero, and just call it a black magic bar which increments with verthunder -> it'd equate to the same thing except with less buttons to click....

Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

[NewAgeDoom]

Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

And to add on to this, you really only get Verholy and Verflare at 68/70, I believe.

Early levels are just there to teach you how to weave your spells properly, use Fleche/Contre Sixte on cd, etc.

[wereotter]

And to add on to this, you really only get Verholy and Verflare at 68/70, I believe.

Early levels are just there to teach you how to weave your spells properly, use Fleche/Contre Sixte on cd, etc.

It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

EDIT: Just realized you meant level 68/70 not mana levels Yes, those are the correct levels

[NewAgeDoom]

It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

Oh, sorry, I meant the level you get the skills to finish off the combo and start the casting again, not the amount in the Balance gauge.

[ChaoticCrimson]

Your balance gauge shows you if you can use Flare or Holy with your current levels when you melee link... And it's a white magic / black magic bar as you can only use "RED" magic when balanced. Otherwise you fall too much on one side and get penalized when you try to use the other.

It's at 80/80 that you can do the melee combo, but you want one higher to guarantee a verfire/verstone proc once you finish.

And yes, it's not a DPS increase, it's a balance you have to maintain else you're penalized with lower DPS as you can't do your enchanted melee combo and cast verflare/verholy without the appropriate amount of mana banked, and if you go too far one direction, the game penalizes you when you attempt to rebalance. It won't be until level 68 that your exact numbers will really start to matter, but it is still important even at level 50.

Yes to both of these. In short, the balance does matter if you want to get the most out of both your melee combos and Verholy/flare. Furthermore, the job also gives you tools like Acceleration and Manafication to help manage things. You want to try to keep one side only slightly higher than the other to take advantage of the mana boost for your finisher spells, too. The trick isn't so much in keeping balance rather than pushing both sides of the gauge to the appropriate levels as quickly as possible on a continuous basis.

[zuzu-bq]

Make all DPS jobs a 1 button spam to be honest. Why apply so much complexity to damage dealing. Maybe two buttons like God of War.

[maestroanth]

Make all DPS jobs a 1 button spam to be honest. Why apply so much complexity to damage dealing. Maybe two buttons like God of War.

Lol, why even have that button, just bot it ;P

I cannot even imagine playing this game on a playstation controller instead of my gamer mouse.

[maestroanth]

Yes to both of these. In short, the balance does matter if you want to get the most out of both your melee combos and Verholy/flare. Furthermore, the job also gives you tools like Acceleration and Manafication to help manage things. You want to try to keep one side only slightly higher than the other to take advantage of the mana boost for your finisher spells, too. The trick isn't so much in keeping balance rather than pushing both sides of the gauge to the appropriate levels as quickly as possible on a continuous basis.

Okay, ya, the purpose of the balance gauge makes a bit better sense to me after reading the last two spells a red mage gets. Where I'm at now there is no reason for you to not keep that gauge perfectly balanced all the time which to me says "you might as well consolidate the two bars into one and call it a red mana bar or something".

[maestroanth]

.....

Still...I wonder though if a RDM design with a little more freedom would be better no? Take out the necessity of any maintaining balance in that gauge at all and whenever you feel like playing a WHM role you can obtain and use white mana with white spells, and whenever you feel like playing a BLM role you obtain and use black mana with black spells, whenever you feel like playing a melee role (or when you are simply 00M) etc., and just have a mixed "red" spell here and there when you accumulated resource in both magics. You just pick which role as how you feel the environment/situation warrants it.

I know that style flies in the face of how traditional MMO's play in regards to parties. Nonetheless, that's how original FF felt with me with red mage which made that class a lot of fun.

[zuzu-bq]

Seriouness in, the RDM's original identity wouldn't fit on XIV's game. The devs did a greate job into implementing Red Mage into Eorzea making it natural to the MMO's system. RDM was not the only job to suffer throught this on its "conversion" to FFXIV. SMN and DRK to some degree also did and people complain about it from launch to this date.

About complexity, the rotation is very very very simple if you remove the mana aspects. Actually if you remove those and the melee attacks it's simply ARR BLM's base design with more instant spells. Isn't that the fun of the DPS jobs though? Complexity and barriers imposed by the job's very own design that once you overcome you deal more damage. The better you are doing that, the better you are dealing damage.