Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Archwizard]

I have a few major issues with the class that I hope new spells next expansion will address.

• Boring/Slow AoE: Moving from BLM's exciting variety to RDM's lack therein was painful in this regard. Up to ten Scatters per Enchanted Moulinet, if I'm unlucky with procs (on average, 5-7 with procs)? I get that this one's a bit of a slippery slope (too much adjustment of the Scatter BM/WM economy could lead to its use in single-target) but anything to make reaching E-Moulinet a little faster (if not make the overall AoE more exciting than "spam Scatter until you can Moulinet") would not go remiss.
• No personal defense: Even BLM gets Manaward, and their rotation doesn't have a melee phase; meanwhile, in spite of our increased mobility, we have the casters' infamously low durability that gets us killed constantly by unavoidable damage (or people just not stacking for mechanics). I'd kill for some kind of counter-based defensive cooldown, and it wouldn't even be unfitting for a RDM to have one between the fencing motifs and mixed themes of "white magic for defense + black magic for reprisal".
• Limited MP recovery: We're the only Magic DPS who has to rely entirely on Lucid Dreaming or the availability of a Bard. I get that limiting our MP recovery keeps us from going overboard with Dualcast Verraise spam, but I've had fights where just casting Verraise once or twice (or being forced to heal myself due to lack of protection...) had me MP-starved within a minute; I dread a healer who asks me to Mana Shift; and with TP getting removed next expansion, we may see our melee become a consumer, too. Even without Verraise, our basic rotation can have us living from CD to CD with Lucid Dreaming if the fight goes long enough. I'm not asking for Umbral Ice-level recovery (since frankly this is more of a niche ask), just a little higher MP regen or a weak Refresh to bump us a tiny bit, or perhaps a situational recovery spell.
• Mobility CDs are used for damage: Because they're not on the GCD and have their own potency, Disengage and Corps-a-Corps are a part of our rotation in optimal play. Of the two, Disengage is the most problematic as it can tend to end a melee phase by propelling the RDM out of the arena to their deaths, but Corps-a-Corps' use as a damage cooldown rather than a mobility cooldown means it may be wasted by the RDM.

To be continued...

[Archwizard]

Continuing from my previous post, I have a few... sample suggestions to address each of the above points:

1. Verflood (5 sec cast): Deal water damage to enemies within 5y of your target, increase both Black Mana and White Mana by 2 per enemy hit, and gain Enhanced Scatter.

   The goal here is to rapidly speed up our AoE by giving us a spell that can be woven with Scatter to increase its Mana generation; on three targets, with the extra Mana from Verflood itself, the guaranteed proc of Enhanced Scatter will be enough to reach a single Moulinet in only 4 GCDs (less even, if you're fighting at least 5 targets or lucky with procs from Scatter itself). As for using "Verflood"... it seems fitting, both for us to have an AoE representing the cataclysm that birthed red magic, and for it to flood your Mana pool.

2. En-garde (2 min CD): Surround yourself in a barrier of swords, halving (or absorbing) incoming damage for up to 10 sec. When the effect ends or is canceled, the swords lash out and split unaspected damage between nearby enemies equal to the damage prevented.

   Based a bit loosely off of Reflect from Kingdom Hearts II and Noctis' guard ability from Final Fantasy XV, the idea with this skill is that it can synchronize with a RDM's melee phase, giving them protection while they rush in and detonating before they jump out. Alternately, it should last just long enough to pop in expectation of a big hit like Protostar and then detonate when the boss is available again.

3. Verfreeze (2 sec cast): Deal weak ice damage to enemies within 5y of your target, and inflict additional ice damage over 30 sec to all affected targets. While Verfreeze is active on at least one target, you regain 2% of base MP per second; this effect does not increase if more targets are affected.

   Killing two birds with one stone here - the idea with this DoT is that it can be used as an opener in both area-effect and lengthy single-target encounters (pairing nicely with Verflood above before you cast Scatter), while also alleviating our costly MP issues. Mixing our MP generation with ice magic also serves as a shout-out to Black Mages' use of Umbral Ice; 2% MP/s is low enough that it would still take 10 seconds to replenish the cost of a Verraise, but we could likely sustain our main combo off half that... assuming our melee combo doesn't switch from TP to MP in Shadowbringers.

4. Disengage no longer deals damage, but instead applies Heavy to the target for 3-5 sec, a la its PvP incarnation. Corps-a-Corps also no longer deals damage, but instead stuns the target for 1 sec; damage of both skills is instead displaced into the Enchanted Melee combo.

   With Corps-a-Corps having a 40 sec cooldown, the stun effect would be equally available to RDM as Leg Sweep is to any (other?) melee DPS, while the slow effect on Disengage would justify the current animation lacking damage. Otherwise giving bonus effects to either one is more for QoL than necessity; the important thing is removing the damage from them so you're compelled to use them as needed.

[Dualgunner]

It would be nice to have a form of defense. Something to protect myself from getting crunched by mesohigh because my sch forgot to shield me. Maybe have verwater be a defensive shield, next hit taken does 10% less damage and causes verblizzard ready. Verblizzard can then be a 310 potency Insta cast not affected by dualcast. Seems very third eye, but I'm a sucker for reprisal mechanics like that and it fits whm def blm reprisal that was mentioned before.

[Lauront]

En-garde is very good and fits right in with the job's theme. I like the rest too, and I think coupled with some of Grimoire-M's ideas and the En-elemental trait, it'd give RDM a very nice, rounded ability repertoire.

[Archwizard]

I particularly like the idea of them tying the En-elemental (e.g. Enfire) abilities to the job.

I'm of two minds with this one.

On the one-hand, I think it's absolutely perfect from a lore standpoint. White Magic protects and enhances; Black Magic harms and overpowers; and Red Magic represents the child of the two concepts -- a mage who not only wields spells of each school, but interweaves the two on a conceptual level (as with my En-Garde suggestion). A White Mage is unconcerned with increasing harm, and a Black Mage wouldn't willingly give their elemental power to another, but a Red Mage is not philosophically restrained as either, and would absolutely be the most likely to develop damage-enhancing buffs for their allies, particularly ones that could enhance weapon skills.
And in our particular case, support buffing would be a great niche for us on top of our swift-raising, raising raid damage substantially by our presence even if our own damage lacks compared to other casters.

And on the other hand... from a mechanical standpoint, where would that fit exactly? There isn't really an open niche for it -- we have Embolden already for enhancing allies, particularly the weapon wielders. Would this be some alternative to it, or in addition? How frequently would we employ it, given the infrequency of our own melee combo? Would we have to select individual targets for such buffs, and what would the benefit be to us? And what's to prevent people from begging for En- skills of all 6 elements, aside from the complete impracticality given the lack of real difference between elements outside aesthetics?

I've had a friend tell me several times that they're hoping we get some kind of Haste spell, however, which could be interesting to help caster allies before using Embolden in melee, even if the spell speed isn't wholly useful to us.

[Kalise]

I particularly like the idea of them tying the En-elemental (e.g. Enfire) abilities to the job.

Personally, I'd hope they save En-elemental skills for a magical based mDPS such as Elementalist or Rune Knight.

I feel that given the way current En-Elemental skills work (They only add damage to physical attack from the enemies that use them) it would fit a bit better with that kind of job concept as a way to fit in magical damage, without shoving a bunch of attack spells into their kit and ending up feeling like a RDM.

If the goal is to give RDM some additional utility... Maybe they could get reworked Elemental-storm spells instead? I feel that would suit their more mage focused playstyle better as well as be more flashy skills for them to look cool with. (Also, could help expand their AoE rotation if they want to try and put up Firestorm/Aurorastorm for some sort of AoE debuff/buff effects as well as maybe some persistent AoE DoT/HoT effect)

[Lauront]

They've sort of boxed SAM into the sword mage role, though. Like how they describe its Iaijutsu in lorebook 2.0, as a form of martial magecraft. Not saying they couldn't bring in such a job, particularly if they avoided making it a sword user as there's an amplitude of those. It'd need ample padding out to work.

[Dralonis]

Personally, I'd hope they save En-elemental skills for a magical based mDPS such as Elementalist or Rune Knight.

I feel that given the way current En-Elemental skills work (They only add damage to physical attack from the enemies that use them) it would fit a bit better with that kind of job concept as a way to fit in magical damage, without shoving a bunch of attack spells into their kit and ending up feeling like a RDM.

If the goal is to give RDM some additional utility... Maybe they could get reworked Elemental-storm spells instead? I feel that would suit their more mage focused playstyle better as well as be more flashy skills for them to look cool with. (Also, could help expand their AoE rotation if they want to try and put up Firestorm/Aurorastorm for some sort of AoE debuff/buff effects as well as maybe some persistent AoE DoT/HoT effect)

This is how I feel. En- spells were essentially just Mystic knight ff5 stuff. Like steiner in FF9 and spellblade in FFTA2. I could see Mystic knights being a Dual wielding mDPS class similar to rune knight(Thats how it was in FF5. ). I'd rather Tanks not have yet ANOTHER sword based class. I've been wanting more of a spellblade dps

The en stuff was never in the games until XI and they don't really want to base their classes off that game so I personally don't see it being a thing. They seem to want to go the route of taking their class inspiration from games FF8 and before for now. Not much after that. This is more of a FF5 RDM. I feel they wouldn't do enfire etc since it would only focus melee. sorta like embolden. Could be what they wanted to go with for embolden, however I don't think it should lock out casters. Very little caster synergy but tons of melee synergy. Same with even more Melee stuff. They are a range first and foremost. While it fits with the lore, it would be a bit too much to add even more. I'd like to see some more that uses both white and black mana for them.

I don't see why so many people want to add dots to them though. They are a burst class and they want their damage to be balanced around bursting, not as much sustain. If you put damage into their sustain, they will lose burst and that whole speed thing they want to portray.

[M1551NGN0]

I would like a trait similar to Lance Mastery. Pop a Verflare after a Verholy, and vice-versa.

And some AoE finishers after three Enchanted Moulinets.

[Lubu_Mykono]

Gunbreaker is the mystic/ rune fencer/sword magey physical job to be honest. They are not going to do another.