Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Acelyn]

the only way I see a 3rd finisher working is if it plays off of shadowbringers light/dark theme,

that way you have a light finisher, verholy, biased on light mana
dark finisher, verflare, biased on dark mana
and lastly a null/void finisher unlocked I would say after a verholy and verflare then with even bars on mana, call it ver...i dunno, ultima

boom, a simple addition without butchering the job with dots or other nonsense, add in trait boosters, jolt III and an aoe finisher for even mana bars and rdm is set for another 2yrs

[Archwizard]

I've already explained why a third Verfinisher (particularly built off of having to do two full melee combos that require 40 sec apiece) is a bad idea in the current state. There would need to be substantial change to facilitate that alone.

I should also point out that the gap between Jolt II and Impact/Verfire/Verstone is only 30 potency, which themselves are only 30 potency behind Verthunder/Veraero/min. 3-target Scatter, so a Jolt III would have to come with advancements from each of those abilities to maintain the current rotation without discarding any current skills.

What you're proposing is to waste every advancement on potency boosts instead of tools we still have space for, and change nothing about the rotation for 2 years (bar one new instant cooldown), which is simply not done -- even if the rotation were perfect, MMO devs have an obligation to enforce continual change to keep the game fresh so we have reason to keep subscribing.

[Dualgunner]

I've already discussed why a third Verfinisher (particularly built off of having to do two full melee combos that require 40 sec apiece) is a bad idea in the current state.

I agree; looking at Summoner, it's way too punishing to have a rotation carry like that because death puts you back to square one. One to two minute burst rotations should definitely be the limit.

[Archwizard]

I agree; looking at Summoner, it's way too punishing to have a rotation carry like that because death puts you back to square one. One to two minute burst rotations should definitely be the limit.

Agreed. The only reason to give us a third Verfinisher would be if we were able to inflict it within a minute, meaning consistently getting current Verfinishers twice a minute, either by means of substantive boosts to our Mana generation to combo more frequently (which without just halving the CD of Manafication outright is highly improbable since we would have to average 14 Mana every action and reduce the CD of our movement skills, assuming that #3 doesn't require a full combo itself, meaning 20 Mana instead which would leave us constantly imbalanced on top of higher mana-per-action than the Verfinishers themselves), or allowing us to Verfinish outside of a combo -- which needs its own groundwork.
Either way there's no guarantee this would come without devaluing our current Verfinishers to make room for a new one, given the Verfinishers we have are already nearly as strong as Foul.

[Archwizard]

Spell - Ardor: (2 sec cast)
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to the target and all nearby enemies. All affected targets receive the Overheat status for 30 seconds, dealing unaspected damage over time with a potency of 30.
Your attacks against a target you have afflicted with Overheat have a 20% chance to grant Aether Saturation, upgrading Verthunder to Verfreeze and Veraero to Verflood, respectively.

Verfreeze: (5 sec cast) Deals ice damage to the target and nearby enemies, with a potency of 340 to the first target, 40% less to the second, and 60% less to all other targets.
Increases Black Mana by 11, and an additional 2 Black Mana for each target struck. Consumes Aether Saturation on cast. Does not grant Verfire Ready.

Verflood: (5 sec cast) Deals water damage to the target and nearby enemies, with a potency of 340 to the first target, 40% less to the second, and 60% less to all other targets.
Increases White Mana by 11, and an additional 2 White Mana for each target struck. Consumes Aether Saturation on cast. Does not grant Verstone Ready.

Upon further consideration, I suppose an alternative could simply be to skip having to debuff targets to allow the casting of Verfreeze/Verflood, and instead make it a proc chance for, say, Impact and each target hit by Enhanced Scatter (since the latter gets cast less often). With the suggested interaction from Equilibrium, it would still make Verfreeze/Verflood impactful on the rotation rather than just being a straight upgrade to Verthunder/Veraero like Impact is to Jolt.
Main issue being if you get two Enhanced Scatters in a row, you lose the Aether Saturation proc.
Alternately, make it a trait on Dualcast instead, "your instant spells have a chance to proc Aether Saturation for each target hit." Loads of possibilities.

Figured I'd mention it in the interests of reiterating that I don't really care if we do get a DoT one way or the other, I'm just not going to pass up an opportunity to shake up the rotation, and see benefits in having more outputs for Spell Speed.

... Especially when you could do fun things like:

Verfreeze: Increases Black Mana by 11, and causes your active Overheat effects on targets struck to grant 1 Black Mana per tick for the remainder of the duration; this effect does not stack with Verflood. Deals 10% more damage to enemies marked by Verflood.

Verflood: Increases White Mana by 11, and causes your active Overheat effects on targets struck to grant 1 White Mana per tick for the remainder of the duration; this effect does not stack with Verfreeze. Deals 10% more damage to enemies marked by Verfreeze.

[Seraphor]

Upon further consideration, I suppose an alternative could simply be to skip having to debuff targets to allow the casting of Verfreeze/Verflood, and instead make it a proc chance for, say, Impact and each target hit by Enhanced Scatter (since the latter gets cast less often). With the suggested interaction from Equilibrium, it would still make Verfreeze/Verflood impactful on the rotation rather than just being a straight upgrade to Verthunder/Veraero like Impact is to Jolt.
Main issue being if you get two Enhanced Scatters in a row, you lose the Aether Saturation proc.
Alternately, make it a trait on Dualcast instead, "your instant spells have a chance to proc Aether Saturation for each target hit." Loads of possibilities.

Figured I'd mention it in the interests of reiterating that I don't really care if we do get a DoT one way or the other, I'm just not going to pass up an opportunity to shake up the rotation, and see benefits in having more outputs for Spell Speed.

... Especially when you could do fun things like:

Verfreeze: Increases Black Mana by 11, and causes your active Overheat effects on targets struck to grant 1 Black Mana per tick for the remainder of the duration; this effect does not stack with Verflood. Deals 10% more damage to enemies marked by Verflood.

Verflood: Increases White Mana by 11, and causes your active Overheat effects on targets struck to grant 1 White Mana per tick for the remainder of the duration; this effect does not stack with Verfreeze. Deals 10% more damage to enemies marked by Verfreeze.

As AoE skills, I can only see it making sense to have Scatter or Enhanced Scatter proc this 'Aether Saturation'

[Archwizard]

As AoE skills, I can only see it making sense to have Scatter or Enhanced Scatter proc this 'Aether Saturation'

Not necessarily. The intent is that, like Foul and its ilk, Verflood/Verfreeze still act as damage upgrades in single-target (particularly with the attached Equilibrium suggestion), just with extra benefits to embellish and speed up our dull AoE rotation.

[Nezia]

What I'd like to see:

-Melee combo now costs only 70 black/white mana to fully perform instead of 80;

-Verflare/Verholy no longer generate mana, instead uppon usage they put you into a black/white stance(Verflare for black instance; Verholy for white), while in the black/white stance, increases the damage of all black/white mana generating spells by X%.

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Explanation: a simple change that doesn't really change much about the class, but makes the gameplay a bit more challenging as it forces you to play on the limit of the balance gauge to pull out more damage. Ideally you'd want to use as many black/white spells as possible during the black/white stance but without letting the disparity of both manas grow beyond 30, on a perfect scenario you would go for the melee combo with a 100/70 mana ratio, which would also give you a lot of room to spam the black/white spells once going back at range.

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Another idea I have but that's still very green in my head is letting go of al the procs. All the skills can be used at all times, but then make our black/white mana generating to be a bit more... chaotic, like gaining or losing mana at random so it would be a struggle to keep both manas balanced, but then you'd be reward with extra damage the closer the manas are to each other.

This idea however would require a lot of core mechanics of the class to be changed, so I doubt they'd go for something even close to this... but hey.

[Ariel_Valmont]

I honestly don't understand all the knee-jerk reactions to the concept of any DoT spells whatsoever for RDM. I've seen it here, on Reddit, in-game discussions...

It’s not a knee jerk reaction, it’s being able to enjoy a job that doesn’t have to worry about dot maintenance. Yes this makes us fairly unique, and that doesn’t make us bad.

Our simplistic rotation gives RDM its extremely fluid gameplay. Any movement that needs to be done can be achieved during the GCD, you should be able to move all over the field and not miss a cast due to dual cast and the GCD. Giving us some traits to make things more powerful or some new oGCD abilities can easily make up for the lack of a dot. Personally I’d like to see less abilities going foreword and more traits that change our current abilities in new and interesting ways.

I’d rather they come up with something different than borrowing playstyle from other jobs (thunder and procs, bane/aero3).

RDM is fine without a dot, the only way I’d be ok with one is if it was added on as a bonus to our melee combo or spell finisher. For example, the 3rd enhanced melee strike cause a bleed on the target, or flare/holy causes the target to burn after the initial hit.

This would help maintain the fluidity of the job, which I feel is more important than trying to make us have a more complex rotation.

[Ariel_Valmont]

I think you could make Scatter more fun to spam is that each proc of enhanced scatter also reduced the recast time. Let those enhanced scatter chains just come out the gate like an endless barrage of fireworks.

I really like this idea!