Rdm in 5.0?

[Syrus718]

Personally I Feel like If verraised is put on cool down I won't use it anymore it's just that simple. Some cried out when dual cast raising was shown all the way up to this point and I have saved a number of runs with multiple raises. And now it seems our movesets have been gutted somewhat because people begged for more Aoe's instead of asking for scatter, Contre six, and moulinette to be improved on.

[Nalien]

I feel Red Mage got completely shafted with 5.0. Nothing they showed remotely excites me, and instead has me worried... In no particular order;

• I really don't get why we need four whole skills which sole purpose for existing is AoE rotation... Most Jobs get one skill to spam, maybe a second, and the rest is oGCDs... Scatter spam and Moulinet was perfectly fine as is... The AoE Veraero and Verthunder are just wasteful skill bloat IMO, it would have made far more sense to simply make Scatter into an AoE stance... You turn it on, Jolt/Impact are AoE, Veraero/stone/thunder/fire are AoE... Makes far more sense than wasting two new actions on nothing...
  
• Contre Sixte and Fleche still have the same lame animation... Look at all the awesome new animations other Jobs get, and we're busy just shooting a lame reskin of the Serpent Officer's Longsword from Palace of the Dead... Imagine if Paladins new skill was just them summoning a big reskin of an existing weapon, instead of the beautiful animation they got...
  
• Engagement... OK I get this skill, I use it when I can't use Displacement because Displacement will throw me off the arena... I get that... Why is Engagement 150 potency while Displacement is 200 potency, though? Why is there nothing remotely interesting about our Lv72 skill? It could easily have an additional effect, perhaps that new Charge Skill mechanic? But nope... It's just a DPS loss in punishment for certain arena designs, something which shouldn't be an issue to begin with... How hard is it to code dash backs so they can't take you off an arena? How about just using the same logic you used with Repelling Shot instead? Back at Stormbloods launch the logic there was that movement skills shouldn't have to be part of your damage rotation, so you took damage off them, yet you went and made Red Mages movement skills deal damage, and now you're persisting with that? What's more you're wasting a new skill on "fixing" the issue presented by a dash back being part of our damage rotation... This is just stupid...
  
• Scorch? Yeah that's OK. Nothing really interesting about it, just an extra step in the burst combo.
  
• Reprise. It's not offensive, it's just again, not particularly interesting. Can't say much without knowing its Enhanced potency, but I can at least see its utility, even if it is fairly niche.
  
• Manafication. Putting this here solely as a question mark. It still seems to double Mana (although in both the trailer and Live Letter, they use it at around the 60/60 mark instead of the <50/50 mark... not sure if that means anything), but it also seems to have a status effect attached to it now. Honestly this was the biggest point of interest for me in everything they showed off with Red Mage, which is troubling...

A Verdisappointing showing to be perfectly honest... Nothing stood out... Most of what we did get seems entirely redundant, Machinist gets a freakin' mecha while we get pointless AoE skill bloat...

[Zyneste]

I feel Red Mage got completely shafted with 5.0. Nothing they showed remotely excites me, and instead has me worried... In no particular order;

• I really don't get why we need four whole skills which sole purpose for existing is AoE rotation... Most Jobs get one skill to spam, maybe a second, and the rest is oGCDs... Scatter spam and Moulinet was perfectly fine as is... The AoE Veraero and Verthunder are just wasteful skill bloat IMO, it would have made far more sense to simply make Scatter into an AoE stance... You turn it on, Jolt/Impact are AoE, Veraero/stone/thunder/fire are AoE... Makes far more sense than wasting two new actions on nothing...
  
• Contre Sixte and Fleche still have the same lame animation... Look at all the awesome new animations other Jobs get, and we're busy just shooting a lame reskin of the Serpent Officer's Longsword from Palace of the Dead... Imagine if Paladins new skill was just them summoning a big reskin of an existing weapon, instead of the beautiful animation they got...
  
• Engagement... OK I get this skill, I use it when I can't use Displacement because Displacement will throw me off the arena... I get that... Why is Engagement 150 potency while Displacement is 200 potency, though? Why is there nothing remotely interesting about our Lv72 skill? It could easily have an additional effect, perhaps that new Charge Skill mechanic? But nope... It's just a DPS loss in punishment for certain arena designs, something which shouldn't be an issue to begin with... How hard is it to code dash backs so they can't take you off an arena? How about just using the same logic you used with Repelling Shot instead? Back at Stormbloods launch the logic there was that movement skills shouldn't have to be part of your damage rotation, so you took damage off them, yet you went and made Red Mages movement skills deal damage, and now you're persisting with that? What's more you're wasting a new skill on "fixing" the issue presented by a dash back being part of our damage rotation... This is just stupid...
  
• Scorch? Yeah that's OK. Nothing really interesting about it, just an extra step in the burst combo.
  
• Reprise. It's not offensive, it's just again, not particularly interesting. Can't say much without knowing its Enhanced potency, but I can at least see its utility, even if it is fairly niche.
  
• Manafication. Putting this here solely as a question mark. It still seems to double Mana (although in both the trailer and Live Letter, they use it at around the 60/60 mark instead of the <50/50 mark... not sure if that means anything), but it also seems to have a status effect attached to it now. Honestly this was the biggest point of interest for me in everything they showed off with Red Mage, which is troubling...

A Verdisappointing showing to be perfectly honest... Nothing stood out... Most of what we did get seems entirely redundant, Machinist gets a freakin' mecha while we get pointless AoE skill bloat...

Our support side of RDM is practically gone with the exit of Manashift/apoc/erase. We could at least pretend to be support with those skills, but yeah lets delete them so we can have even less to do during single target encounters.

If we had gotten even one support skill that would be worth while, like GUN's Aurora, I wouldn't have this foul taste in my mouth, but it feels like we are shifting into BLMs with 10% less DPS, with reworked tools that already had answers in 4.0 and just the same old boring tunnel vision as any other dps.

[Nalien]

Our support side of RDM is practically gone with the exit of Manashift/apoc/erase. We could at least pretend to be support with those skills, but yeah lets delete them so we can have even less to do during single target encounters.

Ah right, I'd forgotten. Caster additionals were almost completely gutted too... It's a shame, I'd liked to have seen stuff like Erase reworked and expanded upon... Although honestly I was never a fan of the additionals system... When we had to pick 5 our of 10 of them it had potential, most outright weren't worthwhile but if they were adjusted it could be an interesting system. Now that they're just essentially default skills? Hate how they're shared across Jobs to be honest... I miss the extra class identity provided by Dark Knight having Shadowskin instead of Rampart, or Scholar having Leeches instead of Esuna, for examples.

Still, as it was there was still potential... I enjoyed Verraising healers and topping their MP off with Mana Shift. I enjoyed using Erase to help with healing and potentially save healers an Esuna cast. I enjoyed timing Addle before AoE magic attacks, and Apoc before single target ones... Such a shame to see all that gone...

At the very least I guess at least Red Mage should get a fair amount of adjustments over 5.x... That or we'll be ignored for an entire expansion like Machinist and Dark Knight were...

[Zyneste]

Ah right, I'd forgotten. Caster additionals were almost completely gutted too... It's a shame, I'd liked to have seen stuff like Erase reworked and expanded upon... Although honestly I was never a fan of the additionals system... When we had to pick 5 our of 10 of them it had potential, most outright weren't worthwhile but if they were adjusted it could be an interesting system. Now that they're just essentially default skills? Hate how they're shared across Jobs to be honest... I miss the extra class identity provided by Dark Knight having Shadowskin instead of Rampart, or Scholar having Leeches instead of Esuna, for examples.

Still, as it was there was still potential... I enjoyed Verraising healers and topping their MP off with Mana Shift. I enjoyed using Erase to help with healing and potentially save healers an Esuna cast. I enjoyed timing Addle before AoE magic attacks, and Apoc before single target ones... Such a shame to see all that gone...

At the very least I guess at least Red Mage should get a fair amount of adjustments over 5.x... That or we'll be ignored for an entire expansion like Machinist and Dark Knight were...

Addle is staying. Its the only thing we have left.

Instead of Tank buster incoming -> Apoc

Well have to adjust to Tank buster incoming -> Hey rdm can you get the Verraise.

[Nalien]

Right, Addle, Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast and Surecast, right?

I think I heard something about Surecast having a significantly increased recast timer too? That really sucks as well IMO, as it currently is it's timed perfectly for most fights. Something like Chaos it feels rather good to pop it before every knockback while the rest of your party positions to not be knocked into death. Guess they need to make Reprise more worthwhile somehow though, guessing they designed that as the "Use when repositioning" skill.

[Archwizard]

I really don't get why we need four whole skills which sole purpose for existing is AoE rotation... Most Jobs get one skill to spam, maybe a second, and the rest is oGCDs... Scatter spam and Moulinet was perfectly fine as is... The AoE Veraero and Verthunder are just wasteful skill bloat IMO, it would have made far more sense to simply make Scatter into an AoE stance... You turn it on, Jolt/Impact are AoE, Veraero/stone/thunder/fire are AoE... Makes far more sense than wasting two new actions on nothing...

I... disagree, actually. The main concern towards our AoE was that it was boring -- you just hit Scatter over and over, 7 casts to the Moulinet, unless you were at exactly 3 targets where you alternated Verthunder/Veraero. Under the new system, it's inverted from our single-target rotation, which is at least a change to be less repetitive if nothing else; arguably the two could also have niche purposes in single-target to adjust our mana totals, since they're shortcasts that don't rely on procs.
Meanwhile, your suggestion of "just give us an AoE stance" would make AoE gameplay as boring and uninspired as you claim the new 71-80 skills are. Sure, we don't AoE terribly often in full party content, but I find myself doing a lot of it in alliance raids and dungeons, which is a fairly large aspect of the casual experience.

Bear in mind, the two new actions are actually marked as low-level skills replacing Scatter, not as part of our five advancements. Also, while skill bloat is a concern, it's only insofar as every job is "bloated" -- we were actually on the lower-end as a new job, and with 6 Role Actions going away and Verholy/Verflare getting their buttons rolled into the original Veraero/Verthunder, we'll actually have more slots ending Shadowbringers than we had starting Stormblood.

My only point of contention with the new AoEs is that they went back to Veraero and Verthunder -- they didn't even name them "Veraero/thunder II", and while I'm sure these are WIP names, the fact they exist for completely different purposes than the versions we already have is just confusing. I'd much rather they change one of the pairings to Ice and Water spells.

Contre Sixte and Fleche still have the same lame animation... Look at all the awesome new animations other Jobs get, and we're busy just shooting a lame reskin of the Serpent Officer's Longsword from Palace of the Dead...

I rather like their animation -- way more exciting than the loads of "summon a crystal overhead" cooldowns and spells we see everywhere.
Hell, I'd want them to expand on their style. Imagine us being able to summon a wall of those crystal swords as a barrier skill, like Armiger Noctis (or Ultimate Form Sora) does to guard.
Who cares what sword model they use anyway? Outside of Gpose they're not on screen long enough for you to bask in their glory or anything.

Engagement... OK I get this skill, I use it when I can't use Displacement because Displacement will throw me off the arena... I get that... Why is Engagement 150 potency while Displacement is 200 potency, though? Why is there nothing remotely interesting about our Lv72 skill? It could easily have an additional effect, perhaps that new Charge Skill mechanic?

Because Yoshi wants us to do flips into and out of melee, rather than just having them be niche mobility and escape tools. I agree that putting such a drastic difference on Engagement versus Displacement is punishment towards the players for bad encounter design, and I would have much rather they had taken the damage off of our movement skills entirely... but I also disagree with making Engagement as powerful as or better than Displacement, since its core purpose is not to be a full replacement, but a niche alternative option. A better option than giving new effects to Engagement would be to shorten or remove the gap between it and Displacement, and then add more non-damage effects to Displacement (in addition to the backstep) as incentives to its use over Engagement.

Also, I... feel like you don't understand the new Charge system all too well if you're suggesting adding it to Engagement, when it shares a timer with Displacement, which presumably would not have charges.

I think I heard something about Surecast having a significantly increased recast timer too? That really sucks as well IMO, as it currently is it's timed perfectly for most fights. Something like Chaos it feels rather good to pop it before every knockback while the rest of your party positions to not be knocked into death.

I would assume they changed Surecast specifically because of those kinds of encounters actually -- it allowed us to completely ignore some mechanics and skip the intended risks of such fights. Sure that would have been a good thing for like, a Black Mage to root themselves in one spot and not have to worry about getting knocked off the platform just long enough for them to be able to throw out a couple more casts, but... we're not Black Mages, we actually have some mobility between casts.

Meanwhile, Lucid Dreaming's CD was halved, which is a victory lap for us (and to a lesser extent, SMNs) and our MP concerns.

[LeoLupinos]

I'm really disappointed about RDM in 5.0, and I'm getting the same bad feel I felt about 4.0 DRK after the Job Action trailer, and it all turned to be very true to my bad feelings.

About the new actions:
Reprise: This skill is disappointing. They should have just changed enchanted riposte to be ranged instead of WASTING a new skill slot with such an underwhelming action.
Engagement: This is another wasted new skill slot. Should have just changed Displacement to be impossible to fall off the edges.
Scorth: The only good thing they added, but I feel it could be so much more.

Now about Veraero and Verthunder: They should have changed the AoE and single target to be the same action, being Aoe by default and turning into their powerfull version when dualcast is active. But instead of using Impact they should have created Verwater and Verblizzard as the new AoE 5s cast time.

The feeling I had with DRK in 4.0 is that if they had added nothing to 3.0 DRK then it would still be better than the 4.0. RDM 5.0 is the same thing. I find 4.0 RDM better designed.

I would trade the new actions with:
Reprise: New AoE finisher for moulinet.
Engagement: Some new action that have some mechanic with casting Verflare and Verholy. Ex: enable to cast Verflare after Verholy and vice-versa during 20s (to match Embolden), with that we could cast 4 times in the 20s if we use manafication. I would change embolden to not fall of every 4s for the red mage, only for the party members.
Verthunder: Verblizzard with 5s cast time.
Veraero: Verwater with 5s cast time.
Scorth: I don't really know what this action does, so I don't know if it's worth keeping of changing.

[Archwizard]

How hard is it to code dash backs so they can't take you off an arena?

Engagement: This is another wasted new skill slot. Should have just changed Displacement to be impossible to fall off the edges.

Y'all do realize that that wouldn't help us at all on fights like O11 or Bahamut, right? Fights where the arena is wide enough that you won't fall off, but just touching the edge will lead to you receiving massive damage or just instantly dying?

Again, I agree that Engagement is not a perfect solution to that issue, but if you'd rather just have Displacement as-is and just be forced to lose even more damage...

I find 4.0 RDM better.

... You realize that aside from role actions, they removed nothing from our toolkit, right? 4.0 RDM still exists within 5.0 RDM's design. You could skip the new skills and the only thing you'd lose is tediously alternating Jolt II with Impact.

Except for our AoE being... loads better than now? You're welcome.

[Nalien]

I... disagree, actually. The main concern towards our AoE was that it was boring

All AoE is boring... Actually Red Mages is already one of the more interesting ones... Scatter spam into Moulinet is more interesting than simple Death Blossom spam, or Total Eclipse spam, or Quick Nock spam, or Spread Shot spam...

What's more, who even cares if AoE is boring? AoE is such a small part of this game, and certainly not the focus in the majority of endgame content, yet "You have new AoE tools!" was pretty much the main focus of Red Mages new toolkit... Other Jobs got new AoE as well of course, but they seemed to have got AoE in oGCDs, which is honestly what I'd prefer... AoE oGCDs like Contre Sixte still have value in single target scenarios, while GCDs like Death Blossom don't.

Meanwhile, your suggestion of "just give us an AoE stance" would make AoE gameplay as boring and uninspired as you claim the new 71-80 skills are.

That suggestion was more to not waste action slots on AoE. I'm not a fan of the skill bloat we're seeing (which is an odd thing to say during a skill prune, but here we are...). Just converting an already existing skill (Scatter) into a stance? Achieves the exact same thing without bloating our hotbar. Actually arguably it can achieve more; Verstone and Verfire could become AoE as well, heck Vercure could. That'd be interesting.

A stance also lends itself nicely to giving Red Mage a new direction to go in; Stances that alter the effect of its spells. Said it in another thread, but I think Bravely Seconds Spellcrafting system would be a nice fit for Red Mage.

Except for our AoE being... loads better than now? You're welcome.

I don't see changing AoE so it's the inverse of our single target rotation to really be "loads better". It honestly makes no difference to me, AoE is such a minor part of this game that I really shouldn't care. The only reason I do care, is that this was the main focus of what they showed with Red Mage, while everything else is equally niche and unexciting... They're all technically improvements, some like Engagement are dumb improvements but still an improvement, but they're all so incredibly minor and boring... Meanwhile you look at what other Jobs are getting in their 5.0 Happy Meal? It's incredibly disappointing.

Machinist can summon B.O.B and I can spam White Scatter and Black Scatter instead of just Scatter in dungeons? Excuse me if I'm a little peeved at that.

Because Yoshi wants us to do flips into and out of melee, rather than just having them be niche mobility and escape tools.

What he wants is stupid then, and someone needs to let him know that. How they clearly intended Red Mage to be played isn't even how I play it most of the time... I reversed the usage of Corps-a-corps and Displacement and live in melee range most of the time for that sweet sweet autoattack damage. Heck some encounters make that a requirement anyway... The whole "You dash in, melee combo, dash out and Verholy!" is a poorly designed rotation from the onset, at least as far as Corps-a-corps and Displacement are concerned... It basically a mechanic that looks nice for trailers and nothing else, in terms of gameplay we're not locked into doing it that way, nor does it really add anything... If anything it takes away, since you're using them for damage rather than saving them for escapes...