Rdm in 5.0?

[Nalien]

It would be a strawman if it was a stretch from what you said, but you literally just doubled-down on declaring that the gameplay of AoE and single-target should be exactly the same. Said hyperbole illustrated that the function is little different for us from what you suggested.

I fail to see how my simple apathy to AoE GCD rotations in any way leads to the ridiculousness of your strawman argument of "Just remove trash packs entirely!". Just because I simply don't care if I'm spamming Scatter or using three different spells instead, doesn't remotely indicate such an absurdity... All I'm saying is a stance achieves pretty much the exact same thing, if not more (since you can apply it to Verstone/etc and have the exact same depth of the single target rotation in the AoE one, even have it the toggle for Moulinet which frees up space for other skills, heck you could work it on Vercure if we're feeling spicy), while also paving the way towards a new avenue for Red Mage to go down (abilities that alter the spells effects).

You can dislike the suggestion if you like, but there's no reason to resort to such absurdities. Has me more incline to just ignore what you're saying than bother engaging in any form of debate.

"The devs' core intent for the class is stupid" is an implication that your design ideas differ wildly from the devs while simultaneously using insult to hold yours superior to theirs, with only personal bias to back that up. That's entitlement, plain and simple.

Corps-a-corps and Displacement are the core of Red Mage? Pretty sure the core is building the gauge, using it on the melee combo, and performing the finisher. Corps-a-corps and Displacement are just tools to help with mobility. Tools most Jobs have, but are not required as part of any DPS rotation, because SE rightly identified the issues inherent to that... Except for Red Mage, Red Mage has to include them as part of their DPS rotations because it looks cool... I'm sorry, but if you cannot see the idiotic hypocrisy on display here, then there's no point continuing this argument... I mean, I think Repelling Shot has a cool animation too, and I enjoyed it being part of Bards damage rotation before they rightly removed the damage from it because the concept didn't work in practice...

You can't really write-off the Aetherflow oGCDs in SMN's case. Painflare and Bane are both important aspects of SMN AoE, especially when they're part of activating Dreadwyrm Trance in the first place -- and of course, Bane has its own prerequisites. Deathflare is as big to their AoE as Foul is for BLMs and Contre Sixte for us.

I'm not writing them off, it's just they're oGCDs. They have cooldowns. They can still potentially be useful in single target situations. What you spam is Tri-Bind. What you spam is Fire II (or at least it was, I've not checked in with Black Mage in a long time). oGCDs are mixed in to spice things up, but Veraero II and Verthunder II (I assume they missed a II off the naming for the showcase build) are not oGCDs, they don't spice anything up IMO. I honestly just don't see a world of difference between Scatter spam, and doing Veraero II > Impact > Verthunder II > Impact. You're just pressing 1 3 2 3 instead of 1 1 1 1, there's still nothing to really keep track of or focus on... Mix a Verstone II and Verfire II in there and perhaps its a bit more interesting, since you'd be watching for Ready procs just like the single target rotation, but do that an we're really talking about skill bloat which brings us right back to "Just add a stance".

Heck, it gets worse when you factor in the potency of spells... Given Impact is 220 potency, and Veraero and Verthunder are 310 potency, Impact is worthwhile even on two mobs (120 potency more). This effectively removes what I'd be more incline to enjoy from the current AoE rotation (were I to care about AoE rotations), recognizing that we're down to three mobs and mixing Veraero and Verthunder in instead. I have to pay attention with that, that's more engaging IMO.

I disagree. It makes more practical sense to strengthen our foundations before adding more to the top, especially when you consider aspects like how long you're spending building up the gauge versus the length of the windows where you're actually expending it.

I think the foundations were solid enough as is... Veraero II and Verthunder II don't really add anything, all they've done is stabilize the gauge building by removing Scatter procs. The change that is actually nice is the one to the cost of Enhanced Moulinet, Veraero II and Verthunder II are inconsequential next to that... If gauge building is that big a problem though, I'd again say the solution is more oGCDs rather than two new AoE GCDs... Something like Manafication helps with gauge building in both single target and AoE situations, for example...

Now that I think about it, actually... It's a shame Acceleration still has no place in the AoE rotation... I always wished it would get adjusted to force a Scatter proc, since that would give you one more thing to remember during AoE rotations, but with Scatter gone that's no longer a possibility...

I'm also honestly not seeing how the new rotation is a faster buildup actually... You get to Moulinet faster purely because it costs 10 gauge less, other than that the only thing it is is more consistent because of a lack of Scatter RNG.

Lets just look at 10 GCDs for simplicity sake;

With the 5.0 changes, you'll get to 36 - 29 on your gauge. (Aero (7 - 0) > Impact (10 - 3) > Thunder (10 - 10) > Impact (13 - 13) > Aero (20 - 13) > Impact (23 - 16) > Thunder (23 - 23) > Impact (26 - 26) > Aero (33 - 26) > Impact (36 - 29))
With 10 Scatters? That's 30 - 30 with no procs. Throw a single proc in and that's 37 - 37. While RNG never works like this, 30% chance for a proc should mean you get at least two procs over 10 GCDs, which would put you at 44 - 44.

Not that I'm a fan of Scatter RNG, but well... Like I said, the main change here is the reduction to Enhanced Moulinets cost... You hit that threshold faster because of that change, not because of any change to the rate we fill the gauge, if anything that's slower, although it's nice for it not to be RNG dependent, but again I think just letting Acceleration play a role there would have helped with that...