Mmm. I wouldn't say that I feel overly cheated. More that the irony kind of smacks me in the face.
Seems like they thought that they had a winning chemistry with Red Mage. So, they went for more or the same; with the only true improvement being - as I alluded in my previous post - the addition of Scorch and the breadcrumb QoL we got with the traits.
It's more that I felt Scatter+Scatter wasn't something that was broken, so, why fix it? The fix, so far as I'm concerned, lessens the Red Mage experience rather than enhance it. I get that the addition of Aero 2 and Thunder 2 means that there's a choice to make for the Red Mage's player to choose what mana color to raise... but did that really need to happen? If Holy Spamming is fine, why wasn't Scatter spamming fine?
Though, more to the point, there's also extra shelf space being taken and I'm not fond of the contorsions required on the keyboard to simply cast the things (It was one thing to mash Ctrl+0 in Stormblood, but now I have to dance between Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3 and Ctrl-4 a whole lot and my left hand really resents going through those contorsions).
Where single target is concerned, the Red Mage feels snappy, powerful and overall rewarding. But the AoE current setup?
Not a fan.
I'm not going to be flipping desks over it, nor to I expect it to change during Shadowbringers' patches, but my tiny hope is that if I make my voice heard, maybe it'll get streamlined by the next expansion. In the meantime, I'll be grateful to any tank that isn't inclined to double-pull since I won't feel like AoEing while playing Red Mage. Maybe I can find a positive spin to this by reviewing my keybinds in order to make the AoE experience less of a chore to execute ad nauseum.
After all, I'm posting here because I want to like the Red Mage.![]()