Red Mage "better"??

[Gruntler]

Wereotter had a point that if melee rotation frequency increases significantly, then the dev intent of CaC falls apart, which is why it is surprising that its CD is thus far unaffected.

If dev intent was that the movement abilities were to coincide with the melee combo, then Corps-a-Corps would be locked behind 80/80, Displacement would have no damage at all on it, Engagement wouldn't exist, CaC and 'gagement would have the same cooldown, both would have cooldowns that coincide with the speed it takes to get 80/80 mana within a reasonable tolerance, and fights would be designed such that a ranged character standing 15 yalms away from a boss at all times would dovetail with the boss's mechanics, rather than put one at a disadvantage vs cones and out of range of the most common heals.

Manafication resets CaC so that you can melee in at any point on the field when you go into your burst window. That's it. That's the only thing we can intuit behind dev intent.

Seeing as we live in a world where Melee-phase gain was increased without increasing these cooldowns, where Displacement had damage added, not taken away, where Engagement was added so that you could use it wherever it was convenient rather than merely as your melee-out, and no change was made to make CaC and 'gagement line up at all, the latest boss is yet another 'fuck you have more cones' boss, and Cure III and AoE ground heals are still short range, we can safely assume their intent is not for us in 5.x is not for us to slavishly use them solely as transition abilities between standing away from the boss with spells.

The game is designed where our ranged attacks are a tool in our kit we can use, not a guideline for where we must stand in every fight ever. FFXIV doesn't design fights where spreading for long periods of time is mandatory.

[InfiniDragon]

If dev intent was that the movement abilities were to coincide with the melee combo, then Corps-a-Corps would be locked behind 80/80, Displacement would have no damage at all on it, Engagement wouldn't exist, CaC and 'gagement would have the same cooldown, both would have cooldowns that coincide with the speed it takes to get 80/80 mana within a reasonable tolerance, and fights would be designed such that a ranged character standing 15 yalms away from a boss at all times would dovetail with the boss's mechanics, rather than put one at a disadvantage vs cones and out of range of the most common heals.

Manafication resets CaC so that you can melee in at any point on the field when you go into your burst window. That's it. That's the only thing we can intuit behind dev intent.

Seeing as we live in a world where Melee-phase gain was increased without increasing these cooldowns, where Displacement had damage added, not taken away, where Engagement was added so that you could use it wherever it was convenient rather than merely as your melee-out, and no change was made to make CaC and 'gagement line up at all, the latest boss is yet another 'fuck you have more cones' boss, and Cure III and AoE ground heals are still short range, we can safely assume their intent is not for us in 5.x is not for us to slavishly use them solely as transition abilities between standing away from the boss with spells.

The game is designed where our ranged attacks are a tool in our kit we can use, not a guideline for where we must stand in every fight ever. FFXIV doesn't design fights where spreading for long periods of time is mandatory.

Or alternatively, it was just poorly implemented which does happen with SE. It's pretty clear when you look at any promotional piece for RDM when they were leading up to release or NPC RDMs like Alisaie the intent was to save the closers for the melee combo then disengage to go back to caster range, as that's how you'll see the computer characters use them or the video introducing the job back in the day, in that exact sequence.

It's just as with many things SE plans out as the "intended" design, we as players find better ways to optimize. The gap closers on cd just happens to be one that SE doesn't feel breaks the job to require adjustment, like say the TK rotation for example.