I'd like more sword play from RDM in the future, melee and ranged

[Klaleara]

The thing that I enjoy the absolute most on the RDM is their sword based abilities.

That includes both their ranged sword based abilities, and their melee abilities.

The ranged is just awesome looking. I'd really like to see more, turn me into Gilgamesh for all I care. Best looking abilities in the game.

And secondly, melee. I personally (And I'm sure I might be in the minority here) would love to go back and fourth between ranged and melee more often. Or stay in melee longer. While I'm not cap level, I do have the double mana type ability, and melee still doesn't happen as often as I'd like.

[Leareaux]

I agree OP. I find it a bit frustrating that we build up Mana slowly and expend it extremely fast.

I'd instead like to see the amount of Mana stored be equivalent to a 'melee mode' duration. Using your first melee combo action will commence the countdown, and every combo chain you complete gives you a holy/flare damage up buff. So your obvious goal would be to start your melee mode with the minimum amount of Mana to complete the most amount of combos. And to make your movement a bit more flexible while in melee mode your dash-in/dash-back move CDs are greatly reduced for its duration.

[Cetek14]

RDM is first and foremost ranged caster. Current design is completely fine. What we need is separate "spellsword/spellblade" job.
I don't want to say your idea is bad and you should feel bad, but if we go too far with melee abilities, we basically turn this job into melee, which is not the point.

[Shurrikhan]

Same. But "tradition!" apparently means that we need to relegate our mechanics into purely nominal classifiers to cover up the fact we're bloated af and that our weapon has to amount almost solely to a four-step uptime-dependent Foul...

:: Above all, RDM suffers from the "leaving space" problem. We can't have Time Dilation on AST because of an eventual Time Mage, can't have any real elemental play on Conjurer because we might some day get Geomancer, can't have any interesting pet interactions beyond aimless auto-heals because we might some day get a healer with a pet that isn't either clunky or irrelevant, etc. And so we're stuck with a sword that amounts to a caster-limitation rather than a means of versatility.

Nonetheless, I may try to do a full write-up at some point aiming to make more out of RDM's elements and swordplay, if I can keep from getting too perfectionistic this time.

[Duskane]

RDM is first and foremost ranged caster. Current design is completely fine.

lets not get ahead of ourselves now

[Klaleara]

RDM is first and foremost ranged caster. Current design is completely fine. What we need is separate "spellsword/spellblade" job.
I don't want to say your idea is bad and you should feel bad, but if we go too far with melee abilities, we basically turn this job into melee, which is not the point.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say we should always be in melee. I would just like it to happen more often. Either make it so we can jump in more often, or make it so we have more to do while in melee.

Side note: I'd really appreciate it if our engage had a temporary second charge after we use it. Nothing like jumping to an opponent, and they teleport away to another location. Or die mid combo. Be nice if we could do a second engage within a time period, to quickly switch targets, and keep our combo smooth feeling.

[Kolsykol]

I kinda want a straight up Fencer class instead, but that's very unlikely to happen.
For some reason Rapiers are just incredibly rare in games, it's the same with Spears.
Then when we get a Rapier class it's basically a mage xD.

I still like RDM, but maybe the melee phase should be longer.

[Kuroka]

What i want is a aoe finisher, like, do 4x the aoe combo and then boom. It kinda sucks we only got single targed flare/holy/"then new spell i dont know in english".

[BasicBlake]

Hell we use our sword way more than the years I played the class in XI. But I think I am one of the few rdm players who is fine with the amount of sword skills we have for being a caster.

[PatronasCharm]

I'm torn between either A: Getting more sword abilities (which I'd be OK with, as long as it builds meter not depletes it)

or B: I'd like it to branch more caster-wise and have Verwater / Verblizzard / Verflood / Verburst and perhaps I'd assume they'll get Vercure II in the next expansion.

So, for me, to bring justice to a Magical Melee, I'd prefer SE to make a completely new Job focused solely on melee/magic, a Spellblade / Mystic Knight etc.