Seeing Red Again

[Joven]

Did you really not do any research on RDM before blaming the devs for this?

Short answer: yes.

Though it still doesn't answer why the melee skills are usable before charging mana because they're pointless without it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

The same reason you can use Souleater without using Hard Slash and Siphon Strike first.

[StriderShinryu]

Seems like the situation has largely been resolved but one thing I'll add in just in general is that it's actually a pretty decent idea to do a PotD run or two if you're coming back to a class after a long time away. Even for classes that aren't intended to be played "at level 1" they are all built to work at level 1 in PotD. It can act as a nice fairly quick tutorial on how the class builds as it levels without having to actually level it up again and while fighting actual enemies instead of just whacking a training dummy.

[Joven]

Seems like the situation has largely been resolved but one thing I'll add in just in general is that it's actually a pretty decent idea to do a PotD run or two if you're coming back to a class after a long time away. Even for classes that aren't intended to be played "at level 1" they are all built to work at level 1 in PotD. It can act as a nice fairly quick tutorial on how the class builds as it levels without having to actually level it up again and while fighting actual enemies instead of just whacking a training dummy.

Honestly I forget PotD is even a thing.

[Aldora]

I'm more than certain that I've had a few times where casting Jolt didn't proc Dualcast and I don't mean right after casting Verfire/Verstone. Maybe it was a glitch which is what lead me to think it only had a chance to proc.

I've had cases like this, but it usually was linked to either a "Miss" or lag, where it didn't register the proc in time.

To give you an example, when i play DNC i sometimes have the issue (lag related) that when i press either Fan Dance or Fan Dance II, Fan Dance III wouldn't proc immediately. About half a GCD later it would still proc, but by then i pressed the next weaponskill or Fan Dance (I or II), losing the opportunity to use Fan Dance III at that time. Or when you press a step action, the next one in line doesn't proc immediately. Since you can see in which order you should press the step actions, i would still press it, only to find out that the server didn't register it as the next valid step action. Then i have to repeat it in order for it to register correctly.

It is pretty annoying when that happens several times during an encounter. (T_T )

[Metallium]

FYI sprint consumes a dualcast proc(I do that alot and forget)

[Genz]

Though it still doesn't answer why the melee skills are usable before charging mana because they're pointless without it.

Because FFXIV has a lot of small design errors and incoherences like these to look interesting. If they removed them, we'd have "less skills" and some players would complain, even if the gameplay would be exactly the same.

Combo in general are the best example : second and third skills of a combo are useless alone, but we can use them.
(when they added combo in 1.20, there were some case where using the second skill alone had a different effect)
But as Dragoon for example, we can't use Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust outside the combo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And in PvP, the devs did have the realization to put the combos on 1 skill.
Also all the skills that get automatically replaced when some condition are met, like True Thrust -> Raiden Thrust : we could argue that it needs to be a separate skill and it's down to the player to have the "skill" to use it correctly.

tl;dr : it's just arbitrary.

[Virlym]

I decided to try Red Mage for the first time since unlocking it way back when it was introduced in Stormblood and I got to say I was confused with how the job was meant to be played. I had to have a friend explain the mechanics to me because the tooltips don't. Like at all.

They honestly do explain a lot if you take the time to understand what you're reading. lv 1 trait : Dualcast - "Grants the effect of Dualcast upon casting any spell with a cast time. While under the effect of Dualcast, your next spell will require no time to cast. Effect is canceled upon execution of any action other than an ability. Auto-attacks do not cancel effect." So from this, you understand that when you hard-cast a spell, the next spell is instant. When you look at your spells, you'll see cast times of 2.5s and 5s. This should tell you that you hard-cast a 2.5s spell, proc Dualcast, then insta-cast a 5s-cast spell. And that's 70% of the job's gameplay right there. you then read that your job gauge is just keeping track of 2 mana colors, each spell you cast gives you a certain amount of one or both of those colors, your sword skills drain this colored mana to become empowered. It all flows nicely if you take the time to read.

Why doesn't Jolt mention that it reduces the cast time of Veraero and Verthunder? Or that it has a chance to proc Doublecast?

See Dualcast's tooltip.

[Virlym]

What's the point of even having the melee skills available all the time if they're useless before you charge up your mana?

Melee skills aren't 100% useless before you have 80/80 or more colored mana, they just aren't optimal before then. One of the best things that happened to RDM this expansion was that they got Reprise at lv 76. Before that, you were subjected to your cast times and sub-par mana dumps for long movement. As deceiving as it is, RDM is actually the least mobile of the three casters. Yes, we may have the most time in a given fight where we can move, we can't control when we get it like the other jobs. BLM can force insta-cast procs for skills and save them for a time, they also have triplecast. SMN gets a phase in their rotation that just allows all their GCDs to be instant cast. Both of them can plan to have these high mobility times in their rotation when they need it in a fight. RDM isn't so lucky. We have an insta-cast every other GCD, and we have a melee combo that's dependent on how much colored mana we have. So before reprise, unless you had perfect procs to get your mana just where you needed it, ended a hard-cast spell just when you had to start moving, had swift up for after you used the Dualcast proc, and that ended into you having enough mana to start your melee combo while being in melee range, it was hard for RDM to do long movements (we all hate you Pantokrator). Rather than just running around for 10s not casting anything, it's better to just use the melee combo (without the finisher) just to keep the GCD rolling (a little damage is better than no damage). There's also times when you died, got raised, then had to spend all the mana you had to raise some1 else. In times like these, you could go through the 1-2-3 of the non-enhanced melee combo to allow you to have some mana rather than cast a spell, then sit there waiting for your mana to regen before you can use the Dualcast on another. Again, not optimal, but something is better than nothing.

[Virlym]

Not that it helps now, but I think that all the jobs should have started at level 1 so there's an easier time to learn and a better possibility for more competent players in high level dungeons.

Honestly, I HATE playing RDM under level 70. Without access to Verflare and Verholy, it just isn't satisfying to go into the melee combo. It feels like I'm barely gaining any dps than if I just sat and casted the entire time. But like someone previously said, there is always PotD if you really want to start something at level 1.

And as to the sometimes your Dualcast didn't proc. Remember that it only procs off a hard-casted spell, not a specific spell. To exemplify this example, the opener has you hard-cast a Verthunder/Veraero and use the Dualcast proc on the other. In normal play, you wouldn't hard-cast one of those 5s spells, but in an opener with a countdown, you have the time so you might as well get the extra potency and colored mana. Also to keep in mind that lag is a thing. The best thing to do is to reduce lag, but if you can't, you learn to play around it (or find another job that isn't affected by lag as much). One tip would be to stutterstep each hard-cast to reduce the lag impact. When a spell has about 0.3s - 0.5s left of it's cast, you start moving. Your character will still continue the cast, but you can get a little movement in and be ready to start casting the moment your GCD comes back up without having to wait for the lag between casts. This is even more helpful for RDM because it gives the server a little longer to register that you have a Dualcast proc. But lag can kill any job, not just RDM, it's just something you either fix, or learn to deal with. For example, I used to raid on AST back in HW and SB. At times, I would lag when I used the Draw ability, the ability would go on CD, but I wouldn't have a card.