Red Mage: Potential adjustments

[Baklavah]

If there's one thing I learned by playing RDM, it's that some skills feel a little strange. Fleche and Contre Sixte specifically. As attacks, they have their places. However, if they were to be changed to a personal buff that changes the way the sword combo behaves, I feel they would be far more beneficial.

1st change: Fleche
The change I would make here is to change Fleche from a single-target, high damage skill with an acceptable CD to a buff that makes your melee combo into a multi-strike chain combo. Consider this. A 2nd meter that fills up alongside your Balance meter. Let's call it the "Flourish" meter. Every cast of Jolt, Jolt II, Scatter, Impact, Scorch and every use of Reprise, Enchanted Reprise would increase the meter by 5/5/5/5/10/7/15 respectively, capping out at 50 points.

Upon using Fleche, you would gain a multi-strike on sword attacks that change depending on the amount of meter you have. Activation can only be done starting at 20, granting 2 "magical shadow strikes" per skill use that follow the exact motions of your combo skills and deal 25 less potency for each successive shadow strike, with the "shadow strikes" starting at 250 potency. At 50 meter, you would have 5 shadow strikes. Buff lasts for 30s or until the combo is completed. Only affects your main melee combo (both standard and enchanted). So the logic would be as follows:

Meter - 20/30/40/50
Strikes - 2/3/4/5
Potency per strike - 250/225/200/175/150
CD - 35s to 40s

2nd change: Contre Sixte
The change I would make to this is to enhance the range of your melee combo AND grant it limited-range AoE (similar to the range of Moulinet/Enchanted Moulinet). The same rules will apply to the meter, except that it will have 2 parts. One at 25, and the other at 50.

At 25 meter, the melee combo skills will exhibit an AoE quality at 100 potency. At 50, it will be 200. The AoE only affects targets other than your initial target, and only strikes once per skill. The buff is consumed after 30s or when the melee combo is completed. Rules as follows:

Meter - 25/50
Strikes - 1/1 (AoE)
Potency - 100/200
CD - 35s to 40s

Final notes:
To make this feel powerful and not overly so, Fleche and Contre Sixte would share a CD, this way either of them could only be used every other melee combo (maximizing efficiency by maxing out the Balance Meter to use a full "Enchanted" combo), and they will provide both power and flair.

I don't expect this to become reality, but I would be A-OK if it happened.

[Rongway]

(Bunshin) (No thanks.) We're not ninjas.

RDM's action set is perfect right now. We don't need any more actions or any fewer. Its failings are in potencies. Fix Embolden's awkward "I can't buff everybody, but those I can buff get weaker every tick" and trait up the spell/weaponskill potencies a so that they're appropriate for later levels without being too overpowered at low levels and we'd be set.

[Jkap_Goat]

give me vercure II, i would love more Healing spells

[Baklavah]

(Bunshin) (No thanks.) We're not ninjas.

RDM's action set is perfect right now. We don't need any more actions or any fewer. Its failings are in potencies. Fix Embolden's awkward "I can't buff everybody, but those I can buff get weaker every tick" and trait up the spell/weaponskill potencies a so that they're appropriate for later levels without being too overpowered at low levels and we'd be set.

You missed the part where I said it was "shadow strikes". Not clones. Anyway, nice to know people aren't open minded. Kinda sad really. New ideas should be welcome and debated, not shot down because you're set in your ways with your comfort zone. But whatever. You do you I guess. :/

[StrumerJohn]

Eh, I like RDM where it's at. I don't think it needs these changes.

[Rongway]

You missed the part where I said it was "shadow strikes". Not clones.

They might as well be the same thing.

Anyway, nice to know people aren't open minded. Kinda sad really. New ideas should be welcome and debated,

I didn't say, "I don't like your idea. It's stupid."

I said no thanks, and then explained why not.

not shot down because you're set in your ways with your comfort zone.

There's a difference between "set in your ways with your comfort zone" and "the job is rotationally perfect". I'm more than happy to consider changes that take me out of my comfort zone if they are necessary to improve the job. Right now, RDM has no need of such changes, least of all one that belongs squarely within NIN's thematic demesne.

As RDMs are fencing mages, you could maybe make an argument for basically the exact same mechanic but "your weapon flares up with elemental energy as you strike, doing additional damage" instead of "your strikes are followed by shadow strikes" and I would no longer have a thematic objection. But I'd still disagree that such a change should be implemented.

[Duskane]

RDM fine atm id like more support but thats more a expansion thing

give me vercure II, i would love more Healing spells

no thanks

[Archwizard]

2nd change: Contre Sixte
The change I would make to this is to enhance the range of your melee combo AND grant it limited-range AoE (similar to the range of Moulinet/Enchanted Moulinet). The same rules will apply to the meter, except that it will have 2 parts. One at 25, and the other at 50.

At 25 meter, the melee combo skills will exhibit an AoE quality at 100 potency. At 50, it will be 200. The AoE only affects targets other than your initial target, and only strikes once per skill. The buff is consumed after 30s or when the melee combo is completed. Rules as follows:

Meter - 25/50
Strikes - 1/1 (AoE)
Potency - 100/200
CD - 35s to 40s

While the idea of a stance system is interesting in concept for our magical fencer, I have to question this particular skill for us on the grounds of practicality.
We don't need a skill to turn our melee combo into an AoE combo. We already have Moulinet for AoE. If we had an AoE melee combo that ignores Moulinet, we would ignore Moulinet full-stop.

Without Contre Sixte providing an alternative enhancement option to the combo, we'd just have Fleche adding flat damage to each melee action, which essentially makes it a waste of a skill since the devs would just reduce the individual melee actions' potency to compensate for it. And when you factor in Manafication bypassing the 40 second wait between combos, and the combo acceleration we get each expansion from things like Scorch, we wouldn't necessarily have either one of these skills every time either.
Plus it would mean losing oGCDs from between our slidecasts, which just seems like a huge waste of all that extra time.

I do think it's an interesting idea, but definitely not one for RDM. Maybe for another melee job.

RDM's action set is perfect right now. We don't need any more actions or any fewer. Its failings are in potencies. Fix Embolden's awkward "I can't buff everybody, but those I can buff get weaker every tick" and trait up the spell/weaponskill potencies a so that they're appropriate for later levels without being too overpowered at low levels and we'd be set.

I can agree with the sentiment, albeit not the specifics. RDM's kit is solid, functional, and doesn't have any glaring mechanical absences like some other jobs. It could be treated as holistic, which I think any job should kinda feel like at level cap for a given expansion.

I do, however, believe there is still room for additional expansion to the kit -- that it's a strong foundation that can be built off of, not necessarily the best it will ever be. Like how BLM felt "whole" last expansion with Foul as a capstone, but still had little spaces to slide into here and there without overcomplicating it this expansion.
In RDM's case, just to pick at a few plausible (but not strictly "necessary") openings: expanding Moulinet into a combo (or pseudo-combo), dual-Mana procs or oGCDs to accelerate the main combo without imbalance, or virtually any spell that could fit into our Shortcast-Longcast casting model. All that without having to add a second gauge (and we're one of the few jobs that doesn't have one, or any timers like DoTs or sustained buffs).

I also believe some of its issues aren't strictly related to potencies and would be better addressed via alterations to its existing mechanics. You have to know that the "Raise Tax" won't go away (if it ever does) without adjusting our relationship to Verraise.

[Eliadil]

*snip*

So, while the changes are "interesting", there are multiple questions that needs to be adressed. The first one is "does Red Mage needs to have his offensive kit reworked" ? Like, does the current gameplay/rotation of red mage feels bad ? Does his burst (since it seems that's what you're adressing) is bad or feels bad ?

The second one is "does this benefit Red Mage in any way for high end content, or simply for any kind of content" ? Is this a major improvement for savage raiding ? For EX trials ? For dungeon ? In what way ? More aoe potential (let's not forget that red mage has seen tremendous buffs to its aoe rotation) ? Is it an actual dps gain or a nerf ?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for changes that are well thought and decent, but only when they are... Needed. Currently, I fail to see in what way those changes would benefit RDM in any way/change his playstyle to make him better.

[Rongway]

just to pick at a few plausible (but not strictly "necessary") openings: expanding Moulinet into a combo (or pseudo-combo),

I can appreciate that adding a combo action to Moulinet is something people might like to see, as it would be a little more interesting than 7xMoulinet spam. But even though we only have one AoE weaponskill, we have four AoE GCDs; this is already quite high. I think the next highest are MCH, GNB, and MNK at three. Did I miss a four somewhere? (I left out SMN because their multiple sets of actions are really just one set of trance actions that get reskinned depending on which phase they're in.)

dual-Mana procs or oGCDs to accelerate the main combo without imbalance, or virtually any spell that could fit into our Shortcast-Longcast casting model. All that without having to add a second gauge (and we're one of the few jobs that doesn't have one, or any timers like DoTs or sustained buffs).

Can we really afford the extra buttons there though? This is another one where I agree more actions could be more interesting, but something that'll always need to be considered for RDM is that despite the simplicity of its ST and AoE rotations, those simple rotations have a comparatively high number of buttons due to the duality of our spells. Extra spells for us don't pose a combat design problem so much as an interface issue.

Certain types of spells would need to be added in pairs, so introducing certain mechanical concepts to the job increases the number of buttons quickly--one of the reasons I (probably unpopularly) don't think we should get Verwater and Verblizzard as new spells separate from what we already have. We got around this sort of problem this expansion by mapping Scorch, Verholy, and Verflare to Jolt, Veraero, and Verthunder, respectively, so that we could afford the extra buttons for Veraero II and Verthunder II.

We could accommodate more spells if we can fit them onto existing buttons, but adding separate buttons would be cumbersome. For this reason, I believe traiting up our existing actions is the only practical way to go:

• Ancient Magic Mastery basically analagous to Lance Mastery so we can do Enchanted Combo > Verflare > Verholy+ > Scorch, or E.Combo > Verholy > Verflare+ > Scorch. This alone would put us 9~12 mana ahead of where we would be after each of our current combos (21 mana gained, minus the cost of an extra GCD during which we would have cast another spell anyway), plus guarantee both procs.
• A trait that replaces Veraero II and Verthunder II with Verwater and Verblizzard. For example, casting Veraero II could have a 50% chance to upgrade your next Veraero II to Verwater, dealing higher damage and generating 2 extra mana.
• A mastery trait that upgrades the single target spells to tier III versions for additional damage.
• A trait that adds something more interesting to Fleche and Contre-Sixte but otherwise doesn't change what they already are. For example (but not necessarily for endorsement), maybe Contre-Sixte could grant 1 or 2 mana of each color for each target hit, or something.