6.0 Red Mage speculation

[Jonnycbad]

Vercure is basically Verwater as it has a light blue aura around the red mage's feet when casting and a blue aura on their sword hilt. They just didn't want to make all the Ver spells offensive. In my mind Fleche is our ice spell (I know it's physical and unaspected, but the swords look like they're made of ice,and it physical to make it not synergize with embolden.

[Archwizard]

Vercure is basically Verwater as it has a light blue aura around the red mage's feet when casting and a blue aura on their sword hilt. They just didn't want to make all the Ver spells offensive. In my mind Fleche is our ice spell (I know it's physical and unaspected, but the swords look like they're made of ice,and it physical to make it not synergize with embolden.

You've been saying that for a long time and been debunked on several counts before. I'm not going to derail another thread by addressing it, so I'll leave it at this: Ultimately as you've just admitted, that's just your headcanon until the devs say otherwise.

And let's be honest, even if the devs did explicitly say that was the intent, people would still ask for "real" water and ice spells regardless. It doesn't help that literally zero full-casters available have access to water damage, making it appear underrepresented and neglected, while BLM holds a monopoly on ice magic.

[Mhaeric]

You've been saying that for a long time and been debunked on several counts before. I'm not going to derail another thread by addressing it, so I'll leave it at this: Ultimately as you've just admitted, that's just your headcanon until the devs say otherwise.

And let's be honest, even if the devs did explicitly say that was the intent, people would still ask for "real" water and ice spells regardless. It doesn't help that literally zero full-casters available have access to water damage, making it appear underrepresented and neglected, while BLM holds a monopoly on ice magic.

Y'shtola uses water and she's a full caster

[Hypephoon]

Honestly, I'd like to see the class embrace more of its sword magic (introduced with Fleche and Contre Sixte). I'm surprised they didn't build upon it more in ShB.
Overall, I enjoy the way the class involves red magic, there's a nice split between the red magic itself aesthetically (Scorch and Jolt are pretty cool) and it's black/white spells. However, I think the classes true separation from it being a generic FF class is within its sword skills, which are seemingly unexplained in lore and in game. They are by far the most visually appealing aspects of the Job for me, yet they feel so out of place as it begs the question of how they are related to the class in the first place.

In terms of bringing them more to the forefront in gameplay, maybe adding a sword skill to follow up Moliuet with could be cool.
Given how quickly we add to our balance meter now because of scorch, adding something to the melee combo seems likely, I would actually love a samurai style melee charged finisher given that the double finishers are both instant cast (Melee combo/charged finisher/Double instant cast finishers).

[Jirah]

RDM remained mostly the same with its aoe being adjusted and the fine buff to acceleration. But what RDM needs is more things to do maybe more sword play even its support is bare bones and situational. only MCH of all things is a easier job, but unlike MCH RDM has a nice base to work off of. also Embolden is rubbish

[Duelle]

Honestly, I'd like to see the class embrace more of its sword magic (introduced with Fleche and Contre Sixte). I'm surprised they didn't build upon it more in ShB.
Overall, I enjoy the way the class involves red magic, there's a nice split between the red magic itself aesthetically (Scorch and Jolt are pretty cool) and it's black/white spells. However, I think the classes true separation from it being a generic FF class is within its sword skills, which are seemingly unexplained in lore and in game. They are by far the most visually appealing aspects of the Job for me, yet they feel so out of place as it begs the question of how they are related to the class in the first place.

Part of the problem I think is that the devs shackled themselves to a design that doesn't have much room for sword skills. For weaponskills on the GCD you'd need to make them either proc Dualcast (which makes no sense concept-wise in the current design), generate mana (which makes no sense concept-wise in the current design), or deal really high damage to offset the loss of mana generation per GCD (which would be broken and probably still be a DPS loss).

oGCDs have a little more leeway, though that isn't saying much. You'd need abilities that interact with procs, or deal higher damage than the current oGCDs. The former could make sword use contribute to mana generation without breaking the hard rules the devs created for RDM sword skills (i.e, they are either regular weaponskills that hit like a soft breeze, or enchanted weaponskills that deal actual damage). One suggestion I've been thinking about is an oGCD sword skill (requires melee range because I'm a melee proponent) that consumes Verfire/Verstone Ready and generates the proc's respective mana (+9 Black Mana for consuming Verfire Ready, +9 White Mana for consuming Verstone Ready, +9 B/W Mana if you have both effects active) on a 15-20s cooldown. I also still think Engagement's damage needs to be buffed and separated from Displacement's cooldown.

To answer your question regarding Fleche and Contre, they're likely there because actual sword skills (that require swinging a sword) couldn't be in the skill list due to the job being put in the ranged caster DPS category when it was introduced. My own hypothesis is that it's also a callback to an MMD animation of a spell fencer fighting a monster (because the swords she conjured in the video were very similar to the swords we see in Fleche and Contre's animations). I thought it looked ridiculous, but some people liked it.

[Katie_Kitty]

Part of the problem I think is that the devs shackled themselves to a design that doesn't have much room for sword skills. For weaponskills on the GCD you'd need to make them either proc Dualcast (which makes no sense concept-wise in the current design), generate mana (which makes no sense concept-wise in the current design), or deal really high damage to offset the loss of mana generation per GCD (which would be broken and probably still be a DPS loss).

oGCDs have a little more leeway, though that isn't saying much. You'd need abilities that interact with procs, or deal higher damage than the current oGCDs. The former could make sword use contribute to mana generation without breaking the hard rules the devs created for RDM sword skills (i.e, they are either regular weaponskills that hit like a soft breeze, or enchanted weaponskills that deal actual damage). One suggestion I've been thinking about is an oGCD sword skill (requires melee range because I'm a melee proponent) that consumes Verfire/Verstone Ready and generates the proc's respective mana (+9 Black Mana for consuming Verfire Ready, +9 White Mana for consuming Verstone Ready, +9 B/W Mana if you have both effects active) on a 15-20s cooldown. I also still think Engagement's damage needs to be buffed and separated from Displacement's cooldown.

To answer your question regarding Fleche and Contre, they're likely there because actual sword skills (that require swinging a sword) couldn't be in the skill list due to the job being put in the ranged caster DPS category when it was introduced. My own hypothesis is that it's also a callback to an MMD animation of a spell fencer fighting a monster (because the swords she conjured in the video were very similar to the swords we see in Fleche and Contre's animations). I thought it looked ridiculous, but some people liked it.

I've actually been advocating for a continuation-type skill that you can use during your melee combo. I like the idea of having a button similar to GNB's continuation that does two things:

1) It performs a powerful oGCD melee attack in-between melee steps

2) It channels the b/w mana gauge spent on enchanted melee combo steps into a secondary job gauge which is used to perform a powerful finisher melee attack at the end.

For example

Melee 1 (b/w gauge goes down) + Continuation (2nd gauge goes up) > Melee 1 (b/w gauge goes down) + Continuation (2nd gauge goes up) > Melee 3 (b/w gauge goes down) + Continuation (2nd gauge goes up) > Verflare/holy + Melee finisher + double-weaved oGCD > Scorch + 2 double-weaved oGCDs

Maybe the melee finisher could be a DoT. Or, alternatively, instead of a melee finisher the new 2nd job gauge could produce a major damage buff for the next few spells. That might be neat.

[ZaqueXIII]

I think when speculating about red mage you need to look at the job as it is currently and the areas it is lacking in compared to other jobs, but, also see what is demanded in the end and where it has plenty.

One change I would like to see is a small MP refund for using our enchanted sword moves. Sword moves exist almost exclusively inside the burst combo so having them give us a small benefit(I wouldn't honestly refund more than 500 mp per move) would help RDM. On the OGCD front, I think as it is red mage has so much that it doesn't necessarily need more. If a continuation like addition to the sword combo would make it so the RDM is wasting fleches and contre-sixtes and their other OGCD skills over a fight which seems like a waste. Also, I've only got controller room for like 3 more buffs or OGCD's before red mage hits bloat and more GCDS is basically out of the picture

As for the AOE combo, Its really close to good but still feels lacking, AOE is only used in dungeons and other content and our DPS output there is fine, however, I would like to see perhaps a secondary sword AOE move with moulinet that maybe consumes 30 gauge but has a combo potency making it worth it so it would translate from 7 moulinets into 3 combined sword(6 actions) AOE's max. Also perhaps some kind of proc that would result in the AOE magic combo generating more black or white MP. Because in terms of getting to 100/100 currently, It takes around 14 dual casts or roughly 28 GCDS from 0/0 which is a little over a minute, I believe, of saving resources to feel a big pay off, whereas many other jobs hit their AOE stride every 30 seconds and don't have to save near as much.

Also, I might be alone in this but jobs with more than one job gauge or a useless job gauge are smelly. I think the Black/White mana gauge Does enough for us and don't want unnecessary clutter on my screen or dictating my play. there is alot of depth with the current gauge too allowing for a variety of openers and optimization.

[Jonnycbad]

As far as AoE combo goes, I would like to see something like BLU's Surpanakha added to Enchanted Moulinet.

Trait- "Enhanced Spellblade"

Enchanted Moulinet
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 to all enemies in a cone before you.
Additional Effect: Grants "Ensorcellment", increasing potency of next Weapon Skill by 30.
Can be stacked up to 3 times.
Duration 15s.

Then we get a verfinisher called Ardor that requires and then consumes 3 stacks of Ensorcellement while refunding us back 7 black&white mana like Scorch does. Like Verflare/Verholy, Ardor would replace Impact on the hotbar when you have 3 stacks.

Ardor
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 550 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies.
Consumes 3 stacks of Ensorcellment.
Additional Effect: Increases both Black Mana and White Mana by 7

This basically gives us an aoe "combo" that culminates into an AoE finisher spell. Ardor was a spell exclusive to Red Battlemage class in FF12:TZA, so I think it fits.

[Raikai]

I'm still getting around RDM, think the job is really nice without an overflow of buttons like the others. I've got some observations so far that might or might not be wrong, due to my still novice-ness to the job:

- I'd love if Engagement became the default melee 200 potency finisher and Displacement had both its damage and target requirement components removed, thus becoming purely a movement based skill, to be used on demand at the end of the melee combo or if you'd actually had to leap some other time. It always feels a bit weird to tie in utility (movement) abilities with dps components.

- I wish the potency of the non-enchanted melee combo was raised, but not to the point of being the same of the jolt>etc rotation... Reason is, there would be a few opportunities to use that on trash targets that would die too fast for you to complete cast spells... It wouldn't really affect the main rotation at all, but offer an option in such cases. E.G. Heaven on High runs where things die way too fast, I feel kinda useless as a RDM.

- I find very fun the melee aspect of the job... I wish it we had means to maintain it for a bit longer, somehow.

Edit, Adding as I'm experiencing 80's playstyle in Bozja...:

- I take that Enchanted Reprise is meant to fill in a movement-heavy moment? But even at a very low b/w mana cost, is it worth to cast a few times and inevitably delay your next melee phase? I almost never find a good situation to use that, to the point that I actually wish for a rework or something that would make it truly an on-the-run useful spell without compromising your melee phase timing.

- Dunno, but the AoE combo feels kind of incomplete. I'd love if they could expand it a bit in 6.0... Moulinet could've been an OGC so we could weave in after Impacts, or at least it could have a second combo sequence.