Praise for RDM design

[StriderShinryu]

Come for praise for the RDM job design, stay for (another) thread complaining about SMN/RDM balance.

[Averax]

I was interested at first, but the rotation started to bore me a bit in shadowbringers and it's still just sitting at level... 74? I should give it another go eventually, but i feel like it hasn't changed all that meaningfully in the past few years and the same things that bored me about it before will surely do so again.

Never know, though. I'm currently in a job identity crisis anyway because healing is so damn boring anymore. I should not be so bored healing relatively new content, the part where it's supposed to be the most exciting.

[Gruntler]

Come for praise for the RDM job design, stay for (another) thread complaining about SMN/RDM balance.

You can tell that SMN is in a bad place because they're not doing their usual complaining about BLM/SMN balance using the mantra 'Raises aren't actually utility if you need them you shouldn't clear! and we should be doing BLM damage' and instead are here with 'Raises are too strong a utility to give to RDM we should be doing more damage.'

I mean SMN is undertuned, but let us RDM have our first expansion where we're NOT undertuned and enjoy us avoiding the expac launch shitshows that we usually have faced in the past.

[Kaedys]

I mean SMN is undertuned, but let us RDM have our first expansion where we're NOT undertuned and enjoy us avoiding the expac launch shitshows that we usually have faced in the past.

It's not even about tuning. RDM is simply fun right now. The Manafication change was absolutely exemplary, as was the change to mana costs and generation levels, giving us substantially more room for pooling and timing melee combos, and a much MUCH smoother opener. I was initially ambivalent about the Acceleration change, but it's also phenomenal. Add to that an additional spell finisher, and one that looks and feels amazing (swirly swirly punch LASER), a raid buff that's no longer so weird and bad for backloaded burst windows (cough Samurai cough cough), and a new additional raid defensive tool that we 100% didn't need (but I won't say "no" to), and RDM is in a fantastic spot. Flashy, flexible, strong on support, and having a very dynamic and fun rotation. A+ design in EW, imo.

My sole wishlist item is that they'd reduce the mana cost of Enchanted Reprise. Because of the change to mana costs elsewhere, and the increase in our mana finisher potency total and general rotational potency, using Enchanted Reprise is now slightly more than twice as much of a potency loss as it was before, meaning it's actually better to spend a fair percentage of a GCD doing nothing at all than it is to use Enchanted Reprise for that GCD. I'm fine with it being a DPS loss to use versus the main rotation, all of the instacast mobility buttons are, but Enchanted Reprise is rather especially bad atm (especially compared to itself back in Shadowbringers, when 5/5 mana wasn't 10% of a melee combo). They need to either reduce the cost and boost its potency a bit, or remove the cost entirely and reduce the potency a bit. Personally, I'd prefer the latter. Still, with the number of options RDM has for movement (60-70% of our rotational time isn't limited by movement, and that's not including our mana combo, plus Acceleration and Swiftcast), it's rarely an issue. Just feels bad, how harsh of a loss Enchanted Reprise is versus its Shadowbringers incarnation, which is purely a result of it not being adjusted alongside the other changes.

[Gruntler]

It's not even about tuning. RDM is simply fun right now.

Oh. Yes. Very yes.

The Manafication change was absolutely exemplary, as was the change to mana costs and generation levels, giving us substantially more room for pooling and timing melee combos, and a much MUCH smoother opener. I was initially ambivalent about the Acceleration change, but it's also phenomenal. Add to that an additional spell finisher, and one that looks and feels amazing (swirly swirly punch LASER), a raid buff that's no longer so weird and bad for backloaded burst windows (cough Samurai cough cough), and a new additional raid defensive tool that we 100% didn't need (but I won't say "no" to), and RDM is in a fantastic spot. Flashy, flexible, strong on support, and having a very dynamic and fun rotation. A+ design in EW, imo.

The change was so good it made ShB RDM look bad in comparison, like it stripped apart ShB RDM's issues that we just accepted as things we had in our lives and went 'Okay, but how about if we don't have all these things.' EW is so far ahead of ShB RDM and I loved ShB RDM.

My sole wishlist item is that they'd reduce the mana cost of Enchanted Reprise. Because of the change to mana costs elsewhere, and the increase in our mana finisher potency total and general rotational potency, using Enchanted Reprise is now slightly more than twice as much of a potency loss as it was before, meaning it's actually better to spend a fair percentage of a GCD doing nothing at all than it is to use Enchanted Reprise for that GCD. I'm fine with it being a DPS loss to use versus the main rotation, all of the instacast mobility buttons are, but Enchanted Reprise is rather especially bad atm (especially compared to itself back in Shadowbringers, when 5/5 mana wasn't 10% of a melee combo). They need to either reduce the cost and boost its potency a bit, or remove the cost entirely and reduce the potency a bit. Personally, I'd prefer the latter. Still, with the number of options RDM has for movement (60-70% of our rotational time isn't limited by movement, and that's not including our mana combo, plus Acceleration and Swiftcast), it's rarely an issue. Just feels bad, how harsh of a loss Enchanted Reprise is versus its Shadowbringers incarnation, which is purely a result of it not being adjusted alongside the other changes.

I can't disagree but I can accept Reprise being worse than before simply because of how much additional movement we got and flexibility in other areas. Like, if that's the cost I have to pay for having the rest of the rotation the way it is, I can't really complain--I've already had Christmas.

[Tulzscha]

Does RDM change very much from 65 to 90? I haven't found it terribly interesting but that's as far as I leveled it. I know some jobs change a lot in the later lvls but it looks like all RDM gets are extra bursty spells added onto their melee combo.

[Gruntler]

Does RDM change very much from 65 to 90? I haven't found it terribly interesting but that's as far as I leveled it. I know some jobs change a lot in the later lvls but it looks like all RDM gets are extra bursty spells added onto their melee combo.

Kinda? You get Vercure, Verraise and later Magick Barrier so you get more utility tools in your kit, as well as Enchanted Reprise as an emergency movement option. You just got Manafication which helps a lot, but honestly most of the changes we're gushing about are changes to the core gameplay relative to Shadowbringers, rather than stuff you'll experience through levelling. Other than upgrades to spells (potency buffs, upgrades like J1->J2 or VT->VT3/VA->VA3, Scatter->Impact) you're not really looking at much gamefeel change.

Where the real meat is though, is when you start delving deeper into the job, stuff like Vercure becames an important downtime dps-tool, having a longer combo and charges on displacement and corps-a-corps means having longer free movement, having Verraise means you're going to steal clears your group didn't earn, having Resolution gives you the ability to cleave things that many jobs can't... it's all gifts that won't change your life, but will make it nicer and have more subtle value.

The job is fairly straightforward up front, it doesn't surprise you with new tricks and it doesn't flip your gameplay upside down every ten levels, which can be 'boring' to some, but also makes doing anything 60+ more enjoyable than jobs where a key enjoyment of their kit comes in a later package. And there's enough depth in the gameplay that there's always room to improve, despite the front-loaded accessibility.

[Kaedys]

Does RDM change very much from 65 to 90? I haven't found it terribly interesting but that's as far as I leveled it. I know some jobs change a lot in the later lvls but it looks like all RDM gets are extra bursty spells added onto their melee combo.

A fair amount. You get Verholy and Verflare at 68 and 70, then Scorch at 80, then Resolution at 90. It greatly extends and empowers the melee combo with some very powerful spell follow-ups. Since Verholy and Verflare guarantee a Verstone/Verfire proc, but only if they are the low mana, it introduces an additional element you want to consider before using your melee combo (specifically, ensuring whichever of your manas is lower does not currently have a proc on it). You also need to make sure you're aware of which mana is your low one, and use the proper finisher for that mana. The combination of Verflare/Verholy, Scorch, and Resolution also generates a fair amount of mana (+19/8, 27 total, or an average of 9 per GCD, versus an average of 5-5.5 from your normal generator filler), which noticeably accelerates how often you can enter your melee combo. They also look and feel really good. Resolution (the new level 90 ability) in particular feels very satisfying, imo.

You also gain a second charge of Acceleration at 88, which alters how it gets used (from "on cooldown" to "before it hits 2 charges", and thus giving you flexibility to use it for movement and such). The upgrade to Manafication at 78 is pretty important as well, from a gameplay perspective, as it means you must go into your melee combo immediately after using it (or, in certain edge cases, use it between the melee combo piece and the spell followup piece), because you need the next 6 abilities you use to all be as high potency as possible.

Still, Verflare/Verholy + Scorch + Resolution is the most significant change from 65 to 90. RDM below 68, you basically just use your melee combo whenever it's not actually lethal to be in melee range. After you get Verflare and Verholy, you get some additional pre-requisites to its usage due to the conditional guaranteed proc. And because the melee combo itself gains a substantial amount of potency (those 3 spell finishers together do a bit more than twice as much damage as the 3 melee abilities), it becomes more important to time it around things like raid buffs and important burst phases in the fight. Those spells also do AoE splash (at -60% falloff, but that's still ~800 potency per secondary target across the 3 spells), which makes them really satisfying to use in AoE, and makes Enchanted Moulinet feel better. It also means you want to pool to 60/60 and use 3 Enchanted Moulinets in a row, followed by the spell finishers, rather than just throwing out Enchanted Moulinet whenever you want, as you can while under 68.

[StriderShinryu]

Snippity

Nothing really to add, but just want to say that this is an excellent breakdown of things. RDM is funny in that way because it really does build on itself very organically throughout the levelling process. "On paper" it can feel like all it does is get a new "ender" every once in a while but when you actually see it put forward like this it really does put truth to why it actually feels so empty when you sync down. I'd be hard pressed to really say why it feels so empty but this lays it out very well.

[Ramesses]

Finally-- a thread with truly positive, critical, truthful, concise, unbiased feedback.

It's been quite amusing watching the English forums gradually get cluttered with whinging while the other global forums are focused on constructive feedback.

Personally, I just finished leveling RDM to 90 on my main and it feels very polished. Manafication works brilliant, the bursts flow well and I like the new AF design (though I still prefer the lvl 80 AF boots).

Well done Devs-- can't really think of any way to improve on the class at the moment. Thank you.