Red Mages 6.5 Job Adjustment feels Insulting

[Anvaire]

That's a big assumption... as in... that I actually am having problems.

I didn't say that,

I said... I find RDM to be much more mobile now than the SMN.

If you don't dont like that... well TS, I play both. I am telling you whether you like it or not, that the SMN is no longer as mobile as it used to be. You never had those types of casting times with Summoner before. Everything outside of Ruin III was insta-cast... Now you do. Whether you like what I'm telling you or not, is not my problem.

RDM is much smoother and more consistent in mobility now.

I think in general SMN is much more mobile than RDM, but it also has 3 long GCD's that are no mobility (though you can slide cast)

In practice this means you either have all the mobility or no mobility, and if you don't prepare or have enough knowledge of the fight can make it clunky. But I think its a minor thing that isn't really a problem in comparison to Red Mage which while has "mobility" with slide cast, it is much more limited than the chunkiness SMN faces with its 3 casted GCD, worse still is that most of the time, the SMN chunkiness can be mitigated by Ruin 4, Ruin 3 slide cast swift cast and the Ifrit Gap n Smash combo.

Ultimately, though I think red mage needs a little more mobility, and SMN needs a truck load less mobility.

[Zofian]

Red Mage should be able to use Corps-a-corps and Displacement on targetted party members for mobility purposes.

[Renathras]

What's funny to me in all the RDM vs SMN back and forth people don't realize BLM is more mobile than RDM is these days.

RDM gets Dualcasts to walk around, but BLM can be ridiculously mobile AND can move that DPS-maintaining mobility around a lot. One of the benefits of being a sustained damage rather than burst Job, BLM doesn't suffer huge losses in moving around some things like a Xenoglossy or making timely use of a Sharpcast proc, and has some pretty insane mobility with Athereal Manipulation on that short CD.

RDM's mobility is limited to parts of its rotation (so is SMN's, but that's an aside and a much larger portion) while BLM can more effectively move its mobility around so it always has it when it needs it most.

It's not that RDM is less mobile than SMN.

RDM is less mobile than basically any other Job in the game, even the supposed complex, well designed, turret of a glass canon, BLM. Specifically, less "on demand" mobile.

And the sad thing is, this doesn't have to be true since it has stuff like Enchanted Reprise that COULD be tapped to help with that...but isn't. Though Acceleration and Swiftcast can help with that, and it is true that (if you don't have to evacuate the galaxy sized hitbox) the melee combo and finishers offer 6 (12 if Manification) GCDs worth of totally free mobility. It's just, again, these are locked into parts of the rotation/when they're up.

.

As for the changes, good direction, but too late in the expansion cycle. RDM and SMN should be balanced to do a similar level of damage, neither should be super behind the other.

[Shurrikhan]

RDM is less mobile than basically any other Job in the game, even the supposed complex, well designed, turret of a glass canon, BLM. Specifically, less "on demand" mobile.

Aye.

And the odd thing is that we've seen ways to fix that suggested since Stormblood, by just moving melee combo from being primarily a mobility constraint (even more so back in Stormblood) to being a mobility affordance (all the more necessary with so much mobility added across the rest of the Caster role).

There are many different ways to do that, of course, but a decent starting point is to just make it so that everything that basically gives you strict costs or outright "Do Not"s were removed.

For instance, imagine if...

• instead of melee actions canceling Dualcast, they maintained it and Enchanted melee actions even generated it;
• the base melee ppgcd were nearer to RDM's average and would it (and therefore also the Enchanted combo) be buffed at the same time as its basic potency upgrades, as not to wholly waste those buttons;
• the MP expenditure of the melee combo were proportionate to their potency contributed (e.g., 5|15|30) so that it weren't so punishing to use a partial combo and the melee combo didn't feel like a waste over the leveling experience;
• Holy/Flare were unlocked by 50 Red Mana (Black+White Mana together) being spent via Moulinet or your combo, rather than necessarily 3 consecutive uses of the Enchanted melee combo or of Enchanted Moulinet, with (one skill's worth of) excess expenditure being usable towards the next unlock; and
• the Enchanted melee combo added to the un-comboed potency, too, instead of solely the combo potency, so one could rush ahead if need be (by using just Redoublement).

[Valence]

The problem people often forget when taking such comparisons is that while tools and elements can have a certain amount of power, pushing BLM technically above RDM in terms of options (2 charges of sharpcast and thundercloud/firestarter, 2 charges of triplecast, aetherial manipulation and between the lines, ice paradox, xenoglossy, and potentially the quick cast ice/fire swaps), is the effort one needs to provide in order to deploy such options. RDM mobility options are extremely basic and simple to grasp and use, and also linear: stutter step to dodge with dualcast, or longer bursts of mobility with melee, but once one is out of those options, they're dead in the water and have to resort to Reprise.

On the other hand, BLM mobility tools are the opposite of linear in use, require the player to think which ones to burn and when, and which ones to keep for later. It also on top of it requires the BLM player to plan those ahead in the case of sharpcast or xenoglossy in order to benefit from their mobility since it's also directly tied to their core rotation. On top of it almost all those tools require preplanning in weaving them ahead in a rotation that doesn't accept a lot of ogcd slots, those often requiring spending instacasts as well to begin with (where spending instacasts helps with the use of other instacasts). The effort and ease of use involved are completely on another level, and that's often what makes people forget that BLM has more mobility tools.

I do think that's an important conditional to keep in mind.

[kajv95]

Can we talk about how Magic Barrier and Verraise were mentioned in the same sentence as to why RDM must remain low to preserve "game balance"

Magic Barrier
Reduces magic damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10%, while increasing HP recovered by healing actions by 5%.
Duration: 10s
Cooldown: 120s

My party supportive ability truly knows no bounds

[Valence]

While it technically made RDM even more supportive than rphys in Endwalker before they recently re-added or buffed BRD and MCH support abilities (Minne and The Wrench(tm) ), the irony I know, I'm sure that most RDM players would rather ditch their support for what truly matters in raiding with the ShB and EW battle system: party damage.

There is not much more to it than this.

As a rPhys player, while it would literally gut me to lose whatever is left of our identity, I'd still happily trade away all my stupid mitigation tools to be able to compete with the melee boys (and BLM). Healers and tonks have way enough of that already to face whatever is being thrown at us those days, and that's not even mentioning how pitiful healing has become anyway. This game is not about the battle system anymore, it's about doing the most damage while dodging mechanics, running everywhere, and praying that nobody dies to a body check.

[Rychu]

While it technically made RDM even more supportive than rphys in Endwalker before they recently re-added or buffed BRD and MCH support abilities (Minne and The Wrench(tm) ), the irony I know, I'm sure that most RDM players would rather ditch their support for what truly matters in raiding with the ShB and EW battle system: party damage.

Honestly Valence, despite all of my shitting on the current balance around my main's DPS, I actually would not be opposed to Red Mage being more support oriented. The problem is that they want their cake and eat it too. If I am a support caster then give me support skills worth having low dps for.

IDK if anyone else saw that one post about what could be changed about all of Red Mages kit where they proposed a dance partner-like skill called white pledge and black pledge. You attached white pledge to a healer and a black pledge to a dps and you automatically boost their healing/dps in a way that also generates mana for the RDM. That would be cool as fuck.

I will always love Red Mage, but I switched to Summoner this Savage tier because even the fight designs dont care about Red Mages. There were more than one instance in p12s where the 2 minute burst came up during mechanics that keeps the caster away from the boss, and my damage does not warrant having a pf group readjust just for me. I fucking hate it here.

[Renathras]

Honestly Valence, despite all of my shitting on the current balance around my main's DPS, I actually would not be opposed to Red Mage being more support oriented. The problem is that they want their cake and eat it too. If I am a support caster then give me support skills worth having low dps for.

IDK if anyone else saw that one post about what could be changed about all of Red Mages kit where they proposed a dance partner-like skill called white pledge and black pledge. You attached white pledge to a healer and a black pledge to a dps and you automatically boost their healing/dps in a way that also generates mana for the RDM. That would be cool as fuck.

I will always love Red Mage, but I switched to Summoner this Savage tier because even the fight designs dont care about Red Mages. There were more than one instance in p12s where the 2 minute burst came up during mechanics that keeps the caster away from the boss, and my damage does not warrant having a pf group readjust just for me. I fucking hate it here.

Agree with this.

I'm not certain by any stretch, but I'd guess that the vast majority of RDM players (including all the casuals in this as well as the raiders) like the support elements and would really hate to lose them. Casual players seem to love Vercure, and everyone knows of runs where they Verraised over a dozen times to drag a party through to the victory, and everyone knows its value in prog raid pushes. Likewise, Magick Barrier is a debatably better Addle, as it doesn't require the boss to be targetable, still has a massive radius (and doubles as your Frazzle button in PvP!), and most raidwides are magic. So it's useful utility...though the CD on it is kind of extreme. Would it REALLY hurt to be 60 sec instead of 120? Well, okay, it would hurt people on the healer side of the fence, but it wouldn't really be OP considering RDM's damage.

In any case, I think a lot of RDM players really do appreciate RDM's non-damage buttons.

The problem is that RDM either needs to fully embrace #SupportLife, or it needs to get a damage boost given the support it has now, while useful, is also situational.

[kajv95]

Agree with this.

I'm not certain by any stretch, but I'd guess that the vast majority of RDM players (including all the casuals in this as well as the raiders) like the support elements and would really hate to lose them. Casual players seem to love Vercure, and everyone knows of runs where they Verraised over a dozen times to drag a party through to the victory, and everyone knows its value in prog raid pushes. Likewise, Magick Barrier is a debatably better Addle, as it doesn't require the boss to be targetable, still has a massive radius (and doubles as your Frazzle button in PvP!), and most raidwides are magic. So it's useful utility...though the CD on it is kind of extreme. Would it REALLY hurt to be 60 sec instead of 120? Well, okay, it would hurt people on the healer side of the fence, but it wouldn't really be OP considering RDM's damage.

In any case, I think a lot of RDM players really do appreciate RDM's non-damage buttons.

The problem is that RDM either needs to fully embrace #SupportLife, or it needs to get a damage boost given the support it has now, while useful, is also situational.

Agreed, although that brings up the fact that Magick Barrier is a debatably better Addle, something that black mages and summoners also have, and is only incidentally better and most tanks and healers already come with these types of abilities baked in. It's pretty useful for that one raidwide you might block the smallest bit of damage with, but it's not something that is ever required and does not interact well with the ridiculousness that is healers at this moment in time.