Red mage 7.0 Wishlist

[Connor]

I’m not an RDM main (more of a rdm casual lol) but I’m all for it getting more support options. Personally I’d like to see at least one debuff in Red Mage’s kit since it’s the only thing it’s really ‘missing’ to complete the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ fantasy. It has damage (ofc), healing and resurrection, damage and defensive buffs (Embolden / Magick Barrier), so I think some kind of debuff spell would be the perfect way to round things for the job.

Maybe like PvP Frazzle that increases damage taken by the enemy. They could have it give a defensive effect depending on mana balance, like more White making it give a small HP shield to party/target.

Also I don’t think ‘giving it a defense buff’ means it’s going to have sub-Dancer levels of dps. I mean, if that’s how they balance things how in the world is Black Mage not penalised for Manaward or Aetherial Manipulation. Both can be pretty significant for survival. I’m not seeing Reapers being heavily taxed for being able to give a party wide Regen either…

[Jade_Tyrant]

Do not give anymore OGCD moves. There is currently too many OGCDs in the opener. Another OGCD would certainly result in a triple weave (ew).

Personally I'd be happy with a few more oGCD moves. As soon as you hit Scorch in the opener, you've got room for more oGCDs without triple weaving and still within buffs. Obviously wouldn't want a ton more, but we're unlikely to get more than one or two new ones regardless. Don't have anything specific I really want from oGCDs, so wouldn't be upset to not see any new ones, but I don't think triple weaving (or more likely, leaving something out of the opener) would be a real issue even with more oGCDs to hit.

Give red mage a way of building resource during down time. Other than manafication. Manarushing misaligns parts of the swordcombo with embolden, which isn't ideal in my opinion - its a weakness brought on from downtime, not a strength. Popping manaification when a boss is gone, i'm looking at you A8s and the ultimates, feels bad.

-OR-

Give red mage a time built resource like xenoglossy or afflatus misery. The ultimate fights feature too much downtime and they have fallen behind summoner and black mage in this expansion due to those classes benefiting greatly from down time as of 6.0.

Downtime
Resource builders struggle in fights with down time - we need a fix for that.

"I want a vercure during downtime that gives me a free bahamut"

We have a weird nichie where vercuring during down time isn't a bad idea (unless you're 3 sword hits into your finisher but that's an entirely different niche set of scenarios).

---

(...)but maybe, our resource building flaw could be solved by having us do something that benefits the party during down time. A meditation, or dance, something that perhaps supports and sets us up to damage.

Don't really agree with some of the specifics here (don't really want us to just get a copy of Xenoglossy or Afflatus Misery), but in the broader strokes, I do like the idea of us getting something that helps us during downtime a bit more than just "Vercure to get a free Dualcast when the boss shows back up." Something like Samurai's Meditation would actually be cool; slow build up of gauge while we hover in place and/or (visually) steal BLM's Leylines to store up more power for later.

Maneuverability
A lot of people have personal examples of how that has been rough this expansion. The latter half of this expansions content demanded some movement for some mechanics that were beyond the red mage toolkit so they'd miss out on damage or generally not have as much fun trying to pull it off as other classes. Try and share what you wish you could have had to solve this that other classes may have.

Honestly, I... haven't personally found RDM mobility to be a huge issue, but I also haven't been doing Savage for various reasons (didn't do the second tier on RDM, haven't done anything past P9S in the third tier), so some of the rougher movement mechanics there might be the ones in question that I've not encountered.

The movement in the Extremes has been fun to optimize, though. The 6.4 EX is one I've seen some complaints about, but I really enjoyed figuring out how to best make use of all my movement tools there to not lose uptime without failing any mechanics.

A funny (but likely not happening) way to help mobility issues would be for instant casts (Swiftcast and Acceleration) to still give Dualcast, which would make them give two instants instead of one.

You're not gonna get more DPS (relative to other jobs), because there is no way in heck they will make Red Mage deal more damage than Summoner from a design perspective. That's never going to happen because Red Mage is a hybrid support-DPS job by the jobs design, and by long standing FF tradition.

So yeah, at least give RDM:
a) More support so it justifies it's lower damage (it's not a tax it's intentional, calling it a tax is ridiculous when it's literally the jobs design to use support).
b) More tools/options to make use of their main ability: dual cast.
c) A mechanic/bar that can that be toggled between white/black magic boost like they have on PVP, boosting support abilities when White, and boosting damage when Black or altering effects of certain abilities like in PVP.

Red Mage is a jack of all trades, master of none type of job. It's never going to be a high damage dealing job, just as Black Mage will never get a heal or a res.

PS: Checked and yeah RDM is basically on par or very slightly bellow SMN in damage. Exactly as it's intended. So yeah, we aren't getting more damage unless it's by non-intentional imbalance.

Yeah, the comments from the devs on the 6.5 changes made it pretty clear that RDM has low damage by intent, and the only way that would change is to remove their support actions, which I do not want to happen myself.

a) I like the idea of more support, though I don't have a lot of faith that extra non-damage-related support buttons would really feel worth it? Between healers and tanks, there's so much free healing and mit that it doesn't feel like there's much a RDM could bring to that table that'd be worth it.

b) I like this in concept though I'm admittedly struggling to think of what that could be...?

c) Personally I like an idea I saw in another thread where the Black/White shift mechanic turns into a Dance Partner-like mechanic instead, with both active at once and buffing other party members; I can't help but feel like if RDM had a White/Black Shift mechanic that was like PvP, it would just become "Black Shift bc damage is king." I suppose if it was something like "White Shift in prog, Black Shift any other time" it could work?

Personally I’d like to see at least one debuff in Red Mage’s kit since it’s the only thing it’s really ‘missing’ to complete the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ fantasy. It has damage (ofc), healing and resurrection, damage and defensive buffs (Embolden / Magick Barrier), so I think some kind of debuff spell would be the perfect way to round things for the job.

Maybe like PvP Frazzle that increases damage taken by the enemy. They could have it give a defensive effect depending on mana balance, like more White making it give a small HP shield to party/target.

I think Frazzle overlaps a bit with Embolden, in regards to functionality. They're both "party does more damage", and I'm unsure they'd want to give RDM a second raid buff like that.

Maybe this (and my above comment regarding Black/White Shift) is me giving in to the devs and the "damage meta" too much, but I don't really like the idea of Frazzle swapping between support and damage based on mana, since it'd quickly become "always be higher on Black mana".

[Milkbeard]

I’m not an RDM main (more of a rdm casual lol) but I’m all for it getting more support options. Personally I’d like to see at least one debuff in Red Mage’s kit since it’s the only thing it’s really ‘missing’ to complete the ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ fantasy. It has damage (ofc), healing and resurrection, damage and defensive buffs (Embolden / Magick Barrier), so I think some kind of debuff spell would be the perfect way to round things for the job.

Maybe like PvP Frazzle that increases damage taken by the enemy. They could have it give a defensive effect depending on mana balance, like more White making it give a small HP shield to party/target.

Also I don’t think ‘giving it a defense buff’ means it’s going to have sub-Dancer levels of dps. I mean, if that’s how they balance things how in the world is Black Mage not penalised for Manaward or Aetherial Manipulation. Both can be pretty significant for survival. I’m not seeing Reapers being heavily taxed for being able to give a party wide Regen either…

Now red mage does have a defensive buff in magick barrier and an offensive buff in embolden that makes the enemy take more damage already. Building upon your idea more, would you like to see those two moves condensed into one button, or perhaps both are provided for a longer duration and it shifts between the two based on preference or mana balance?