Red mage 7.0 Wishlist

[Milkbeard]

If you are really doing it that way, you are spending way too much time building up to 100 Mana when you don't need to anymore. In reality you only need to build up to 50 mana to do a combo, I go 60 for a buffer but not always. The Dual Casts are about half what you demonstrated in your chart. It's why I'm sitting in melee all the time. You get even a single proc which you usually do after a finisher, and you're building much faster even than that. The only time I'm up at 100 Mana is when I'm building up for Boss fight with trashmobs in dungeon or Alliance Raid for the next fight.

Secondly you are assuming everything is an 8-Man what you showed only applies there, not to Alliance Raids or Expert Dungeons.

But even if you were to assume that, You're still spending time building to 100 when you no longer have to do that. It's much quicker these days. Yeah Enchanted Reprise kinda falls into the unused toolset now, but doing faster finishers will do more damage in the end, because that's the big damage portion and you do it much faster and more of them.

And it is because of that, and because you end up just sitting in melee range all the time that I am starting to suggest staying power in melee. Hence the Adlo idea and DEFINITELY extending the Magic Barrier to be the equivalent time to Embolden.

Just to quickly follow up with this.
Silver,
he listed the exact amount of time that is necessary for building the mana for a combo. It is a fact that you are casting more than you are sword comboing as a red mage. Its not just a preference, style of gameplay, or tailored to a specific encounter, red mage literally needs to cast more than it can do melee hits in all given encounters.

The mobility issues that individuals are talking about exist specifically within savage and ultimate content. No jobs, including red mage, have any mobility issues in the content outside of savage and ultimate raiding. To understand where people are coming from with the mobility gripe with red mage, you have to share their same experience- if you aren't doing that content, then yea, of course you can say that you have no issues with mobility, but that does not mean the class doesn't have mobility issues. It literally cannot do some of the mechanics because it's mobility is tied to its burst. Other jobs have utility that helps them move, we literally have to give up burst to move sometimes.

[mallleable]

An idea that's been rattling around in my head is giving RDM the ability to force their mana gauge to become imbalanced, while giving them access to melee combos that cost either black or white mana. How I imagine it would work is RDM would get an ability called Vertriple or something which allows them to instantly cast Verthunder II/III or Veraero II/III, the spell hits three times, and the mana generation is tripled for each hit, forcing an imbalance which can be corrected by spending the imbalanced mana on an astral or umbral melee combo. Vertriple would be on a 60 or 90 second cooldown. I think it would be a good mobility tool as well as just varying up the kinds of melee combos that can be preformed.

[Rongway]

No I'm really not,

If you are really doing it that way, you are spending way too much time building up to 100 Mana when you don't need to anymore. In reality you only need to build up to 50 mana to do a combo, I go 60 for a buffer but not always. The Dual Casts are about half what you demonstrated in your chart.

Whether you build up to 92|81 with Manafication available to do a triple combo or you combo immediately on 50|51 at every opportunity, you MUST spend the same amount of time building up Mana every 110 seconds: about 28 GCDs, less 1 Dualcast for residual Mana if your procs work out perfectly, plus up to 2 additional Dualcasts if you don't get any procs at all. That's between 65 and 80 seconds of Mana generation every 110 seconds. Whether you split this time into three sections or one is irrelevant. You still spend that much time on Mana generation, and during most of that time you can only move in short 2 second steps.


If a party burst ends immediately before an in-out or out-in mechanic and you have a depleted gauge, there may be no mobility option but to use E.Reprise, and E.Reprise is currently not a button we want to press. That would be easily fixed by making it cost a charge of timed gauge and increasing its potency or making it generate positive Mana.

[Silverquick]

Just to quickly follow up with this.
Silver,
he listed the exact amount of time that is necessary for building the mana for a combo. It is a fact that you are casting more than you are sword comboing as a red mage. Its not just a preference, style of gameplay, or tailored to a specific encounter, red mage literally needs to cast more than it can do melee hits in all given encounters..

Lol don't worry this isn't about me and Rongway in some kind of fight.

He doesn't play that way either,(ie the way his chart demos). He knows full well not to go to 100%.

The things we are talking about came out of the end of Shadowbringers when there was a new way of Red Maging put forward back then. And I remember him being one of the people putting it forward. It's why I know he doesn't play that way either. It was basically this... the idea of skipping Enchanted Reprise and just using the bump from Verflare/Holy + Scorch to run faster combos and staying in melee the whole time. I was skeptical back then because I didn't think that it would make that much difference as Reprise was 300+ potency.

But decided to give it a try anyway and it did actually result in more combos, it wasn't overly significant, just worthwhile to do.

That didn't come until Endwalker.

Now we the finisher is VerFlare/Holy (600p) + Scorch (680p) + Resolution (750p) for a whopping 2000+ potency and a much more noticeable bump in Mana from them allowing you to combo almost repeatedly with a LOT less time spent doing Dual Casting. Because just as often as not you go Verfire/Stone ready when you do your finisher with an even bigger manabuild after that.

Now it really is eye-popping. His ideas may not have been significant back then, but they are now. RDM is, believe it or not, much more mobile now than it used to be due to that, and we spend significantly less time Dual Casting.. BUT the RDM playstyle has changed significantly to account for that where we really do spend that much more time in melee range.

While I do not deny that your point about the bad design of the Savage/Ultimates is true, that does not just affect RDM that affects all melee classes tied to a gauge not just RDM. RDM just happens to be affected by it because... well we are one now just due to the way things work.

Sad that Reprise fell to disuse, but

[Milkbeard]

An idea that's been rattling around in my head is giving RDM the ability to force their mana gauge to become imbalanced, while giving them access to melee combos that cost either black or white mana. How I imagine it would work is RDM would get an ability called Vertriple or something which allows them to instantly cast Verthunder II/III or Veraero II/III, the spell hits three times, and the mana generation is tripled for each hit, forcing an imbalance which can be corrected by spending the imbalanced mana on an astral or umbral melee combo. Vertriple would be on a 60 or 90 second cooldown. I think it would be a good mobility tool as well as just varying up the kinds of melee combos that can be preformed.

Nice, there is a lot going on with this design idea, but i'm kind of here for it. It isn't too derivative due to the nature of verflare giving more white mana and verholy giving more black mana. I think this kind of change would see the skill ceiling being raised, but could also be very rewarding.

[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?

[VictorSpoils]

1. Buff Enchanted Moulinet
2. Buff Embolden & Magick Barrier
3. Increase Verfire/Verstone timers from 30 seconds to 32 (JK, but not really)

[SaberMaxwell]

My core wish is to maintain RDM's current gameplay flow. Honestly I wouldn't mind too bad if we maintained EW RDM, or got ShB potency Reprise for RDM.

Casters *should* have these mobility difficulties, they're the spine of the gameplay loop imo. And yes, Red Mage does have significant mobility challenges, anyone who's played the job in savage or ultimate could attest to that. Summoner being the outlier that it is is the issue imo.

[Milkbeard]

1. Buff Enchanted Moulinet
2. Buff Embolden & Magick Barrier
3. Increase Verfire/Verstone timers from 30 seconds to 32 (JK, but not really)

You share the same sentiment as a lot of others. Simple actions such as these would protect the classes current flow while making it more competitive, which many seem to value.

Are you comfortable with the current status quo of the red mage glamour scene? lol

[Milkbeard]

My core wish is to maintain RDM's current gameplay flow. Honestly I wouldn't mind too bad if we maintained EW RDM, or got ShB potency Reprise for RDM.

Casters *should* have these mobility difficulties, they're the spine of the gameplay loop imo. And yes, Red Mage does have significant mobility challenges, anyone who's played the job in savage or ultimate could attest to that. Summoner being the outlier that it is is the issue imo.

I have seen this sentiment before, that mobility difficulties are part of the classes identity. That it could be a skill issue on behalf of the user. Now something we do know for sure though is that groups that bring a red mage into content such as the ultimates are currently seeing more phases and encountering longer clear times because they are bringing red mages. The damage variance is quite large and the job must be played at it's upper 90s percentile to compete with some classes' average dps output. Do you think the class should have mobility issues as well as lower average dps? Or do you think a higher damage output would be appropriate if it is to maintain it's current low mobility.

Most importantly
This is about forming a wishlist for devs to see. What changes or additions do you think could be made in 7.0 to either remedy or maintain your level of fun playing this job. There will no doubt be changes to the job but what kinds would you think would be most fun. If I were to think from your perspective based on your message, it might be most fun to have the job receive traits that upgrade animations and potency but maintain everything that was established this expansion with it's current rotation, leaving everything intact as is.