Red mage 7.0 Wishlist

[Milkbeard]

Now I want to put a hot fact out here that most of you, for sure aren't seeing or realizing. Self-mitigation is redundant outside of all content other than expert roulette.
Self mitigation is redundant, it doesn't negate death in any situation in which you have the slightest coordination with a healer and or tank. Every mechanic and attack *in the game* has a mitigation threshold. You meet the threshold using group mitigation. If you do not meet it, someone in the party dies. Self-mitigation is redundant because mitigation thresholds are the bare minimun expectation for surviving an AOE and are balanced around players not self-mitigating.

This is a fact ladies and gentlemen of this forum. You may not agree with it, but it is how people who clear hardcore content know exactly what moves to pop. You plan the mit, and then execute the completion of the mechanic.

Sumn personal mit, BLM personal mit, all DPS personal mit. Is redundant, a literal waste of button space.

I challenge you to come up with a single mechanic in the entire game that requires it, (spoiler) there are none. Because they are all balanced to be handled without it.

Regardless, I will add it to the post as something red mages think would be fun to use. Is it needed? It is not, never has been, never will be.

[kayll]

Self-mitigation is redundant outside of all content other than expert roulette.
Self mitigation is redundant, it doesn't negate death in any situation in which you have the slightest coordination with a healer and or tank.

Can you tell me why if you look at overall parses on fflogs, RDM has the highest amount of deaths on every fight for savages?
Even with them enabling more deaths to other classes because they can raise them?
Do you think its possible because RDM inherently has the least effective HP in the game for both magical and physical attacks due to nature of being a caster on top of not having any sort of personal mitigation?

[Milkbeard]

I don't think we can form any causal links using that data. If two classes who don't have personal mit moves are performing different in death percentages for a given encounter or phase i'd be inclined to lean more towards what you originally said about durability, hp values and resistances. Sorry that I didn't address that in your original post, that is something I too think should be changed. I don't personally think casters should have radically differing HP or resistance values than roles other than tank.

Using the statistics you mentioned, we could be asking ourselves a lot of questions about why classes die more than others. Sample sizes, clears vs wipes, party distribution, its tough -I really would like to see someone map out one mechanic from one fight and try and find something other than anecdotes or personal opinion beyond just setting the tabs to their very limited options on the site. It forms a graph and gives a percentage but doesn't really give an answer, at least as far as i've seen.

[kayll]

I don't think we can form any causal links using that data. If two classes who don't have personal mit moves are performing different in death percentages for a given encounter or phase i'd be inclined to lean more towards what you originally said about durability, hp values and resistances. Sorry that I didn't address that in your original post, that is something I too think should be changed. I don't personally think casters should have radically differing HP or resistance values than roles other than tank.

Yeah I don't actually want a personal shield for our capstone, I'm just pretty fed up over overkills of 500 damage, despite no one in my party making a mistake.
If they haven't fixed HP/Resistances values by now, I don't have high hopes, and there is currently no way to justify the massive differences they have currently.

[Silverquick]

Now I want to put a hot fact out here that most of you, for sure aren't seeing or realizing. Self-mitigation is redundant outside of all content other than expert roulette.
Self mitigation is redundant, it doesn't negate death in any situation in which you have the slightest coordination with a healer and or tank. Every mechanic and attack *in the game* has a mitigation threshold. You meet the threshold using group mitigation. If you do not meet it, someone in the party dies. Self-mitigation is redundant because mitigation thresholds are the bare minimun expectation for surviving an AOE and are balanced around players not self-mitigating.

This is a fact ladies and gentlemen of this forum. You may not agree with it, but it is how people who clear hardcore content know exactly what moves to pop. You plan the mit, and then execute the completion of the mechanic.

Sumn personal mit, BLM personal mit, all DPS personal mit. Is redundant, a literal waste of button space.

I challenge you to come up with a single mechanic in the entire game that requires it, (spoiler) there are none. Because they are all balanced to be handled without it.

Regardless, I will add it to the post as something red mages think would be fun to use. Is it needed? It is not, never has been, never will be.

Hot fact, that's incorrect.

That is way too many assumptions. First of all you assume... the healer or tank is going to be doing that. You assume... that someone is covering you. You assume... you're not going to end up outside the healers radius and be able to do that.

That is not what happens in reality...

That's what happens in a perfect world. And I can tell you one thing it definitely doesn't apply to Alliance Raids. They are chaotic and f'd up half the time. You can't control what happens there.

And I can tell you now that Personal Mit as you call it has saved my az a million times on SMN. I don't have to worry about anything like that. I have two of them, and almost never out of them, unless I really screw up. Not so on RDM. I have to constantly Vercure myself. And in your words in a Raid that is going to cost you DPS.

RDM is actually behind the other mage jobs in staying power in combat when it clearly should be one of it's strengths over and above the others.

[Rongway]

That is way too many assumptions. First of all you assume... the healer or tank is going to be doing that.

You are absolutely allowed to assume that the tanks and healers will be doing their jobs when you balance duties. That's the whole point of forcing tanks and healers in the party composition.

And every bit of content in this game that actually cares about job balance is balanced around the idea that it can be cleared with the DDs providing no self-healing and no self-mitigation because there are tanks and healers who are expected to provide enough to cover the minimum requirements for surviving the unavoidable damage in any given fight.

If people die because they failed to avoid avoidable damage, that's a player problem, not a "this job needs personal mitigation" problem.

[Shurrikhan]

Now I want to put a hot fact out here that most of you, for sure aren't seeing or realizing. Self-mitigation is redundant outside of all content other than expert roulette.
Self mitigation is redundant, it doesn't negate death in any situation in which you have the slightest coordination with a healer and or tank. Every mechanic and attack *in the game* has a mitigation threshold. You meet the threshold using group mitigation. If you do not meet it, someone in the party dies. Self-mitigation is redundant because mitigation thresholds are the bare minimun expectation for surviving an AOE and are balanced around players not self-mitigating.

This is a fact ladies and gentlemen of this forum. You may not agree with it, but it is how people who clear hardcore content know exactly what moves to pop. You plan the mit, and then execute the completion of the mechanic.

Sumn personal mit, BLM personal mit, all DPS personal mit. Is redundant, a literal waste of button space.

I challenge you to come up with a single mechanic in the entire game that requires it, (spoiler) there are none. Because they are all balanced to be handled without it.

Regardless, I will add it to the post as something red mages think would be fun to use. Is it needed? It is not, never has been, never will be.

This is objectively correct, but it's also objectively a non-sequitur if we're interested in gameplay.

No tool whose use is not yet forced is required, true. But, every tool that is generated can be give a potential use... while tools trimmed or precluded obviously... cannot.

And, perhaps more importantly still, that use does not have to be reduced to, as you've hinted, a single party-wide-coordinated use in order to forgo a healer GCD in Succor or EukProg where the party would otherwise die and every Broil/Dosis matters. It could as easily come from fights having many more small instances of avoidable damage and to be used as a personal recovery tool, or even an uptime-greeding tool, for when free external spot-healing tools are depleted and/or the timing of that damage taken would not be recoverable in time.

Does any non-tank NEED personal mitigation tools? No. Can one's total decision making, sense of agency, and variety of gameplay met within a given fight benefit from having them? Yes, most definitely.

Increasing the instances of (avoidable) damage and granting some modest self-heals/shields accordingly (that are, due to that increase, not sufficient to degrade the healer experience) may not "require" those self-saves to be used (though, if they would otherwise languish on CD, they should at least replace some ST-spot-heals), but they create a new optimization challenge, felt more deeply for those who cannot necessarily dodge every bit of damage but still experienced even by those who do. Such is a net deepening of gameplay.

________________________

Now, that's not necessarily conferrable to every type of self-save, though. There's a serious issue of diminishing returns there. For instance, if I could use Manaward to 0 a knockback after receiving a Succor/EuP and thereby nullify it completely... but I have Arm's Length that doesn't depend on anything else for that, Arm's Length is just going to become the non-contextual, no-coordination-required mechanics-canceller, which in turn may also remove the point of banking Thundercloud or Swiftcast, etc. for that mechanic. Many such tools can go too far, erasing more depth than they could possible add. So, don't take the above "if it adds to gameplay, there's merit in adding it" as a blank cheque to be used without considering net impact.

[Milkbeard]

Hot take, this is how you optimize the fun out of a game.

Sieya, this is clearly a reminder for myself that it isn't always what I say that incites a response, it is how I say it. I'm not trying to sway anyones opinion that this was like a hot shot optimization. I could have stated it differently, and I apologize. Personal mitigation is currently not too great as whole concept.(yet! who knows, it one day could change!). Optimizing all fun out of the game isn't the point of the wishlist, so don't feel discouraged, please still recommend what you would think is fun if they added it to the class in 7.0.

This is objectively correct, but it's also objectively a non-sequitur if we're interesting in gameplay.

Personal mitigation might seem like it offers an ocean of depth, and optimization, and identity, but there isn't very strong evidence supporting that it really does.

The depth of gameplay involves assuming that the bare minimum mitigation wasn't going to be used by your party. So it isn't something reactive, like some sort of skill shot, it is literally a player not trusting that bare minimum mitigations are being used, before a mechanic goes off. Either that, or you're pressing it in situations where it isn't beneficial and is just redundant with group mit.

I just don't quite agree that it is something fun, or nuanced.

Who knows though, open world solo content might get harder, personal mitigation might be a saving grace in that content and everyone could be happy. Who knows, maybe it could be a button that "negates 1 vuln" instead.

Currently for me, it is kind of a nothing burger. The majority of the times you don't need it, doesn't yet justify the times you could need it. I would rather have just increased HP and resistances. I can't deny its not something people are passionate about though, and that it doesn't deserve a spot on the wishlist.

Shurrikhan, sorry if this doesn't entirely address your argument. You're eloquent almost to a fault my friend, so apologies if I didn't grasp it all. I am going to try an not be non-sequitur for both our sakes moving forward .

[Shurrikhan]

Currently for me, it is kind of a nothing burger.

That's fair. I can often be accused of making a bit too much out of mere potential / future-proofing. That said:

The depth of gameplay involves assuming that the bare minimum mitigation wasn't going to be used by your party.

This is where we see things differently, and it doesn't come down to trust or the like nearly so much as simply fight design and the players intended to be involved in it.

If you can reasonably expect that every player will dodge every threat that is not an unavoidable party-wide, you'd be right. But I don't think that's generally so reasonable an expectation as to deny players some agency over those times when that will not be the case.

Consider:

• Almost no fights actually need oGCD heals, so long as players make no mistakes and Solace/Rapture can be saved for what movement requirements would truly prevent casted heals (while SCH pre-barriers and AST Lightspeeds and Eukrasian-Scholar wonders what cast times even are). But, we do nonetheless have those oGCD heals, and having the ability to spot-compensate for those mistakes not only offers further agency for those situations but also gives healers more to track and just generally "do" in any and all situations.
  
  
• Similarly, having some degree of burst damage available to healers, be it through above-filler-ppgcd spells or oGCD actions, feels better than not having them. They're virtually never necessary, and they aren't even part of the healer's "role", exactly, but it feels better having some than not.

Personal mitigation would not be far off from either of those two examples, except for one issue: This game's AoE heals are overpowered af. Were AoE heals partly split (200p + 1200p split over all affectable allies in range, to a max of 800p each) or by whatever other means turned into smart-heals at a far weaker maximum total potency, then non-tank personal mitigation wouldn't feel nearly so redundant or lackluster (and healing would feel better in general, to boot).

Who knows, maybe it could be a button that "negates 1 vuln" instead.

A bit of a tangent, but that is a direction I'd particularly not want to see mitigation go towards; a 30% self-shield or 30% mitigation buff, for instance, can both have that same effect as having negating 1 vuln (except in that it doesn't also save you from later hits) but can also fit other uses like greeding a weaker AoE for uptime, etc. I prefer that versatility.

[SieyaM]

Sieya, this is clearly a reminder for myself that it isn't always what I say that incites a response, it is how I say it. I'm not trying to sway anyones opinion that this was like a hot shot optimization. I could have stated it differently, and I apologize. Personal mitigation is currently not too great as whole concept.(yet! who knows, it one day could change!). Optimizing all fun out of the game isn't the point of the wishlist, so don't feel discouraged, please still recommend what you would think is fun if they added it to the class in 7.0.

I did earlier in this thread, but I know it is very unlikely since it would not only change fundamentally the way RDM plays, but could very easily become an unbalance mess of a job. Stance switching between a black and white magic stance similar to the PvP actions of RDM with white magic having a heavy focus on support abilities and black magic having a focus on personal damage, meaning it would have no group buffs or other support abilities while using black magic. Unless it is balanced in such a way that the support offered in the white magic stance equated to the same DPS in black magic then in group play you would only be using the one stance. I do feel it would give the job some kind of player expression though and much more versatility.