Red mage 7.0 Wishlist

[DRKoftheAzure]

Personally I would like the RNG to be more forgiving and/or have more gauge build up for our main spells, because that RNG feels REALLY bad if you don't get any procs, or just do away with the RNG and give us more gauge build up.

[Jade_Tyrant]

The downtime after each verwind/thunder feels really bad as it breaks the flow of cast. We basically spend half of our time doing nothing waiting for the gcd to refresh. I would like the recast time of verThunder/Wind to be reduced to 2.0 or even 1.5s. (although that might be too short)

Personally not fond of this idea. The window of "doing nothing" is both where we weave in oGCDs when they're available, as well as what gives us regular movement capabilities. The shorter that becomes, the harder it becomes to weave oGCDs and the less movement we actually get. Given there's already complaints regarding RDM mobility, I'd rather not give up more of that.

I also just don't feel like that "doing nothing" feels that bad? It fits right into the pattern of "cast, dualcast, move/do oGCDs". When no mechanics are happening that require movement, and we don't have oGCDs to hit, it can get a little stale - but if that really needs fixing, I'd rather see other solutions that involve having more things to put in those windows, rather than shortening our Dualcast window itself.

[Milkbeard]

snip

Well put, I liked reading your response to all the listed stuff in the OP so far.

Personally not fond of this idea. The window of "doing nothing" is both where we weave in oGCDs when they're available, as well as what gives us regular movement capabilities. The shorter that becomes, the harder it becomes to weave oGCDs and the less movement we actually get. Given there's already complaints regarding RDM mobility, I'd rather not give up more of that.

I also just don't feel like that "doing nothing" feels that bad? It fits right into the pattern of "cast, dualcast, move/do oGCDs". When no mechanics are happening that require movement, and we don't have oGCDs to hit, it can get a little stale - but if that really needs fixing, I'd rather see other solutions that involve having more things to put in those windows, rather than shortening our Dualcast window itself.

I do agree 100% with this.

[Milkbeard]

Personally I would like the RNG to be more forgiving and/or have more gauge build up for our main spells, because that RNG feels REALLY bad if you don't get any procs, or just do away with the RNG and give us more gauge build up.

If it gives you any peace of mind, the RNG from procs doesn't affect your DPS over the course of any encounter in a meaningful way. You aren't going to lose sword combos from not getting enough procs, even in the 20-minute long ultimate fights. No other player in any encounter is building a sword combo that you aren't just because of poor RNG.

Think of bouncing between procs and jolt in your rotation like playing Pong, but no one wins or loses.

[TheDustyOne]

One thing I'll give credit to RDM is that I feel every iteration since its introduction has always been an improvement on what came before, something I can't say for a lot of other jobs.

I do have a few things I'd like to see though:

• A new spell to Dualcast into; maybe a cooldown GCD that combines a light and dark motif and increases both Black/White mana at the same rate as Verthunder/Aero.
• A buff to Reprise, either reducing its gauge cost, increasing its potency a bit, or a temporary upgrade from some other mechanic. It's a weak movement tool at the moment.
• Moulinet starting a combo, either a 2-hit combo where the second hit grants 2 mana stacks at 30|30 mana, or a 3-hit combo costing 20-15-15 like the single target combo.
• Speaking of combos, if button count is a concern, I wouldn't mind combos being condensed.
• Verstone and Verfire upgrading eventually to Verstone III and Verfire III.
• A cooldown upgrading Veraero and Verthunder into Vertornado and Verburst for a single cast, possibly an Acceleration upgrade.
• Embolden increasing damage from all of the users attacks and not just magical attacks.

For basic QoL, yeah having Sprint not consume Dualcast would be nice, why is that a thing?

[Milkbeard]

One thing I'll give credit to RDM is that I feel every iteration since its introduction has always been an improvement on what came before, something I can't say for a lot of other jobs.
[LIST][*]A new spell to Dualcast into; maybe a cooldown GCD that combines a light and dark motif and increases both Black/White mana at the same rate as Verthunder/Aero.[*]A buff to Reprise, either reducing its gauge cost, increasing its potency a bit, or a temporary upgrade from some other mechanic. It's a weak movement tool at the moment.[*]A cooldown upgrading Veraero and Verthunder into Vertornado and Verburst for a single cast, possibly an Acceleration upgrade.


Sprint not consume Dualcast would be nice

I agree, and I particularly like these suggestions. Buffing reprise echos a similar sentiment discussed on this thread. I believe you're the first to suggest the potential of Veraero and Verthunder having a temporary upgraded version via Acceleration. It honestly sounds sick AF and I am here for it. I think acceleration should upgrade those moves to higher damaging forms, heck yea.

[Milkbeard]

Anyone have more glamour suggestions or adjectives I can add to the OP?

[Renathras]

I think red mage should have a DoT or anything to give them more damage

What?

Why?

You can get more damage by just bumping up potencies. You don't need a DoT for that, just add 10 to all their ability potencies across the board.

DoTs are annoying if they're just tacked onto Jobs and the Job isn't built around it, but one thing RDM has had going for it since it started was having a dynamic gameplay loop that had no DoTs or upkeep buffs. Why would you want one? I get SMN lost the ones it had, but BLM still has its DoT, and its DoT actually has some interactions with the kit (Thundercloud, Sharpcast generated Thundercloud, and how much of BLM is built around positioning and movement with Thundercloud being a strong movement tool/option as well as the random procs being something to optimize around and adjust your rotation based on), which makes it far more useful than just tacking Dia onto RDM.

RDM is one of the more perfect Jobs in the game right now. It's easy to pick up, it has things to optimize if you want to push yourself, it has a lot of party utility, but that utility comes at a serious trade-off in damage, so it's actually a meaningful choice to make and adjust to, with resource considerations (especially Verraise since you can OOM yourself). The only issue it has is that its damage is probably too penalized, and at least for right now (granted, last patch of the expansion...), the Devs acknowledged that with the RDM potency buffs to nudge its damage up towards where it should have been this whole time.

But the problem with RDM isn't its abilities or gameplay. It's that it needs some potency bumps and then to not be touched much.

(The only other major change I'd make is do something with Enchanted Reprise like make it only cost 2/2 or 1/1 or something since 5/5 is a pretty big chunk of 50/50...), but even that isn't too big an issue now that we have Acceleration working as 2 more charges of Swiftcast so we aren't as movement limited as we might otherwise be. (Though I still think it should be done...)

...okay, I'd also consider flipping the AOE rotation, since it STILL bugs me that's backwards from single target...but even so, I would probably not want to do it now since my muscle memory would fight me forever and a day over that until I could get used to the adjustment. XD I do like what I saw someone say about just making Moulinet cost 25 and be a 2 hit combo instead of a 3 hit one, though. Not sure how that would work with the mana gem thing (though it could have a combo action with itself that the second one generates a second gem, that'd be easy enough to code/implement). In ShB, this was difference because you could 100/100, hit it twice, then Manification to get 3 more (or something like that, I don't exactly remember it) because of the way Manification worked and that Moulinet didn't give you the Holy/Flare...but I kind of like getting to use Holy/Flare in AOE, so...I'm okay with the EW chnages there.

I was thinking the other day it might be neat to get "Verscathe" as a movement tool that generated 2 black mana (and Vercure be changed to generate 2 white) so you had a few more buttons going on, but that would be a replacement for Reprise and...at this point we're stuck with Reprise.

.

I guess what I'm curious about at this point is what there's even left to add. Vermedica would be too much since Vercure (like PLD Clemency) is potentially powerful but not enough to replace healers, and Vermedica would be able to replace them. Likewise Versuna (though BRD can remove a debuff, so...). When I say I think it's a near perfect Job already, I mean it. I'm honestly not sure what there is to change/add at this point...

[Kitkat]

Honestly, and this is going to be a very unpopular opinion that is rife with balance issues, I wish they would allow RDM to switch between a white and black magic stance giving benefits of each. Black magic stance could focus very heavily on damage replacing any utility and healing with DPS tools while White magic stance could give us even more utility in addition to vercure and raise being available. I feel like it would allow for some kind of player expression with the job but I can already see how whichever stance gave the higher DPS output would be the only one people allowed RDM to play as in groups.

I have to strongly disagree with this for two reasons:


1. Having played during stance dance days, this works horribly in practice and would in fact cause more trouble than it would resolve for RDM.
2. Having played FFXI, this would dangerously put rdm close to a healer-alternative role, and trust me you really don't want to land Rdm in this spot. It will entirely destroy the identity of rdm and cause certain meta that forces rdm into a healer role. Granted the game isn't built well to force this kind of meta, but in certain instances where a healer is too much to ask for and a rdm fits the bill enough while being able to stance dance between a healer/dps role...yeah, you really don't want this. Trust me.

[Milkbeard]

I have to strongly disagree with this

I do agree with your sentiment for the exact same reasons. Stances don't belong in MMOs anymore- There isn't a good way to implement them that feels fun and not make players experience some sort of punishment, or tax, for turning them off or on. I think the dev team is beyond adding them back to the game at this point just because of how insanely hard cleric stance and making tank stances tied to damage output failed. Some players remember that stuff fondly, but all it really did was start countless arguments day and night about players thinking its ok to never dps because one move in their kit says that it is optional.

But, what else do you want to add to this wishlist though? How do you think the black and white motif can be better added to red mage that makes more sense? Do you have strong opinions about the stuff on the wishlist as is?