RDM 7.4 changes and job identity

[Solilunaris]

anyway i have no idea of the reception of these changes in jp, but i hope they either rollback the change or add the "positionals". it would be a nice change

[Azurarok]

anyway i have no idea of the reception of these changes in jp, but i hope they either rollback the change or add the "positionals". it would be a nice change

Mostly positively received on twitter as far as I can tell, mixed to positive on the forum thread (not counting my own posts, obviously). In other places I see comments like "finally, took long enough". There does seem to be a few that do care about job identity, but it's definitely an uphill battle and balance/ease of use tends to be favored much more. I kinda think most people who really cared about job identity have long left or given up.

I don't expect it to be rolled back for the rest of the expansion, if ever.

[Daralii]

Mostly positively received on twitter as far as I can tell, mixed to positive on the forum thread (not counting my own posts, obviously). In other places I see comments like "finally, took long enough". There does seem to be a few that do care about job identity, but it's definitely an uphill battle and balance/ease of use tends to be favored much more. I kinda think most people who really cared about job identity have long left or given up.

I don't expect it to be rolled back for the rest of the expansion, if ever.

They're probably just going to end up increasing the baseline range to be on par with spells. You aren't playing Red Mage, you're playing [Caster], and [Caster] needs full uptime at range for the sake of the script.

[ForsakenRoe]

They're probably just going to end up increasing the baseline range to be on par with spells. You aren't playing Red Mage, you're playing [Caster], and [Caster] needs full uptime at range for the sake of the script.

Wonder if they'll also adjust SMN's Ifrit-Dash too then, though that one might slide under the radar because you can shift the timing of when the dash gets used around in the rotation, and it never falls in the 2min window

The idea that 'you are playing [role]' does explain some things. Like 'why does SCH/SGE kit feel 90% identical', or 'why is every Tank apparently trending towards having the same rotation as WAR'

[Miradelle]

In a scenario where every other job can do their bursts and you would be the odd one out sitting in your corner hitting embolden and just dual casting, do you really feel that's fair or not? Granted there are not many scenarios like that right now, but i think the changes were meant for the upcoming savage tier and potentially new ultimate. There were some fights where it was tough but not impossible to get off a melee and quickly get out again. P12s p1 or p10s come to my mind. But if getting off the melee becomes an impossibility due to the fights mechanics, i'd rather be able to do my burst from range. It is still just speculation if there will be fights where it will be impossible but the new extreme is already kinda tough to get the melee off in some scenarios.

Just go in as fake melee if you're an RDM in savage.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Just go in as fake melee if you're an RDM in savage.

That would be the ideal way to handle it, but thanks to the DPS number philosophy shift since Endwalker of melees generally having to be the highest damaging role (sometimes by a large margin), it kind of leads to a soft-forcing of running two true Melee DPS and having Red Mage fight for a ranged position instead.

If damage values were more condensed between DPS roles similar to how it was in Shadowbringers and Stormblood, then running a melee RDM would be far more viable since you can safely play an additional two ranged jobs for the R1/R2 position without sacrificing a lot of damage potential for not running double melee.

But that would require a philosophy shift on part of the balancing team. Red Mage and Summoner utlities are overtaxed to hell anyhow.

[Infindox]

I'm confused what is so "job identity breaking" about it when you're still forced to do the other melee attacks in melee range when it's not up, and did nothing to the rest of the kit. I personally like it; if I know a fight well enough I can choose to save it for when a mechanic forces me away from easy melee range.

[StriderShinryu]

I'm confused what is so "job identity breaking" about it when you're still forced to do the other melee attacks in melee range when it's not up, and did nothing to the rest of the kit. I personally like it; if I know a fight well enough I can choose to save it for when a mechanic forces me away from easy melee range.

I think the most major concern here is that this is just a "canary in the coal mine" type situation. Sure now the job doesn't play that much differently than how it used to (and you're still encouraged to be in melee range for burst in a group situation given corps and engagement) but it creates a bit of awkwardness in how the job plays.. and the most likely next step for the devs to take after this given this change and their past history is to just throw the entire melee combo itself out the door by making it all ranged all the time. Of course none of us KNOW it's going to happen that way, but the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour and all that.
Not to mention there's also the fact that Red Mages also had a tool in Reprise that could have served this exact purpose by becoming something like "Magicked Reprise" when under Manafication but instead of changing/updating that they instead chose to dunk on the uniqueness of the melee combo instead.

[Voidmage]

I'm confused what is so "job identity breaking" about it when you're still forced to do the other melee attacks in melee range when it's not up, and did nothing to the rest of the kit. I personally like it; if I know a fight well enough I can choose to save it for when a mechanic forces me away from easy melee range.

Like StriderShinryu said, it's mostly the worry about what comes next.

If this was the very first change for a job or if others hadn't be handled so extremely in the not so distant past, then you would see far less outcry and defensive voices about it.
The problem is that the job designers have a horrible track record of keeping job identity alive and given how other jobs have been handled, the next logical step would be for RDM to loose it's melee range identity and skill expression of it next.
It also doesn't help that the devs are again far too secretive as to what they even plan in 8.0 or what they themselves see as job identity so this change seems like the first step to what they want to do.

The only thought they have shown for the jobs lately was to adjust them for fight designs.
One can like or dislike that but it's a clearly one sided direction without even listening to the other side or giving them alternatives.

[Valence]