Red Mage is Range Combat? (Discussion)

[VanilleFang]

Some use it as a primary healer, others, their primary magic DPS. Some use it for the melee attacks, and backup spells. There are two things that make a RDM a RDM.

RDM is a jack-of-all-trades. Using it as a primary anything is purposely gimping your party.

[AlphaFox]

RDM is a jack-of-all-trades. Using it as a primary anything is purposely gimping your party.

While true, some just work better that way. Think I ran FF1 with a Warrior, Thief, Blackmage and Redmage, guess who got stuck healing when it was needed? :P

[Hyrist]

As said at the presentation it's the other way around. Chain spells building a melee attack or two, then flip back for finish spell, hence their "ranged dps" identifier. Their focus is staying out of melee range and I expect them to spend 75'ish % of their time there.

Actually nothing that specific was mentioned. Only that's classified as Ranged DPS and that it will use Ranged and Melee attacks. Other than that, they stuck pretty tightly to the slides - even went as far as to say that they will reveal more as time goes on.

It was a teaser, nothing more. I'll remind people how 'evasion' was jumped on when Dark Knight was first teased, and illustrate how little that aspect meant anything.

I won't speculate where the damage comes from or what percentage we'll be front/back lining. Honestly this will be a delicate balance no matter how they play it. I'll reiterate that it's good to have the job confirmed finally and bow out before the sour grapes spoil the fun out of the game for me again.

[ckc22]

IMO it doesn't look anything like dragoon's jump or ninja's assassinate but much more like plunge/repelling shot - which are entirely different.

[Nihility]

the way he described it is like the combination they use skills in will be important.
he said they will start out casting spells from range with cast times, then enter melee range for sword attacks, then go back to casting for chainspells

it honestly sounded to me like it will play a lot like monk, just instead of side and back it will be going between range and melee
More accurately it's going between casting and fighting but by the video the sword skills may just induce the melee/range cycle automatically

perhaps along the lines of spells will give you an "empowered sword skills" buff and then sword skills will give you a "chain spell usable" buff type of deal
and the utility side is apparently limited healing(one spell on a cooldown?) and a battle res

[AlexanderThorolund]

Not particularly impressed with the magic dragoon gameplay choice, so far. I've pretty much lost all interest in the expansion because of the way the job currently feels really halfhearted.

No offence but I find that quite rude. I'm not interested in Red Mage at all. Out of all the FF jobs it's the one I was least looking forward to them adding but even I can see that a lot of thought has gone into the class, in both combat and style. I have to take my hat off to them for that. It looks incredibly well thought out.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

No offence but I find that quite rude.

Everyone has an opinion. As it stands right now, RDM looks like a soulless copy of BLM with a gimmick of occasionally swinging their sword for one attack before retreating. I agree that the animations look amazing, but the gameplay style it seems to have looks incredibly lacking in creativity. All I'm hoping for at this point is it at least has some support abilities.

All of this, of course, is not meant to demean the aesthetic of the job I adore, however it is my two cents that I personally find this job to be about as uninspired as could be.

At least it has a sweet vpose.

Honestly you sound quite ridiculous right now. You've lost all interest in the entire expansion because a minute long video that showcased like three whole moves weren't up to your dream of what RDM is supposed to be?

They showed a lot more than just three moves. There were at least 9 different moves used within the video, only two of which actually involved the RDM being in melee range. It's not a seamless blend of spell and steel like a classic true RDM is, it's a range heavy job with a one-off gimmick, as far as I can tell.

All I can realistically hope for now is it has some sort of worthwhile support skills.

No, there were not at least 9 different moves. At most 5. The video was literally 0:49 seconds long, more than half of which was battle stance and victory pose. So, effectively, you are basing your entire disappointment of the whole expansion on maybe 20 seconds of game play.

Three cast spells, one buff, one charge in, one melee attack, one leap back, and one finisher. That's a lot more than 5

[NorthernLadMSP]

They showed a lot more than just three moves. There were at least 9 different moves used within the video, only two of which actually involved the RDM being in melee range. It's not a seamless blend of spell and steel like a classic true RDM is, it's a range heavy job with a one-off gimmick, as far as I can tell.

All I can realistically hope for now is it has some sort of worthwhile support skills.

No, there were not at least 9 different moves. At most 5. The video was literally 0:49 seconds long, more than half of which was battle stance and victory pose. So, effectively, you are basing your entire disappointment of the whole expansion on maybe 20 seconds of game play. Sorry, but that's an extremely over-dramatic and negative way of thinking.

[Duelle]

No, there were not at least 9 different moves. At most 5.

0:31-0:36 - Three spells. Already worrying that the first thing the job does is start casting spells from range.
0:37-0:42 - Gap closer, followed by multi-hit WS, followed by Repelling Shot.
0:43 - not-Flare.

I counted 7 skills. So 1/4 of available skills assuming the lv60 cap. That's still quite a bit, even if we assume that skills automatically switch RDM from ranged to melee.

The video was literally 0:49 seconds long, more than half of which was battle stance and victory pose. So, effectively, you are basing your entire disappointment of the whole expansion on maybe 20 seconds of game play. Sorry, but that's an extremely over-dramatic and negative way of thinking.

It's not unfounded disappointment. RDM is a melee mage. They not only classified it as ranged caster, but started the demo at range instead of melee range (which to me is a red flag). That they classified it a caster tells me we'll get some AoE attack that we'll almost never get to use as our LB, which is a pity because I wanted to see us get something like Chant du Cygne as our melee LB.

Considering that almost every job preview has given us an idea of what the involved jobs do in combat, that short vid so far is saying RDM will be staying out of melee range for most of combat, dashing in at set intervals before going back to ranged. Which means they ignored all the "RDM belong on the front line" threads, not to mention the suggestions provided on these forums. The only upside is that it wasn't shown acting like a buffbot.

I'm reserving judgement until I see the full ability list and all the involved mechanics, but so far I'm not impressed.

[Hyrist]

I'm reserving judgement until I see the full ability list and all the involved mechanics, but so far I'm not impressed.

Sorry to nail you on semantics but... you are rendering judgement, even if it's tentative.

Strange as I actually had a better take away from you, and am rather impressed that both Melee and Caster were utilized in a seamless manner. Yes, it seems to lean more heavily on casting - but that's not dynamically opposed to what Red Mage is

As much of a front-line proponent as I am, the one thing that seems to divide us here is that you feel as if 'front line' was the sole argument for Red Mage. That seems to snuff in the face of those who prefer the caster aspects of the class. It also kinda pushes away from what your own quote in the signature says - both casts and has regular melee attacks. What I saw displayed in front of me was something who utilizes both cast and melee to benefit one another - which is honestly more than what Red Mage ever was in any of it's previous incarnations. (Previously it was always one way, casting improving physical presence and Physical just being on its own.)

Anyways, it does not matter how the job was displayed this early on. We're still six months out and adjustments will be made - and there will also be discussions on how the class will be played in Meta. For example - Auto Attacks - depending on their overall impact on DPS performance verses other casters playing "At a range" may not be optimal in spite of initial design display. We'll see.

But thematically, I don't see anything wrong with what was displayed - I just see, yet again, Red Mages refusing to agree on what the class 'should be'. And I'm getting too old for that kind of nonsense. If playing it is fun, that's all that matters, and honestly, this is looking fun for me.