Red Mage is Range Combat? (Discussion)

[Duelle]

You've become far too hardline in this stance over time, and you're beginning to mar yourself and other proponents by doing so.

I speak for myself, and always aim to. Others who want certain things out of RDM are free and should disagree with me if they feel the need to.

First off, Red Mage was never swordsman first. In truth if we're speaking logicly, the casting has always taken the forefront of Red Mage, though always entangled and by a narrow margin. I'm not talking FFXI exclusively here, I'm talking through it's whole history.

Again, we have to keep in mind that nearly every iteration of RDM was in games built around turn-based combat. That's an entirely different animal from MMORPG/live-action combat in terms of design and application. Yes, in turn-based RPGs 9 times out of 10 the best way to use a RDM's turn was to have them cast magic.

That said, Melee is an inseparable part of the class and yes, the meta of FFXI did Red Mage a large disservice. But to stress, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING HERE. It was abundantly clear that a good portion of skill kit comes from adjusting the class's positioning. This would not be needed if it was primarily attacking only from range. To have both a closer, and a distance maker indicates that this class will be diving in and out of close range frequently. So both caster and melee will be important implementation.

I'll disagree. The demo emphasizes range while seemingly treating melee as a thing you do because mechanics rather than uniting both to flow into each other. If we had seen something like, say, melee combo going into insta-cast nuke followed by a hard cast spell followed by repelling shot followed by another spell or Lunge, that paints an entirely different picture (since it'd show that you'll be hitting things with a sword, it somehow allowing you to instacast spells while also having mobility built into the job).

And to be completely fair, attack magic was the MINORITY of that display. The first three skills seemed to be status inflicts of some sort (I'm guessing the first was chainspell. I don't know what the second was, but the third was some sort of restorative buff, by the coloring.) Then we have three melee attacks. The gap close, the attack skill, and the Gap maker. Then we had all of one offensive magic cast, at the very end, which did not even seem to have a cast time.

Based on the demo, I suspect what's going to happen is some aspect of the gameplay will require you to temporarily get in melee range to either empower future spells or make them cast instantly, then getting out of range to do so.

For someone claiming to not be passing judgement, you are clearly jumping the gun, and jumping it hard.

I like to think I'm allowed to develop an opinion based on what info we have available. I can still change my mind if something else surfaces or if I were to see the ability list along with what mechanics are part of the job. I did say that so far I was not impressed, and I'm sticking to that.

Red Mage has always been the versatile combat mage who sports both magic and swords. It has never been exclusively a front-line entity, nor a back line entity and I can see the pains SE has taken to keep that true here. Yes, A Red Mage casts spells, even at a distance, even at close range.

Simply put, the ranged/melee hybrid thing is needlessly convoluted. It's like they were reaching for something to make up, because a guy in melee range blasting fire into enemies' faces at point blank range in between sword swings was apparently not original enough for them.

As I've said, we'll see how this turns out, but I'd be lying if I claimed excitement about what has been shown so far. I still really want to see that ability list.

the whole reason most debate happens is solely because of this reason.

people who say red mage is mainly magic with some physical or some who say red mage was more physical with some magic.

To be fair, this discussion wouldn't be happening if we had specializations per job (instead we'd all be arguing to ensure both caster RDM and melee RDM are balanced with each other). Since we don't, we're obviously going to lean towards our preferences.