#RIPRDM

[8bitNinja]

Focusing more heavily on magic vs melee for the Red Mage fits the Final Fantasy XIV lore. After all, the Red Mages are former Black and White Mages that worked together to create an entirely new school of magic. They just added swordplay into it as a way to augment their skill set a bit further. This isn't the classic Red Mage. It's right on the Stormblood page.

"The survivors gathered from near and far, and amongst them were refugees of the sorcerous cities of Mhach and Amdapor.

These sworn enemies buried their history for the sake of the future, and cast aside their vestments of black and white. Upon the remnants of their arts a new discipline was built, and the first red mages stepped forward with rapiers in hand to fight back against the rising tides of destruction."

[Ageofwar]

snip

The other non-lore info on this as said in the live letter is the values are not final and can potentially change in the next month, but at the end of the day it looks like quite a flashy job and I can't wait for the next month to pass so I can try and figure out the best rotation for myself

[Cynfael]

I'm just glad that they went the sane route and didn't try to make RDM a quasi-healer to appease players who demanded Cure spells. The DPS roles are competitive enough with each other that RDM really didn't need to build a reputation of being 4.0's incarnation of the heal-happy Arcanist we remember and love to hate from our early leveling days.

[Xyrn86]

I'm just glad that they went the sane route and didn't try to make RDM a quasi-healer to appease players who demanded Cure spells. The DPS roles are competitive enough with each other that RDM really didn't need to build a reputation of being 4.0's incarnation of the heal-happy Arcanist we remember and love to hate from our early leveling days.

While I agree I do like the idea that we will have another dps that might be able to pinch rez if needed.

[Duelle]

Rewatching the video there does seems to be one ablity that gives 2/3 of both bars.

That's the cooldown I was talking about. The RDM hits 41 white/black mana and uses a cooldown to double the mana accumulated. Not-Holy adds 21 white mana, and Not-Flare is speculated to do the same for black mana. If I were to hazard a guess, those two spells will probably be locked behind a requirement; requiring a Cross Cut => Chant du Cygne => Millionstab combo, requiring you use the jump back, or requiring you to spend X amount of mana (though the chances of the last one are very low).

what im saying is dont base everything you see based on a video of someone playing a class that they havent played at optimal

I only brought up rotation because the rotation is the result of what abilities a class has. When the bulk of your abilities are ranged spells, and the devs show nothing but mechanics that involve ranged spell casting aside from grudgingly putting the sword to use for 3 GCDs...the writing is on the wall. You'll cast like a turret until you pool enough mana to do your three hit combo and back to casting you go.

I wish I were wrong, but as I said in the other thread, the devs have had plenty of opportunity to prove me wrong, and have not.

Focusing more heavily on magic vs melee for the Red Mage fits the Final Fantasy XIV lore. After all, the Red Mages are former Black and White Mages that worked together to create an entirely new school of magic.

And at that point I ask, why Red Mages? If you want mages that don't use swords making peace and joining forces, Sage would have been a much better pick. Make them ascetics focused on balance in everything to create something bigger/better, and go from there. It'd even conceptually fit as a magic counterpart to MNK (who have the light and dark chakra thing).

[Ageofwar]

I'm just glad that they went the sane route and didn't try to make RDM a quasi-healer to appease players who demanded Cure spells. The DPS roles are competitive enough with each other that RDM really didn't need to build a reputation of being 4.0's incarnation of the heal-happy Arcanist we remember and love to hate from our early leveling days.

I am really happy they didn't turn RDM into a quasi-healer and quasi-tank DPS like quite a bit of the comunity was asking for ie "Jack of all trades, master of none"

[Mhaeric]

You'll cast like a turret

This is incorrect. The base cast time red mages operate under due to chainspell is 2s on the first gcd and instant on the second gcd, repeating every 2 gcds. That's a 60+% uptime in which there is huge mobility and ability to weave ogcd abilities we havent seen all of yet. They will feel and play much more like the current bard than a black mage what with the priority proc rotation, short cast times, and ogcd weaving.

I'm super looking forward to it.

[Duelle]

This is incorrect. The base cast time red mages operate under due to chainspell is 2s on the first gcd and instant on the second gcd, repeating every 2 gcds. That's a 60+% uptime in which there is huge mobility and ability to weave ogcd abilities we havent seen all of yet.

Which means nothing other than being able to avoid telegraphs without as much slidecasting. Doesn't address the problem I have with the job's implementation: you're standing at range spamming spells for most of the gameplay.

[Mhaeric]

Which means nothing other than being able to avoid telegraphs without as much slidecasting.

It means that gameplay will be more than just standing at range spamming spells most of the time, since there will be huge opportunity to weave plenty of additional ogcd effects between casts for a very fast paced playstyle. BLMs are turrets because they don't have time to do anything but stand there and cast. RDM will not be standing there just spamming spells and nothing else. And even if it does end up to be just standing there during the spell part of the rotation...

Doesn't address the problem I have with the job's implementation: you're standing at range spamming spells for most of the gameplay.

We need to build ~80 mana in each type to be able to unleash 3 melee attacks according to the video. It takes 2 gcd to build 20 mana, so that's ~16 gcd without the use of any cooldowns. We then unleash 5 gcd worth of melee and leaping rapier attacks. That's a ratio of ~25% melee to 37.5% black magic and 37.5% white magic. With the use of the cooldown as shown in the video we only need to build up ~40 mana in each type taking ~8 gcd to do so, so the balance is ~38% melee to 31% black magic and 31% white magic. I.e. The balance is not as big of a difference between melee and casting as you're making it out to be. This RDM design certainly fits with what red mage has been throughout the series: a caster that mixes black magic, white magic, and melee attacks in roughly equal measure. That they're not doing them simultaneously while in melee appears to be your biggest hangup. To be honest it sounds like you actually want a rune fencer/magic knight with the degree of emphasis you are placing on being in melee. Your melee rdm suggestion from your signature certainly reads like a magic knight with it's emphasis on weapon en-spells and exploiting them.

Anyway, regardless of your opinion, the design is not going to change significantly from what is coming apart from number tweaking, so your choice is either to learn to enjoy it (or at least not hate it) or to wallow in bitterness and disappointment. So far you seem to be leaning towards the latter with your comments about devs not proving you wrong, etc., so I wish you luck in that and hope you are able to come around from it. Bitterness is never a fun place to ground oneself in. Cheers.

[Blueyes]

We need to build ~80 mana in each type to be able to unleash 3 melee attacks according to the video. It takes 2 gcd to build 20 mana, so that's ~16 gcd without the use of any cooldowns. We then unleash 5 gcd worth of melee and leaping rapier attacks. That's a ratio of ~25% melee to 37.5% black magic and 37.5% white magic. With the use of the cooldown as shown in the video we only need to build up ~40 mana in each type taking ~8 gcd to do so, so the balance is ~38% melee to 31% black magic and 31% white magic.

I'm being a little nit picky, but you'll want to take note that certain actions will generally have a blue aura around the character's feet which indicates ability intended to be woven in during or between global cooldown execution. So abilities like the jump in and jump back don't equate to a global cooldown usage. Interestingly, when we focus on global cooldown usage, what we see are three casts white magic, three casts of black magic, three casts of red magic, and then three executions of melee weaponskills. This discounts the final white magic spell which is used after the gauge is reset. So in an ideal scenario you will be using weaponskills approximately 25% of the time with spells of varied types occupying the remaining 75%. This could potentially be skewed further if their "double up" ability has a lengthy cooldown, prolonging mana accumulation when that ability isn't available, but how often that ability can be used remains to be seen.

Personally I'm content with Red Mage so this is just me pointing out some details.