Integration of the Sword: Red Mage

[Duelle]

AKA "you knew this was coming"

Foreword

It's no secret that I have a problem with the way the job is put together. The current RDM does not tie melee and magic to one another, and instead keeps them segregated in a way that funnels gameplay to spamming spells and then using 3 melee GCDs before going back to spamming spells some more. That's not gameplay that I expect from a hybrid; that's something I'd expect from a caster with tacked-on sword use, where the sword so inconsequential from a mechanics perspective that you could replace it with something else and not feel the difference. Some of you might like spell spam from range, and I can respect that. I will still argue that a pure caster is better-served with the Dualcast/mana system the devs have given RDM, and that RDM deserves a better balance between casts and sword.

Seeing that a redesign is out of the question (though I will eventually write that post), what I can do is give suggestions to make this design more palatable.

System Changes

Casting Mechanics: Keep Dualcast as is, but remove the "auto-attacks cancel Dualcast" part. In addition, melee combos grant the RDM a buff called Composure/Clarity, which makes the next spell cast faster/instantly. The catch is that the buff duration is only 6 seconds and the combo has to be used outside of Spellblade (more on that later).

Composure - Reduces the cast time of the next spell by 50%. Duration: 6s.
Clarity - The next spell is cast instantly. Duration: 6s

So your standard combo without Spellblade active would be Riposte => Zwerchhau (proc Composure) => Redoublement (proc Clarity) => Cast spell instantly

Mana generation: Melee weapon skills generate 3 of each type of mana; Zwerchhau and Redoublement require the combo bonus in order to do so. Mana generated by Aero/Stone and Thunder/Fire increased to 11 and 14, respectively. Manafication now generates 50 white and black mana and has a 90s cooldown.

Mana consumption: Spellblade has been changed to a toggle rather than something that's automatic. You can toggle it on after hitting 30 Mana, and will remain active until you bottom out on mana, deactivate it or use Enchanted Redoublement. While Spellblade is active, weapon skills consume 30 (Riposte) or 25 (Zwerchhau & Redoublement) mana. Activating/deactivating Spellblade breaks melee combos and removes Dualcast.

Damage output: Allow auto-attack damage to scale with INT. Increased baseline potency of non-enchanted weapon skills. With melee playing a bigger role, spell damage would require a small nerf to keep DPS output where it is.

Skill Changes

01 Riposte - Potency increased to 150. Additional effect: Increases both Black Mana and White Mana by 3.
35 Zwerchhau - Combo potency increased to 210. Combo bonus: Increases both Black Mana and White Mana by 3. Combo bonus: Grants you Composure for 6s. Now gained at lv15.
50 Redoublement - Combo potency increased to 240. Combo bonus: Increases both Black Mana and White Mana by 3. Combo bonus: Grants you Clarity for 6s. Now gained at lv30.

02 Spellblade - (new skill) Requires at least 30 white mana and 30 black mana to activate. Enchants your melee weaponskills, consuming black and white mana to increase their damage. While Spellblade is active, casted spells do not generate mana nor grant you Doublecast. Effect ends upon reuse, upon reaching 0 black and white mana, or upon the execution of Enchanted Redoublement. Cooldown: 2.5s.
40 Displacement - Cooldown increased to 45s.
45 Fleche - Additional effect: Reduces the gauge with the highest mana value by 1 and adds it to the opposite gauge.
60 Manafication - Generates 50 black and white mana. Cooldown of 90s.

02 Jolt - Potency reduced to 100.
62 Jolt II - Removed.
04 Verthunder - Potency reduced to 260.
10 Veraero - Potency reduced to 260.
15 Tether - Now gained at lv35.
26 Verfire - Potency reduced to 210.
30 Verstone - Potency reduced to 210.

Nitpicks

- Riposte renamed to Quick Thrust (A riposte is an attack performed after parrying an attack, so calling your opening weapon skill that makes no sense). With Spellblade active, the name changes to Soul Thrust.

- Redoublement renamed to Crimson Pin (A redoublement is an attack that is performed after an attack that misses or is parried; basically you missed and try to attack again; did they just pull random names from a fencing glossary for the melee abilities?). With Spellblade active, the name changes to Bloody Pin.

Notes

- I'd need to run this by someone who knows numbers better than I do, but the idea here is that since the sword is being used for more than just dumping mana, sword skills need to deal more damage to justify spending GCDs doing that instead of casting Jolt. Hence the Jolt nerf and the buff to non-enchanted sword skills.
- Seeing that the melee combo is more important to gameplay, it should come earlier, which is why RDM would get Zwerchhau at lv15 and Redoublement at lv30.
- The Jolt nerf is intended to create choice for generating mana depending on where you're standing. If you just ran away from a boss that has a long-casting telegraph (the final boss in Gubal Library Normal comes to mind), then you'll cast Jolt followed by Dualcast Veraero/Verthunder to get some mana (if you proc Verstone/Verfire, even better), and as soon as the telegraph is done you can Corp-a-Corps to the boss and get back to swinging and casting. If you're in melee, you'll want to use your combo to generate 9 mana and deal higher net DPS.
- The change to Fleche is meant to add the ability to skew mana values or even them out, as needed. This is very tentative, but I felt some people would enjoy having skills that manipulate the mana gauges.
- The increase in mana generated by Verthunder/Veraero/Verfire/Verstone is also tentative.
- Manafication generating 50/50 mana should allow for slightly more frequent use of Spellblade and enchanted sword skills.
- In theory, the rotation would be: melee combo for Clarity buff => insta-cast Veraero/Verthunder => if you get a proc, cast Verstone/Verfire for more Dualcast action| if you didn't get a proc, go back to using the melee combo for another Clarity buff => At 80/80 activate Spellblade and do enchanted melee combo => Cast Verholy or Verflare => If you got a proc, cast Verstone/Verfire for more Dualcast action| if you didn't get a proc, go back to using the melee combo for another Clarity buff. Throw in oGCDs as needed.
- Spellblade as a toggle should in theory give the player more control over when mana is consumed.
- The short of it is: more sword use, you can keep chain-casting as long as you're getting procs.

I have a good idea of what the replies to this are going to be, but I nonetheless invite thoughts and comments. Be aware that I will revise this once the expansion launches and I get a look at the job traits and any skills the devs did not reveal as of the time of this writing.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like the direction here is an improvement, but even after reading through it a few times, it doesn't seem to quite be living up to a spell-fencer style, either. Maybe I'm just caught up on the idea of macro-rotation and wanting desperately to see multiple layers of synergetic ramp-up between spells and blade use. I feel like I'd usually be better able to articulate my critiques, but for now all I can say is that it still looks... incomplete?

I feel like the toggle on Spellblade will be very useful for this and similarly directed designs.

I'm not certain why you've left the mana gains on melee attacks so low. I'll have to compare these to the spell gains, but these still feel low. Like, swat-to-the-face low, where it'd sting less if they just gave you nothing. 2-4 seems like it'd be more reasonable.

*Nit-pick* I don't know if Flèche is the perfect word to tie a mana-crossing mechanic to, but it's at least a decent one. A more general Cross may be even better, in that the term can include the changing of sides about the opponent, or even just any of various terms in which one takes the inside or reorients the outside to become a new inside by side-stepping. But, I like the idea of the mechanic. I just feel like it, again, needs to control more mana, perhaps even the entirety of the last application's, to feel satisfying.

Manafication allows a shit-ton more opening burst than the mana-doubling. I can't honestly say which I'd prefer. So long as mana is being spent only on physical (albeit Enspell-ed) attacks, oddly enough, I think my preference lies with the doubling at a more frequent rate. Given a balance of throughput, I'd prefer to gain 50 mana each per 90s than 100 mana each per 3 minutes. Slightly. Very slightly.

I'll need to look at the throughput gains of the increased frequency of GCD or sub-GCD casts due to Clarity and especially Composure in order to give any numbers advice.

At this time we don't even know if auto-attacks will be intelligence-based—I'd assume not, given how many mechanics actively discourage them except during sword-spending—but should such sword integrations go through without increasing the AA speed, the difference between Composure and Clarity will be rather small. On a 6-second cast, it'd make .5 seconds lost uptime and 2.5 seconds lost auto-attack time (which may each be merely hitting for the equivalent of 2 potency). I'd include the shift to Intelligence-based AA damage in your notes (or have I just gone blind when reading wherever it's located?). That said, I'm not sure how I feel about auto-attacks consuming mana. In a pinch, it could just barely make you unable to use your last mana-consuming skill.

[koroko220]

AAs are not INT based sadly. I always wondered if AAs would be a thing with red mage but I believe it's in the gamerescape video you can see something hitting the mobs even there in close range and it's only about 69 damage. Rdm has no dots so it has to be AA.

[Duelle]

I feel like the direction here is an improvement, but even after reading through it a few times, it doesn't seem to quite be living up to a spell-fencer style, either. Maybe I'm just caught up on the idea of macro-rotation and wanting desperately to see multiple layers of synergetic ramp-up between spells and blade use. I feel like I'd usually be better able to articulate my critiques, but for now all I can say is that it still looks... incomplete?

I can accept this. I admit that my focus when putting this together was making the sword a bigger part of RDM's gameplay. To fully create a system where sword and spell have nuances and synergies, you'd have to remove part of the caster kit and add more skills that interact with the next spell cast. An alternative would be sword skills that consume the Verfire/Verstone Ready procs.

I feel like the toggle on Spellblade will be very useful for this and similarly directed designs.

You mean spells behaving differently when Spellblade is active?

I'm not certain why you've left the mana gains on melee attacks so low. I'll have to compare these to the spell gains, but these still feel low. Like, swat-to-the-face low, where it'd sting less if they just gave you nothing. 2-4 seems like it'd be more reasonable.

The idea here was that you spent 3 GCDs doing melee combo to generate 3 mana, or stand at range and use Jolt for 3 mana in 1 GCD, but dealing much lower damage. I'm open to the idea of each weaponskill generating 3 mana instead, if that'll work better.

I don't know if Flèche is the perfect word to tie a mana-crossing mechanic to, but it's at least a decent one. A more general Cross may be even better, in that the term can include the changing of sides about the opponent, or even just any of various terms in which one takes the inside or reorients the outside to become a new inside by side-stepping. But, I like the idea of the mechanic. I just feel like it, again, needs to control more mana, perhaps even the entirety of the last application's, to feel satisfying.

This was more me sticking the mechanic to a skill that didn't intervene with the melee or spell rotation. We could create a brand new skill for gauge manipulation, if needed.

Manafication allows a shit-ton more opening burst than the mana-doubling. I can't honestly say which I'd prefer. So long as mana is being spent only on physical (albeit Enspell-ed) attacks, oddly enough, I think my preference lies with the doubling at a more frequent rate. Given a balance of throughput, I'd prefer to gain 50 mana each per 90s than 100 mana each per 3 minutes. Slightly. Very slightly.

Manafication, at least as I saw in the images, has a 2-minute cooldown. That's actually why I changed it, since doubling mana generated every 2 minutes loses out to being able to go from 0/0 to 100/100 every 3 minuutes.

At this time we don't even know if auto-attacks will be intelligence-based—I'd assume not, given how many mechanics actively discourage them except during sword-spending—but should such sword integrations go through without increasing the AA speed, the difference between Composure and Clarity will be rather small. On a 6-second cast, it'd make .5 seconds lost uptime and 2.5 seconds lost auto-attack time (which may each be merely hitting for the equivalent of 2 potency). I'd include the shift to Intelligence-based AA damage in your notes (or have I just gone blind when reading wherever it's located?). That said, I'm not sure how I feel about auto-attacks consuming mana. In a pinch, it could just barely make you unable to use your last mana-consuming skill.

You somehow managed to read my mind, because an earlier draft of my OP had a provision for making auto-attacks scale with INT in order to not make them hit for 70 damage. I felt it was too much, but if auto's scaling with INT would help, then I'll happily put it back in. As for auto-attacks consuming mana, I guess I could remove that if we were to buff auto-attack damage by making it scale with INT.

Composure and Clarity are there sort of for leveling purposes. From lv1-11, RDM would have to cast Jolt in order to proc Dualcast to use Verthunder and Veraero. At lv12 you'd gain Zwerchhau and Composure, which would basically reduce that annoying 4s cast time to 2s. This makes your combos Riposte => Zwerchhau => Verthunder\Veraero if you're in melee range, and Jolt => Verthunder/Veraero if you're away from the target. Clarity sort of serves a similar function, since by the time you get Recoublement/Clarity at lv30, you also have both Verstone/Verfire.

AAs are not INT based sadly. I always wondered if AAs would be a thing with red mage but I believe it's in the gamerescape video you can see something hitting the mobs even there in close range and it's only about 69 damage. Rdm has no dots so it has to be AA.

I think your standard Thunder/Bio DoTs hit harder per tick than 69 damage a pop, so I don't think we can even call autos a DoT at that point. Especially at higher levels, the damage would be almost inconsequential, right?

Thanks for feedback, by the way.

[Ordoric]

Would have been nice if there was an off gcd skill for melee strikes. For like 15 seconds. That uses what ever verspell you last used. For like "en" effect and give the a refresh. Effect they can cast on them selves. And. Light base magic gives a boost to self buff refresh

[Shurrikhan]

You mean spells behaving differently when Spellblade is active?

I meant exactly what you had. It looks good. My only concern was again that auto-attacks consuming mana could be frustrating if one wanted to try to burn asap.

This was more me sticking the mechanic to a skill that didn't intervene with the melee or spell rotation. We could create a brand new skill for gauge manipulation, if needed.

All good. I was merely teasing out of shared annoyance with the "Reposte" initiator, etc., skill names. It's one of the better terms to tie the effect to.

The idea here was that you spent 3 GCDs doing melee combo to generate 3 mana, or stand at range and use Jolt for 3 mana in 1 GCD, but dealing much lower damage. I'm open to the idea of each weaponskill generating 3 mana instead, if that'll work better.

I went with 2-4 because there's just something embarrassing about the number 1. "You get... 1 mana!" The initiator would give 2, the bridge 3, finisher 4. That would still prevent it from taking the place of magic as a mana-building tactic, though.

Manafication, at least as I saw in the images, has a 2-minute cooldown. That's actually why I changed it, since doubling mana generated every 2 minutes loses out to being able to go from 0/0 to 100/100 every 3 minuutes.

Again, I'm not arguing with the relative buff. I'm just saying I'd prefer frequency to strength, or would rather buff frequency than its per-cast functionality. We're already getting 21 mana back at the end of each burst phase that would otherwise go to waste if we were to give 100/100. Also, if we really did give 100/100 we wouldn't get the guaranteed proc from the finisher onto Verstone or Verfire, as one mana count has to be at least 1 mana less than the other.

tl;dr: Only the bolded part is important.

EDIT:

Oh, I see. That was a major reading comprehension failure on my part. I can agree there, especially since I didn't take Verflare and Verholy into account. 50/50 mana on a 90s cooldown it is, then.

World's worst nit-pick: I apologize if this was implicit, but just to correct my earlier wording very, very clearly, hopefully no one would be doubling their mana at 50/50, thereby gaining 50/50 (sum 100/100), or they'd lose out on free procs. Hopefully it'd be a 49/50 or 50/49. Again, my apologies. >.>

EDIT 2: Trying to find the horribly overcomplicated write-up I was doing for RDM before. I fear it was on my reformatted hard-drive, however. It uhh... used a massively different cross-class system though... (Each class has mechanically-integral traits that could be shared with other classes. Each class had access to 8 of these, atop 2 guaranteed native class traits (total of 10), while each job had access to 4, atop two native class traits and two native job traits (total of 8). It also required the implementation of inherent granular elemental effects (as on-target resources)...

This RDM was about 60% melee, 40% caster, whose core advantage was the sheer amount of synergy by which he could connect borrowed schools of magics and class traits. What looked like a wet noodle by base potencies could turn disgustingly powerful over time via multiplicity, refreshes, scaling, etc. Under certain builds, the MCM was more reminiscent of a NieR: Automata gun-pod, with simultaneously castable attacks triggered from the main bars but with zero animation lock since your own character was not involved in the animation.

tl;dr: A proper RDM has been my pipe-dream since 3.0. But I actively feared it being added in 4.0 because I knew there wouldn't be enough undermechanical depth to support it as it deserves.

[Duelle]

I meant exactly what you had. It looks good. My only concern was again that auto-attacks consuming mana could be frustrating if one wanted to try to burn asap.

Funnily enough, part of the reason I had autos consume mana was to discourage people from sitting around while Spellblade was active. I think I'll just remove that part of the skill and see what happens.

The initiator would give 2, the bridge 3, finisher 4. That would still prevent it from taking the place of magic as a mana-building tactic, though.

I'd preffer 3/3 mana per weaponskill just to drive the point home that you're choosing between range & lower damage and melee range with higher damage and two extra GCDs before you can cast something instantly.

I'm just saying I'd prefer frequency to strength, or would rather buff frequency than its per-cast functionality. We're already getting 21 mana back at the end of each burst phase that would otherwise go to waste if we were to give 100/100. Also, if we really did give 100/100 we wouldn't get the guaranteed proc from the finisher onto Verstone or Verfire, as one mana count has to be at least 1 mana less than the other.

Oh, I see. That was a major reading comprehension failure on my part. I can agree there, especially since I didn't take Verflare and Verholy into account. 50/50 mana on a 90s cooldown it is, then.

Would have been nice if there was an off gcd skill for melee strikes. For like 15 seconds. That uses what ever verspell you last used.

I like the idea, but it'd need a new UI element or something to show that the game is keeping track of what spells you use. A 15 second cooldown does mean you could use it rotationally while also having a chance to use it right after Verflare or Verholy.

give them a Refresh effect they can cast on them selves. And. Light base magic gives a boost to self buff refresh

This is conjecture on my part, but if we're increasing melee uptime, I don't think it a refresh skill would be needed much.

--------------------------------------------------------

That being said, let's have a little fun with this:

72 Manabrand - Release residual aether from your blade aligned to the element of the last elemental spell you used. Deals damage with a potency equal to that of the spell last used. Cooldown: 30s.

or

72 Manabrand - Deals fire/earth damage with a potency of 230. Requires and consumes Verfire/Verstone Ready. Cooldown: 30s.

[Shurrikhan]

Alright, so I found part of the old pipedream document... You may remember the Elementality concept (Enemy held granular values for Heat, Mass, Saturation, etc., as to be manipulable by all element spells in addition to Gravity, etc.) from a thread back in 1.0 I wrote, I believe, around the same week you swapped to that signature...

At your own risk. It's a mess, and somehow in 7 pages still only the first half...

[YokeM]

Your Ideas sound great. It`s to bad, that you are largely ignored.
A real spell fencer would have been much more interesting. Right now, RDM will be really just a caster 80%-90% of the time.

[Duelle]

Your ideas sound great. It's too bad that you are largely ignored.

The story of my life. ~_~

I've made some tweaks to the OP.

Having done some tests and looked at the gameplay, I'll post some initial impressions of the job so far. I'd rather do it here than to make a new thread about it, specially since I'm not going to exactly gush over the design.

- Mana gauge: It might be the way the gauge is laid out, but it is VERY distracting. The fact that you're managing two bars doesn't help, and neither does peripheral vision. Unless the job is meant to sometimes go off-balance, but I find that unlikely. If there's a way to turn it sideways to make it easier to see (since I'd put it over my actions bars), I've yet to find it. Even Weak Aura-style bars would be better than what we currently have.

- Corps-a-corps & Displacement: As I predicted, forcing the job to make rotational use of mobility was not a good idea. Again, telegraphs and other mechanics are not going to be fun to deal with, and will intervene with your 3 GCD combo if you hit 80/80 at the wrong time. Sure, 80/80 means you have some wiggle room since you can try to get close to the mana cap without going over while waiting for an opportunity to rush into melee range, but gameplay-wise you're stuck in limbo. Which ties to...

- General gameplay: You can't stay in range because you'll cap out in mana, but you can't stand in melee unless you're 80/80. Auto's deal pitiful damage so you can't even use that to justify staying near the target to cast until you hit 80/80 to combo the mob. Jumping in and out sounds cool until you realize that this game has telegraphs and other things to look out for in a fight. It looks good on paper and I guess it has a "cool" factor if you're willing to ignore that it's a very impractical approach to combat, but I find the execution lacking since it tries to tie two styles of gameplay in a way that doesn't really work. There's a reason why "ranged/melee" hybrids tend to buy the farm; they're almost as bad from a design perspective as melee healers. Funnily enough, this design would actually work better in a game like FFXI where you don't have much in the way of mechanics to worry about.

In before "they can still patch it/you don't know how to play/it's only the first day of the expansion/I accept everything SE gives me without question/Yoshi-P is infallible/wait until lv70/just quit the game".

PS: For those curious, the skill spread for RDM is very close to how jobs were designed for ARR and Heavensward. RDM has the same pace of growth as a GLA or CNJ from lv1-30. The job has no other skills past lv30 aside from those that correspond to the ARR/HW job quest abilities (35, 40, 45, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60). It also does not have two lv30 abilities (unlike a GLA which got Shield Swipe from the lv30 GLA quest and Shield Oath from the lv30 PLD unlock quest).