Integration of the Sword: Red Mage

[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.