Seeing Red - A Complete Red Mage Guide

[ColeSlawter]

Hey, I normally just lurk and see what you all come up with for rotations/openers but I hadn't seen this mentioned and wanted to throw it out to see what others think.

What about Vercure on yourself (or party member) before pull to get Dualcast for first cast?

[Draxxion]

Level 53 now in RDM. Been doing PoTD which has been a lot of fun. Still finding I will mess up occasionally on rotation mainly in not noticing a verfire or verstone proc. I think it is more the nature of PoTD which is the issue. At low levels you don't have them and I find I get into a certain casting pattern that I forget to adjust to. Need to rearrange my bars.

As for swift cast, I haven't used it once and highly considering dropoing it.

[evil_befall]

thank you i found rotation bit confusing searched it up but it confused me more but you explained it way better and less confusing

[Draxxion]

Hey, I normally just lurk and see what you all come up with for rotations/openers but I hadn't seen this mentioned and wanted to throw it out to see what others think.

What about Vercure on yourself (or party member) before pull to get Dualcast for first cast?

It would shave off a bit of time, but not much. Jolt and Jolt II have a rather short cast time. If you do that I would also pull with Accelertion up. Then you get a duel cast from vercure and an immediate proc of Verfire or Verstone that you can follow up with Verthunder or Veraero.

Edit: Had to wait till lunch to edit this as I couldn't do so on my phone. I would not recommend this for one reason, Impact. Once you Jolt II you also gain Impact and the Impactful effect. You want to do Jolt II and then follow it up by Impact and then go into the rest of the "rotation"

[Arkenne]

A little question to those higher lvled RDMs around, is Impact a skill separated from Jolt?
As in, if you use Jolt it transitions into Impact or Impact simply remains as a different skill grayed out until you use Jolt?

[Anastacy]

A little question to those higher lvled RDMs around, is Impact a skill separated from Jolt?
As in, if you use Jolt it transitions into Impact or Impact simply remains as a different skill grayed out until you use Jolt?

Jolt II (which is upgraded from Jolt) procs Impact, which is a separate skill.

[Arkenne]

Jolt II (which is upgraded from Jolt) procs Impact, which is a separate skill.

Oh ok, then I'll plan my sets around that, thanks!

[Silverquick]

This is sort of semantics but it really needs to be pointed out again, since it can lead to people getting on the wrong track for damage calculations: dual cast spells still trigger the GCD. It's not like you're getting free spells in there, its just the difference of them hitting at the start or end of the gcd. Jolt+ VerAero/Thunder is NOT a 480 pot attack. .

Its is indeed just semantics.

Its a 180 potency Jolt with an insta-cast 300 potency VerAero/Verthunder tacked on... but its still just a single attack in the same time period. So yeah.... its basically a 480 potency attack.

The reality is, the Red Mages 2 spells go off easily within the same (actually faster) time period as a Single Fire IV and it is just like a single attack. Its the same damage.

BLM has a bunch of other things that can be done inside Enochian which can boost their DPS, but it doesn't change the fact that RDMs attacks are 480 and 570 respectively.

Like I said... these two are very competitive with each other as a base Jobs. Summoner is not even close on any side of the ball.

[JustMatt]

Well, it is still two gcds isn't it? It is more like 240 per cast in the build up phase. The potency of the blm spells is far higher here? I.e you would still start your third cast at 5 seconds and the blm would not be far behind. Honestly, the potency of the rdm skills look a little low to me (could be completely wrong as I have not got to 70 yet or do any actual testing beyond simply looking at the potency of the skills).

[Rbstr]

It's only a single attack if you want to be misleading (or you misunderstand the concept). The jolt+aero pair still uses two GCDs. If you want to call it a 480 potency attack you also then have to say you attack half as often as the BLM does. It's a horrible basis for comparison.

You don't attack once and that's that. It all averages out over time and the GCD (plus oGCD extras). The lack of thinking about time averaging is why you think summoner is so bad in single-target. It's not, you aren't accounting for how the changes have saved dot-casting GCDs allowing for more ruin and thus a better average per gcd.

EDIT: Yeah, JustMatt, they actually do seem a bit low. But RDM does get two oGCDs and a raid/personal buff. The jury is out until someone does all of the math, but it might be close. IMO it's unlikely the RDM does more personal DPS than the BLM and it was probably intended to be that way given the other stuff.