Why the other casters need buffs and Red Mage does not need a nerf.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Hello everyone, I just wanted to post this thread to hopefully derail the "RDM can do all of these things, nerf them omg" bandwagon. A common argument I'm seeing is that we have over the top damage along with fantastic utility and a fairly useful heal.

1. The over the top damage, which is only over the top when contrasted with the difficulty to payoff ratio to the other 2 casters, does not go hand in hand with the useful heal. If being able to very occasionally throw off a useful heal in exchange for DPS is OP, you must be absolutely railing at Erase which is oGCD, scales off INT and removes a DoT. Vercure is not oGCD, you're exchanging 240+ potency worth of damage by using it once, and at least 540 if you dualcast it. Vercure is an emergency tool and that's it, using it otherwise, aside from gaining dualcast in between phase changes (Before Ame-No-Murakomo spawns for example), is pointless.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

2. The average damage and the peak damage you can get out of Red Mage is not far apart and somewhat RNG based. The only way to get top damage is to have 100% procs (extreme statistical outlier) and there's little to no way to optimize your rotation to squeeze out more damage.

3. The utility scales up more with physical damage and the effect descales over the duration. While in the current "meta" this is bonkers, that's more due to the "Feed the SAM" mentality we've got going on. This is once again something that would be remedied with increased damage on the other casters making the choice between a hard hitting DPS or partly increased raid DPS.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

4. The mobility Red Mage is something it was advertised with, it's necessary both for the classes theme and to a lesser extent damage output. Once again the mobility is a trade off with damage, if you want to move you HAVE to stand still for around 2 seconds before doing it, and if the time in which you have to move lasts long enough or the interval between mechanics is short enough, you're doing 0 damage during that time. RDM does not have a DoT like BLM or SMN and no movement coverage spells like Scathe or Ruin 2.

5. I'm not saying other casters/jobs do not need to be buffed. BLM needs a mild to moderate damage buff to keep them at the top since they bring starkly less utility (e.g. no utility outside of role actions) and need more of a reward as they are the turret class of the game. I don't know much about the state of SMN as I've seen accounts both positive and negative about it.

[Neela]

the problem with buffing every cls to get on par with Sam/Rdm/Ast is that the game itself will get easier and easier... i know SEs intention was to make the game more friendly for new players but... there is nothing ingame yet which really needs practice or further thoughts... SB in its current status is easy like hell... even getting a full set of 310 in 2-3 day... omg... it never was so easy to get gear or the new materia? even easier... if they go like this they have to cut their update-cycle for a way shorter period than before or people will lose interest pretty soon... buffing every cls giving them op-ness for no (or lets say minor to be not that harsh) effort like the RDM cls currently has... won't make things better. There is nothing to master, nor to work for in this tier... the grind what endgame is all about will get even more boring than its nowadays : /

[Sunako]

I think main reason why casters are kinda weak right now is because they changed foe and battle voice effect from bard. That was only reason how casters keep up somehow melee dps before. Red mage is pretty much only optimal choice if you wanna run with caster right now imo. Triple melee can be probably even better.

[Neela]

its not just the buff - its more that some cls need way more effort to reach MID lvl dmg while others are really easy to play with less punishment if they make a mistake and still reaching top tier output. yet we know they did it on purpose to promote Sam/Rdm but its still the wrong way to fuck all the other cls up... I'm just waiting for some adjustments to Sam/Rdm like they put Brd/Mch on casttimes with HW... than everybody will scream again... they started it wrong in the first way and are trapped now... if they buff everyone else it will get to easy and boring if they nerf SB cls the comm will call them out. lose - lose situation here : /

[Yorumi]

the problem with buffing every cls to get on par with Sam/Rdm/Ast is that the game itself will get easier and easier... i know SEs intention was to make the game more friendly for new players but... there is nothing ingame yet which really needs practice or further thoughts... SB in its current status is easy like hell... /

This has been a big disappointment to me. FF14 was already easy, SB made it nearly brain dead. I havn't had enough time to play to get to EX primals but the dungeons so far have been absolutely mindlessly boring and from what I hear the EX primals arn't much better. I remember bismark and ravana EX kicking ass for a while when they were relevant content. Beyond that you have the utterly incompetent class balance and it just feels like SE gave up. Feels like everything short of rdm/sam/pld/ast needs all kinds of attention. For that matter, despite playing a rdm it feels like every class in the game, including the OP 4 need nerfs to to put some semblance of danger in the game.

[Neela]

yeah thats what bothers me and others the most... have they really gave up? it doesn't make sense in anyway going commerz but fucking up the veterans who paid their bills over years... but well we will see... one way or another .____.

[RyuujinZERO]

Another issue with just buffing the casters is that MCH and BRD are already far behind the casters in DPS. People usually try justify this was 'But they have support skills!' - however, MCH is the lowest DPS of all the DPS classes, a full 20% behind SAM, and even behind BRD and MCH doesn't provide nearly as much support as BRD. We're already in a situation where nobody wants MCH in bleeding edge raids. If you push the DPS casters even further ahead of the martial ranged classes, you're going to be in a situation where BRD is only invited when people REALLY need the buffs and MCH gets /votekicked just for daring show up.

But if you buff the ranged classes AND the caster classes, you've reworked most the DPS classes in the game to get to that point, which bring us full circle - That RDM and SAM are simply punching above their weight and need to be brought in line.

[KaiSunstrider]

Hello everyone, I just wanted to post this thread to hopefully derail the "RDM can do all of these things, nerf them omg" bandwagon.

Thanks for starting this discussion. Just in case you are new to the FFXIV forums, I am sure you noticed that there are character post limits. You can submit a post and then edit it to get past these limits if you want a singular consolidated post rather than having to make 3 to get all of the desired info in.


For my input on the topic at hand, I agree that some of the Bard changes have skewed the caster result. The change to foe req and battle voice have now made bard viable in almost all comps because there is no longer the limitation to "caster only buff", but now that bard buffs are more homogenized to fit more classes, the once powerful classes are now even more powerful.