RDM QoL change: Impact should overwrite the Jolt II hotkey when it procs.

[Kabooa]

Frankly, I'd consolidate the melee combo before impact. Impact still offers a fairly compelling choice depending on your mana needs and thus having a separate button for it is fine to emphasize that weight.

[Dualgunner]

Frankly, I'd consolidate the melee combo before impact. Impact still offers a fairly compelling choice depending on your mana needs and thus having a separate button for it is fine to emphasize that weight.

What compelling choice? I mean, beyond boolean if(Impactful){Impact}

[Kabooa]

What compelling choice? I mean, beyond boolean if(Impactful){Impact}

In situations when you have to melee combo right damn now, Impact offers a way to hit both your Mana pools (Double dipping with jolt, or with Aero/Thunder should one mana be lower but still within the thresh hold)

It is admittedly a rare scenario, but it exists where Impact would be more beneficial than Fire or Stone.

The priority system for Red Mage isn't difficult but it has a fair amount of branches, and Impact is part of that. Because it remains part of this branch, having its own button is fine. The melee combo is just a 123, and it would ultimately save more buttons than Jolt->Impact

[Dualgunner]

In situations when you have to melee combo right damn now, Impact offers a way to hit both your Mana pools (Double dipping with jolt, or with Aero/Thunder should one mana be lower but still within the thresh hold)

It is admittedly a rare scenario, but it exists where Impact would be more beneficial than Fire or Stone.

The question isn't Impact vs Fire/Thunder it's Impact vs Jolt 2. What situation, if you have impact procced, would you choose jolt 2 over it? Besides, of course, "There's <2 seconds on Impactful".

[Shurrikhan]

In situations when you have to melee combo right damn now, Impact offers a way to hit both your Mana pools (Double dipping with jolt, or with Aero/Thunder should one mana be lower but still within the thresh hold).

But so, too, does Jolt II, which is the only alternative of concern here, as that is the one being recommended for replacement.

It's not like we're suggesting that Veraero be replaced with Verstone or Verthunder with Verfire. There is no reason, ever, to use a Jolt II over Impact when Impactful has sufficient duration to get the cast off.

You could just as easily call it Enhanced Jolt, and apply the Impact animation thereupon, and nothing in your range of decisions would change. You will have simply saved a button. That's it.

[PockyStyx]

I'm honestly hitting so few buttons, that I don't feel like its entirely necessary. . . but I'm not against it if they do change it.

I imagine 5.0 will bring us some new buttons to press, so why not trim the fat?

[Pastahnak]

maybe later on down the line ill have a need for this, but red mage is one of my least busy control set ups (I think i have 18 spots open for abilities on my crossbar/extended/doublecrossbar) but i do agree with how pvp does all these QOL things and they do them well that I really wish they'd give us the option to either use these or make these as macros ourselfs.

[JohnnyDevo]

-snip-
Edit : Having 5 VerFire/Stone in a row has 3,125% chance to happen. The thing is we all feel it does happen more than that. Are we all lucky? Are the RDM ghost buffed? No one knows...

in a 10 minute fight, according to some napkin math I just did, you can expect to cast aero/thunder 100 times. This, in itself, makes that 3.125% chance much more common.

In addition, between acceleration, swiftcast, and guarantee procs from holy/flare, the ratio of procs to no-procs is actually much higher realistically than 50%.

For example, if you're gaining (on average) half a proc every 5 seconds, acceleration starts at the top and bumps your first gcd to 1 proc in the first 5 seconds. At 35 seconds, acceleration comes off and adds another half proc, putting you at 4.5 procs. To simplify things, cut the melee combo out of the "timer" and call it a proc every 40 seconds, putting you at 6.0 procs at 40 seconds. You'll note that you only need to spend a proc every 5 seconds, which actually puts you at a boon of procs, more than you can use.

Compound this with swiftcast, which, every time its used, provides an additional half proc and simultaneously snips out a proc that you would have had to spend. Compound it further with the fact that every time RNG fails you and you need jolt, you get a free proc.

All of these factors, managed properly, create a situation where you're generally needing to cast jolt very few times. To fish an immediate example, a top-20 score of neo exdeath, this red mage casted jolt a total of 12 times out of his 187 non-melee/non-finisher spells. or 6.4%. To take a random sample of one of my shinryu runs, 15 out of 190, or 7.89%.

I've had plenty of instances where I got back to back Ver procs long enough for the Impact buff to fall off. It definitely does happen. If you're prioritizing Impact over anything other than Jolt II you're doing it wrong.

Yup! This is a common occurence! I, in fact, would recommend prioritizing impact over stone/fire if impact would otherwise fall off. It helps you fish for another proc. It's kinda like moving up the jolt you'll eventually have to cast on the schedule in order to not actually have to cast jolt again. While it does generate 1 less mana, in order for that to be relevant it would actually have to prevent you from using a melee combo, which is... unlikely.

suggestions of using macros on your gcd

Don't do this.

[Remedi]

Honestly speaking, I don't play RDM much, but when I levelled it I always felt Impact to be nothing more than button bloat, you could say that they could've just add it's extra potency and Mana to Jolt 2 and call it a day, but I'm a bit ignorant on its true usage so take this for what you want

[Sylvain]

Although it isn't QoL, I'd like VerWind/Thunder to reduce the recast time from 2.5 to 1.5sec (and some potency adjustment to compensate the dps gain)
I really dislike how every 2 cast I stand there like an idiot waiting for the GCD to end.