RDM: Acceleration and Impact

[LunarEmerald]

The only things I would change about Red Mage is making impact automatic instead of giving us another button that clutters up hotbar space.

[PatronasCharm]

I like the idea of Jolt II becoming Impact, and I do believe they should remove:

Acceleration and make it a trait instead like it increases Proc rate for VerStone / Fire by a base of 10% then increases by 2% after each tier of the trait.
For example Acceleration I-V

[Riyshn]

From talking with a RDM friend of mine about this a couple days ago, his biggest issue with Acceleration is that it's essentially a CD that has a 50% chance of doing absolutely nothing. Yes, it guarantees the proc, but you already had a 50/50 chance of that happening anyway, and there's no system in place to say that this cast gave the proc naturally, so your Acceleration buff isn't consumed.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Both skills are fine, Impact and Acceleration are just there as proc insurance since our maximum DPS is determined by RNG. Nothing needs to be changed.

[Stormblessed9000]

Both skills are fine, Impact and Acceleration are just there as proc insurance since our maximum DPS is determined by RNG. Nothing needs to be changed.

I agree on acceleration, but impact is s different story. As it stands, impact is completely independent of how lucky you are with procs. It doesn't interact at all with the other procs 99% of the time, and the 1% is just when you get tons of other procs back to back on both spells so it falls off. If it only triggered when you don't get a proc, that would be a different story, but as it stands, it just makes our filler use two buttons instead of one.

[Meng_Qing]

Turn impact into an AOE? Both scatter and jolt procs it?

It looks like it'll be an AOE with the animation.

[Trespar]

I'd give RDM a trait that adds the additional effects of Impact(+30 potency +1 B/W mana) to the next Jolt, rather than replacing Jolt with Impact, this would be to prevent Impact from failing if cast with too little time on the buff.
If the buff expires, you'd simply cast Jolt II at 240 potency and 3 B/W mana. If cast with, it's Jolt II at 270 potency and 4 B/W mana.

And change Impact to always be active and instead have a 5 sec cast time, and have 120-150 aoe potency.
This to spice up our aoe, because just spamming Scatter doesn't feel like it fits with the spirit of the job.

If necessary, take some of Scatter's potency to keep our aoe potency same as before.

About Acceleration, maybe it could cut down the global cooldown on whatever next skill you cast with Dualcast in addition to its usual effects?
Say that it lowers the gcd by 1 second, you'd get a Jolt(2.5s gcd) into an instant, but 1.5s gcd Verthunder.

Personally I don't think Acceleration needs changing, though.
But something like that could be somewhat interesting at least.

However, Impact is probably my least favorite skill in the RDM repertoire, because it just feels like unecessary clutter, and I like the idea of completely redesigning it to have it spice up our aoe, and retain the neat animation.
Its animation being as flashy as it is, fits aoe much better, anyway.

I don't know how others experience it, but in a single target situation, its animation is actually kind of distracting in a way.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Its point is to be independent from proc luck. It's just there as a balancing mechanism so that if you're in the lower half where you're only getting procs an average of 40% or less than the time, your damage isn't getting smacked in the shins with a shovel. Personally I like it, there's a few different ways I use it to optimize my output or salvage a dry run of Verstone/Fire procs.

As for giving it an AoE effect as some people have suggested, it wouldn't really fit in to the AoE rotation at 3+ targets since you're losing a lot of potency by not scatter spamming and attaching Impactful to Scatter would be moot since then the damage has to be nerfed and Enhanced Scatter then probably goes in the trash and now you have wet noodle AoE spell as your proc insurance when you're running dry. It's boring I know, I wish they gave us Verblizzard/Water as follow up AoE spells that gave mana scaling up with how many targets you hit with them, to break up the tedium of Scatter.

[Fluffernuff]

Both skills are fine, Impact and Acceleration are just there as proc insurance since our maximum DPS is determined by RNG. Nothing needs to be changed.

I really don't feel as if Impact fits that description. It doesnt give any insurance for any sort of procs we rely on- and it activates 100% off of an ability that has no interaction with our RNG to begin with. it is quite frankly, a consolation prize for trying.

I would actually prefer if Impact had the same treatment as enhanced Scatter, but for Jolt. Reduce the proc rate down from 100% to 30%/50% or something, increase cast time, and change the mana gain to 8/8 or something silly. Instead of being a tacked-on "combo" we only use of out necessity, let it fill the role of our single target mana gain. It would still be less powerful than the Verslows, but give better mana gain.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

snip

Okay think of it like this, before you can cast Impact, you have a chance to go 100% (an outlier yes, but for the sake of argument) without procs meaning you would only be able to do 540 potency per 2 gcds instead of 570, over the course of a standard fight it's a substantial potency loss. Over the course of a minute it's about 360 or so potency. Impact means that for a minimum of 50% of the fight you get the extra 30 potency and 1 additional mana for each element (to a total of 8 mana generated vs the 9 from stone/fire). Meaning it's your damage insurance in the case that you're unlucky, reducing RDMs dependence on RNG up to that point. It's fine, doesn't need to be changed.