Red Mage improvement suggestions from a RDM advocate.

[Hyrist]

It's no new thing that I defend Red mage to the bitter end, but even I can acknowledge when a class is under-tuned, or when there's something lacking with it. For those who are looking for admission from me - they can have it - Red Mage needs a buff to bring up its average performance and skill floor a bit.

(Summary is listed below, which is a copy-paste of the adjustments without the reasoning behind them.)

I do always, however press for fully exploring something before critiquing it and often when I keep this open perspective I begin to identify issues that are NOT being frequently talked about.

So let's get the obvious out of the way - I'd like to address a couple of matters that are commonly brought up and turn them on their head a little.

1. "Red Mage has no burst." - I agree with the sentiment, but not the details of why.

I agree that Red Mage's damage is too spread out from where it is now, but I do not believe this is as much of an issue with numbers as it is with delays. Between the ~2 Second CGD on Enchanted Redoublet and the 1.5 second animation delay on Verflare/Verholy, the Red Mage's strongest damage portions have this giant gap between when they hit, giving healers and tanks plenty of time to react.

Now it's been noted among the more dedicated Red Mages that it's possible to Jolt II before Verflare/Verholy, then still instant cast Impact afterwards, but the Animation and Recast delay on Verflare/Verholy still make this impractical to use as a full burst.

In fixing Red Mage's burst, I feel that it would be more important to implement the following before adding any potency changes.

Adjustments (Burst)
- Reduce the Recast Timer of Enchanted Redoublet to 1.5 seconds (Same as the two previous melee skills)
- Reduce the damage trigger for Verholy's and Verflare's animation to ~0.3-0.5 Seconds, and reduce its recast to 1.5 seconds.

Now there's something additional I'd like to add that will assist Red Mage's burst, but I feel that the change will also be better suited for the utility discussion.

2. Red mage has no Utility.

This phrase is just overall wrong semantically, but it's meaning is more or less accurate:

Red Mage has an instant, on-demand AoE Weight that deals 1000 damage to its primary target and fall-off damage to each additional target. The problem is that it's restricted to the GCD, costs 300 TP, and is Melee range conal.

While it is great for assisting with retreats and chases, Red Mage literally has no other utility to follow it up with, which makes me wonder why the ability just isn't all that powerful if it's going to be our ONLY utility. Address it's three innate flaws and this would quash all utility discussion for Red mage.

So here's the proposed change.

Adustments (Utility)
Replace Flunge with Contre Sixte - give it the same AoE Radius in PvE, put it off the global cooldown with a 30-45 second recast timer and remove the TP cost. Damage can be adjusted from 1000 for balance purposes if needed, but I'm not sure that due to the delay it will need it when Black mage already has Flare that does similar, on top of both Weight And Sleep in their kit.

If Red Mage is to be restricted to one utility skill, weighing down a clustered group of enemies off the global cooldown, that can be woven into a Red Mage's damage cycle and fits with its PvE themes, I feel, is the best way to go here.

3. Red Mage has too much risk for its burst. (Has to be in Melee Range.)

Here is where I disagree staunchly with most of the community. Right now PvP lacks a high-risk-high-reward style class, which Red Mage would fill if it was appropriately balanced. And if its damage and utility are corrected, this becomes a non-factor, as currently it's a very small factor that only manifests in drawn out fights, if anything I'd say Red Mage could afford give away its one 'defensive' buff to double down on playing aggressively while addressing the idea that Red Mage can't deal damage at range.

Monomachy, personally, to me is an Eyesore of a skill. There just does not seem to be any engaging gameplay of swapping a passive around that further highlights how predictable and tunneled Red Mage's damage already is - furthermore, it has no basis in any of Red Mage's PvE skill line up at all, which is contrary to every other PvP skill which at least has a basis in cross-role skills if not primary. So instead, let it be resplaced by something that's native to Red Mage's class that will address the more important matters of Red Mage's ranged damage, and it's burst window.

Adjustments (Misc)
- Replace Monomachy with Fleche, give Fleche a potency of 500-750 and a recast of 25-30 Seconds.

With this, a Red Mage's damage becomes versatile enough to be worked at a range, but at the cost of some of its Burst damage. And its strongest burst comes form risking itself in close range and blowing all of its off global cool-downs within it's melee burst, with plenty of flexibility to pull suprise tactics such as the Jolt II Ver(Flare/Holy) Impact along with Fleche and Contre Sixte.

The fact that this would make it an all-range damage threat with an OGC weight on top of it's movement tools would make diving it a deterrent unless CCed.

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So, to summarize my proposed adjustments:

- Reduce the Recast Timer of Enchanted Redoublet to 1.5 seconds (Same as the two previous melee skills)
- Reduce the damage trigger for Verholy's and Verflare's animation to ~0.3-0.5 Seconds, and reduce its recast to 1.5 seconds. (To remove awkward pauses in burst rotation)
- Replace Flunge with Contre Sixte - AoE off GCD 50% Slow for 3 seconds, no TP cost. 1000 potency with falloff. 30-45 Second Recast time. (Gives only utility skill proper impact)
- Replace Monomachy with Fleche - 500-750 potency and a recast of 25-30 Seconds. (Gives proper ranged component to burst, both addresses and doubles down on risk/reward system for Red Mage)


Disclaimer - I don't expect any of these adjustments to be taken verbatim, (pun intended) let alone in their entity. But any one grouping of them would be a massive improvement to Red Mage's overall performance - and I feel the list as a whole would convey the idea that Red Mage needs smoothing over. Note that most of this has more to do with shifting around the damage we already have into something more focused than just straight out buffing our damage. (Examples: Fleche actually deals less damage than the impact of Monomachy during a burst duration, but deals its damage at range and all at once. Contre Sixte does less damage over the course of a fight than utilizing Flunge but is more accessible to use in combo.) This highlights my idea that Red Mage does not need buffing so much as an adjustment of how its damage is distributed.

Anyways, thanks for your time.

[Hecathedrk]

Make Flunge an oGCD skill.
And this is what I need the most, increase the mana gained from verfire and verstone, it takes way too long to build enough mana to burst.

[Kisama]

It'd also be cool to get Tether, so our Limit Break isn't absolutely useless.

[Cynric]

What about changing monomachy to a CD similar to Samurai's chiten where on activation melee hits will be countered and you gain a defense buff, but adding a knockback effect for a small time(3s)? Similar to barrier moves used by bosses like Ravana. That way Red mage can actually get their melee burst off meanwhile they can actually add a small level of crowd contol on melee targets.

I haven't played Red mage in 4s yet (melee main) but from my times going against and having them on my team, whenever they go in to do their burst(if they even do) they're pretty easy to just nuke right there and they only get the one disengage. So I dunno how helpful or OP that would be but my idea was to add to the "fencing in melee" theme they seem to have.

[Hyrist]

To be honest, I have to wonder whether or not the Red Mages getting collapsed against are not taking the defense buffs at the start of the match. Usually I don't "get nuked then and there" until well into the match and even then, tanks and healers seem to have the awareness to heal/defend me when I'm in my burst.

I do like your idea, though, Cynric, and it could help if I thought defense was really an issue here. But I'm not repeatedly dieing or getting crushed for going into melee range - I'm seeing erratic damage performance in my matches (I've taken a habit of screens-hotting my match summaries so I can study them and see how I can improve.) usually as a result of juking my casts (ducking behind obstacles) or shielding them behind stoneskin or immunity effects.

I do get low on HP when targeted frequently, but I take Recuperate for the frequency of restoration of health So often when they think there tackeling someone with 10000 health they're attacking someone with 12500, which throws them off. I don't find myself dieing any more than say a Melee in my position when I'm in melee range and for much the same reasons, except I do have 2 escapes (remember enemies at range and objects such as Adrenaline Supplies can be used to use CaC as an escape tool as well, and is a lot more controllable).

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Meanwhile, Hecathedrk, how are you building Mana at the start of the match? I use Jolt II/Impact as mainly a Mana building tool unless I'm trying to burst someone down, but MP can be an issue in long fights. But I don't find our burst to be too distant from one another. I'm wondering what we're doing or viewing differently.

I'd like the idea of an Off Global Cooldown Flunge, if its targeting wasn't so unreliable. An enemy can be dead to rights in range of the animation in my screen and not be hit. If it was going to be off global cooldown I'd prefer it be targeted as well.

Kisama, an off global cooldown AoE Slow at range should help for landing the Adrenaline Rush. I get your frustration though, which is typically why I use Flunge on a cluster that's trying to burst down someone then immediately attempt to land. Tends to work better.

[Hecathedrk]

Usually i start the match with jolt 2/ impact on 1 of the boxes (20 mana on both white and black mana).
Then ill throw another jolt 2/impact on the enemy ( 40 mana)
Then ill use verfire and verstone to build up mana, or use x2mana skill in case of bursting.
The problem is not at the beginning of the game, we build up mana way too slow to follow our melee fellows, sometimes they are ready to burst when we are still busy building our mana up. And verfire/verstone is not killing anybody, in case the healer got cced and cant heal.

It's just like we are not even there with them.

People are wrong one thing about rdm, their burst is not weak, but it takes way too long for rdm to be ready to burst, so they feel like there is no damage from the rdm at all.

[Takatsuki]

Nah the burst is hella weak, when your burst takes like 5seconds then its hella weak.
If they would do the same amount in half the time, they would be decent atleast, but I honestly doubt that there's a balancing team to listen.

[Hecathedrk]

Have you ever done the rapier combo after verholy/verflare?
Just like when you watch the enemy blocks goku's kamehameha, and then Goku appears out of nowhere and fk the guy up? Yeah, the fully RDM burst is kinda like that.

[KfLeX]

I would love to see it get buffed. I love playing rdm in 8s would like to play it more in ranked.

[NorthernLadMSP]

I say this as having only played RMD on Frontlines (don't play Feast), but my biggest gripe with RDM is illustrated below:

You start by casting your Ver spells to build up white/black, you then use Manafiction to get up to the 90s-100. You dive in, try your melee combo which is actually quite annoying given that people often sprint away (and you may not have spring up at the moment). When you finally land your final melee hit, the target is dead. You get excited you can now use Verholy or Verflare. However, you look around and there is no one in sight. Or, the enemies you do see are so far away and you sigh in frustration as you realize you aren't going to be able to use Verholy/Verflare because it falls off so quickly. BLM and SMN get access to their big move indefinitely (until they use it) but after all that work RMD loses theirs after 5 seconds.