How would you make RDM more complex?

[Kabooa]

Again, more complex does not necessarily mean playing grand orchestra style piano on your keyboard. I'm not talking about adding a hundred new buttons to press nor a mega mandatory maintenance buff that gimps you for forced inactivity. I'm talking about maybe one or two more variables other than, "do have proc?", or "how big number to stab?". I quit playing SMN over the massive amount of micro management, RDM is a fun change of pace but that pace need not always be a leisurely meander through the tulip garden.

With this in mind, the Impact suggestion I made alone seems sufficient for a variable piece. A priority use depending on what you need at the moment and that you plan ahead for.

Also Flare Rose'.

[Kabooa]

@Kabooa I legitimately hadn't thought about consuming mana for support buffs, and I like the idea. I am a little unclear on how the Impact change would work.

Did not see this edit.

Effectively, the Impact suggested in my post way back there has it working like this.

If Red Mage started a fight with VerAero -> VerThunder, then the spell prior to casting Impact is 'VerThunder'.

Impact would then generate black mana and provide the Black Mana generation buff.

If the Red Mage string was Jolt -> VerAero, Melee Combo into VerHoly, then the last spell used is 'VerHoly', and Impact would give its effect based on that.

The various effects were spitballed, and in the grand scheme of things, a few other knobs and levers would need to be turned and pulled were such a thing to come into play.

[BigT102090]

To be honest I like red mage how it is. I would prefer having some higher AoE abilities. Scatter, Moulinet, and contre sixte are nice and all but it just seems to me like they dont do very much damage at all.

[Hellstorm]

personally only thing id like to see is holy and flare have situational useage maybe holy be single target while flare be aoe or one put phy debuff and other put magical.

[Shurrikhan]

By creating a Fencer class beneath it with adequate complexity in itself to be enjoyable at level 50, and then working the magic into a spellsword system, spending (based on macrorotational choices and build and the present situation) one third to two thirds of total time at melee.

Sadly, the spellsword system itself would require vast rehauls to introduce inherent by-element effects (not a mere rock-paper-scissors elemental wheel) into combat as a whole...

[XiXiQ]

I still don't want to see it made complex, but it could do with a DOT, a way to generate self-mana (needed after a KO), and one of the verHoly/Flare should be made into an aoe procced after moulinets. It also needs a self buff CD (speed or a double-cast). There, that will do fo RDM at 80

[Dualgunner]

I still don't want to see it made complex, but it could do with a DOT, a way to generate self-mana (needed after a KO), and one of the verHoly/Flare should be made into an aoe procced after moulinets. It also needs a self buff CD (speed or a double-cast). There, that will do fo RDM at 80

Don't need to change verholy or verflare for that--there's always verflood or or verfreeze, since we have no water/ice spells yet.

[dinnertime]

I want to see it changed up a bit to something varied and actually engaging while still keeping it about the same.
There's really not much variety on RDM due to a spell being parallel with another one.

I like the idea of more mana spenders that actually gives different effects. It's a simple solution to give RDM some variety into it.

spellsword system

I'm hoping they save that for a proper Mystic Knight. Pls be a tank

[Shurrikhan]

I'm hoping they save that for a proper Mystic Knight. Pls be a tank

I honestly don't think the domain is so narrow that it cannot be expressed very differently between the two. In fact, I'd most like for their manipulations to be like two sides of the same coin, or three facets each sharing a common base between MSK, RDM, and a third manipulative elementalist.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Wouldn't you be frustrated if the question you asked immediately got panic reactions from people who frankly gave off the impression that the slightest amount of nuance would make RDM an overly complex piano class like SMN? Now I'm being overanalyzed by someone who thinks I have some sort of duty to be 'fair' as if this is some sort of scholarly forum. Plainly I don't give a fig about the other side of the argument since to me it appears either complacent or boring. In my mind there's no realistic keep it simple argument since mechanical changes are the bread and butter of each expansion thus far. The question I made was to elicit responses from people who would desire more complexity to the class, others could've kept browsing. I wasn't manufacturing discussion I liked, I was inviting like minded others to share ideas.

The class is largely simple without any relativity thrown into the mix. There's not much more to it than the oversimplified sentence fragments I used rhetorically above and vaguely mentioning anecdotal situations does nothing to make RDM seem less simple. Lore is not an argument to be used here. We have one game worth of established lore which boils down to accelerating forms of Black Magic and White Magic so we don't use external Aether and harm the environment, the accelerated magic causes Mana build up which is then released through sword play. There's the lore, you can branch out quite easily from there without undermining the concept. The only proposed way I've seen of solely modifying Verholy and Verflare is what Llugen mentioned above since they're both offensive options, realistically no one is going to use a defensive damage down proc or a control effect since in either case it's simply not useful or incredibly difficult to time.

That Verraise suggestion isn't interesting, it's the kind of overly superfluous effect I'd like to avoid since having your mana at 100 is generally a loss in DPS either from mana not gained or holding onto your melee combo for too long. I agree with the rest of this paragraph.

Sure, but it wouldn't actually change gameplay that much, with the free proc version it wouldn't even be an increase in single target DPS considering the recast is 1.5 seconds along with whatever potential time is consumed by repositioning and Jolt II/Impact/Verfire/Verstone all cast at a realistic time of about 1.9 seconds for 40-70 more potency followed by Verthunder or Veraero for 300 more potency.

As for Vernochian, it's not viable either and not the kind of gameplay I, or most RDMs, would want, juggling a 10 second stance for Black Magic and then White Magic, assuming that's how it would be implemented, would be tedious at best and laborious at worst if you need a non gameplay reason it's also not lore friendly since it's about balancing the use of Aether not just focusing on one until it's depleted.

If you want a post by post breakdown my tone went from inspired excitement, to patient, to slightly irritated since 3 people immediately decided to post basically the same thing. I like theorizing, I like creating an idea to be critiqued. I don't like it when people immediately decide to attack the motive rather than just looking at the suggestion critically and then deciding their personal thoughts about it.