Red Mages need some love

[Mhaeric]

Question for clarification, just making sure I'm not misunderstanding you: realistically you'd rather not use Impact? Everything I know about RDM is "Use Impact at the next available longcast you can, even if both fire and stone are procced." It's theoretical loss versus absolute loss-that absolute loss being if you let Impact fall off.

Not quite. The only time you should cast Impact if you have both Verprocs is if there's less than 8 seconds left on Impactful. Otherwise, use Impact as a proc fisher when you have 1 or no procs.

From https://www.mooglemedia.com/rdm-guide/ (bolded emphasis mine)

NEVER let Impactful fall off. Always use it to fish for another proc. If you have both Verstone and Verfire and Impactful has <8 seconds left, use Impact anyways. This will still result in a net DPS gain.

Inevitably, you will end up having to cast Jolt II at some point in the fight. Jolt II will grant you the Impactful buff, allowing you to use Impact. At first glance, Impact appears to be a “cast me instead of Jolt II” button when you run out of Verstone/fire procs. However, in most cases you’re actually going to want to prioritize Impact over Verstone/fire. Impact should be considered a “proc fisher” just like Swiftcast and be used as often as possible. Furthermore, you should NEVER let Impactful fall off. Even if you have both Verstone/fire procs up, it is still a DPS gain to use Impact. Ideally, you would want to use Verstone/fire procs until one of them falls off and then use Impact to fish for the proc that just fell off, but if you have less than 8 seconds left on Impactful, go ahead and use Impact, regardless of how many procs you have.

The coles notes Impact/verproc priority from highest to lowest is as follows, but there's a much more in depth proc fishing priority list in the guide I linked above that goes into how other abilities and balance levels interact with it:
1. If there is less than 8 seconds remaining on Impactful then cast Impact regardless of the number of procs you have.
2. If you have 1 or fewer procs, cast Impact.
3. If you have 2 procs, cast your Verproc spells until you lose one of them or Impactful is about to fall off.

[Remedi]

Question for clarification, just making sure I'm not misunderstanding you: realistically you'd rather not use Impact? Everything I know about RDM is "Use Impact at the next available longcast you can, even if both fire and stone are procced." It's theoretical loss versus absolute loss-that absolute loss being if you let Impact fall off.

I'm saying that Impact doesn't really feel good as an ability especially need it's own button, I'd rather have it take over Jolt II for the duration like Ruin IV does to RuinII.
In short I feel like something it's missing out of it

[Kabooa]

Things I'd personally do.

1. Remove Raise from Red Mage and Summoner.
2. Dual Cast increases Spell Potency (10-20%). This equates to around a 5-6% damage buff.
3. Embolden no longer decays. This equates to around a 2% personal buff and a buff to 2% Physical DPS overall.

Things I saw someone else suggest

1. Moving Vercure to the Ability type.
-I like this idea because it does become a bonus the Red Mage brings instead of a trade off. It'd either need a somewhat comparable cooldown (like 15 seconds) or maintaining the MP Cost.

[EllieShadeflare]

Such a better era.....no customization = no fun. Bring on the science and make this shit interesting once again!

It'd come out to the same, because people will always try to find the meta (which will be found quickly), and buttholes will always use the meta to justify keeping people out of their parties.

It changes nothing and you just get a clunky system that few people are actually gonna take full advantage of (except in predetermined ways discovered by other players).

Also, I saw something that irritated me (despite being from a user that I tend to agree with), so we're going to unpack this a bit.

1. Remove Raise from Red Mage and Summoner.

I don't think this is necessary, if only for the reason that there's lore reasons for the former and mechanical reasons for the latter to keep their Raises. Red Mage has it to emphasize that they're users of magic of both White AND Black, but they're not a healer so they only chose the most basic abilities from White Mage (other than the elements). Summoner needs their Raise because they're Arcanist, and I don't know if it's actually possible to replace one skill with another in its entirety from the base class set. Summon 1 and 2 don't exactly count because they only change the result, not the skill itself (you still summon something, but it seems to be a conditional "If Scholar then Fairy" kinda thing.

That said, you could limit these raises in various ways. For example, Resurrection (for Summoner) could have an absolutely unreasonable MP cost which is handled by a level 1 trait for Scholar, whilst Red Mage can't use Dualcast on Verraise (but could still use Swiftcast). It'd also help if we got more mages in the Caster Role to also show that Raise is simply a class/job lore thing rather than a role thing.

2. Dual Cast increases Spell Potency (10-20%). This equates to around a 5-6% damage buff.

This feels unnecessary, considering that Verthunder/Veraero are already higher potency than the spell you hardcast.

3. Embolden no longer decays. This equates to around a 2% personal buff and a buff to 2% Physical DPS overall.

This is something I highly agree with, since the decay was originally built for when Embolden was slated to be a whopping 20% buff. At 10%, it's about the same as Trick Attack, but with almost twice the CD and also decays. It's not at all good. As a result, I suggest either we go with your suggestion or bring Embolden back to its originally intended 20%.

1. Moving Vercure to the Ability type.
-I like this idea because it does become a bonus the Red Mage brings instead of a trade off. It'd either need a somewhat comparable cooldown (like 15 seconds) or maintaining the MP Cost.

I personally don't like it myself because Vercure had a bonus utility of ensuring a Dualcast in downtime, so we could get a proc when something finally happens. It also allows us to cover for our own mistakes as needed and removes some of that pressure from healers.

[Kabooa]

Raise.

I disagree. Caster Raise is currently an all or nothing affair with inconsistent stances on who has it, why they have it, and what they give up for having / not having it.

It doesn't fit the bill of an emergency raise when it's always available, but only on certain jobs.

It is 100% possible in any perceived framework of the game to remove a skill from a job, because as we've seen -they've already done it-. In fact, if you remember the transition from Cross Class to Role Action, the stuff didn't get removed from our bars. It was disabled. The Skills are likely still in the game, but access to them is cut off. It isn't a fancy Text change to your Job name, you are likely moving from one 'Job database' to another.

Also, "Raise" is hardly the 'most basic' of spells from a lore standpoint, and mechanically a Summoner is not a healer, so they don't even get that excuse for having it.

[maestroanth]

It'd come out to the same, because people will always try to find the meta (which will be found quickly), and buttholes will always use the meta to justify keeping people out of their parties.

That's a very pessimistic viewpoint IMO, but I do get it. In reality though, I only faced your "butthole" problem in WoW. I think it's mainly because Rift and DDO attract players that share my D&D pov whereas WoW attracted a more generalized demographic of player. Plus, MMO's with how much repetition there is, needs stuff for players to f*ck around with to keep it interesting. Plus, with talent trees you get certain combos that derive naturally that are optimal at various levels which makes the grind much more fun.

I mean, I actually get excited when I level up in Rift and decide what to invest my points in, but in FFXIV, I couldn't care less.....

[maestroanth]

And plus too, even with the microcontrol of what abilities are used in PVP vs PVE by the developers with no customization from the players, the PVP in FFXIV is still inferior to many other MMO's especially Rift.

There is just no excuse for that.....

[MoroMurasaki]

I'm saying that Impact doesn't really feel good as an ability especially need it's own button, I'd rather have it take over Jolt II for the duration like Ruin IV does to RuinII.
In short I feel like something it's missing out of it

The issue with this is when Impactful is going to fall off you can potentially create some dead time where there is nothing but 5sec spells or Vercure to cast.

If you've not got any procs, don't have melee up and have used SC recently you would have to stand there waiting for Impactful to fall off. No one wants to do that. Vercure would be on the table but Jolt II does still do more damage than nothing.

[EllieShadeflare]

It doesn't fit the bill of an emergency raise when it's always available, but only on certain jobs.

It is 100% possible in any perceived framework of the game to remove a skill from a job, because as we've seen -they've already done it-. In fact, if you remember the transition from Cross Class to Role Action, the stuff didn't get removed from our bars. It was disabled. The Skills are likely still in the game, but access to them is cut off. It isn't a fancy Text change to your Job name, you are likely moving from one 'Job database' to another.

You're forgetting to realize that in this case, Resurrection is a CLASS skill for Arcanist, who splits off into Summoner and Scholar, which is why I mentioned mechanics and I specifically included the Scholar's fairy as an another example. I also said this:

I don't know if it's actually possible to replace one skill with another in its entirety from the base class set.

Referring to the question of Resurrection in the ACN slot. And note, with the other skills that went from the Classes and Job skill lists to the Cross Role skill lists, the whole skill was removed from its original job and class. If you need me to be more specific,

We currently have no way of addressing Raise for Scholar before Level 30 if we remove Resurrection from Arcanist and by extension Summoner.

Also, "Raise" is hardly the 'most basic' of spells from a lore standpoint, and mechanically a Summoner is not a healer, so they don't even get that excuse for having it.

Raise in the FFXIV term isn't bringing something from the dead, you realize. It's merely curing the knock out status, or bringing them back from the cusp of death, not specifically true resurrection or revival. Nybeth Obdilord specifically mentions that our Raise spells (which, by the way, is univeral enough among classes with healing potential that Astrologian and Arcanist both have their own incarnations of the spells) cannot actually raise the dead.

The art of true resurrection... a challenge even in this world, it would seem. The Trader's Spurn seemed promising, but inevitably renders the subject undead.

The magicks of Gridania proved equally ineffective, only pulling souls back from the brink of death, unable to reach beyond the veil.

As for mechanics, I already stated that it might be physically impossible for the devs to remove it from Summoner without removing Summoner from the Arcanist skilltree entirely. This might be why the 60-70 SMN quests hint that there's ways of using Summoning that doesn't involve tomes.

That's a very pessimistic viewpoint IMO, but I do get it. In reality though, I only faced your "butthole" problem in WoW. I think it's mainly because Rift and DDO attract players that share my D&D pov whereas WoW attracted a more generalized demographic of player. Plus, MMO's with how much repetition there is, needs stuff for players to f*ck around with to keep it interesting. Plus, with talent trees you get certain combos that derive naturally that are optimal at various levels which makes the grind much more fun.

I mean, I actually get excited when I level up in Rift and decide what to invest my points in, but in FFXIV, I couldn't care less.....

That's a you problem, to be honest. The "illusion of choice" seen in other MMOs have crashed and burned massively, and are only really maintained in very niche MMOs (RIFT being a good example of this, since it's very top-heavy and players are complaining about balance issues).

And while some players will find talent trees with unique combos, getting those combos will cause people to harass them for not taking the "optimal" build, because people are inherently toxic.

[Remedi]

The issue with this is when Impactful is going to fall off you can potentially create some dead time where there is nothing but 5sec spells or Vercure to cast.

If you've not got any procs, don't have melee up and have used SC recently you would have to stand there waiting for Impactful to fall off. No one wants to do that. Vercure would be on the table but Jolt II does still do more damage than nothing.

What you mean? if you have no proc you should fire off impact anyway