Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Archwizard]

I 100% think that RDM is going to get some sort of ability with the name Refresh as a ref to XI, whether or not it operates the same. As for damage abilities, RDM is designed so perfectly that adding anything to its single target feels like it'll disrupt the almost choreographed flow of the job. Maybe a third finisher ability that's aligned with neither black/white magic for when you finish your melee combo with a balanced amount of mana that could proc Impact or something

Since Ranged already have Refresh I would be surprised, not to mention we lost Death Blossom out to Rogues and got Chant du Cygne renamed to "Zwerchau". If I recall correctly RDMs in XI were strong debuffers, while they don't even have DoTs in XIV; safe to say the design is going to be a bit different between the two games.
There are other options to recover MP though, I believe someone mentioned Aspir/Osmotic Slash earlier in the thread.

I don't think that perspective on single-target is true at all - as long as we maintain the pairing of "shortcast -> Dualcast longcast" and net-gain Mana, it's nigh impossible to "disrupt the flow," and anything longer than 2 seconds to cast will automatically be shuffled into our longcasts anyway. Ironically the only way to really disrupt it would be an instant GCD, and even then we have space for a Scathe or a Ruin II in mobile encounters.
It would easy enough to add, say, a proc that replaces the next Veraero/Verthunder in the rotation (just like Verfire/Verstone already do to Jolt/Impact), or a DoT that replaces a Jolt/Impact to refresh. Same flow, but with extra buttons or different timers.

(Yes, I know, I keep saying DoT. It's my go-to example for design expansion, not a claim of 'necessity.')

As I previously explained, I think it would be more disruptive to add a third Verfinisher; right now the choice is a simple binary. Adding a third option under the current circumstances would most likely just create button bloat, either leading to Verholy/Verflare being pushed to the side completely in favor of capping your MP to cast the superior option, or be completely ignored in favor of them outside niche scenarios -- and with a condition of only "balanced mana", I find the latter more likely since Impact is already easier to proc than Verstone/Verfire, with a lower Mana gain than either.

Some earlier in the thread have suggested a third Verfinisher that only becomes available after having cast both of the others, but presently it takes 40 seconds to build up to each Verfinisher without Manafication, and having to do so two or three times under current circumstances would lead to a build-up just shy of SMN's for Demi-Bahamut, which nobody really wants. For a more reasonable buildup to such an ability (say, 1 minute), we would either need a faster Manafication CD, a substantial (~50%) increase to our base Mana generation, a substantial (~25-30%) reduction to our Enchanted combo cost, some happy medium between the two, or a means to proc Verfinishers outside of a melee combo.

[Jonnycbad]

I think MP issues would be obviated if they nerf Verraise to make it on its own recast timer with a 30 or 60s recast (same for SMN). Most of our MP woes comes from coming back from Weakness or spamming raises. DPS can only get TP back with cross-role skills Tactician/Invigorate, so I think it would be fine if RDM could only get it back from Lucid Dreaming. Our spells are far cheaper to cast than other DPS casters.

SMN can regain 10% MP with Aetherflow, but SMN MP costs are actually a bit higher:


3 GCDs every 30-40 seconds cost on RDM cost 0 MP, as well.

That said, they could definitely tweak RDM's MP costs to be even cheaper or give us a 5-7% MP boost when we use Acceleration, or give us HP/MP drain when we do our Enhanced melee combo.

[Mansion]

I think MP issues would be obviated if they nerf Verraise to make it on its own recast timer with a 30 or 60s recast (same for SMN). Most of our MP woes comes from coming back from Weakness or spamming raises. DPS can only get TP back with cross-role skills Tactician/Invigorate, so I think it would be fine if RDM could only get it back from Lucid Dreaming. Our spells are far cheaper to cast than other DPS casters.

Mmmh not really.
If you play uptime RDM, with no raise and no lucid dreaming, you will run out of MP around 4-5 minutes in the fight.

SMN uses Ruin 3 most of the time (240 PM), can refresh DoTs once out of two times thanks to an oGCD ability (free mana cost), and sometimes SMN use Ruin II (480 PM) for mobility outside of DWT and Bahamut (that's not considering Ruin 4 procs that is 240 PM, and instant). And they get 10% MP recovery every minute. Sure their MP pool is a bit reduced compared to RDM, but you virtually cannot run out of MP on SMN as long as you don't die. Plus you can access Lucid Dreaming if things go really bad.

RDM is ONLY using spells that cost 360 MP, 480 MP for each dualcast and 600 MP after each melee combo, with no mana recovery part of their rotation. They can be expected to Mana shift and Raise. So yeah, they need something in their kit to fix the MP costs (either through a regen or a Thin Air like ability).

[Archwizard]

RDM is ONLY using spells that cost 360 MP, 480 MP for each dualcast and 600 MP after each melee combo, with no mana recovery part of their rotation. They can be expected to Mana shift and Raise. So yeah, they need something in their kit to fix the MP costs (either through a regen or a Thin Air like ability).

... and we can be assured that in the current circumstances, a Thin Air-like ability would be primarily saved for Verraising, since that's the fastest drain on RDM's MP if we can LD the main rotation.

So, either we use the compromise of gaining a cost-reduction CD for our primary rotation (which would most likely be used right before the Verfinisher if it lasts into the main combo) while also removing the MP cost from Verraise outright and putting it on a cooldown like Jonny said -- bearing in mind our costs are already a fraction of what other casters have and it seems part of the intent of the melee combo is to give us scant seconds to recover MP (... before our biggest cost) -- or we advocate some form of direct MP recovery purely to sustain the rotation, allowing us to save Lucid Dreaming for emergencies such as Verraise spam or death recovery.

I find the latter solution both simpler and more elegant. Besides, Mana Shift's recovery is based on the MP consumed, so a cost-reduction skill would either have no benefit or weaken the skill.

Given the rough example number of 4-5 minutes without Lucid Dreaming or downtime, we expend about 20-25% of our MP per minute of combat assuming 1) we don't Mana Shift or Verraise and 2) our average MP expenditure doesn't jump up in Shadowbringers.
Now on the one-hand, we could aim to break even during the course of our rotation. Napkin math says this could mean increasing our base Refresh rate by about 1-1.25% of our max MP every tick, or (assuming 40 seconds to the melee combo with an extra combo every other Manafication, coming out to 7 combos every 4 minutes or 1.75 combos/min) about 11.5-14.3% of our MP every melee combo -- bearing in mind that while SMN gets 10% back per minute with Aetherflow, they also can choose to sacrifice DPS in a pinch using Energy Drain to recover an additional ~9% per cast.
On the other hand, we don't necessarily need to break even, we just need to reasonably last through the encounter. At half those numbers, we theoretically double our uptime without LD, and at two-thirds the sample we triple that uptime -- and that's all assuming the fight has no downtime of its own for base MP recovery, which virtually no encounter longer than 5 minutes is lacking in.

[Mansion]

Snip.

Yes, I'm assuming we are keeping Lucid Dreaming too, so we can either pair it up with a "Thin Air", or have those two options when things go bad.

I'm more keen to have a MP recovery within the RDM kit and not necessarily in the rotation (my original suggestion was our unenchanted melee combo), based on the fact that we would keep Lucid Dreaming. They could do as you suggest and implement it within the rotation too.
Every way could work really, either have it as another CD that you can use onfly for MP refresh (as Lucid Dreaming's agro drop can save lives sometimes), have more MP, have less MP-expensive spells... just anything that gives us MP back on top of Lucid.

[Archwizard]

I'm more keen to have a MP recovery within the RDM kit and not necessarily in the rotation (my original suggestion was our unenchanted melee combo), based on the fact that we would keep Lucid Dreaming. They could do as you suggest and implement it within the rotation too.

Which is why I've lately been favoring an MP recovery that is based on the damage of our melee skills.

Having MP recovery based purely on our unenchanted melee gives us MP on demand but encourages bad play, not to mention there are times when we are locked out of the unenchanted melee.
Having MP recovery based purely on our Enchanted melee gives us the ability to upkeep our rotation and guarantees it won't be a consumer in ShB, but requires a massive MP investment before we can go about recovery (which is inconvenient in Verraising/MShifting and impossible after reviving).
Having it based on both however, with a higher value on our Enchanted melee, gives us the best of both worlds -- the ability to recover a sliver on-demand just to get started, while still encouraging our Enchanted melee combo for primary upkeep. A full Enchanted combo has a potency of 970 (before Verfinisher, which has an MP cost itself), while an unenchanted combo is 510; giving about 1.18-1.47% MP per 100 potency would allow the main combo to break even over the course of a fight, and our unenchanted combo to give 6-7.5% MP per use for when LD isn't available.
Even making it so the unenchanted combo recovers 4-5% MP per use would allow the main combo to sustain us through a standard boss duration assuming we live the whole time and don't need to Verraise or MShift, and give us enough MP to kickstart our rotation instead of waiting around for 20 sec after reviving. And in such small numbers, we still maintain penalties to Verraise spam since we would have to hit the combo 3-4 times before we can cast from 0, while still being relatively comparable to SMN in terms of recovery. (And if that's too much, they can always put a short CD on our melee skills, which I half-expect to happen anyway with the removal of TP.)

All these numbers assume that our ShB rotation doesn't accelerate the rate of our melee, of course, which I find unlikely but possibly evened out by increased MP expenditure anyway.

I personally favor saving LD for emergencies since as you said, the aggro drop can be equally as important as the MP gain. (Granting, I would also much rather have the enmity drop be folded into Diversion...)

[Jollyy5]

As someone who would like to see more melee options for RDM, maybe some sort of a melee oGCD that drains MP from the enemy? Unless someone has already suggested it, in which case nevermind.

[Jonnycbad]

The MP drain should be on Enhanced spellbade GCDs as it would recover MP based on good RDM play as opposed to spamming an ineffective skill to get back MP. Every other job that uses MP has a skill as part of a rotation or a free oGCD to gain their MP back PLD gets it back during their DPS and DoT combo for example. It would likely be a fixed amount, and perhaps only on the final hit (Enhanced Redoublement) since RDM doesn't really have MP issues before Verraise/Vercure. Acceleration could also be used as a small MP gain, given its name, it implies it accelerates the RDM's mana stores. So naturally it would make sense to give it like a 5% MP restore or something (it can be used more often than Aetherflow)

[Kurando]

If we really need an action for MP recovery, I would propose bringing Celes' Runic (FF6) ability in to RDM's arsenal. Of course we would need to adapt it better to FFXIV, so perhaps it can be a oGCD that every 2-3mins that lasts for about 20secs and it returns a portion of the damage dealt back as MP. It could be a buff that effects RDM only, or it could potentially be a party wide utility, so Bloodbath for everyone... except it's MP instead of HP!

[Kabooa]

If we really need an action for MP recovery, I would propose bringing Celes' Runic (FF6) ability in to RDM's arsenal. Of course we would need to adapt it better to FFXIV, so perhaps it can be a oGCD that every 2-3mins that lasts for about 20secs and it returns a portion of the damage dealt back as MP. It could be a buff that effects RDM only, or it could potentially be a party wide utility, so Bloodbath for everyone... except it's MP instead of HP!

Only thing here is I'm pretty sure Runic's gonna go to the Gunbreaker or Dark Knight.