Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Jollyy5]

Enmity reduction skills might not be necessary as tanks will be generating aggro out the ass in tank stance.

[Lauront]

I'd like to see it in action when the game is out, but I don't consider anything they've added to it to significantly draw me to it. Their choice of an AOE Aero and Thunder was rather uninspired. I'm interested to see how Manafication and Scorch work.

It's odd, because I've long been a caster main in MMOs, yet of the three, I'm only really intrigued by SMN come this expansion, and even that is tentative.

[Nalien]

Engagement needs a complete rework IMO. A Lv72 skill that shares a recast with a Lv40 skill, does less damage (5.0 Displacement does 200, Engagement does 150) and has absolutely no additional effect? That's beyond pathetic... Even if it had the same potency as Displacement, that's still just wasting a brand new skill on something that already has an obvious solution; Do to Displacement what you did to Repelling Shot... I absolutely never understood why Displacement was as it was when they gave the reason for removing Repelling Shots damage in the lead up to Stormblood... It has baffled me all expansion and now doubly so...

Reprise... Hopefully the enhanced version has something interesting... Prime candidate for giving Red Mage a DoT all all honesty, but I'm not holding out hope that it'll be anything interesting... The explanation we got in the Live Letter made it sound like this was just something for us to use while being forced to move... Not the most riveting addition... Black Mage has had Scathe since Lv15, why are we only just getting it at Lv76?

Scorch, honestly the only nice thing Red Mage got out of any of this, and it's boring... Just a 5th action on the end of our "combo", doesn't seem to do anything new or interesting. Looks nice, hopefully the potency is nice, but... Meh...

The AoE additions are, to my mind, entirely pointless. You could have changed Scatter into a Stance that turns various spells into AoEs and achieved the exact same thing without bloating out skill set. A stance like that would have been much more interesting to play with than White Scatter and Black Scatter. Even open the way to some other interesting mechanics that play around with the current spell set, I've always thought Red Mage would do well to copy some mechanics from Bravely Seconds Spellcrafting system, granted most of those effects wouldn't work with MMO mechanics, but a few could.

Honestly, it feels like they forgot about Red Mage entirely and just rushed to put together a handful of new skills in time...

EDIT: Since this thread does have wishlist in the title, here's what I'd have liked;

-Enhanced Reprise applies a DoT effect.
-A new Acceleration type skill makes your next Veraero or Verthunder into a DoT, which costs from the Mana Gauge as well (either Veraero costs White Gauge or Black Gauge, idk or care which way around that should be).
-DoT Veraero can only be successfully applied to targets with the Reprise DoT, or the Verthunder DoT.
-DoT Verthunder can only be successfully applied to targets with the Reprise DoT, or the Veraero DoT.
-The obvious rotation here, is to apply Reprise, then apply Veraero or Verthunder, depending on your Gauge, and then keep them up by alternating them.

-Contre Sixte and Fleche get a visual upgrade, similar to Bards DoTs/etc., simply because I'm sick of that lame PLD sword reskin... We should have something unique, heck look at what Paladin throws out in its trailer, now that is an aetherial sword...

-The Manafication buff... I'm hoping this is an effect that lowers the recast on Displacement/Engagement to something near-spammable. This would make Engagement work, IMO. Yes you could do Displacement instead, but then you have to run back to do it again, but if you stay in range you can just spam Engagement instead... IDK, just a thought...

[Archwizard]

There's a lot I'm okay with and some I'm not.

Enchanted Reprise I think will work out fine with one simple addition: Applying Dualcast. It will not only mitigate the Mana cost of our "Scathe" but give it more flexibility on the go.

I'd like to see Veraero and Verthunder (don't care which iterations, honestly, though I am partial to the existing Verthunder's animation) replaced with Ice and Water spells, both for aesthetic and to reduce confusion. Probably too late in the process to get this changed of course.

If they're hellbent on not removing potency from movement skills, then second choice: Reduce the gap between Engagement and Displacement to 10-25 potency, and add a new effect to Displacement like reducing enmity, applying Heavy or briefly increasing our evasion. Enough that we still are encouraged to substitute Displacement instead, but don't feel quite so penalized for using Engagement if we must.

Impact only giving 3 Mana of each type is... questionable. However, I might suggest increasing the potency of Enchanted Moulinet slightly, nerfing Impact's potency and then increasing the Mana gain based on the number of targets hit.
Or instead of increasing its potency, even having Enchanted Moulinet reduce the cooldown of Contre Sixte or have a chance to proc Scorch (if the latter is an AoE, which I still hope it isn't).

Agreed that Scorch should do something "new or interesting", but we didn't see the tooltip so we don't yet know what it (or Manafication for that matter) does.
Hell, we don't even know what procs it beyond the Verfinisher. For all we know it's the "If your Mana totals were even before Verholy/Verflare, this activates" skill that every third suggestion has begged for; we've only seen it used when our Mana was 100/100 before combo.

[Lauront]

So it looks like enhanced manafication reduces its CD to 110s and causes it to increase your magic damage by 5%.

[Nalien]

So it looks like enhanced manafication reduces its CD to 110s and causes it to increase your magic damage by 5%.

Now we're just waiting, and hoping, on Enhanced Reprise being worth a damn... What a disappointing set of changes...

Just going to leave what I wish Reprise did here, rather than the flat potency + ranged attack it's going to be...

Reprise could have been a nice way to add something in there though. Make it a DoT. Base Reprise is nothing. Enhanced Reprise (balanced) is a mid-potency DoT. Black/White Reprise (unbalanced gauge) is a high-potency DoT.

Actually having to intentionally unbalance your gauge for the sake of applying a DoT (or some other skill management, DoT is just the first thing that comes to mind) would be an interesting new way to play with what Red Mage currently has... The mechanic to unbalance your gauge is already there, but it sees 0 usage. It's meant to be a punishment for messing up, like Ninjas Rabbit Medium, but such punishments are meaningless when the possibility of messing up is as close to 0 as one can get...

[Lauront]

That apparently has a potency of 300 (not that it means much right now) and a balance gauge cost of 10/10. That is all.

As a BLM main... you have my commiserations, since we're in much the same boat.

[Nalien]

That settles it. I'm moving back to Scholar, been waiting on that 100% Crit Adlo skill since 2.0 and that alone is enough to get me excited for the Job, nevermind all the additional stuff on top of that... Red Mage basically got nothing this expansion, what tiny additions we did get are countered out by the gutting of additionals/etc.

[Lauront]

Well, it's based on information that has yet to be confirmed/is not final, however if true it is lackluster stuff.

[Nalien]

Did Scorch get a potency leak? Just looking at the numbers right now, unless the potency of the melee combo has also been changed...

80/80 nets you 970 in melee combo and 600 in Verholy/flare, totaling at 1,570.

80/80 nets you 8 Reprise, for 300 potency each, totaling at 2,400.

Basically, unless numbers change, Scorch is going to have to deal at least 830? Doesn't factor in the gauge regain from Verholy/flare, but still...

At the very least Reprise is good value for money, but still... It's just such a boring skill... Being a Lv76 version of Scathe by design is really sad...