Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Archwizard]

While I'm sure it's too late for Shadowbringers, a thought came to me in the other RDM thread:

• Remove the damage of Displacement, replacing it with enmity control or CC
• Replace Enhanced Displacement and Engagement with "Enchanted Corps-a-corps": When you have at least 80 Black Mana and 80 White Mana, the potency of Corps-a-corps increases by 200

That way you still save Corps-a-corps for when you're about to use your melee combo anyway, rather than using it on cooldown, making the damage just an addition to its primary use as a gap closer for your melee combo.

Could even use the admittedly very cool Engagement animation when Corps-a-corps is enchanted.

[Zyneste]

Faster Acceleration:

Duration: 10 Seconds
Cool down: 30 seconds

Effect: Your next Verthunder/Veraero cast time reduced by 3 seconds. Each cast of VerThunder/Verflare and VerAero/VerHoly will result in proccing Verfire and Verstone respectively.

Let's you use one VT/VA as your dual cast fodder and gives you a proc.

Just something to hope for to spice things up in 6.0

[Archwizard]

Faster Acceleration:

Duration: 10 Seconds
Cool down: 30 seconds

Effect: Your next Verthunder/Veraero cast time reduced by 3 seconds. Each cast of VerThunder/Verflare and VerAero/VerHoly will result in proccing Verfire and Verstone respectively.

Let's you use one VT/VA as your dual cast fodder and gives you a proc.

Just something to hope for to spice things up in 6.0

I like the basic idea behind the VT/VA cast reduction.
Although, mechanically it does seem a bit of a waste to have VT/VA guarantee VF/VS procs on every cast in such a state, considering you're better off just spamming VT/VA until the effect runs out, and not using it at all for the Verfinisher. Further, having this type of action available for 10 out of every 30 sec is quite a lot -- not least because it guarantees you'll be using it every single combo.

However, I did also see an early edit you made of this suggestion where it just flat out reduced the cast time of all attack spells by 3 sec, like a variant Light Speed (slightly stronger on cast times, but without the MP cost reduction). I assume you likely removed Jolt/VF/VS from it as a result of Reprise covering the need for an on-the-go attack tool.
If you took that idea, put it on a 1-3 minute cooldown (separate from Acceleration) and named it something like "Chainspell", "Fast Talker" or "Verhaste", I could see it being treated as our version of Triplecast or Trance while leaving Reprise in its own niche for when it's on CD. Use Jolt/procs on-the-go or empower VT/VA to more rapidly build gauge while standing still.

Just add Impact scaling Mana gains with the number of targets hit (baseline) and voila, it's a temporary complete reversal of Dualcast.
Hell, take it further: Let us proc some new longcast spells to trade with VT/VA and you can still swap between casts without getting repetitive.

[Archwizard]

In other news:

The more I think about it, the more likely I find it we're going to end up getting a DoT in a future Xpac.

The devs can't add "Jolt III", because in order to make our Verspells more appealing they have to be stronger than Jolt II, which is only 20 potency behind VF/VS and 50 behind VT/VA. In order to raise the potency of Jolt any higher, every Verspell needs to be increased too.
To add more potency to the base rotation, either they need to add more procs, more finishers at the end of our combo, buff our cooldowns, or straight up give us something to swap Jolt with; they just blew their load with Scorch and cooldown buffing, and they removed Impactful, so returning a variant of it at this point would just be disappointing.
But a DoT -- say, a 2-sec cast with an innate AoE spread -- could easily inflict more total potency than almost any spell in our rotation (and should, so we have reason to maintain it) and be continuously tuned free of the other Verspells (since at the end of the day we won't ever be spamming it), and so long as its mana gain per-cast exceeds Jolt, it can easily slide in to replace it.

And to this day I will never understand someone complaining such wouldn't "fit" in the rotation. Not wanting to maintain a DoT, fine, maybe, but if the duration is long enough it's hardly different from the rest of our proc gameplay.

[Mansion]

The devs can't add "Jolt III", because in order to make our Verspells more appealing they have to be stronger than Jolt II, which is only 20 potency behind VF/VS and 50 behind VT/VA. In order to raise the potency of Jolt any higher, every Verspell needs to be increased too.

If they are to keep the "easy appealing job" route, it's likely that if the potencies are too low compared to other casters, they would just create a Trait that increases potencies of all spells and that's it.

[Archwizard]

If they are to keep the "easy appealing job" route, it's likely that if the potencies are too low compared to other casters, they would just create a Trait that increases potencies of all spells and that's it.

And while I must begrudgingly admit that Enhanced Displacement and Weaponskill Mastery point to that being true, I am under no obligation to enjoy that fact.

But what exactly is complicated about "2 sec cast: Gain 3/3 Mana and deal damage over time for 30 sec"? Or even "Gain 1/1 Mana per tick"?

If anything I would think it would be a great way to introduce DoTs to people who made it to level 50 to unlock RDM without somehow ever casting a DoT effect.

[Shurrikhan]

And while I must begrudgingly admit that Enhanced Displacement and Weaponskill Mastery point to that being true, I am under no obligation to enjoy that fact.

But what exactly is complicated about "2 sec cast: Gain 3/3 Mana and deal damage over time for 30 sec"? Or even "Gain 1/1 Mana per tick"?

If anything I would think it would be a great way to introduce DoTs to people who made it to level 50 to unlock RDM without somehow ever casting a DoT effect.

I see nothing complicated to it. I just don't see anything appealing to it, either, unless it can be in some way... "abused".

For instance, what if rather than Scatter upgrading to Impact, Scatter instead... Scatter'ed your last spell? You see a ton of enemies, hard-cast your long-cast DoT and voila! Enchanted Moulinet for days! Granted, I'd want it to be internally balanced enough that that's not always the best decision, but it ought to at least be something that gets you a little giddy with "I can literally Moulinet through my entire Embolden window!" or "All these little mobs... if we could just bind them away from the focus target as my DoTs tick away, I can triple melee-combo off them... *Evil laughter.*"

Otherwise it's just Heavy Thrust all over again.

[Mansion]

And while I must begrudgingly admit that Enhanced Displacement and Weaponskill Mastery point to that being true, I am under no obligation to enjoy that fact.

But what exactly is complicated about "2 sec cast: Gain 3/3 Mana and deal damage over time for 30 sec"? Or even "Gain 1/1 Mana per tick"?

If anything I would think it would be a great way to introduce DoTs to people who made it to level 50 to unlock RDM without somehow ever casting a DoT effect.

Nothing complicated in itself, I agree. Now I'm quite enjoying a DPS job that has actually no DoT "for the sake of having one" (or a timer to maintain, whih rules out MCH). Looks like DNC will be that way, more Proc-based and thus won't need a DoT.
Seeing the 5.0 changes on RDM, I'm actually closer to simply "give it up" because though I wish for something more challenging in RDM's design, I don't see it coming and in the end, that's ok.
But I would have loved something like SAM : a basic rotation, but a huge DPS output potential when you really focus on optimizing DPS.

[Archwizard]

Nothing complicated in itself, I agree. Now I'm quite enjoying a DPS job that has actually no DoT "for the sake of having one" (or a timer to maintain, whih rules out MCH). Looks like DNC will be that way, more Proc-based and thus won't need a DoT.

I am curious about the thought process behind calling it a DoT "for the sake of having one". As I explained it seems a likely course of action should they seek to add more potency to the rotation in the future as an alternative to "Jolt III", aside from just buffing every spell with one Trait, especially with how DoTs can function as easy damage-tuning knobs.

Not to mention that between BLMs scoffing at maintaining their DoT amongst all of their other timers and SMN tying more and more of their DPS to maximizing theirs, RDM could be a happy medium, and nothing says a RDM DoT couldn't come with its own mechanics/benefits for maintaining it beyond Mana and damage. My bare-bones descriptions there were simply to illustrate the incredible ease of sliding one into the rotation, given that I've seen complaints before about how one 'wouldn't fit' or 'would be out of place' or whatnot -- and may also shine a light on minimum requirements of such DoTs to be useful without outshining other skills, of course.

At the very least a new spell addition to the base rotation wouldn't be unwelcome given the showing we've been given for Shadowbringers. Wow, one whole extra finisher soaked in Impactful's blood, gee thanks.

[Nalien]

I'd like 1 DoT like Higanbana to manage, that plays with the Mana gauge in a different manner than what we currently see. The whole unbalanced Mana aspect of Red Mage is sorely under played IMO, it's essentially the same as Ninjas Rabbit Medium when it could be used in a somewhat interesting manner. For the melee combo burst I think it has to be balance based, but for a single skill that you use solely to apply a DoT? That gives you room to play around with.

Lets say the default effect is nothing, much like Reprise.
The Enhanced version from a balanced gauge (10/10 Mana cost perhaps) is a medium-potency DoT.
For the full potency DoT though, you want to push to unbalance your Mana gauge, and then you get either a White or Black version of the DoT (obviously none of these versions stack with each other). So for maximum potency, you actually want to push too many Veraeros, for example, and then the cost of the White version of the skill would bring your White Mana back down to rebalance you.

Playing around with the Mana gauge like that seems like the logical next step to take Red Mage IMO. Doesn't even have to be a DoT, could be any number of skills. If anything, a DoT is the boring option since both White and Black versions would essentially be the same. You could instead have a skill that does one effect while White, and another while Black. Certainly a much more interesting means to tie two skills cooldowns together than what we see with Displacement and Engagement. I imagine the entire mechanism for such a skill are already in game, they're just not being used because the current mindset is that going too far White or Black should be a punishment, and that seems wasteful to me... Make it a punishment most of the time, sure, but you could easily have one or two skills where that's the aim, and it adds a whole new dynamic to the Jobs gauge with zero rework involved...

Heck, lets just fill in the missing elements with this; Something along the lines of Scatter/Jolt/Impact/Scorch for the balanced weak version of the DoT. Turns into Verblizzard (inflicts Verfreeze DoT) when too much Black Mana, or Verwater (inflicts Verdrown DoT) when too much White Mana. Any reason a spell can't cost from the Mana gauge as well? I'd prefer more sword skills, but it would be nice to round off the elements.