This is my first post here, ever, but: hi, I'm Turing, I do theorycrafting and optimization calculations for Red Mage.

Since picking up the game some time after Stormblood's launch, I made an early switch to Red Mage and quickly came to love it, soon after making it my first level 70 class, and soon after that I took it into raiding. I worked hard to play at the top of my game, looked up guides, everything, and the class only got more fun to play as I explored the depth of optimizations it offers. When 4.3 came out, and some changes to RDM with it, I even did some of the math myself and contributed back to the community!

With 5.x approaching, I doubled down. I got excited about the changes we saw in the trailer and the live letter, I jumped at the opportunity to update my math, and took it further into working on authoring a guide and acting as one of the main RDM theorycrafters for a large community. Its been a ton of fun, and Red Mages have been among some of the most excited in the community for the new expansion. What we're getting isn't as dramatic as a rework, but it seemed tailored to what we needed. As someone who has become intimately familiar with not only playing RDM, but the math behind it, it really felt like the team that designed the changes to the class knew almost exactly what the class needed.

Of course, the reason I'm trying to communicate all this excitement, is to say that a lot of us feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us, with this morning's release of the job guides. Reprise was the only change, yet it carried a lot of weight in our excitement. It had so many possibilities as a tool for adjusting our mana, delaying our rotation, improving our flexibility, and movement... Now, at 220 potency, Reprise is worse than casting, and it drains our gauge. It is now an active detriment to use Reprise, bad enough in some cases that it would be better to move without casting at all rather than use Reprise and waste the gauge. It feels like we've lost a new skill before we even gained it.

I've done a lot of math for RDM, and I could tell you a lot of things about what I would change. I could go on for several posts about what the potency of Reprise could be, or other changes I would have liked to see instead. But for the purposes of this post I will leave you with this: for all the few changes Red Mages got, many agreed Reprise was the most exiting thing to happen to the class. This is effectively gone now, and I sincerely hope that the FFXIV team realizes this loss to the potential for engaging gameplay, and walks back this decision.

In a class that is designed so intricately, it is surprising the effect a change to one skill can have.

Finally, this: the change to Reprise is going to mean optimizing Red Mage may involve using single target Moulinet. Please don't make us use single target Moulinet.