RDM thoughts and tuning needed

[Zyneste]

Engagement isn't useless though, or at least that hasn't been my impression so far. I have seen myself many times being unable to cast displacement without crippling my rotation badly or without downright dying. The 50 potency loss is worth it many times.

Reprise yes, that thing is entirely useless. You might as well not even bind it.

Engagement is far from useless, but its equally far from being good enough to be called a level 72 skill. There's no "progression" in job evolution.

It's main use as a anti-platform death mitigator won't see nearly as much use appreciation at 72, as it would, if you got it at 40.

It has other uses for sure, a possible additional 150 potency every manafiction from well timed use, the ability to stay close to the party during restrictive mechanics and the ability to burn multiple OGCDs before the boss invulns without the long animation of Displacement.

Overall though its just too little too late. Its a QoL skill at its core and should be a core part of RDM decision making from the beginning.

The level 72 skill should focus on RDM's healing/defensive support side on the OGCD, in my opinion at least.

[Sylvain]

4)Embolden needs to affect all damage types. This is the only buffing ability like this that's still split between magic and physical. It feels terrible, and punishes you for having another caster in the party.
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I wonder, are PLD holy spirit and NIN mudra considered physical or magical?
because that would also make their most potent skills unnafected by your raid buff. Definitely something that should be fixed

[Zyneste]

I wonder, are PLD holy spirit and NIN mudra considered physical or magical?
because that would also make their most potent skills unnafected by your raid buff. Definitely something that should be fixed

Most Mudras are magical and so is Holy Spirit. Embolden doesn't affect them.

Other minor effects are:
Dragonfire Dive on DRG is magical.
Multiple DRK skills are magical [Salted earth and Abysmal drain as examples.]
All of the bards songs are magical (although very very minor in overal damage.)

This is a huge issue, especially with PLD. Of all the Casters, RDM is at the most disadvantage for synergistic parties. We are locked out of having another caster with us and if Ninja is as powerful as it was last expac, we'll always be helping them much less than they help us. SMN would be a better match. [We also lost 1% of our DPS from losing Piercing up, but we'll have to see how our DPS is this time around at end game. Overall though my concern isn't about our personal DPS so much as our defensive support utility ;-; A reason to watch the party for more than just waiting for someone to die. If we don't get that defensive support, we should surely be neck and neck with SMN in personal DPS after the constraints left on use from physical only Embolden. SMN makes up for its 1% less average DPS buff and 5 seconds less total by allowing the other caster/Healers and itself full use of the Devotion buff. RDM only benefits from its Magical skill use. In STB physical Damage was 20% of our DPS. This number increased with encounters with downtime.]

[Rongway]

I wonder, are PLD holy spirit and NIN mudra considered physical or magical?
because that would also make their most potent skills unnafected by your raid buff. Definitely something that should be fixed

Holy Spirit/Circle, Requiescat, and Confiteor are magic. Offensive jutsus are magic except for Fuma Shuriken.

We also lost 1% of our DPS from losing Piercing up, but we'll have to see how our DPS is this time around at end game.

We also got 28% more frequent Contre Sixte though.

[Archwizard]

I agree that our AoE feels far too slow. It's not an issue that it's lower than our ST buildup relatively, considering Moulinet is still cheaper than any other melee skill and we don't need to worry about an AoE combo... but Scatter/Impact in particular returns less Mana than either of the other AoEs (which themselves return more than Jolt/II). I might recommend Scatter/Impact be buffed to 4/4 Mana per cast, or perhaps reduce Veraero/thunder II by 1 Mana each and change Scatter/Impact to 2/2 Mana per target (maybe with a cap) -- the latter of which would go a long way towards a permanent address to the issue (more akin to the Enhanced Scatter of old) without just cloning our single-target gains.

At the same time, I think the pre-Impact portions of our AoE (Scatter, Moulinet, Ver- II spells pre-78) could be uptuned just a little, particularly Moulinet since it's weaker and less satisfying than Impact despite being used about a third as often. While I acknowledge that Moulinet can be used multiple times in a row and has a shorter GCD, those advantages are reliant upon you having already pooled the Mana to use it multiple times in a row and hitting every GCD. I might even agree to a small potency nerf to Impact if it was made up for by a stronger portion on Moulinet (and perhaps a smaller gap with the Ver- II spells post-78).
I don't mind it being a cone, however. You can dash to the nearest enemy, hack at the crowd, then jump back without putting yourself deep enough into the killbox to be at risk of taking a hit meant for the tank. Plus it just feels more thematically "melee" this way.

As for Engagement, I agree that it feels like a waste of a slot right now -- while I grant that it is useful in niche situations when Displacement is not a viable option, I've had fewer instances overall in Shadowbringers where that was a concern; I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to spend the CD on Engagement since I got it, especially since every boss fight I've encountered so far has either had ample room on the platform or straight-up barriers to back into. Any time I have used it was to clear the CD during a mechanic before I hit Manafication.
The way I see it, there are three options to avoid Engagement simply being a bloat skill:
1) Replace Engagement, and remove the damage from Corps-a-corps and Displacement so that we can use them purely as optional movement tools.
2) Remove Engagement but keep the damage on other skills, and combine Displacement into one action with Corps-a-corps, where casting within a short period (say, 10-15 sec, enough time to combo) causes you to jump back to the location you dashed in from, so you can better control where you'll land.
3) Keep both the damage and Engagement, but make it a niche sidegrade over Displacement (other than removing the backstep, which is a net neutral) to justify its existence as a separate button beyond being a backup Displacement, such as AoE damage.

I agree on Embolden. It seems to me like Embolden was the devs' attempt to make a pseudo En-elemental buff for the party (particularly if we're synching it with our melee combo), but there were other ways to preserve that flavor. Even when it was introduced, there were more buffs that affected melee damage than there were for our fellow casters, and despite the removal of most of those skills, we uniquely persist in a manner that punishes pairing us with other casters. At this point I would much rather have had a group Haste buff, or perhaps a "add X% unaspected magic damage to all attacks" skill other casters could get into.

Current numbers show that since its nerf to 220 potency, Reprise is not worth using over simply overcapping our Mana, and community consensus is that it's too weak to justify spending 10/10 Mana on what is effectively our Scathe. Napkin math from theorycrafters I've consulted shows it needs a minimum of around ~260 potency to justify using it in an overcap situation or to delay our melee combo, and having it be a 300 potency skill for the cost of 2-3 generators was a good sweet spot, which compares well to 3-target Moulinet.

On a somewhat unrelated note from the OP, is it just me or does it feel like our MP is being burned through more quickly, even without Verraise? I still feel like I'm playing CD-to-CD with Lucid Dreaming (despite the supposed "net gain" in potency)...

[JeibuKul]

So, I was looking at it, and just looking at the numbers and the number of GCDs it takes.

It takes 32 GCDs using a VerAoE + Impact and does 5440 potency to each target to reach 104 Black/White Mana. At 24 GCDs the potency would be 4080.

It takes 24 GCDs using VerAoE + VerSlow and does 5160 potency to one target and 1440 potency to all others to reach 108 Black/White Mana.

You could also change up and do one Impact rotation in there, which would give you 103 Black/White Mana at GCD 24, changing your damage to 4980 single and 1880 for others.

So for a straight up lots of little mobs, I would probably say VerAoE+Impact would be the way to go. If there is one large mob in there, it would probably quicken the fight to have your Melee Combo ready 8 GCDs sooner.

Would also have to take in to account how long AoE packs take to kill and how much mana you want for the start of the next fight. I dunno??

[Sayori]

The biggest issue I have with current RDM is how fast it eats mana now. Even when you use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown you still end up losing mp rather than gaining mp. MP costs are absolutely ridiculous right now.

[Trayes]

The biggest issue I have with current RDM is how fast it eats mana now. Even when you use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown you still end up losing mp rather than gaining mp. MP costs are absolutely ridiculous right now.

I am going to have to agree with you here. I can't tell you how many times I have OOMed as the new RDM.

[Zyneste]

The biggest issue I have with current RDM is how fast it eats mana now. Even when you use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown you still end up losing mp rather than gaining mp. MP costs are absolutely ridiculous right now.

I am going to have to agree with you here. I can't tell you how many times I have OOMed as the new RDM.

All non-Verraise RDM mana costs went up. My guess is that they wanted to make them visually pleasing by all ending in a manageable "00" (like 300, 400, 500.)

The only spell that saw a slight 1% reduction relative to max MP was VerRaise. Every other spell saw a .5% to 1% increase. Scorche is also an additional MP burden compared to before.

I was a bit pampered on old RDM from how easy mana was when things weren't going to hell, but I think right now we're just barely "manageable" as long as we don't see more than 1 death ever 5 minutes.

Our DPS should be pretty high since our raise potential is fairly low.

[Archwizard]

Does anyone happen to have the numbers on what our MP recovery rate was in SB? I'd like to see some comparisons with our expenditure in ShB.