Red Mage in 5.0 in Review: Feelings after Reaching 80

[Zyneste]

I've loved Red Mage since the release. I've raided on it every tier in 4.0. I've always felt a strong sense of control and just generally clicked with the job. I've had allot of issues with the changes before release, but finally had a chance to play it.

So far I have gotten it to 80, finished main story, beaten the Titania EX Stone Sea Sky at ilevel 421, and beaten Titania and Innocence EX 10+ times.

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The Good Through My Eyes

• Our AoE is much more "Red Magey" from the introduction of VerThunder and VerAero II.
  
• Impact really does look like it was always meant to be our powerful AOE skill. Jolt II into Impact on 2 mobs is the new Scatter into Verthunder/Aero on 3. I like it.
  
• Moulinet has seen new life with the black and white mana changes, with a possible 7 in a row use, 5 under manafiction. It has even made its way into single target.
  
• Manafiction with a damage up buff on it feels great stacking with a POT and Embolden. Even more so with additional party buffs.
  
• Reprise and Engagement make great "crutches" for strict mechanics. [They have issues, but their core idea is great!]
  
• Scorch is powerful and instant cast. Great for pushing the GCDs towards your next acceleration and weaving, all while giving more mana than Jolt II would.
  
• Our mobility and choice in positioning has only been strengthened by Engagment, Reprise and Scorche.

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The Bad Through My Eyes

Engagement:

The skill itself is wonderful. The Animation is short and sweet, easily weavable. Its pairs well with manafiction, allowing you to "squeeze" an extra Displacement/Engagement before manafiction just before pressing manafiction the following time.
At its core however, it is just a solution to the problem of Displacement and platform issues. It fixes the problem that Displacement makes of itself at level 72, but can't do the same for anything between the levels of 40-71. Its potency is weak, but it is a fair compromise without completely outclassing displacement.

Reprise:

It has a quick animation and does its job well. What it doesn't have is the damage to back up its planned use. Its an "on your feet" skill that you use in response to certain alignments of mechanics, such as a need to move right now or if you really need to hit that last .1% before you wipe and you don't have swift.
The potency itself is too weak. It does less damage than spamming jolt II. This makes Reprise nothing more than VerScathe at a high personal DPS cost.

MP:

MP is manageable, but its way tighter than what it was in STB. Relatively, we have lost 22% of our MP regen from the removal of Refresh from the Ranged DPS role action slot.
This in combination with the relative INCREASED spell cost of almost every spell, makes our MP consumption much greater than before. It is still very manageable, but we are not the raise bots we once were by any means.

MP comparisons:

RDM in 4.58 had a max MP of about ~14,400.

• Jolt II had cost 360 mp. Its relative max MP cost would then be 2.5% of your max MP. It is now 300 MP or 3% of your max MP. A .5% change.
  
• VerThunder had cost 480 mp. Its relative max MP cost would then be ~3.3% of your max MP. It is now 400 MP or 4% of your max MP. A .7% change.
  
• VerFlare had cost 600 mp. Its relative max MP cost would then be ~4.2% of your max MP. It is now 500 MP or 5% of your max MP. A .8% change.

Relatively speaking these changes seem small, but if you think about it, they add up. Every Jolt II into VerThunder costs you ~1.2%. Every 2 costs you an entire old Jolt II.
It starts getting expensive. So expensive that missing Lucid by a couple GCDs or performing a raise could put your DPS into serious jeopardy.

AOE:

Allot of people feel the AOE is much slower than before. I don't really notice that much of a downspeed since the changes to Moulinet and a slightly more engaging mana build up system, but I thought I'd mention it. Allot of people are disappointed without VerFlood/VerBlizzard so I think that's why this is such an often complaint, but I'm sure it'll be on its way in 6.0.

Support and Role Identity:

This expansion did not expand on our supportive roots, if anything it distance us and the other casters from it.

• Apocastasis, a once BLM job skill, has completely been removed.
• Manashift, although pretty much unusable at our current MP economy felt very rewarding.
• Erase, as weak as it was, befitted casters, the closest in arcane knowledge to healers of all the roles.

Bugs:

There is a known bug when level synced, after performing Enhanced Melee combo at levels below 68, will result in VerFlare/VerHoly replacing the VerThunder/VerAero, even though you cannot use them.

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Changes I Would Make

AOE:
I do find myself popping acceleration in AOE situations, working that into increasing the mana gain on Impact would help tie the AoE kit into red magic even better.

Engagement:
The skill should be moved to level 40, at the same time as you learn Displacement and should from the beginning, be a core part of Red Mage decision making.

Reprise:

Buff the damage back up to 300. It was modest, but still rewarding. The skill could then act to slow your Mana Gain down without going anywhere near your Melee combo's actual damage. They really should have stuck with that number.

Support and Identity:

I am always of the mind that more tools are better than less. Give us at least 5 role actions. Black Mage, although feeling button bloaty as is, could surely take it, simply because Lucid Dreaming, with the removal of the enmity drop, serves them no current purpose. For Crowd Control Content, RDM and SMN would be overjoyed to have Sleep to replace our lost Binds for content like POTD and Eureka, if it came to adding Sleep into the role skills, like the change to Repose.

Personally, with Engagement moved to level 40, opening a slot at level 72, I would have really liked a single target support ability. Currently Red Mage can only "Support" on the GCD at great personal DPS. There is also a DPS cap placed on us for having that "Rez Mage" utility.

I would have liked to have something similar to Erase on a shorter cool down, with a higher potency heal. Something like "Cure Potency: 350. Cleanses a single Damage Over time effect. If the target was suffering from a Damage Over Time effect and cleansed, this skill will 100% crit." It really strikes a cord with our white magic roots and our power to dispel as a caster.

Again, personally, I hope we stay away from anymore GCD based spells. I never want to see VerMedica. VerCure fits iits purpose of Dualcast proccing and effecient downtime use. Any healing/supportive actions we get should be something we can use free of a damage burden and on the OGCD.

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In review:

I feel like, Red Mage is still Red Mage. The loss of caster role skills has me very saddened at heart. They new skills add mobility of RDM, but could use some potency/level changes to add depth. MP costs are much tighter, but manageable. Back to Back Raises will be very punishing. Our AOE feels good, but our support is wanting. The amazing Shadow Bringers story has really helped me get through the sting of some of the changes.

Resources:

Red Mage 4.58 Official Job Guide
Red Mage 5.0 Official Job Guide

[Archwizard]

I agree with almost everything here, except for one major aspect:

Moving Engagement to level 40 to become "a core part of Red Mage decision making" will not address any of Engagement's intrinsic issues. While I agree that it came perhaps too late in our leveling curve (I've used it maybe twice throughout leveling, and only when I was about to hit Manafication and wanted to save the dash from Corps-a-corps for a mechanic I knew was coming), it has at least two larger issues:

• The fact that it serves to promote Displacement as a damage gain means that our damage can be arbitrarily penalized by encounter design. Yes, this is more of an issue with Displacement and yes, Engagement is made to mitigate that loss, but the point is that that is a circumstance beyond our control that directly impacts us and Engagement serves as a band-aid at best and official endorsement of this design flaw at worst.
• The fact that it's a damage loss compared to Displacement means that even in scenarios it's made for, we will see players attempt to cheese any way they can to avoid using Engagement, meaning Engagement itself contributes to bloat. I've had a friend raving to me about how his static's RDM Displaced off the edge of Titania EX, and while his intent is to give a funny story about an awesome WHM Rescuing him in time, what I keep hearing is that's a situation it was made for and players would still rather ignore it for however paltry a damage gain.

Meanwhile, I've seen it pointed out that the devs could have just put Corps-a-corps and Displacement on shared charges so Corps-a-corps could perform the same task as Engagement, so even for the sake of giving us a "choice", you really can't tell me that contributing to bloat was the only way to do so.
Bear in mind, even with the risk factor of using Displacement over Engagement, we're still going to be middle of the pack at best if we used Displacement every time, meaning we don't receive nearly enough reward for the looming threat of death. It's an incredibly flawed "choice" with multiple other avenues to address Displacement directly.

Personally, I would rather have seen Corps-a-corps and Displacement lose their damage and just become pure movement tools (perhaps adding an Enmity reduction to Displacement like Elusive Jump, or some type of CC to each so the cross-slash animation would still have meaning), and never have seen Engagement.
And even if the devs have clearly decided that Corps-a-corps and Displacement are intended as essential parts of the rotation and the damage is non-negotiable, there are options there too; I've previously proposed tying the two skills into one button, so that your position is temporarily logged when you hit Corps-a-corps and then it turns into Displacement to send you back to that starting point, which is a far safer alternative to the current circumstance (at the very least meaning you won't Displace off a ledge).

TL;DR: Replace Engagement and just fix Displacement.

[Zyneste]

I agree with almost everything here, except for one major aspect:

Moving Engagement to level 40 to become "a core part of Red Mage decision making" will not address any of Engagement's intrinsic issues. While I agree that it came perhaps too late in our leveling curve (I've used it maybe twice throughout leveling, and only when I was about to hit Manafication and wanted to save the dash from Corps-a-corps for a mechanic I knew was coming), it has at least two larger issues:

• The fact that it serves to promote Displacement as a damage gain means that our damage can be arbitrarily penalized by encounter design. Yes, this is more of an issue with Displacement and yes, Engagement is made to mitigate that loss, but the point is that that is a circumstance beyond our control that directly impacts us and Engagement serves as a band-aid at best and official endorsement of this design flaw at worst.
• The fact that it's a damage loss compared to Displacement means that even in scenarios it's made for, we will see players attempt to cheese any way they can to avoid using Engagement, meaning Engagement itself contributes to bloat. I've had a friend raving to me about how his static's RDM Displaced off the edge of Titania EX, and while his intent is to give a funny story about an awesome WHM Rescuing him in time, what I keep hearing is that's a situation it was made for and players would still rather ignore it for however paltry a damage gain.

Meanwhile, I've seen it pointed out that the devs could have just put Corps-a-corps and Displacement on shared charges so Corps-a-corps could perform the same task as Engagement, so even for the sake of giving us a "choice", you really can't tell me that contributing to bloat was the only way to do so.
Bear in mind, even with the risk factor of using Displacement over Engagement, we're still going to be middle of the pack at best if we used Displacement every time, meaning we don't receive nearly enough reward for the looming threat of death. It's an incredibly flawed "choice" with multiple other avenues to address Displacement directly.

Personally, I would rather have seen Corps-a-corps and Displacement lose their damage and just become pure movement tools (perhaps adding an Enmity reduction to Displacement like Elusive Jump, or some type of CC to each so the cross-slash animation would still have meaning), and never have seen Engagement.
And even if the devs have clearly decided that Corps-a-corps and Displacement are intended as essential parts of the rotation and the damage is non-negotiable, there are options there too; I've previously proposed tying the two skills into one button, so that your position is temporarily logged when you hit Corps-a-corps and then it turns into Displacement to send you back to that starting point, which is a far safer alternative to the current circumstance (at the very least meaning you won't Displace off a ledge).

TL;DR: Replace Engagement and just fix Displacement.

Engagement does provide an advantage beyond mobility, its a DPS gain with good use, because of the fast animation, allowing it to go into cool down. After using Manafiction, you should be using Engagement immediately after. Either during the same weave or right after Enchanted Riposte. From there you should be using Displacement whenever its cool down doesnt align with any other OGCDs, but it should always be used off CD, either as Engagement or Displacement. You have about ~5 seconds in wiggle room to squeeze in your weaves.

With Engagement: 0, 35, 70, 105. 600-700 potency.
With Displacement only: 6 [Melee combo pushes it back], 41, 76 [Manafiction comes off cool down before Displacement does.] 600 potency.

I would prefer we don't take damage off of our Corpse and Displacement. They are core part of our decision making. Planning ahead our movement and the weighing the cost of the skills usage vs pushing it back.

All enmity drop skills have been removed, even the emnity drop from Elusive Jump.