Red Mage Proposed Changes

[Leidiriv]

If anything, to give RDM slightly more consistency in combat I'd love to see an Impactful equivalent brought back, a buff to Fire/Stone's potency to bring them to 290, a buff to Acceleration to make it generate 4/4 mana when used in combat, a buff to the Manafication magic buff, and a slight buff to Scorch's potency (and making the actual spell effect look about 10% bigger).

[Drayos]

But but but raise utility and RDM are more braindeaderer than any other job they need to stay at the bottom of the totem pole

Gotta keep the meme true! XD

On a serious note.

I’m rather dissapointed by the lack of tools the job got I was expecting RDM to get more

Imho if I was to ask for changes they’d be a lot bigger then this tbh and here’s why:

We still missing he 6th element from the wheel, I’d like some water and ice based abilities,

I’d like Verwater as a ST OGCD

Verblizzard as a AoE

I want reprise to return to its 300 potency prime.

I want melee abilities which don’t cost mana

I want a second gauge which feeds into the mana bars, (not a new mechanic as the RDM role is defined in its mana usuage but something that feeds into our existing one)

I’d love to see us get a secondary gauge which we are able to build through spending white and black mana

We are the only magical melee hybrid, make the fantasy true.. take a risk with the job and give us something more then the same static rotation with a new ability to hit on the end

I

[nth]

I'm not convinced about some of these changes, especially Manafication. With 2 charges and 60 seconds cooldown RDM would pretty much become melee job. Let's not forget RDM is still caster, melee combo is just a bonus.
RDM is absolutely fine at the moment, but could use stronger party buffs.

It wouldn't and that's an exaggeration, but a more frequent melee combo is exactly the thing Red Mages need to differentiate themselves as a Job from SMN and BLM, especially if it's done in a way that further differentiates average RDMs and skilled ones.

In regards to OP specifically, I think Jolt II -> Impact is fine and fun, and RDM should have a couple unique mix-ups. I agree with most of the rest though.

[Archwizard]

Couple thoughts:

• To be honest I'm not sure why I didn't jump on the "increase Jolt II by 1/1 Mana" train before, since it is understandably jarring that our Ver-2 AoEs generate more Mana than Jolt or Impact -- which I usually just resorted to "nerf them by 1 Mana each", but this works just as well and is more positive for us in the long run. It's a buff on paper, but in reality it just diminishes the gap with Verfire/Verstone and the loss of "peak performance" to bad RNG. Sounds good to me!
• An alternative suggestion I've made in the past for Impact would be scaling the Mana gained based on the number of targets hit, perhaps with a cap. This way you can get the effective value of Enhanced Scatter of old without having to balance it around being gamed in single-target. Say, 2/2 per target up to 10/10?
• Just for the sheer urgency of the value of increasing the Ver-II spells' potency, I would also suggest reducing Impact's potency by 10 as an immediate offset; it would still be more effective at 2 targets but could at least sweeten things for the devs so they won't have to worry about readjusting numbers.
• I'm all for increasing the duration of Acceleration for QoL, not sure I'm for it proccing Dualcast since that would mean another Swiftcast on half the cooldown. Plus I would worry about habitually tapping it right before casting Jolt/Verfire/Verstone thinking "it won't matter, it'll only burn the charge on Verthunder/aero -- oh, oops, just Dual'd the wrong spell."
• I love love love the idea with Manafication just giving a flat amount of Mana outright, but I don't see them halving the cooldown, much less adding charges. However, I could see Enhanced Manafication bumping it from 40/40 Mana to 50/50 Mana, partly for AoE value and partly to align better with damage windows.
• I'm on the fence about the Engagement suggestion. I'm against Engagement conceptually since I believe the devs could have solved the problem of Displacement killing people without adding another button that continues to penalize our damage based on arena design, like putting it on shared charges with Corps-a-corps, or even having Displacement fling you back to the last position you Corps'd from. But if I want to consider things with immediate implementation value... shrinking the gap between Engagement and Displacement (without removing it completely) would address it. Maybe even give it its PVP effect of placing a barrier on you while you're in melee.
  This is, of course, operating entirely under the assumption of Engagement being a placeholder for a better solution.
• Enchanted Reprise... I like the suggestions conceptually but that's a big buff you're asking for.