Thread: RDM 6.0 Idea

Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

While I want to see more traditional White Magic or fusion Black/White RDM supportive abilities, I think they need to be oGCD cooldowns with no mana cost or gain. Nothing that causes DPS loss via eating GCD's (Vercure/Verraise) or will throw off mana accumulation if you actually need to use it to save the party. Because if that happens, people will complain and want it gone. Possibly for good reason, if that lowered DPS makes keeping people alive futile because the RDM's DPS plummeted doing so and you hit enrage (this, presently, is the problem with Verraise in Savage).

Preferably, such abilities would work in one of the following three ways:

1. Have nothing to do with DPS, and are thus only used if needed (ex. an improved version of Erase with a real potency and decent cooldown)
2. Can be slightly delayed in use without serious DPS loss, and if you don't need it to heal, no big loss either (ex. Ver-assize)
3. Damaging aspect depends on actually being used for defense (ex. Reflect/Wall type ability)

I addressed all 3 points in that pair of skills. Both Leniency and Phalanx are oGCD, their damage potency was carefully selected to be slightly below the potency-per-mana of the melee combo (8 potency per mana instead of the 9.16 of the combo), and the primary purpose of their Balance Gauge interaction is for realignment without having to blow excess procs or anything like that. Additionally, Phalanx fulfills your third point to the letter.

Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

And leniency hits option #2.

However, I think that them interacting with the mana gauge at all would produce unintended side effects or player perceptions.

What side effects could it produce? (Also, the potency per mana numbers in the quoted post are severely outdated now, as i buffed the skills a fair bit).

Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

Someone will get into a situation where they feel pressured to choose between putting out the heal and delaying their melee combo by a GCD (or worse, cutting it short if it's going on when the support skill needs to be used and their mana numbers are hovering just above minimums), then come onto the forums and claim these skills are horrible clunky design and they'd rather just have straight DPS skills.

And people would agree with it, given that things like ever having to clip an oGCD in this game are apparently seen as a horrible offense against game design by some on this forum.

Experience with the community has taught me that the best received support abilities on DPS jobs don't mess with rotations, even circumstantially, unless the impact cannot possibly be negative.

I guess I just don't see the slight melee delay (though it could, on occasion, do the opposite and get you meleeing earlier than you would normally, at something like 90/75) as an inherent loss, as long as you're still getting the requisite 3 melee combos per Manafication. Hell, these skills could even be a way to dump some excess mana in the event you can't actually go into melee quite yet. If they're mid combo, all they need to do is use Holy/Flare and suddenly they have enough mana for their utility, for that matter.