Thread: Let's Theorize a 5.1 Balance Patch.

Originally Posted by Leidiriv

The first point is why Thunder/Aero got buffed. Good proc management should be a bit more rewarding than just 20 potency, and it's not like RNG has that much of an effect on RDM's gameplay now with 2 hardcasts every melee cycle guaranteed to be Fire/Stone and having 2 Swiftcasts every Manafic to fish for even more procs. If it gets dire enough, there's nothing saying they can't add an Impactful equivalent back in for 6.0.

My main concern with making Embolden omni-damage is that it'd make us want to use Fleche/C6 awkwardly in an attempt to get the damage buff on them, and it'd bring what's already an incredibly strong buff up above 1k rDPS more likely than not. Such a buff would have to come at the cost of our personal damage, which I'd absolutely dread.

Magical Embolden would only affect party members, but even if it did affect our fleche it wouldn't really change when fleche is used. Personally, I do hate unsynergistic design so I wouldn't want our CD alignment to be at the mercy of embolden, so if embolden does change I would want it to change for party members only, but at the end of the day, nothing is changing for the worse.

Fights like e3s show how much of a detriment bad procs can be. You only have so much wiggle room. Being ready for Manafiction by the 2nd drenching puddles and again when stormy comes up, you need to be within 20/11 on either mana to get the needed mobility via melee combo]

Changing Embolden would increase our RDPS by about 15~20%. That's about 175* RDPS on a good day. A comp with MNK + BLM might increase that a bit, to about 200, but thats it. RDM still has 800 DPS to make up with personal damage.

*based on a 95 percentile party in E3s, with all 99 percentile DPS. Other fights with more uptime like E2s change these values by ~15.

Originally Posted by Leidiriv

My main concern with making Embolden omni-damage is that it'd make us want to use Fleche/C6 awkwardly in an attempt to get the damage buff on them, and it'd bring what's already an incredibly strong buff up above 1k rDPS more likely than not. Such a buff would have to come at the cost of our personal damage, which I'd absolutely dread.

But also consider the math on that.

We get 4.8 Fleches every 2 minutes and 3.4 C6s, for each Embolden. Note that neither of these are integers and both CDs are longer than the Embolden buff, so in the ideal case when you're keeping these on CD, they won't always fall into the Embolden window, otherwise you've already lost damage from holding.
But let's say we time everything to pop C6/Fleche every time it's up, which itself means we're already taking a damage loss... for a 10% boost to two skills that make up a fraction of our damage.

A) How does the gain from having every 4th-5th Fleche and 3rd-4th C6 go up 10% compare to the loss caused by holding them to align them perfectly, and
B) Assuming the ideal scenario, what average percentage are you actually gaining by just popping both on CD and naturally waiting for them to line up?

I haven't actually crunched the numbers, but following the logic on the number of casts versus percentage damage gain, and I'm fairly certain the ultimate damage difference peaks around 2% percent just in the vacuum of those two oGCDs. And even then the point is to buff RDM in the first place.

Originally Posted by Leidiriv

1) Why should RDM be rewarded for poor play/proc management with an even stronger Jolt II?
2) No DoTs, the class quests explain why RDM doesn't use any DoTs and they just plain don't fit with the class's playstyle. Also, Reprise is meant to be that skill for movement phases.

1) Provided it remains weaker/less efficient than Verstone/fire, Jolt II buffs are less of a reward, more of a safety net against bad RNG strings.
2) Now I'm certain you're making stuff up. Literally WHERE does it say that?? The job quests only explain that we have low-cost skills and poor MP recovery because of the way we channel aether, they say nothing about the forms by which our spells are channeled.

Originally Posted by Leidiriv

The whole thing in the first quest about how we make up for using weaker/lower cost spells by using our body and our blade as an arcane accelerator says hi. We can't use DoTs because we're already using them, just completely frontloading their effects.

Wow, you really hung your entire argument on that one line, huh.

"To manifest more powerful effects, the first red mages adopted a method by which precise sword techniques would harness and amplify the energy of their spoken incantations -- the mage's own physical form serving as an arcane accelerator. An ingenious way of preserving their self-imposed limitations."

"Arcane accelerator" doesn't mean "when you cast a DoT, the entire thing is one tick dealt upfront" like Thundercloud. He was literally explaining with the most jargon possible that we cast from our body's own reserve of aether as a reminder to keep our spells cheap and calculated, and channel it through our Enchanted melee strikes, rather than just quite literally nuking the battlefield from orbit like a Black Mage.

That literally says nothing that would prevent the application of DoTs. Hell, we could inflict a regular bleed on the target at no consequence.

And let's be honest here: Even if it did mean that, you really think the devs wouldn't just go back and redo that quest text? You think they didn't do that every time a spell like Tri-Disaster Tri-Bind Outburst got renamed or shuffled around in level?
Mechanics aren't made to fit the lore. Lore's written after the mechanics are already made in order to add fluff and flavor to the world, so when an RPer says "why do you do this", they have an explanation that doesn't go into "because the devs thought it would be balanced."
Lore's the single flimsiest justification for mechanics, 'cuz it can be rewritten.

THAT BEING SAID!
I disagree with the addition of a DoT to the RDM kit if it doesn't affect player behavior or interaction with the rotation.
Given that all of our existing skills are designed for instant gratification, adding a DoT to them would just be for a DoT's sake, not a mechanical interaction.
And while I've heard a few people elsewhere suggest a DoT on Reprise, I would hate to see the extra Mana we get from Scorch be completely relegated to DoT maintenance when its intent is to speed up the rotation, not slow down our casting phase by at least three more GCDs.