Suggestion for: RDM improvements

[CroszArcenciel]

Is a full heal every 180s really that strong? Hmm... Maybe just take out VerCure then... Or just make it a 500 potency heal every 60s. I actually want both Vercure and Verraise gone. And just let SE rework the utility part of RDM if they really want to push for it.

[dinnertime]

There's really no reason to remove both Vercure and Verraise to buff RDM, nor it needs to be reworked. RDM is just simply undertuned and pretty much unchanged in this expansion while the other DPS (especially the melees) got significant changes/new skills that gives them more damage, which makes RDM lag behind.

Using both Vercure and Verraise is useful but it costs them their GCD/damage anyway, while most (if not all) DPS utilities are oGCDs, plus Vercure doesn't see a lot of worth in most content anyway because healers are better at healing more than ever now. Resurrected players already get penalized for dying so I don't know why the only two DPS who have Raise are being "taxed" so much.

[Shurrikhan]

Manafication: Increase intelligence by 5%. Duration 12s

I've noticed that buff from manafication never fails to fall off within one second of casting Scorch. This buff should last at least until we can cast our strongest spell. Additionally this buff should apply to any skill we perform making it so that if can now also buff Fleche and Contre Sixte.

Jolt 2 : Deal unaspected damage with a potency of 270

Corps-a-Corps : Additional effect, increase strength by 4000. Duration 10s

Engagement : Delivers an attack with a potency of 200

1. By all means, extend the damage dealt buff on (Enhanced) Manafication by an extra two seconds, but we have no need to throw primary stats into the mix. Just leave the effect itself as is.

2. You realize how miniscule 20 potency is, right? The total of 6, down from 9, B/W Mana adds a bit to that, but even at an effective difference of say, 30 potency that just feels muddied and indistinct. You very nearly might as well remove the mechanic at that point.

3. Why? Why would you add a flat stat buff, greater than that of any melee job at present, just to support a pointlessly niche function for a brief time? Just to oblige RDMs to stay dangerously in melee range at least a third of the time? Does that sound like a gameplay buff to you? And consider -- that's not just going to affect auto-attacks. That will effect the melee skills as well. Giving 4000 Strength to a level 6, to affect both AAs and melee weaponskills? That doesn't seem well planned.

4. So... RIP Displacement forever?

[Duelle]

Is a full heal every 180s really that strong? Hmm... Maybe just take out VerCure then... Or just make it a 500 potency heal every 60s. I actually want both Vercure and Verraise gone. And just let SE rework the utility part of RDM if they really want to push for it.

A full heal would be really strong in group content, but not so much in solo situations.

[Zyneste]

Copy paste from another rdm thread:

I would say we need to be about 5% higher in damage. All the ranged do. So to get there we would need about 850 DPS to make up for it at the current tier using E2s as the Metric for its 100% uptime. [~14,150 is orange RDM damage. The ADPS of a rdm around 13,650 for simplicity/consistency later.]


RDPS increase from Magical Embolden [165/850]

Magical Embolden is the number one thing I want even over personal DPS buffs. We need both, but if we don't get Magical Embolden we'll never be able to party with another caster without being gimped. That alone would add about +165 from the good Healers. We'll also be getting some DPS back from Ninjutsus/the other classes that have magical skills in their bursts. [7,500 DPS healer +6% with 1/6 fight uptime. ~1% DPS increase. More when you multiply it with other buffs so well estimate it at 1.1. 82.5. x2 healers.] This leaves us about 685 for personal buffs.

Raw Potency Increases [425/685]

[If you're going to increase the others by 20, you should be increasing jolt. You shouldn't punish RDM harder for its RNG. We can only do so much to mitigate bad procs.]
Jolt II: Potency increased to 270. [Makes up about 4.4% of our aDPS currently. If doing 13,650 thats 600 from this skill]

20/250 = 8% increase in potency. 8% increase to 4.4% of our damage is a ~50 DPS increase.

Verfire/Verstone: Potency increased to 290. [Makes up about 16.5% of our aDPS currently. If doing 13,650 thats 2250 from these skills]

20/270 = 7.4% increase in potency. 7.4% increase to 16.5% of our damage is a ~165 DPS increase.

Verthunder/Veraero: Potency increased to 330. [Makes up about 26% of our aDPS currently. If doing 13,650 thats 3550 from these skills]

20/310 = 6.5% increase in potency. 6.5% increase to 26% of our damage is a ~210 DPS increase.

Enchanted Reprise: Potency increased to at least 270 to stay in the same shape it is in now. Ideally this just needs to stay relevant to compete. 300 would be better but 270 minimum. You can't really count this towards our DPS goal of 850. We have about 260 DPS we still need to make up for, thats about 1.5% damage increase.

Increasing Manafiction [~260/260]:

Manafiction is essentially 5% of 2250 potency so 112.5 potency every 120 seconds in the 120 rotation. [Jolt II does about 19.2k per cast on a log similar to the criteria set. Jolt II is 250 Potency. About 38% DH and 31% crit. Thats about 9,600 Damage for 112.5 potency.] Over 120 seconds this converts to about 80. So increasing it from 5 to 10 would be a 80 dps increase.I would say we could go farther and increase it to 20%. That would be 240. Factor in raid buff alignments and we'd be pretty close to that 260 mark, bringing us very close to our goal of 5% damage increase on RDM. If Its damage is barely too high, just reduce Manafiction from 20% to 15% to knock down 80-100 DPS.

[Archwizard]

Is a full heal every 180s really that strong? Hmm... Maybe just take out VerCure then... Or just make it a 500 potency heal every 60s. I actually want both Vercure and Verraise gone. And just let SE rework the utility part of RDM if they really want to push for it.

Vercure is a non-issue tbh. Every GCD spent casting Vercure is time and resources taken from offensive spells for less healing than a dedicated healer would give. Us pausing to heal someone while a healer is active is like the healer letting a DPS die so they could greed out a few more Malefics.
Its primary value right now is in giving us a means to generate Dualcast when the target is unavailable; otherwise it's an innate damage loss just to use and doesn't justify any nerf for the value of utility.

At least the instant Verraises are GCDs and resources saved from healers, so losing some value due to having it makes some sense. Still, I would prefer a system where we're largely only penalized for having it as often as we're using it, with a smaller (though still noticeable) base gap with BLM so we aren't pushed out of groups as soon as progression ends.

[wereotter]

1. By all means, extend the damage dealt buff on (Enhanced) Manafication by an extra two seconds, but we have no need to throw primary stats into the mix. Just leave the effect itself as is.

The stat buff is instead of the magic damage increase buff. This is solely intended to make it so that buff granted by manafication extends to ALL red mage skills. As it is, Corps-a-Corps, Engagement, Displacement, Fleche, and Contre-Sixte all deal physical damage and do not benefit from the buff granted.

2. You realize how miniscule 20 potency is, right? The total of 6, down from 9, B/W Mana adds a bit to that, but even at an effective difference of say, 30 potency that just feels muddied and indistinct. You very nearly might as well remove the mechanic at that point.

The intent is only to even out the red mages damage. Right now having damage the damage differential adds an unnessecary layer of RNG to the peak damage the job can do while maintaining that it's still a DPS increase to have and use Verfire and Verstone when the procs become available as they give you more black and white mana, making it so you can more quickly get to your melee combo.

3. Why? Why would you add a flat stat buff, greater than that of any melee job at present, just to support a pointlessly niche function for a brief time? Just to oblige RDMs to stay dangerously in melee range at least a third of the time? Does that sound like a gameplay buff to you? And consider -- that's not just going to affect auto-attacks. That will effect the melee skills as well. Giving 4000 Strength to a level 6, to affect both AAs and melee weaponskills? That doesn't seem well planned.

This part I'll agree on as I didn't consider how that differential would impact low level play, and only looked at high level. But I do think that giving red mages auto attacks a potency buff while you're supposed to be in melee range would be welcomed.

4. So... RIP Displacement forever?

Sure. Why not? Use Displacement if you want to or need to for movement, use Engagement if you want to or need to for mechanics. There shouldn't be a 50 potency penalty because you have to stay in melee range due to platform sizes (I'm thinking E3 and Suzaku) or because you need to stay with the party for stack mechanics or healing, or if you can't leave the area. There's no reason that there should be a difference in potency for those who either choose to stay closer or for time when you must stay closer.

[Leidiriv]

Both platform examples you gave can be Displaced on pretty easily, it's actually CaC that will kill you there more often than not. You've just gotta hug the inner edge of the arena.

[Archwizard]

Sure. Why not? Use Displacement if you want to or need to for movement, use Engagement if you want to or need to for mechanics. There shouldn't be a 50 potency penalty because you have to stay in melee range due to platform sizes (I'm thinking E3 and Suzaku) or because you need to stay with the party for stack mechanics or healing, or if you can't leave the area. There's no reason that there should be a difference in potency for those who either choose to stay closer or for time when you must stay closer.

The problem with that is that Displacement isn't DRG's Elusive Jump. It's an instant damage CD, which shares a charge with a damage CD -- and maximum damage from instant CDs will come from using them as soon as they become active, unless they have A) charges so you have an entire CD's leeway on timing or B) mechanics that increase their potency for holding them for an ideal circumstance (which due to them both being physical damage, we don't get from any other abilities). The current disparity between Displacement and Engagement is an ill-fated attempt to induce scenario B.

If Engagement did equal damage to Displacement (or at least near enough as to be inconsequential) and no other changes were made, the only time you would pop Displacement is if it came off cooldown at the EXACT SECOND the boss dropped an AoE marker in the melee -- otherwise, it will never even be available because you'll be using Engagement on CD, especially with your suggestion to make auto-attacks stronger for RDM since you will want to actively avoid jumping backward for the whole 10 sec to greed out maximum damage.
(And bear in mind, the theoretical scenario you suggest where Displacement remains objectively better has to exist in the same realm where current melee jobs are not at a significant disadvantage for lacking similar escape tools. Which only DRG has.)

There would be no "use Displacement when you need to," or at least not with enough frequency to justify it being a separate ability. Displacement may as well be taken off the bar in such a case.

[wereotter]

The problem with that is that Displacement isn't DRG's Elusive Jump. It's an instant damage CD, which shares a charge with a damage CD -- and maximum damage from instant CDs will come from using them as soon as they become active, unless they have A) charges so you have an entire CD's leeway on timing or B) mechanics that increase their potency for holding them for an ideal circumstance (which due to them both being physical damage, we don't get from any other abilities). The current disparity between Displacement and Engagement is an ill-fated attempt to induce scenario B.

If Engagement did equal damage to Displacement (or at least near enough as to be inconsequential) and no other changes were made, the only time you would pop Displacement is if it came off cooldown at the EXACT SECOND the boss dropped an AoE marker in the melee -- otherwise, it will never even be available because you'll be using Engagement on CD, especially with your suggestion to make auto-attacks stronger for RDM since you will want to actively avoid jumping backward for the whole 10 sec to greed out maximum damage.
(And bear in mind, the theoretical scenario you suggest where Displacement remains objectively better has to exist in the same realm where current melee jobs are not at a significant disadvantage for lacking similar escape tools. Which only DRG has.)

There would be no "use Displacement when you need to," or at least not with enough frequency to justify it being a separate ability. Displacement may as well be taken off the bar in such a case.

So delete displacement, or turn it into a simple movement skill with no damage.

I make no hiding that I think it was only an okay skill at best when it was implemented, but causes more trouble than it's worth too often. I've had it launch me off platforms that are too narrow to actually use it more than once, and in open world content, I've had it launch me into enemies in Eureka causing my death when they all get agroed onto me. The game's developers have failed to take this skill into account when designing arenas, and rather than address this, they gave us Engagement, and then made it have less potency. This means that Red Mages have been nerfed for fights where Displacement isn't a viable skill to use, and that's not okay by me.

No other job I can think of gets a damage penalty because of the shape of the platform you're fighting on, so why should Red Mage? If you prefer to be at range, nothing is stopping you from using Displacement to go away if their damage is nearer equal.