Suggestion for: RDM improvements

[Archwizard]

• Manafication now gives a flat 40/40 Mana, while Enhanced Manafication increases this to 50/50 Mana.
• Embolden reworked: now increases ALL personal damage by 10% and ALL allied damage by 5%, no longer diminishes over time.
• Verraise is now a (90 sec to 5 min) CD with two charges.
• Jolt II and Scatter now give 4/4 Mana; Impact gives 2/2 Mana per target struck, up to 5 targets; Scorch now gives 10/10 Mana.
• Enhanced Contre Sixte increases the potency of Veraero II/Verthunder II to 130 each.
• Enhanced Displacement also reduces the CD of Displacement and Corps-a-corps by 5 sec.
• New trait at 80, "Enhanced Redoublement": Reduces the recast time of Enchanted Redoublement, Verflare and Verholy to 1.5 sec.

Just a few tweaks here and there, all that I think are doable this expansion.

VerHoly/Flare/Scorch all do AoE damage scaling 50% off on 2 targets

Okay, let's start with... why?

I get that Verflare and Scorch look a bit like AoEs, fine, but the problem with this suggestion is that it completely ignores context. If you're at a point where you're meleeing in an AoE scenario, you're not going to be bursting your melee combo somewhere Moulinet is an option, and I don't think "two-target scenarios" where enemies are grouped are common enough to rebalance our finishers over.
If there is some multi-target scenario where Moulinet is practically insufficient, where our single-target combo plus 50% cleave on our Verfinishers would far and away be more potent output, then by all means suggest away -- but I would say the problem in that scenario would be our existing AoE option, not any lack of a new one.

Vercure buffed to 800 potency gives a Stone Proc immediately upon use (why not)

"Why not" is because we aren't a healer, and a potency buff of that magnitude (bigger than Cure II/Benefic II/Emergency Adloquium, with Dualcast to boot?) would either lead to our damage being penalized as an offset to this utility, or us replacing a healer in raids, neither one of which sounds good to me.

Verraise gives a Fire Proc immediately upon use.(community can decide if they want to keep this or not, I’m over it)

Gonna tackle something of an elephant here: A) rewarding us for spamming raises is going to make "Rez Bot" memes worse not better, and will definitely lead back to the above where our potency takes a big hit, and B) ignoring that Verraise/cure/stone are White Magicks and Verfire is a Black Magic, having forced damage procs off of Vercure and Verraise promotes Mana imbalance since the two of them are not used equally.

For 6.0, I’d also consider a bit of a redesign to truly capture that SpellBlade White magic support casting DPS identity that rdm was supposed to be.

Okay, yikes. Spellblade's a separate job, Red Mage is a caster DPS, and the "more melee, more white magic" thing will make us more of a disjointed mess, not somehow cause a wave-function collapse into a perfect rendition of the job that will make everyone happy.
There's no reality where a caster with hardly any access to survival tools is better off with more attacks that restrict them to a 3 yard range of the target, and heaven help you if they add positionals like a true melee without True North. And in RDM's particular case, it would require an extensive revamp of the Mana Gauge economy to actually amount to more time in melee rather than more time casting to fund it anyway.

Also, if anything I would argue we need more Black Magic tools next expansion, since we already have nothing to balance out access to Vercure and Verraise. I would normally have argued for a literal "Verscathe" to offset Vercure but we've already got Reprise so that's moot, and BLM's not exactly a fountain of utility to start with.

If people want a Spellblade next expansion, just be direct and ask for a Spellblade. You cannot have it both ways of "There's too many melee jobs and I don't want them to add more, but I also want them to (for all intents and purposes) turn existing an caster into a melee job in all but name."

[Wayfinder3]

snip

I like your suggestions, but here are my reasoning, everything i've suggested is open to input but it's all still grounded in this games combat and what can be expected from this game.

1st. VerHoly/Flare/Scorch being AoE means RDM have a proficient way of using their mana on 2 targets, moulinet doesn't enough damage at 2 targets to warrant expunging mana for it.

Moulinet on 2 targets for 5 gcds= 2000 potency
Melee combo on a single target for the same amount of gcds = 2270 potency


this means RDM in prolonged 2 target scenarios such as adds in ucob or add heavy fights like o7s can only use single target melee combo which puts them behind SMN and BLM who have dots that help with this as well as powerful AoE abilities to spike their damage. while this is a niche scenario, giving rdm this flexibility will help them should they aim to do longer add phases in future ultimates or savage encounters designed around multiple enemies. not every change needs to be groundbreaking, some can be little touch ups and future proofing, this won't change RDM in anyway besides give them more AoE options and if 50% is too strong, we can reduce it to 30% so that E moulinet isn't invalidated at 3 targets.

2nd. giving a fire and stone proc for using raise and cure isn't a true reward, you still lose the 310 potency from veraero and thunder and these are RDMs 2 most potent GCDs over the course of a fight. This is called mitigated losses, it's the same concept behind white mages lily system. Afflatus misery's 900 potency is worse than the 4 glares you alternatively would've had (1200 potency). vercure would be buffed by this but only so far as downtime and this would at least save the RDM some potency on their follow up cast by allowing it to be verfire or stone . the issue you present about using the spells equally wouldn't matter as much because cure and raise give you Procs, not mana, you still have to cast the spells to get the mana and thus won't have to worry about imbalancing.

3rd. Paladin has a very functioning heal in clemency and doesn't pay for it as it's arguably the best tank and the role is so well balanced. taxes are flexible, giving RDM an effective single target heal on the GCD doesn't require the job to be 15% weaker than BLM. if 800 is too much, 500 is fine but i can assure you, a 800 potency cure 1 isn't replacing any healer anytime soon when none of them in optimized play ever cast their cure 2s. Adlo is the exception but thats for a deployed shield. Cure 2, Cure 1, Bene 1, Bene 2, Physick and arguably Lustrate all go unused because 1 GCD on a single person isn't worth the DPS loss. suggesting that it would implies RDM would be able to help the main healer heal up 8 players with this one single target GCD as well as heal through attacks like tumults. If you chose to bring up the AST solo heal thats currently possible, RDM getting an 800 potency heal won't make that main stream largely because again, it's a single target heal and 2, fflogs standard comp metric would make that solo comp pretty much ignored. All this 800 potency would do is allow RDM to recover runs by keeping the tank alive on top of members making it better for prog(what it's currently designed to contribute in the most)

4th. In later implementations, More melee can be handled easily if it's stored nukes like xenoglossy that also add mobility. Personally, i believe the red mage melee aspect of the job would flow better if it were a GCD combo on a cooldown like GNBs gnashing fang combo for a couple reasons. first, It allows us to plan our melee combo without worrying about mana generation, second, it means the job will no longer have a delayed burst which will add a fun layer of optimization. as for additonal melee abilities, you can BW mana build to a strong melee range hit, that can be used every 50 B/W mana and have acceleration immediately give 50.
also, caster rarely don't want to be in at least max melee range and the idea that them not having survival tools ala second wind is a very strange argument to make. if this was a legit concern, they could just give casters second wind or an equivalent, BLM has manaward so survival tools aren't alien to casters. Red mage can easily get more melee as long as its handled properly


more white magic can just be more defensive ogcds, such as a possible AoE regen, a shield to mitigate damage, (it could be a weaker rdm version of temperance as an example) some healer abilities that are nerfed but can slot into a dps kit without turning it into a healer. verraise and vercure are fine defensive utilities but they're too niche in their application which causes the job to feel like that white magic identity is too small. the only BLM utility offered that RDM could've taken was apoc which doesn't exist anymore. frankly, if they added a nerfed blizzard ability that restored mana, that would be a nice Black magic ability to take.

I don't want a spellblade job, i already have one and, that is the Red mage. what i want is for the devs to capitalize on the potential a magic melee job with roots in B/W magic could offer. Red mage won't be a top tier dps like BLM, i don't see the point in asking for that, but i can ask for the job to be close enough to BLM that the dps disparity won't matter unless you want extra saftey or even more damage. Red Mage should do more than just B/W B/W melee combo in my opinion. i don't need a spell blader thats 100% melee with little magic (play paladin if you do) I want a Red mage that specializes in versatility and uses it's magic enhanced sword to support the party as well as it's prowess in black and white magic. This is what red mage has always been, you seem to believe it's not possible to explore the melee dps aspects of RDM, i believe that it is and you simply need to open your eyes to the possibilities. As a caster melee hybrid, red mage is allowed to walk the line between melee dps and ranged because it's not competing with melee. Red mage doesn't need positional because it's also a spell caster and casters have cast times which are equivalent to the melee's positional as a role design choice. I'm not even sure why you think i want them to turn red mage into a melee dps. more melee doesn't mean, all melee and no spells so this argument is very strange.

i'd agree Spellblade was a different job if all of Red mages Enchanted Melee skills weren't fundamentally the same as imbuing swords with magic. the only difference between spellblade jobs and red mage in past games is that they could imbue their sword with any magic, while red mage could just use lower tier B/W magic. this however isn't true for this game where Red mage can imbue magic and use B/W magic of which tiers don't matter. In my eyes, they are the same. If RDM wasn't doing this, explain why their melee combo is functionally and lorewise, doing magic damage. it's because they are indeed a Spellblader.

[Archwizard]

1st. VerHoly/Flare/Scorch being AoE means RDM have a proficient way of using their mana on 2 targets, moulinet doesn't enough damage at 2 targets to warrant expunging mana for it.

Moulinet on 2 targets for 5 gcds= 2000 potency
Melee combo on a single target for the same amount of gcds = 2270 potency

this means RDM in prolonged 2 target scenarios such as adds in ucob or add heavy fights like o7s can only use single target melee combo which puts them behind SMN and BLM who have dots that help with this as well as powerful AoE abilities to spike their damage.

So the solution is "increase the damage of two of our Verfinishers by 30-50% for a niche scenario" (which will most definitely come with an offset to their single-target damage) instead of increasing the damage of Moulinet by 30-40p (which at worst would come with an offset penalty to our AoE damage, most likely Impact which still has 60p of wiggle room in 2-targets)?

3rd. Paladin has a very functioning heal in clemency and doesn't pay for it as it's arguably the best tank and the role is so well balanced.

Yes, but its heal is a part of the Paladin's actual role as a tank, both for personal survivability and off-tanking, in lieu of tools like The Blackest Night, Aurora or Nascent Flash -- Arguing "PLD doesn't pay a tax on its healing!" is better matched with "WHM/SCH/AST don't pay a tax on mitigation!", not using RDM as an example. Vercure is outside of RDM's role as a caster DPS, hence its primary use as a means to pop Dualcast without a target, not a heal.
Not to mention that in both cases of Vercure and Clemency, each use of the healing effect is a penalty in itself, consuming both a GCD and resources intended for offensive skills.

If RDM wasn't doing this, explain why their melee combo is functionally and lorewise, doing magic damage. it's because they are indeed a Spellblader.

Functionally? Aight, let's start with the fact that without a melee combo at all, people would complain that it's "not a Red Mage" and "just uses the rapier as a stat stick" -- all things we already hear with the token melee combo we have (which kinda just proves my point that it would be much louder), which really makes me question where their stopping point is for a "real" Red Mage, but I digress.
The melee combo does magic damage because, as a caster, we capitalize on boosts to magic damage like the personal side of Embolden (or, back when RDM was released and it still existed, Contagion). To give us a melee ability that was purely physical like RDM has historically always had (for instance, literally the entire melee combo sans Enchantment) would be as detrimental to the job as changing SAM's Sen skills to deal Ice, Earth or Unaspected damage, on top of mitigating any future benefits that could be given to casters.
I mean, unless you want to tell me the enchantment is actually a detriment, and the job would have been better off not enchanting its weapon due to the more numerous boosts to physical damage that actual melee jobs benefit from? I'll wait.
Meanwhile, historically, a Spellblade doesn't enchant their weapons simply for the benefit of dealing bonus magic damage and exploiting elemental weaknesses, but largely for the purposes of granting buffs or debuffs via their swings that scale off their more physical stats, which is significantly more useful in FF14 given the lack of distinction between magical damage types.
Plus, y'know, having the core of their attacks be melee rather than spellcasting? Much like PLD vs WHM (or arguably SMN vs DRG, rock the dragon), it's kind of a significant difference.

Lorewise... what does that matter? There was no lore for Red Mage before Stormblood much like there was no lore for Gunbreaker before Shadowbringers or Dark Knight before Heavensward. Lore is neither justification nor tipping point for any balance decision, it's flavor text on decisions that have already been made. The devs could add a Spellblade tomorrow of non-Gyr Abanian origin and they would probably add a last-second writeup that "they always existed but you just never met one before," or "the art seemingly died with [Insert Ancient Magical Civilization Here]" like they've done for Literally. Every. Single. Job. Released.
Also, lore is a funny justification coming from the person who says Verraise should proc Verfire, balance be damned. Just sayin'.

As a caster melee hybrid, red mage is allowed to walk the line between melee dps and ranged because it's not competing with melee. Red mage doesn't need positional because it's also a spell caster and casters have cast times which are equivalent to the melee's positional as a role design choice.

Counterpoint: The people who say they want RDM to be more of a melee sound a lot like "I want to play melee but I hate positionals." SAM is already a job that uses cast times with its melee skills, so the two are already not mutually exclusive.

I'm not even sure why you think i want them to turn red mage into a melee dps. more melee doesn't mean, all melee and no spells so this argument is very strange.

You're correct that it doesn't mean "all melee and no spells" -- as we see with NIN, PLD or DRK, we can absolutely have a melee that still weaves spells, much as RDM is a caster that uses melee in bursts.
The key distinction I make with that, however, is largely due to significance and uptime.

Saying "I'd like to see more melee skills or spend more time meleeing" is, in a vacuum, harmless -- and likely will be exactly the direction the devs will take towards improving our damage in future expansions since the time factor makes for an easy tuning knob. All they need to do is add traits to reduce the CD on Manafication (ding, already done once!), add new spells with higher Mana returns (Scorch says hi), or trait to reduce the cost of melee abilities by a shred, and little by little we'll push that envelope and increase our melee uptime (and consequently our damage) by a respectable amount, even without having to add new melee attacks or increase the potency of any skills.

Perhaps this is a knee-jerk reaction on my part since you specifically may not actually fit the group, but in my experience the people who ask for RDM to have "more melee" or "be a real melee-hybrid" don't want 5-10 seconds of shorter delays before melee each expansion, they want the job to spend a significant percentage of the time performing successive melee combos broken up by strings of spells, or frankly have no idea what they want. The problem with that is, by the time you get to that 50% melee uptime mark, the job functionally is a melee sans positionals, that just so happens to have ranged attacks in their main combo -- and remember, nearly every melee has a rotational or oGCD attack with ranged or line damage, which they will often burst from point-blank anyway.
Why that and not the other way around? Because you have to play to the lowest common denominator, in this case the limited range opportunity of the melee attacks. You're under no compulsion to jump back 15 yards after the melee combo before you start flinging spells, nor under any penalty from bursting spells close-up aside from being squishy. We get away with backing off from the boss now because between cast times, pathetically weak auto-attacks and the sheer lack of melee uptime, we're hardly bound to melee range as-is; true "hybridization" of any significance would negate that.

[JohnnyDevo]

Moulinet on 2 targets for 5 gcds= 2000 potency
Melee combo on a single target for the same amount of gcds = 2270 potency

I just wanted to go a bit more into detail.

This is correct, but for the wrong reasons. First and foremost, moulinet gcds are all 1.5, whereas melee combo gcds are 1.5, 1.5, 2.2, 2.5, and 2.5. Second, 5 moulinet costs 200 mana, but a single melee combo costs only 125, since two of the skills refund 21 and 14 mana respectively.

To find the most correct way to do it, you have to calculate the pps gained from doing the alternative action over your normal spell rotation, multiply that pps gain by the duration, and divide that number by the mana spent, and you arrive at "extra potency gained per point of mana spent".

For your baseline, in this case, it's what you do against 2 targets. Jolt II is 250 potency, higher than verthunder/veraero's potency of 240 against 2 targets, so you use that. And, of course, you use impact at 220*2 = 440 potency. 250 + 440 / 5 = 138 potency per second.

An encanted moulinet does 400 potency over 1.5 seconds for a PPS of 266.6666(repeating). Subtract your 138 potency per second of the baseline, get 128.6666(repeating) PPS gained. Multiply that by the 1.5 seconds duration and you arrive at 193 potency gained. Divide that by 40 mana spent and you get 4.825 potency gained per mana spent.

A melee combo puts out 2270 potency in 10.2 seconds, for a PPS of ~222.549. Subtract your 138 pps and you arrive at ~84.549. Multiply by the duration again and you get 862.4 potency gained, and divide by the 125 potency spent and you arrive at a hefty 6.8992. Almost 43% better of a use for your mana. So yeah it's better to use melee combo over moulinet at 2 targets.

For those curious, at 3 targets, the gains come out to 7.35 potency per mana for moulinet, and a stark 1.5136 potency per mana gained for the melee combo. It's an interesting contrast. At 2 targets, melee combo is far stronger. at 3 targets, moulinet is far stronger.

[Duelle]

Manafication now gives a flat 40/40 Mana, while Enhanced Manafication increases this to 50/50 Mana.

This would help a bit since current manafication use hinges on having 40/40 or thereabouts to get a melee combo out. This would facilitate getting two melee combos back to back, which is a step forward.

Jolt II and Scatter now give 4/4 Mana; Impact gives 2/2 Mana per target struck, up to 5 targets; Scorch now gives 10/10 Mana.

I like these.

Since several good ideas have already been mentioned, I don't have much to offer aside from:

- Jolt II, Impact, and Scorch have a chance to grant Enchanted Blade (35%, 35%, 100%, respectively). Enchanted Blade is a stacking buff that caps at 3 stacks and allows free use of an Enhanced Weaponskill of your choice per stack. The idea is for spell spam to give additional opportunities to use the sword within the current design beyond just hitting 80/80. The only concern would be just how much this would increase RDM's DPS output.

The ideal scenarios I was thinking of are being in the stretch between 30-80 mana and getting 3 stacks spamming spells to allow for a melee combo, and using partial stacks (one or two stacks) to initiate a melee combo and ending up with a good chunk of mana instead of being empty or near empty.

- Engagement's damage buffed to match Displacement's. I don't see the point in punishing the player for not jumping away and/or being in situations where they can't jump away.

Okay, yikes. Spellblade's a separate job, Red Mage is a caster DPS, and the "more melee, more white magic" thing will make us more of a disjointed mess, not somehow cause a wave-function collapse into a perfect rendition of the job that will make everyone happy.

Adding more melee wouldn't necessarily make the job disjointed, as doing so necessitates mechanics to make everything work.

As for playerbase happiness, it'd be foolhardy to think a change of that level would make everyone happy. The people that wanted the sword to play a bigger role would likely be happy. The ones that wanted to play a caster that didn't have BLM's or SMN's extra mechanics, on the other hand, would not.

There's no reality where a caster with hardly any access to survival tools is better off with more attacks that restrict them to a 3 yard range of the target,

If your concern is damage taken (I don't see why else you'd mention survival tools), bosses don't have much in terms of unavoidable damage that is exclusive to specific ranges (i.e unavoidable damage that hits only the melee or unavoidable damage that hits only the ranged). Unless melee are standing in the fire in EX and Savage fights because of DPS uptime and it hasn't been brought to my attention.

and heaven help you if they add positionals like a true melee without True North.

I don't see a scenario where giving a front-lining RDM positionals would make sense. Specially if you make the combo rotation involve both sword skills and magic. An argument could be made for multiple melee combos (which would make it easier to justify positionals), but there's the risk of button bloat given the limited number of skills per job the developers use as a rule when designing things.

[Archwizard]

- Jolt II, Impact, and Scorch have a chance to grant Enchanted Blade (35%, 35%, 100%, respectively). Enchanted Blade is a stacking buff that caps at 3 stacks and allows free use of an Enhanced Weaponskill of your choice per stack. The idea is for spell spam to give additional opportunities to use the sword within the current design beyond just hitting 80/80. The only concern would be just how much this would increase RDM's DPS output.

I like the idea of this "stackable free weaponskills" trait and I could absolutely see them adding something like that in a future expansion, possibly even next, in lieu of adding more weaponskills while still increasing melee uptime.
Though I have a few concerns with the stated implementation:

1) Having it proc from Jolt is possibly a bad idea, largely because the goal of the current rotation is to minimize Jolt as much as possible. Since the goal of any job is min-maxing, increasing the value of Jolt means minimizing the value of Verfire/stone, which could lead to ignoring their procs.
2) "Weaponskills" is a broad definition, which includes Reprise. Attempting to stock several charges could also limit our mobility in an effort to avoid spending them on Reprise by accident.
3) Increasing access to Weaponskills without increasing access to our gap-closer at the same time could be painful.

- Engagement's damage buffed to match Displacement's. I don't see the point in punishing the player for not jumping away and/or being in situations where they can't jump away.

... but then you run into the alternative scenario where nobody ever uses Displacement as an intended punctuation on our melee periods -- which is to say, nobody ever uses Displacement, period, instead just standing in melee and popping Engagement on CD.

Other melee stuff

See my previous post.

[Duelle]

1) Having it proc from Jolt is possibly a bad idea, largely because the goal of the current rotation is to minimize Jolt as much as possible. Since the goal of any job is min-maxing, increasing the value of Jolt means minimizing the value of Verfire/stone, which could lead to ignoring their procs.

I added Jolt for thematic purposes. If spells are going to proc this effect, then it makes sense for it to involve the job's "red magic". Jolt still sees use in situations where you get no Verstone/Verfire procs and have Acceleration on cooldown, though I guess the proc chance could be adjusted (increased to minimize the use of Jolt). An alternative would be to tie Acceleration to it (Veraero/Verthunder cast while under the effect of Acceleration grant Enchanted Blade), though I'm not a fan of this since instead of receiving the effect through regular gameplay you're getting one from the burst phase (which can be interrupted if you get a boss that becomes untargetable) and one from an ability on a 35s cooldown.

2) "Weaponskills" is a broad definition, which includes Reprise. Attempting to stock several charges could also limit our mobility in an effort to avoid spending them on Reprise by accident.

This is a fair point. I was thinking of just letting it work with Reprise too, though the mana saved is not worth spending the proc. The effect is really meant for Riposte/Zwerchau/Redoublement and Moullinet.

... but then you run into the alternative scenario where nobody ever uses Displacement as an intended punctuation on our melee periods -- which is to say, nobody ever uses Displacement, period, instead just standing in melee and popping Engagement on CD.

In situations where you need to get away and it's off cooldown, you are definitely going to use Displacement. The rest of the time, you're right that Engagement would be used on cooldown. Given my opinion on the forced positioning thing (read: it's stupid as hellreally tacky in a poor attempt to look cool), I'm not really bothered by this outcome.

If mobility is a concern, I'd suggest separating Engagement's cooldown from Displacement in exchange for reducing or removing the latter's damage component. At least for the way I play RDM it'd be really convenient, since I'd have 3 oGCD skills to use between Dualcasted GCDs (Fleche, Contre, Engagement) and can leap away from an enemy in times of need.

[Archwizard]

I added Jolt for thematic purposes. If spells are going to proc this effect, then it makes sense for it to involve the job's "red magic".

And thematically I understand and don't disagree. Theme, however, shouldn't overtake balance or practicality in terms of a job's mechanical design.
If you increased the proc rate to be substantially procced by Jolt, it wouldn't mean people using Jolt less to achieve the number of procs you intend per fight, it would mean people actively attempting to use Jolt more to game it and squeeze out the maximum number of procs. Remember, much like any other proc, the proc rate of the effect off Jolt is a factor in the effective increase to the potency of Jolt -- and the proc is worth the maximum value you can get out of it, which is equal to 30/30 Mana.

Just to give you an idea of the potency of this proc: to make it net neutral with Jolt II as-now, you'd have to remove Jolt's base Mana return completely, make EB a 10% proc chance or less, and reduce Jolt's potency by a fraction of the damage of the entire melee combo (since the first hit doesn't exist in a vacuum, being both the most expensive hurdle and weakest single swing) which I don't want to calculate right now.

An alternative would be to tie Acceleration to it (Veraero/Verthunder cast while under the effect of Acceleration grant Enchanted Blade), though I'm not a fan of this since instead of receiving the effect through regular gameplay you're getting one from the burst phase (which can be interrupted if you get a boss that becomes untargetable) and one from an ability on a 35s cooldown.

Especially since that would absolutely jump the gun. The only reason you wouldn't get one or more Accelerations per melee phase as now, is because the stacking of procs would mean achieving the melee phase multiple times between Accelerations. The frequency would at least mean you would effectively be permanently locked into using your melee combo at 50/50 Mana or less.
I'm sure you'd be pleasantly satisfied but that is a grandiose increase in frequency and damage that would absolutely be offset by a damage cut, unless dealt to us a future expansion.

... alternately, however, you could have Manafication just give 3 stacks outright and cut out its innate mana gain entirely at the cost of just not including the proc by any other means. 3 free Moulinets or a full melee combo every 2 minutes, would make aligning your burst phase significantly easier. Probably too strong since you could effectively ignore Mana altogether when it comes up, but eh.

In situations where you need to get away and it's off cooldown, you are definitely going to use Displacement.

Situations which exist at a very specific intersection of CD timing and boss attack patterns, particularly if that same CD is being pressed on-cooldown with Engagement.

If mobility is a concern, I'd suggest separating Engagement's cooldown from Displacement in exchange for reducing or removing the latter's damage component.

Mobility isn't my concern, my concern is that would negate the entire point of having Engagement, as an alternative means to inflict damage via Displacement's CD. If they remove the damage from Displacement, the only reason for Engagement to exist is oGCD damage specifically in the melee phase, at which point they may as well add its damage into Corps-a-corps or an actual melee skill since we barely have time to use oGCDs in melee.

At least for the way I play RDM it'd be really convenient, since I'd have 3 oGCD skills to use between Dualcasted GCDs (Fleche, Contre, Engagement)

... The way I play RDM I already have 4. Fleche, Contre, Acceleration and Swiftcast.

Entirely ignoring Corps-a-corps, which would fulfill the same role as Engagement at point-blank.

[Duelle]

Just to give you an idea of the potency of this proc: to make it net neutral with Jolt II as-now, you'd have to remove Jolt's base Mana return completely, make EB a 10% proc chance or less, and reduce Jolt's potency by a fraction of the damage of the entire melee combo (since the first hit doesn't exist in a vacuum, being both the most expensive hurdle and weakest single swing) which I don't want to calculate right now.

Reducing Jolt's chances to proc this could make the procs become incidental of spell spam instead of spamming spells to get the proc. 10% sounds really low to me (especially since, as you said, the gameplay emphasizes using Jolt as little as possible), though if that's what'll take to prevent people focusing on Jolt to game the system, so be it.

... alternately, however, you could have Manafication just give 3 stacks outright and cut out its innate mana gain entirely at the cost of just not including the proc by any other means.

At that point you're trading one effect for something similar instead of adding a new piece to RDM's gameplay. I would like to see something like Enchanted Blade join the other things in RDM's kit, not replace one of them.

Mobility isn't my concern, my concern is that would negate the entire point of having Engagement, as an alternative means to inflict damage via Displacement's CD. If they remove the damage from Displacement, the only reason for Engagement to exist is oGCD damage specifically in the melee phase, at which point they may as well add its damage into Corps-a-corps or an actual melee skill since we barely have time to use oGCDs in melee.

Most fights I've been part of involve people stacking behind the boss for one reason or another, so I've been getting a lot of use out of Engagement (much to my own surprise). En-Combo => oGCD => Verflare/Verholy => oGCD => Scorch => oGCD => Spellspam. Assuming the cooldowns align, those oGCDs are Fleche, Contre and Engagement. Throw in Acceleration on the second or third slot if available and if one of the others is on cooldown (otherwise use on Dualcast oGCDs when missing one or both "Verspell Ready" buffs).

... The way I play RDM I already have 4. Fleche, Contre, Acceleration and Swiftcast.

How silly of me. Let me clarify: damaging oGCDs.

Entirely ignoring Corps-a-corps, which would fulfill the same role as Engagement at point-blank.

I'm not keen on that for the same reason I wasn't a fan of DRGs using Leg Sweep or BRDs using Blunt Arrow on cooldown during ARR and Heavensward: it's a waste of utility on top of teaching very poor habits to the player.