Suggestion for: RDM improvements

[SaberMaxwell]

"RDM- Potency Increases. RDM Acceleration has 3 stacks, increased recast time."
not sure acceleration needed to have that many stacks but ok

This makes perfect proc opener guaranteed, which is huge.

[Rilifane]

"RDM- Potency Increases. RDM Acceleration has 3 stacks, increased recast time."
not sure acceleration needed to have that many stacks but ok

Guaranteed perfect proc opener, better control over burst phase and when your melee combo will be ready and overall dps increase through this change alone.
I think 3 stack Acceleration is a fantastic change.
Adding the potency increases will definitely place RDM in a better spot. Still below the upper half but not by as much as now. Right now RDM is a poor choice when your raid struggles with meeting dps checks but with those two changes it should be a valid choice again. Not optimal but valid.

[Kabooa]

The problem I have when I keep seeing this argument, is that the "basic" nature of the AoE rotation in the first place was that it provided room to be built and expanded upon. They did that.

We're gonna disagree here. There were plenty of ways to build upon the previous iteration, and this one was at best a side-step. If it's meant to mirror Red Mage's single target system, then seeing as that hasn't changed either doesn't do much.

And I say cheated because the Red Mage's kit expansion this expansion is awful. You can't help but look at jobs who just got an aoe progression instead of an AoE revamp and look at their shiney if buggy toys and not feel like someone didn't get cheated in the long run.

[Mhaeric]

It's more that I felt Scatter+Scatter wasn't something that was broken, so, why fix it? The fix, so far as I'm concerned, lessens the Red Mage experience rather than enhance it. I get that the addition of Aero 2 and Thunder 2 means that there's a choice to make for the Red Mage's player to choose what mana color to raise... but did that really need to happen?

Scatter spam was one of the complaints players had about RDM, myself included because it was mind-numbingly boring. I am super happy with the AoE rotation we have now since it allows for things that weren't possible in the previous version. E.g. the split into a weak and strong AoE skill means it now interacts with Swiftcast in a much more meaningful way. The only things I wouldn't mind seeing added to it are an interaction with Acceleration somehow and an AoE finisher move that procs after some number of Enchanted Moulinet (5 would be my suggestion.)

[Leidiriv]

I just have to say, the Acceleration change is wonderful as long as we can still use it out of combat. I'm optimistic that our Verspells will end up getting buffed by Enhanced Manafication or Enhanced Jolt, but I'm really curious to see what they end up buffing. I *hope* it's not just 150-ish potency to Holy/Flare and Scorch though, because that would just make us so crazily crit-dependent it wouldn't even be funny.

[Archwizard]

It's more that I felt Scatter+Scatter wasn't something that was broken, so, why fix it? The fix, so far as I'm concerned, lessens the Red Mage experience rather than enhance it. I get that the addition of Aero 2 and Thunder 2 means that there's a choice to make for the Red Mage's player to choose what mana color to raise... but did that really need to happen? If Holy Spamming is fine, why wasn't Scatter spamming fine?

Holy Spamming may be "fine", but healers aren't made to be particularly concerned with the process of inflicting damage, since they're expected to drop it at any time to do their real job -- that's how they get their fill on variety. If I wanted my AoE spam to be one button, I would probably just queue as a healer; meanwhile, RDM explicitly is made for damage, and can expect a little more demand on AoE like BLM.

At any rate, one of the big critiques of healing right now is the lack of variety in the damage rotation, so your mileage may vary.

We're gonna disagree here. There were plenty of ways to build upon the previous iteration, and this one was at best a side-step. If it's meant to mirror Red Mage's single target system, then seeing as that hasn't changed either doesn't do much.

And I say cheated because the Red Mage's kit expansion this expansion is awful. You can't help but look at jobs who just got an aoe progression instead of an AoE revamp and look at their shiney if buggy toys and not feel like someone didn't get cheated in the long run.

I don't disagree that there were other ways to expand it -- any of which would involve either adding new spells or significantly changing Scatter. I too had very different ideas on how I expected our AoE to change.
However, I find it a moot point to argue that having a one-button toggle to turn our single-target skills into AoEs is any more progressive than what we gained; if anything your proposal is an extra GCD of setup in which we can't just Vercure up a Dualcast at the start of an add phase, while this way we netted a game-able heavy AoE spell, more reliable Mana generation, a fringe 2-target rotation, a means to reliably imbalance our MP between bosses, and new modular skills the devs can tune/trait separately from our single-target in the future.

Nor do I disagree that our "new toys" feel awful this expansion, and that we ultimately went largely unchanged -- but as I said, that's not necessarily caused by our AoE revamp. It's not like the devs said "Hey, you can either get more diversity and expansion in your single-target from 72-80, or a complete rework to your AoE pre-70 and one new nuke at 80, but you only get one." That's frankly just an irrational way to look at it when it wouldn't be true for anyone else.
The devs looked at the new job they released, decided to focus on adding missing tools or those that would smooth the gameplay out before building off the base, and "Rework Scatter Spam" ended up on that list. You may disagree with the method or dislike how it turned out, but it was there by popular request, and many of us are quite happy not to press one button for half the dungeon.

[Duelle]

It's more that I felt Scatter+Scatter wasn't something that was broken, so, why fix it? The fix, so far as I'm concerned, lessens the Red Mage experience rather than enhance it. I get that the addition of Aero 2 and Thunder 2 means that there's a choice to make for the Red Mage's player to choose what mana color to raise... but did that really need to happen? If Holy Spamming is fine, why wasn't Scatter spamming fine?

I agree with this. Though repetitive, Scatter spam was fine. Considering they went for actions replaced by other actions in the same hotbar slot depending on resources/effects, they could have gone with Scatter => Impact as you mentioned.

Additionally, they've set the precedent of Tier II Verspells being AoE, which means if they follow that to its logical conclusion AoE gameplay will likely turn needlessly complicated once Verfire II and Verstone II enter the picture.

Though, more to the point, there's also extra shelf space being taken and I'm not fond of the contorsions required on the keyboard to simply cast the things (It was one thing to mash Ctrl+0 in Stormblood, but now I have to dance between Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3 and Ctrl-4 a whole lot and my left hand really resents going through those contorsions).

I opted to commit the cardinal sin of clicking with the mouse cursor on the AoE skills. I'm not bending my wrist in a weird direction just to cast AoE. What could have comfortably fit on CTRL-4 (CTRL-5 if I stretch) if it had been one button is now on the other side of the hotbars.

"RDM- Potency Increases. RDM Acceleration has 3 stacks, increased recast time."
not sure acceleration needed to have that many stacks but ok

I agree Acceleration at most needed 2 stacks (for those instances where you procced nothing but Acceleration is still on cooldown). If I were to hazard a guess, Acceleration will likely be bumped up to 60s or 90s cooldown per charge.

[Sylvain]

They didn't mention it but it would be nice to have E-Reprise do more damage and consume more B/W mana. Too often do i find myself above 50 a few sec before Embolden + Mananifcation come back up.

I agree Acceleration at most needed 2 stacks (for those instances where you procced nothing but Acceleration is still on cooldown). If I were to hazard a guess, Acceleration will likely be bumped up to 60s or 90s cooldown per charge.

90s would be way overkill. 45s to 60s at most.

[Leidiriv]

The lrimary reason Acceleration will provide 3 stacks of the buff is because of the opener. For the 8 spell perfect proc opener, we need exactly 3 procs total. This change guarantees that we get the 8 spell opener every time. It makes perfect sense, imo.

[Archwizard]

Personally I'm still hoping Mana gets adjusted with the potency changes. I know it's irrational and largely unnecessary, but it bugs me that VA2 and VT2 generate more Mana than Jolt or Impact.