Red Mage "better"??

[Wayfinder3]

I just know my dnc still does more dps than my rdm does at same ilvl.

That’s a player skill issue. RDM does more damage than DNC and BRD in pretty much most scenarios. Perhaps your rdm play should be evaluated against your DNC play.

[Yorumi]

This. RDM's skill ceiling isn't obvious; it's in a whole bunch of micro-adjustments that seem, individually, like there's not much variance, but there's so many of them that they all add up. There isn't a massive 'THIS IS A MISTAKE' drop-off like there's going to be in some other rotations; your dps doesn't die for 'dropping a stack' it does the death of a thousand tiny cuts from individual micromanagement mistakes that you constantly deal with even when you think you aren't.

I was curious if there's a guide anywhere that better explains some of the more advanced rdm things. I've been looking for a more detailed discussion of rdm like these little optimizations and stat prioritis and such but most guides seem to be just the bare minimum use your procs and keep everything on cooldown.

[Nosphuratu]

I was curious if there's a guide anywhere that better explains some of the more advanced rdm things. I've been looking for a more detailed discussion of rdm like these little optimizations and stat prioritis and such but most guides seem to be just the bare minimum use your procs and keep everything on cooldown.

I suggest joinning the balance discord! There are tons of advanced guides and discussions on optimization on top of various BIS sets you can use!

[Daharahj]

Maybe actually add an incentive to stay at long range rather than spam cac/eng on cd and squeeze out as much AA damage as you can. They sort of realized this halfway through shb and decided to make Engagement a thing lol.

Manafication could do away with the combo reset to give room for choices during your gauge dump and Embolden either needs to include phys damage or a drastic increase in damage on the first stack, I like the decaying damage component since it adds choice on what order you'll execute your combo, but it's nowhere near significant enough for it to matter, especially considering other classes get to constantly vomit buffs with similar or stronger potency with no drawbacks whatsoever.

[Gruntler]

Maybe actually add an incentive to stay at long range rather than spam cac/eng on cd and squeeze out as much AA damage as you can. They sort of realized this halfway through shb and decided to make Engagement a thing lol.

There's no incentive for BLM or SMN to stay at long range either. There's no incentive for BRD, MCH, or DNC to stay at long range. The encounter design, and healer design (especially Cure III) doesn't want us to stay at long range longer than necessary. Changing RDM to enforce that would make RDM worse, not better. Hell, we already have healers who won't heal us if we Displacement; we don't want to make that worse!

Manafication could do away with the combo reset to give room for choices during your gauge dump and Embolden either needs to include phys damage or a drastic increase in damage on the first stack, I like the decaying damage component since it adds choice on what order you'll execute your combo, but it's nowhere near significant enough for it to matter, especially considering other classes get to constantly vomit buffs with similar or stronger potency with no drawbacks whatsoever.

Embolden gives you no choice regarding your combo, because the only decision point in your combo is whether you cast Verholy or Verflare. Embolden has nothing to do with that (and frankly, neither does Manafication.)

Embolden is a raidbuff, and you should be lining it up with other raidbuffs because multiplying more things together is better than doing them separately. If you want to use Embolden with your combo, you can; however that's about managing your mana so that you can manafication around the time you embolden, because those two cds can be lined up. If you're finding this to be hard, it's because you're not managing your manafications right, not your emboldens.