Red Mage "better"??

[Maero]

Yep you all understood what i mean't. We all know Rm was never the big deeps but i honestly do not know why they could not have Embolden buff physical and magical.
Who knows look how long it has taken blm to be at the point it now is. Red may be the same... i hope not

[Writheheart]

so... if RDM is super easy why does it have the second highest DPS variance according to FFlogs, right behind BLM?

I messed up before & didn't quote lol, didn't know how to fix
just for my own clarification, as I had put off RDM because of perceived easiness despite it being my favourite FF flavoured job, bar none; this variance is essentially the difference between getting down the basics and then mastering the job? (alongside doing a big boss battle of course lol). that is to say, despite the rotation being easy to get into, once you get it down you can learn some tricks to raise the skill ceiling, and it isn't quite as easy to play at the highest of percentiles?
your comment really super caught my eye, kinda wish I could PM you and not sound stupid in public but oh well lolo. I'd super appreciate a reply! frankly this would solve my forever swappin' and changin' main Job issue haha

[Leidiriv]

Yep! At a very very basic window it's easy to use melee combos when they're up, not worry about optimizing procs, and use Manafication whenever. But then you add in fixing procs before a combo, Swiftcast usage, proactive mana fixing for each Manafication cycle, proper Acceleration usage, identifying when to go with the 110s Manafication cycle or the 120s cycle, and suddenly there's an extremely high skillcap there for RDM.

[Gruntler]

Yep! At a very very basic window it's easy to use melee combos when they're up, not worry about optimizing procs, and use Manafication whenever. But then you add in fixing procs before a combo, Swiftcast usage, proactive mana fixing for each Manafication cycle, proper Acceleration usage, identifying when to go with the 110s Manafication cycle or the 120s cycle, and suddenly there's an extremely high skillcap there for RDM.

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.

[Lodi]

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.

Except losing your combo, either by dying or breaking it (who has two thumbs and thought that using Reprise instead of Scorch during a forced moving phase was a good idea? This guy!)
Maybe losing your combo isn't as dramatic as other classes' burst phases, but man does it feel bad.

As for the optimisations, oh man.
Between precasting Aero/Thunder, using Manafication closer to 50/50 to get an extra bit of mana, swiftcasting to skip a Jolt if there's no procs available, casting Cure to trigger Dualcast during downtime, using every ogcd as soon as they're available thanks to the large weaving windows, juggling Flare/Holy to not overwrite procs... and I'm probably missing some more.

This class has a tiny random factor we have to work with, it always keeps us on our toes without being too punishing. I love it.

[ReiMakoto]

The large dps varience in RDM dps I'd likely attribute to poor embolden usage/ not having party comps that benefit from embolden. At the top end embolden can provide ~900 ish dps, but many things can cause large fluctuations in that damage, such as bringing a ninja/second caster, bringing a drk, people unaligning burst, selfish embolden ect. So on top of the normal varience just in competence, you have large varience being caused just by the team comp which is something other classes are not as effected by. This is also discounting a possibility that rdm could just attract players of a wider skill range than other jobs due to its status as being known as easy, so less competent players pick it up and get less competent results.

[Gruntler]

The large dps varience in RDM dps I'd likely attribute to poor embolden usage/ not having party comps that benefit from embolden. At the top end embolden can provide ~900 ish dps, but many things can cause large fluctuations in that damage, such as bringing a ninja/second caster, bringing a drk, people unaligning burst, selfish embolden ect. So on top of the normal varience just in competence, you have large varience being caused just by the team comp which is something other classes are not as effected by. This is also discounting a possibility that rdm could just attract players of a wider skill range than other jobs due to its status as being known as easy, so less competent players pick it up and get less competent results.

Naw, it's not that big a differential as you'd think; RDM's differential in aDPS matches its differential in rDPS, and Embolden does not factor at all into aDPS.

[Silverquick]

The large dps varience in RDM dps I'd likely attribute to poor embolden usage/ not having party comps that benefit from embolden. At the top end embolden can provide ~900 ish dps, but many things can cause large fluctuations in that damage, such as bringing a ninja/second caster, bringing a drk, people unaligning burst, selfish embolden ect. So on top of the normal varience just in competence, you have large varience being caused just by the team comp which is something other classes are not as effected by. This is also discounting a possibility that rdm could just attract players of a wider skill range than other jobs due to its status as being known as easy, so less competent players pick it up and get less competent results.

I don't think it has much to do with Embolden either.

Any job that has a lot of Procs will have a lot of variance. Accelleration usage is one... procs on VerStone and VerFire outside of accelleration are another. So there might be a lot of variance in those times you fill your guage and do your melee + Verflare/VerHoly combos.

And I don't know whether what you're talking about is coming from Raw Parce data or some other means.

There's so many factors in Red Maging that can account for a large variance at least in overall DPS. I'm starting to see it in some of the higher level instances where I have at times spent soo much time Resing and backup healing I did very little DPS at all. I had one today in the Vauthrie 8 Man where I was constantly resing the team over and over again. Also healing both myself and others after Ressing them. And there was so much Raid wide AoE, that I was doing VerHeal (self) + VerThunder/VerAero dual casting a lot.

One run in the Ivalice Raids, in the Clocktower, the minute we started it, 5-6 people started out by saying they'd never done it before. Some of those bosses can be just brutal for anyone who hasn't done them before so I was constantly ressing the healers, blm, drg, and at times again spent more time ressing and healing than I did DPSing.

[Gruntler]

I don't think it has much to do with Embolden either.

Any job that has a lot of Procs will have a lot of variance

RDM also has a lot of proc-management which mitigates it. Honestly, performance on the job should be consistent, even taking procs into account. A bigger factor will be whether you crit your finishers than your proc-luck.

In tripleceleration world, RDM procs are a lot more consistant than even in StB, when they were reasonably consistant.

backup healing

You. Are. Not. The. Third. Healer. And. Vercure. Heals. For. Shit.

[hynaku]

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