Red Mage: Potential adjustments

[Rongway]

just to pick at a few plausible (but not strictly "necessary") openings: expanding Moulinet into a combo (or pseudo-combo),

I can appreciate that adding a combo action to Moulinet is something people might like to see, as it would be a little more interesting than 7xMoulinet spam. But even though we only have one AoE weaponskill, we have four AoE GCDs; this is already quite high. I think the next highest are MCH, GNB, and MNK at three. Did I miss a four somewhere? (I left out SMN because their multiple sets of actions are really just one set of trance actions that get reskinned depending on which phase they're in.)

dual-Mana procs or oGCDs to accelerate the main combo without imbalance, or virtually any spell that could fit into our Shortcast-Longcast casting model. All that without having to add a second gauge (and we're one of the few jobs that doesn't have one, or any timers like DoTs or sustained buffs).

Can we really afford the extra buttons there though? This is another one where I agree more actions could be more interesting, but something that'll always need to be considered for RDM is that despite the simplicity of its ST and AoE rotations, those simple rotations have a comparatively high number of buttons due to the duality of our spells. Extra spells for us don't pose a combat design problem so much as an interface issue.

Certain types of spells would need to be added in pairs, so introducing certain mechanical concepts to the job increases the number of buttons quickly--one of the reasons I (probably unpopularly) don't think we should get Verwater and Verblizzard as new spells separate from what we already have. We got around this sort of problem this expansion by mapping Scorch, Verholy, and Verflare to Jolt, Veraero, and Verthunder, respectively, so that we could afford the extra buttons for Veraero II and Verthunder II.

We could accommodate more spells if we can fit them onto existing buttons, but adding separate buttons would be cumbersome. For this reason, I believe traiting up our existing actions is the only practical way to go:

• Ancient Magic Mastery basically analagous to Lance Mastery so we can do Enchanted Combo > Verflare > Verholy+ > Scorch, or E.Combo > Verholy > Verflare+ > Scorch. This alone would put us 9~12 mana ahead of where we would be after each of our current combos (21 mana gained, minus the cost of an extra GCD during which we would have cast another spell anyway), plus guarantee both procs.
• A trait that replaces Veraero II and Verthunder II with Verwater and Verblizzard. For example, casting Veraero II could have a 50% chance to upgrade your next Veraero II to Verwater, dealing higher damage and generating 2 extra mana.
• A mastery trait that upgrades the single target spells to tier III versions for additional damage.
• A trait that adds something more interesting to Fleche and Contre-Sixte but otherwise doesn't change what they already are. For example (but not necessarily for endorsement), maybe Contre-Sixte could grant 1 or 2 mana of each color for each target hit, or something.

[Archwizard]

Can we really afford the extra buttons there though? This is another one where I agree more actions could be more interesting, but something that'll always need to be considered for RDM is that despite the simplicity of its ST and AoE rotations, those simple rotations have a comparatively high number of buttons due to the duality of our spells. Extra spells for us don't pose a combat design problem so much as an interface issue.

Certain types of spells would need to be added in pairs, so introducing certain mechanical concepts to the job increases the number of buttons quickly--one of the reasons I (probably unpopularly) don't think we should get Verwater and Verblizzard as new spells separate from what we already have. We got around this sort of problem this expansion by mapping Scorch, Verholy, and Verflare to Jolt, Veraero, and Verthunder, respectively, so that we could afford the extra buttons for Veraero II and Verthunder II.

We could accommodate more spells if we can fit them onto existing buttons, but adding separate buttons would be cumbersome.

We're at fewer buttons in Shadowbringers than when RDM was introduced (remember that we also dropped six role actions) and still have room for buttons to consolidate or remove – for instance, solving the "Displacement problem" would mean we could remove Engagement, which means 1-2 more buttons right out of the gate depending how it's executed. There's space on my bars, without having to get too clever about consolidation or saying "no more, we're done".

[Gruntler]

We're at fewer buttons in Shadowbringers than when RDM was introduced (remember that we also dropped six role actions)

We dropped Erase, Diversion, Break, Drain, Mana Shift, Apocostasis, and the buttons for Verholy and Verflare.

Break and Drain were never on our bars to begin with.

Verholy and Verflare were replaced with Verthunder II and Veraero II.

That leaves only 4 buttons different, but we added Engagement and Reprise, so we only have two actual button difference. I honestly don't see where on my hotbars all these buttons are going to fit people want. If I have to go to a third xhb, that's too much.

[ArianeEwah]

Ancient Magic Mastery[...]

This is most likely to happen and I would be totally okay with it.

SqEx has a history track of changing burst window timing to align with each other, usually 60s, 90s, 120s and 180s. RDM melee combo (burst) window is roughly every ~40s. Shortening it to ~30s, adding an additional melee combo overall seems like an appropriate approach. Whether this will make RDM more engaging/fun or not, may be another story.

[Aghis]

RDM ist most boring and uninspired class i ever played.
That includes the 1 button spaming WoW frost mage from classic WoW. At least that mage had other things to do, when not dealing dmg (like crowd controle).

Starting with the cast animations.
3/4 of the spells look like, i would look when tossing a small ball to a kid that never catched a ball before.

You could delete half of its spells right now, and (almost) nothing would change at the rota. So why are those spells there? Just to fill up another collored Bar?
2 Spells to fill up a white bar and the exact same spells with another name (and animation) to fill up a black bar?

The black mages spells at least do something different. Fire for big bam but expensive mana, ice to fill up the mana. So it does not feel like doing the same thing.

Who ever managed to persuade quality controle at Square Enix, that this is fun and should be in the game, is polititian matierial for a countrys president

This class needs a "burn it to the ground and reinvent it" rework.
Ill max it out and never touch it again.

omg and im trying to be constructive here.

[StriderShinryu]

RDM ist most boring and uninspired class i ever played.
That includes the 1 button spaming WoW frost mage from classic WoW. At least that mage had other things to do, when not dealing dmg (like crowd controle).

Starting with the cast animations.
3/4 of the spells look like, i would look when tossing a small ball to a kid that never catched a ball before.

You could delete half of its spells right now, and (almost) nothing would change at the rota. So why are those spells there? Just to fill up another collored Bar?
2 Spells to fill up a white bar and the exact same spells with another name (and animation) to fill up a black bar?

The black mages spells at least do something different. Fire for big bam but expensive mana, ice to fill up the mana. So it does not feel like doing the same thing.

Who ever managed to persuade quality controle at Square Enix, that this is fun and should be in the game, is polititian matierial for a countrys president

This class needs a "burn it to the ground and reinvent it" rework.
Ill max it out and never touch it again.

omg and im trying to be constructive here.

I mean, you could just not play it?
Clearly there are a lot of players who do enjoy RDM and even with all of the sometimes heated discussion in this thread it's mostly dancing around "we like it as it is but it could have this added or that added."

[Seraphor]

I also believe some of its issues aren't strictly related to potencies and would be better addressed via alterations to its existing mechanics. You have to know that the "Raise Tax" won't go away (if it ever does) without adjusting our relationship to Verraise.

I've suggested this before, but all they really need to do is change the Dualcast effect.
Instead of reducing cast times to 0, it should reduce cast times by 5s.
This would have no practical effect on any spells other than Verraise, which will go from 8s to 3s.
As 3s is more than a GCD, then chain Verraising becomes twice as detrimental to their DPS output, not to mention the movement restrictions of a 3s cast time. While they still technically have the ability to chain raise, the very act of doing so would hit their DPS hard enough to warrant raising their potencies. Still not to SMN levels obviously, but enough to make the DPS more viable.

[Kalker]

I've suggested this before, but all they really need to do is change the Dualcast effect.
Instead of reducing cast times to 0, it should reduce cast times by 5s.
This would have no practical effect on any spells other than Verraise, which will go from 8s to 3s.
As 3s is more than a GCD, then chain Verraising becomes twice as detrimental to their DPS output, not to mention the movement restrictions of a 3s cast time. While they still technically have the ability to chain raise, the very act of doing so would hit their DPS hard enough to warrant raising their potencies. Still not to SMN levels obviously, but enough to make the DPS more viable.

Verraise actually has a 10s cast time, so if Dualcast reduced cast time by 5s it would end up with a 5s cast time. You'd be effectively killing it because you'd be missing out on more than 600 potency per raise.

[Seraphor]

Verraise actually has a 10s cast time, so if Dualcast reduced cast time by 5s it would end up with a 5s cast time. You'd be effectively killing it because you'd be missing out on more than 600 potency per raise.

So reduce cast times by 7s then...