What makes RDM an easy DPS?

[LitheSuxman]

I main NIN and DRK, before EW comes out, I decided I will play caster jobs for side content and grinding. And so I get into RDM, and I find myself on akhmorning look at the rotation and the opener.

First is, damn, caster is so much more hardcore than melee jobs because of all the cast time and thus the "weaving" is different.
Second is, because the job is designed around balancing black and white mana, there's always two variations of the same skills, keybinding is painful. I'm days in and still moving skills around action bars to find a smoother keybind.
Third is you have to focus on changing your dualcast sequence depends on the proc to maintain mana balance.
Finally, I don't get the purpose of scatter, true it's 20 potency higher than thunder II and aero II, but if the goal is to keep up your 8080 as frequent as possible, why not thunder II in aero II or vice versa?

Overall it feels very overwhelming compared to my mains. And that makes me wonder how do people find it one of the easiest jobs to play?

[Jirah]

RDM is basically 1-2-1-2 finisher with all of its prog kit being “upgraded” to previous skills or finishers (Jolt II, Verflare, Verholy, Scorch, Resolution, Scatter) it’s a very early bloomer job and easy to grasp and since it’s only mechanic is mana it’s very simple

Wouldn’t call it the easiest job in the game, DNC does the same but with less nuisance and less support and SMN is looking to be just 1-2-1-2 and might be easier

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The first job quest is literally: ”Listen and watch: this is how you RDM at its most basic.” and that’s basically all they need to taught us to perform reasonably decent.

From that point, it just sort build up on its own. Things like “where can I stand comfortably to cast safely?” ; “is this boss safe enough to gap close or to melee against in next 5-10 seconds?” ; “where should I slidecast to?” ; “overcapping resource is generally bad! (Mana) ; “sitting on cooldown for too long is not wise!” ; “read tooltips before jump off!!” ; “proper hotbar assignment & UI layout.” — all these comes together from playing other jobs (or previous MMO) and still applies reliably on RDM.

[Jeeqbit]

Red Mage is easy because you jolt and then rotate between white and black magic like a see-saw which is pretty braindead. It has no damage over times. It has no positionals. Dual-casting allows you to move freely out of mechanics.

[SomeRandomHuman]

The most complicated thing about red mage is just knowing when to corps-a-corps in and make sure you don't displacement off a cliff. Otherwise, it's just jolt > Veraero/thunder > Jolt or Verstone/fire(if proc'd) > Veraero/thunder > repeat and then melee combo whenever you get the gauge for it.

It's an easy dps because of simple and basic it is. No fancy bells and whistles to worry about like a lot of other jobs.

[Rongway]

there's always two variations of the same skills, keybinding is painful. I'm days in and still moving skills around action bars to find a smoother keybind.

There are two of each spell but in reality there aren't many spells. And with the augmentations to AoE coming, you can safely split AoE and Single target bars if you don't want them all on at once:


But really, RDM still fits on three bars if you don't use separate AoE and ST bars, and there's even room for Magick Barrier (place held here by Shield Samba):

Third is you have to focus on changing your dualcast sequence depends on the proc to maintain mana balance.

In practice there is very little RNG to RDM and even when you can't force a proc with Acceleration or the correct Verfinisher, the nature of Dualcast gives you plenty of time (t>1.8s) to decide which spell to use next.

Finally, I don't get the purpose of scatter, true it's 20 potency higher than thunder II and aero II, but if the goal is to keep up your 8080 as frequent as possible, why not thunder II in aero II or vice versa?

The extra 1 mana from using a VerAoE spell is not worth the lost damage from ignoring Scatter. In AoE, 1 mana is only worth 1/40 of an Enchanted Moulinet, which only does 134p over what you would do with an average AoE spell in the same amount of time, so you'd be giving up 20p of Scatter damage for 3.35p of E.Moulinet damage. It's not a good trade. It's even worse when Scatter becomes Impact and the difference between Impact and a VerAoE spell jumps to 100p.

[Iscah]

I like it because there's no long sequence of spells you can fumble and have to start over. It's just "what is the current state of my current mana bar and procs?" and go from there.

I feel like it maps well to one half of a controller if you put the four basic spells in a square.

Stone Aero

Fire Thunder

Tipped diagonal on a controller of course, but that's the idea. You're either crossing to the opposite point of the square or moving left-to-right (or casting Jolt/Cure/Swiftcast on the other half of the controller to get things started).

And the melee rush bit has a nice flow to it that arranges well on the controller too.

It sounds like Endwalker's job tweaks will mean we have a bit more freedom to hold off on using the melee combo if it's currently unsafe to go in, instead of hitting the awkward point where any more spellcasting will overfill the bar and ruin your chances of triggering a proc from Holy/Flare.

[Minnel]

1- Straight forward skill combo/usage timing
2- Good mobility amongst casters since dual casting essentially leaves you free to move for few seconds
3- As a side bonus, you can basically quick cast raise with dualcast.

[LitheSuxman]

There are two of each spell but in reality there aren't many spells. And with the augmentations to AoE coming, you can safely split AoE and Single target bars if you don't want them all on at once:


But really, RDM still fits on three bars if you don't use separate AoE and ST bars, and there's even room for Magick Barrier (place held here by Shield Samba):




In practice there is very little RNG to RDM and even when you can't force a proc with Acceleration or the correct Verfinisher, the nature of Dualcast gives you plenty of time (t>1.8s) to decide which spell to use next.



The extra 1 mana from using a VerAoE spell is not worth the lost damage from ignoring Scatter. In AoE, 1 mana is only worth 1/40 of an Enchanted Moulinet, which only does 134p over what you would do with an average AoE spell in the same amount of time, so you'd be giving up 20p of Scatter damage for 3.35p of E.Moulinet damage. It's not a good trade. It's even worse when Scatter becomes Impact and the difference between Impact and a VerAoE spell jumps to 100p.

I arrange my keybind based on functionalities. For example, my 1-2-3 combo is always Q-1-2, AoE combo is always 3-4 etc. That being said, an extra buttons for a couple of skills is tedious to manage.
It's true the procs don't come as often without acceleration, maybe 4-5 times every minute, but it requires your attention to constantly check your action bars for procs while spellcasting, that makes the whole gameplay way challenging.

[FusiaRain]

Auto spells every other attack, legitly most you can resurect better than healers, its heal does good recovery about the same level aa clemency. Its given closers and exits.

Then ontop of that it gets the signatures of blm/whm now its going aoe...

Rdm is made way to op for devs who want balance they made rdm basicly a god. The only way you can fail rdm is if you have only 1 brain cell.