Red Mage has been shafted all expansion and "but Verraise" doesn't cut it

[Semirhage]

Yeah yeah. Blah blah blah, "it's okay to be lower on personal damage if you have lots of utility!", "Verraise is so helpful!", whatever. Red Mage has been subjected to a whole tidal wave of total BS this expansion and this latest "balancing" patch where they cranked the already strongest caster even higher is just icing. If it were one or two things, hell, even three or four it'd be arguable. But there's a whole litany of nonsense aimed at Endwalker RDM.
- It's the least mobile job in the game
- It lives in an encounter design meta that loves making people run all over the place, which makes lack of mobility a tough thing to play around. Again, this is fine. In a vacuum. When it's not sharing space with all the other points.
- Endwalker's comically large hitboxes have made melee's "weakness" practically irrelevant.
- Caster is the only role where a "prog job" is a thing. Everyone else has their damage and utility *actually* balanced, whereas Black Mage gets this enormous damage bonus factored in on top of it for not having Raise.
- Red Mage's burst and mobility are rolled together in a melee phase, in an expansion where fight design is in sweaty monkey love with forcing people away from the boss during those burst windows. Guess who's getting a melee safe spot for their burst? A melee.
- Raising people is taxed in MP, it's taxed in stopping your damage rotation (and not building B/W mana), and taxed in class design budget. Triple taxes for the win!
- It's the only caster without personal mitigation, making it inordinately squishy, especially in early progression. You know, the place it's supposed to be most useful.

And all of this for doing physical ranged levels of damage. Come on Square. This is ridiculous. Black Mage was already the highest damage caster no contest, and you just slapped a huge buff on top of that? Red Mage was already so far behind that you could have added forty potency onto every single one of its buttons and it would still do less damage than Black Mage, and that was before the unnecessary 6.4 buff. Stop "balancing" classes based on play rate.

[Ransu]

BLM only contribution is damage... Asking RDM to match or come close to BLM output is just silly.

[Picker]

I agree casters have been ignored this xpac, but blm needed this buff to sit comfortably ahead of the melee. It was preposterous that you’d play really well as a blm and do the same damage as ninja or dragoon. Rdm should do as much dps as the melee. The encounter design is hostile to casters and hand-holdy for the melee.

[Rychu]

As a two expansion RDM main, I never want to suggest that our damage should be comparable to BLM. It just isn't the same with how difficult that class can be compared to us. I do think that it is extremely unfair that SMN is stronger than RDM despite being pathetically easier to operate. As everyone already agrees with, SMN is by far the most mobile caster job with barely a cast time every minute or so. Despite that they do higher damage compared to RDM who has to plan for it's movement astronomically more.

Also the argument that RDM is balanced to be weaker in hardcore content because it would be too strong in casual content is weak because guess what? It's casual content, who cares how strong the jobs are when running through content made for people that don't want to do extremes, savages, or ultimates. Plus if people are still worried about the damage in dungeons and fates then here is a fix, add a late level trait ( lvl 80+) that boosts damage by like 1% when in trials or raids.

At the end of the day, these arguments about damage all stem from one spell, Ver Raise. Personally, I am okay with them limiting the strength of Ver Raise if it means that they have more wiggle room to adjust the rest of the job. Even YoshiP has gone on record that hey have considered removing Raise from RDM and SMN due to this exact problem. I think a good compromise would be to change Ver Raise to a charge system, give it 3 stacks of Ver Raise with a hefty cooldown (60sec-120sec) per stack. This change would still keep the Rez Mage idea alive while also providing the developers more room to adjust the job, I hope that out of everything they see of people whining about balance I hope they consider this one the most.

[Sqwall]

I don't play BLM so I really can't be tossing my hat in the ring in that regard. But I do play RDM casually and I will say this. RDM is WAY more useful then a damage turret. Playing RDM well takes some skill and understanding situations VERY quickly. I have saved runs with a quick verraise. RDM is the ultimate utility job in the game....it can do it all.

It serves RDM's identity very well. Jack of all trades...master of none. We have a RDM in our static and they are ALWAYS saving runs.

Honsetly, RDM is prolly one of if not THE most well designed job in the game.

[Rychu]

See I completely agree that RDM is one of the most designed jobs in the game. I think it is right up there with black mage in terms of how well designed it is. The issue is that the utility is being valued much higher than it currently is. At least in raid content, the amount of body check mechanics gives no chance for RDM to even use its raise so the utility is just a flat zero at that point and the lack of self utility while being the squishiest caster means that RDM can die from Raidwide damage far easier than the other two. My Static's DRK just has a macro now for throwing TBN on me since he knows that even with BIS, I will need it for Raidwides.

[Taranok]

See I completely agree that RDM is one of the most designed jobs in the game. I think it is right up there with black mage in terms of how well designed it is. The issue is that the utility is being valued much higher than it currently is. At least in raid content, the amount of body check mechanics gives no chance for RDM to even use its raise so the utility is just a flat zero at that point and the lack of self utility while being the squishiest caster means that RDM can die from Raidwide damage far easier than the other two. My Static's DRK just has a macro now for throwing TBN on me since he knows that even with BIS, I will need it for Raidwides.

Eh, Black Mage isn't a well designed job. A quick look at Scathe, Lucid Dreaming, and Blizzard 1 tells you all you need to know about how 'well designed' it is. You can say it's fun if you want, but it's a textbook definition of "Too many hats." That is, they don't actually change or fix the class, but they keep adding new hats to it. How can a perfect class keep getting better each expansion if it wasn't already in a bad place? Yada yada. I can go into a lot of detail as to what makes it a badly designed class but, that has no bearing on personal enjoyment (and people do enjoy it,) nor the topic at hand.

What I will say, weighing in as someone who loves Black Mage's core gameplay with most endwalker experience on BLM being in DSR of all things, is that Endwalker in general has shafted anyone who wants to simply sit still and cast. Including red mage. Not having personal mit is frustrating. Having to pretend you're a physical ranged DPS in every other mechanic is a serious problem. One Red Mage can do a lot better than Black Mage with how movement-heavy every single EW fight has been.

As you say, Endwalker is also filled to the brim of mechanics that 1 death = wipe. This is if we're not also including the tight DPS checks all but forcing 2 melee DPS, especially in abyssos, because melee DPS do that much more damage.

[Taranok]

- It's the least mobile job in the game

Hard disagree here, but it depends on if you need quick point to point movement, short but sustained movement, or a little bit of movement, a lot, over a long period of time. I will say, at least in DSR, red mage completely destroys black mage on practical movement.

- It lives in an encounter design meta that loves making people run all over the place, which makes lack of mobility a tough thing to play around. Again, this is fine. In a vacuum. When it's not sharing space with all the other points.

This is hitting Black Mage about 2-3 times harder, in actuality. There is a reason RDM is played 2:1 over BLM in most cases, and often a worse ratio for ultimates. This expansion has been awful for casters in general. Even healers feel it.

- Endwalker's comically large hitboxes have made melee's "weakness" practically irrelevant.

Don't forget the lack of forced melee downtime mechanics.

- Caster is the only role where a "prog job" is a thing. Everyone else has their damage and utility *actually* balanced, whereas Black Mage gets this enormous damage bonus factored in on top of it for not having Raise.

I disagree with this premise, but understand the concept. That is to say, I have regularly progged on BLM. That said, I will also say that raise utility being missing from BLM is a big problem for BLM's balance, as well as the balance of CDPS as a whole.

- Red Mage's burst and mobility are rolled together in a melee phase, in an expansion where fight design is in sweaty monkey love with forcing people away from the boss during those burst windows. Guess who's getting a melee safe spot for their burst? A melee.

The fun thing is, you can still save your melee burst combos and, after learning fights, know when you can double melee burst. It's part of what rescues RDM's mobility, since having damage on the jumps and backsteps instantly kills the argument that those abilities are also mobility spells. This won't always work, but as mentioned, it depends on the exact type of movement you need out of a fight.

- Raising people is taxed in MP, it's taxed in stopping your damage rotation (and not building B/W mana), and taxed in class design budget. Triple taxes for the win!

Hard agree, iterating the also-balance-problems created by it from BLM not having a res. Defesive utility should not be taxed, period. I don't see melee DPS being taxed for having a crappy aoe heal (Reaper) or Feint in general.

- It's the only caster without personal mitigation, making it inordinately squishy, especially in early progression. You know, the place it's supposed to be most useful.

This shouldn't be a problem, but I understand why it's a point all the same. I'd find more offense in fight design requiring the mit versus not, however.

And all of this for doing physical ranged levels of damage. Come on Square. This is ridiculous. Black Mage was already the highest damage caster no contest, and you just slapped a huge buff on top of that? Red Mage was already so far behind that you could have added forty potency onto every single one of its buttons and it would still do less damage than Black Mage, and that was before the unnecessary 6.4 buff. Stop "balancing" classes based on play rate.

Nothing has killed my desire to play the caster DPS role more than endwalker. The fight design is so hilariously, stupidly anti-caster. They've completely destroyed the entire point of the role. Hell, they're trying to turn casters, a traditionally stationary role, into a role as mobile as ranged physical DPS, for every single damned fight.

It's like every encounter designer completely forgot that there's an entire role in the game that is supposed to be designed around primarily sitting still and casting. What happened to the days of RDM being irrefutably the most mobile caster? Why is it the devs need to destroy the role I used to enjoy the most in the game?

EDIT: Clarified to defensive utility shouldn't be taxed, not just all utility.

[Mithron]

While I don't think there should be such high DPS disparities between the jobs, I do think the job identity of RDM being a support caster with lower DPS than BLM is very important. BLM should always be the top DPS in the game, and RDM should have so much utility and support that they're among the bottom DPS. In classic FFs, they are known for this type of playstyle, and that's why I enjoy playing RDM. I do not want BLM to ever have raise, and I do not want RDM to ever lose Verraise or Vercure.

I agree that they should not be the most immobile of the three casters, either. They should be the most mobile. I think increasing the Mana generation so you can combo more often would be a good solution while perhaps increasing their melee range so they can be more mobile as they spend more time in sword combo than casting.

[Arguscbf]

Come on Square. This is ridiculous. Black Mage was already the highest damage caster no contest, and you just slapped a huge buff on top of that? Red Mage was already so far behind that you could have added forty potency onto every single one of its buttons and it would still do less damage than Black Mage, and that was before the unnecessary 6.4 buff. Stop "balancing" classes based on play rate.

IMO i think devs don't read forums when it comes to this AND don't play RDM cause for them it's "Prog Mage". Just swap to SMN when you get to enrage on savage and it's all good! It's sad to see a well designed job being neglected like that. They gotta put on their minds ppl play RDM because it's an awesome job not because it's good for prog.