Red Mages: How do you feel about the symmetry of Black and White magic?

[Jkap_Goat]

I love how RDM currently plays, its fun, intutive and a good spread of keys without being 3 actions bars full.
only down side is it feels like the mobile could use a bump..

as far a "uniqueness" in the different magic schools, what do you expect? its a mmorpg, you are limited by what this genera is sadly, everything has to stay in the mold, so you basically get to be direct damage or dot. most they could do is what blm does the black magic can eat mana and white regain it i guess.

I mean FFXI is an MMO and Red mage performs as a Red mage should: Has cures up to Cure IV, can nuke, has great enfeebling Magics, can chain spell, can DD, can raise

it's a great all around job unlike XIV red mage which I think is the worst red mage out of the series

[AmiableApkallu]

Oh, I certainly don't think that's the case; there's plenty they could do to mix it up…

When I first started FFXIV, back when post-ShB was current, I was prepared to find out how all the casters with elementally-aspected spells would actually function in practice. As it turns out… elemental affinities are all but non-existent.

[Valence]

I'm surprised and happy to find more and more people thinking that pvp toolkits have a ton more flavor than what we have in pve...

[Payadopa]

Deliberate imbalance would be odd lore-wise, and arbitrary imbalance isn't really any more exciting than arbitrary balance.

Yes, yes it is. It's called designing a game/job/system. You conceive a game with rules with which it is played. Everything about a game is arbitrary from that kinda lense. The point is to make the arbitrary part fun.

And concerning the lore, please.
The didn't care about AST in that regard as well. Male Viera are supposed to be rare. White magic is supposed to be only know to like 4 people. I think RDM having more interesting abilities is fine. And besides, balances doesn't necessarily mean mirrored. PvP RDM is also a form of balance.

[Supersnow845]

RDM to me always felt like they had half a job design then implemented the “black and white mana” so they could double the number of skills to make the job feel more complete and while I know it’s part of wider FF lore the idea of trying to introduce white magic utility spells like vercure was never going to go anywhere in a holy trinity MMO outside of something like eureka

The core rotation from SB was a good foundation but the overall focus on just increasing the finisher over and over and the changes to what the finisher costs makes RDM feel like an immobile phys ranged rather than a mobile caster, I think they need to stop touching the finisher (if anything is support them removing the final finisher they added in 6.0) and going back and trying to make the caster element more interesting, rather than 2 identical skills that just differ in what magic they generate what about if they generated different amounts of mana but had different effects, like 1 veraero gave as much mana as 4 verthunder’s but veraero was a short DOT so you don’t want to cast it as often

I also think it’s time to upgrade fire and stone and just in general please buff RDM’s damage

[Iscah]

And concerning the lore, please.
The didn't care about AST in that regard as well. Male Viera are supposed to be rare. White magic is supposed to be only know to like 4 people. I think RDM having more interesting abilities is fine. And besides, balances doesn't necessarily mean mirrored. PvP RDM is also a form of balance.

AST's lore is fine, and took minimal damage from the mechanic changes. The other two are a disconnect between lore and what other players are doing, whereas a RDM "balance of white and black" not actually being balanced would be a disconnect between lore and what you personally do.

RDM PVP kit is a different beast entirely, certainly, but it's not the same thing as proposing "RDM as it currently is, but the gauges grow at different speeds just because I think symmetry seems boring".

[Supersnow845]

AST's lore is fine, and took minimal damage from the mechanic changes. The other two are a disconnect between lore and what other players are doing, whereas a RDM "balance of white and black" not actually being balanced would be a disconnect between lore and what you personally do.

RDM PVP kit is a different beast entirely, certainly, but it's not the same thing as proposing "RDM as it currently is, but the gauges grow at different speeds just because I think symmetry seems boring".

AST’s lore makes zero sense now what are you talking about, the entire SB questline makes zero since they removed nocturnal sect (and the few tiny changes they made to the text to make it fit don’t change that) the lore of the constellations still matches the SB card effects (like you align with bole and she says “people look to this constellation for protection in times of doubt” bole effect 6% damage up on ranged and healers) not to mention the lore still references time magic

If AST was your first class (not that it can be) you would be forgiven for thinking the lore of your skills doesn’t need to have any relevance to what they actually do

[Korbei]

I don't mind the gameplay flow of the white and black symmetry. It's a fairly simple and straight forward means of building up to that crescendo of the big melee combo/big boom. A little from column A, a little from column B. Repeat until boom, like an acid/base reaction. It's executed with appropriate style and I dig it.

I would kind of enjoy a forced alternation between Verflare and Verholy, like Summoner switches between Bahamut and Phoenix to force a swap between elements one rotation to the next.

I do take a bit of issue with the disingenuous use of the term "white" in the lore of the job in this game. It's all black magic.. let's be honest here. There's very little white magic to be found. It's just Vercure and Verraise. What we're really talking about here is light and dark... But that's how this game has decided to interpret the blend for practical purposes and I've come to terms with it.

[Shurrikhan]

Tbf, XIV lore does classify Holy as white magic, and XIV's white magic and the light elements are almost wholly interconnected (see the Mhachi).

[Renathras]

The rhythm and symmetry of RDM spells appeals to me, and it feels awkward and unpleasant when they are out of sync, as they are in early dungeons or the awkward gap in the 60s where you have Flare but not Holy.

Deliberate imbalance would be odd lore-wise, and arbitrary imbalance isn't really any more exciting than arbitrary balance.

Agree with this. I like the even back and forth. I think the only thing I might change is making Vercure give Mana (either White Mana or, if they think that's imbalanced somehow, make it like Jolt/Impact where it gives the same amount of both, though that would be weird). [Okay, my one other complaint is why the AOE spells are "backwards" from the single target; Impact should be the quick cast like Jolt, not Aero/Thunder 2 spells...]

I find the even keel of RDM to be pretty chill and it's what makes it so friendly to players picking it up.

Yes, yes it is.

No, no it's not.

The problem with subjective statements is they aren't factual. It's different from person to person. "My favorite color is blue. I think blue is pretty." "No it isn't. Blue is ugly. And it isn't your favorite color." Deliberate balance is just as or more exciting than deliberate imbalance to a lot of people. A lot of people enjoy RDM and would like it less if it was deliberately imbalanced.

.

EDIT:

Though all that said, when they first announced it - recall this was back in HW - I remember thinking it sounded like WHM. A Job that has some healing magic and some damage spells, just also with a bit of melee. I remembered wondering briefly if it could be a new healer Job with the White Magic spells for healing and the Black Magic spells for its damage, so using Fire/Ice/Thunder instead of Stone/Aero/Fluid Aura somehow, along with some melee attacks. Granted, it turned out not to be that at all, but I do remember the possibility being interesting to me. Especially since there aren't THAT many Jobs to draw from other FF games for healer slots, considering most FF games have "White Mage" and make it so good at healing that you just...don't really have anything else other than sometimes having advanced forms of it like Sage or Mystic or the like, with the odd White Mage-adjacent bit healers like Chemist.

(Of course, Sage is normally an advanced version of Red Mage...so we're all kinds of goofy, lol)