The State of Red Mage is Insulting

[kajv95]

Oh Red Mage, like a younger brother hanging out with his older brother and his friends because their mom told them to. From DPS Problems to Movement, to Underwhelming Support abilities. How is it that one of the most well-designed jobs in the game has been reduced to such rubble? Feeling underwhelming to play, and only existing for the rush of saving casual content?

A Brief History Lesson
Now, the Red Mage has always had this “Little Brother” energy. Debuting in an expansion where party composition mattered far more than it does now, the Red Mage would be relegated to the prog job by the community. Useful to see more of the fight faster. Then, some groups might keep them around, some might swap them for the summoner. It was even pretty common for Summoners to have the Red Mage on deck for progging, but then getting the clear on Summoner once their team had it down. The Red Mage was so useful for this because a myriad of factors:

1. Movement
   Movement was an ability that was unparalleled by its peers in the caster sphere.
   Summoner had not gone through its rework yet, and would have to be more careful about movements. Black Mage didn’t have Xenoglossy yet. For them, the movement of Red Mage seemed almost like that of a Bards. It was honestly kinda broken. Which also meant that a Red Mage was often consistent, and nigh unkillable.
   
2. Dualcast Verraise
   The Dualcasted Verraise was an amazing ability. Capable of saving runs before things went down too hard, Red Mage had the ability to instantly raise its peers without too much of a hassle. At worst, a person awaiting a raise would have to wait maybe 7 seconds. Black Mage did not, and still does not have this ability, and Summoner would prefer not to.
   
3. Dps and Body checks were less - for the most part.
   For a Red Mage, it was easier to succeed at doing the things it enjoys doing due to the encounter design of the game being very different. It was overall less punishing if a player had died. And although it’s effects are limited these days, Vercure, at the time, could occasionally make or break a situation.

In Shadowbringers, not much would change for the vermilion fighter - while Black Mage was gearing up and getting ready to pull ahead, Summoner in its odd Shadowbringers form and Red Mage were a little behind - but in the sense that it felt like a decent enough balance. Plus, Summoner and Red Mage were better rivals to each other, as the generic meta party had been killed off. While several jobs would lose their identity, Red Mage held firm as being basically the same as Stormblood’s incarnation, now with another spell to the finisher.

Rumblings would start to occur, when red mages started lagging behind a bit more.

And then, Black Mage Pulled Ahead

In Endwalker, while the damage between Summoner and Red Mage would remain not egregious enough to constantly point out, the rise of Black Mage happened. And happen it did - sitting comfortably amidst the top while Red Mages, and Summoners occasionally, would dance with the Physranges. The physranges, whose fight for some form of equality, had started in Shadowbringers are now joined by the Red Mages, who have been reduced to their level. Chunks of the community would fight over these things, often comparing their role to another. But that’s not the Red Mage’s problem.

The Red Mage’s Problem is within its own role. Within Caster - a competitive role of which only one is brought in parties.

The Situation: Red Mage is Overly Weak in a Highly Competitive Role
or Black Mage is simply too strong.
I realise saying that is grounds for crucifixion but I’ll stand by this. The reality is simple: Only 1 Caster ever exists within an 8-man party. The option is there, but it is not only an unspoken rule, but something the developers actively balance around. Two Melee DPS, one Caster, one Ranged. Not only is this set in stone, but the balancing on jobs more than enforces it, as dropping one melee is dropping thousands of damage every second. And so is dropping the Black Mage for any of the other casters.

As the game has progressed, so have the jobs. Summoner, now a shell of its former self, is practically a ranged dps on its own, which is pretty good grounds to cause ire from the actual ranged. Barely a caster, it darts about freely on the battlefield with nary a care in the world. And it has a raise to boot! Black Mage has increased its capacities of moving about massively since the Stormblood days. With Polyglot having an additional charge, Sharpcast having an additional Charge, Triplecast also getting blessed with an additional charge, Black Mage can dart about the place more than ever - but also save these things when it doesn’t need to.

Dispelling the Notion of “Red Mages Can Move for Free!”

Once again, I’m only going to be talking about the casters here. While I personally think the hitboxes are egregious and stupid as they’re just there to cater to melee uptime, it’s an almost entirely separately connected issue.
Red Mage’s Movement being considered so free is a hold-over community opinion from Stormblood, where it was introduced and definitely far more free than any of the other casters. Just having half your casts being instant made the job much more mobile than others. Nowadays, Red Mage largely retains the same mobility, but there is one thing that now sets the Red Mages apart from the others in this regard: A Lack of Control. While Summoner can shuffle its gems around, and is instant cast all the time, and Black Mage prefers to be grounded but can change its mobility depending on what’s coming up, the Red Mage is subject to the whims of fate in this regard. Half its casts are free, but it no longer gets to use its movement skills for, well, movement due to the insanity of the boss hitboxes. It cannot decide to push 20 seconds of free casts somewhere like a Summoner can and simply hardcast the rest - it must be done within the dualcast rhythm. It also has a slight parallel to Triplecast in Acceleration, but not really as you are guaranteed to be running out of Acceleration due to it being tied to both a damage and a mana (a.k.a long-term damage) increase. Aside from that, two charges of Acceleration only makes up for one lost Dualcast, since the accelerated spell does not proc Dualcast in itself. The movement of Red Mage is obviously very straightforward, nobody would deny that - but due to Acceleration being tied to a dps increase, the Red Mage cannot stack these abilities and use them at leisure. It must keep using them, and overcapping turns into a dps loss.

Look mom, I’m a melee now!

The second of the Red Mage-only restrictions comes into play here. Red Mage is the only Caster who often has to get into Melee range, there where two melees are already playing. Of course, this is nullified a bit by the massive arena-sized hitboxes, but not irrelevant to point out. As a trade-off to its movement, the Red Mage, as a unique thing to casters, must be in melee range for a prolonged period of time. During the burst phase, it will pull off 3 Melee combos in succession, preventing it from moving anywhere else. While the Summoner does have a dash-in, this is only for two GCDs on a minute, which they can redirect in any order they please. For the Red Mage, it’s far more complicated, as this happens for prolonged periods of time during the fight, and during midfight spending as well, though not as long. It must also use corps-a-corps atleast twice every 70 seconds, though thankfully displacement has since been rendered unnecessary. Because of this, I find Red Mages are *forced* to be mobile, but are not actually free.

Lol, utility?

“Red Mages are Weak because their utility is strong.”
I can’t even start to think about where to start unpacking this. Verraise is pretty good. More on that later. Let’s talk about the other two here. Vercure and Magic Barrier.

Vercure is a 350 Potency, single target heal on 2.5s GCD that does not generate White Mana. It pauses the rotation and can only rarely be used to proc Dualcast in advance of a boss returning to the arena. To put its power into perspective, my Red Mage is currently i652, and Vercure heals for four digit numbers when not critted. It would take 8 Vercures to get a dps up to full from 1. I know we’re not supposed to be replacing a healer anytime soon, but also, healers exist. Red Mage’s Vercure effectively has no point - it is worthless in a pinch, pauses your damage output and mana generation entirely, and should not even be entertained in hard content where balance actually matters.



Next, we have our Level 86 skill - Magick Barrier. A 10 second long, 10% Magic Damage reduction and a 5% healing increase. That sounds pretty good if not situational! Wait, no, it takes 2 minutes to recast. There we go. It’s no surprise that the developers are pretty hesitant to give any real game-changing abilities to DPS that doesn’t equate to “brings more damage”, or else we might actually start valuing their existence. Magick Barrier exists in an environment that does not value its existence in the slightest. It can’t be used in older content, so its only useful in Endwalker content. Where it’s… not useful. At all. 10% is already a paltry amount when it’s specifically for magic damage, but it’s on a 120s cooldown timer. You just cannot use this. Not to mention, this is offset against the Summoner and the Black Mage, who both gain shields to mitigate their own incoming damage. Not just magic damage, all damage. Which can be played around in infinitely more uses, is less content-specific and unlocks at way, way lower levels. And the other half of the skill, to increase healing, means the other half must be played by… a healer! Who all have the same types of ability as Magick Barrier and do not need a Red Mage to put that up.

Magick Barrier is at best a funny light to press, and at its absolute worst, an extra thing for Yoshi-P to pretend Red Mages are good at to justify the current atrocious balance.

The Problem with DPS Raises

Alright Summoners, this one’s for you too!
I want to ask, when you’re raising someone in a team without voice chat, how often do you end up raising the same target as the healer? And in a team with voice chat, how often are you, as a DPS, actually asked to raise something?
Is it when:
A - 1 Party Member falls, and the run can easily be salvaged.
B - 2 Party Members fall, and the run can be salvaged though it might end up being difficult
or C - 3 Or More Party Members fall, we’re probably going to die to the dps check now if a mechanic doesn’t do us in first.

As it is, raises already have their own penalties. And yep, looks like we have two healers! As long as atleast one of them lives, it’ll always be as salvageable as when a dps raise exists. If both of them die, it might just be better to reset regardless, and if 3 people die, god help us all. Not to mention, the red mage has a long, uninterruptible burst. If someone dies during that? Tough. Either your dps is even further down, or someone else needs to pick up. The problem with the dps raise is that it punishes in every possible way:
The player who died is punished for dying
The Red Mage/Summoner who raised is punished for picking up
The Red Mage/Summoner is punished for having the audacity to have a raise programmed in to begin with.

A Delicate Balance to Achieve

Now, do I think that the Black Mage should be on the same level as Red Mage/Summoner despite them having a pretty useful party trick? No. Not in the least. But I’m not the game designer here, and it’s not up to me to come with a way to figure out the conundrum. Even so, there are plenty of ideas here on the board. All I advocate for is better dps parity. I understand it can never be the exact same as the niche BLM brings is exactly the damage, but just as the other two have their niche in their raise, let that niche be a niche. No job should be left as a “prog job,” and I think raise taxes in a game that already punishes getting raised pretty hard should not be that egregious.

No other role has this large of a cliff between the jobs within said role, and I would like to see this remedied for 7.0

[Rychu]

"The State of Red Mage is Insulting" HEY LOOK I PROBABLY HELPED COME UP WITH THAT, MOM GET THE CAMERA.

Okay, but no forreal this is pretty spot on.

The only thing that you forgot to mention about movement is that we are the only caster that does not have movement at will. Corp a Corp and displacement do not count since the boss' hitboxes have been getting bigger every fight, and neither does manafication because that is used on cooldown for our burst window. You did mention that both black mages and summoners can move and hold their movement abilities for mechanics that demand it but for red mage? "Nope fuck you"-IDK some dev probably. You have to build up 50 mana before you can have 10-12ish seconds of "free but still in the boss' hitbox" movement. And sometimes, there are multiple mechanics that require a lot of movement, or even just one mechanic that is just a shit ton of movement (pangensis for example can be really rough if you dont have a perfect plan for movement which can be hard even on reclears to remember). Plus our movement is the only one where we are punished if we get too lucky with our procs, looking at verfire and verstone.

I personally like the 50% proc rate of verfire and ver stone because it adds a little variety to your rotation so that you aren't falling asleep like how I do when I play summoner eating different colored crayons all day. But the problem is that you can ironically enough proc them too much and not have to deal with wasting a proc because you need to use your melee rotation for movement and use an acceleration for movement even when both stone and fire are procs and ready for use already. Maybe if there was a trait that boosted your Ver-thunder/aero/flare/holy when you use them while still having a proc available so that players don't always have to feel like they wasted their ability? Idk this sounds nitpicky but you have to understand that it happens WAY more often than some people think, I have had multiple instances during our raid nights where I just keep proccing and proccing and have both for use and am either going to max out on mana which you never want to do or have to just accept that something is getting wasted which could have been helpful in a different point of the fight.

[Raikai]

I'd be willing to have Verraise with a 60s recast time if it meant to be taken out of the DPS tax from Red Mages' equation. And Vercure... It's niche but it's the good kind of niche. Nobody expects you to use it during high end content, but it's really nice to have in the many solo duties we have in this game, or Field Missions.

For 7.0 changes... I don't know, with where the job got at, I find Jolt kind of in need of some change. With so many procs, and ways to force a proc, it feels like a leftover of something. Maybe Verstone/fire could be the actual fillers and Jolt being reworked as the proc instead, to open up for different mechanics using it as a proc resource.

For 7.0 additions, as currently is, I honestly can't see where RDM can go anymore. They surely wouldn't dare to add yet another step to its melee combo. Actually if they want to add a step to something, give a combo follow up to Enchanted Moulinet.

[Rychu]

I'd be willing to have Verraise with a 60s recast time if it meant to be taken out of the DPS tax from Red Mages' equation. And Vercure... It's niche but it's the good kind of niche. Nobody expects you to use it during high end content, but it's really nice to have in the many solo duties we have in this game, or Field Missions.

Oh I agree that in solo duties and stuff, it is definitely a nice thing to have. But in the high end content that the game is balanced around, it is a worthless addition. And we all know that the devs factor Vercure into balancing Red Mage which is total crap.

[Rongway]

To be clear, I do not think we need any changes to RDM rotation or gameplay insofar as the role of a damage dealer is concerned. The offensive set flows well, even when I'm caught off guard by a 3s movement that I did not plan well enough for, which I can fix next time.

The only thing wrong with RDM is that the offensive set it has does not have a high enough damage output.

I'm absolutely not asking for changes to the rotation. None. I just want to do more damage with what we have. And if that means sacrificing the ability to Raise three people in a span of 12 seconds, then so be it.

[Raikai]

And we all know that the devs factor Vercure into balancing Red Mage which is total crap.

Wait, they stated this out loud? I thought that was just in regards of the (actual useful) utility that Verraise had. I'm a PF raider and I don't think I ever encountered a RDM actually trying to 'help' with Vercure, even when the healers were struggling.

[AnotherPerson]

Vercure goes into the "this makes sense to make the toolkit cohesive" when you're doing content where you don't want to specifically hit an enemy - ex: exploratory content or Deep dungeons.
Vercure is definitely not useful enough as utility without any updates for healing. Magick Barrier is sorta weak to justify RDM's utility. It's mainly just chain raises, which is where the "Ress Mage" stems from - the ability to quickly fix a party that dropped like flies when push comes to shove at the cost of their entire MP bar.

The mobility side of RDM was better in ShB because Enchanted Reprise cost much less in relation to your melee combo (80 Black and White Mana as opposed to 50 today). It could have been a DPS gain at times as a result when you need to move, but with the addition to Resolution at lv 90 in the melee combo and the reduced mana cost, this skill can no longer be a good mobility tool at all. It's very strange why they didn't update this skill to reflect the changes made to RDM's lv 90 melee combo toolkit.

[kayll]

My wish list for RDM changes in the new expansion is basically just quality of life.

More HP (or a Third Eye like cooldown that parries the next damage taken) so you aren't the only one who randomly dies to raid wides overkilling you by 3 digits.
More range on melee combos so you can actually DPS when you need to despite every strategy putting casters out of melee range for mechanics.
Resolution granting a free cast of Reprise so you can fix the oGCD drift the addition of Resolution has caused, though I know some enjoy this micromanagement. (would also grant a little bit of extra mobility)
Prevent combo from breaking when you are forced to stop them and use Verraise or leave the player on the ground till the combos over, which both options feel bad.

All this is stuff that just not in your control at all that make the class feel bad to play.
I'll stubbornly play RDM even if its damage is bad, but why does it feel like I have to fight the game itself in ways no other class has to?

[Atmaweapon510]

We just need a mechanic to make Enchanted Reprise damage neutral/positive when used sparingly.

Example:

-Enchanted Reprise grants "Mana Charge" causing your next weaponskill to gain 40 potency and generate 8 Black and White Mana. This effect can stack up to 6 times and lasts 30 seconds.
This gives a massive amount of flexibility to RDM as to when to use a melee combo and enables a highly impractical quad melee combo from banking mana. It's 7.5 seconds of free movement inbetween each melee combo.

[GoatOfWar]

If you cry as hard as Warrior mains did you'll have both identical damage to BLM *AND* superior utility.