Was BLM not enough?

[Ajisaii]

Why has SE decided to also lobotomized RDM? Are we not allowed to have at least 1 (one) challenging caster? Once every single job has been lobotomized to the point where it's impossible to be put in danger while doing your rotation then what? A complete auto rotation? One button rotation for your entire kit?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Why has SE decided to also lobotomized RDM? Are we not allowed to have at least 1 (one) challenging caster? Once every single job has been lobotomized to the point where it's impossible to be put in danger while doing your rotation then what? A complete auto rotation? One button rotation for your entire kit?

What's the source on this? I don't have a link to full patch notes yet.

[Ajisaii]

What's the source on this? I don't have a link to full patch notes yet.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...edbafa4f7eef54

[Shistar]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...edbafa4f7eef54

"Due to ongoing maintenance, this page is currently unavailable. Please try again later." Oh, well...
While we wait, and if you still have access, could you post a screenshot? Thank you.

[Ajisaii]

"Due to ongoing maintenance, this page is currently unavailable. Please try again later." Oh, well...
While we wait, and if you still have access, could you post a screenshot? Thank you.

https://imgur.com/a/Y3rbZ49

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

That's... quite something. Correct me if I am wrong, this basically means the following...

• the damage enhancing effect of Manafication is actually gone and Manafication instead simply grants three stacks of "free usage of melee skills", of which the single-target ones have their range drastically increased
• to make up for those damage enhancing stacks being essentially gone, they are folded into Embolden
• Manafication is now baseline 110s even without a trait (yay?)

I wouldn't quite call that lobotomization akin to what they have done with Black Mage (given said lobotomization also opened a lot of other paths of optimization). From what I can see, the swordplay stacks essentially just allow you to use Manafication earlier and be far less strict on timing on "when" you use it in your Embolden window. This can, possibly in some niche scenario, lead to potentially a much easier way to get an extra cast of Manafication in a fight since the stacks are only consumed on melee skills.

It also means that the timing of your Prefulgence is not edging the end of group buff windows anymore since you can use it much earlier. I'm going to be blunt, I think that is a good thing, lobotimization or not.


What I "actually" consider the lobotomizing part is having your Manafication swordplay gain 25y range, making your positioning far less critical and also taking away from the identity of "Red Mage engages its burst with melee attacks". That was honestly the cool part about optimizing Red Mage, knowing how to utilize Corps-a-Corps + Displacement accordingly to make it work even in more hectic situations.

However, the core resource/proc management is actually still quite there and hardly modified, once again why I can't "quite" compare it to Black Mage. In terms of proc management and making sure Fleche & Contre Sixte don't drift, utilization of Great Impact/Swiftcast/Acceleration is still quite there.

Overall, I'mma give this a C. Has some good imo, can lead to some improvements and is now more baseline across the level sections, but the 25y range on melee skills was REALLY not necessary.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...] Overall, I'mma give this a C. Has some good imo, can lead to some improvements and is now more baseline across the level sections, but the 25y range on melee skills was REALLY not necessary.

I'm giving this second thoughts in retrospect, because certain aspects of the change were NOT clear to me until I actually fidgeted around with it.

Manafication's 25y range buff is not tied to the three stacks of Swordplay it provides, it is a 30s buff that you can attach to as many melee combo hits you can fit into it. At Lv100, with enough gauge, you can perform three back-to-back Swordplay combos in a row, disregarding the viability of such for now.

I'm basing my thoughts on my own experience & enjoyment from playing Red Mage as well that of a fellow friend who has been playing the job to great success since Stormblood and found great joy in finding the right times to hit melee attacks and disengage with Displacement:

• This most certainly is a way to ensure median damage goes up by making the 2min buff window easier to successfully execute as Red Mage
• This does virtually nothing (aside from other potency changes with it) to increase the damage ceiling of Red Mage, which along with Summoner has been greatly lagging behind.
• It absolutely demolishes the fun of optimizing the job, full-stop. The only time you now actually get to do fun melee combos is the one extra you do between 2min buffs.
• While already a niche tool for uptime to begin with, this just makes Enchanted Reprise even worse and more pointless.

Had it only been ONE of the two melee combos in an Embolden window, it would have been fine - you'd have to choose the start or tail-end of your Embolden window for the extended reach.

There are other avenues they could have looked at to make potential changes to Red Mage - an unexplored area could have been intentionally overaspecting into Black or White Mana to be able to use certain abilities (condition requirement) and spend accordingly a lot of that manatype to use it, which will lead into other ways to do damage or gain resources to get to more damage.

But this? I'm gonna be honest, this is a bit heartbreaking to see. We had three Casters to pick from if we specifically wanted something we could use safely at range, the fourth was not necessary.

[Kisshu]

CU3's preferred job adjustment tool.

"Due to ongoing maintenance, this page is currently unavailable. Please try again later." Oh, well...
While we wait, and if you still have access, could you post a screenshot? Thank you.

That's just the top of the page, you should be able to scroll down and see the patch notes.

[Rithy255]

People who are still hoping 8.0 will bring positive job changes need to wake up.

Not the worst changes in the world like it could have completely ruined the job, to me its more like what they did with ninja recently it's not the worst thing in the world but it's certainly a small step in the large amount of steps they've been making from SHB to now to make the jobs bland, remove all rigidness from any job that has it because 1 raider complained it was bad.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

People who are still hoping 8.0 will bring positive job changes need to wake up.

Not really. We were told from before 7.0's release that 7.X would be balanced in accordance to their design philosophies for 7.X.
There's no correlation to be made between changes made now and the changes they have implied will happen in 8.0, like always.

If that was the way they operated, 3.X, 4.X and 5.X wouldn't have had major changes to jobs that immediately got canned in the upcoming expansion.
Individual job design in the present never informs that of an upcoming expansion. You've not experienced enough expansions to understand that, but I can assure you this has always been the case.