Thread: RDM 7.4 changes and job identity

I’m honestly baffled with the RDM changes in 7.4. Now the class that was a cool melee-caster hybrid and felt right and lore accurate is just another braindead stationary class, a fix for a fight that is not even relevant anymore.
Red mages now have a sword that has no use, they didn’t even bother to give new animations as you swing a sword at nothing. Might as well play BLM at this point.
This is yet another strike at job identity and a unnecessary fix pandering to a vocal minority of Braindead players that refuse any little bit of difficulty in the game. Way to go.
Extremely disappointed and I just hope they will fix this joke of a change.

I have to agree, I was RDM for the fight in question and I hated all of it but the job shouldn't give because the fight design was atrocious. Instead the devs should playtest with all the jobs and ask "does this work?", that should have lead them to move that part of the fight to a one minute window instead of a two minute.

As regards salvaging it now that the damage is done, I could see some good from just making magic-melee attacks do full damage within melee range and when beyond melee it could use a blade-beam animation and lose some of it's damage (20% maybe?) so it's not a complete loss when at range but it's still better to be in melee range. Also drop that bit from manafication, just make it a stock feature of the attacks themselves. It doesn't fix bad fight design and it doesn't fix this change but it would be better.

The idea of “positionals” would be an amazing very good fix that encourage melee range but also doesnt punish when you are stuck far from the boss during burst. Pair it with some animation and it would fix it

Cannot see the devs do it tho, too much of a good idea.

On the one hand, people were complaining that RDM was "weakened" by the fact that its primary damage rotation was dependent on close-range hits, and so when close range is infeasible due to Boss mechanics it weakens RDM's damage output, at least temporarily. This led to the arguments that RDM was getting the short end of the stick and was imbalanced compared to pure casters. It wasn't specifically an argument on "playability" or "difficulty", though granted I'm sure some of the complaining was also likely related to that.

That said, my answer to all this is that not all jobs need to be exactly equivalent in all situations - in fact that's what "Identity" means in the first place. I get that SE is trying to balance things so that all jobs feel rewarding and competitive in all scenarios but to do that for such a vast variety of jobs is simply not feasible unless, as you've seen, they strip away all unique mechanics and normalize each job category across the board.

I think SE's is going the wrong way with all this, the changes to RDM and even the changes to GNB which similarly make it much closer to WAR in its cycle (though I'm no GNB expert to be fair so I'll defer to others). If trends continue I won't be surprised if DRK is next in line because as I see it now, it's the last Tank that's actually unique in some ways.

Rather than trying to make every caster the same, every tank the same, and so on with only visuals and extremely minor gameplay differences, they should be looking more at their one-track Boss design to try and make those more accepting to different circumstances. Don't change the jobs, change the fights themselves.

I personally loved RDM's playstyle, not being an RDM main or anything but still even with my limited time playing it. It was unique and engaging, and now like it's been suggested before, the job is much more lethargic and streamlined. I'll still play the job because I like to play all the jobs in the end, but I do hope they correct this very poor show of judgement.

I'm honestly really confused about why people are complaining about the changes. I personally love them.

It's a temporary range buff when you use Manafication now. You still need to dash in and do melee range combo without it. Everything else from what I've been playing has been great, and all I play is RDM. Burst window is easier, it makes me feel like an actual Magical Sword wielder when I power up and can slash away from a distance.

Why complain when your buff window was made easier? I don't get it. It's not like they removed Dual Cast or anything. Just made it easier.

Originally Posted by Valence

I mean, you can also make a change so that you only have to spamm a single button during burst that condenses all of your abilities into one, that's making the buff window easier too. Why would people complain about it?
Heck, condense the whole rotation into a single button, job should be easier to play, who in their right mind would complain about it?

We should do exactly that. SE did it with Healers, and it was universally accepted as 'the best video game design decision of the century' and everyone loves it /s

Originally Posted by Valence

It's always the story and it's been going on for a long time. Remember that when P10 got released they buffed most healers and mitigation abilities to 50 yalms? And made their bubbles cover the whole screen?

30y (And 20y for GCD actions like Succor, more recently), but yes

There were times, such as M8S adds, where you had to think about what healing actions to use because you were out of range. Whether to leave the party on the other side to the cohealer, or to find an action you can use that hits both sides at once. For example, SGE couldn't hit everyone with Ixochole there, but they could hit everyone with Pneuma, or Holos, or Panhaima. It provided opportunities to be more creative in the solution for 'how to heal party', rather than just defaulting to 'press Succor/Medica'

SCH is the worst offender for this. The fact that you can move the Faerie to a different location from yourself, indirectly extending your healing range, gave SCH the potential design space for some really interesting interactions when it came to 'party is on opposite sides of the arena for this mechanic'. But now we have 20y Concitation, so whatever cool planning you came up with for those adds, is less relevant now, because you can just press Succor between each hit instead

Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

We should do exactly that. SE did it with Healers, and it was universally accepted as 'the best video game design decision of the century' and everyone loves it /s

I DO find it funny that some of the same people I saw mocking healers over the "strike" in certain FF14 circles are now howling mad at the ever growing march to narrowing DPS and tanking options.

It's almost like ya'll were trying to warn folks or something, but I think you were all told to "go play something else or quit"? Yes, I think that suggestion still works in red and blue just as it did green~

Originally Posted by RodericWarblade

I'm honestly really confused about why people are complaining about the changes. I personally love them.

It's a temporary range buff when you use Manafication now. You still need to dash in and do melee range combo without it. Everything else from what I've been playing has been great, and all I play is RDM. Burst window is easier, it makes me feel like an actual Magical Sword wielder when I power up and can slash away from a distance.

Why complain when your buff window was made easier? I don't get it. It's not like they removed Dual Cast or anything. Just made it easier.

Because having to think less in a game like this just isn't as fun. If I want brainlessly smacking a button so I can see numbers go up, I'll play Cookie Clicker.

Originally Posted by RodericWarblade

I'm honestly really confused about why people are complaining about the changes. I personally love them.

It's a temporary range buff when you use Manafication now. You still need to dash in and do melee range combo without it. Everything else from what I've been playing has been great, and all I play is RDM. Burst window is easier, it makes me feel like an actual Magical Sword wielder when I power up and can slash away from a distance.

Why complain when your buff window was made easier? I don't get it. It's not like they removed Dual Cast or anything. Just made it easier.

It's because a sizable chunk of the Forums Userbase sees obnoxious pain points as 'job identity' , and y'know, not literally every other aspect of the job.