Lets Talk - Red Mage

[Judge_Xero]

Personally? I want Fencer class -> Red Mage job. I want rapiers, and I want actual fencing moves. I want Red Mage meleeing while it casts magic. Its DPS should be maximized by doing a little bit of everything, not focusing on only one. That sounds fun to me.

Exactly what I think of with Red Mage.

It should be one of those classes that is hard to master, but if you do....Then other jobs/classes QQ till it's nerfed.

No but really. I think it could be a DPS beast. With enfeebling WS's. Cut down defenses, add elemental weaknesses. etc.

Need a fancy mechanic for it, like Evade for Monk, Parry for Warrior.

- Forced Dual Cast after a critical WS hit.

So....Secondary Classes Thaum/Pug?

I.E.
-Stab -> Combo to -> Lunge (Combo Bonus: Increased Critical) -> Dual Cast Thundaga
-Blind Side -> Aura Strike (Reduce Magic Defense) -> Dual Cast Fireaga

Base Stats - INT Primary, Dex Secondary

Could be fun

[Mijin]

I made a poll a while back to see what peoples favorite Final Fantasy jobs were. The actual reason I made it to be honest was to see if people loved RDM as much as I suspected, and it turned out that the answer is yes. RDM is still in the lead on this (still active) poll with 77 votes out of 765.

Poll / Results (This poll was posted on several different communities to prevent unbiased opinions; not just the Lodestone.)

In the past SE has said that they are going to focus on adding what jobs are needed to keep a balance in the game. RDM could easily fill that roll, and considering it's obviously popular among players it would be a very logical choice to add it to the game. Will they add it though? Probably not... Why? Because their SE, giving players what they want would just be too main stream.

[Kiote]

RDM underpowerd lol, it was the job that was the most overpowerd job in the 75s. That he was only healer/enhancer/enfeebler in endgame had the reason that it was the best job in it. RDM was never supposed to be a super melee job and thats what most ppl yearning for....

No, Red Mage was never meant to be a replacement healer. It was meant to be a frontline Job. That is why it had Melee enhancement spells. That's why it has fast cast. That's why it had refresh. That's why it had convert. All of the Red mages abilities were designed to allow it to do moderate Melee Damage while maintaining enough MP to use magic without resting.

The only reason they didn't end up being a melee class is the Melee Damage was not properly balanced. They did under powered Damage and fed the enemies TP.

No one can look at XIs RDM and say, with honesty, it wasn't intended to be a front line job.

[moriandrio]

Ít was supposed to be a allrounder, but almost everybody here talks about a powerfull frontline job, RDM never was supposed to be as powerfull like the pure melee jobs. In all the RDM threads ppl want a really powerfull frontline job with heal/support skills. An Allrounder job like RDM was supposed to will never be really powerfull in one discipline it will only be an average frontline and an average backline job.

In FFXI NIN was not supposed to be a tank, but ppl used him for that so SE gave him more tank abilitys. Same happend with RDM the ppl used him as backline job mainly so they pushed his enfeebel/enhance/heal skills.

[Kiote]

Ít was supposed to be a allrounder, but almost everybody here talks about a powerfull frontline job, RDM never was supposed to be as powerfull like the pure melee jobs.

Red Mage, since the very begin of the Final Fantasy franchise, has been and extraordinarily powerful front line job. Rdm was never mediocre at anything. It was always very good at melee and magic. It was always better as a Damage Dealer than support/healing. This is just the way they were built in every single game except XI.

People just want Rdm to go back to what it was meant to be. A solid melee fighter who only reaches the pinnacle of their ability by incorporating magic in to their combat.

Red Mage was never meant to be a Back Line Job. Even XI built Red Mage for the front line. That is why they get swords not wands. That is why they get Leather, Scale and Chainmail. Not Robes. That is why they get low level magic instead of all the supreme spells.

The Key to making Red Mage what it was always meant to be it to Focus on it's Melee skills. When you put the focus on it's melee skills, you put it on the front line and in the battle. You can then balance it's Black and White Magics with that so as not to pull it out of the fight.

If you try to build a Red Mage by focusing on giving it Special types of Magic, which they never had, then you will pull it out of the fight and permanently gimp the class.

[KoujiGeki]

Ok. How can an all rounder work in this game with most people who want to cookie cutter most content. Red will need atleast 1 thing it to excel at I do like Jinryas Dual Cast idea it is unique.

Like i mentioned before Red Mage cant touch anything a Whm can do. Neither will it touch a Black Mage, that's 2 jobs right there out of the 8 its not replacing in a PT. Because if Rdm is the master at nothing it would most likeyly only get Fire, Blizzard, or Thunder but not that ga's. Its front line abilities since it's a mage it's at a higher risk than the other dd, with most likley less HP and less Deff. Making it more vulnerable to AoE. If it gets Phalanx then that will help, but will it have abilities help it so its not dependent on a whm? Like Second wind, Sentinel, the Blm ability that im brain farting and cant remember.

I just see it hard for Red Mage getting picked over others. Like Ifrit Extreme you need to kill the nails and break those horns fast, with mediocre dmg at best won't see it replacing a Drg.

Garuda i can see it getting picked, Cause Red could help out with either Chirada or Suparna. Cause we did do a run with only 1 Drg instead of 2 and with 3 blm. Red mage could replace one blm and still help burn down Chirada while meleeing Suparna.

[Hulan]

That argument isn't entirely accurate. People will always attempt to eke out the maximum amount of damage while safely completing content. It's why RDMs were used as healers in FFXI's Colibri burns. Right now, many events "require" two WHMs for the lay party to finish (I am aware that well tuned parties can get that down to 1 in pretty much any given event, but many lay parties cannot). As long as RDM is "adequate" as a second healer, it would always be prefered over a second WHM, assuming it also did more damage than a WHM.

The same min-maxing mentality that drives people away from hybrids can also be leveraged to encourage the user of hybrids to maximize the damage dealt by your party.

[SwordCoheir]

Eh, there was alot more things that contributed to RDM being a backline job and "the best" at everything at 75 mentality.

-Refresh/Fastcast/Convert which was intended to allow RDM's to melee without resting or casting as often were poorly utilized for front lining.
-Enhancing scaled poorly leaving enspells without enough power to make up for the RDM's lesser physical powers.
-They spent too much time casting a plethora of single target buffs/debuffs to actually have time to melee.
-Unlike their BLU counterpart, Magic and Physical skills were mostly kept separate from one another making it difficult to gear for both.
-There was NO CONTENT that really needed or utilized WHM's cure power, tackled with RDM's mp longevity making them largely unneeded.
-There was no equivalent to Elemental Staves, anyone with half a brain knows that the staves gave the biggest boost to any mages power, but SE never expanded the concept to other weapons which might have given RDM a fighting chance to at least be in the front lines.
-Restriction to the more powerful Magical Weaponskills, even in the early days RDM is the best suited to utilize these (because they actually go off magical stats), however SE never really let them have access to any of the more powerful ones to utilize during combat.

Take those into consideration along with player mentalities of pigeonholing jobs to a particular function, any job loses it's function or uniqueness over time if there's a cheap way to exploit the job *cough*looking at you SAM*cough*.

As it stands in FFXI right now MNK is actually tanking everything in the game because they have high HP, are the top 3 highest in DPS ladder, and everything worthwhile pretty much does max damage even to PLDs from absurd attack numbers. Only about 5 of the 20ish jobs are actually used for anything, and balance in general is just a joke, which makes me think why they're even implementing 2 new jobs to begin with.

[Judge_Xero]

Ok. How can an all rounder work in this game with most people who want to cookie cutter most content. Red will need atleast 1 thing it to excel at I do like Jinryas Dual Cast idea it is unique.

I also like the idea of Dual Casting.
I think it would work well with the Critical Hit WS -> Dual Cast mechanic for Red Mage.

The fact that Red Mage has weaker spells, and can't boost them like BLM and WHM, could be outweighed by the fact that you could Dual Cast.

Same with damage - it'll suck. Critical Damage will suck less.

Imagine a Frontline Melee that debuffs and Dual Casts Cure on the Tank. Oh, the Tank is ok? Make that Dual Casts Thunder

[KoujiGeki]

See if i took jins Idea i would make it though slightly different. You cast poison and Thunder. Dark Thunder yes i like it but to not make it to over powered, spells you use with Dual Cast ability have a slighty longer cooldown. so you can spam the same abilities over, and that way they dont have to have Dual Cast on a timer so now Red permanently has that one thing that sets it apart form the other mages.

I dont know if dual casting the same spell would make it the 2nd teir spell blm, it would be slighlty awesome buit not sure if that would make them too op.