Dev Tracker: Discussion (Old)

[Isiolia]

And ultimately that's where I'll clash. I think RDM needed help then just as much as now, people just made due with it then because it worked.

True, at 75 RDM had the MP pool market pretty well cornered, which in itself gave them a niche. Even if they were horribly inefficient and hellaciously tedious to play, being able to avoid downtime was gold.

But, that's a good niche to lose IMO. It was simply the matter of being the least-shitty option. Now they actually need to make the job stand out on its own, but are probably still afraid it'll become overpowered. Too bad they didn't just distribute attributes of the SCH job among the base three mages, instead of making it something separate, since that could have fixed a lot of it year ago.

Some strong enfeebles would definitely be a good direction to go too, in addition to making them a more unique buffer again (efficiency wouldn't hurt either).

[Toth]

No JP posts today on the new enmity system huh? Geez. I miss when Friday was test server update day

[noodles355]

True, at 75 RDM had the MP pool market pretty well cornered, which in itself gave them a niche.

At 75, a good RDM was quantified almost entirely on their slow/para MND+ set.

The problem with Rdm and Sch is that their vision of RDM is this self-enhancer, but sch specialises (based on SJ) in giving self-enhancements to other PT members). No one cares about how much rdm can buff it' self because any content that rdm excels at another "DD" could do equally or better. So then you're going "What's RDM's purpose?" Well, it's not AoE spells because SE refuses to make RDM useful: an Aoe buffer (standard buffs, phalanx, haste, etc) and a single target debuffer with useful shit like att/mab/mdef/def down would be sound. If I coulld accession Haste and cast Slow/Para II nd Dia III, I'd be a happhy SCH, but all those things a RDM should be abl to do without merits.

[Isiolia]

At 75, a good RDM was quantified almost entirely on their slow/para MND+ set.

Depended on content, but sure, that was probably an indication that someone was doing more than being a Refresh/Haste bot with the job. Things like merit party healing looked more at MP endurance.

Why they don't just remove the single target versions of stuff like the Barspells I'm not sure. Just let RDM use the AoE ones. It's not like they didn't already look, see that RDM might have a slight edge due to the Enhancing cap, and give WHM specific bonuses to Barspells to compensate. Maybe an inherent 60 second JA to AoE Enhancing magic or something too.

[Kyte]

Things they could do to make RDM suck less:

-Make all their merit spells native and make all their durations not too horrible at their base
-Have merits increase potency and add some smaller amount of duration. For example, make Dia III start at 1:30 and have the merits add ~10 seconds per mert and add .5-1% potency
-Phalanx II's formula should be altered to make it better than Phalanx
-Make enspell IIs apply to both hands and go by enhancing skill at the time of cast.
-Give them at least C+ Dark Magic skill
-Give them B+ Elemental Skill. The fact that DRK has higher skill is completely unacceptable. /SCH is a fix to this but it still seems silly.
-Make Gravity II's evasion down debuff resist separately from the -movement speed effect

Looking at FFXIII's Sabateur class, Jinx, which causes successful debuffs to increase the duration of any existing debuffs on the enemy, seems like it would be a neat job trait to throw in. Imperial could also find a place as a -MEVA debuff. Pain (although you would just call it Amnesia in this game) would be useful and easily balance by giving it a long recast and a relatively short duration. I think a 3 min base with a 15 second duration would be long enough to be useful on relevant targets. A strong resistance to the spell would be applied following 2 minutes or so after a successful cast to prevent a team of Red Mages locking down a monster's TP moves. Another option would be to make it a longer duration spell, but with only a chance to stop a TP move (like Paralyze's effect on melee).

[Alistrianna]

I think they should up the effect of Composure too, possibly adding an effect to it that also increases the potency of of single target enhancements. If SE was concerned that this would be too powerful with Accession, they could just do the same thing the did with Divine Caress and not have the effect extend to anyone other than the target.

[SephYuyX]

Things they could do to make RDM suck less:

-Make all their merit spells native and make all their durations not too horrible at their base
-Have merits increase potency and add some smaller amount of duration. For example, make Dia III start at 1:30 and have the merits add ~10 seconds per mert and add .5-1% potency
-Phalanx II's formula should be altered to make it better than Phalanx
-Make enspell IIs apply to both hands and go by enhancing skill at the time of cast.
-Give them at least C+ Dark Magic skill
-Give them B+ Elemental Skill. The fact that DRK has higher skill is completely unacceptable. /SCH is a fix to this but it still seems silly.
-Make Gravity II's evasion down debuff resist separately from the -movement speed effect

Looking at FFXIII's Sabateur class, Jinx, which causes successful debuffs to increase the duration of any existing debuffs on the enemy, seems like it would be a neat job trait to throw in. Imperial could also find a place as a -MEVA debuff. Pain (although you would just call it Amnesia in this game) would be useful and easily balance by giving it a long recast and a relatively short duration. I think a 3 min base with a 15 second duration would be long enough to be useful on relevant targets. A strong resistance to the spell would be applied following 2 minutes or so after a successful cast to prevent a team of Red Mages locking down a monster's TP moves. Another option would be to make it a longer duration spell, but with only a chance to stop a TP move (like Paralyze's effect on melee).

PS2 limitions.

[arus2001]

If you want it to be a BLU with black magic instead of monster spells you may as well just play BLU. Any melee-oriented boost would need to be substantial to make it even remotely viable on anything outside Abyssea (and there's a deficit of appropriate gear to supplement any melee buff it would hypothetically receive), and it will never happen, because it would make RDM the be-all end-all of soloing content again, which the devs seem hellbent on preventing (see: Paladin).

RDM has always been a buffing/enfeebling job. Before, those buffs and enfeebles served a purpose/landed. Now, they do not.

Shit like this is why I didn't elaborate to begin with. People are so obsessed with dictating what the job can't do that what's ultimately left is nothing to do. If you think nothing can be done to make the class both a functional hybrid and not spiral the game into fits of imbalance, you're just being dense for the sake of being dense. The whole bogey man soloist schtick needs to GTFO, too, as plenty of other jobs do it just as well or better right now.

[Obsidian]

Shit like this is why I didn't elaborate to begin with. People are so obsessed with dictating what the job can't do that what's ultimately left is nothing to do. If you think nothing can be done to make the class both a functional hybrid and not spiral the game into fits of imbalance, you're just being dense for the sake of being dense. The whole bogey man soloist schtick needs to GTFO, too, as plenty of other jobs do it just as well or better right now.

So what is it you want them to do? You can't really say "well I wanna melee" and not offer any solutions that accomplish that. If you can point out the flaw in my thinking, please do, so we can have a discussion (this is a discussion thread, after all).

Yes, other jobs solo as well as, or better than, RDM currently. The issue is that any worthwhile adjustment to RDM melee or elemental magic is going to push things in RDM's favor, which will make them better than all the other jobs at soloing. This constant escalation is what the devs want to avoid, because at some point something is going to break everything, and we'll be back to requiring Perfect Defense to accomplish anything, or worse, they'll smack RDM with the nerf bat and we'll be back to square one. If you have a solution for this, please provide it.

I'm slightly confused about what you want to happen with RDM. If you want to build on its (pathetic) melee capability, the boost will need to be substantial enough to make it viable on content people do (I can already Chant/Evisceration to my heart's content inside Abyssea or on old content). That won't make it worth taking over a BLU or an actual DD. Build on its elemental magic? It'll never be competitive with BLM or SCH, so you still won't be worth a spot. Healing magic? It'll never be better than WHM or SCH. What's left? Enfeebling (lol) and Enhancing.

What could they do to Enfeebling? Well, allow it to land, for starters. Fixing Paralyze so that it actually procs on TP moves was a nice change, but they can, and need to, go farther. Gravity II should be changed to straight evasion down, and land on everything. Paralyze II needs to be an appreciable upgrade in paralyze rate over Paralyze. Our merit spells should all be learnable with scrolls, and the Group 2 merits need to be completely reworked. Have Composure give magic accuracy as well as physical. Increase enfeebling magic durations so that I don't spend two minutes immunobreaking Slow II only to have it wear off thirty seconds later. Hell, give it Penance in spell form, or Plague.

What can they do to Enhancing magic? Buffs durations, for starters. All these self-target buffs are ridiculous; make them all single-target (when the hell am I ever going to want to Gain-CHR myself?), or make them all Accession-able at the very least. Specifically, Temper, because this is a buff that will get you into alliances (see: COR). Give RDM buffs that increase attack or accuracy, store/save/conserve TP, critical hit rate, magic accuracy/attack. There are plenty of buffs we could get that would not only make RDM more valuable in party-based content, but would also reduce the necessity of CORs and BRDs.

Rework group 2 merits to have job traits that enhance debuff potency or buff duration. Have JAs that increase buff potency and enfeebling accuracy. Make RDM's new SP an all-in-one debuff with enhanced potency. Just throwing ideas out there.

If you have a solution to make RDM melee viable, or any other solution for that matter, I'd love to hear it. I personally don't care how RDM gets buffed, as long as it's in a way that will make it more desirable. Until you propose one, please refrain from calling me dense for not understanding how an imaginary proposal will do anything to help.

[Jeryhn]

While RDM certainly is a capable job, it gets hit on a lot of different fronts:

Healing
+ Mp management is not a problem.
+ RDM has Fastcast going for it.
+ RDM can cure as well as any job that's not WHM, but...
- It doesn't get Solaceskin as an extra protective buffer to its Cures
- Access to Accession is limited by a level 49 recast timer, so AoE Cures are limited.
- Even if you don't include Stratagem charges as an issue, does not get access to Rapture.

Nuking:
+ Gets a lot of decent nuke gear.
+ Looks to possibly gain some of the most headway with the proposed changes to elemental magic, but...
- Currently limited to tier4 spells.
- Low elemental skill, mostly alleviated by Dark Arts and a decent nuking set.

Enhancing:
+ Natively caps Enhancing Magic at the same level as Light Arts, the highest enhancing magic skill found on any job, but...
- Most spells that benefit from the natural high enhancing magic score won't factor into anything you'll want to waste an Accession charge on (Barspells)...
- Of spells you'd want to be able to cast on others that only RDM can cast, none of them can be cast on others, nor can they be Accessioned (Enspell2, Temper).
- None of its spells really increases survivability nor the ability to clear content at a faster pace, which is why we've pretty much come to rely upon both Embrava and Perfect Defense these days.
- A small thing, but they're also the only buffing job without the ability to increase movement speed, lol.

Enfeebling:
+ Pretty powerful enfeebling capability.
+ Immunobreak really helps on tougher mobs.
- Enfeebling magic is no longer as necessary for survival as it once was, as generally it was used in the past to increase the MP efficiency of your healers.
- Doesn't get Stun natively.
- No native AoE debuffs without Manifestation.

Other Concerns:
- Merited spell selection is kinda lopsided in general usefulness. Blind2 and Phalanx2 are both terrible, Bio3 is easily matched by any BLM with a dark set with a much shorter duration unless you waste all your merits in it. Dia3 is useful as fuck, but its duration is likewise terrible. Slow2 and Paralyze2 are both solid spells that no other job can match in effectiveness, but nothing any good WHM or SCH casting Slow1 or Paralyze1 can't make do with.
- No "niche" or "ultimate" spell that's an equivalent to Arise, Meteor, Embrava or Kaustra that might make an RDM wanted in general or even unusual situations.
- Shitty new SP proposals.

Honestly, if all RDM got was a unique buff they could put on their party that was useful, or a debuff that would actually land and change the way battles play out in the same way Embrava did, RDM would be just fine. Hell, a better idea for their new SP would be to simply transfer all of their current buffs and their remaining durations to all party members in range. This would make RDM a supremely useful job if only for giving party members a lengthened Temper effect (through Composure, finally useful!) that could be used in harder content like Legion.

[Economizer]

Healing
+ Mp management is not a problem.
+ RDM has Fastcast going for it.
+ RDM can cure as well as any job that's not WHM, but...
- It doesn't get Solaceskin as an extra protective buffer to its Cures
- Access to Accession is limited by a level 49 recast timer, so AoE Cures are limited.
- Even if you don't include Stratagem charges as an issue, does not get access to Rapture.

This doesn't really describe correctly why RDM is behind WHM and SCH for healing.

Basically, Cure V/VI are like bonus cures for a White Mage, you ideally should never use them unless your recast is down, since Cure IV can cure enough in the majority of situations. Unless enmity "fixes" this (I dread this day as a White Mage, because I like Cure I-IV's higher MP efficiency), you'll see good White Mages avoiding Cure V/VI except when something has gone wrong.

The real powerhouse in healing for White Mage is their AoE cures as you noted, but this is somewhat hard to pull off since having a party cluster up is hard to do at times, especially if you're not in the party that took the damage.

Cureskin is a nice bonus, but it mostly just keeps a White Mage up with Scholars who have Aurorastorm, which boosts cures even more then cure skin's effect does. Rapture takes a stratagem, which takes time to cast, whereas Aurorastorm can be prepped well in advance and full timed.

While giving Red Mage Afflatus Solace while /WHM might seem like a good idea, all it will do is make SCH better too, and you'll see no real change for Red Mage, but more situations where White Mage is shunned for a Scholar. On the other hand, giving Aurorastorm out with /SCH would mitigate the problem much better, since Scholars wouldn't benefit, making the two even, but you still have the power inflation issue, especially if you have issue with White Mage (I personally don't think it would be that bad, but obviously it would inflate a White Mage's healing, and further force the WHM/SCH combo).

Personally I think that Red Mage heals very closely to the other two, and that a small buff to non-healing could even turn the balance of what jobs get invited to events.

I've seen suggestions that Red Mage should get Haste II. This doesn't fix the pain of cycling spells, and would just ensure that Red Mages replace White Mages for lowman situations that a BRD/WHM cannot handle for example.

Part of the problem is that the healing jobs are actually relatively close in power. Any move to increase the power of one will just make it so that job is preferred in all situations generally.

-

On the front of making the game more fun to play, I'm in favor of giving White Mage and Red Mage Hastega around 80+ and making Haste Accessionable.

[fantasticdan]

^ Don't forget about light arts regen V, that's one of the big things that keeps sch so far ahead of rdm for low man healing and the like, even without embrava.

Too bad they didn't just distribute attributes of the SCH job among the base three mages, instead of making it something separate, since that could have fixed a lot of it year ago.

This so much. Rdm should have gotten the hots/dots, native AoE enhancing/enfeebling, and perpetuance. Blm should have gotten the weather spells, libra, and manifestation as it's own JA. Whm should have gotten accession and rapture. Main and subbed magic skills should have just been fixed across the board rather than only through stances like light/dark arts.

[Cleverness]

Shit like this is why I didn't elaborate to begin with. People are so obsessed with dictating what the job can't do that what's ultimately left is nothing to do. If you think nothing can be done to make the class both a functional hybrid and not spiral the game into fits of imbalance, you're just being dense for the sake of being dense. The whole bogey man soloist schtick needs to GTFO, too, as plenty of other jobs do it just as well or better right now.

When was RDM ever a real hybrid? Be real, it's been the same role the entire time, with solo capabilities tacked on. It's never been great at the melee aspect of the game. People liked it because at lower levels you could effectively melee well with RDM but that didn't last very long once the skill level gap grew. People take this experience and feel it should apply to RDM overall because it was initially advertised as a jack of all trades even when it was obvious that it wasn't to people who played it. But because it's advertised as such, people feel SE owes them in that department. Even when all the relic/af3 gear shows they are pushing RDM as purely a spellcaster.

RDM does need fixes in the support role because atm it's useless with how SCH is now. SCH went from merely an excellent subjob and evolved into something alot better than RDM as the level cap increased and they expanded its 2hr. The RDM group 2 merits should be common scrolls and the job needs a group 2 that actually further enhance their abilities. However when it comes to the melee front, there's a reason people say "just go play BLU", it's because it's true.

[Kyreth]

At 75, a good RDM was quantified almost entirely on their slow/para MND+ set.

The problem with Rdm and Sch is that their vision of RDM is this self-enhancer, but sch specialises (based on SJ) in giving self-enhancements to other PT members). No one cares about how much rdm can buff it' self because any content that rdm excels at another "DD" could do equally or better. So then you're going "What's RDM's purpose?" Well, it's not AoE spells because SE refuses to make RDM useful: an Aoe buffer (standard buffs, phalanx, haste, etc) and a single target debuffer with useful shit like att/mab/mdef/def down would be sound. If I coulld accession Haste and cast Slow/Para II nd Dia III, I'd be a happhy SCH, but all those things a RDM should be abl to do without merits.

I look at it this way. The fewer JA's we have that beef up our enfeebles, the more nice "combo" debuffs would be. Give me something that lays down Slow/Paralyze/Silence all at once and I'll happily "seal" that thing on anything that comes along.

By 99 we should be lobbing a combo version of our merited debuffs at things, none of this "You must choose X, Y, or Z cause merits mean limits.".

And a combo ATK + DEF down minus the DoT.

[Damane]

Shit like this is why I didn't elaborate to begin with. People are so obsessed with dictating what the job can't do that what's ultimately left is nothing to do. If you think nothing can be done to make the class both a functional hybrid and not spiral the game into fits of imbalance, you're just being dense for the sake of being dense. The whole bogey man soloist schtick needs to GTFO, too, as plenty of other jobs do it just as well or better right now.

The problem is that RDM is tapping into alot of different niches at the same time. Giving them something very usefull while not makeing them OP Is very delicate:


Lets do a check:

MP Conserving:
RDM: A+
SCH: B (sublimation is nice, but can never beat convert + refresh II)
WHM: D (very SJ dependend, without SJ its shit)
BLM: C (dependend if Aspir can be used or not)

Healing magic:
WHM: A+
SCH: A
RDM: B+
BLM: F

Enhancing/Buffs:
SCH: A+
WHM: A-
RDM: B+
BLM: F

Elemental Magic/nukeing:
BLM: A+
SCH: A
RDM: B-
WHM: F (yes I know banish/holy etc are nice once in a while, but seriously taht shit cant compare to serious nukeing)

Crowd control/Debuffs:
SCH: A+
RDM: A+
BLM: B+
WHM: D

Dependence on SJ (how much are you dependend on a SJ to fullfill your tasks/dutys):
WHM: A+ (no SJ needed to cure, they only suplement whm)
BLM: A+ (no SJ needed for them to nuke, they only sub them for more MP effeciency and survivability)
RDM: B+ (the job can still do almost anything)
SCH: C (SCH without a proper SJ looses alot. no convert no debuffs, the MP effiecency of a SCH goes down alot by this and they alos loose the majority of ther buffs like haste, phalanxga, enspells etc.)

Consensus: RDM is actually a very potent Job, The main problem the job has lies in the SupportJob department/uniquness. The Job doesnt gain much from its support jobs, only little key roles, while the other 3 mages, ESPECIALLY SCH, gain alot from subbing RDM. It excells in all field decently, not great but decently when proper geared.
Solution 1: nerf /RDM, by nerfing convert. This would actually hurt all 3 mages but would hurt BLM/WHM more then it would hurt SCH
Solution 2: add unique spells to the Job and make their single target spells castable on other PT members.
- En-spell I + II castable on other PT members
- Temper castable on other PT members
- Barspells castable on other PT members
- Gain-spells castable on other PT members
- New Spell "Fasten": Reduces Spellcasting time by 20% and reduces recast time for magic by 20% (cap 500 enh. magic skill), every 25 enhancing magic skill give 1%, The spell prevents Addle from sticking on to PT members. (the same as haste prevents slow form sticking on PT members)
- Revamping the Merit 2 category: add all spells in that list to RDMs, and just make the merits 2 enhance the potency of the spells.

Additional change to SCH:
- Adloquium caps at 5 regain/tic, 0 skill 1 tic, 125 skill 2 tics, 250 3 tics, 375 4 tics, 500 5 tics.

Additional change to WHM:
- Haste II

Additional change to SMN:
- Screw this job, its beyond hopeless to get it up on par without more drastic changes.

[Obsidian]

If anyone gets Haste II it ought to be RDM.

Edit: I also disagree a bit with nerfing Convert, and RDM's general effectiveness. Nerfing Convert won't accomplish much, the only job that should be subbing RDM is SCH, which doesn't need Convert.

As far as healing effectiveness goes, RDM doesn't get AoE -nas without /SCH (even then, only once every two minutes, and no access to Stona), group cures (same deal), Solace, Aurorastorm, or Rapture. These are all pretty big negatives. Healing one DD works fine, healing a party is rough. RDM's elemental magic can't really compare to SCH or BLM; it's behind a spell tier, has less MAB than BLM and SCH, and loses out on Thunderstorm/Ebullience. MP conservation is largely mitigated by the ridiculous amount of refresh available, RDM has no native AoE crowd control abilities (Sleepga from /BLM or Manifestation from /SCH, but again only twice every four minutes), and most debuffs (read: everything not Poison or Addle) get resisted into the ground or are outright unstickable.

[Khajit]

Haste 2 wont matter unless it's strong enough to let brds drop a march from their buffs or brd gets a new march.

[Fwahm]

The "standard" enfeebles (slow, para, blind, addle, etc) actually stick on most things now with enough enfeebling skill; unless a mob is immune to something because it's their element, I can land them just fine on things like Ig-Alima, Bismarck, and Legion enemies. Gravity/II doesn't stick on big NMs, but until SE splits the speed and evasion, we can't really hope for much on that front.

At this point in the game, the biggest problem with the lack of usefulness of enfeebling is how there aren't any enfeebles that will hinder TP spamming monsters at all; until we can blunt TP moves directly (and no, a plague spell won't help unless it's ridiculously potent, like 30/tic or more), enfeebles won't help the melees survive any longer; melee attacks (barring AoE ones that Slow doesn't even work on) generally don't kill players anymore unless they're finishing off someone who's just been hit by Oblivion's Mantle, Gates of Hades, Fulmination, Yaksha: Oblivion, Ballistic Kick, etc.

[noodles355]

MP Conserving:
RDM: A+
SCH: B (sublimation is nice, but can never beat convert + refresh II)

Disagree completely. Sch is much better.

Firstly, Sch has convert as well unless you're on stun duty (and if you're on stun duty MP is never a problem).
Secondly, Penury/Parsimony - You left them out completely.
Thirdly, Sublimation > Refresh II.

Spoiler: show

Refresh II is 7MP per tick, +4MP for being able to idle in a refresh+2 body, +1 hat and owleyes. 11MP per tick. 60MP cost to cast.
Sublimation (with AF2+2 Body, AF hat, Earring and Siriti) is 13MP/tick with 30 seconds of downtime.

I charge 429MP in 33 ticks. I then have 10 ticks of downtime where I'll be getting 4MP/tick from swapping in refresh gear over sublimation. So sublimation gains 469MP every 43 ticks, for 10.9MP/tick.
Composure Refresh II gives 11mp/tick for 150 ticks (including the +4 refresh yo'd use instead of subli gear), 1650MP - 60 spell cost. So Composure Refresh II gives 1590MP every 150 ticks for 10.6MP/tick.

Fourthly, you can store a charged sublimation if you're not using your MP. That means you effectively have another +430~ish max MP for when you start to.

There is no way Rdm beats Sch for MP conservation and management. Sch is king for that.

[Economizer]

Forgot to mention Regen spells on Scholar, although in my defense its because Regen spells are so useless for White Mage. To be honest Red Mage should get the same tiers as White Mage has at this point (or at very least up to Regen III), since White Mage has the AF3+2 pants to make cures solidly superior and even the standard sub /SCH does nothing to help Regen spells for White Mages, and it wouldn't harm White Mage in the slightest. Still wouldn't catch them up to Scholar though.

Solution 1: nerf /RDM, by nerfing convert. This would actually hurt all 3 mages but would hurt BLM/WHM more then it would hurt SCH

Nerfing Convert wouldn't do a damn thing to White Mage. I can count on one hand how many times I've subbed Red Mage as a White Mage, and most of the time it was for Magic Attack Bonus or Dispel. If I need MP efficiency I'll sub Scholar every time.

On Haste II, I wouldn't give it to White Mage without also giving it to Red Mage, although I'd still prefer Hastega. If the issue is having more Haste then currently available without having a Bard show up, or allowing Bards to drop a March, just have Hastega scale with skill (and do the same for Summoner).

All this said, we'll have to see how GEO and RUN actually affect the game to get better reads on future changes soon, even if many of the complaints people have tend to be stuff that should have been solved back in 2008.