I made the comparison in the OP (which I will update soon to not be misinformative I swear) but anyone a former 3.X MCH who can agree that I say, from afar, that RDM plays sort of like a simplified MCH? I'm picking up MCH as a side project from 50 and it feels like one half of the elemental mana fishing.
Lol, you'll be in for a good laugh. I did it by accident, made my whole party laugh.
I did it on Laksmi normal yesterday by mistake, fun was had by all.
It basically is a simplified MCH. Hell, Acceleration is basically Quick Reload.
The enchanted melee combo is a dps increase every time you use it. The recast is 1.5s and the full combo is 970 potency, which is higher than any three spells, period. You'll also get quicker access to Verflare/Verholy and that's 550 potency, and it's instant cast. I almost guarantee that having quicker access to it means the combo will get a nerf to compensate.
We would just have to cross fingers then
On a side note, am I the only one thinking Impact is lackluster? For some reason it feels out of place to me.
So after a few clears of Susano Ex and talking to several other RDMs, these are my general thoughts on the job.
Coming from MCH, which was my favorite dps job in 3.x (even when it was considered bad in 3.0), RDM is a very easy fit to me. While it is a simple job, there's a lot of nuances to it that requires optimization, such as Corps/Displacement use, Swiftcast usage, keeping an eye on your gauge and playing a reactionary playstyle. In 3.x, it was generally very easy to act as if casting never existed as MCH unless you're using Split Shot. Can't do that with RDM because you're always hard-casting every other spell, which attributes to it's reactionary playstyle due to it's procs. Overall though I very much enjoy it.
Now for more pragmatic thoughts. RDM apparently has the lowest dps of all the casters. I personally take this with a grain of salt. However, I am going to assume this is the case for this post, because I theorize this is easily made up by RDM's perks. Vercure isn't much in a hardcore raid setting, but Dual-casted Verraise is. Embolden is also the best raid-wide buff out of all the casters, despite it having a decay. It's only issue is it does nothing for other casters, which easily makes RDM have no synergy whatsoever with any other casters, but the meta is heavily in favor of physical damage anyway. Which leads to the next point.
All of RDM's oGCDs are Physical Piercing, despite the fact that it scales off of INT. This means RDM benefits from any physical damage raid buff, though it's little. The best benefit is having a DRG in the party due to Disembowel, though obviously not as much as BRD or MCH. The thing is though, Fleche is 420 Potency on a 25s cooldown, while Contre Sixte is 300 Potency (with fall-off per target) at 45s. This is obviously to make up for the fact that RDM has no dots, but having these oGCDs get increased by Disembowel is a nice bonus that a lot of people don't talk about. I'm also of the personal opinion that DRG is locked in the meta due to giving the best raid buffs (that SAM would love).
Damage-wise, RDM's burst potential is very insane and heavily frontloaded. Getting to the top of the parse is very easy at the start of the fight. Sustained DPS is also nothing to laugh at either. However, AoE damage is a little harder to pinpoint, because mana generation is extremely low, but Moulinet and Contre Sixte are very strong, along with Scatter being a really spammable AoE that can go on for days. Just looking at the tooltips alone though, I can see that BLM easily has RDM beat in this department.
As far as cons are concerned, they're far and few, but the big one is MP generation. If everything goes right, it's no problem. But when you're recovering from deaths, MP becomes a major issue. This'll make progging Omega Savage very tough imo. I also really dislike my Impact/Verstone/Verfire spells getting dropped because the procs wear off before the casts finish, but that's more of a personal issue.
Overall though, I'm not seeing a lot wrong with RDM. At worst, it gets punished very hard for mana misuse, but the solution to that is to not mess up. Again, I'm not really seeing RDM as the weakest caster in terms of damage, especially in mechanics heavy fights (which punishes BLM more than SMN or RDM). They might even see potency adjustments before Savage comes out.
Sustain and bio being removed from SMN pretty much axed my ability to solo some of the hard bosses in PotD on SMN. I've been stuck on Behemoth. Should I use RDM to solo it instead? I haven't messed around with RDM enough yet to know but if you guys think it will be doable then I'll go git gud.
Has anyone seen/thought about macros for this job? I can't test or do it myself now, but I was wondering whether you could make an Impact macro that uses Impact when up but otherwise just uses Jolt. I was thinking the same might work with stone/fire and wind/thunder but you'd probably want way more control over those.
For the above impact thing, the following should work:
/ac "Impact" <t>
/ac "Jolt II" <t>
/ac "Jolt" <t>
About stone/fire and wind/thunder, I would say the following would do the job, but you can't "spam" it or you risk trigger in the lower priority:
/ac "Verfire" <t>
/ac "Verthunder" <t>
/ac "Verstone" <t>
/ac "Varaero" <t>
Dump Verholy on top of the verstone and Verflare on top of Verfire.
Unsure how the Impactful status work by the way I assume it wears off once Impact is casted, these were just macros I made based on the descriptions for when I was kitting out my RDM's gear and kit.
I'm not too fond of using macros to condense actions that I have to use a lot, since, unless they fixed it, macros can't be put in the queue so you'll end up casting those spells slower unless your timing is almost perfect every time.
On the other hand, I have a pair of macros for Corps a Corps that switches my cross hotbar to #2 (where I have the melee stuff), and another with Displacement, which does the opposite, switching to cross hotbar #1 where the spells are.
However, I'm finding myself using Corps a Corps and Displacement more often outside of the approach - combo - retreat situation once you have 80+ mana, so I'll probably remove those as well.
I think having it for Impact would be beneficial, but for thunder/fire/air/stone you want to do those normally. Impact won't activate unless it can, giving you Jolt.
Those with low latency would probably avoid it, but those with mid to high could take advantage of it.
Yeah at the very least it makes sense for Impact since there's only 2 things that happen, you use Impact or you use Jolt. To be honest, considering SE made an effect to condense actions I don't know why Jolt is a separate one.
slippery slope of why they wouldn't condense all actions a la PVP at that point
and we all know PVP is beta in that regard
In AoE situations its true BLMs and SMNs can be alot stronger, however in single target situation the RDM is not to be taken lightly, the fast casting make me think that Crit will be playing a big part in our stats similarly to a bard. I think it will also contribute to the DPS Sustain you were talking about.
The job still has heavy magical damages with alot of mobility, my only issue is also something you pointed, the complete lack of debuff to favorise magic damages for example. Impact shouldd provide some sort of 5-8 seconds debuff decreasing the target's magic resistance by a said amount to make you use your ressources appropriately, it would also guarantee the job a spot in raid.
Impact as a whole is a very boring and dare I say it dumb skill. It's nice because it can stop you from having to pick between higher potency vs unbalancing yourself, but it's only 30 potency more than Jolt II. I wouldn't mind if SE redid this skill to give it some more flavor.
as a fan of revolutionary girl utena and lightning impact is one of my favorite looking spells in the game.
Fun fact, pretty sure Impact looks like Death Blossom from XI?
I'll be curious to see how RDM's MP economy is in sustained fights, because I have so far had to spam raises on Susano normal, and solo heal final boss of Baelsar's Wall when WHM bit the dust 10 seconds in. In the latter case I ran on fumes for a short time but otherwise was fine.
That Vercure scales with INT (and Clemency with STR while we're at it) while SMN's Physick is still MND is stupid for SMN, btw. That tooltips nowhere reflect this is also stupid.