RDM Tanks?

[Amok]

I have a question. I haven't tanked anything worthwhile on my RDM, also, I've never had enough support to halve my recasts, so my question relates to Callisto saying his shadows are hadly ever down.

1) Do you wait for the third shadow to go down before recasting? Iow, no overlaps, ever? I'm asking because to me that seems like the best way since you can get ichi off in time with FC anyway and you want to bridge the gap between the two recasts.
2) Theoretically, vs an elegy'd mob, with normal attack speed and (for the sake of argument) no double-attack or physical aoe's, could you keep shadows up indefinitely with halved recasts?

Bonus question: do you let SS run through all of the absorbing potential before recasting? Or do you try to estimate when it's about to run out and re-apply before you take any damage? Seems like a trade-off between safety/enmity-lost and MP conservation. Do you maybe keep a standard hit-count per mob type, let's say you recast SS every two hits on one mob and every 3 hits on another?

[Callisto]

One other thing I wanted to put out there if you're engaging was that you're always going to need at least one March to fully cap recasts regardless of your gear I believe, however full Haste/Fast Cast + March actually will put you over 50% by like 4-5%...I'm currently working on upgrading AF hands and getting the SNM boots that give 5 Parry/Eva. Against Ultima/Omega at least I actually have a really surprising amount of Parry procs just wearing Boxer's, and I'm definitely considering gearing for Parrying in slots where the Haste would be excess.

[Tsuko_Asura]

1) I hardly ever cast Ichi with a shadow left, as long as what I'm fighting has Elegy. Its just too easy to get up, and I'm usually dealing with a small amount of lag that's just enough to make it difficult to cancel the last Ni shadow in time >:

2) Correct. The only fights I can think of where I take excessive amounts of damage from being unable to keep shadows up is Byakko(lawl) and The Buried God(Slow aura Q_Q). But Byakko generally eats me regardless of what I'm doing, and [S] Adamantking hits like a little girl, so its meh ;3

And I usually let my Stoneskin get down to ~half before I reapply.

[Callisto]

I have a question. I haven't tanked anything worthwhile on my RDM, also, I've never had enough support to halve my recasts, so my question relates to Callisto saying his shadows are hadly ever down.

1) Do you wait for the third shadow to go down before recasting? Iow, no overlaps, ever? I'm asking because to me that seems like the best way since you can get ichi off in time with FC anyway and you want to bridge the gap between the two recasts.
2) Theoretically, vs an elegy'd mob, with normal attack speed and (for the sake of argument) no double-attack or physical aoe's, could you keep shadows up indefinitely with halved recasts?

Bonus question: do you let SS run through all of the absorbing potential before recasting? Or do you try to estimate when it's about to run out and re-apply before you take any damage? Seems like a trade-off between safety/enmity-lost and MP conservation. Do you maybe keep a standard hit-count per mob type, let's say you recast SS every two hits on one mob and every 3 hits on another?

1) Mob dependant, if I'm fighting Omega I know that he doesn't DA, and like I mentioned I get a fair amount of Parry procs on top of stuns/Paralyze, for him I wait for shadows to all go down. With Slow II/Elegy/Para sometimes I get to the point where I'm only using Ni.

Against something that wipes shadows quickly like Byakko I try to precast Ichi just to be safe, however with max Fast Cast it honestly can sometimes be hard to cancel that last Ni shadow in time, resulting in the 'no effect' message on Ichi and kinda leaving you boned for a few seconds. I know there's a plugin that can cancel it for you, but I sometimes still use 360 so I don't rely on that.

2) Yes, that combined with the ability to simultaneously build the same amounts of CE and VE are pretty much the entire basis of RDM tanking.

3) If I get hit at all I recast Stoneskin as soon as I have shadows back up. I prefer to have a full 350 as often as possible, typically with proper support you're going to have excess MP anyways.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Calli, have you ever tanked Byakko on Red Mage? I did for the first time last night, and it was bloody awful Q_Q

There were a lot of "lolTaru" flying around >:

[Callisto]

Yes, the very first time was basically me spamming my Utsu macros nonstop(I even had Recast loaded and still just button-mashing out of pure fright) and going OMG OMG OMG STUN THIS FUCKING THING MORE MORE KEEP STUNNING...I held out pretty well but was still the hardest thing I've ever tanked(until I did Tyger as PLD). Most of the time my shadows were gone as soon as I cast them from triple attacks, I think at one point I just stopped casting hate spells, fulltimed my physical- set, and let TAWS' be my hate source as I spammed Utsu, lol. Eventually I got the feel for it but he really doesn't give you a lot of time to breathe.

Seiryu has straight up embarrased me though, I thought I could straight tank HF using Chainspell Utsusemi(still think I can but haven't tried it again), but right as I popped CS he used Radiant Breath and silenced me and I was dead before I could pop my echos, lol.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Alright.. That sounds a lot like my encounter, the exception being that I have ~1,000 HP, so a double-set of Triple Attacks meant I was on the ground :/ . Generally I wouldn't mind, but even though I completely destroy the Paladins in my linkshell in pretty much every avenue of tanking, there's still a massive 'lolTaru' and 'lolRDM' stigma, which gets brought up on those rare occasions I actually die from fighting something for the first time. Funny how people only seem to remember when I eat dirt, and never that.. Oh wait, he was eating dirt because nothing's ever looking at our Paladins.

Also, lol@ the Seiryu thing >;3

[rog]

I consider fast cast a pretty nice form of indirect damage mitigation, since it always works. RDM's answer to shield mastery for PLD is not needing shield mastery to get spells off in the first place.

not to mention being able to cast utsu1 1.6 seconds sooner, almost as if you had a 13.4 sec recast

[Callisto]

Honestly regardless of job Byakko requires a fair amount of support. Shield blocks or high evasion won't save you from a Cyclone > TA any more than Fast Cast and Stoneskin will, if you don't have reliable stunners and someone capable of landing a Slow or Elegy you're going to have a rough day.

I almost always carry my debuffing set(skill/Macc one, not my MND potency set) just in case, as even when tanking I know that I have the best set in the LS, and I don't always want to rely on hoping that someone else will land a Slow/Para when I could just do it myself. I've saved my own ass against Byakko and Ultima a few times just by being the one to Slow it when everyone else was getting resisted.

[Caerloc]

I've never had any really hard time tanking Byakko on RDM, elegy or no elegy. Then again i'm elvaan and generally idle in 1500-ish HP. But like i said earlier in the thread, this is a typical fight where RDM's doesnt excell.

Pro-tip, just have your BRD's sub BLM, cause well, it's not like any of their whm-spells is gonna save you more trouble then a guarenteed elegy will.


And no offence, but you must be out of your mind if you dont think a 65% (yeah you should be able to atleast come close to cap on Byakko) shieldblock will save you from a triple attack.

[Seraph]

And no offence, but you must be out of your mind if you dont think a 65% (yeah you should be able to atleast come close to cap on Byakko) shieldblock will save you from a triple attack.

There is a 27.4625% chance it will! >_>;;;;;

[Tarmo]

I do a lot of tanking for my Sea/Sky ls, and what I found is that tanking Byakko in full dmg reduction set simply makes him lawl. I'm a taru as well and in my dmg reduction set I have about 1k hp. With tacos and the set, Byakko hits for about ~100, and the add effect does about 0-10 if we can't dispel it. I've had a few times where the PLD ends up dying against Byakko and I end up solo tanking the whole fight. Try the dmg reduction tanking and see how it works.

[Syntex]

I do a lot of tanking for my Sea/Sky ls, and what I found is that tanking Byakko in full dmg reduction set simply makes him lawl. I'm a taru as well and in my dmg reduction set I have about 1k hp. With tacos and the set, Byakko hits for about ~100, and the add effect does about 0-10 if we can't dispel it. I've had a few times where the PLD ends up dying against Byakko and I end up solo tanking the whole fight. Try the dmg reduction tanking and see how it works.

Is this with /blu or /nin?

Also where is everyone getting these cool iRdm, iNuke, iSolo button looking things, I want one :O

[Tarmo]

/NIN. I recast shadows as often as possible, but with the triple attack spam I like to idle in -44-50% dmg so i can take about 3 or so hits withough SS breaking.

[Callisto]

And no offence, but you must be out of your mind if you dont think a 65% (yeah you should be able to atleast come close to cap on Byakko) shieldblock will save you from a triple attack.

Didn't say that I didn't think it wouldn't save you, said that I felt it was somewhat even with the ability to cast shadows much faster combined with Stoneskin, lol.

And yeah I think were I to have a slightly better physical- set it'd be much easier...I only have about 31%(36% nighttime) at the moment, just about finished with rounding out my magic reduction set before I start dropping cash on HQ darksteel gear...but at this point I'm seriously hurting for storage room for more reduction pieces(RDM + BRD + COR don't play nice inventory-wise )

[Tsuko_Asura]

Definitely staying in my physical damage set next time around. I really feel like I could have gotten those really lawl numbers if I had been the last time, but I really just couldn't react fast enough when my shadows were being stripped the second I got them up. Live and you learn >:D

Also, for the person who was earlier inquiring about PLD:RDM damage intake, I present you with many lawlz:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...222_164500.jpg

Tinnin has a pretty clear TP pattern, so when I knew he was going to start charging Nerve Gas, I started casting Stoneskin. Didn't anticipate that it wouldn't even break it >_>;

[Amok]

I do a lot of tanking for my Sea/Sky ls, and what I found is that tanking Byakko in full dmg reduction set simply makes him lawl. I'm a taru as well and in my dmg reduction set I have about 1k hp. With tacos and the set, Byakko hits for about ~100, and the add effect does about 0-10 if we can't dispel it. I've had a few times where the PLD ends up dying against Byakko and I end up solo tanking the whole fight.

Your damage reduction set in that case also includes MDT/MDB for the enspell effect? Also, when you say tanking him in full dmg reduction, that's as opposed to what? trying to idle in refresh gear? I always assumed physical dmg reduction was a big part of rdm tanking of anything, so I'm kind of surprised that Byakko is getting some special consideration. That's also why I had to ask those questions in my previous post, because I was totally shocked at being able to RDM main tank something and hardly ever taking a hit.

Solos and tanking in groups are different, I know, but watching RDM solos with straight tanking, it usually means constant reapplying SS cus of all the hits you take. It seemed obvious to assume tanking tougher stuff with support (though easier in several ways) would result in more TP moves and so more damage taken.

All this Byakko talk makes me thing of this
http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/6...obyakkouk8.jpg

[Tsuko_Asura]

Not that I'm ever actually 'idle', but spots with nothing better for them always go towards -MDT% while doing most things. There's no reason(for most mobs) to have a Darksteel Harness on when shadows are up. I also live on min-maxing, so I know I'm amongst the minority on this.

[Syntex]

Not that I'm ever actually 'idle', but spots with nothing better for them always go towards -MDT% while doing most things. There's no reason(for most mobs) to have a Darksteel Harness on when shadows are up. I also live on min-maxing, so I know I'm amongst the minority on this.

You know the whole min-maxing thing is a curse really >.> I refuse to uncurse a Dalmatica unless I buy a -1 <.< >.> <.< -_-

Also a few thing's I wanted to ask in regards to merits, on that Belkinator's LJ he covers merits but not the RDM T2 Merits, Attributes, 4 of 20 combat merits, half the magic merits, half of group 1 merits for RDM.

Now I am sure he is assuming people have multiple jobs at 75 and don't want to mess that up but lets say you want to be a full blown tank and have soloability?

I would say for T2 RDM 5/5 Slow II, but on the fence between Paralyze II for HNM and soloing or Bio III for solo.

Unless the cap is 4, why not max out the parry merits and also shield merits, that should put you at 20/20 right?

For attributes I was thinking +int for sticking binds and helps with some enfeebling magic.

Other half of the magic merits enfeebling magic, with the other half of the T1 RDM merits in Ice accuracy.

And another thing I want to bring up because I think its borderline equal to or better is a RDM using Genbu's shield and a sword.

Now this is all speculation but would a RDM with FULL PARRY AND SHIELD MERITS, and capped skills be almost equal to or greater mitigation then a Terra Staff RDM? What if you had Excalibur?

I think that with the right merits and capped skills that Terra's staff might be a thing of the past to tank in when taking damage, what do you guys think of that and the suggested merits?

[Tsuko_Asura]

If I had Excalibur, I'd be going about it the same as a Paladin would. It wouldn't be nearly as effective, partially because of the lower natural accuracy, but mostly because of how frequently I'm casting. All of that aside, it'd still be a nice bonus. Beyond that, I don't see sword/shield being beneficial for mitigation. Physical damage taken% reductions show increasing returns, so that 20% on Terra's really makes a massive difference.

Most merits are irrelevant to a tanking Red Mage. Go with the obvious ones, and then use up the rest on whatever suites anything else you do.