rdm meleeFollow

Depends on the party make up and the rdm and what jobs the group requires of him to perform. At 41 Even with maxed sword skill I miss more than I hit. I do more dmg with my nukes than with my sword at this level. It helps having elemental skill maxed though. But you can't seriously at that level melee/debuff/nuke all at the same time. You will need to heal during battles sometimes.And the time it takes to put away you weapon and get out of aoe spell ranges to heal is honestly a waste of time. If there is a bard in the group you have even less choice and where to stand. You sure as hell are not going to make the bard happy by standing with the melees and away from the other mages. Bards often place 2 songs on the melees and 2 other songs on the casters...and this requires both groups to be apart from each other. Personally I would rather have the bards mp regen songs that stack with my refresh on me and be able to have less need to heal up mp and be able to do more elemental dmg.

The dmg a rdm does with a sword is roughly = to what a war and a pld do with their swords..which is very very little.

As i do not know much about sam i can't really reply to this idea, but if it works like you say it doesm it could make for a very interesting combo.

Red Mage/Samurai equipped with a club. Ever 100% TP, you can refresh your mp, or even refresh your parties mp - requiring you to run over to the mages yes, but just flick lock off and run over, doesn't even require putting away your weapon.

There are a couple problems with this
a) Red Mage skill with Clubs is relatively weak compared to Red Mage skill with daggers and swords.

b) The clubs that a red mage can use are limited and mostly deal with adding casting caster stats
Look at 30 you can either use a
chestnut wand - 10dmg 216dly int+4 mind +4
versus
centurion sword - 19dmg acc+4 atk+4
A passable melee club a RDM can use is
Shellbuster lvl 48 18dmg 264dly Lightning Dmg vs Quadavs
but its very situational

You dont have to take my word for it - try it out.
At 30, try soloing any "easy" monster with a decent club of your level, then try it with a sword.

c)Since a RDM whi come out at the start of the fight with a club have inferior skill and a weak weapon compared to other melees, to build 100%TP against mobs that give xp at higher levels means very little or no casting at all in a party. Thats if you can even hit the monster for decent damage. If you are able to build TP to 100% in a single fight I have serious concerns about how strong your party is.

Refresh is VERY mana intensive to cast, especially if you are refreshing multiple players - including yourself!. Add to that debuffing and you dont have much opportunity to build TP if you are playing your strengths as a RDM.

Finally
d) The key Samurai skill of Meditate doesnt kick in until level 30 - which means you dont get it subbed until 60.

Quintis

To Quintis, regarding Vellion:

I dont think he was refering to the ability to do damage at
all, just quickly building up TP between spells, so
he can use the mana refresh WS starlight and moonlight.

I'm not sure, but I don't think the damage you do determines
TP, but rather each time you hit the enemy.

And I'm not sure how the Samurai class works, but it appears
they get store TP at both level 10 and 30.

edited for clarity

Edited, Sat Jan 24 03:54:17 2004 by NightSpirit

Well, you can swap weapons via a macro, couldn't you? Get up to 100+ TP with your sword, then hit your macro that swaps you to a club and fires off your WS ... or does switching weapons remove your TP?

If you can swap out, then there is no problem with this. How much mps do those WS give you?

When you swap weapons you lose all your TP.

Out of curiosity..

I'm an elvaan right now, and I'm aware of their limited mana pool, although not quite as badly as Galka. In my estimation, I think it would be almost a requirement I melee to try and make up for the fact that my MP pool is weak.

True, I might not do as much as an elvaan warrior or the likes, but when my MP is restricted like that, I think meleeing would almost be a necessity, no?

I'm a hume 42 RDM/BLM sub and I melee whenever it makes sense for the group. Two seperate examples: in one party we were WAR/DRK/RNG/RDM/BRD/WHM. I would refresh myself and the WHM, debuff the mob, and then charge in slashing with an enspell on. I usually hit IT mobs two out of three swings, but this is because my sword skill is maxed and I have +3 DEX from various items. I figure I end up doing around 2-300 melee damage during the fight and I save my mps for emergency healing and refreshing (with the occassional nuke thrown in ... gotta keep that skill maxed) so I never have to rest. This party never rested once while I was in it ... it was one IT soldier crawler after the other for sick experience. The second example is a NIN/THF/SMN/RDM/BLM/WHM party. In this party I almost NEVER melee'd, since I had two more people to keep refreshed. I would dump my enfeebles on, restore everyone's refresh, and then rest a minute before starting the process again so my mps stayed stable. Those 60-80 mps I would get on top of my refresh were necessary to ensure I never ran out of mps (160 in refreshes per 120 gained with around 100 mps in debuffs). This group very rarely rested (once per chain 6 for two minutes) and we were getting over 5000 experience per hour (the above two groups got me around 11K experience in about two and a half hours total).

Really, the question boils down to this: your primary duty is enfeebling at ALL levels. Your secondary duty is refreshing the mages once you hit 41. In third place comes meleeing and nuking, but this is ONLY if it doesn't interfere with the above two duties. The reason enfeebling comes first is that the 20 seconds or less it takes to enfeeble a mob will save you more damage needing healed than the 12 mps or so that the WHM will recover in that time.

Another thing to consider is if the mob is a high AOE mob or not: if you stand a good chance of losing a large amount of hps, then the damage you do with your weapon would be better off used nuking, assuming you have the mps to spare. On heavy AOE mobs it is normally best if you stay back and support post-41 ... before then, I can never see a time that a red mage should NOT be in the fray unless they are constantly low on mps.

As far as the WHM having to heal you:

1) insist they don't unless you are orange or below. You shouldn't be getting much aggro or your tank sucks, and even if you get hit a time or two this is what drain is for if you have a BLM sub.

2) are you tanking or something? I get hit maybe one out of every three fights that I melee and that is assuming I'm the puller. I get more aggro nuking then meleeing, and if I melee I have the option of delivering finishing blows via nukes or emergency healing if things go very bad ... and the six seconds it takes you to stand up and heal someone is enough time to cost them their lives if you're resting after a nuking binge. Limiting yourself to nuking rather than using all your skills not only adds downtime to your party but puts them at greater risk of death. You were given a large list of skills for a reason: don't focus on only one or two.

edit: what, you don't like it when people contradict you with good reason so you lower their post score? Does it hurt your feelings when someone points out why you're wrong?

Edited, Sat Jan 24 19:27:12 2004 by airspirit