On the verge of quitting RDMFollow

The profound ignorance of pet jobs yet continues.

I think I can still log in until the 31st, haven't tried it yet to be honest.

So the cap is eventually going to be raised to 99 and you all expect to get your best abilities at 76-80. Makes sense to me.

Tier 4 nukes, and lack of good melee gear seems like a hint to me.

Pregrats on 1k btw

yea that was pretty much my thought too, btw welcome back rog

It's funny because people were happy at first, because they thought it would help them when not tanking.

Well, they could at LEAST give the job that is responsible for managing MP, Auto-Refresh!

Missed this before. What exactly are you happy about? It's 5 more def than protect 4. For 100k. I've got quite a bit of gil (9m atm), and never in a million years would i even consider buying that sh*t.

Oy, that too. Though to be fair, it's not all that big a deal most of the time, since you'll usually be /sch and can accession it, and most of the other times you'll be able to rest after you cast it on yourself and/or everyone. But yeah, just another reason i'll never get it.

refreshii @ 82?

I'm adopting a wait and see approach to Rdm. There's no point in leveling it to 99 if something else solos as well and is funner. However, if I had to guess now, I'd say SE will make Rdm worthwhile to play.

You see this in your crystal ball?

edit: clarity: implied solo at 99

Edited, Jun 26th 2010 6:13pm by Shirakx

This is indeed a blow against redmages. However this is not an entirely unexpected course on SE's part.
Historically SE has always taken the same basic approach to redmage. The intent had always been for redmage to be a type of "filler" character, one who could serve in whatever capacity the party currently needed but lacking the full breadth and heights of the specialists.
Historically this has worked out well as you were limited to very small parties (In most cases only 4 characters). In these situations the redmage was of immense value as a redmage could fill many roles at need while a specialist could fill only one. There were redmages in Final Fantasy 1, 3 and 5. In all cases they could use both white and black magic and use it nearly as effectively as white mages and black mages could. However specialists were still needed. The versatility of a redmage also meant limitations. Redmages could not learn all spells (being limited to a certain number per spell tier), there were spells redmages could not learn at all (such as raise 2), there were enemies that redmages could not damage easily due to thier lower offensive abilities, etc. In short redmages cold do a great many things but none of them particularly well. Versatility was thier selling point.
However this is ceasing to be the case with FFXI. There is an old proverb. "The fox knows how to do many things fairly well. The armidillo knows how to do only one thing but that exceptionally well." Get together enough armidillos and the fox becomes a hindrance instead of a help. The only reason redmages still have a place in parties is because they have a couple tricks that no one else can duplicate yet.
The only saving grace for redmage may be that for solo and low man situations versatility is a prized commodity.
It is all too likely that SE is simply using the same recipe for redmage that they have been all along. I am dissapointed. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised.

I'm honestly surprised it isn't already. Almost every single Impossible To Gauge mob that's been added since November has been Bind/Grav/Sleep immune, and not only are VNMs also packing this, they're also packing Flee speed (or close enough to it). It's almost like they're encouraging terrain exploitation on T2/3 VNMs by NOT giving them draw-in.

Yeah, you might as well do that if you've got a sh*t ton of people for it, but if you don't, why bother with that? That at least takes some degree of skill, preparation, and for some of them, gear to have a chance of surviving things like Hundred Fists (which I've already seen two of the T2 VNMs use; I forget their names but they were a squid and a walrus).

Why risk that when a good pinning area pretty much guarantees that any heehaw with Bio II can win?

Redmage is not the only job that natively has the ability to regenerate MP. Bard anc Corsair also have native MP regeneration abilities (mages ballad and evokers roll).They also have unique abilities that other jobs do not and will not be able to get. At the moment nearly all of a redmages abilities can be done by someone else. At the moment refresh (the spell not the effect), composure, tier 2 en spells and tier 2 enfeebles such as slow 2 remain . All save the tier 2 line of enfeebles and refresh are useful to only the redmage themself. All their other abilities can be had either by subbing rdm or natively. Unless something changes drastically in the last 19 levels there is no future for redmage except for solo and low man situations.

I've been learning to enjoy some parts of what we got in the update, but there's still the self identity crisis to worry over.

Hope, is about all RDM has at this point that we might get something game-changing for us between now and 99. SE's "the job is very powerful" reaction to our job at Vanafest, however, isn't giving me much room for hope.

Which is why I started an ideas thread, but no one took to it.

If I ever really needed to pull hate off someone, chances are they need heals, and therefore I've usually found I can do it just fine with Cure 4 (and this arguably worked better than simply starting to cast Blind/Dispel/Sleep to try to pull hate). I still can. To say our ability to pull hate has been totally killed off is rather ludicrous.

B/D/S was just a cheaper way to get it set up for scenarios where you know BEFOREHAND that you want to be tanking.

After this update, I doubt anyone feels enthused to come up with ideas because it seems like SE has their own interpretation of RDM at this point. So in a lot of ways we're like this guy.

With the exception of tanking in Campaign, every instance you listed above could probably be rectified with a Cure IV. In most of those situations, the party member probably needs to be healed anyway. The enmity nerf obviously crippled RDM tanking but I disagree that RDM can no longer pull hate off others.

And after this many years in the game, I think we should all know by now that SE generally does not follow the desires of the player base. This has been slowly changing lately, however. The truth is that SE never envisioned RDM as a tanking job. Whether the player base has a problem with it or not is probably irrelevant to SE. Other companies might be willing to follow the direction that the players may take their game, but SE isn't one of them. They have a vision for how they want jobs in their game to be played. Clearly tanking RDMs did not fall into that vision.

What remains to be seen is what exactly SE will do with RDM. With many of it's unique abilities now available to other mages, something has to be given to the job 80+. I am confident SE is aware of this. What I'm not sure of is whether their design will satisfy the players. I remember reading somewhere that SE said it would like other jobs to be able to enfeeble as well, so I don't think a second tier of enfeebles could be all that is in store for the job.

I of course understand why some RDM are very frustrated. You had an entire aspect of a job removed. For some of us who only play RDM casually, it isn't much of a loss. But for those RDMs who took the time to actually perfect their tanking gear and who played this role frequently it is quite a blow.

Or like this guy?
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/bestiary.html?fmob=7672

In retrospect, Accession + Haste probably was the one thing SE never wanted Accession to do, given the power of Haste and how it can be used to target anyone, in party, in alliance, or just any random person in range.

If it was allowed, a RDM/SCH or a WHM/SCH maintain Haste-ga two parties' front line jobs, while a SCH/RDM can easily handle FOUR parties. I don't even want to think about the amount of stress when event leaders put an entire alliance worth of curing and haste load on two healers (RDM, WHM, and SCH).

Getting AoE Haste doesn't you'd do less buffing--it means you'd either do MORE buffs and/or more curing. I think SE saved us from ourselves there by making Haste not work with Accession.

* * *

I wanted to try RDM tanking more, so was sad about the enmity change on the spells. That said, it has been really nice in Dynamis when the average DDs can take critters off of the sleepers in a hit or two (when the Provoke/Flash/Animated Flourish people are all dead), even though we've been sleeping them for over 5 minutes.

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Recently hit RDM76. Last night at Seiryu as RDM/DRK, people broke Shadowbind by keep hitting Seiryu when it SP'ed. Our tanks couldn't get Invincible up in time or something. One BLM went down, and the one remaining BLM already burned his ES on something silly like a nuke.

While my previous experience with Bind without Elemental Seal had been hit and miss at Lv.75, I thought, well, nothing to lose but the fight, and we were going to lose that if Seiryu was allowed to run free with Hundred Fists up.

Ended up landing 8 Bind in a row. (The BLM who wasted his ES earlier couldn't land his. The RDM/NIN* only tried and landed 1...)

I love Red Mage at Lv.76. lol. Can't wait to hit Lv.80.


* The RDM/NIN wasn't a tank or trying to be one--apparently because Monomi is cheaper than Silent Oil and won't cause magic aggro, /NIN is the best SJ for RDM in Sky. No, don't ask, I don't get it, either; I use on average one Silent Oil a month in Sky as RDM/WHM or RDM/DRK.


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MPK'ed one of the WHM and someone else when Seiryu stopped by them and they didn't move... I don't understand why people don't keep running until AFTER the Bind lands.

Oh well.

I couldn't agree more.

I believe it is because they plan to release Hastega as a spell. It already does exist as one, not just as a Blood Pact (Moblin Gurneymans in Movalpolos can use it)

Only real problem with that theory is that it doesn't explain why Sleep works with Manifestation, though...




Ehh, it's still not hard to avoid magic aggro in most places in sky if you watch where you cast. Besides, RDM even has Composure now (which Monomi doesn't work with) to make it easier.

Its always possible Rdm will get more hate tools and still be able to be a tank. One that SE creates rather than the player base.

It seemed to me Rdm, Whm, and Blm were nice interlocking mage jobs, tank(shield), dd, and heal; maybe se doesnt see it that way though.

but yeah, what Singbismarck said.