Job Adjustments (was =10)Follow

This is why nobody likes you Alma; playing semantics is not debating or even arguing, and that's all you ever do. Poorly, I might add.

Are we even playing the same game?

Well to be fair if you're I'm heading out to just chain-nuke things on RDM, like say for doing some magian trials, then /SCH is preferred simply for the MP endurance it offers over other subs. It makes it easier to make it to the next Convert while dropping tier IV nukes along the way without slowing down in low refresh situations.

That aside, you're probably right. Anyone who sees stunning party wrecking TP moves as a gimmick, well... I can't think of anything nice to say.

Getting pretty defensive there aren't you?

You said stun was a gimmick. That's bullsh*t. Stun saves lives. The end.

Carry on with your tirade now.

Stun > then AoE phalanx and Stoneskin, therefor /BLM > /SCH in most situations, if not all. SCH is a gimmick sub with the biggest benefits to it being unusable on RDM.

That's awful, awful logic.

For heavy nuking scenarios, no, /SCH is still the best when /NIN isn't necessary; you get Dark Arts, Parsimony, and Aspir to stretch your MP further, and you get Drain and Storms to help with damage.. /SMN doesn't come close.

The speed bump from Dark Arts alone beats out /SMN (and /BLM) for nuking, nevermind Alacrity or even Parsimony. I'm not saying Stun is a gimmick, it's quite handy all things considered, but it's just not needed in a lot of things. It doesn't help that without a stun rotation, odds are you're in the middle of some other cast when it would be useful to use, heavily reducing the effectiveness of picking a sub solely to have Stun "just in case". /SCH gives phenomenal nuking boosts while being 90% of /WHM. And it still replicates several BLM tools, with a minor hit for on relying on JAs. Unless you plan to poke things with a really sharp stick or need to set up for Stun specifically (i.e. Apademak's leveling), /SCH is a pretty damn useful default sub, lots of nifty tools.

Same 2009 logic still applies: You don't bring overly much of what you need.

If your low man tank is a dancer with multiple stuns and you're overloaded on cures, Stun isn't a factor, you're just blowing cooldowns overlaping and building resistance quicker.

You both are also missing the essential reason why I call Stun a Gimick on RDM. Sokay, I didn't explain it correctly.

It's a "Oh oh, me too! I can sub for stun!" That's the gimick. This mentality of having it just to get into groups. You don't get /blm for stun alone, you get it for the same reasons as you subbed BLM in 2009. The only thing that's changed is that you don't have to walk back out to swap back to /drk for stun anymore when people want you to CSS.

But in this regard, so many other jobs do it better now, and /sch offers more to the party than stun alone does. (Read: The problem isn't that /sch is a bad subjob. See below.)

I'm not talking just our nuking game either, though that still keeps /sch ahead in that regard.

I'm talking the full of the utility.

You talk about AoE Phalanx and Stoneskin not being as good as a stun. I Agree. But in the case where you have stunners (and Stun is so readily available that you should have at least one without loosing a RDM's subjob with it. Bare minimum BLU is there for procs.) That AoE Stoneskin is an extra line of defense.

But that's not the end of it either.

You're completely overlooking Aspir, Drain (At auto-beyond capped skill rating), emergency Sleepgas (Granted, takes some getting used to using the stratagems quickly. Train in Campaign though, you'll get the hang of it.) and most importantly, status cures.

You sacrifice a lot in utility just for Stun and Sleepga. Sure, Stun saves lives, but so do a lot of other methods, and there are a lot of other jobs that can use stun as well.


So we get to the reason why it's such a 'gimick'.

It's a stopgap. We have no debuff to deal with TP moves so we default to a subjob that has one? I view that as a flaw in RDM's design, considering the trend. Either give us Stun natively or some other ability that takes the edge off of TP attacks. I've been pushing that suggestion for quite a while now.

I'm not saying stun is not useful. But the truth of the matter is, we're using it as a crutch. It's a gimick to pull attention away from the problem RDM currently is having with debuffing due to SE's current love of making everything a TP move. And we use it as a way to get into groups.

The preference for it, is a symptom of a greater underlining problem for RDM. And when that problem gets addressed, it'll fall by the wayside just like it was before.

Make more sense now? It's not as if I don't use it when it's needed. But I see the trend for what it is.

Edited, Sep 3rd 2011 1:49pm by Hyrist

What you call a gimmick, I call the Support Job system working as intended. /shrug