Can RDM get some melee gear please?Follow

Um what? I have always maintained BLU should be out damaging us when it comes to Magic damage (or spike damage if thats what you want to call it.) Its always you crackpots who think RDM is in a terrible place who make claims that a RDM can't out DoT (or straight MELEE only ie. NON WS or NON Magic) Damage. I did not say a RDM would out perform a BLU or a DNC, I said at the end of the day it would be close. When you take into account our melee Damage (including enspells) our WS damage, and our magic damage (usually in the form of MB's which can be done of both DNC and BLU self skillchains, as well as our own SC's we set up or close). The three jobs parse out nearly the same.

However. RDM still supports better than these two jobs do. Meaning we are right in the middle of the pack. In terms of how all our damage comes together we fall between DNC and BLU and in terms of over all job usefulness we sit behind dedicated melee, and dedicated support.

I have never claimed we out damage X or Y, I said we are close, and comparable. I have always maintained that RDM is right where it should be in terms of MELEE. BLU using magic is not melee, it is magic, regardless if the spell is physical or not, it is magic. Stop adding apples and oranges when you are only holding apples in your other hand.

This is a topic in regards to the MELEE portion of RDM. Something that is equal to those around us. In terms of overall damage A DNC has a large edge in WS damage, and a BLU has a large edge in Magic damage.

Stop putting words in my mouth because you assume the job is out of place. It is smack dab in the middle of the road, right where it should be. Our current MELEE gear keeps us competitive with MELEE. WS and Magic based Damage are entirely separate entities in the topic. The sooner you realize this the sooner you might actually become good at something.

lol @ tp feed christ did I get sucked back to 2005.

For fodder mobs I'd also LOL, but with HP totals climbing over 2k, 3k or more depending on Atma, Cure IV is both inefficient and potentially risky to spam when some NM TP moves do 1500+. Some mobs also have auras tied to their TP moves or could just be generally annoying like Amun and its Catharsis spam.

"We're middle of the pack, it's okay!"

Earth to dingdong, people in MMOs don't want middle of the pack, they want the best possible even if people supposedly playing the best suck at it and the middle-runners surpass them.

People see no point to RDM melee. Perhaps it's due to that middle of the pack angle you love. There should be no "My way or the highway" clause in taking up a party with an expected job feature. Apparently nobody's been able, or dare I say willing, to come up with a good place for it yet, either being wishy-washy on reasons not being reasons because nobody melees whatever anyway but said mobs matter and what matters is what's important in FFXI.

Giving RDM melee a purpose doesn't exactly correlate to moving it to the top of that pack, but rather a creation of a new category to be "best" at involving it that people will want around if available, ideally a mix of enfeebling and enhancing. You're loony if you think other "comparable" jobs getting better spells, equipment, and abilities while RDM has physically remained the same has somehow maintained balance. Such would imply RDM melee was overpowered at 75, so forgive me while I go laugh my ass off in the corner and recall years of outsider commentary mathing up it's gimpness and saying things like being 80% of a real DD should be your goal. But nah, people won't miss what that loss of 20% could've been because the other gains are either achieved in the back or considered redundant if another healer's around.

Get back to me when all those numbers magically align in a TP set without needing Berserk, Enspell resists never happening on VT+, our Haste gear actually having Accuracy in more than one slot, and you're not demanding sh*t like HQ'd Dusk, Speed Belt, and giving up the off-hand for a shield. I'm shooting for everyman accessibility (Of which 22% Haste is the more reasonable number with a bit of luck and effort), not FFXI's most expensive niche hobby in the game's current state. Meanwhile, I'll just forget things like Triumphant Roar and Building Flourish exist to maybe give your argument a bit more steam. Like it or not, I will relate to the melee of other jobs because we're @#%^ing talking about melee compared to other jobs being the problem. When people want melee damage, they don't want Cure IV, and to then turn around and say you're doing okay damage because of it. Nobody ever says, "Hey, invite that BLU. He can cast Magic Fruit/Plenilune Embrace!"

Edited, Oct 28th 2010 5:36pm by Seriha

Why are so pig headed about apples and oranges.

500ATK does not require berserk, berserk gives us over 600ATK heck in my semi-lol TP set I have 434 without food. Using Pizza I get to 477 add 10 STR on from abyssea is 483 abouts, and I have room for a few upgrades (back head) Berserk is not required for 500ATK.

Haste: 4% body 5% head 3% hands 3% legs 2% feet 1% shield = 18% 6% Vbelt (easy to get if you camp the mob) = 24%. Without +1 Dusk. +1 dusk can give you 26% and cap haste. (I didn't say it was cheap I said it was possible.) (personally id sit at 25% if I got brisk mask)

ACC: 2ACC range 7ACC neck 10ACC rings 7ACC legs = 26 + 15ACC composure. 74dex(85 taru)+10(abyssea)/2 = 41ACC Dex
: 200+121*.9 = 308+26+15+42 = 391*1.10 = 430 With a couple upgrades (neck/rings) you can get to about 440 which is more than enough to reach cap. (I hit 86% with 12ACC less than this using SW joyeuse i lose the pants and 1 ring.)

All relatively easy to obtain. no special gimmick gear, some costly items if you want to get to 26% haste, or you can sit @ 24% haste. (if you feel 6mil for feet, and 7-8mil is to expensive for hands +1)

20 DMG is 80% of what number..... 24. Enspell D. Hmmm can we do it. Yep with the easily obtained Hollow Earring. Booyah. That is a 20% resist rate giving an average of 20DMG. (I have that on a parse fighting VT mobs) I also don't have a hollow earring meaning 80% is actually a little bit low more like 90-95% MACC.

As for giving up the offhand for sentinel unless you are using Blau/Joy your DPS DW is very very close (within 1-2DMG) under your own haste when single wielding joy. Compared to Sash/Kahnda+1 (did this in another thread not doing it again). The TP gain rate is faster SH Joy vs those as well. Under high haste, you can get joy to a 1.1 second delay, while Sash + Kahn only get to 2.3 (B/J hits at 1.6) Meaning with just Joy you are attacking 2 times faster.

@ 90 the DW will close the attack rate somewhat, but you also give up over 575 ATK (having zerk up 60% of the time based on 500ATK) having 10% DA, having 15 more ACC (based on aggressor up 60% of the time) 5% crit +, +40 TP (on WS's like Vorpal, DB , CDC that all have TP variants.) If you think 10% more DW matches that you are crazy.



Like I said, I do not think you have any experience with melee as a RDM I think you are talking out of your ass, trying to sound important but coming off as a whiny child who does not know what they are talking about. Also if you think having to do work to get better gear (see vbelt brisk mask, and arguably rager ledlsens) or having to spend money (see Dusk +1 hands) is to much to ask, maybe you should play a different game. If you want to be good at something you strive to get the best gear possible. If that means you have to camp KA for a week, and farm up a few mil to get items so be it. Every job has to put in effort to get good gear, RDM is no exception.



Edited, Oct 28th 2010 6:22pm by rdmcandie

Edited, Oct 28th 2010 6:23pm by rdmcandie

I agree the stigma needs to be broken, but I disagree that we need buffs to do so. In order for anyone to consider us worthy of a DD spot we would need to be buffed to the point we out DD anyone. Or apply a gimmick to end all gimmicks. The only reason DNC is asked to melee is because they have no other option. The only reason a BLU melee's is because they have some TP enhanced spells, Self SC potential, and need to be close to the mob anyhow.

Some people suggested an Aura Gimmick, but all that would require us to do is stand in melee or casting range and not really require us to melee, or even cast. This idea has promise, but the fact it does not force us to melee to keep active means it is redundant. I can already stand in melee range and auto attack while main healing or what not.

Some suggested long ago ENII's should have had Enfeebling properties tied to them. Personally I like this Idea because it allows us to provide additional useful effects to the mob. For example a 5% boost to Slow, a 5% boost to para... obviously the catch is not all elements would be covered, so you can always get creative with new enfeebling type things. Unfortunately SE nixed this and gave us -Resist which is a highly niche effect and is on a slightly weaker version of ENspell. Hopefully ENIII is in the cards, based on the ENI style with comparable damage boosts and additional effects to bonus up Slow's and Para's and what have you.

What I am opposed to is stupid threads like this that are whine threads with no purpose, or gimmicky ideas that have no real bonus to us actually engaging the mob. As far as our gear goes we compare with 2 jobs we are most comparable to, our ability list does as well, and our traits and spells back us up further. As far as utility that is where we are lacking, outside of Niche situations. You could Buff RDM to high hell, but it would only call on the nerfbat as the only way to make RDM melee stigma go pop is to have it out damage anything around us (see the 2H update.)

You can not compare our class to other DD's. You have to compare it to those jobs we are similar to. A RDM should never DD better than a WAR or a SAM, should never nuke better than a BLM, heal better than a WHM. For all intents and purposes the job is very very very good in its role as a hybrid, it is better support than either BLU or DNC (which is why they will generally parse higher than us overall) but it has better melee potential than a SCH who should out heal or out nuke us all day.

The issue is that the DD epeen club doesn't understand that you can not compare apples and oranges. Seriha talks a big talk, Seriha has several DD's and suffers from BNS. Seriha compares apples to oranges on a daily basis. This is something most non hybrids do. For some reason they think RDM's and DNC's want to be heavy DD's when all we are doing is providing ADDITIONAL Damage, as well as ADDITIONAL support. In the days of the 6 man the best party set up was 2HDD(SAM)/SAMx2,RDM/NIN,DNC/NIN,COR/NIN,BRD/NIN this was the best overall EXP party on colibri, but only worked with the RDM and DNC healing in tandem and both providing melee DD. This gave you 80% Haste on (SAM)/SAM DD, gave you 70% haste on RDM, with -25% DEF, +x% ATK +EXP. This was the colibri/wivre wreaking ball and numerous times netted me over 35K/hr. If the RDM did not melee you lost 20% of the damage. In parties without a DNC you lose 10% haste, and -10%DEF.

This is no longer the 6MAN days, this is no longer we need to kill fast to keep chain, but not to fast to lose it (unless you could take out Wivre's with ease like the above PT) This is 18 man groups killing mobs that are plentiful in as little time as possible meaning everyone who can swing a weapon or nuke should be doing so. Any Damage on these mobs is good damage. That means jobs like WHM,RDM,BRD,SMN should all be meleeing, even if it is just auto attack. Jobs like RDM/SCH Should be nuking. PUPs should have auto's that fill holes. The faster sh*t gets done the faster you get AF feet, move on to NM's get your merits/exp. There is no excuse a RDM should not be meleeing now, at all. Stigma or not. Unless you personally choose to prioritize nuking, which is also an acceptable alternative.

I am not going to cover NM's again, other than, we can melee just fine on the ones that can be melee'd and like all melee do not melee the ones that can't/shouldn't, however it is in situations like this where our melee Gimmick comes out to play, we are the only job that can make our mages lives easier on HNM's where magic damage is number one, simply buy meditate+weaponskill and low delay, low ATK/STR gear enspelling.

We do not need a buff we just need people including RDM's to stop thinking we are sh*t because there are few bad apples, and we need people to stop comparing us to oranges.

Yep I did used to melee in full attack, I also meleed in a lot of STR and DEX gear with the Attack until I was learned through doing that Haste => ACC => ATK (unless capped ACC). I also learned over that same time through many many many hours of calculating sets, experimenting in parties that RDM is not that bad off when compared to similar jobs. I laugh at you, someone who has never posted their own melee sets good or bad, never posted a parse good or bad, never offered an insightful opinion on how to make the best of what we have to work with. You have been crying for 3 years about RDM needing a melee update when for all those years it has been pretty well off. Argue stupid retarded sh*t about oranges being better than apples. No one gives two sh*ts if your DRK can out DD a RDM, It bloody well better do so, or you are gimp as all hell and don't belong in a party. Id be worried if a BLU out DD'd a RDM (who is focusing only on DD) to the point anything you said will be worth it. (It won't happen the jobs design won't let it happen).

RDM's code is fine, its right in the middle on casting, I will garuntee you a RDM the melees will do the same damage as a RDM that nukes on a neutral mob. (I have tried it many times unless you cheat and use chainspell.) Both Backline and Frontline offer the same support where ever they are, a fronline RDM usually has less MP endurance but doesn't use MP to damage, a backline RDM uses more but has a higher endurance.

Just because my sword is out, and I am in 500ATK 26% haste with 95% ACC does not make my haste any slower, it doesn't change the effect of my refresh, enfeebles are a whole 0% different then they would be if I used a staff, the only thing affected is Cure potency by 15% (or more if you got the new staff), and nukes. The job itself is very very well balanced.

Against other jobs that can do the same things as us we are very well balanced. Ive talked to death about BLU and DNC. But SCH nukes better than us, and we melee better than it. Balance. RDM's mechanics and gear options are perfectly suited for the various roles it plays and keeps it balanced amongst the jobs it should be compared to.

Also I do not care to win arguments in an internet forum. I am simply correcting and legitimizing facts that I know because I have done nothing but RDM since 2003, I have meleed on the job longer than most people who frequent this topic, I have played ever aspect of this job into the ground (except tanking it was nerfed before i really got into it.) My posting style may be agressive, and condecending and dickish and i come of as a huge @#%^ing @#%^. But I know how to squeeze nearly every ounce of juice out of RDM in pretty well anything it could be asked to do. I have spent 7 years playing, discussing, researching everything pertaining to one single job. You can say I am playing the I did this, I did that card, but I think I am entitled to it. I have done nothing but push my RDM to the limits I could get it too. I don't expect everyone to have the best, because I don't even have the best. I get by very well with my Above Average RDM melee set. But I do have the experience that allows me to squeeze every ounce out of my gear, while hasting, while refreshing, while curing.

Now do not confuse what I am saying. RDM does not need new gear, nor a gimmick update, it does not need to be broken open into some leet DD job. But that doesn't mean I would say no to some new gear, or new updates. I just don't think it needs any special attention. RDM has always gone on gear droughts. All I am saying is RDM is right where it should be, I have played the job long enough to know when it is dragging as in comparison to other jobs. Since 75 we have been on par in our progression as much as the next guys, however the melee move a little faster in the melee DD area, and the caster mover a little faster in their areas. Again this is balance. Expect it to remain similar all the way to 99.

Again I will say I very much doubt you have very much experience playing as a melee RDM. I do not think you know how to get the most from the job. You should spend more time with Zaf he is very good at it from some of the discussions we have had regarding gear. You should also not be so fast to criticize like you always do when people begin talking about CURRENT mechanics. You are usually one of the first to chime in that you would rather DD on your DRK because RDM melee is lulzy by comparison. Like I said Earlier It damn well better be because I know for a fact your DRK's nuking and support abilities are lulzy by comparison.

MMO's hate hybrids, god like gear, silly gimmicks and other sh*t will not change peoples opinions on if they want a DD they will overlook jobs like BLU DNC and RDM. If they want a job that can help support the will over look jobs like DRK SAM WAR. It just so happens that BLU DNC and RDM can do a bit of both, without overly hindering either side of what they were invited to do. In 6 man parties it was hard to fit a hybrid. In 18 man abyessa slug fests, having a RDM in a mage party, a DNC and/or BLU in the melee parties means you have refresh, you have a haste, you have heals, in all parties without sacrficing 3 slots for 3 additional mages. Competent Hybrids means you can single WHM an abyssea alliance, with minimal sacrifice to healing and damage.

Well I don't need to ask Zaf Ill take you at your word, but I just can't recall off the top of my head you ever even mentioning your gear in a discussion. As for the "permission" thing, my shell and friends were skeptical at first, I often resorted to building my own parties in the early going. But i've been meleeing a long long time, from being a sh*tty AH ATK STR DEX ACC only to an average with AH gear with better stats, to where I am no above average. I could stand to get several upgrades but work and life reduce my time to camp certain NM's and participate in certain events. Anyhow back on topic, the result of my building parties spread word through my friends and LS, who in turn had word spread to their friends and so on and so forth.

Don't get me wrong I get asked to /WHM more often than not. (which is laughable now as well but offtopic.) But within my shells (it actually began in my dynashell hella long time ago). and friends, and friends of friends I am usually expected to go RDM/NIN (in pre abyssea days) or RDM/DNC or RDM/DRK (since my war is underleveled). For various reasons. Mostly being what I alluded to before in the ToAU era, 2HDD/SAM, RDM,DNC,COR,BRD was probably the most efficient killing party at Bthicks. Not only did it smoke show birds, Wivre were not a hard match either allowing us to extend chains with the added DPS of having essentially a 4DD party with the support and healing of a 3DD party. In abyssea I was often requested within my shell to nuke and melee to build lights. Nuke obviously for Azure, and Elemental WS kills (cyclone before I got Sanguine) for Amber. Only 2 jobs are capable of doing both reliably, they are BLU and RDM. As far as Randoms go, they often request /WHM or /BLM, to which I ask why. Most say cuz thats what you are supposed to sub, they have no real idea why other than it is popular. I usually say 1 time I can do that same stuff /DNC or /DRK. If they still want me ill go if not, there is 92 other RDMs to pick from. I have turned many many heads in abyssea, both in parties where I have excelled DPS wise. (as some of my parses recently have shown me carrying the damage of the group) or been mediocre and excelled support wise (as others have shown with haste/refresh cycles and healing done). I would say from people that know me, grouped with me etc I am asked to come melee a good 3/4 of the time. The other times I usually oblige them because it is something where my skill set would be better used in another way, such as nuking or straight up cure bombing. Or it is something I shouldn't melee on because it is dangerous to do so for everyone involved.

My experience has shown me RDM is in a great spot, even with Above Average gear, great gear is even better. It just depends on what you have to focus on. In a Pure DD role a RDM can do very very well. But the more support you add into it the less effective the DD becomes. Countering that however is the more support you provide usually to those who can not do so themselves they get better. Stuff like Haste and Refresh and Dia III's stuff that people always forget where it comes from. If I have to support 5DD or 5Mages the Damage loss from me having to cast is replaced by their damages going up. Essentially I can DD my brains out, with minimal support, maybe a couple haste and a refresh, and do very very well. The parse i posted in =10 where I was top DD was one such party, although with the exception of the DRK whom I parsed close to DPS wise the rest were admitidly fairly gimp. But If I haste 5 DD that is 17-20% more DPS each I have provided them at a cost of 1-2 melee rounds per cast to myself. With dia included that is almost a 40% increase with a total of maybe 10 melee attacks I miss on every 3 minutes. Well worth it IMO. Refresh is the same deal Every refresh is a free nuke fro a BLM or SCH that is 1.5-2K +DMG to mobs for the group based on 10 melee hits i miss every 2.5 minutes.

In the end one of the biggest hurdles RDM's have and why they are often not invited back to melee is tunnel vision. They get zoned into only 1 task, happens to me sometimes still even after years of doing it. They get caught up in the DD aspect and forget sometimes you need to sacrafice your own DPS to make those around you exponentially better.

Suffice to say knowledge and application is 95% of what makes a good melee RDM. You could have the greatest gear ever, DW Relic + Mythic, if you can not apply everything about the job and can not get over the tunnel vission you will be a gimpy lolrdmmelee who has nice gear.

As for this topic, RDM does not need gear, we have access to gear that is comparable to the jobs we should be compared to, we do not need a gimmick because DD is not all we should be providing (although we can do well when it is all we do provide). At the end of the day it takes waiting for a group to invite you so you can practice in a group, it takes building your own parties, and it takes a thorough understanding of game mechanics. Is it hard to get really good at, yes, just like everything is hard to get good at. It is one thing to have gear, its another to know how to apply that gear as efficientlty as possible.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself am I doing it right, and am I doing it as well as I can be.

(Id like to see your gear, Id also like to know if you have any macros set up for quick buffing and quick nuking for MB's. A proper macro build can save you tons of time of lost DPS.)

Just to elaborate, even if we are not a top flight melee DD, and we should never be, in abyssea there is absolutely no reason at all you should not have a melee set and or solid nuke set and putting damage on the mobs. Unless of course you see big DD jobs not meleeing the mob for TP, at that point you either Nuke or you use TP feeder mobs like them for WS's only. (usually DB is your best bet).

Edited, Oct 29th 2010 11:50pm by rdmcandie

See I do not have the gear issue problem with only one job, that is neither here nor there however. On My RDM I carry My useful Etaves (dark/earth/thunder/water/ice) a convert set, my enfeebling skill set, nuke set, a tp set and a ws set. this sits me at about 70/80 give or take laziness to move some items around or take some items or tools on the rare /nin day and food. This has me ready for every situation that I need to be ready for. I no longer carry a +MND set as SAB + Slow II and elegy caps my Para is so finicky i don't even care to give it 5% more or w/e the silly number is.

As for spellcast the only macro set I have for it is for RDM/NIN solo, all my other macros are ingame custom made. Sometimes (for my TP set for instance) I have to hold L2 and hit X 3 times, or vice versa to get back to TP gear. Macros I am refering to are things like.

(x=number)

/ma "Haste" <p1> etc etc
/ma "Rfresh" <p1> etc etc

This means don't ever have to take my eyes off what I am doing to haste and refresh, I don't have the couple second extra delay selecting my targets. These macros are by far the best macros I think I have they are so freaking good I wish more people would use them. The only issue is remembering who is where when party members leave which takes 2 seconds, no MP haste, mucho MP Refresh.

all my macros for gear swaps are similar to the above multi hit swaps, with a command line that jumps books on the last hit to either my nuke/heal/selfbuff/enfeeble/JA/WS macros. Each spell takes me back to the top command line which is my gear swaps line.

It is very very very extensive and if I typed it out would look like a maze. But once you get accustomed to it, everything is 100 times easier. (spellcast would be 1000000 times easier but I can't write XML or w/e nor am I willing to spend an hour doing it since I have a solid macro set up for every role I can possible wish to do.)

I honestly never have to look up from the keyboard/controller. L2+2 x 3 L2+4 = Sanguine, L2+3 for Vorpal L2+2 For DB, L2+1 for Evis
Healing I use the exact same macros as buffing, unless someone is asleep then I manually cast from the spell list and scroll. Although I expect people to be on the ball. I do not like laziness and I will tell people straight out, I use my melee as a benchmark if I am doing better than most jobs those job have a problem (like the parse I posted in the abyssea makes me cry in =10).

I am not one for hoping, or dreading, taking things as they come, and working with what you have is all you can do. At the present RDM is very good, even without Atma, Atma only allows us to keep up to others with Atma, or stroke our epeens. I personally have 0 Atma not a single one. I post nearly 500ATK a 12% Crit rate 86-88-90 ACC rate (weapon depending SW,B/J,Eswd/J) I have no Totm weapons outside of a couple common ra/ex items and goliard I have no special great items you can't get on AH. I have no swift belt, I have no anything.

Then again I tried to make coming back as hard as possible by giving away all my gear and droping anything that did not have a strong sentimental value to me. Some things I never got, Hollow/Brutal/Suppa are all things I personally do not have but include in my calculations because most people do have them or some combonation of the three. I have nothing special outside of a Joytoy, a Blau, and an Esword. My entire melee set is above average AH for the most part, infact it is pretty effing gimp by comparison to what is available. I still parse in the middle of the pack while meleeing. I still out melee DPS many jobs, I still WS on average damage wise. I MB as often as possible and usually come close to topping the healing charts.

RDM is not that bad off. Trust me. There are much worse things you could be. You could have THF leveled and outside of 1 minute awesomeness get out DD'd by pretty well every job that can swing at a mob reasonably well. You could be married to /NIN or /DNC like BLU or THF to keep your melee DPS high. We are one of the few single handed DD that can make excellent use of /WAR and /DRK and even /SAM at times. Simply because of the Joyeuse, and other DA weapons, and out great great great enspells when used properly (ie. mob weakness @#%^ the day of the week and that sh*t.) with either T1 or T2 give us an awesome boost in damage.

At the end of the day we are solid in how we can perform, and this is coming from someone who has likely weaker gear than you do.

RDM i find is one of the easiest jobs to avoid burnout on. I can main heal, nuke, melee anytime I want, that is a far cry from other jobs that can only do one of the three. Personally I think it is the funnest job because you can change your role with a macro swap, unlike BLU who needs new spell sets, or SCH who rely on a 1 min timer. It is the only reason it is still and always has been my only cap job. I have many jobs in the 50-60 range, I even have several in the 60-80 range, but I got bored of their lack of variable abilities.

Which is another reason I do not feel RDM needs a buff or new gear in melee. We are a very versatile class that sacrifices nothing and can switch roles near instantly. No other jobs have the all around flexibility a RDM has. It may be weaker in some areas but is the only job that can nuke/heal/buff/debuff/melee very well depending on what gear you have macro'd into.

Ive said it before and I will say it again I would not play RDM is it was pushed into a singular role. SCH is threatening the backline portion of our job, to me that is where we need focus. We need something that says we are still as useful in this slot. We can not compete with Haste/Refresh, Stonskinga, Enspellga, Phalanxga from a supporting SCH. We do not have to tools to do so. Hell Outside of Higher teir cures WHM can not compete well with that either.

IMHO people need to worry less about our melee side which is fairly balanced with other jobs like us (BLU DNC) and should be more concerned about other jobs creeping up on our support slot. BRD/RDM, 7MP/tick refresh provided, 35% haste provided. COR/RDM 6MP/Tick refresh, haste. SCH i covered above. I have no issue with subable convert, but I have felt that we are quickly losing our place amongst enhancing classes. Unless SE focus' on the RDM casting side of things particularily in the support section, we are not going to be wanted very much. Then again my old resentful FOTD (flavor of the decade) side says good it will finally crush the poser RDM's out of existence. But as someone who thoroughly enjoys every aspect of the RDM experience I am more concerned we are going to get pushed into an outside support job that is only used to help heal. That is the only doom and gloom I have for RDM. SCH is getting to strong and RDM as a sub is going to be very powerful for any job that can reliably make use of it (BRD/COR/SMN/BLM).

But I for see Haste II at likely 98/99 for RDM 90 for WHM @ 20% (matches BRD) this will give us something over SCH (like refresh II did), and keep us in that best overall support job.

I think they will have to or SCH will just be called on to do everything. Under light arts they get all -na's and erase. They get a 10% mp cost reduction, they can AoE stoneskin to everyone @ 350 reduction, can AoE phalanx at a 30 DMG reduction (more by the time cap hits.) they can AoE enspells to give a 21+ DMG bonus, they can keep their last for a Curaga III or IV. On top of that they can cast refresh and eventually haste. A WHM can not match this, a RDM can not match this. They will be the one stop support goto healer of choice. With sublimation or self refresh the MP reduction they get fast cast /RDM and Convert they will be insane.

The only solution is to give RDM and WHM another teir of Haste to still maintain something over SCH. They do not have to give BRD another March, they could do, but since Magic haste caps @ 40 someodd % then the 20% Haste from say haste II would be negated by march 2/3 or march 3 would be negated by haste 2.

All I am hinting at is there are more important things to worry about then getting more accessible melee gear that we overly do not need at the moment. (now depending what SE shovels out to DNC BLU and RDM in the next update I may be singing a different tune in that regard but currently even using level 70ish junk we are very comparable.)