RDM Magic Skill Points

[Szkol]

I just wanted to make sure I'm Leveling my skill points more or less whatever is considered to be normal or acceptable for a Lv. 17 RDM.

Elemental ---42
Enfeebling ---39
Dark ----------9
Healing --------12
Enhancing ---- 2~3
Divine ---------0

I used my sword almost exclusively until level 11 or so... at which point I realized that my magic ability sucked, so I started using magic exclusively to try to make up for lost time. Am I progressing normally?

[Sabaron]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

The only tip I have for this is: If it's not blue, it's not as good as it could be. RDM doesn't do a lot of Dark magic--he only has Bio, so that one would be really hard to cap (cap it as DRK or BLM).

Enhancing 2-3: You should probably do what a lot of people do. Stand outside your moghouse and cast your 2-3 cheapest Bar spells on yourself. Run out of mana, go back inside, repeat. You can do the same thing with Healing.

Of all the things that should be the highest, Healing and Enfeebling are tops.

Heal everyone who passes by that is injured while your travelling. When you encounter a monster, don't nuke it until you have cast every single one of your enfeebles on it.

[Aksannyi]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

Best way to skill up your dark magic is wait until your RDM is 24 and your BLM sub is 12, then you can spam Drain (as often as the recast timer will let you) for Dark magic skillups. You can also do this with Aspir when you hit 50(/25 BLM).

Enfeebling spells get used so much in xp parties you should never have a problem capping it.

Healing magic is a bit tougher, since White Mages do the bulk of curing in most parties, but just make it a point to cast cures when you can. Running by the newbie areas of Sarutabaruta, Ronfaure, and Gustaberg, target everyone you run past and cure them if they need it.

For enhancing, I used to like to hang out at the AH or in Rolanberry Fields (where all the mules hang out) and cast Protect on all of them until I'd run out of MP.

Divine - we don't have it. You'll have to skill that with White Mage.

Elemental should be decent from xp parties, especially early on when you don't have as many enfeebles to cast and you don't have Refresh. If you find yourself not casting a lot in a party and you have the MP, toss a few nukes out there to get a bit of skill.

It takes some time, especially if you let it go for a long time. My enhancing magic skills stayed FAR below cap well into my late 20's ... and I'm still playing catch-up with it, so try to keep your skills as high as you can or you'll have a hell of a time trying to cap them later.

If nothing else, though, cap enfeebling every time you level.

[Lilani]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

As Sabaron said, always try and get your skills capped (as high as the skill can go at that level, it will be in blue rather than white) before you level up. This means that your spells with be as effective as they can possibly be, making things much easier on you.

For example: Let's say your enfeebling magic is 6 levels below the cap. This means that mobs you are fighting will be hard to enfeeble, and you might have to cast the spell multiple times to get it to stick. This is a waste of time and MP. If your skill is capped then that means that it will me much easier to enfeeble. Now, by all means that doesn't mean that it won't be resisted, but it will be resisted much less often.

I suggest getting your healing, enhancing, and dark magic skills a bit further up. Dark is mainly for bio, so you don't really have to cap it, but it would be best to have it past at least 15 at your level, so that it can cause a decent amount of damage. Healing is for, well, healing. As a red mage you will have to subheal and sometimes even main heal in your lifetime, so keeping healing magic fairly high is important.

Enhancing magic is a bit iffy though. At 41+ it's easy to keep up with refresh and haste cycles, but before that it's best for en- spells and buffs. I believe it makes your en- spells last longer/do more damage, and I believe it also makes things like protect and shell stronger and last longer, but otherwise it's not all that important. Unless you go and tell everyone about it I'm sure they won't care about it, because it's not affecting them very much. In all honesty, it's best for soloing.

All that aside, dark, healing, and enhancing magic are important in their own ways, so keep them up there.

[zagex]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

For elemental magic skill, I found (especially towards later levels), the 2 ways I would cap it is from elemental enfeebles, shock, frost, drown, etc, and from sleep/nuke soloing. I'd also cap Dark magic from sleep/nuking. Enfeebling magic should generally be capped always because that is one of your primary duties as a Rdm.
Healing magic I never bothered with really. It's still about 15-20 points below cap, and I've been a 75 Rdm for a couple months now, and I'm just going to let it cap itself.
Enhancing magic, for me, I skilled it for a long while when I got the bar- spells as whm (lvled whm before rdm), then I never bothered doing more skillups because it was boring. As long as you have it at a decent number so that your bar- spells aren't totally gimp if you sub whm and need to cast it on the pt... then it doesn't make that much of a difference. My enhancing was somewhat far below cap, but then somehow it caught up around the mid 60s for me.

[Sigmara]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

I would say focus on enfeebling magic and it will not be that a focus as you should already be debuffing the mob a lot.

Dark magic if you want to go /BLM then you should keep an eye on it, apsir and drain can be nice but you need a good dark skill. That skill is not that good as RDM so having it capped is a minimum to have be able to use these spells.

Elemental : you will mainly need it if you go /BLM but you will be using elemental debuff which are elemental magic based, so it's the same as enfeebling magic : will lvl up as you exp.

Enhancing magic : yes it will be nice to have it capped if you sub WHM for bar-spells but that's all, not sure if it 's worth the pain as it will lvl by itself once you got refresh.

Healing magic : it will be as hard to lvl than enhancing, maybe even more but the reward is greater. I would say : dont be shy to heal or main heal, get a light staff at lvl 51 and macro your MND gear when curing. That should make it.

So if you are /BLM : keep an eye on dark, for the others things, they will lvl as you need them if you do your job right. You will only need to skill up some magic skills if you get are trapped on the same duties for a few lvls.

[Szkol]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

Here's my goals for jobs and sub-jobs for the immediate future:

I want to take RDM at least to level 30, and from there unlock all of the advanced jobs so I can have the option of pursuing and job I want later on. As far as subclasses go, I want to first go /BLM or /WHM. After that I think I want to pursure DRK, though I don't if this is actually a viable subclass for RDM? If not then I'll be pursuing it as my main class for awhile. After that I'm undecided, though it will probably include leveling BLM, WHM, and RDM at least to 50.

[Icemage]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

/DRK is a viable subjob for Red Mages between level 20 and 23 for XP parties. It gives earlier access to Drain than /BLM does. It is also viable between 40 to 49 due to early access to Aspir, but only if you're fighting enemies in that level range that can be Aspired (beetles in Crawler's Nest for instance).

After that, you never really see RDM/DRK until level 75 when you run into enemies that require Chainspell + Stun.


Icemage

[Mhurron]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

/DRK is a viable subjob for Red Mages between level 20 and 23 for XP parties. It gives earlier access to Drain than /BLM does. It is also viable between 40 to 49 due to early access to Aspir, but only if you're fighting enemies in that level range that can be Aspired (beetles in Crawler's Nest for instance).

After that, you never really see RDM/DRK until level 75 when you run into enemies that require Chainspell + Stun.


Icemage

Though it should also be said, you will probably be asked to change to another subjob even though you are subbing it for a good reason. Well, pre-41 you would be.

Leveling Dark skill is slow on RDM, it and Divine have a really poor rating. It really is so much easier to skill it up on DRK or BLM, both of which have a significantly higher rating then RDM. Thankfully you'll probably find both DRK and BLM fun to level.

[arkaine23]

Re: RDM Magic Skill Points

Stand outside your MH and spam cure and bar-element spells on yourself until out of mp. Enter your Moghouse to refill mp, and exit. Repeat until you can't stand skilling up your healing and enhancing magics anymore.

Find a worm in say Korroloka Tunnel (for your current level that should do). Silence it. Spam Enfeebling, Dark, and Elemental spells on it until its dead or you're out of mp. If you run out of mp or get in trouble, run far out of range and rest your mp to full. Repeat.

Early on in a red mage's career, you're skills are spread all over the place and the tasks you perform will require those skills be up to par. This is not so much the case if rdm is not your first job. At this stage healing, elemental, and enfeebling are the most important. The only dark magic spell you have is bio, and in xp parties you should be using dia instead of bio anyway. The only enhancing spells you have are enstone and bar-element spells. You'll probably want to work on dark and enhancing anyway, even if at this point you don't have much use for them.

Most of the time (up to the 30's), unless you're main healing, you'll be meleeing and casting at the same time. You'll want your en-element spells to be as potent as they can be for the added melee damage, so there's no reason not to spam enhancing spells at your moghouse. By the time you get drain and aspir from your drk or blm subjob (lvl 40,50), you'll have a lot of catching up to do on your dark magic skill unless you work at it now... so try to skillup on worms with bio, or just cast bio at the end of a fight when you're partying.

It's really just a good habit to get into, to think about these skills and getting them to cap. When looking for party, the moghouse spam of healing/enhancing, or just heading out to solo some DC worms while on seek, are excellent ways to keep skills up.