Becoming a better Red Mage

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

It's not really kicking him when he's down if he doesn't seem to care about it. I mean, I wouldn't call someone out on their terrible posting if they recognized that it was a problem and tried to fix it. But this guy seems to revel in it. I see no reason to reward him for that behavior by pulling any punches.

[Skylar]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

It wasnt your posts I thought to be a bit much. Not to mention the fact you're a senior veteran and imo deserve a little respect for that.

The fact he typed "PLEASE DONT FLAME DEAL/WITH IT" made me want to flame him as well , but you had it covered so I didnt.

As I read on seeing another post from someone else about the samething bothered me. Not that Im some kind of authority but when I see something like that it makes me feel bad.

Either way , not a huge deal ...But eh , I'm at work and a little bored.

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

I'm not any more worthy of respect than anyone else here. XD I just post a lot.

[Sabaron]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

Must we have 15 posts relating to the punctuation/grammar/spelling of a single post? I suppose. {/sigh}

To the question at hand:

If we're going to discuss Higher-level RDM Melee--I really do enjoy it. You don't get to do it in XP PT, but that is the only situation. Make sure you keep your skill up enough so that you can deal with EM/T mobs at least and get at least one of the High Sword WS classes for a sub job. Those are WAR, PLD, DRK, and BLU. I prefer BLU of the four for general use. I think you'll still love Vorpal Blade as a staple WS. Savage Blade at high level can be used without a High Sword sub job and has a very nice 50% MND bonus on a double attack. I'm not sure how much better it is than Vorpal as I do not have it. It's useful for forming Light Skillchain though.

Question: It is an "Aerial Attack". Does that mean that you can hit a flying dragon with it or is it simply a description of the animation?

For the meleeing Red Mage, you will indeed, as Ravd says, focus on buffs. This is especially true if you are farming something and need to conserve mp. I've recently been using a Rune Blade--a lovely priviledge of RDM who have adequate MP reserves to do so. I find that if the only short-duration buffs I use are: Enspell, Haste, Stoneskin, and Phalanx, my mp bar will last for approximately 10 minutes at level 70--just in time to Convert and fill it back up again. With a PLD, SMN, or BRD sub or Sanction Refresh, you can get 4mp per tick. The sword does very nice damage especially with Fencer's Ring (Latent Activated) and an appropriate Enspell. My hits are on par with a DD of my level with the Enspell active. Of course, my damage costs four mp per tick, but it's much cheaper than say.... Aero III spam (Aero 3 is roughly 4Damage Per MP without resists and Rune Blade gets you 4 damage every 2.36 seconds at 4mp/tick or roughly 4.8 damage per tick with good (95%ish) accuracy). Rune Blade is also very cheap--on Asura it's around 30k. It costs generally 22k just to activate the machine to retrieve it. Incidentally, there were none on when I wanted one, so I did two chips to Eldieme (with Doctor) and got it on the second one (Waxing Crescent, Firesday for you Strange Apparatus nuts).

Basically, when you're setting up for melee, depending on how much inventory/money you intend to spend, get things that a melee of your level would like while trying to balance that with your Red Magely needs. Jewelry, Hands, Feet and Neck items are probably your best upgrades here. You can also swap out your body piece since a RDM doesn't need +Enfeebling to land well on even VT mobs.

With respect to the ubiquitous NIN sub job, I will say that, defensively, it is quite good especially at 74/75 when Ni comes in to play. Remember what you lose for that NIN sub is a lot of good damage (including High-Sword-only WS's) and spells/job abilities that can come in very handy (Auto-refresh [PLD], Warcry [WAR], Cocoon [BLU] come to mind). Don't be Ninja onry. Make yourself well-rounded and only use /NIN if you need shadows. You get so much from the other subs that you just don't get from /NIN. NIN sub is primarily used for pulling or soloing things that are a bit tougher than your standard fare--you can get a lot of mileage out of Stoneskin/Phalanx/Cocoon with BLU sub and still get your high-grade WS's, a touch more mp, and some other cool little abilities like the very cheap Poison Breath which at 1000hp and level 70 does 150ish damage for 22 mp (7damage/mp)--significantly cheaper than Tier III nukes, but you've got to have your HP up. I usually go at around 750hp (for Fencer's Latent) and get 130/22 which is just under 6 damage/mp. I don't see terribly many resists, but you get occasional resists on Tier III too.

Try /BLU. Get some melee gear especially if said gear also has certain things Red Mages like too like +MP, +INT, or +MND. Kill stuff by yourself. Skill up that sword, but please refrain from trying to skill it up in XP parties. It doesn't work efficiently first of all (because the mobs are too powerful for your B sword skill), and it exposes you to damage or status effects from AoE moves the monster uses.

[EDIT UPDATE: Changed 9 posts to 15 posts. The useless uninformative flame spam continued while I was writing]

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

Can the moderators lock this thread? It has degenerated to nothing more than a flame fest. Heck, after reading it, I feel like adding more flame myself.

BTW, posting a thick block of unreadable text then proclaim: "I KNOW PEOPLE HATE READING W/O PUNCUATION ..... PLEASE DEAL WITH IT NO FLAMING" is baiting people. Bad. Very bad.

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

I shouldn't have said anything at all. Maybe then most of the last page and this one wouldn't have happened. :/

Nice post, though, Sab. Very informative.

[Skylar]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

Alright it was a good point. My main is RDM so I have to thank you on the great info. Well done

[Raydeus]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

Make sure you keep your skill up enough so that you can deal with EM/T mobs at least and get at least one of the High Sword WS classes for a sub job. Those are WAR, PLD, DRK, and BLU. I prefer BLU of the four for general use. Taking PLD, however, will get you Swift Blade too, but I think you'll still prefer Vorpal Blade as a staple. Savage Blade at high level can be used without a High Sword sub job and has a very nice 50% MND bonus on a double attack. I'm not sure how much better it is than Vorpal as I do not have it. It's useful for forming Light Skillchain though.

Only PLD can use Swift Blade, so even if you sub /PLD you wont get access to it.

Vorpal is nice if you crit all hits (I've done up to 800ish dmg on T-) but for most aplications Evisceration is better. Blau Dolch is a great dagger for that but I haven't worked to get it yet, so I use Misericorde or another high damage dagger. (RDM is very limited in options).

Savage Blade rocks!.... but only if you use it at 300TP and to make a Light SC. Not worth it at all outside of that situation, both Vorpal and Evisceration will pwn it's damage otherwise.

So the way I use weapons and WS is kinda like this (in order of use/importance).

Dagger : Evisceration, Energy Drain, Cyclone.
Sword : Vorpal Blade, Spirits Within, Savage Blade.

I always find myself using dagger much more than sword, but that doesn't mean one is more useful or powerful than the other, it all depends on the situation.

So I usually carry both weapons with me at all times.

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

I carry both too. I use dagger a lot, because I heart the speed of my Hornetneedle with an Enspell and Haste, but I also enjoy my sword. I don't have Savage Blade or Evisceration yet, so I just kind of chip away at both skills as I can.

[Sabaron]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

Another note on tanking or soloing: If you create a gear-swap macro for something like Stoneskin, you'll want to macro in as much Spell Interruption Rate -% gear as possible. Stoneskin with Phalanx on lasts quite a while so you don't necessarily need Utsusemi, but if you are using Utsusemi you will want to put the Spell Interruption Rate -% gear there too. Just don't swap in something like "Hermit's Wand" and reset your TP. I suppose, if you're doing /NIN you could always [permanently] off-hand Hermit's Wand which would be quite amusing, but would further lower your DoT making you say: "Damn, I suck at melee". With an appropriate sub, you'll be saying "Hey! I'm not actually so bad at this!"

[Ravd]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

ok yah im bored so i came back. higher up dagger is best for solo because of the En-spell. you can hit faster than sword, u will hit 0's on both anyways if the mob is high enough such as HNMs or Gods. this makes dagger better because ur DoT spells and En- spells are the only way u are going to do damage to it, so the DPS on dagger is much higher than that of sword. just thought i would add that

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

When I get a Joyeuse I'll use it over Dagger. Or Ceremonial Dagger on mobs I don't want to gain TP.

[Ravd]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

best combo for rdm is Enhancing Sword (main) and Joyeuse (sub), but if ur on Remora u know that Enhancing Sword is 4 mil ... good luck getting that o and the drop on Bune is about 14%

[Murphie]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

4 Mil isn't that difficult to earn. It's not as easy as it used to be, but hardly impossible. That said, I doubt I would buy one any time soon.

[BurningPanther]

Re: Becoming a better Red Mage

4 mil? I wish. That fucker is still in the 20 million range on Ragnarok. Though at this point I want it more as a trophy than anything else.

But oh, to get my hands on a Justice sword and Virtue stone... one day...