RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

[tdh]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Taking all the gear I currently have in my Mog House or on Mules, I can build Acc+51. Plugging all of this into FFXI Calc 2.94, it says with Sushi, Suppa, and 8/8 Sword Merits I can break the Accuracy Cap against Lv.80 mobs assuming my guess of DEX55 is what I have as an Elvaan RDM.

Acc Gear

Optical Hat - 10
Scorp. Harness - 10
Spectacles - 7
Woodsman Rings x2 - 10
Life Belt - 10
Prince's Slops - 4

Now I have absolutely no intentions of cap'n Sword Merits, and as a SAM75 when I finally do DM, I'm going for the Bushi. (Want that STR+2 for a number of jobs, and GKT+5 will be nice.) But that appears to be nearly as good as it gets. Could tack on another 2 from HQ Scorp Harness, could tack on another 4 from 2 Sniper's +1, there's a Shield that has some Acc on it as I recall, but I don't think any of us could justify that kind of gil for a melee set. We're not about to compete.

Taskmage asked me last night what my melee build consisted of. My response was "whatever left over Atk gear I have from DRK or SAM on me when I switch jobs." I also admitted to not doing much in the way of soloing, in quite some time. I'm not in bad shape as far as Acc gear goes. I do have the Lv.70 RDM/BST gloves and boots, but they were muled long ago since I hadn't had a real reason to use them.

My highs on RDM WS numbers required Souleater or Sneak Attack. I've landed a 1001 Savage against an EP Demon with /THF. I've also done 1200 Vorpals with Souleater, but before you guys go "HORI CLAP" it was against the Boreal Hound. I don't tack on STR gear (which I have a crap load of as DRK75 and SAM75.), and sometimes I have none on because of my macro swaps. I guess now that I have 20 different books of macros, I could build true RDM melee macros but I don't have much use for it lately. Cap'd Dagger & Sword. I'm in no hurry to finish off Club, I'm quasi working on Throwing and Archery, but before WotG dropped I spent all my time as SAM.

Maybe I'll bit the bullet, get GB 7 & 8 done, and start carrying some RDM melee gear just in case.

[Patchinko]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Of course, they could have just been referring to /dnc.

It sounds good on paper, but I don't think RDM TP gain is robust enough to make it as wonderful as all that.

[Taskmage]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

It doesn't really have to be. Dances don't really require spamming. I've only seen Samba I in action, but it seems to last a few minutes and the highest subbable version of it only costs 25 tp. The enfeebling steps require 10 tp each, which would only take 10 or 20 seconds to build depending on your acc. The curaga waltz is 40 tp, so a free 80ish hp for every 7 hits you make. That's a considerable amount of mp saved vs a real Curaga.

[Patchinko]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

It doesn't really have to be. Dances don't really require spamming. I've only seen Samba I in action, but it seems to last a few minutes and the highest subbable version of it only costs 25 tp. The enfeebling steps require 10 tp each, which would only take 10 or 20 seconds to build depending on your acc. The curaga waltz is 40 tp, so a free 80ish hp for every 7 hits you make. That's a considerable amount of mp saved vs a real Curaga.

Well, like you said, it depends a lot on your accuracy, and you'd have to sacrifice mage stats for the most part to get that accuracy. Plus you'd have to sub a non-mage class, which will hurt your MP pool, and it becomes a question of whether "mp saved" for a dance that you can only cast if you've got 40tp saved up is really worth all those sacrifices.

To me, it doesn't seem like a very effective combination. Maybe I'll be proven wrong... I'm open-minded about it anyway.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

AHHH NECRO!

Well I was bored of RDM Melee. But I forgot this thread made it to 13 pages. I'm rekindled now! I'm about to go through my first Cavernous Maw. bbiab.

[Lmnop]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Well, like you said, it depends a lot on your accuracy, and you'd have to sacrifice mage stats for the most part to get that accuracy.

Evasion down step to help your acc as well as dedicated DDs. You really won't have a "stat deficiency" since, outside of weapon/sub, everything is swap-able, inventory allowing. Unfortunate that Stutter Step (I think? The magic resist down move) is level 40 and thus, won't be accessible to this combo.

[Armando]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Apparently Quickstep is about -5 Eva, stacking up to 5 times. But the recast on Steps is 15 seconds, so it'd take you 1 minute to debuff the mob fully. Even so, getting -10 Eva on the mob within the first 15 secs of a fight is useful.

Considering a RDM melee still has to do some casting, and RDM WS power is pretty lackluster, I could see Waltzes, Sambas, and Steps being far more efficient uses of a RDM's TP, while removing the need to come close to a DD's damage in order for your meleeing to be useful. If subbed Waltzes are any good, then that'd also take some strain off of your MP by using some of your TP to heal instead.

[Patchinko]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Well, again, I just don't see RDM building enough TP to make it very effective compared to other subjob combinations, mostly because of my experiences in trying to gain TP against Very Tough and higher mobs. Speculation is a little pointless, but I probably will be leveling SCH for sub before DNC because the benefits are far more obvious.

[Omni]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

AHHH NECRO!
Well I was bored of RDM Melee. But I forgot this thread made it to 13 pages. I'm rekindled now! I'm about to go through my first Cavernous Maw. bbiab.

welcome back.

[Hyrist]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Well, again, I just don't see RDM building enough TP to make it very effective compared to other subjob combinations, mostly because of my experiences in trying to gain TP against Very Tough and higher mobs. Speculation is a little pointless, but I probably will be leveling SCH for sub before DNC because the benefits are far more obvious.

While More obvious, I also see them as a bit more limited.

The only spells we gain from /sch is Drain, Aspir and Regen II, with Regen II being the only one of theses spells unique to the Sub itself.

While gaining a B level in respective statuses will be benefital to nukes, cures and Darkness Magic, we already have High A ratings in Enfeebeling and Enhansing, which makes "Arts" in and of itself useless, when considering the Determent given by casting a spell against the arts your using. Please keep in mind that in our casting regemine, we often cross between black and white magic possibly multiple times within the one minute casting time, so we cannot keep these abilities on full time.

Pair this with another consepts, what, on a four minute timer that we have is worth a 50% casting time reduction? Escape isn't there for us to use, neither is warp. It would be useful for raise but hopefully you'll never need to use that outside Besieged and Campaign.

The same comes for MP costs. A 20 MP refresh would be nice, indeed, but not at the cost of Curaga spells and Divine Seal itself. (Note: We cannot use the potency enhancers.) Magic Bursts off of Skillchains at half cost would be useful as well, but come at the cost of Magic Attack bonuses, accessible thought /blm along with Conserve MP, which could potentially outpower the Stratagem usage for MP reduction, without the limitation of choice between spells and white/black magic on a minute rotation respectively.

Comparing the two subjobs directly, in light of the 'front line' bonuses RDM seems to be scheduled to get, /dnc seems to be a far better choice potentially, especially seeing the results I already have on various forums.

But please, do explore this for us, I would love to see the full extents of /sch that I am currently not seeing and not inclined to pursue myself.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Want that STR+2 for a number of jobs, and GKT+5 will be nice.

If you're going to get Bushanomimi, you better be getting it for the +5 GK skill, not the +2 STR you can get from a Triumph Earring, otherwise you're wasting a run you could have gotten a Suppanomimi with.

As far as RDM/DNC, until it proves its viability, I'm holding that one as a lame excuse to get on the frontlines. Many RDMs have proven they cannot handle melee, enfeebling and support all at once. I think SE finding ways to encourage will only result in further frustration on the behalf a RDMs - the job is simply too dedicated to casting to make melee viable in terms of DoT.

If SC/MB PTs came back, I'd feel less that way, as RDM's MBs are a contribution to the PT effort. Basically SE just needs to scale mob difficulty to make a lot of things more viable, I'm just disappointed that SE seems to frightened to address it.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

Well there's always the "Max MP" bonus. But that means nothing to RDMs.

[Taskmage]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

While gaining a B level in respective statuses will be benefital to nukes, cures and Darkness Magic, we already have High A ratings in Enfeebeling and Enhansing, which makes "Arts" in and of itself useless, when considering the Determent given by casting a spell against the arts your using. Please keep in mind that in our casting regemine, we often cross between black and white magic possibly multiple times within the one minute casting time, so we cannot keep these abilities on full time.

Pair this with another consepts, what, on a four minute timer that we have is worth a 50% casting time reduction? Escape isn't there for us to use, neither is warp. It would be useful for raise but hopefully you'll never need to use that outside Besieged and Campaign.

The same comes for MP costs. A 20 MP refresh would be nice, indeed, but not at the cost of Curaga spells and Divine Seal itself. (Note: We cannot use the potency enhancers.) Magic Bursts off of Skillchains at half cost would be useful as well, but come at the cost of Magic Attack bonuses, accessible thought /blm along with Conserve MP, which could potentially outpower the Stratagem usage for MP reduction, without the limitation of choice between spells and white/black magic on a minute rotation respectively.

Getting a bit off the topic of this thread, I disagree with this very much. When melee soloing or backlining for a melee-based party I almost never use black magic. Even the enfeebles I use are white magic aside from Poison, which nobody would probably miss. Halving the cast time of Stoneskin would make it fast enough to recast between mob swings like Utsusemi: Ni. Now granted I would probably rarely trade away Curagas and -nas for main healing or Cocoon/Utusemi for melee soloing, but /sch is still far from useless in those situations. There are a lot of times I go solo where I plan to melee but want to be prepared to kite if the need arises. I would be happy to sub sch in those cases.

When kiting I use almost exclusively black magic with the exception of Refresh, Stoneskin, and sometimes Haste or Blink, all of which only need to be recast every few minutes, allowing me to switch arts to recast them if I want. Going /sch over /blm does not cost me any magic attack bonus. Level 37 blm only gives Magic Attack Bonus II, which rdms get at level 50. rdm/blm does not get a higher version of the trait. 10% mp cost reduction from Dark Arts being active trades nicely for Conserve MP, and the 50% mp cost Strategem saves me 128 mp every convert cycle if used on Thunder III, effectively buying me an extra nuke. +20 elemental magic skill is nothing to shake a stick at, to say nothing of the +50 to dark magic skill for stronger, more reliable Drain, Aspir, Bio II and possibly Bio III, the first three of which are already great spells even with our dismal natural skill level.

OMGedit:

As far as RDM/DNC, until it proves its viability, I'm holding that one as a lame excuse to get on the frontlines. Many RDMs have proven they cannot handle melee, enfeebling and support all at once. I think SE finding ways to encourage will only result in further frustration on the behalf a RDMs - the job is simply too dedicated to casting to make melee viable in terms of DoT.
If SC/MB PTs came back, I'd feel less that way, as RDM's MBs are a contribution to the PT effort. Basically SE just needs to scale mob difficulty to make a lot of things more viable, I'm just disappointed that SE seems to frightened to address it.

I think the best of us will adapt to use our enhanced versatility correctly, while those of us that suck will continue to suck at pretty much the same level, just in new ways. Taking a wait and see attitude towards rdm/dnc is probably for the best, but it does have enough merit in theory to test out.

[Patchinko]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

While More obvious, I also see them as a bit more limited.
The only spells we gain from /sch is Drain, Aspir and Regen II, with Regen II being the only one of theses spells unique to the Sub itself.
While gaining a B level in respective statuses will be benefital to nukes, cures and Darkness Magic, we already have High A ratings in Enfeebeling and Enhansing, which makes "Arts" in and of itself useless, when considering the Determent given by casting a spell against the arts your using. Please keep in mind that in our casting regemine, we often cross between black and white magic possibly multiple times within the one minute casting time, so we cannot keep these abilities on full time.
Pair this with another consepts, what, on a four minute timer that we have is worth a 50% casting time reduction? Escape isn't there for us to use, neither is warp. It would be useful for raise but hopefully you'll never need to use that outside Besieged and Campaign.
The same comes for MP costs. A 20 MP refresh would be nice, indeed, but not at the cost of Curaga spells and Divine Seal itself. (Note: We cannot use the potency enhancers.) Magic Bursts off of Skillchains at half cost would be useful as well, but come at the cost of Magic Attack bonuses, accessible thought /blm along with Conserve MP, which could potentially outpower the Stratagem usage for MP reduction, without the limitation of choice between spells and white/black magic on a minute rotation respectively.
Comparing the two subjobs directly, in light of the 'front line' bonuses RDM seems to be scheduled to get, /dnc seems to be a far better choice potentially, especially seeing the results I already have on various forums.
But please, do explore this for us, I would love to see the full extents of /sch that I am currently not seeing and not inclined to pursue myself.

I realize this isn't really relevant to RDM melee, but excuse the tangent. Maybe I should make a /SCH thread, but I don't find a lot of use in speculation and would rather wait until I get some time playing SCH before doing something like that.

The problem with your reasoning is that you're assuming the detriments of casting magic of the opposite school while under the effects of one of the Arts will outweigh the benefits of casting magic of the aligned school while under it.

If a RDM is in a main healer role, I can assure you with little doubt that he or she will be casting far more White Magic spells. In this case, Light Arts will be affecting the majority of his or her spells in terms of MP cost and casting time, and additionally will bring the rather sad C- rating of Healing Magic up to a B. This at the cost of Divine Seal, na-spells, bar-ra spells, and weak AOE heals and with the added benefit of a half-MP cost, half cast-time big heal every four minutes (which probably more than makes up for losing Divine Seal).

If you have another caster along with a WHM sub, you assign him or her to -na and bar-ra spells, and you handle healing. Better yet, use SCH sub when you're going to a camp where bar-ra and -na spells aren't needed very much if at all.

The Dark Arts scenario would be rarer, but if there's a time where a RDM knows he or she will be nuking or using Drain/Aspir enough to make up for the deficit to White Magic, it would also be quite effective. For example, a PT with a WHM as the only other magic user, so there's very little Refreshing and healing, and more opportunity for nuking.

Anyway, one can come up with a lot of scenarios where /SCH would be an effective and even optimal subjob.

In contrast, I can't really fathom a time when RDM/DNC will be particularly great, mostly because RDM melee capability in a party is too weak to generate the TP needed to gain great benefit out of the sub. Also, I am curious about these results you've seen on various forums. Do you have links to them? I learned long ago to take purported claims over forums with a grain of salt, especially second-hand ones.

[Hyrist]

Re: RDM Melee (Renarudo Style)

The problem with your reasoning is that you're assuming the detriments of casting magic of the opposite school while under the effects of one of the Arts will outweigh the benefits of casting magic of the aligned school while under it.

Excuse me if I had not made my point clear, but my actual point was Scholar in total cannot serve as well with the Arts abilities and Stratagem's as can the specific Black Mage and White Mage subjobs in their respective roles. I'll regard each section separately to bring home my reasonings why later though, as I have a limit on my online time until my internet in my new apartment is hooked up.

A brief touch up on each though:

Regen II seems to be the only real factor that competes main healing Red Mage, as if I am main healing it is specifically because there is not another substantial healing source. Even with a PUP/WHM in the party I am still finding myself better off /whm to make sure the status removals for the party are swift to cover what is needed. Curaga in itself is a godsend of Cure Efficiency, especially when I can cover an entire party with Divine Seal versions, which strategically get placed halfway through my convert cycles (unmerited). If I'm running into MP problems there is something I or the party is doing wrong, so much that the 4 minute MP reduction (again, no curega to help reduce MP from) essentially is moot.

On the /blm side, I must say that even /blm I find myself switching between white and black magic versions (to use elemental debuffs, dispels, or magic bursts) far too frequently to take advantage of the Arts abilities. Conserve MP falls in direct conflict with the Stratagem usage in this case: I would have to be very careful with how I use my stratagems to outweigh the benefits Conserve MP would give. I would, however, enjoy the B-skill Aspirs Drains, and Nukes.

And of course, absolutely no melee with /SCH.

Where I find /SCH to fall into the lines of those 'gray area' jobs in which healing is covered, and the players are moving too far away form each other (rangers, Bards, Corsairs, etc.) for curega to be a constant effective in comparison to Regen II, and where Magic Bursting may be a frequent.

Essentially, if I ended up in A 'RDM BLM WHM' party and needed to backline, scholar would be my subjob.

Back on the subject...

As far as RDM/DNC, until it proves its viability, I'm holding that one as a lame excuse to get on the frontlines. Many RDMs have proven they cannot handle melee, enfeebling and support all at once. I think SE finding ways to encourage will only result in further frustration on the behalf a RDMs - the job is simply too dedicated to casting to make melee viable in terms of DoT.

It's a warm feeling to know you don't fail to provide a counter argument against RDM melee. I was expecting your skepticisim.

So you know, I've been following the progress of a RDM/DNC closely on whatever forum will post it (when I can get on internet, yey for McDonalds WiFi) And the results are far more than just promising.

There is some difficulty and debate as to the specifics, but Drain Samba seems to cap drain effects up to 50% of damage delt, seemingly effected by weapon delay. The fact that this is AoE in and of itself, and considering that the "additional effect" of the weapon also serves as a damage booster means that this ability stand alone is a significant DoT/Curing aid. The fact that it becomes attached to our weapon means we can inflict it upon multiple monsters within a single casting-something I've been asking about for debuffs for a long time due to TP burn mentalities.

As far as dedications to casting, the really depends on the monsters fought. Remember again that some fights simply go too fast to make certain deubuffs to be recasted over and over again due to limited effect and MP drain, one of the arguments I have stated previously. /dnc regards both of these issues.

I too though, expect that this will take a difficult adjustment period for your average-level Red Mages, who are accustomed to simply backlining. As for someone like myself, who takes pride in my multitasking skills and the ability to gage a situation quickly and make whatever advancements and cutbacks necessary to streamline the situation, this just adds bonus factors to my swiss army knife.