Jack Of All Trades: A Guide To Red Mage

losing sherida earring is a rather large loss.

poison potency is enfeebling skill

using a 7 dw cape just means you have to carry it for no reason. you need a 10 dw cape for /dnc or when trusts aren't maintaining marches anyways and a 10 dw cape is one off capped delay for /nin with maxed magic haste and frees up a second earring.

I'm not advising to make a 7% cape and leave it there, just that a DW cape is important to open up other slots. I value the MEva and HP on Eabani highly myself and I never /DNC so I left it at 7 for now with the option to increase it to 10 if I need to later.

Anyone mind sharing their rdm gearswap? One that isnt Motes? Please and thank you.

Do us a favor and keep that to yourself

HMMM.

For a Elemental WS Cape- MAB or WSD? My gut tells me WSD will perform better. But im not sure. Any one got some guidance here? Does MAD work on Elemental ws's too?

WSD, you have more access to MAB in other slots.

i figured that was the case, just sad ive got to go make two more capes now ;_; ADD ANOTHERONE TO THE PILE BOIS

How is Excalibur R15 doing these days in comparison to other Main hand options?
Mostly for solo situations with trusts, no multi box~
Thanks in advance.

lol! It has its niche uses. In the situation you are asking about, not bad if zerging is not the better option.

For instance, Lute (masterclass RDM player) soloed Ou using Excalibur. Sure, there will be responses that Lute could have done X better, blah blah, Excalibur wasn't useful coulda have fusioned w/ Ullr, etc., but until that poster does what s/he says Lute should have done and posts a vid, Excalibur has its uses.

With the amount of DT gear and R15 Unity items, it is very well likely that RDM can get -50 DT and sit in 3K HP if you want to "tank." The block chance from R15 and the Regen/Refresh combined with RDM Regen II/Refresh buffs is not bad. Due to their innate JP gifts and traits, it is also possible to hit 3K in FC gear, and may be possible for midcast if you fandangle it just right. The issue arises whenever the RDM does WS, since that will drop their HP around the 2K range. With Sacro Bulwark and R15 Excalibur, you can also hit fairly levels of block chance, but due to the discrepancy between end-game mob ilvl and the calculation that allows block to happen, it may not be as useful as it sounds (I will test one day!).

You can probably use those six stacks to R15 something "useful" (Tizona, Hand-Cannon, Masamune, etc.), but if you're dead-set on R15ing Excalibur, go for it. I R15'd Murgleis and don't regret it one bit, even though my LS mates were dogging me for it, lol. Why would I care about R15ing hand-cannon on a job I never play, even though it may be infinitely more useful? R15 Excalibur is definitely not the best REMA (probably lowest tier, lol) but as a hardcore RDM, gotta have it in the toolbox.

I'll be R15ing Mandau, my last REMA to R15 for RDM. It's definitely gimmicky, but whatever. As long as I sleep well at night, that's all that matters. So you do you!

Thoughts on a Sleepga set for when you have 10 Dyna W2 mobs hitting you (or similar situation where you can take massive damage from multiple mobs in an instant)? Just quickly threw this together.

ItemSet 371961

103% SIRD
35% PDT
21% Haste/71%-80% FC pending Unity ranking and Chironic Gloves aug.
15s & 45% Enfeeble Duration

I use a similar set (actually have it set up in gs) but I’ve literally never found myself in a situation where I could use it

Is there a consensus on group two merits? I currently have enhancing and enfeebling magic duration, but I am wondering if there is a better setup.

Generally magic acc and immunobreak, situationally it depends.

I find RDM merits group 2 as most hard to choose from all jobs.
Everything seems useful. I currently have enspell and enfeebling. Imo enfeebling duration is the most useful. Most things build resistence to debuffs, so you want debuffs to stick as long as possible and if you solo a lot, thats even more important, because it gives you more time between debuffing.

I dont think enhancing is that useful, because we already have a lot of it and more is just QoL, but for sure not needed.

Macc and Acc are useful but I think its very rare situation were 25 Macc will decide if you can land something, but still its really good and helps with enspell too.

Immunobreak is nice and Enspell is nice.

Its a really hard choice imo.

anybody know what Murgleis and Death Blossom are looking like these days? or can point me to what page the info's on please? thanks ^^

I'm a fan of Enfeebling Duration. Personally I don't use RDM on anything where I need every single available point of MAcc, so my 2nd is Enhancing Duration atm.

Nope, no consenus, most of them are good and they're very situational.
Following with my two cents on RDM group 2 merits.

When I had to spam Odin HTBF completely solo on D, I used Enfeebling Duration and Enspell damage, obviously.

Normally I have Macc and Enhancing Duration.
A lot of people voiced reasonable motivations mut mine are that Macc not only adds +25 in general, but it also adds +15 to Vitiation Chapeau +3, making it an even better option for enfeebling midcast and simplifying your sets.
Enhancing Duration is because having those buffs last longer personally make me hard. Keep in mind that the +30 seconds are added to the BASE duration of the spell, which means those +30secs become more after they get multiplied for your enha duration bonus from your gear.
Small cherry on the cake: on some sets I midcast with Vitiation Gloves +3. Getting those spell receive +15 further seconds base duration sure is nice!


It has to be said though that I do not own and don't plan to get a Crocea Mors. If I did then of course one merit would totally be Enspell Damage 5/5, I'd probably sacrifice enhancing duration.

Last small bit about Enfeebling Duration.
I agree with what some people have said. NMs build resistances sometimes so you can't land the same spell on full potency more than a certain amount of time. Making it last longer sure sounds good, right?
Hard to disagree.

But that doesn't apply to every situation, it depends on what you use RDM for, against which targets.

Several NMs have full self-dispell mechanics. Against those targets having your enfeebles last more is pretty useless.
Many other NMs die long before the first cast wears off, sometimes they die before you even manage to land all your debuffs, so again not useful in those situations.

Some other times you're more concerned on landingt he debuff faster instead of having to try 3+ times hoping for an immunobreak, making Macc+25(40) more useful than Duration.



So really, it's up to you. I know I used duration 5/5 when I was soloing Odin D, like I already mentioned.

Thanks all for the feedback. I appreciate the detail.

Yeah there really is no "wrong" T2 merit combo, they are all "good", whats "best" depends on what you do most.

RDM get much use out of mythic or is it extremely niche/novelty?

Niche imo. its very good, dont get me wrong... but i feel its kind of fallen to the wayside when compared to titans like the Crocea/naegling.

its still good for some things, but you'll never really want to melee in it, which makes it effectively a casting stat stick at best.

maybe it has some usage under R15 Afterglow & level 3 AM, but honestly having to use DB, and losing the +500% Enspell/+100% elemental damage from croc, or the Massive boosts from Naegling? i just cant see it.

i kind of feel all the RDM REMA need some love.

1. Excalibur, and even most relics, need a modernization overhaul. they need to have their weaponskills universally beefed up across the board to match the other REMA Skills in either damage or utility. i'd change excalibur's added light damage to proc on all hits, be based on 10% of your current HP, and be effected by Enspell damage + effects and skill. make it so that paladins can do some pretty good AE hits too. +3 Refresh / +30 HP is honestly kind of sad. maybe 10 refresh and 100 HP would make it worth while? IMO One of rdms biggest let downs is that it lacks regen 3 & 4.
2. Murguleis should ABSOLUTELY have the +Enspell damage exceeding what is available on the Crocea. the idea that an auction house weapon absolutely decimates EVERY SINGLE REMA available to the job....
3. Sequence doesnt hold a candle to Crocea or Naegling in any situation. i really wish sequence didnt suck so hard. imo its worse than Xcal/Burt for paladin, Worse than Tizona/almace for BLU, and worse than Crocea/Naegling for red.
4. Almace is still pretty strong if your doing CDC. we cant hold a candle to blu CDC spams due to their superior gear access, but we can definitely still get some usage from it. id like to see something that bought it a bit higher on utility scale.

TL/DR: Get the crocea, and the naegling as a back up with Daybreak/Thibiron offhand, and never look back. Nae is needed for situations where elemental damage isnt cutting it (like omen, or this months ambu). any other setting the AE Damage from crocea is going to absolutely decimate anything the nae is going to put up, and requires ZERO Buffs to do so.

at rank15 its an expensive Macc piece - That's about it - Can do without unless you min/maxin

I'm a little new to rdm, but wouldn't Ea or Ea+1 be better than pixie hairpin+1 for sanguine?

If not could you explain why so I understand how it works better?

Elemental Attack Bonus works differently than regular Magic Attack Bonus, it has a significantly larger impact on the damage formula since it's not applied against Magic Defense Bonus. Instead, it is part of a separate multiplier after the rest of the damage calculations are done.

affinity gear is straight +% dmg calculated at the end of everything else, so pixie is a straight +28% not accounting for the +int on it thats also going to contribute to sanguine