Anyone else here miffed Blu has A- sword skill?

[arkaine23]

Blue Mage Sword caps at 269 according to some JP game magazine and all the forum rumors, so what do you red mages think about it?

I'll grant that there are a lot of things red mages do effectively as support in the back lines of a party that both take up battle time and more often then not involve weapon changing and subsequently loss of TP. Ok, so this more or less prohibits meleeing the majority of our late careers. And if that's not enough our inventory space hardly has room for appropriate melee gear, real melees will tell us we're giving the mob TP for our only moderate dmg output, and come endgame stuff dies too fast to even enfeeble and we get cast often as main healers for burn parties because of our rapid MP recovery. Ok, so a lot of mechaincs and player perceptions prohibit us from doing much more than a few sword swings in our post-refresh level grind.

I'm still jealous Blue Mage gets 19 more Sword skill than us. I know they don't get the kind of damage mitigation we do. And no Refresh/Convert to keep going, and going, and going like us. Nor do they get to use all of their aquired techniques all at once, but have to stop and swap and wait a minute....

It's still frustrating. Here I am spending merits on sword wishing I could save them for another job's weapon, like Monk for instance.

I'd really be happy with just a small upgrade to red mage sword cap. Say 256, the same as a White Mage's club skill. How about you?

[neighbortaru]

bumping it up will only lead to more Red Warriors who don't do their job in XP/merit parties. i honestly don't mind that BLU has higher sword skill, let all the idiots flock to that job. :wasted:

[Taskmage]

Nah. My sword is good enough to solo with. If I really wanted to melee in a party I'd ... well probably play blue mage. ^^

[ultimaknight]

I really don't care about the sword skill either. My sword is usually on my belt for show anyway, considering I spend more time casting that meleeing. If things get hairy and/or the pt doesn't mind then I will take a few swings. I try to keep my skills capped as I go (though a few are falling behind).


Besides, its just one rank better right? A - versus B -?
Hardly worth crying about in the long run.

[LadyPeorth]

Footkick as listed as critical varies with TP. This is only while using Chain Affinity
The accuracy of physical Blue Magic is based on the accuracy with a weapon.

Therefore, it's pretty obvious that a BLU must melee if they want to be good, unlike a RDM.

Imagine if your sword skill had to be capped for Enfeebles to land...or for Thunder 3 to not be resisted as often.

[BurningPanther]

Actually, I am more than a little irked that Blue Mage gets higher sword skill. I was wondering when someone would point this out. Granted, it holds little relevance in parties, where RDM has always been support role, but it's still a part of our character, and we were billed as being equally comfortable with sword or spell. My constant whiffing at mobs while solo says otherwise. To add to that, the availabilities of swords that even remotely compliment our skills is sad(the best to date are Buzzard tuck and Enhancing sword).
It's nice and all, but can someone explain why we get more access to staves and clubs when our club skill is poor and staff skill is nonexistent?
At some point, RDM was woefully gimped, having C rating in ALL skills, and thusly fitting in poorly everywhere. S-E compensated for this by giving us a little boost, particularly in what makes us great in parties. But RDM were made to have a sword in their hand at some point, and I for one would like to be able to finally swing a degen like it means something.

[ultimaknight]

I guess BurningPanther does bring up a good point. They (SE) does peg the RDM as being a sword wielding mage. And I guess that is further evidented by the fact that the RDM's Relic gear is called "Duelist," no to mention we can wield Excalibur (which is suppose to be one of the greatest swords around).

I guess I don't care much because in a party I don't do enough damage with a sword for it to matter. Which I guess is the point, why don't we make a difference when we have a sword in our hand? They could add an ability similar to the PLD's "Shield Mastery" in terms of swords for the RDMs.

In terms of the staves and wands, I can see that point. Especially with the elemental staves, which many a RDM flock to own. Why not give us some sort of elemental swords? Gear it towards the RDM where it gives a similar attribute like the staves, and maybe each sword enchances the effect of its corrisponding En-spell.

I guess I just accepted the fact that RDM's swinging a sword is frowned upon by parties, probably because of the lackluster rank.

[neighbortaru]

B, I find, is more than sufficient to go toe to toe against EM-T mobs, which is way more than other jobs can say.

[BurningPanther]

I guess BurningPanther does bring up a good point. They (SE) does peg the RDM as being a sword wielding mage. And I guess that is further evidented by the fact that the RDM's Relic gear is called "Duelist," no to mention we can wield Excalibur (which is suppose to be one of the greatest swords around).

I guess I don't care much because in a party I don't do enough damage with a sword for it to matter. Which I guess is the point, why don't we make a difference when we have a sword in our hand? They could add an ability similar to the PLD's "Shield Mastery" in terms of swords for the RDMs.

In terms of the staves and wands, I can see that point. Especially with the elemental staves, which many a RDM flock to own. Why not give us some sort of elemental swords? Gear it towards the RDM where it gives a similar attribute like the staves, and maybe each sword enchances the effect of its corrisponding En-spell.

I guess I just accepted the fact that RDM's swinging a sword is frowned upon by parties, probably because of the lackluster rank.
Here I was expecting to get flamed. It's nice to see that those who agree with me aren't so minor in number.

It is rather accepted that RDM don't melee in parties, first reason being that our meleeing ability is laughable. When we swing, we miss. When we hit, it's for piss poor damage. All we do it is give TP uneven to the amount of damage dealt. Against IT+ mobs, that is bad juju. The second reason for our back row role is that the higher we get in level, the busier we get. There are simply so many things a good RDM should be doing we barely have time to /heal, much less make time for a little stabbity. Our mage aspect has been played up so much, even fellow RDMs forget about the melee portion.
And Neighbortaru, I know you don't go out and solo with that B sword ranking without an Assualt jerkin, Wise Wizard's anelace, or Wise gear to compensate for all that missing you surely do. What I'm getting at is that we shouldn't have to worry about ALL those compensations. Don't get me wrong, the swords RDM are meant to use(think of our AF degen), aren't meant to do crazy amounts of damage, but it should be a damn sight more accurate, and almost as fast as a dagger.

[Taskmage]

I'm only 60, but my hit rate with swords on EM-T targets isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. I don't have all that uber gear, either. What I do have is geared for +attack.

[Jei]

In terms of the staves and wands, I can see that point. Especially with the elemental staves, which many a RDM flock to own. Why not give us some sort of elemental swords? Gear it towards the RDM where it gives a similar attribute like the staves, and maybe each sword enchances the effect of its corrisponding En-spell.
That actually is a pretty interesting idea. What if we can't wear elemental staffs but gained those bonus by casting en spells? It will be a lot of trouble compare to just macroing /equip main "whatever staff" but also sounds a lot more interesting imo.
enearo to boast silence for example. Might not work out so well but still interesting.

[nazlfrag]

Swinging swords as a rdm... I like the elemental sword idea. Seeing as we are meant to be fencers, why not up our evasion/parrying ability? My best idea, is a passive melee-related job ability, Fencer. When wielding a sword/dagger with no shield, we get a +10 bonus to our weapons.

[neighbortaru]

hmm, should i split this discussion into the BLU forum now? ;)

Edited:
Discussion split to: http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/blue.mage/54936-weighing.blu.split.rdm.forum.html

[Kadenmire]

I don't see that the Blues have that much over us. Yeh they can swing a sword a little harder then us but we can swing it longer and more often and toss lightning into the mix too. As for partying I fight as often as I heal when in a party you just have to make sure you make your talents known beforhand and if they arent willing to take you as you are then find another or start your own.

[Gobo]

There is a RDM in my LS that more often than not melees in either Burn PTs or Lufiuse Meadows PTs (Joytoy/Nightmare for burn, Dynamis dagger/??? for Meadows). She definatly holds her own, using mainly acc/att gear eating sushi and keeping up with whatever else she has to do. It must be working since shes near 100 Merits.

Personally, I really dont care if BLU have more sword than RDM. Most of the things I solo on RDM are high T or VT, and meleeing would get me killed very fast (since they have WS that bypass Utsu).