What if Red Mages had Elemental Swords?

[BurningPanther]

Re: What if Red Mages had Elemental Swords?

I would very much like to see RDM's dependency on those cursed staves broken, either through stat tweaks, gameplay tweaks, or introduction/removal of available weaponry.

The current staves offer, across the board, +10% boost to nuke potency and Enfeebling accuracy, with +15% on the HQ. Small differences not withstanding(damage reduction on Earth, +Cure potency on light, +hMP on Dark, etc,), just including the potency and accuracy bonus would work out well enough on a sword. Just to be nice, I'd love to see sword enhancement +duration/damage included as well, since currently only two RDM-specific swords exist that cater to En-spells. In all, a sword that offered the potency and MAcc bonus would do well toward giving RDM an alternative to the staves.

Another method would be stat tweaks. I'll use BLU as an example, which was created with a novel concept. S-E tailored their physical spells' damage and accuracy to their weapon's damage and any inherent stat bonuses it offered, allowing BLUs to go crazy seeking swords with the strongest damage and inherent STR or Acc bonuses on them. Moreover, they made the physical spell generally stronger than their magical spells. This leaves BLU with every reason not to be confined exclusively to magical gear, such as wands or the cursed staves.

What I had in mind was to do something similar for RDM; tying spell accuracy and potency into their chosen weapon. Unfortunately, this would completely undermine the current utilization of MAcc/MND/INT, so the concept is still a work in progress.

Another idea would be to completely re-align the relationship between potency(INT/MND) and accuracy(skill), placing less importance on drawing potency and MAcc from INT/MND and gear, and placing it almost centrally in your skill level, perhaps in a 80%-20% or 90%-20% skill-gear ration. Again, another oddball idea, a work in progress.

And the last idea, certainly the least likely and least well-received, would be to take RDM off the list of staff-equippable jobs, to include a number of wands as well. RDMs everywhere would cry foul, and for a while, other jobs would shout "gimp," but at least we'd be free to use other stuff... :P

(that last one was just an radical idea from left field, only half-serious... maybe three-quarters serious)

[Yellow Mage]

Re: What if Red Mages had Elemental Swords?

And making it dependent on enspell would make it worthless - changing enspells is more time consuming than changing weapons, and costs MP too. Who wants to cast Enblizzard, then Paralyze, then Enstone, then Slow, then Enlight, then Cure III? Even RDMs don't have THAT much fast cast. And there is no Enlight for players.

That's pretty much the whole point: a Sword that gave Potency to every element simultaniously would either be horibly overpowered, or terribly gimped. One element at a time pretty much balances it without breaking it too much. It also forces Red Mages to choose thier element wisely for the occasion.

+Enspell duration/damage on such a weapon is an obvious must, and other bonuses on both the physical and magical sides would be nice.

Burning Panther, I see where you're coming from, but I think that most of the stuff you're proposing either isn't possible, or has a better alternative.

Such large stat re-assignments, for example, are too drastic an option, not to mention impractical.

So are making RDMs unable to use the Staves in question, as they are "All Jobs."

What would be nice is, instead of the Merited Spells of now, Red Mages has Tier II Enspells, which automatically also give bonuses to corresponding Potency and Accuracy, not to mention being a more powerful and longer-lasting Enspell on it's own. That, however, would eliminate the need for a sword which did this with normal Enspells at 75. But I wonder if Tier II Enspells should stack with such a sword, anyways . . .