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A Red Mage should only nuke to magic burst.
That's the rule I myself usually follow, but today I found myself in a party with two WHMs, and I found myself breaking that rule quite a lot, and I caught some flak for it from one of the WHMs in the party for apparently nuking too much.
My routine when I have a WHM in the party is generally as follows: apply my entire array of debuffs (minus whatever debuffs other mages might be casting), occasionally interupting the debuffing process if the WHM is falling behind on healing or to MB.
After debuffing, I turn my attention towards doing some healing... whenever I see the tank with yellow numbers, I'll toss on a cure, generally speaking, or I will heal if the WHM is resting, or I'll toss a regen or cure on anybody who isn't currently near full health.
Nuking is usually one of the last things on my agenda for things to do in a fight (just in front of melee) but I try to MB at every oppurtunity.
However, in my party today with two WHMs, and a skillchain set up that did not allow me to burst with a particularly powerful nuke (I was a 38-40 RDM/BLM throughout thus hunt, and we had a Fusion chain--all I could do was Fire MB for 15-80 damage.) I found myself nuking outside of MB a lot. I still tried to follow my above routine, plugging the gaps for the WHMs, but most of the time they weren't leaving me any, either one of them was at 200+ mana or both of them had 130+ mana, and nobody had come very close to dying yet.
I figured that if there were any time to do some nuking outside MB, this definitely was it. So at first I tried using spells that according to what I'd read, the monsters should've been weak too... ice (Blizzard) against flies and wind (Aero) against bats. I wasn't too impressed by the damage that these spells were doing. They did do fairly efficient damage in MP:damage terms (usually--I still got dud casts for wimpy damage sometimes), but of course were not doing very impressive chunks of damage overall, being some of my older spells.
So I tried using some of my more powerful nukes... Stone II, Waterga, Water II. Though occasionally I'd get duds that would produce more wasted MP than a low level nuke dud, a few spells in particular seemed to be landing for very good damage a good portion of the time... Waterga was doing about 55-120 damage per hit against flies, then Water II was scoring about 100-150 per hit most of the time, which surprised me because it seemed to be performing about as efficiently as Blizzard, and of course was doing it about twice as fast (freeing me up to cast other spells or /heal sooner). Maybe it was because of the day of the week or something--I didn't think to check that at the time. So I ended up alternating between the spells the monster was weak against, and one of the higher level nukes.
When we lost one of our WHMs, while we continued fighting waiting for a replacement WHM to arrive, the remaining WHM started expressing some impatience and criticism about the way I was playing.
I'll admit at this point I wasn't 100% on my game... I was tired, and I had just learned Convert, and thus had to squeeze a new macro in somewhere--I put it in a different macro bank from the one I use most (for healing, debuffing, nuking) to avoid accidentally hitting it. For a kill or two I was still in a more nuke-heavy mindset, so for those reasons I was a bit later on my heals than usual. I apologized for my performance, but it was at about this time the WHM in the party starts giving me advice about what I should be doing.
He advises me that the bats are weak against wind and lightning and that the flies are weak against ice. I tell him that I know this, and try to explain my above observations about how the low level spells I have at my disposal not performing too favorably (either in terms of overall damage or MP efficiency) compared to some of the higher level nukes I'd been experimenting with. He replies saying "Bottom line as a rdm you shouldn't be nuking except to MB".
At this point I was getting a bit annoyed. On the one hand I appreciated what he was saying, as it's my general philosophy as well, and he was only, I'm sure, trying to help me. On the other hand, he was criticizing my previous performance in the party and didn't seem to be willing to accept anything I was saying... I guess I felt a bit like he was quoting scripture to me. He says that the way I was playing is not acceptable for JP parties (he's not JP, but I guess he has partied with a lot, apparently being one of the few level 70+ NA players on our server), and he's telling me that when/if I do nuke, it should only be with nukes against enemies with an elemental weakness to that nuke, or in MB, even if doing this produces only negligable damage.
Personally I feel he was being a bit too rigid in his adherance to this "philosophy" here. The party was doing fine, for one thing... I was not pulling aggro with my nukes (not once that I recall), we had very little downtime that wasn't caused by our puller going out and fetching things, or waiting for tougher mobs to get out of the way, and it seems to me that once you basically eliminate downtime, your emphasis should be on executing faster kills--which can only be accomplished through doing more damage. I tried to explain to him that I was only nuking with surplus mana to bring the fights to an end sooner, but he tells me there is no such thing as surplus mana.
I don't know, anybody have any opinions? On the one hand, like I said, I see his point, and often agree with it. But on the other hand, I really don't see that what I was doing in that particular situation was out of line, I think I was adapting to the unique situation presented by the party structure. This guy was giving me advice as a level 70 RDM--maybe he forgot what it was like to be a level 38-40 RDM in a party with two WHMs, if he was ever in that situation... I didn't have the mana or time burden involved with casting Refresh, and we had WHMs and a PAL tank hardly allowing me to get a Cure in edgewise... nuking just seemed to be the logical thing to do.
When I left the party I made amends with the guy, as it seemed like we had gotten the wrong idea about each other, to some extent anyway... he had called me a "Wannabe BLM" (which if he had partied with me in any other situation, he would've seen I wasn't--I'm a RDM almost to a fault--when I play my BLM, I have to remind myself to nuke instead of enfeebling/healing all the time)... it's true that before we lost one of our WHMs, I hardly did any healing whatsoever, but that's because I could never find a good oppurtunity to do so. I explained to him that I agreed with him, and tried to re-explain my reasoning to him (telling him basically what I've said previous in this message), also saying that I felt it was important sometimes to do some first-hand experimenting to see how things work for yourself, instead of relying entirely on what "more experienced" people say. I think this satisfied him, and he said I seemed to understand "most of it" about being a RDM.
Anyway... how often do you guys nuke outside of MB at level 40+? And do you ever nuke with a spell that the monster isn't weak to? When, if ever, do you feel doing this is appropriate, and how do you think higher level nukes compare to lower level nukes in efficiency and overall damage output, and how much (if any) do factors like the weather or day of the week determine what spells you use, as opposed to creature weakness?
That's the rule I myself usually follow, but today I found myself in a party with two WHMs, and I found myself breaking that rule quite a lot, and I caught some flak for it from one of the WHMs in the party for apparently nuking too much.
My routine when I have a WHM in the party is generally as follows: apply my entire array of debuffs (minus whatever debuffs other mages might be casting), occasionally interupting the debuffing process if the WHM is falling behind on healing or to MB.
After debuffing, I turn my attention towards doing some healing... whenever I see the tank with yellow numbers, I'll toss on a cure, generally speaking, or I will heal if the WHM is resting, or I'll toss a regen or cure on anybody who isn't currently near full health.
Nuking is usually one of the last things on my agenda for things to do in a fight (just in front of melee) but I try to MB at every oppurtunity.
However, in my party today with two WHMs, and a skillchain set up that did not allow me to burst with a particularly powerful nuke (I was a 38-40 RDM/BLM throughout thus hunt, and we had a Fusion chain--all I could do was Fire MB for 15-80 damage.) I found myself nuking outside of MB a lot. I still tried to follow my above routine, plugging the gaps for the WHMs, but most of the time they weren't leaving me any, either one of them was at 200+ mana or both of them had 130+ mana, and nobody had come very close to dying yet.
I figured that if there were any time to do some nuking outside MB, this definitely was it. So at first I tried using spells that according to what I'd read, the monsters should've been weak too... ice (Blizzard) against flies and wind (Aero) against bats. I wasn't too impressed by the damage that these spells were doing. They did do fairly efficient damage in MP:damage terms (usually--I still got dud casts for wimpy damage sometimes), but of course were not doing very impressive chunks of damage overall, being some of my older spells.
So I tried using some of my more powerful nukes... Stone II, Waterga, Water II. Though occasionally I'd get duds that would produce more wasted MP than a low level nuke dud, a few spells in particular seemed to be landing for very good damage a good portion of the time... Waterga was doing about 55-120 damage per hit against flies, then Water II was scoring about 100-150 per hit most of the time, which surprised me because it seemed to be performing about as efficiently as Blizzard, and of course was doing it about twice as fast (freeing me up to cast other spells or /heal sooner). Maybe it was because of the day of the week or something--I didn't think to check that at the time. So I ended up alternating between the spells the monster was weak against, and one of the higher level nukes.
When we lost one of our WHMs, while we continued fighting waiting for a replacement WHM to arrive, the remaining WHM started expressing some impatience and criticism about the way I was playing.
I'll admit at this point I wasn't 100% on my game... I was tired, and I had just learned Convert, and thus had to squeeze a new macro in somewhere--I put it in a different macro bank from the one I use most (for healing, debuffing, nuking) to avoid accidentally hitting it. For a kill or two I was still in a more nuke-heavy mindset, so for those reasons I was a bit later on my heals than usual. I apologized for my performance, but it was at about this time the WHM in the party starts giving me advice about what I should be doing.
He advises me that the bats are weak against wind and lightning and that the flies are weak against ice. I tell him that I know this, and try to explain my above observations about how the low level spells I have at my disposal not performing too favorably (either in terms of overall damage or MP efficiency) compared to some of the higher level nukes I'd been experimenting with. He replies saying "Bottom line as a rdm you shouldn't be nuking except to MB".
At this point I was getting a bit annoyed. On the one hand I appreciated what he was saying, as it's my general philosophy as well, and he was only, I'm sure, trying to help me. On the other hand, he was criticizing my previous performance in the party and didn't seem to be willing to accept anything I was saying... I guess I felt a bit like he was quoting scripture to me. He says that the way I was playing is not acceptable for JP parties (he's not JP, but I guess he has partied with a lot, apparently being one of the few level 70+ NA players on our server), and he's telling me that when/if I do nuke, it should only be with nukes against enemies with an elemental weakness to that nuke, or in MB, even if doing this produces only negligable damage.
Personally I feel he was being a bit too rigid in his adherance to this "philosophy" here. The party was doing fine, for one thing... I was not pulling aggro with my nukes (not once that I recall), we had very little downtime that wasn't caused by our puller going out and fetching things, or waiting for tougher mobs to get out of the way, and it seems to me that once you basically eliminate downtime, your emphasis should be on executing faster kills--which can only be accomplished through doing more damage. I tried to explain to him that I was only nuking with surplus mana to bring the fights to an end sooner, but he tells me there is no such thing as surplus mana.
I don't know, anybody have any opinions? On the one hand, like I said, I see his point, and often agree with it. But on the other hand, I really don't see that what I was doing in that particular situation was out of line, I think I was adapting to the unique situation presented by the party structure. This guy was giving me advice as a level 70 RDM--maybe he forgot what it was like to be a level 38-40 RDM in a party with two WHMs, if he was ever in that situation... I didn't have the mana or time burden involved with casting Refresh, and we had WHMs and a PAL tank hardly allowing me to get a Cure in edgewise... nuking just seemed to be the logical thing to do.
When I left the party I made amends with the guy, as it seemed like we had gotten the wrong idea about each other, to some extent anyway... he had called me a "Wannabe BLM" (which if he had partied with me in any other situation, he would've seen I wasn't--I'm a RDM almost to a fault--when I play my BLM, I have to remind myself to nuke instead of enfeebling/healing all the time)... it's true that before we lost one of our WHMs, I hardly did any healing whatsoever, but that's because I could never find a good oppurtunity to do so. I explained to him that I agreed with him, and tried to re-explain my reasoning to him (telling him basically what I've said previous in this message), also saying that I felt it was important sometimes to do some first-hand experimenting to see how things work for yourself, instead of relying entirely on what "more experienced" people say. I think this satisfied him, and he said I seemed to understand "most of it" about being a RDM.
Anyway... how often do you guys nuke outside of MB at level 40+? And do you ever nuke with a spell that the monster isn't weak to? When, if ever, do you feel doing this is appropriate, and how do you think higher level nukes compare to lower level nukes in efficiency and overall damage output, and how much (if any) do factors like the weather or day of the week determine what spells you use, as opposed to creature weakness?
If you debuff the hell out of it, you may not even be in a situation where its necessary, because it might take so long to be ready to cast and the effort is moot by then. But...if its going to hit hard, and the relief that you'll provide by casting it is there, blast away.
Combat Caster's Boomberang +1 | Master Caster's Bracelets
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